Brixton Bwoy

by Rocky Carr

  ‘We were going to give you some, mate,’ Big Youth said. ‘But since you’ve made a fortune yourself, we’ll all just go and buy some drink and ciggies and have a good smoke.’

  For all Tee’s venturing with the Herbies into petty crime, he still had a sense of honour, a feeling for right and wrong. It was OK to steal from wealthy tourists or clothes shops which could afford the loss, but he would never allow anyone weak or defenceless to be picked on. He had his own code of honour.

  One holiday this sense of honour was nearly the end of him. He found himself at the fun-fair in Peckham, spending his ill-gotten gains. The place was packed with people having fun, eating candyfloss, throwing balls at coconuts and queuing for all the rides. Tee had just finished on the bumper cars when he saw a bit of wood flying through the air. Fortunately, it missed everyone. But a moment later, he saw people running to one end of the fair where a crowd was standing in a circle. He pushed his way in and saw four of the fun-fair men, armed with various weapons, beating up two girls. Tee knew them. They were Valerie and Esther.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ he shouted, walking forward. The men looked up and without hesitating came straight for him. For a moment Tee saw them, sledgehammers and pickaxe handles held up, and then a blow caught him and he fell to the ground. The next thing he saw was a sledgehammer coming down towards his head, and as he scrambled away he saw it smashing into the earth beside him. His eyes passed over the crowd and he caught sight of people he recognised from school, but no one stepped forward to help.

  The next blow landed on him, and the next. Tee tried his old trick of playing dead, but the blows kept coming. He rolled away and tried to shelter at the feet of the crowd, but they only moved away, screaming and fearful for themselves. And then he was staring up at the beautiful lights and shapes moving in the sky. There was music and excited screaming and laughter in the distance. He realised he was still at the fair, looking up at the big wheel. He was being put on a stretcher. And then he passed out again.

  ‘How is he, doctor?’ he heard a voice saying. It was Pearl.

  ‘He stands a fifty-fifty chance,’ a strange voice said. ‘He took some severe blows to the head, as well as the body.’

  He drifted back into unconsciousness. Later he was told he had been asleep for several days. Then, one morning, he woke up complaining that he was hungry. He smelt food coming closer and tried to look, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t see! For a moment he thought he was blind. But then he found that if he forced his eyelids open with his fingers, he could see a bit. The food was on a shiny tray which he held up to his face like a mirror. He screamed and threw down his food when he saw what they had done to him.

  For days he lay there consumed with violent hatred, contemplating what he would do to those fair workers when he caught up with them. The local newspaper had actually reported that he had been beaten to death, and after that gangs from Brixton went up to Peckham to find the fairground employees. For several days, Peckham was afire with fighting.

  Many people came to visit him. Of course Pearl was there, and Roland and Richie, all of his relatives. Even Joe came once to check up on him – with all his beatings, he had never hurt his younger brother this bad. He didn’t stay long. Friends also came, and people he didn’t know were friends. At school, his worst enemy was a white boy called Roy. But almost every day, Roy would come to the hospital. ‘Don’t worry, Tee,’ he would say. ‘You’ll make it, and when you get better and come out we’ll go and get those dirty bastards.’ Tee loved Roy for that.

  When Tee finally returned to his school in Peckham, he got a standing ovation in front of the whole assembly. The head teacher called him out to the front. ‘Just look at him, boys and girls, scarred and in bandages simply for trying to protect two girls.’

  Slowly he recovered, and before long he was hanging out with the Herbies and the Rebels again, following them wherever they went. Often they would go to the pictures, to the Odeon, the ABC or the Classic Picture House, nicknamed the Bug House. They would stand in the queue, pretending to be eighteen. If they were stopped at the box office, they would find some other way of getting in. One day at the Odeon, thwarted at the door, Big Youth led them round the back to an open window. ‘Let’s climb in here,’ he said. It was such a small window that Tee thought he was joking, but everyone managed to squeeze through until only Tee was left. He pulled himself up and got his head, an arm and a shoulder in. But he was bigger than the rest of them, and he couldn’t get any further. What was worse, he couldn’t go back, either. He was stuck. All his friends were now in fits of laughter, which soon attracted the doorman, who came and gave him a good hiding while he was still stuck fast. For weeks after, he was the laughing stock of the entire gang.

