The Girl in the Painted Caravan (24 page)

When deciding to stay, my parents had to make a further decision about the several hundred pounds we had accumulated over the season and which they had hidden in the flat. There were lots of
reports of robberies in the
Brighton Evening Argus,
our local paper, and Mummy in particular felt worried about our safety with the money there as a temptation for thieves, so she came to
the conclusion that she should open a bank account.

I don’t know if my mother had ever been to a bank in her life. But that was the situation she found herself in, and she knew we had to start getting used to the gorger customs if we were
going to live in the gorger manner. So, quite boldly, she walked into the bank she had chosen (because she liked the way they decorated their window boxes), put the bundles of notes on the counter
and said that she wished to start an account.

The clerk there said that the bank would require two references. Mummy was quite startled by this request. She replied, with sincere indignation, ‘It’s my money I’m giving you
to look after. I should be asking for references from
you
!’

We only had a short lease on the Cannon Place flat, so we moved to a flat on Royal Crescent, with Sir Laurence Olivier as a neighbour on the left and John Clements and his wife on the right.
When autumn came that year, I started to notice that a man who lived in a nearby flat would jump in his car and follow me whenever I left. He would pull up alongside me and offer me a lift. Despite
me always refusing him, he still persisted.

‘Go away and leave me alone,’ I would say, in no uncertain terms.

‘I’m only being neighbourly,’ he would bray back at me.

I didn’t tell my father or Nathan because I didn’t want them to have a confrontation with him, but I did tell my mother. She immediately went and rang on his doorbell. He opened the
door and she said, ‘Now, young man, I want to talk to you about my daughter.’

He started laughing louder and louder. She realised he wasn’t quite right in the head and she needed to be careful with him. With wide eyes, she said, ‘You’re a good-looking
man. I’m sure you must have many admirers, but please don’t talk to my daughter again. She has a very nervous disposition, you understand.’ She quickly turned on her heels and
returned home. ‘The man’s a nutter,’ she said to me. ‘There’s definitely something not right about him.’

It was already quite strange having someone stalking me, but if my mother was now concerned, that made me ten times more worried. After the life she had led, there wasn’t much that could
shock her, but I could see that she was shaken. As much as we loved living in the Crescent, my mother’s feelings about this man and my trust in her judgement and my own meant that we decided
to move again.

There was a big luxury flat to rent in West Street Mansions, right in the town centre and next door to my mother’s dukkering place. ‘Not bad going, eh?’ said Mummy.
‘Three moves in less than a year. It’s almost like travelling again.’ Whatever happened in our lives, she always kept her sense of humour, a trait which got us through anything.
So we moved into this big first-floor flat and that became our home for the next few years.

During our first November in Brighton, we’d heard there was to be a big ball thrown by the
Evening Argus
newspaper at the Regent Ballroom to raise money for a children’s
charity. An acquaintance I had made at the paper suggested to me that I might offer my services, which I did.

I was delighted when I found out I would be rubbing shoulders with people like Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn, William Hartnell, Flora Robson, Godfrey Winn and Alan Melville. These were people
I’d only seen in films or on TV. It started off with me giving readings for the general public. The celebrities were cordoned off with a big yellow rope on the other side of the ballroom.
After a while, a distinguished-looking gentleman with silver hair and spectacles came over for a reading and afterwards he told me that he was greatly impressed by my accuracy. He then introduced
himself to me as Mr Gorringe, the editor of the
Evening Argus,
and he invited me to go with him behind the yellow rope. He wanted me to read some of the celebrities’ hands – I
had to stop myself from jumping up and down with excitement!

The first person for me to read was Zena Marshall, who went on to become the very first Bond girl. William Hartnell, who later played the first Doctor Who, invited me to sit with him and Dame
Flora Robson and then invited me to dance with him, as did Norman Wisdom. In the end, I hobnobbed with most of the celebrities present, including Phyllis Calvert and Leo Glenn, and I was obviously
thrilled to pieces.

