Sean Smith - Tom Jones - The Life

Alan may have been better looking, but it was Tom who had the charm. He had a bent, lopsided nose, crooked teeth and an elongated jaw, but he was easy to talk to. ‘He just had this lovely personality as far as I was concerned,’ recalls Gill, who readily agreed to meet up a day or two later by the railings on The Parade, the street below the curry house.

‘He told me when he wanted to meet me there, but he didn’t come. I just hung about for an hour and eventually he turned up. No matter when he made arrangements with me, it would be an hour or two later that he would turn up.’ Gill didn’t realise that he had responsibilities elsewhere.

Nothing happened between them on The Parade other than a walk and a chat. They just seemed to like each other’s company. It was very relaxed and Tom suggested that she might like to hear him sing at a gig or perhaps take in a dance one evening soon; he would call her to let her know when.

The next time she saw him, he was walking underneath the bridge by the railway station in Pontypridd, looking unrecognisable in a double-breasted navy blue pinstriped suit. Gill assumed he had paid a trip to the magistrates’ court nearby: ‘He might have been a naughty boy, but he was very smartly dressed.’ She didn’t quiz him about it. It wasn’t her business and she wasn’t a pushy sort of girl anyway. She admits, ‘I never had any confidence in myself.’

Tom’s luck with the law had, in fact, run out when, desperately short of cash, he had broken into the old tobacconist’s shop in Treforest with a pal. They were hardly criminal masterminds. The stupid petty crime was unearthed when, by all accounts, they tried to sell their haul down the Wood Road. The police, hearing the rumours of some dodgy cigarettes for sale, put two and two together and found the goods hidden in Tom’s mother’s house.

Even the dole office knew of his misdeed, noting in its records: ‘Applicant is on bail pending being heard for a charge of breaking and entering at the next quarter session.’ Tom has not denied this transgression and later admitted he had once been placed on probation.

Tom started calling Gill to suggest when they might meet up. Neither of them had a phone. Tom would step out to his red phone box and she would be in hers outside the Central Hotel, just across from the top of East Street. Tom would dial the number – 2026 – and wait for someone to answer the ringing phone. It didn’t matter who it was, he would simply ask the person to pop over the road and tell Gill that he wanted to speak to her. She would dash for the phone, pleased to hear from him.

Gill had the same routine if she was staying the night at a friend’s house. She would simply ring the phone box and ask whoever answered to go and tell her nan what she was doing, please, so she wouldn’t worry. She never knew the number of Tom’s phone box, presumably because he didn’t want to run the risk of his wife answering. Gill recalls, ‘I would have to wait for him to do things and I suppose I was patient enough to wait without even thinking about it.’

She loved it when they went jiving at Judges in Porth or the Bucket of Blood in Rhydyfelin: ‘I was a good jiver and so was he.’ But, in the main, she would just be his girl when he went to a gig. Often she had no idea where they were, although Franchies in Taff Street was one she enjoyed. Neither of them had any money – Gill used to make a lot of her clothes – so it would be a trip on the bus to the gig, where she and sometimes other friends would cheer him on. Tom would usually be paid a couple of pounds and perhaps some beer. Afterwards, there was no hanging around. He needed to get home to his family, so they would catch the bus back to Pontypridd, get off in Merthyr Road and he would set off for Treforest, while she walked back to East Street. She recalls, ‘He would do the gig and then he would be gone. We never had any money. We never had anything at all.’

Looking back with the privilege of hindsight, Gill believes Tom wanted company: ‘He needed someone when he went to these gigs – he needed someone in the audience there for him, someone whom he could focus on or relate to. He didn’t want to go on his own.’ He was clearly fond of her, however.

On one evening she was due to accompany him to a gig in Caerphilly, eight miles away. Tom suggested she get the bus, which left from the Broadway, with him and his friend Gwyn Griffiths. The bus ran only once an hour, so Tom had to catch it or he would be late. Gill and Gwyn, whom she already knew, caught the bus as arranged, but, typically, there was no sign of Tom. As they travelled down the Broadway, they saw Tom running along, clutching his guitar and trying to catch them up. He banged on the side to attract the driver’s attention and Gill started shouting to him to stop the bus as well. Thankfully, he stopped and let Tom on board.

She had dolled herself up for the occasion, wearing her long brown hair up and putting on a red dress that an aunt had brought over from Jamaica as a present. Gill will never forget that gig, because after his usual smattering of Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, Tom turned towards her, midway through his next song, focused his gaze directly on her and sang, ‘See the girl with the red dress on …’ It was his power-packed version of ‘What’d I Say’, the song that took the legendary Ray Charles into the mainstream in 1959. Jerry Lee had made a rock ’n’ roll recording of the track at the famous Sun Studio in 1960. ‘I was elated,’ says Gill. ‘He was singing to me.’ It was lovely for Gill, but it also revealed that Tom hadn’t forgotten the advice of his Uncle George and was selling the song to his audience. It was a technique he continued to employ as a Las Vegas headliner.

Gill thought there was more to the relationship than there was. Perhaps she was naive, but she acknowledges simply: ‘Yes, I thought he was my boyfriend.’ That changed when she saw him in Pontypridd with a young blond boy who was clearly his son and turned out to be Mark. ‘I didn’t have bad feelings towards him about it. I’m a “what will be, will be” sort of person. I think that a little bit of something is better than nothing. That’s the only way to explain why I went on seeing him.’

Gill admits that she and Tom enjoyed plenty of ‘kisses and cuddles’, but she denies there was anything more. If they weren’t going to a gig or jiving, then they would simply stay and chat on a street corner or go for a walk in Trallwn or the nearby village of Ynysybwl. She strongly believes that the image of Tom as a rough and ready macho man is completely wrong. She explains: ‘I think people got the wrong impression of him. He wasn’t at all as he was portrayed. I never found him to be a forceful person. He never expected anything from me and he told me that, and it was very important to me. He said to me that whatever I wanted physically would be OK. He was never, ever nasty with me and treated me as an equal. He was a gentle person.’

Everyone assumed that Gill was sleeping with Tom, because for nearly two years they were often seen together. They never went all the way, however. Eventually Gill found a proper boyfriend, whom she would marry. She still saw Tom occasionally. He would pop in to find out how she was doing and make sure she was all right. They lost touch when Tom’s career began to move forward, although Alan Barratt would call round to catch up from time to time. When Gill had a son, Alan brought her a card from Tom on the boy’s first birthday that contained two crisp pound notes. By strange coincidence, in later life, she became the best friend of Marion Crewe, who was Dai Perry’s sister and was close to Tom, whom she adored. Gill remained on the fringes of Tom’s world and would say hello on the sad days he came home for funerals.