  From then on, they made it their business to find easier ways of getting into the cinemas. They found a side door at the Odeon which could be opened with a good hard kick. One of them would kick and then they would all rush in. If some were caught, it would only set the rest of them off laughing. The ABC was similarly easy to get into. The Classic was the hardest. A black man worked there who they called Nose, because he had the biggest, ugliest nose they had ever seen. He was not someone who could be easily fooled, and he was always quick to call the police. But that didn’t deter them. One of the gang would pay to go in, another would keep Nose busy, and then the one with the ticket would go to the emergency doors and open them for the rest. Even then, they were not guaranteed to see the film, because Nose would often walk around the cinema with his flashlight, asking to see tickets and keeping his eyes open for anyone he had not seen paying to get in. Tee was usually the one who did actually pay, because Nose knew his face well. Nose didn’t like him; he didn’t like any of them, and they didn’t like Nose.

  Tee loved Pearl and her husband, Mr H, and when he was in the mood he tried to be helpful around the house. But eventually, even Pearl couldn’t help realising he was up to no good. She started questioning him and shouting at him, worrying about what he was doing when he wasn’t in the house and how she could control him.

  Richie and Roland knew, and were forever telling him to stop running with the bad boys, but he wouldn’t listen.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, all right,’ he’d say.

  ‘You’ll end up in prison,’ Roland would reply.

  ‘Nonsense, man.’

  ‘Don’t say me never warned you, Pupatee.’

  ‘If there’s any police try stop me I’ll flatten their rass,’ he said.

  One day, Pearl went into the room Tee shared with Roland and Richie to gather up the dirty washing, and came across all Tee’s new clothes in the wardrobe.

  ‘Pupatee,’ she demanded, ‘what are you up to?’

  ‘Nothing, Sis, me did lend them things off my friends.’

  ‘Why did they lend them to you?’

  ‘To wear, of course,’ he said, smirking.

  Mr H tried talking to Tee, but he was an easy-going man and had no effect. So Pearl, at her wits’ end, turned to the last resort – Joe.

  ‘Where did you get them, boy?’ he demanded when he came round.

  ‘From me friends.’ Tee was giving nothing away.

  Joe was mad, too, and he and Pearl agreed they would have to take the clothes to Brixton police station. He ordered Tee to accompany him. They went through the door together, but when Joe got in his car Tee walked off in the other direction.

  ‘Boy, are you going to follow me or am I going to have to follow you?’ Joe yelled. Tee paid him no attention and continued on down the road. He had become used to life without Joe and his beatings, and in any case, by now he was almost as big as his brother. He wasn’t going to listen to him. And if Joe took the clothes down to the police station, nothing would come of it, and Tee would stay on at Pearl’s.

  One Sunday morning, Pearl was making a dinner of chicken and rice and peas. There was still an hour or two to go until it would be ready, and Tee, who needed money to go to a club called St John’s that night, decided
to go out and see if he could find some.

  He walked out into Brockwell Park and saw a group of boys about his own age, even a bit older. But they weren’t tough like him and they hardly put up a protest as he went among them, demanding money. Sadly, they didn’t have much more then twenty pence on them, and Tee cursed and gave up and went home to dinner. That night, his friends had to support him, buying drinks and weed so he could have a good time.

  A few weeks later, he was just about to go into the Odeon picture house, which was across the road from the police station, when two police officers suddenly appeared and grabbed him. They said one of the boys he had robbed in Brockwell Park had pointed him out. Although they didn’t find anything incriminating when they searched him, and Tee would say nothing, they still held him and telephoned Pearl. She was fuming when she arrived and gave him a lecture.