Before the evening drew to a close, a writer who was working for the
Argus
at the time asked me to go to the office with him. I presumed he was too embarrassed to ask me to read his palm
in front of his colleagues so I followed him. But when we got into the office, I realised the reason for the invite, as he tried to pull me towards him. Shocked, I pushed him away and beat a hasty
retreat.

The next day, to my delight and amazement, there was a double-page spread in the
Argus
which was very complimentary about me and my work and made me the focus of the evening. A little
later in the day, I had a phone call from the editor, Victor Gorringe, asking me to go and see him. Mummy had one of her psychic flashes and suggested I draft out a horoscope column to take along
with me, which I did, just in case.

It was a bit of one-upmanship on my part. Before he’d got through telling me about his idea for me to write a daily column, I dived into my handbag, drew out what I’d written and
placed it on the desk in front of him. His face was a picture of astonishment as he tried to read my scrawl. He then pressed a bell on his desk and a young lady appeared. He asked me to accompany
her so that she could type up what I’d written. ‘You may have to dictate it to her,’ he said drily.

I took the typed copy back to him and he read it. He then formally asked me if I’d like to write a daily column. Would I? Of course I would! He pressed the bell again and the girl
reappeared. He put the copy in the girl’s hand and said, ‘Give that to the features editor to go in tomorrow’s paper.’ I couldn’t believe it. We agreed on three pounds
a week.

The next day I waited for the paper to arrive at the newsagent’s. He had given me a whole page! I did this for six months before one of the reporters at the
Argus
that I’d
become friends with suggested I get my copy syndicated to the other regionals.

‘How do I do that?’ I asked.

‘I suggest you go to the Press Association. They deal with all that stuff,’ they replied.

Nathan and I trotted off to the railway station the next day and got the train to London, which was only about an hour away. We took a taxi to Fleet Street, walked into the Press
Association’s vast offices and were greeted sternly by a tall man in a green suit and a green peaked hat who folded his arms as he stepped in front of us. ‘Can I help you?’ he
asked.

‘I’d like to see the features editor, please,’ I said with my head held high.

He smiled a mocking smile and said, ‘Do you have an appointment?’

I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘No, I don’t. Please would you tell him Eva Petulengro is here and that I need to see him immediately. It’s quite
important.’

He told me I’d have to write in for an appointment, but I stood my ground and said, ‘It won’t hurt you to go and ask him, will it?’

He could see I wasn’t going to go away and withdrew. On his return, he asked me to follow him. I was led into the editor’s office, where I was invited to sit down. Nathan stood
behind me. The editor studied me carefully before he spoke. He said, ‘I had to see you because nobody gets past Charlie. You must have impressed him. What can I do for you?’

I took some copies of the
Evening Argus
from my bag, laid them on his desk and said, ‘I’d like you to syndicate these, please.’ He studied them carefully, then after a
few minutes looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Yes.’

Nathan and I left the office and could hardly speak. How could it have been so simple? We hadn’t eaten that day so I asked him if he’d like to have something to eat now and he
replied, ‘I couldn’t eat a thing. You cheeky cow, how do you get away with it, talking to people like that? You should have been thrown out on your ear.’

A few days later, I received a phone call from the writer who had come on to me at the
Argus
ball, telling me a film producer friend of his wanted to meet me. He said, ‘His house is
just around the corner from the office, Eva. Come with me.’ I was obviously wary of him, but was also bowled over by the prospect of a film producer being interested in me and couldn’t
pass up the opportunity to meet with him.

He took me to a little row of old cottages, rang the doorbell and, when there was no answer, casually said, ‘Oh, he can’t have arrived yet.’ He put his hand in his pocket and
produced a key. I realised right then what his real game was, but I wasn’t afraid. We went in and he put some music on and offered me a drink.

‘He must have missed his train,’ the writer muttered.

With this, I belted him in the eye with the hand on which I wore a very large ring – my knuckle-duster, as I called it. At the same time lifting my leg, I kneed him right in the groin,
just as my mother had always instructed me to if I ever got caught in these circumstances. I left the cottage hoping and praying that his eye would go black before he got back to the
Argus
offices. It did. Not only that, one of his front teeth was also missing.

