King's Cross Kid

by Victor Gregg

  Maisie gave me a hug and then a lecture. ‘Victor, you listen to me, you’ve the makings of a good boy, but at your age you should be thinking of your future. Who was that scruffy Jewboy you brought along with you the other night?’ ‘That was my mate Roscoe, he’s all right.’ ‘All right my foot,’ said Maisie. ‘Look at ’is ’ands the next time you meet up wiv ’im, never done a day’s work in ’is life. Looks like a crook to me. ’E must be breaking ’is poor muvver’s ’eart. Yer got to make somefink of yerself, Victor. Don’t forget us, yer know where we live’, and with that she shoved an envelope in my hand. ‘It’s something for yer to put in the Post Office. It’s not a free gift, Victor, you’ve earned every penny, now get along wiv yer, you’re breaking me poor Jewish heart.’

  I had feelings within me that are hard to describe. I wanted this woman who was not my mother to put her arms about me. I wanted her to know that if she needed support then I would be on hand to give it, in the same way that I used to feel when our mum had her dark moments thinking about our dad.

  And that was the last I saw of Maisie. The envelope contained one hundred pounds in fivers, an enormous sum, and a letter explaining to any future employer how lucky they were to have me applying for a job. I held on to the money until Monday when I went round the local post office and deposited the whole lot in a savings account which paid an interest rate of two and a half per cent – sixpence in the pound. I opened the account in my mother’s name. That evening when she came home from work I told her about the money Maisie had given me and gave her the book with the hundred pounds written in and officially stamped. My mum had never had so much money in her life. Suddenly, just like Maisie, she burst into a flood of tears.

  The loss of Sammy and Maisie affected me more than I cared to admit. I really felt as if Maisie was my second mother. Now they were gone and there was nothing to take their place. I used to think about what it was like to be Jewish, but then Rozzie was a Jewboy and he and his dad had nothing in common with Sammy. I used to lie in bed thinking about the words of advice that Maisie had given me and went on wondering if I really was the son she never had and what it would have been like to have Sammy as my dad. One evening, in a fit of self-pity, I told my mum about these troubling thoughts. She told me, ‘The world is full of good people’, and I should consider myself lucky to have found Sammy and Maisie and that she was going to the minister to offer up a prayer for the pair of them. Mum added that for me to be thinking such things showed that I was at last growing up. She said that all I had to do now was to ‘stop going around with that rough lot from where we used to live’.

  39

  Bookie’s Runner

  For a week I mooched around like a fish out of water. I went up to the labour to suss what was on offer and quickly realised that if I wanted a worthwhile job I wasn’t going to get it there. Finally, I went and found Roscoe who was sitting in the usual café with his customary bunch of mates. Once we got through the opening formalities and mickey taking he said, ‘Got anuvver job yet, Vic?’ ‘Nope, still looking.’ One of Roscoe’s mates chipped in: ‘About time yer packed up slinging them sacks about and missing all the fun in the evenings. Done yer a good turn, the old man kicking the bucket like that.’ Roscoe, not wanting a flare up in the café, told his mate to shut ’is gob or e’d shut it for ’im. ‘The old lady gave me a ’undred quid when I left. As a matter of interest, Roscoe, she reckoned you was probably a right crook, said she thought that you’d never done a day’s work in yer life. Well, I managed to half convince her that you wasn’t a crook but I must admit to the fact that I’ve never heard tell of any job yer may of ’ad.’

  Roscoe didn’t seem at all put out by the way the conversation was going. ‘That’s because it’s not in my interest to advertise the way I earn me dosh. You’ve never asked, I’ve never told, and furthermore I say nuffink more than I ’ave to. But I tell yer this, Vic, if yer ever want to earn a couple of bob the easy way, not thieving or anyfink like that, I’ll show yer the ropes. My word will get yer in.’ I sat down at the table and the other couple of lads went on discussing what they had been discussing before I came in – the likely winners and also-rans of the afternoon’s sporting calendar.