  ‘I have to go home and look after my children, Pupatee,’ she said. ‘So if you did what they say, then tell them.’

  At last it sunk in that his family weren’t going to cover for him any longer. So Tee admitted the charge, thankful that he had been caught for one of his least serious offences. They couldn’t do much to him for stealing twenty pence. He was bailed to appear at Camberwell court in a month or so. The gang all told him he had nothing to worry about, and it became a big joke. But the hearing was soon upon him and, to his horror, sister Pearl stood up and told them to put him in a home because she and Mr H could no longer control him. And so it was decided that Tee should be sent away to Stamford House juvenile remand centre in Shepherd’s Bush.

  5

  Doing Time

  As the van taking him to Stamford House drove through the streets of London, Tee thought dolefully about his situation. The judge hadn’t given him a particular length of sentence, but had said Tee would stay in Stamford House until his behaviour merited release and a place in a suitable hostel could be found for him. Tee didn’t know whether he would be spending six weeks or six months or six years there.

  The other boys in the van were amazed that Tee was being sent away for such a minor offence. Although he had committed other crimes, he had not been caught for them, so he considered his punishment unjust. Now that it was actually happening to him, being sent to an institution didn’t seem so cool, and as well as feeling sorry for himself, he was resentful towards Pearl. He had been thrown away like an old boot. It did not occur to him to blame himself.

  They were driven through a big blue gate, which clanged shut behind them. The van doors opened and the first thing they saw was a huge man with ginger hair and breath that smelt of extra strong mints (they later realised he sucked them to cover up the smell of booze). He introduced himself as Mr G – one of the boys whispered that he thought he was Welsh – and without further ado he marched Tee and the others to their wing, where he gave them a lecture about the rules. Dormitories to be kept tidy. No talking after lights-out. No this, no that. There seemed to be about a thousand rules and Mr G warned them that if any were broken it would mean CP. Tee didn’t know what CP meant, though Mr G pronounced it with a satisfaction that hinted at its unpleasantness.

  Stamford House was not a borstal, but a holding place for young teenagers who had been committed by the court into various types of care and detention. The boys were allowed to wear ordinary clothes, mostly jeans, shirts and pullovers, as long as they dressed neatly. They slept in dormitories of four or five, but each had his own corner for his bed and personal belongings. The boys in each dorm would join forces to keep it spick and span as the rules required. The meals were good, particularly Friday’s fish and chips, and as there were plenty of fry-ups, they never went hungry. It was a comfortable enough place, but in those first days it felt like a prison to Tee. Life was dictated by routine. Up at seven. Shower, breakfast, line-up in the yard. Then education, lunch, more education, tea and finally association in the recreation room where there were billiard and table-tennis tables, or down to the gym and the swimming-pool. Lights-out at 9.30 sharp. Tee conformed as best he could, listening, watching, trying to fit in and not get into trouble.

  He quickly worked out that his problems were going to be with the other boys. Out on the streets, Tee had been one of the toughest in his neighbourhood. But here were the hard boys, from all over London. On his very first night in the canteen, just after he sat down to eat, he had a knife drawn in his face. The owner growled at Tee that he was in his seat. Tee jumped up and told him to watch it. The boy tensed and shouted, ‘Come on.’ Others now jumped up, some calling the boy’s name, Carbury. ‘You come do it now,’ he shouted again, but before Tee could do anything, staff rushed in and took Carbury away to CP.

  Tee was let off with a warning, but the very next day, he was confronted by another Carbury, the first Carbury’s older brother. They were known by their initials, A and M. M was in Stamford House for beating up a couple of policemen.

  ‘Hey, star, wha you in for?’ he asked Tee.

  ‘Robbery,’ Tee replied.

  ‘Wha, a old woman?’

