Where Memories Are Made (33 page)

Ginger tried to urge Jackie to reconsider and leave this situation for the security guards to deal with, but she was already making her way inside and down the dark, dilapidated corridor.

Jackie pushed open the door to the room where they'd seen the light. Ginger was following close behind. They had both expected to find the room in a state of severe neglect, but were stunned to find this to be far from the case. Whoever was living here wasn't present at the moment but they had certainly made it homely.

The room was lit by several intermittently placed candles. The once cream walls were now dingy yellow, the plaster missing in parts. There were water stains on the ceiling, but otherwise the room had been swept clean and the wooden floor washed. A faded old rug covered part of it. Across the floor, set against one wall, was a narrow rusting iron bed, neatly made with an odd assortment of shabby but clean bedclothes. By it was an open suitcase holding folded clothes. Basic household equipment and food items sat on the table. A thick pair of curtains hung at the window. The bottom corner of one was caught up, revealing the flicker of light that Jackie had observed from the burning candle sitting on the draining board under the window.

There were other items visible but they went unnoticed as both women had their eyes riveted on what was hanging from the room's picture rail.

It was Ginger who found her voice first. ‘My God, Jackie, look at those clothes.'

‘I am looking,' she responded. ‘They're just stunning. What I wouldn't give to have a dress like that!' she uttered, pointing to an ankle-length evening dress in canary yellow satin and chiffon. ‘It looks to be my size too.'

‘I want that one,' said Ginger with longing, pointing to a red wool mini-dress with a long white pointed collar and white cuffs, a double-buckled wide white leather belt around the waist.

Drawn like a magnet they both went over to look at the dresses more closely and at the dozen or so other garments hanging alongside them.

Jackie was imagining what she would look like wearing the yellow dress.

Ginger's thoughts had travelled past how stunning she would look in the red dress, and how PC Nuttall's knees would buckle at the sight of her, to wondering where all these clothes had come from. Her conclusion had her exclaiming, ‘Jackie, these have got to be part of that warehouse robbery a few weeks back. This stuff hanging up must be what's left of the haul.'

Jackie was at a dance now in a posh hotel, all the other women in their cheap shop-bought dresses looking on enviously as she was spun around by a stunningly handsome man dressed impeccably in a black dinner suit. ‘Eh?' she murmured. Then her vision vanished as just what Ginger had said registered with her. ‘Oh, don't be daft. I mean, what are the odds of discovering two sets of criminals hiding out here in one …' She stopped talking as it struck her what other explanation could there be for expensive clothing to be hanging up in a place such as this?

She clamped a hand to her forehead and let out a despairing groan. ‘What is it with criminals at the moment, thinking they can use Jolly's as a hideout?' Her eyes darkened thunderously. ‘Well, like those bank robbers tonight, this one is going to find out that he picked the wrong holiday camp to hide out in. We'd best get Inspector Clayburn back here quick sharp. He wants to end his career with a bang. Well, with this on top he'll be ending his police career with an explosion!'

All that was in Ginger's mind was the danger they must be in. She frantically urged, ‘Let's just get out of here, Jackie. The warehouse robber could have a gun too for all we know and we're about to be blasted to hell.'

Fear swamped Jackie then. What were the odds of escaping two life-threatening situations in one day? She wasn't prepared to wait around and find out. ‘Yeah, come on, let's get out of here quick.'

They were just about to leave when Ginger caught Jackie's arm and stunned her by announcing, ‘I'm having that red dress. It's not like the robber can report me to the police for stealing it, can he?'

Before Ginger could make a move to take it, though, they both froze as they heard the muted sound of the outer door opening and shutting and slow steady footsteps heading their way. Their eyes then darted to the door as they saw it starting to open. As terror of the unknown consumed them, they huddled together and clung to each other, shaking.

A man came in. He was wearing a long khaki Parka jacket, the hood pulled up to cover his head and obscure his features. He was lumbering under the weight of a bucket of water. Putting it down by the range, he pulled back the hood of his jacket and took it off. As he turned to hang it on the back of a chair, light from the candles illuminated his face and Jackie and Ginger gave a gasp of recognition. At this sound the man jumped, letting out a yell of shock as he spun round to face the intruders.

