SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 18)

Returning from shopping on a cold wintry day, I was within 10 paces of my front gate when I was suddenly surrounded by plain clothes policemen diving out of many parked cars.
They were bristling with radios and were pointing hand guns at me and Dan, who was walking alongside the loaded pushchair.

I froze to the spot and the nearest policeman demanded my house keys. I fumbled in my handbag thinking, "Oh! For fucks sake! What now?" I handed over the keys and he ordered me to stay put. Most of the policemen poured in through my front door and swarmed all over the empty house.
One of the younger ones stayed, still pointing his gun at me at full arms length, but very close range. Dan was most amused, thankfully. It was like something we might have seen on the television in a police drama, which were popular at the time.

The police quickly searched the entire house and even the loft. I asked the young one what on earth was going on and he stated that someone had escaped from Chelmsford Prison. My address was simply one of many they were raiding to try to find him.
My mind immediately jumped to Dougie and I thought, 'surely not!' Dougie only had weeks to go before his release date. The police left as abruptly as they arrived and we were finally free to enter our house and shut the front door.

As I unpacked the pushchair we heard weird crackling and static squelch coming from the staircase. One of the policemen must have dropped his walkie-talkie radio. I picked it up and overhead all the communications about their raids from then on. I listened for about two hours during which time I worked out that it was not Dougie that they were looking for, but a guy that had shared his cell. They must have swept through a half dozen addresses, but were unsuccessful in their efforts.
When the mad search had reached what sounded like a conclusion I examined the buttons available on the surface of the device and worked out how to speak into the thing.
Trying really hard not to laugh, I said, "Hello? Can anyone hear me?" I received a gruff response, "Who is this?" and I politely explained about the lost brick sized device.

About 20 minutes later a car screeched to a halt outside and I went out to hand over the goods. The poor rookie cop looked really embarrassed as he apologised for the inconvenience. I just grinned and hoped that he would not get into too much trouble over it. He grimaced and dived back into the drivers seat to shoot off with all the drama etched on his very red face.

The grinding poverty was too much at times. Tony was earning his salary on the oil rig and more when he was at home by doing the odd roof here and there, but I was still struggling to pay off the huge debts that had run up during our separation.
In desperation for more housekeeping money, I took a job as a barmaid in the pub at the bottom of the road, just lunchtimes this time, and Dan came with me. He would go upstairs to play with the landlord's little boy while I worked from 10am until 2pm every day. It was just enough extra cash to keep us going.

Everything was going fine and the boys started drinking where I was working to keep an eye on me. They were determined that I was not going to be at risk, but they never expected me to stop working just to put their minds at rest.

One Saturday lunchtime, the bar was pretty busy and the landlord was working alongside me to help out. To my horror the enemy, Peter Buglioni, who had slashed Jai and Phil, walked in with a couple of unknown London guys. 'Oh gawd, deja vue!’ I thought nervously.
Jai, Alan and Chas were at the other end of the packed bar with beers in hand. I don't think that the newcomers even noticed them. I said to the men, "What can I do for you gentlemen?" and they stood appraising me like I was a piece of meat on display at a butcher's shop.
"You can give me a blow job right now!" said the face-slasher, very loudly as he reached for the fly zipper at the waistband of his trousers.
Suddenly the bar erupted in a chaos of flying stools, glass, blood and snot.
I immediately ducked down behind the counter covering my head and I stayed there until the noise subsided.
When I stood up to survey the damage, Jai was coming back through the bar door having kicked his slasher out into the street. I had never seen him look so totally triumphant. I poured three pints of lager and handed them to Alan, Chas and Jai saying "On me OK?" and they ceremoniously clinked their glasses together as the rest of the people in the bar came back from the edges of the room to which they had run when the rumble had started.
It took a lot of effort to clean up that day and, as soon as it was done, the landlord was ringing the bell for the last orders. He looked really grim faced. After everyone had finally drunk up and left, he unceremoniously sacked me saying that he was barring the Jocks, as he called them. He did not want any more trouble in his pub. He did not care that Peter Buglioni had improperly propositioned me. That was irrelevant to him.

I went to Elaine's straight from work that afternoon and told her about losing my brief job. I was not really bothered and accompanied her to do her washing at the local laundrette. I got into a chat with the owner, who was trying to do some service washes and keep his eye on his shop next door at the same time. He was known as Mr. Fixit. There being nothing electrical that he could not repair.
He was complaining that the woman who usually worked for him in the laundrette had upped and left town unexpectedly a few days before, leaving him trying to run both businesses at once. I volunteered to take the job, on the proviso that my son Dan could come to work with me. We agreed the wages and timetable and I started right there and then, so that he could get on with fixing things in his workshop next door.
Elaine shook her head and laughed, "You jammy cow!" she jibed. "Always turning dark clouds into rainbows! Look at you, earning money while I am spending mine!" We agreed that sometimes I had astoundingly lucky moments.

‘Sometimes’ being the operative word there.

I arrived home from working in the laundrette, happy with myself and looking forward to slipping into a hot bath to prepare for Saturday night out on the town with Elaine. I was expecting my cousin to arrive at any moment to have dinner with Dan and I. Later she would babysit for me, leastways, that was the plan. When I heard the knock at the door I ran to open it and gasped with shock to see Dougie standing there.

