Don’t say that

A RECENT New York Times article revealed that 56 per cent US residents wouldn’t use the word gypsy owing to its often-negative associations.

There are fewer reservations about the word in Spain although strangely you now see fewer immediately identifiable gypsies around .

This certainly wasn’t the case in the late Eighties when I worked as secretary to a Benidorm businessman. The word businessman is an overstatement as he had lost his moneymaking knack to the extent that I had to send marble samples by express courier to the United States, which played hell with the petty cash. He lived in fear of his mistress, his estranged wife and three grown-up daughters, two of whom should have been called Goneril and Regan – not that the third was any Cordelia.

A very beautiful young gypsy started to visit the office, which opened on to the street, asking for money. We always gave her something and she dropped in regularly until she was heavily pregnant, later returning, sometimes toting the child,. She was always taciturn and it required persistence to learn her name, which she claimed was Maria but possibly chose at random owing to its anonymity.

Eventually my boss did a runner and I saw no more of Maria until I was walking along Benidorm’s Avenida del Mediterráneo a year or so later. Somebody bumped into me and something brushed my shoulder-bag, the sort with a flap and no zip.

It was the lightest of gossamer touches but enough to warn me to feel inside it as I was overtaken by the person who’d jostled me. The purse was gone and a few paces away were two young gypsies, one of them Maria, no longer so slim or so beautiful but still recognisable.

Furious and fuming because I was pretty hard-up at the time I shouted after her, “After all the money I gave you in the past now you go and take mine!” In fact I’d never her all that much, but María turned and looked at me coolly over her shoulder and said something to her companion who, rapid as a fish darting through water, slipped something into her hand. It was my purse and María casually returned it with neither smile nor change of expression.

I was so astounded that all I could manage was an inappropriate “thank you” as the pair accelerated rapidly along the pavement. On telling Spanish people this one hundred per cent true story most receive it sceptically as another instance of Brit invention and inclination to romanticise gypsies.

But it happened, and it happened to me.

They, like many others, also say that giving money to beggars only encourages more beggars but I still feel begging must be a tough way to survive. Anyway, I did what I believed was right at the time, although whether or not it was doing the right thing for the right reason I’ll leave you to decide. But at least I got my purse back.

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