Two years later, when I had an office in East Street, a lady came in with an appointment one day and I gave her a reading. She then proceeded to tell me that she had two other lady friends who
had been to see me and she confessed that all three of them had been paid by this writer to report back to him about what I had told them. He’d said he was going to reveal me as a fraud, but
she said the three of them were more than happy with their readings and had decided to tell me that he was trying to screw me – yet again!

Around the time of the knuckle-duster incident, I kept running into a lovely little old lady who would stop me for a chat and would always say, ‘I’d love to photograph you.’ I
was always in a hurry and paid no heed. However, one day, my mother said that a royal photographer whose daughter was married to one of Winston Churchill’s sons had approached her. She wanted
to photograph both of us.

When we arrived at the beautiful house, in a very exclusive terrace, it was my little old lady friend who opened the door. I was speechless, for on the walls were black and white pictures of all
the top film stars. She truly caught the spirit of my mother in her photograph and I couldn’t believe that the little old woman who I thought was merely a keen photographer was, in fact, a
professional and very renowned one.

I was renting a booth in the Aquarium, opposite the Palace Pier, when one day, while I was giving a reading to a lady, three mods burst in to grab our bags. My instincts took over and I attacked
them with my crystal ball. I hit one square in the chest and he fell to the ground, wheezing. My client was by now screaming and the mod was screeching obscenities.

He started for the door, but by now I was really seeing red. I had worked hard all day for my money and here he was thinking he could just waltz in and take it. I wrapped the velvet that my
crystal ball was kept in around the ball and started swinging it at him. It was hilarious to see the look of terror on his face as he ran out yelling, ‘Leave me alone, you witch!’

It was reported in the local paper and my mother made me give up that place after that, as she thought I was too vulnerable there. That’s certainly not what I thought, though. In fact, I
couldn’t wait for him to come back for round two, now that I had learned how very useful my ball could be in ways I’d never imagined.

Strange that despite my profession of foreseeing the future, I never guessed I would become a writer. Around this time we had again been talking of leaving Brighton to go back on the road. But
the responsibility of writing my regular column kept me there, and then another event, which I also hadn’t anticipated, took place and made my temporary stay a permanent one. I met my
Johnnie.

TWENTY-FIVE

‘I’ve got a date, Eva!’ Iris said. ‘With a boy called Vic. We’re meeting at the Sussex at eight o’clock. Please come with me, just in case
he doesn’t turn up. I don’t want to be sat there all alone. Pleeease!’

She’d called round to the flat, almost breathless with excitement. I wasn’t keen on the idea of going to a bar, even though I was then twenty-three years old, because I knew my
father wouldn’t approve – bars weren’t considered somewhere for Romany girls to be seen. But she begged me to accompany her and I couldn’t let down my friend.

‘I’ll come, but I’m not waiting around all night for some boy,’ I said firmly.

‘No, we’ll just give him ten minutes and if he doesn’t turn up we’ll go to the dance like we planned. I promise! Thank you so much, Eva.’

I was still feeling a bit cross about it as I got ready to go out that night, putting on my moss-green sack dress, which was all the rage at the time, and applying another layer of mascara and
eye-liner. I just didn’t understand why so many girls seemed to be just dying for a man to come into their lives. I had had the occasional date by this point, but never felt strongly enough
about anyone to get romantic over them. I often used to wonder whether there was anything wrong with me. Looking back now, I can see that my life as a Romany and my work had a great deal to do with
the way I felt at the time.

As a Romany, I’d had a sheltered life, which made me shy towards any male not part of, or a friend of, the family. And my work meant that although in some ways I was totally innocent,
naïve by today’s standards, what I lacked in personal experience I made up for in knowledge of other people’s lives and problems. This gave me a sort of built-in warning device
which prevented me from getting involved with anyone. Funnily enough, because of my work, it seemed that all the conversations I had with men were based on a kind of consultant-client relationship.
I don’t know whether this was because of their curiosity about what I did for a living or whether I needed to gain the upper hand by playing the expert, but I usually finished up advising
them about their career prospects or something like that.