  ‘Ever do the ’orses or the dogs?’ said Roscoe. ‘Don’t know nuffink about them,’ I said. ‘Ain’t yer ever ’ad a bet then?’ said one of Rozzie’s mates. ‘Wouldn’t know the first thing about it.’ Then Roscoe upped and said he’d got to get away. ‘Fings to see to,’ he said. ‘Come round tonight, Vic, we’ll go down the Albion and ’ave a pint, I got business down there so I’ll be in there till nine, OK, Vic? Might give yer a few ideas.’ After that I left the café and sauntered down to Percy Street looking for Ron but he was out so I had a coffee and made my way to my mum’s place of work in Bridle Lane. I’d do what I used to do a long time ago: walk home with my mum.

  Later that evening I was sitting in the Albion, a beer house just off the Pentonville Road. It was known as a beer house because it didn’t sell spirits. You could have what you liked as long as it was beer, and Whitbread’s Best at that. Roscoe showed up around six thirty and, ignoring me, went round the tables collecting money and giving out little chits of paper. When he’d got all that sorted he came over. ‘That’s the opener for the dogs at Catford,’ he said. The penny dropped. So that was what my mate Roscoe was into: he was a bookie’s runner.

  ‘You can ’ave a go, Vic. The only fing, you got to keep yer mouth shut, yer customers will know yer, that’s all, come on, I got another three pubs to do tonight.’

  So off we went on a working pub crawl. By the end of the evening I’d begun to get the hang of things. ‘The most important fing, Vic, is to keep yer eyes open for the law, and make sure you’re never followed on the way back to me dad.’ ‘What about if they hit a winner?’ ‘You got it right first time, Vic, “if” is the magic word. You take the winnings round the next night, so you’re always loaded with cash. If you want to give it a go I’ll put a word in wiv the old man, but I tell yer straight, if yer ain’t quick enough, the rozzers will nab yer. They fine yer a fiver every time you go up in front of the beak, and he’ll tell you he’s going to be lenient if you tell the court the name of the bookie. Naturally you don’t know nuffink, you always pass the bets on to some geezer on the corner of the street, they know the score, everyone knows the score, not a problem, if you’re quick you can make a fiver a week.’ With that mouthful I now knew the ins and outs of the illegal gambling trade and how Roz could afford all the new gear he was always wearing. A fiver a week? He was almost a millionaire. ‘I’ll follow you around for a couple of days, Roz, make sure I know the drill.’ With that we went our different ways for what was left of the night. After he’d gone I realised that I hadn’t asked him how he was getting on with the other little problem of the bird with the bump on her belly, but Roscoe hadn’t appeared to be unduly worried.

  40

  Back with Eddie Again

  I had been involved with some shady characters in the last couple of years – no more than might be expected, considering the area I was growing up in – but did I really want to follow the road that Roscoe was offering? I thought of Maisie and the hundred quid she had given me. A hundred quid was a fortune and yet she must have had enough faith in me to give me that much. I knew that somehow I had to get a worthwhile job, but that was easier said than done.

  The next morning I went down to Chiswick to see if I could get any joy from Eddie Wilson. I just couldn’t see him and his mate working for anybody else. He must have something going.

  Eddie lived in a small house off Chiswick High Road. When I knocked on the door I was greeted by his missus. ‘Hello, Victor, you’ve grown a bit, come in and ’ave a cup of tea, I suppose you’ve come down to see Eddie. What about a nice bacon sandwich?’ I started to cheer up. If his missus was so happy, maybe Eddie was earning again.

  ‘I’ve come down to see if Eddie can find me something interesting like what we used to do.’ ‘Well, I don
’t know much about Eddie’s business, he rented a garage out last week but what he’s doing with it for the life of me I don’t know. I do know that he hasn’t given me any housekeeping money for the last couple of weeks but knowing him something will turn up.’ My hopes that had been rising with each mouthful of the lovely bacon sandwich plummeted to zero. ‘Why don’t you nip round the corner and see what he’s up to?’

  Wherever there is a railway line running through a town or city so also will there be these rows upon rows of arches and in the arches you will find all manner of workshops. It was one such workshop that Eddie was renting.