  M clearly wanted to fight, but Tee didn’t take him up. He kept out of his way for the next couple of days, and by the time A came out of CP (which Tee had discovered meant Closed Prison), things had cooled down. Trouble brewed easily, but could also be quickly forgotten.

  Slowly, by standing up for himself, Tee won acceptance. He joined a gang of black boys, whose members were Slim, Henry, Dexter, Gangerdeen, BufBuf, Derek, Steve and Quena, as well as the Carburys. While these boys were as tough as any of their age – thirteen to fourteen – they were still kids, and most of what they got up to was mischief, and what they considered to be fun. But the authorities took a different view.

  Education occupied most of the day, but Tee did not take much notice of the teachers. When he was in class he was always skylarking about and the rest of the time he would be sneaking out to disturb the others, or to have a quick smoke. One afternoon, when the teacher had already shouted at him and several other boys who were firing folded-up bullets of paper at each other with elastic bands, Tee loosed a particularly fat bullet which caught a white boy smack in the eye.

  ‘I warned you, Baccass,’ yelled the teacher as the injured boy howled. ‘Now look what you’ve done. You’ll have to explain this to management.’

  Tee was marched off to CP, where he was searched and relieved of his tobacco, matches and Rizlas. The walls of his cell were padded like sponge and it was bare except for a mattress, a table, a chair and a piss-pot. The furniture was all fixed to the floor. It was an isolation cell, a prison within a prison. On that occasion Tee only stayed overnight, but later he was to spend more time in CP and he always hated its loneliness.

  Once when he was locked up on his own he asked a member of staff to help him write home to Mama and Pops and Carl. The freedom of life in Jamaica seemed a long way off now, and he told them that although he was all right, given the circumstances, he missed them and loved them and hoped they missed him too. But when Mama’s reply eventually arrived, she wrote that he clearly didn’t love her, because if he did he would love himself and do better in life. It was a black time.

  Many of the boys went home at weekends, and one called Rodent even escaped one day by rushing out of the gates when they were opened to let in a van. But Tee had nowhere to go and he would watch the others leaving on Saturday mornings with a sinking feeling. He would almost have welcomed going to Joe’s, but his brother had completely washed his hands of him. He couldn’t go to Brixton, because Pearl had decided he should stay at Stamford House to learn his lesson. Certainly he was lonely and miserable for a while, but what Pearl didn’t understand was that the longer he stayed there, the more he learned to be tough and criminally minded.

  While Tee resented Pearl for leaving him in there, she never abandoned him completely, and continued visiting. Eventually, he persuaded her to take him out for a weekend leave. In his initial enjoyment of the delicious home cooking, surrounded by the comfort of his family, he forgave his siste
r. But the pleasure of being at home with Roland and Richie soon wore off, and Pearl and Mr H couldn’t keep him in, so on Saturday evening he was out roaming the streets in search of his old friends. He bumped into a mate from Stamford House, and they snatched a handbag and shared the proceeds. Then they went out to have some fun. His time inside was not teaching him anything.

  Eventually, after a year, Tee’s stay in Stamford House came to an end. Pearl was still reluctant to take him, so a place was found for him in a hostel.

  The hostel was run by Mr P, to whom Tee took an instant dislike. But among the residential staff were a younger couple named Paul and Rose, who stayed up late drinking and smoking weed. Paul even asked Tee if he could get him some weed; he would give him cash to do so.

  Tee walked out of school on the first day, and after that he rarely went back. He was also supposed to help out at the hostel, but when asked he simply refused. He was nearly fifteen now and thought he had reached the age when nobody else could control his life. And in a way he was right. The staff tried a few times to bring him into line, but faced with his stubborn determination, they gave up. They had other people to attend to. Tee retreated into his ‘bad bwoy’ image. Stamford House had completed his education in bad bwoy ways. He was rude and acted as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He gave up even attempting to talk proper English, and once more used only pure Jamaican lingo, which some of the black boys couldn’t understand, let alone the English staff and kids.