A Fickle Fortune
I had always been a good planner. Whenever we went on holiday, it was my job to organise a route, taking in as many sights as possible. I spent some years planning my own escape. It was forced on me by conversations I had with my parents, when we saw sexy girls and drag queens on the TV. I knew that me thinking that I should have been born female wouldn’t go down well.
The first thing I did was to enlist the help of a couple of girls I knew, who had met my alter ego one Halloween night. The nights I escaped; I left home dressed as if I was going to the cinema. At Sues’ house, I changed from my normal self as John Williamson, usually called Jack, to my preferred look as Jasmin. I claimed that I had a girlfriend, which pleased my parents. I did have a girlfriend, in fact I had several, and we would go out to the cinema, burger joints a little way away, and even dances as a group of teenage girls.
By the time I was approaching the school-leaving age, I could dress and pass as a typical teenage girl. It helped that I took after my mother, who had Egyptian ancestry, with me inheriting her lustrous black hair and slightly darker skin tones. One summer, Sue and I both got jobs working in a salon, where my time watching internet videos on make-up and hairdressing was tested. As usual, I told my parents that I had a different job and went to Sues’ house to change. At the end of that summer, I had a referral in the name of Jasmin Williams
I saved as much of my wages as I could, with as much in cash as I was able. I did an advertising brochure round for a while, until the weather got too bad. I saved my pocket money; I did everything I could to stay under the radar and not raise any worries. My parents were so certain of me, they had been on a couple of holidays without me.
The summer that I left school, they had planned a cruise for three weeks, I told them that the job I had wanted me back. The day after they had left me in charge, I went to Sues’ and collected up all of my Jasmin things, including my cosmetic case, which was part of my plan for the future.
That evening, I had a long bath and made sure that I was hairless in all the places that girls are. I washed my hair with things I had used in the salon, and blow-dried while I brushed, putting it in a hair net to sleep. I wore a nightie for the first time at home. Things were coming together.
Next morning, I wrote them a farewell letter, telling them that I had decided to leave home and try my hand at getting work in London. I dressed in my male clothing and, carrying an small, empty case that I had picked up at the thrift shop, I took a train from Poole to Ringwood, paying with my bank card, and made sure that I was visible as I went to a teller machine and emptied my bank account. I then bought a one-way ticket to London. It was money I could ill afford but was part of the smoke screen. I dumped the case and avoided all the cameras on the way back but kept my hood up to make sure.
The next day was leaving day. I put a load of my Jack things in a garbage bag and dressed as Jasmin, this time for good. I had a case with my clothes and tablet, a second-hand one that I had picked up at a pawnbroker and set up under my new name. The other case had my cosmetics. My phone was left holding the letter down. I deadlocked the house, set the alarm, left the key in the hall before I pulled the door shut.
I made sure that nobody was around when I walked along the road to the corner shop, where I had told the Uber to pick me up. It wasn’t cheap, but it was necessary to muddy the waters. He took me to Bournemouth train station, where I put the garbage bag into a charity bin. I looked like every other girl when I arrived at the station and bought a one-way ticket to Dorchester, paying cash.
At Dorchester, I paid cash for another trip to Yeovil. I hoped that all of my little tricks would allow me to have a lot more time than three weeks lead. I found the cheap accommodation that I had researched on the tablet and got myself a room for the rest of summer, and then used a public phone to call the salon that I had emailed, telling them that I would be seeing them that afternoon. In all, the escape had cost me over two hundred pounds, so it was imperative that I found a job.
After I had shown them my skills, I was hired for six months, which turned into a year. I moved on after that to West Camel for a few months, and then to Sparkford for a few weeks, until I got a lift from one of my customers who was happy to have company going to Salisbury.
I was another year in Salisbury, perfecting my skills and increasing my cash reserve. In Salisbury, I opened a bank account and deposited the money into it, to keep it safe. After a few more months there, which I was finding an expensive place to live, I needed another small village and a salon that would put me up.
