the Gypsy Fortune-Teller

She’d said I would and so I wasn’t surprised when, with a flash of déjà vu I finally arrived.

How had she seen this city, set at the confluence of river and ocean, from a hemisphere away?

How had it really looked in her cloudy crystal ball?

A gypsy fortune-teller at a village fête, between ‘Devonshire Teas’ and ‘Arts and Crafts’ her tent standing under its sign ‘Fortunes Told.’ A magnet to the war-weary seeking a half-crown’s worth of hope for an uncertain post-war future.

Pausing only for a moment to admire her pony, tethered near its gaily coloured, up-shafted cart, I had entered her tent to find pale, English, sunshine filtering in through cracks in the canvas and dimly illuminating her, sitting and motioning me to be seated. As I eased my demob-suited body into the empty chair across the table from her, I could hear, from outside, the distant sound of the village Silver Band evoking memories of once-alive comrades who had shared the songs of Vera Lynn, the tunes of Glen Miller, but for whom, now, there was only a war-cemetery grave somewhere in France, North Africa or Italy.

She extended her right hand towards me, and I quickly transferred to it the half-crown I knew was expected of me as she started to intone some, what I thought to be, gypsy words, and to pass her gypsy hands over her crystal ball, like small brown birds fluttering over their nest.

Then, in a low, precise voice she said:

“You have already travelled to lands nearby but, soon, you will travel to a land much further across the world, to a city in a place of sunshine, where river and ocean meet.”

Even as she was speaking, I was thinking I had wasted my money. My demob suit was an obvious give-away that I’d been in one of the services and had travelled to at least Europe and North Africa if not further afield.

It was clear that with horizons thus extended I would seek to get away from the frustrations of a return home to civilian life in England, and would seek out someone like a fortune-teller to tell me where my possible future might lie.

I hardly listened to her final words other than to dimly understand that she was wishing me well in the new life she was foretelling for me. Rising I turned and left, pondering the picture she had painted for me of a possible future.

The afternoon was late, so I made my way slowly back towards the car-park, to find that, since passing that way on my arrival earlier, a new stall had been erected.

Under a large sign two bronze-skinned men were handing out glossy booklets. The sign read:

AUSTRALIA IS SEEKING MIGRANTS

Read one of our booklets and

become a migrant for only £10.