  I found Eddie on his lonesome knee, up to his waist in old pipework, bits of rusty metal and other debris. ‘Bloody hell, Vic, you’re the last bloke I expected to see. What’s up?’ I told him the sorry tale and of my determination to make millions before I reached twenty-one. ‘I’ve been slaving all my life, Vic and I ’avn’t got a brass farthing to show for it. I got offered this place cheap so I’m going to try to get a little business going, repairs and maybe the odd renovation. I’ve got a few contacts, anything is better than working for wages.’ This was the old governor that I understood. ‘Tell you what, Eddie, take me on and start paying me when you start earning.’ ‘You mean you’re willing to work for nix?’ ‘I’ve just been round your house and your missus done me a lovely bacon roll, if she can keep me from starving during the day I’m willing to stay.’ ‘Vic, we’ll be up and running by next Monday, we clear all the rubbish out today and tomorrow we clean down the walls and get my old machinery in. Don’t worry, I’ll ’ave you earning in a couple of weeks. Let’s go down the café and ’ave a meal before we get stuck in.’ Which we did. I wasn’t worried about the money. I was back with Eddie and in no time we’d be up to all the old tricks producing little sports cars out of Austin Sevens and Morris Eights and cheap old Fords. I knew that Eddie wasn’t exactly what you would call straight, and I knew that some of the old tricks would include grinding off engine registration numbers and such like. The law would take a dim view of this, I knew that, but Eddie wasn’t a bad man. He didn’t go around hitting people. He sailed close to the wind, but a lot of people did that just to survive. As far as I was concerned it was honest work for a slightly dishonest governor.

  The little jobs started to come in: engine stripdowns and the like, welding and brazing jobs, enough to keep us ticking over. Eddie supplied the technical know-how and me the brute force. He liked the way he could tell me what to do and how to do it. If he was working with someone a bit older and better versed in the trade he wouldn’t have been able to do this, but with me he had it all his own way, which was fine by me. Once again I was earning money and enjoying life in the process.

  One day Eddie’s old mate Charlie the panel beater joined the firm and it looked like, for Eddie, all was well with the world. I thought Eddie and his mate were top of the class. I met up with Roscoe a week after I started with Eddie and told him about my return to the motor trade. Rozzie wasn’t at all put out by my decision to turn down his offer; he was more concerned by what he called the ‘rantings’ of his dad. Apparently there was going to be another war and it could start any day now. His dad had been to a meeting called by the local synagogue and the Rabbi had given his audience a lecture on what was happening in Germany now that this bloke Hitler had settled in. Half the population was in the nick and the other half were slaving their heads off making tanks, aeroplanes and battleships. People were being shot in the streets and anyone who complained was strung up. ‘That’s what the Rabbi told us and if you can’t believe the Rabbi then who can you believe?’ You went to work, got some dosh and after giving some to your mum, spent the rest on yourself. That was my world. War sounded exciting, though.

  I said as much to Eddie who replied that if the Germans carried on the way they are doing then it was true we would end up at war with them. ‘How much do they pay yer for going to war then, Eddie?’ Eddie looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I was so stupid. ‘Don’t pay nothing, Vicky boy, and most likely you’ll get yourself killed. There’s a rule that says never volunteer for anything, especially wars.’

  What really set me thinking was when our mum came home one night from work and announced that the firm had another big contract for military hats. ‘Like Uncle Frank makes at his firm and we got enough work for the next three years.’ Uncle Frank was Mum’s elder brother and he was a cutter at Ayres and Smith, this firm in Lexington Street that specialised in military hats for the higher ranks, both army and navy. ‘Do you think there’s going to be another war, Mum?’ ‘Not on your life, Victor, there was too many killed in the last one, nobody would be so daft as to start all that again.’ That was the view and wisdom of my mother who had lost two of her brothers in the last lot. Rozzie’s dad was wrong. I thought he must be a nutcase.

