A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams (16 page)

But Gina gave me the most amazing smile I had ever seen in my life. ‘I fancy you too,’ she said. She said it so quietly that I could hardly hear. I just stood there, speechless, for once in my life.

When we left at the end of the night, I took Gina’s hand in mine. Walking along, I really wanted to kiss her, but didn’t know if it was the right moment. We walked a bit further and I couldn’t wait any longer. I stopped and pulled her close to me. And I kissed her. That kiss sealed my future.

In early June, Gina and Elaine found a job working for an English couple who owned a café/bar. They took it in turns, one waitressing during the day while the other babysat Steven, the owners’ four-year-old son, in the evening.

I was still as accident-prone as ever and moved on from the building site after one day the ground suddenly gave way beneath me, sending me flying into a small ravine several feet below. As I fell, my shin caught on a jagged edge that was sticking out of the rockface. The pain was horrendous, and it left a long, bloody gash up my leg. When the girls saw it, they insisted I get it treated, and after asking around, we were directed to a convent, where the nuns ran a small hospital of sorts. When one of them set to work dry-shaving my leg with a cut-throat razor, the pain was so excruciating I nearly hit the ceiling, and when they stitched me up, I had to be held down and the air was blue.

I had to find other work, and had heard about a new discotheque that was opening. The manager told me that the Spanish owner only employed local barmen, but if I wanted a job working on the door I could have one, as long as I didn’t mind dressing as Charlie Chaplin.

I laughed. ‘Of course I don’t mind!’

He handed me a bowler hat and a thin cane and told me to be ready to start at 7 p.m. on opening night. I couldn’t wait to get back home to share the good news with my flatmates. They all thought it was hilarious, and I spent hours practising Chaplin’s walk, swinging the cane and tipping my hat.

On the big night, I wore black shoes, trousers and a waistcoat with a collarless white shirt, and Gina pencilled a black moustache on my face. The whole thing worked a treat, and the club was soon full, the success continuing night after night.

Elaine started to get homesick and decided to return to England at the end of July, leaving Steve, Gina and myself sharing the apartment. Gina chose to work evenings only, babysitting little Steve, which meant we had the days free together. We explored the whole of Benidorm and the surrounding villages on a little moped, having the time of our lives.

In August, some friends came to stay, and of course they wanted to go to Tramps. I was working the door the night they came, planning to join them once Gina arrived, when one of them suddenly ran out to me. ‘You’d better get downstairs now. There’s going to be trouble,’ he said. ‘One of the Spanish lads has just grabbed Ronnie’s bird.’

I was surprised. There was hardly ever any trouble at Tramps. Heading down the stairs, I wondered which of the locals it could be, because by now I knew most of them pretty well. There were somewhere in the region of three hundred people in that night, but peering through the smoky atmosphere, I saw who he meant. It was Cossi.

Everyone knew him and he’d never been any bother before. He was slightly backward and a real loner, but I got on well with him and always let him in for free. I smiled at him and suggested we went somewhere else, but he didn’t move and instead he spat straight into my eye. If it had been anyone else, I would have punched their lights out on the spot. But because it was Cossi, I just grabbed him and tried to move him out of the club.

Halfway up the stairs, he began to get violent. His strength seemed to come from nowhere, and he went berserk. By now I had him in a headlock. I felt like a cowboy holding on to a young steer by the horns as he tossed me all over the stairs. I couldn’t let go, I had to get him upstairs, so I held on as best I could, determined to get him outside. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my chest and, looking down, saw a red stain spreading across my shirt. Cossi had sunk his teeth into me and was not going to let go.

Cossi had to let me go sooner or later – surely he had to breathe! As soon as I felt his teeth slackening, I loosened my grip. In a split second, he threw himself backwards with all his strength, sending me hurtling down the stairs. Cossi was the first to get up, running into the club and somehow managing to get over the bar. Within seconds he was hurling bottles of spirits into the dancing crowds. It was pandemonium.

Once we got hold of him, it took a few of us to overpower him and pin him to the floor. He was going nowhere now, at least not until the police arrived.

