My life as a tailor's assistant: Part 7

Postscript

(Or whatever happened to the unlikely lad who was a tailor’s assistant?)

Princess Perfect in England in the summer of 1999. Strangely enough, she wasn't very interested or impressed when I took her to see King of Maidstone, the shop where I worked all those years ago. "I was a prince of menswear serving a King!" I explained. She gave me her "we're not amused" look.

Fast-forward from 1973 to 1999. I was on holiday in England with my family. I had hired a cottage on the outskirts of Tenterden in Kent.

I had driven to Maidstone for a trip down memory lane. To my sadness, King of Maidstone was no longer: in its place was a bridal gown shop; clothes but not the menswear emporium of yesteryear.

I explained to my wife, The Frog Queen, my son Brainbox, then aged about 5, and Princess Perfect, aged about 18 months, and sitting royally in her poussette (baby buggy), that I had worked in this street many moons ago.

“Ah, the times I’ve had here,” I said to my captive audience but I realized they didn’t really want to hear about my antics in the shop or in the pubs. But my mind wandered back to those early days and nights:

Hot dog nights

The nights when I’d wake up in my tiny bedsit at about 1 a.m. ravishingly hungry after the pints of bitter had washed through my system. So hungry, in fact, that I’d slink out of my bedsit in the dead of night and saunter down to the bridge over the River Medway. There, in the shadows just off the road, was a late-night hot dog van.

Some other dubious denizens of the night were clustered around the van, their faces ghostly and pale in the weak light from the van. It was perhaps foolhardy and a bit dangerous to be there at that time of the night but I wasn’t brave: I was hungry and it overrode my better sense of self-preservation.

The hot dog, smeared in mustard and dripping onions, was delicious and I salivate as I write.

The imposing stone bridge itself was part of the night’s adventure playground. Sometimes when my tall, fiery-headed comrade-in-arms Dave and I made our way home from a night’s carousing we’d take it in our heads to jump on to the eight-inch wide parapet and run along to the other side – without falling in the river, obviously. You didn’t have to be a Nadia Comaneci or Olga Korbut but you needed nerve (and/or much booze) and momentum; stop and you’d fall, if you were lucky on the land side. If not . . .

One night I was munching on a hot dog when there was a lot of commotion from the river. Some guy had tried to do what we stupidly did now and then. He wasn’t so lucky and drowned.

By 9 a.m, though, I’d be back on the menswear floor, besuited and ready for action. King of Maidstone was a family business and Mr Bobby was paternalistic and sometimes gruff in his manner.

Tears and roses

The basement contained the children’s department and was run by two women. But Mr Bobby felt that one of them, Jenny, who was keen but not very good at her job, ought to be let go. So he fired her. She was devastated and spent that morning in floods of tears, saying how this was the best job she’d ever had and she loved working at the shop. It tugged at the old heart-strings, even mine. And even Mr Bobby’s, as it turned out.

One of the staff told him of Jenny’s distress and he rushed out of the shop, returning with a huge bouquet of roses and a larger box of chocolates, which he presented to Jenny. Mr Bobby told her he’d made a terrible mistake, begged her to accept his apologies and reinstated her on the spot. The old softie!

What other tales could I tell my son and daughter as we stood outside the shop that was once the place where I worked as a tailor’s assistant and that was no longer King of Maidstone?

What about the strange, sweaty man who asked to try on a suit? The first one I showed him he grabbed and took into the changing room. He came out wearing it and it seemed somewhat tight on him. I could have sworn I’d picked his right size; I prided myself on being able to tell a person’s size in the blink of an eye.

He said the suit was fine and he’d take it. He paid and was walking away when I suddenly thought “he’s left his old clothes in the changing room!” I hurried over to him and explained.

He looked at me, sweat coursing between his eyebrows, and said he was wearing the suit over his old clothes to save the bother of putting them in a bag. With that he waddled out of the door never to be seen again.

Waistcoats and snooker balls

Our holiday that summer in 1999 was a lot of fun and we often shopped in Tenterden. As I was walking down the High Street I suddenly remembered that I’d heard some years back that Jack Gibbons, my manager who taught me so much, had left King of Maidstone to become manager of Weeks in Tenterden.

I searched and searched, up and down the High Street, but I couldn’t find a shop called Weeks. There was another reason I was searching out a menswear shop – I wanted to buy some waistcoats as I was playing snooker regularly then and competed in The Paris Snooker Championships.

I came across a shop called County Clothes and I found myself several rather natty snooker waistcoats. One was a John Virgo waistcoat decorated with coloured snooker balls. It’s not as bad as it sounds but I’d have been scorned if I’d turned up at a tournament wearing it – but I couldn’t resist buying it.

As I was paying the bill I asked the salesman if he’d heard of a shop called Weeks. He informed me it had closed some time ago. Why did I want to know, he asked.

I explained I used to work for King of Maidstone and someone I knew there later worked at Weeks.

“Oh, you should have told me you’re in the trade I’ll give you some discount,” John Lambert, as I soon discovered he was called, said.

Salt of the earth

“No, that was a long time ago,” I said, “I asked because I was wondering if a Jack Gibbons was still there.”

“You know Jack? Salt of the earth, lovely man. I used to work with him. He retired a few years back. Moved away from the area.”

I thought, “just my luck.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where he lives?” I asked, not expecting a result. I was wrong.

“Hang on,” said John helpfully, “I’ve got his address somewhere.”

I returned to Paris with two swanky waistcoats and an address in Lincolnshire.

I wrote a long letter to Jack outlining my life since leaving King of Maidstone – the local papers I worked for, The Daily Telegraph in Fleet Street, The International Herald Tribune in Paris, my French wife, my two kids etc.

I wrote towards the end of the letter: “We worked hard but you knew when it was time to relax and have fun. Yes, I remember mostly the fun we had there and the laughs and the oddest of customers. I had intended to stay maybe a couple of months; I ended up remaining there for a year, and that was down to you.”

I posted the letter and forgot all about it – I didn’t really expect a reply after so long apart with no contact. I was wrong again.

About a month later a long letter arrived from Jack. It started:

“Dear Dumdad,

What a lovely surprise on returning from our visit to one family in the south of England to find your letter waiting for us. It certainly made our day.”

Jack, who was 75 at the time of writing, filled me in on his career and on what some of the people we’d both worked with at King of Maidstone were doing now and his retirement. He was in good health and had five grandchildren and one great grandson.

He concluded his letter stating we’d had some fun along the way at King’s and perhaps one day we might meet up. That was in 1999 and we haven’t and I guess we won’t now.

But we’ll always have King of Maidstone.

I left King of Maidstone a wiser man (still a teenager) and a man who owned two suits.

I went to work in a local insurance office (short-lived) before pitching up at The Whitstable Times (see side bar). The rest is (my) history.