The Girl in the Painted Caravan (26 page)

We were now on our second bottle of bubbly. One of the reasons they were here was to have the Romany blessing from Mummy, and the time now seemed right.

Nathan jumped up and said excitedly, ‘Right, now let’s have some music.’ He brought out his guitar and began to play ‘Travellin’ Light’. Daisy stood up and
started singing with him. It was an apt song for the circumstances. Afterwards, I sang ‘Autumn Leaves’ with Nathan and, as Daisy and I glanced at each other, we both knew this was a
night we would never forget. We were no longer children. She was married now and I saw before me the woman emerging from the girl.

Nathan, Mummy, Daisy, the twins and I, urged on by the Champagne and the occasion, all started shouting, ‘Come on, Sonny Boy, it’s your turn.’ We didn’t know then if he
could sing or not, but from the confident way that Daisy was joining us in our banter, she obviously knew something we didn’t.

Daisy was sitting in an armchair and Sonny Boy gazed into her face. He started to sing ‘You Made Me Love You’ in a velvety voice which was a cross between Nat King Cole and Dean
Martin. Throughout the song, Mummy and I couldn’t stop crying. It was so touching and you could see he meant every word.

We learned that, earlier in the day, Daisy had sent a telegram to her parents which read: ‘Married today, sorry this way.’

A couple of months later, Honour eloped with Eric Boswell, another handsome Romany who sang like Dean Martin. We hadn’t met Eric and decided to go to Blackpool to look him over. When we
arrived, we found that Sonny Boy and Daisy had bought a house, as had many of the family by that point, although their vardos were always parked behind the houses – handy in case they decided
to roam a bit in the winter months. In reality, they couldn’t just let go of the Romany life. Whenever we got together as a family, weather permitting, we’d light a fire in the back
garden and sit around it, as if we were still in a field in Lincolnshire.

Sonny Boy sat me down and said, ‘Eva, I have to tell you what I did last week.’ He went on to tell me that he had taken on two new stalls now that he had a wife, and he needed
someone to help him run them. Daisy suggested he put an advert in the local paper, which he did – the girl in the advertising department of the paper helped him word it. He received quite a
lot of replies from people who were interested and the first one to be interviewed was a young man who was so handsome that Sonny Boy knew he would attract all the young women.

He spoke to him and he seemed very reasonable, so he decided to take him on.

‘Can you start tomorrow?’ Sonny Boy asked.

The young man hesitated and said, ‘Yes, I can, Mr Pattison, but I need to tell you something first.’ He paused and added, ‘I’m gay!’

Sonny Boy, not knowing what the boy meant, replied, ‘Don’t worry, lad, I’m a little bit gay myself sometimes.’

Later that day, he told Daisy what had happened and at the end of his tale she burst out laughing before explaining what gay meant. Sonny Boy looked at me, waiting for my reaction – of
course, I did the same.

Poor Sonny Boy was worried the young lad might have got the wrong idea and was very embarrassed the next time he met him. But, in fact, it all worked out very well and the lad carried on working
for Sonny Boy for years – and he was indeed very good at drawing in the women (and some of the men).

TWENTY-SEVEN

As the months passed, my feelings for Johnnie didn’t change. I still didn’t dare tell my parents, however, and we used to meet wherever we could without a chaperone
on some pretence or other. I wonder if my parents suspected something. My father did try to keep track of my friends. One evening I’d been out with Johnnie, at the flat of a friend of his,
playing poker. I was happy because I’d won and left having had enough excitement. But a few of the guests there that night decided to go swimming!

My father tackled me the next day. ‘I understand you were at a party last night,’ he said accusingly.

‘Yes, playing poker,’ I admitted, heart thumping in case I’d been found out.

‘And then you stripped off and went diving naked off the pier!’ he shouted.

‘
I
was diving naked off the pier?’ I asked sarcastically. ‘And did I drown? Because, thanks to you, I can’t swim.’ Did he not know me at all? I thought
angrily as I stormed off. Not only had he instilled a fear of water in me, but he should have known that I would never get naked in public.