When I checked with my tablet, I found one near a village called Middle Wallop that had a notice for someone to help out over the winter period. I resigned from the salon, citing a family problem that needed to be sorted out, packed my bags and took a Red2 bus to Bishopdown. I hitched a ride that would take me as far as Lopcombe Corner. That was more than halfway.
The drivers’ actual destination was a little way further on, at a caravan site, so I was dropped off by the side of the A343 to see if I could get another ride. I stood my case by the side of the road and pulled a bottle of water out of the smaller case and sat in the bank to have a drink. It wasn’t the busiest road around, but it was a derestricted speed limit, so what few went by were going fast. I was there about fifteen minutes when a small convoy of circus trucks flew by.
I was starting to worry when I saw a horse and caravan coming my way. As it got close, I saw that it was being driven by a girl, about my age, in a colourful dress and a straw hat on her head that matched the one on the horses’ head. She stopped beside me and smiled.
“I may not be going fast, young lady, but at least I’m going. To Middle Wallop. Is that helpful?”
“It’s perfect, thank you.”
“Toss your bags in the back and come and climb up beside me. It’ll be good to have someone other than old Maggie, here, to talk to.”
I took my cases to the back, worked out the need to drop the steps before opening the door, put my bags inside and hooked the steps back. On the walk back, I saw that the caravan had signwriting on it, a fortune teller with a glass ball and the words, ‘Serena Sees All’.
I hauled myself up beside her, and she flicked the reins, and we started moving again. It wasn’t quick, but it was nice.
“My name is Jasmin; I expect that you’re Serena.”
“Only when we’re at the circus site, otherwise I go with Jools. What are you doing in the middle of nowhere?”
“I’m on my way to see about getting a job with a salon in Middle Wallop. If that fails, there’s another place near Nether Wallop I can try, or Stockbridge or Andover. I’m in no hurry.”
“You sound like our sort of person. You may have seen the trucks going east. They’ll set up the tents at Middle Wallop for the weekend, and then we move on from there. I have this caravan, as it looks more like something a fortune teller would use. I don’t have much to pack, so I’m usually the first one of the artists who leaves. Usually, the last to arrive. I expect that we’ll get overtaken by the others in a while. So, you do hairdressing and beauty treatments, then?”
“That’s right. I’ve been full-time for a few years.”
“Why did you run away from home?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have the look of a drifter. It’s a look we all have and can see it in others. I could tell you that I saw through you with my mysterious powers, but that would be complete BS. A fortune teller looks for clues, what they call ‘tells’ in poker, that allow you to ask questions out of the blue. I’m right, though, aren’t I?”
“You’re right, Jools. I’ve been on the move since the week I left school. I left a smoke screen so that I couldn’t be followed, and have been working salons for a while, in different places. I’ve just come from Salisbury, where the job was good, but the accommodation was way too expensive.”
“I suspect that you had been afraid of what your parents would have said if they saw you as you now look.”
“You really do have second sight.”
“Nothing so wonderful, just the same sort of useless appendage that you still have and wish you hadn’t. The Jools is a lot better than Julius.”
“I’d never have guessed. Jasmin is better than Jack. How did you get to be doing this?”
“Family business, I’m afraid. Mum was Serena, and Grannie was Serena before her. I’ll take a bet that you’d make a good fortune teller, yourself. If you’ve been living on your wits for a few years, you’d be able to see the signs about people. You’d know what cars you can get in, and what ones to stay away from. When we get to the site, I’ll take you around the caravans. We’ve been on the road for three months, and all the girls need a good hairdresser. There’s room for two behind us, and we do communal cooking with everyone putting a pound a meal into the kitty. Can’t live much cheaper than that.”
“What did I do that gave me away?”
“That’s easy. I expect that whenever you get in a car, you do it in a way that’s naturally girly. This cart isn’t so forgiving. You hauled yourself up in a very unladylike manner. Wearing jeans didn’t help. You’ll have to think through your actions for a while before you’ll have it fixed. Nobody in the group will say anything. They’ve known me since I was born and most of them come from odd backgrounds. We talk about the job, the world, and the weather. We don’t discuss our pasts.”