For a moment the three of them stared at each other dumbstruck.

It was Al who spoke first. ‘How did you find out I was here?'

Jackie responded, ‘It was just your bad luck me and Ginger decided to have a walk around here tonight. You hadn't shut the curtain properly so we were able to see light from a candle.'

After months of sneaking around, every moment fearing he would be discovered, Al realised all his hard work and dreams for his future had come to an abrupt stop now. He had almost reached the point of being ready to try his luck at getting himself into the world he so longed to be in and now there was no telling whether he would have the opportunity to finish his task, so he desperately blurted, ‘Look, Jackie, I know I …'

She held up a warning hand. ‘It's the police you need to be pleading your case to.'

He paled, eyes filling with alarm. ‘Oh, Jackie, you wouldn't report me to the police for this, would you? I know what I've done is wrong, but I could end up in jail!'

She incredulously snapped, ‘And you don't think that's what you deserve for robbing that warehouse?'

Ginger piped up sardonically, ‘If we'd known it was you behind it, we could have come direct to you for the dresses and saved ourselves a trip to the market.' Then a thought occurred to her. ‘How much will you let me have that red dress for? And Jackie has a fancy for the yellow one.'

‘Ginger!' Jackie scolded her. ‘Those dresses are evidence. Do you want to be done as being an accomplice if we're caught with them? We need to get rid of those we bought off the market too just in case the police decide to search our wardrobes, being's we know Al.'

Ginger snapped, ‘I bloody well paid good money for those clothes, so 'til Al is safely locked away I shall hide them where the police can't find them.'

‘Be it on your own head then and don't expect me to visit you in prison if the police find your hiding place,' Jackie warned her. She then addressed Al, her tone a mixture of hurt and anger. ‘I can't believe that I was so wrong about you. I never would have had you down as a common thief. Well, I hope you think it was worth it when you're locked up in your little cell.'

Al's mouth was opening and closing, fish-like. He blabbered, ‘I don't know anything about a warehouse robbery. Honest I don't.'

‘So where did you get those clothes from if you didn't steal them then?' Ginger demanded.

He heaved a deep sigh and said quietly, ‘I … I made them.'

They both looked at him, astounded.

Jackie laughed harshly. ‘Do you think we were born yesterday! Well, if you won't tell us the truth, we'll leave it to the police to get it out of you.'

He cried, ‘I did make them, Jackie. It's the truth I'm telling you. There's my sewing machine over there.'

They both looked over to the corner of the room where sat an old Singer treadle sewing machine, beside it a table piled with material offcuts and other sewing paraphernalia. There was an ironing board with an old-fashioned iron and a dressmaker's dummy with an unfinished blouse on it, none of which they had noticed before since their attention had been riveted on the hanging clothes.

They looked back at him questioningly.

Ginger accused him, ‘You're one of them transwhatsits that likes dressing in women's clothes? God, to think I've been fancying you since you first came here, praying for you to ask me out, and all the time you were a pansy!'

‘I'm neither transvestite nor gay,' he told her with conviction.

‘So what are you then?' Jackie asked him.

He heaved a sigh. ‘According to my family and friends, I need locking up in a mental institution and receiving treatment for what they see as my disorder. You'll more than likely think the same when I tell you about it. But is someone mentally ill or perverse just because they have a dream for themself and are determined to follow it?'

While Jackie and Ginger watched bemused, he walked over to the bed and sank down miserably on it. ‘I was a normal kid who enjoyed playing football and scavenging on bombsites with my mates, but ever since I can remember I've also had a passion for designing women's clothes. I always knew that was what I wanted to do when I left school, and used to sit for hours in my bedroom drawing sketches of my designs when my parents thought I was reading my books. My parents were very strict and had set ideas about the world. A man's job was providing for the family, and seeing to the heavy jobs around the home. A woman's was cooking and cleaning, sewing and knitting. I knew they would not be at all understanding of my choice of hobby.