Once, I decided to go to London to buy a leather coat. My parents didn’t mind me going alone, so long as I caught the four o’clock afternoon train back. This gave me a chance to meet
Johnnie, and so I did, at the station. I hadn’t been able to give him much notice and he had come straight from work. He looked a sight, with diesel-stained white plimsolls, a shrunken and
holey boating jersey and a dirty white yachting cap set at a jaunty angle. I probably thought he looked lovely, even though he desperately needed a shave, but to anyone else, he must have looked a
disgrace.

Anyway, we travelled up to London, first class, and it never crossed my mind that we must have looked an odd couple: John dressed like a tramp and me done up to the nines in an expensive fur
coat and very high-heeled shoes. When we got to the West End, I marched into a posh shop somewhere in Bond Street, with John lagging behind a bit to gawp at something. I didn’t realise I had
left him behind until the saleslady’s smile of greeting faded and she apologised to me. ‘Excuse me a moment while I call the manager. We don’t encourage
that
type in
here!’ I realised she was talking about poor John! I walked out with great indignation, leaving the saleswoman bewildered and Johnnie bemused, wondering why I had suddenly changed my mind
about shopping there.

I now had a palmistry stand on the forecourt of a hotel near Brighton’s Metropole Hotel. It was just two chairs, a card table and a crystal ball inside a garden tent, but with very nice
signs. Weather permitting, I was there every day. Since we relied on holidaymakers for the bulk of our trade, we never took holidays when ordinary people did, or knew what it was like to go away
for a bank holiday weekend. That was when we worked, for as many hours as it took, so long as the punters were around, and that made us different from ordinary working people. But when the weather
was bad, it was good, because Johnnie couldn’t run the boat and would have to take the day off, as would I.

On 22 November 1963, some friends decided to drive to London and come back around 10 p.m., so I organised my alibi with Nathan and six of us crammed ourselves into the car and away we went. We
went to the Colony Club, run by the American actor and gangster George Raft. It was packed with smart Americans in cocktail dresses. I wore a black pencil skirt, five-inch heels, and a blue
roll-neck sweater that came down to my hips. That was the fashion in those days, but not to go to smart clubs in! After a while, I was having a problem with a bra strap. I went into the ladies,
where three American women were doing their faces. I went into a cubicle, adjusted my strap and then headed for the door. One of the women turned to me and said, ‘Hey, honey, you ain’t
washed your hands!’

I looked back at her and replied, ‘Honey, I ain’t touched nothing.’ I really didn’t like these pretentious people, and decided to give as good as I got.

Something really important was happening that night in the States. I learned the next day that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

Although I knew I was falling in love, I fought against it. Each meeting I had with Johnnie, I intended to be the last. I just knew that my mother would disapprove of a gorger son-in-law, so I
dared not tell her about him, for fear I wouldn’t be allowed to see him again.

Johnnie and I discussed this, of course, and he was very understanding. He knew that marriage was a big commitment, he knew that the odds were that it would affect my relationship with my
family, and he knew how important my family was to me. I was hopeless and I don’t know why he had so much patience with me. I was like the girl in the old music-hall song, who wouldn’t
say yes and wouldn’t say no.

This went on for the best part of three years and, eventually, he did get fed up with all my indecision. While he spent most of the year working the speedboats at Brighton or Worthing, he still
occasionally took jobs abroad, delivering yachts. He was offered quite a few commissions like this, but usually turned them down so that he could spend time with me. Then a big chance occurred: the
opportunity to deliver a luxury yacht to Majorca. This was a trip Johnnie really wanted to make and he gave me an ultimatum – either I could go with him and we could make it a honeymoon trip,
or he would go without me. I still couldn’t rid myself of my sense of guilt, so he went without me.

I missed him terribly while he was away and I wondered whether he would ever want to be bothered with me again after yet another refusal. Our long courtship was obviously proving a tremendous
strain and I knew it was all my fault. It wasn’t just that I was worried about my mother’s probable reaction. An even deeper worry was my own uncertainty. How could I be positive that
my feelings wouldn’t change? Could this possibly be prolonged infatuation rather than love?