The full extent of the damage only became clear once the lights came on. There were half a dozen or so young men and women with blood pouring from injuries caused by the bottles hitting them in the face and on the head. An ambulance arrived, and the police not long after, and they began to arrest anyone they could get their hands on, including holidaymakers who’d had nothing to do with it. I tried to intervene, to explain what had happened and to tell them that they were arresting the wrong people, but they threatened me with their truncheons and threw me into the back of a jeep.

After much confusion at the police station, I found myself locked up in a prison cell. A couple of hours later, two policemen entered and started to interrogate me. Their English was poor, but I could understand enough to work out that they were accusing me of having caused the trouble, picking on a man with learning disabilities. They were getting very angry and started to beat me with their truncheons, hitting my ribs and my legs. I tried to show them where Cossi had bitten me, but they weren’t interested and just carried on lashing out. Curling myself up in a ball on the floor and covering my face and head with my arms, I could feel their boots kicking my back. The fear seemed to make the pain go away, and the only sound I could hear was their shouts of ‘English pig’.

Some hours later the cell door opened. The nightclub owner had found an English-speaking lawyer to represent me in court. He came straight to the point: ‘Listen very carefully to me, señor,’ he said. ‘You are in a lot of trouble and could go to prison if you do not listen to what I say and do what I tell you to do. Do you understand?’ I mumbled a yes in reply. ‘You do not tell the judge that you work at the club. You are here on holiday, and it was your girlfriend the man was annoying. Leave all the talking to me and do not say anything. Do you understand?’ Again I said I did.

An hour later I was standing in the dock, numb with pain, tired from lack of sleep, scared by what was happening and terrified at the thought of spending the rest of my life in a Spanish jail.

Cossi was standing directly opposite me on the other side of the small courtroom. We stood as the judge entered, and the proceedings began. Of course it was all in Spanish, so I couldn’t understand a word. Suddenly it was all over, and my lawyer walked over to me and told me that I was a very lucky man: I had twenty-four hours to leave the country. I asked him what was going to happen to Cossi: what sentence had he received? His answer was simple: nothing! Apart from being told to keep away from Tramps, he had been allowed to walk away free!

Gina and a group of friends were waiting for me outside the building looking anxious. When I told them what had happened, they couldn’t believe it. Gina was happy to see me, but more concerned about my blood-soaked shirt and the teethmarks on my chest so, once again, I found myself being sewn together by my friendly Spanish nun!

Gina and I quickly packed up, saying goodbye to all the lovely friends we had made over the five months we had spent in Spain. Despite everything that had happened to me, that summer of 1977 was still one of the best summers ever. Mainly because I met Gina, the love of my life and the best friend that anyone could ever wish for.

16. New Beginnings

Our unannounced arrival home was a shock to everyone. Gina’s parents were pleased to see her – though I’m not so sure what they thought of me having been chased out of Benidorm by a judge! I went back to live with Dad and June and picked up where I’d left off, working with Barry on the aerials, while Gina stayed with her parents and worked as a barmaid four nights a week, leaving her Saturdays free to help her father selling shoes on his market stall.

One Saturday near Christmas, I was on my way to put up an aerial on a house near Park Road Market, where Gina was working, and I decided to call and surprise her. She was hard to find at first, as a big crowd had gathered in front of the stall, but as soon as she spotted me, she called out. ‘Jeff! Great to see you! Come and help me. I’m on my own – Dad’s had to go for more stock!’

‘Brown size nine and size four in pink,’ one lady called out, and I found myself serving a customer straight away. The slippers were stacked high, and Gina and her father, Bob, were selling them cheap. I carried on serving until Bob returned and then set off to get on with my own work.

Picking Gina up at around 7.30 that evening, we went for a quiet drink and spent the evening talking about the markets. I couldn’t believe how much I’d enjoyed helping her out that day. Memories came flooding back from when I was a young boy working with Mum on the market, and selling stockings out of a suitcase with Dad. By the end of the night, I’d talked Gina into going into business with me. I was convinced it was fate and meant to be, considering we were both from Liverpool market-trading families and that destiny had brought us together three thousand miles away, in Spain.

