Jack shook his head and bent down so that Dandy and I could lift the screen on to his back. He walked with it towards the wagon, dragging it behind him, and then he came back.

‘He’s never raised his hand to me,’ he said. ‘He never laid a finger on my ma. But she didn’t believe in him. He left her and the three little ones in the village and went on the tramp with the horse. He’d have left me behind too but he knew I was the only one that believed he could do it. He had me trained to ride on the horse within days. I was only a littl’un and I was scared of nothing. Besides, it’s a very big horseback when you’re only five or six. It was easy to stay on.

‘At the end of the summer we went home. He’d been sending money back when he could. And after the winter we started out again. This time there was a cart we could borrow. Ma wanted to come too, but Da was against it. But she cried and said she needed to be with him. I wanted her. And Da wanted the little ones along with him. So we all went on the road.’

Jack stopped. Then he bent for the final section of screen and loaded it in silence. Dandy and I said nothing. He came back and picked up a couple of halters and slung them towards the wagon. He turned and went for the gate as if the story was over.

We went after him.

‘What happened then, Jack?’ I asked. ‘When you were all travelling together?’

Jack sighed and leaned on the gate, looking across the field as if he could see the wagon and the woman with the two small children and the baby at the breast. The man walking with his son at the horse’s head, the horse which he had trained to dance for pennies.

‘It was a grand season,’ he said. ‘Warm, and sunny. A good harvest and there was money about. We went from fair to fair and we did well at every one of them. Da had enough money to buy the cart and then he exchanged it for a proper wagon. Then he saw a horse he fancied and bought her. That’s Bluebell that we have now. He saw she had a big enough back for me as I grew bigger. And she’s steady.

‘We had two horses then so we didn’t work the street corners any more but we took a field and started to take money at the gate. I had an act jumping from one horse to another, and through a hoop. I was still quite small you see – I must have been about seven or eight.