I flew into his arms and kissed him at least ten times all over his face. He pretended to defend himself from an unwanted assault but he was grinning widely. When my cousin arrived a few minutes later I asked her to take a note I was scribbling to Elaine which carried a feeble excuse.

I wasn't going anywhere that night.

Thankfully Tony was offshore. I closed the curtains, turned off all the visible lights to ensure that we had absolute privacy and no interruptions. We told each other our tales of woe and joy, and we indulged in each other like starved street urchins let loose in a luxury restaurant.

All night we resumed our previous relationship as if there had been not a moment of interruption. It was pure heaven for me and finally, after more than a year of loving him, I confessed that I had been in love with him all along. He simply said "Likewise" and we made love until we could not move more.

Dougie stayed for breakfast and Dan was ecstatic to see him sitting at the kitchen table when he got up. He asked, "Where have you been, Dougie?" to which Dougie hugged him and whispered conspiratorially, "I have been doing a job for the Queen, Dan. Top secret stuff, mate!" and they exchanged a silly sequence of winks.

Tony got home from the rig the following Thursday and walked into his home to find Dougie sitting in his chair waiting for him. Tony acted as if he was very pleased to see Dougie, but any fool could see that the surprise had sobered him up in a flash.
Dougie looked at me, flicked his eyes to the door and I immediately got the message and went to the kitchen to make the usual round of coffees and find biscuits.
I heard no crashing of furniture, no raised voices and re-entered the room with great trepidation. They were sitting in silence. Something had been agreed. I never found out what that something had been, but I caught Dougie's eye as I laid down the tray.
He winked and his mouth twitched into a momentary smirk.

1976 came to an end with me in a sultry blissed out state.
Dougie resumed his strange way of earning a living in the bookmakers, hustling for card games in the men's clubs and he found himself some peaceful lodgings nearby.
He spent a lot of time with me and we resumed our habit of arguing about politics, philosophy and religion. He moaned about my ubiquitous rose-coloured glasses and I complained that he was too hard on people, never trusting anyone enough to really let them into his life. We were very much in love.

As the money worries receded and the debts were paid off, I was able to begin redecorating the house and I set about it with great enthusiasm. I knocked out the wall between the lounge and my old purple painted bedroom. This created a huge long spacious lounge.
I asked Tony to work on removing one door and filling the space with a breeze block wall while I stripped all the old wallpaper away to reveal crumbling wall surfaces beneath. He was remarkably cooperative when it came to working on the house, thank goodness.
I consulted with Alan and he recommended that the room needed skimming with fresh plaster and the ceiling could be best improved with Artex. He brought Billy with him and the twenty four foot room was done over a few days. The surface Alan created was as smooth as glass. It was a masterpiece of perfection.
He recommended that I gave it as long as possible to thoroughly dry before sealing it and finally painting it a mild creamy matt colour. Tony fitted a new lounge door which was filled with smoky glass panels and I painted it glossy black along with a fine black line around the edges between the walls and the ceiling to give the shape of the room definition. All the door fittings were shiny black ceramic with a fine gold line.
One wall had black wallpaper, with a tiny Aztec design in cream and I purchased two batches of matching strong fabrics to make a huge quantity of cushions of all shapes and sizes.

When I was ready for the carpets, I asked Tony to build a raised three foot wide platform along one wall. Then I selected a rich dark red carpet with a sculptured design in the pile. I asked the carpet fitter to cover the whole floor and the new platform with it. I arranged all the cushions I had made to form a huge couch on the platform. I bought a wicker peacock chair to sit in the bay window and I made a piped edge, very soft round red cushion for it with a heart shaped matching cushion that was attached to the back of the chair with discreet ties. I made floor length drape curtains in the same fabric and painted all the shelving black.

On the day that the room was finally finished, Dougie and I spent the entire night in there, christening it with a nice bottle of wine….. amongst other things!

My next task was to create my dream kitchen out of the mess that was the entire rest of the ground floor. I took measurements and, during quiet times in the laundrette, I drew my designs to incorporate a huge amount of work surface, copious cupboards and a special space for me to set up my sewing machine permanently. The house had become my very satisfying art project and, instead of fantasising about pretty dresses,
I was now permanently fantasising beautiful rooms.

It was around this time that Dougie went out with Tony for an evening on the town and came back in the early hours of the morning heavily laden with music albums.
Many of these were copies of the ones I had lost to the bailiff when I first returned to my home after the separation.

"Oh wow!" I exclaimed thrilled, "Where did you get all these?"
Dougie twinkled with glee and said, "Well, you won't believe this but...." and proceeded to tell me that he had gone to Lorraine's with Tony and when they had staggered off to bed, leaving him apparently sleeping, drunk on the couch, he had nipped to the bathroom and relieved himself anally in the bath (this is the most polite way that I can describe what he did). Then he had returned to the lounge and relieved Lorraine of the bulk of her record collection! He had left a large window in the front of the house wide open to make it appear as if there had been burglars and he came straight to my house to give me the proceeds! What could I say? I was dumbstruck but happy. Very happy.

He stayed all night, knowing that Tony and Lorraine, drunk as skunks, would not be moving before late the next day and sure enough, Tony returned home at about 11am, mere minutes after Dougie had discreetly left by the back door. I cheerfully offered to cook Tony a slap up breakfast and he never said a word when he spotted that our record collection had mysteriously doubled overnight.