It was then that I came clean to Gina, telling her about my inability to read and write. I felt so ashamed and embarrassed at first but much better after my confession, and she was my right hand from that time on.

We spent a day visiting as many markets as we could, looking at all the competition and what people were selling. The possibilities were endless, but we wanted to sell something completely different from all the others. We eventually decided to go into business selling teenage girls’ fashion. I gave up the aerial business, and by the time Christmas was over we had told everyone what we were going to do and registered J&R Fashions as our trading name – the R standing for Regina, Gina’s full name. Bob gave us an old market stall and a canvas sheet he didn’t need any more, and I already had a van. Now all we needed was something special to sell.

Not having a clue about where to go to find it, we almost fell at the first hurdle. However, our June had recently bought a checked shirt, which we both really liked, and the label inside said, ‘Kumar Brothers’. We got their Manchester address from the phonebook and on Thursday 5 January 1978, a twenty-year-old Gina and I, a slightly maturer twenty-four-year-old, set off to Manchester, clutching hold of our life savings of £300.

The address was a huge former office block in the heart of the city centre. We made our way down a dark and dingy stairwell into the depths of a large cellar, where we were met by an elderly Indian lady, Mrs Kumar, the mother (and boss, by all accounts) of the two brothers who owned what turned out to be a wholesale fashion company. We introduced ourselves as market traders from Liverpool, and she invited us to look at all the clothes that were bursting out of the hundreds of cardboard boxes laid out on the floor.

Walking slowly down the lines inspecting every item of clothing in every box was exciting at first, but after two hours or so we realized that most of the styles on offer were just not what we were looking for. We did, however, manage to find thirty-six checked shirts and twenty-four pairs of drainpipe jeans, which were just starting to come into fashion. Gina also liked the look of a cowl-necked jumper, so we chose a dozen in different colours.

Handing over all our savings to Mrs Kumar was worrying, to say the least. She informed us that Friday night at around seven o’clock was the best time to come, as that was when the big deliveries arrived from London with all the latest styles. We spent the whole drive back to Gina’s house trying to convince each other that we had bought the right things.

The next day, we were over at Gina’s parents’ house, getting everything ready to sell. Robert and Brenda were a fantastic couple and really helped us out. They were the type of parents who would do anything for their children.

I arrived at Gina’s at five in the morning to set out for our first Saturday’s trading. It was still dark and very cold, and Gina was in the kitchen pouring hot soup into a flask, wrapped up in several layers of warm clothing, protection against the cold January air. We left, making our way to Paddy’s Market, the same place I had started out with Mum.

Organized chaos greeted us: at least fifty vans were trying to find somewhere to park in the darkness of early dawn, their headlights blinding me as they bumped on and off the pavement. They were a law unto themselves, but they had obviously been here before and knew what they were doing. We parked a short way away from all the commotion. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of urgency at the speed with which everyone was unloading their vans, and the noise of the metal bars hitting the concrete ground was deafening at times. I told Gina to stay in the van while I went looking for a space to set up.

Five minutes later, I returned: I had found the perfect spot. It didn’t take us long to empty the van, both of us working as speedily as everyone else, and soon we’d piled everything up in the space I’d chosen. Putting a stall up for the first time is very similar to erecting a tent when you go on holiday: nothing ever seems to fit together. After an hour of wrestling with it, however, we eventually managed it, and stood back for a moment to admire our new business venture. I put my arm around Gina’s shoulder and squeezed her towards me. ‘This is it, love,’ I told her, ‘the start of something big.’

But our special moment was quickly cut short by the arrival of an angry man the size of a block of flats! He didn’t mince his words: we had to move our stall or he would do it for us. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘We were here first.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he replied. ‘This is my pitch and has been for years. You can’t just set up wherever you like.’ He stopped for breath. ‘You have to go to the office and see the inspector if you want a pitch. You’d better hurry up and take it down – I haven’t got time to stand here chatting to you all day. So move it, or I’ll take care of it myself.’ Not doubting his ability to carry out his threat, I accepted defeat and told him to keep his hair on; anyone could make a mistake.