  I would have liked to have asked Sammy and Maisie what they thought but Sammy was gone and I hadn’t seen Maisie since we packed up at the market. I wanted to take a trip to Bethnal Green and have a chat with her but I never did. I wondered whether Maisie missed me as much as I missed her.

  On the whole Eddie ran the business as an ordinary garage; a customer brought in a car for repair, we fixed it, whatever it was, and the punter would leave satisfied with a job well done. Eddie couldn’t do the resprays in the workshop, because every time a train went overhead everything got smothered in dust.

  Every now and then a car was brought in, the engine lifted out and cleaned. At which point Eddie or Charlie set about removing any distinguishing numbers or metal tags; anything that could give the game away was removed or ground out. By the time the three of us had completed our various jobs the car bore little resemblance to the vehicle that had entered the garage a few days before. It turned out this was all done for a couple of big garages that had put up the money for Eddie to rent the workshop. Who the blokes were earning the real money out of these cars we never knew, and we never asked. That was the deal and we all knew the score.

  Like the last time I had worked for Eddie all the spares that we bought were bent, but then three-quarters of the second-hand car markets in London were bent. The source of the stolen accessories was the railway goods depot at Somers Town. Goods made in Birmingham and the Midlands in general ended up there awaiting distribution, or, in our case, redistribution from the back of a lorry.

  One day I rode into the yard to find Eddie and Charlie having a real go at each other, not fighting or anything like that, but they were having words and this was no normal difference of opinion. Charlie said, ‘Go down the café, Vic, come back in an hour.’ I looked at Eddie and he nodded. When I came back the two of them said to me, ‘Vic, we’ve decided and what we’re going to say to you is in your own interest, you’ve got to get out. We don’t want you around any more.’

  The previous night Charlie had been visited by the law. A lad handling the stolen goods had been picked up and named our garage as one of the receivers. Charlie, who had form, was visited first. Eddie expected his turn to come at any moment. They were piling the incriminating evidence into Charlie’s little Morris van. ‘If you stay here, Vic, and we go down, the chances are you’ll come along, too. Best for you to make yourself scarce.’ With that Eddie pulls out a wad of notes, puts them in an envelope along with my cards. ‘That’s it then, Eddie?’ ‘Sorry, son, but you’re old enough to know the score, you’ve been around.’ They both give me a slap on the shoulder and I’m off, another job down the drain.

  Before I left the garage Charlie told me it had been the Frazer Nash that was the cause of the trouble.

  The Frazer had arrived at the garage in a covered van about a month before. We had real trouble unloading it. All we had were a couple of twelve-foot scaffolding boards on which we managed to wheel the beast down from the van to ground level. There were only two cars of the thirties that used a chain drive for the transmission; one was a Jowett and the other, much more sophiscated and sought after, was the Frazer Nash, a completely British ca
r. The one we had unloaded was the most sought after of them all, a two-year-old TT Sports Replica. The owner had returned it to the dealer in Great Portland Street because it had developed a bad case of rust in the chassis, a common problem in cars of that period. Eddie was known in the London trade as being a Frazer Nash expert. He had been visiting the Frazer Nash dealer in Great Portland Street when he first invited me to work for him. I imagine he had promised the dealer he could repair this car so it would be good as new.

  We hoisted it on a set of blocks and stripped it down to its last nut and bolt. We found the rust had eaten right through the metal. It was impossible to weld. Eddie needed a new chassis and that was a problem: Frazer Nash wouldn’t provide a chassis on its own. You had to order it with a complete body. The company didn’t want it getting about that the chassis were vulnerable to rust. The dealer had told Eddie not to worry, he’d sort it out.

  My first task was to clean the whole thing up while Charlie got busy knocking out the dents in the bodywork and Eddie stripped the engine down. Then Eddie balanced all the moving parts and I got myself smothered in the dark red rouge paste that we used to polish all the steel parts like the piston rods, cam followers and tappets. They all had to be brought up to a mirror finish, which I did with the aid of an old lathe that took up half the shop. The mirror finish wasn’t just for show; it served two purposes, one to show up any fractures and two to allow the oil to flow freely through the engine. Eddie knew his stuff all right.