As we moved along, she started to give me tips on being a fortune teller, with me reading my own palm for the first time. After a couple of hours, she showed me her own palm to read. I looked at her, sharply. She grinned.
“First rule, Jasmin. Don’t give away your misgivings from a reading. Yes, I know that my lifeline is short. It doesn’t tell you how, when, or where a life ends, and could just be an odd crease that means nothing. Everyone will want to know that they’ll live a full and happy life. If they don’t, they’re not coming back to sue you for telling them a bum steer.”
“What about all the other ways of fortune telling?”
“Most are a mixture of good acting and assistance from the medium. Tarot cards take a bit of learning about what the pictures represent, and then you use experience to weave the magical story. Most of the customers only want something to tell their friends about. Often, you saying that they’re going to be successful does just that, giving them a reason to try. The Crystal Ball is purely acting and using the tells that they give off. You have to think on your feet for that one. I don’t do tea leaves; you have to take more pee breaks with that.”
There was a klaxon sound behind us, and she pulled right over to the side as a number of trucks and four-wheel-drives passed us with trailers or caravans behind them. As we continued, I had one question to ask.
“What can a person earn as a fortune teller?”
“Ah! That’s getting right to the point. With the small villages, I charge five pounds a reading, a couple of pounds for teenagers having a laugh. I may do a dozen, or more, readings a session. A lot rides on the size of the crowd and the weather. Income drops with bad weather. On good days, I do three sessions a day, so the take could be around one-fifty to two hundred. If you joined me, we could alternate shifts and stay operating from the gates opening to the end of the evening. So, a good day would see us getting equal money. Remember, it’s all cash in hand. I do report my income to the tax man, but only on what I bank.”
“You said ‘small villages’.”
“You do pick things up quickly, don’t you. When we play big places, it depends on how prosperous the population are. Towns with a thriving industry get charged a tenner.”
I started to think about a change of career. After a few more miles, as we got closer to the turning to Middle Wallop, she spoke again.
“No matter how careful you were when you left home, if your parents love you, they’d be getting worried without you letting them know how you are. No matter how careful you were to hide your tracks, there will be glaring signs from the years before that a good investigator would pick up. You didn’t create Jasmin from a vacuum. How many names have you used?”
“Just the one.”
“You’ve made it easy, then. All they need to know is that name. They can get that by talking to whoever helped you. All the salons that you’ve worked in would have to submit the names of any casuals. As soon as they have the first, it’ll be easy to track you. Have you done anything official in that name?”
“I opened a bank account in Salisbury.”
“Bad move, sister! Your secret has been blown as soon as they find out what you’re calling yourself, so forget about that problem. What you have to decide is what you want to do now. If you keep me company in the fortune telling business, we’ll borrow a car and I’ll drive you to Warminster, where you empty your account and close it. Then we create you as Madame Zena Mercury, fortune teller. There’s a place in Andover that sells eastern clothing that will go well with your complexion. You can pay for it with the cash. You’ll earn that, and more, before we go to winter quarters.”
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that she was right. They would only have to talk to Sue, or one of her friends, to find out what I’d been doing, where I’d worked, and what I was likely to be doing to earn money. If they had started recently, there could be someone at Salisbury, asking around about Jasmin Williams. My smoke screen may have bought me time, but I had been so fixated on that being all that was needed, I had sown the seeds of being traced.
“I do like the idea of becoming Madame Zena. Would you take this traveller along? I can do you free hairdressing.”
“Welcome to the Wonderful World of Entertainment, Zena. May your stay be a happy one.”
The next few weeks were different in a lot of ways, the only thing similar was having all the girls of the troupe having hair do’s, and a couple of the men as well. Jools borrowed a car, the next day, and drove me to Warminster where I took out my money and closed the account, giving the reason that I was travelling overseas for a job. She taught me the tarot cards and gave me acting advice as we moved on.
My first big public performance was in Farnborough, where we were to be for two weeks to coincide with the air show at the end of July. We were set up in the Rushmore Arena, along with a few other, more conventional, circuses. The sort with bigger, and wilder, animals than the petting zoo that we had, ours being more of a travelling funfair. With the inflex of visitors to the place, it was one of the prime events in our calendar.
