Tales of the Gypsy Dressmaker - Thelma Madine

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that I wouldn’t be able to come and see her sing in the karaoke final. But she wasn’t having any of it. ‘Get down here now,’ she said. ‘Don’t sit there on your own, crying – that’s just what he wants. Get a taxi and I’ll pay for it when you get here.’ She was right. I called the taxi.

      That night Pauline introduced me to Ruth, a woman she had met at some of the singing competitions. Pauline had told Ruth what was happening with me and Kenny, and Ruth asked me more. I spent most of that evening pouring my heart out to her.

      ‘What’s your biggest problem?’ she asked me, trying to get some perspective on the situation.

      ‘Well, apart from the fact that I’ve no car, no business, no money, and am bankrupt, where do you want me to start?’ I said to her, with tears starting to run down my face.

      On top of that, I’d just received a healthy amount of orders from my agent in Ireland that morning. ‘Now I’ll have to call her and tell her that I can’t do them,’ I said to Ruth. To my amazement she offered to help.

      ‘What do you need to fulfil the Irish orders?’ she asked.

      ‘About £5,000 for fabric and a car to go to the warehouses,’ I told her.

      ‘Come and see me tomorrow,’ she said. I couldn’t believe it. Here was a complete stranger offering to help me. I suppose alarm bells should have rung then, but I was probably the most vulnerable I’d ever been and I needed a lifeline. I needed someone to hold on to.

      I went to Ruth’s house and she told me her plans. Her boyfriend would lend me the money I needed, and she suggested that, rather than me carrying on by myself, she and I could go into business together. She told me she had a business degree, so if I made the dresses she could look after the financial side of things. She set up a bank account in the name of My Fair Lady and rang the agent in Ireland explaining that she would be dealing with the business while I got on with the dressmaking. She set up credit accounts with some of the suppliers too.

      When she came to my house one night to drop off some fabric, her jaw dropped when she saw where I lived. ‘I used to live in a house like this, about fifteen years ago,’ she told me, her voice filled with regret. ‘That’s until my ex-husband kicked me and the kids out on Christmas Eve.’ Ruth went on to tell me more about her past life. I felt for her – her story sounded so similar to mine.

      The next day I made a start on the orders. That evening Ruth arrived at my door in floods of tears. Her boyfriend had run off with everything in the house, she told me, including my computer and other things I had lent her to get the business up and running.

      I tried to calm her down. She said she would think about how to get the money and then she said, ‘Have you got any jewellery that we could pawn? It will keep us going until we get the money together.’ I had never been in a pawn shop in my life and didn’t know what to do. ‘Give it to me and I’ll sort it out,’ Ruth convinced me. In the meantime, in my desperation I turned to the only person I could and asked my Aunty Gladys to lend me £3,000 to keep things going.

      We bought more fabric with the money and I carried on with the orders. ‘We should open a stall on the market with the old stock from your garage,’ Ruth suggested. So we did. She set up at Paddy’s and started selling there on Saturdays. Things went well for a bit, but then trade started to slow down when the First Communion season came to an end. So Ruth found a unit in another retail space and I started to make christening outfits for her to sell in it. But I had started to feel a bit unsure of Ruth, as she was becoming over-friendly. Then Ruth and Pauline stopped getting on and Pauline stopped working with us.

      All this time, Tracey and Hayley were still in the family home. But I had no money whatsoever, not a penny, and I had to keep working to supply the shop as I needed to keep the house going. I also wanted to pay my aunty back as soon as I could. It was tough. In fact, it was turning out to be the hardest winter I’d had.

      It’s funny how things work out, though, because me and my kids ended up having a cracking Christmas that year. When I was with Kenny, and used to consider leaving him, I would say to myself, ‘What would you do at Christmas?’ But we had a ball.

      The house was massive and we didn’t have any oil for heating, and it was freezing, so the only thing for it was to go to the pub – me, Hayley, Tracey and her boyfriend. I stuck a duck in the oven and we all went for a couple of drinks (though, of course, Hayley was only drinking Coke). By the time we got back from the pub the duck was burnt. But we ended up playing games and having such a good laugh together that it didn’t matter. We had no money but we had a good time.

      A couple of days into the new year I got a call from Audrey, the seamstress who had worked for me and taught me in the early days. She told me that Ruth had been in touch, asking if she and one of the other girls wanted to come and work for her, because I didn’t want to do the dresses any more. Ruth was trying to cut me out. I went down to see her in the unit. I was livid. ‘I want nothing more to do with you,’ I screamed at her.

      And then it just clicked: I was the business. Without my skills, my contacts and the generosity of my family, Ruth’s ‘business’ would never have got off the ground. Had I not been at such a low point that night I met her in the pub, and had I looked at things calmly instead of getting in a panic about what was happening with Kenny, I could have done everything myself. It dawned on me then that all I had done was to replace a controlling husband with a controlling friend.

      ‘I’m taking over the stall in Paddy’s,’ I told Ruth. ‘You can keep everything else.’

      3

      The Tale of My First Big Fat Gypsy Wedding Dress

      So that’s how I came to be at Paddy’s all these years ago. Now it was January 1997 and my trickle of travellers had turned into a stream.

      One Saturday, one of my regular gypsy customers came up and pointed at a dress. ‘I’m going to a wedding. Can you do this for her?’ she asked, looking down at her little girl.

      ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘no problem,’ and started measuring up.

      ‘Can you do me one for the next wedding too? It’s my brother’s wedding next.’

      ‘Bloody hell,’ I said, looking up at her. ‘There’s a wedding every week in your family. How often do you go to weddings?’

      ‘Oh, nearly every week,’ she said. I just laughed.

      The stall was getting more and more crowded, and Saturdays were becoming a bit intense. Some days it felt as though I’d done thousands of orders. I’d be measuring up one kid and then some other woman would say, ‘Over here, love, will you do her one, love?’ And I’d be like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ trying to write the other measurements down.

      ‘Measure here, love, measure here,’ another voice would pipe up. Then I’d look and there would be four of them behind the counter, and a baby.

      ‘Don’t touch, don’t touch,’ I said, trying not to sound too tetchy. They were my customers at the end of the day, and I wanted to treat them well. But, honestly, it was chaos, with kids running over there, under here … There were travellers all over the place.

      Then the queues started. I’d open up at nine a.m. and soon a line would start to form. I used to feel guilty about keeping people waiting, so I’d ask if they wanted a cup of tea and send out the Saturday girl. ‘I’ll just deal with this and I’ll come back to you,’ I’d say. ‘Just give me a minute.’

      Only it always took longer than I expected, because when it came to giving them the price for what they’d ordered the traveller women wanted to stand and haggle with me all day. Or I’d be in the middle of serving the next family, and the first family would come back and add to the order that we’d already agreed a price for.

      ‘Can

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