‘The mother of one of my friends used to do dressmaking and alterations, and my mother used to send me down to her with the clothes she needed work doing on. I used to make excuses to stay and watch her cutting out clothes and sewing them up. She was an astute woman and soon cottoned on that my interest in what she was doing was far more than mere politeness. One day as I was watching her attach a collar to a dress, she asked me outright why I preferred to stay in and watch her work instead of playing out with my mates.

‘Being put on the spot like that, I hadn't time to come up with a plausible excuse so I told her the truth. I thought she'd react the same way I feared my parents would, but in fact it was the opposite. She told me she would teach me how to sew properly if I wanted her to, which of course I jumped at. She also asked me to show her my designs. When I did she told me she thought I had talent and that I should pursue my dream and not let anything stand in my way. So while my parents thought I was out playing with my friends, I was with Mrs Maybury learning all I could off her. Eventually I got to the stage of helping her alter clothes and make new ones for her clients.

‘When it was time for me to leave school I had no choice but to tell my parents that I didn't want to join my father in the family engineering business but instead go to college and do a fashion degree, with the hope that would get me into a couture house in London as a designer. My father hit the roof, telling me I was unnatural to want to do a woman's job. He wouldn't listen when I said that it was a man, Norman Hartnell, who designed clothes for the Queen and it's men who mostly head up all the big fashion houses. He wouldn't budge. To him, dressmaking was women's work and that was that. He flatly refused to fund me through college and demanded I join him in the family firm. If I insisted on pursuing a career as a dress designer, then I was dead as far as he was concerned.

‘I thought my mother was having a seizure, she took the news so badly. She collapsed on the sofa, clutching her heart, and we had to have the doctor fetched to sedate her. She then tried to get him to have me sectioned in a mental hospital, to receive treatment for my “disorder”, and ordered the doctor out of the house when he tried to tell her that there was nothing wrong with me mentally. She was terrified that all her friends would believe her son was a homosexual, although she knew I wasn't, and she wouldn't ever be able to go out of the house again for the shame of it. She sided with my father, saying unless I stopped this nonsense then she had no son.

‘I was devastated by their reaction. Without their backing I couldn't go to college, and without a degree no reputable fashion house was going to consider me as an apprentice, so my dream was at an end. I joined my father in the business. When I told Mrs Maybury she was devastated for me too as she was really convinced that I had what it took to make a name for myself in the world of fashion. I resigned myself to my lot in life and tried to make the best of it. I quite enjoyed office work but my father is not easy to work for. As I said before, he's very set in his ways. It's his way or no way. And he didn't pay me very well as he was of the mind that it would all be mine one day when I was running the show, so until then I could make do. I did the normal things lads of my age did. I hung around with my mates, went to football matches, dances, had several girlfriends … but deep down I resented what I was doing and was miserable.

‘I'd been working for Father for four years when I read an article in a newspaper. It was about a woman who wanted to train to be a carpenter when she left school, but because that was considered to be a man's job no firm would consider her seriously. She still wasn't prepared to give up her dream of working with wood. She got a job in a factory to earn some money so that she was able to buy herself some tools and decent cuts of wood, and set about making pieces of furniture to show potential employers the abilities she had. It was a hard slog for her but finally her persistence paid off as the boss of one firm she went to see took a chance on her. Now she owns that business and is doing very well for herself, with people paying good money to own furniture designed by her and made in her factory.

‘Her story really inspired me. It got me to thinking I should take a leaf out of her book. If I could design and make up a collection of clothes myself, I could take them down to London and tout them around the fashion houses. Hopefully one of them would think I had enough talent to take a chance on me. I was so excited about resurrecting my dream of becoming a designer again. I knew this would mean I would have to leave my job and home as there was no way my parents were going to allow me to turn my bedroom into a workshop and make women's dresses in there. They have always been strict with me and very dictatorial but I do love them and the thought of being cut off by them was very painful to me. I hoped that if I could make a success of myself then they would see that they were wrong to stop me from following my own path and I would be reconciled with them again.