By then, I had gained a new wardrobe of flowing gowns and headscarves, perfected a make-up look that accentuated my darker complexion, and perfected an accent that sounded mysterious and exotic, by listening to Jools when she was in full Serena mode.
I had been registered through the circus, as Kazuo Dylan, AKA Madame Zena, and had opened another bank account in Reading in that name, with it taken from a row of books displayed in a shop window. They were written by, or about, Nobel Literature Prize winners. Our contacts in the circus world had supplied me with enough identification to really be Kazuo Dylan. Jools and I only called ourselves by Jools and Kaz when we were travelling. All other times, we were Selena and Zena.
I had started small, with the odd session in small villages, but was now ready to work for my place in the caravan. In Farnborough, our circus was open from the morning to night, with a lot of parents and children, with the more traditional circus activity happening in the evening. Serena and I did two-hour sessions from ten to eight, averaging five readings an hour. At a tenner a session, that gave us five hundred each, per day, for ten days.
After Farnborough, we headed south and then west, even performing in Poole, where I recognised a few of my old schoolfriends across the table, so being able to give them spookily accurate readings. They only saw Madame Zena, though.
Our winter quarters was a small farm, on Tower Road, near Honiton, Devon. I met Jools’ mother, and I was given a spare room to live in. Maggie had her own stable, joining an older horse called Maggie as well. Over the winter, I was given some advanced training in the fortune-telling trade and became just another daughter. Jools would drive the two of us into Honiton to shop and enjoy the entertainment. I often found myself dancing with boys and found ways to leave it at that.
Next spring, we rejoined the troupe at the first site, in a field at Buckland St. Mary, and I did the full touring season, coming back as a better fortune teller. The following winter, Jools got a bad case of the flu and died in the Honiton Hospital. Her lifeline had been accurate, after all. Her mother and I both grieved and buried her at the cemetery, after a service at the Family Chapel.
It was decided that I continue with the circus, so was given more training. This time it was how to work with Maggie. I also had the task of pulling out all of my friends’ things from the caravan, which I had been told had originally been built to deliver beer from a local brewery. The caravan part had been built by Jools’ father, who had done a strong man act before a heart attack took him. We got a local signwriter in to change the name to ‘Zena Sees All’ and freshen up the colours. I did seven years on the road in the summers, and at the farm in the winters. The older Maggie had to be put down, and Serena wasn’t getting any younger.
One summer, I was at the site in Andover when I got a phone message that Serena had been taken to hospital by ambulance. I borrowed a car and arranged for someone to look after Maggie, then drove to Honiton, in time to say goodbye to a woman who had been more of a mother to me than my own.
I called the circus boss to tell him that I may be a couple more weeks and arranged the funeral. She was farewelled in the chapel where her daughter had her service and buried a few rows away in the cemetery. I made sure that the farm was secure and spoke to her lawyer, who told me that I was the sole beneficiary.
I now had a decision to make. I drove back to the site where I knew the circus would be and told my friends what the situation now was. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that the right thing would be to go home and look after the farm. I thanked them all for their friendship and Maggie and I took our time going home.
Back in Honiton, I took stock of what I had to work with. Over the remains of the summer, I started the first changes. I converted one of the outbuildings into a salon, buying second-hand equipment from auctions. I stripped the caravan of all extra things and used the sides as parts of the conversion, creating a separate room where all the fortune telling things were kept. The actual placement of the cart was Maggies’ last job before I sent her off to a petting farm to see out her days as a ride for kiddies.
The cart was right by the farm gate, and easy to see as you drove down the road, now adorned with a triangular pile of barrels. I registered Kazuos’ Kuts as a business and set up to work from home. I lived my life as a spinster in the comfort of my own home, with a profession that I was very good at. I needed no more than the interaction with my clients to be happy.
Sometimes, I would give readings in the room that I had set up, but only by prior appointment which gave me time to greet the client as Zena.
My advertising for the farm was simple, with the directions to drive along Tower Road until you saw the ‘Remains of the Dray’.
Marianne Gregory © 2026