For me, marriage was the most important step a woman could take. In my line of work, I had seen much unhappiness caused by marriages which were incompatible or where the physical attraction had
died after a few years, leaving nothing in its place. I was determined this kind of thing would never happen to me. While Johnnie wasn’t there to reassure me, these thoughts tormented me.

The one thing I had to occupy my mind constructively was my profession, and I threw myself into this with a will. Perhaps because I worked so hard, my career progressed in an almost spectacular
fashion for someone so young and for a writer who had never been formally taught to read or write.

The horoscope column had proved to be enormously popular and was by now being syndicated to several provincial newspapers. The horoscope magazine I had recently started was also going well. The
trouble with the magazine was that whenever I thought about it, which I had to do regularly, it always made me think of Johnnie, for it was he who had encouraged me to start it.

I had been glancing through one of those magazines that make predictions and, as usual for me, was criticising everything about it. Johnnie, who I don’t think was really interested, had
just shrugged and said, ‘If you think you can do better, why don’t you start one yourself?’

‘Right,’ I’d replied instantly, ‘I will.’ The decision was a typical one, impulsive and unreasoned, since I lacked financial as well as literary training. But small
details of that kind never did worry me and, having said I would do it, I was determined I would. So I went along to my friend, the editor of the
Argus,
and told him, ‘I want to have
my own horoscope magazine. And I want you to print it and publish it for me!’

He thought I was mad, of course, and told me so. Then he started to spell out all the details: the cost of the paper, of colour printing a cover, of typesetting and making blocks for
illustrations.

I knew I was lost unless I could somehow counter a lot of arguments which I didn’t even understand. Fortunately, I knew his weak spot and, in a moment of inspiration, I interrupted him.
‘I know, why don’t we do it for charity? It will be Christmas soon and we can bring out a special issue, with the proceeds going to any charity you like.’

He blinked at me and thought it over while I waited with anticipation. He muttered to himself and scribbled some figures on his pad. Then he muttered some more and I nodded intelligently. When I
could make some sense of the technicalities, it transpired he was offering to produce a one-off Eva Petulengro magazine – 5,000 copies, so long as I guaranteed a certain amount of
advertising. I agreed at once, went out and sold the advertising myself and came back with it before he had even got in his printing estimates.

The 5,000 copies we turned out sold like hot cakes and I decided that I had been right all along. I could produce my own magazine and, more than that, I now knew how to go about publishing it
myself – and that’s just what I did, although that is a story on its own.

At this time, I was also gaining a reputation because of the many celebrities who were my clients. From a journalistic point of view, my profession as a clairvoyant was extremely useful, since
many famous people didn’t want to give interviews, but were still prepared to talk to me and answer my questions, if only because they wanted to question me in return!

My father’s niece was getting married in Nottingham in October 1964, Goose Fair time, and my parents had decided that the family would go to the wedding, see some of our friends at the
Goose Fair and then visit my grandmother and aunt at Whaplode. It could have been my guilty conscience, or it could have been a psychic flash, but I was convinced my parents knew I was seeing
someone and thought they were being clever, getting me away from him. What they didn’t know was that Johnnie wasn’t even in the country and wouldn’t be back in Brighton for a few
weeks. I was actually happy to get away so I didn’t have to be in Brighton without him.

I bought a black designer suit for the wedding, together with a big, black cartwheel hat, and I teamed them with a shocking-pink chiffon blouse with frills. But after the wedding ceremony came
the dinner, which had a ‘no kids’ policy. Without even being asked, I was put in charge of ten children and had to entertain them while everyone else went to the dinner. Talk about a
bloody cheek! I took the little people to the cinema and filled them full of ice cream and sweets every time they complained. After the movie, I returned to the hotel, where the parents took over,
much to my relief. I did join in the do after that and jived like there was no tomorrow to a band and to the Beatles, who were so popular at the time. After the wedding, we went to the Goose Fair,
met up with loads of people we’d got to know at fairs over the years and ate hot mushy peas with mint sauce, which was and still is a speciality in that part of the country.