Stuttering Charlie was a villain and thief who sold fruit and vegetables from a wheelbarrow. If he had anything to say in court, you might as well take a chair because it took him ages to express himself. The magistrate soon learned not to ask him anything. Stuttering Charlie had a granite face and dishevelled appearance. However, this man attracted some of the prettiest girls. He’d bed them, and invariably they’d come back for more. There were many rumoured explanations of his success. Charlie claimed his tongue, which would get so tied-up in speech, seemed to come into its own when put to other uses.
The wrestler Tommy the Demon sported a neat pencil-thin moustache, a trilby hat bent at the front like a gangster and a long overcoat with a tie belt. He wasn’t a full-fledged villain but did dabble. Tommy was a dirty wrestler who gained his nickname by kneeing his opponents in the testicles and biting them. The crowd loved hating him and booed their lungs out. Perversely, he became very popular at local wrestling matches.
The Flower Mob came from a big family: eight brothers and one girl, Rosie, with whom I had an affair. The brothers earned a healthy living each morning selling masses of beautiful flowers off barrows in Piccadilly. The prices were exorbitant but the blooms of the highest quality. During the afternoon they strolled residential districts admiring beautiful gardens. At night they’d return with scissors to snip off the choicest blooms.
To thieve was survival, but to thieve well was an indication of courage and skill. I’d listen to my stepbrothers and their friends boasting about how successfully they could con people, exchanging stories of dishonesty with vivid descriptions and embellishments to a captive or sometimes cynical audience. There were no feelings of remorse, guilt or embarrassment. It was just a case of, ‘I’m a thief, you’re a thief, but I’m a better and smarter thief than you.’
You had to be street-smart to survive in a tough area like Chorlton-on-Medlock. I learned early what attracted violence and how to avoid it. If walking towards some lads standing idly on the street corner or leaning against a wall, smoking and talking, it was wise to casually cross over and continue on the other side of the road. If I decided to risk passing them, I’d either look straight ahead or turn my head away. A look in the eye could be interpreted as a challenge and they’d utter the time-honoured Lancashire fighting phrase: ‘Who’s thee does tha’ suppose?’
The Americans frequented an illegal drinking den called the Cotton Club in Upper Brook Street. I’d sold some watches to a coloured fellow, and went there to collect the money before he spent it. At the top of a long staircase a seated West Indian doorman rose to a daunting height and blocked my path. When I told him who I wanted to see, the doorman said he wasn’t there. I knew he was lying and asked him if he was looking for trouble. There was silence for a few seconds and suddenly I was looking down a gun barrel. He confidently said, ‘Yes.’ Wilting with embarrassment, I could feel the urine running down my inner leg. I tried to steady my voice: ‘Can’t you take a joke?’ and made an undignified retreat.
It was inevitable that I should meet up again with Dids Marshall and his gang of thieves. Dids was one of the family by then, having married Diana. The pair had a lot in common: heavy drinkers, disloyal, dishonest and extremely selfish. They moved from one caravan park to the next, stealing and conning people wherever they went. The police were never far behind.
Dids still wanted me to be his wheelman. Although I didn’t trust him, I decided to give it a try. I no longer had a driving licence but Dids assured me this would be no problem. First, we bought a secondhand Riley for £16 at Bradshaw’s auction.
I drove the gang to Scotland where .1 got a Scottish licence without having to produce proof of my age. In the early hours of the morning we’d pull up outside country chicken farms. We’d sneak into the hen cages, grab the startled birds, and shove them in a sack before they started squawking. The sacks would then be emptied into the back of our car; when hens were all close together they kept quiet. A poultry dealer in Glasgow took them off our hands, knowing they’d been lifted.
Glespin, not far from Glasgow, had a co-operative store. It was like a fortress; no way in except for a small toilet window high up. When I got through it, I found a treasure trove. I swung open the main doors and the gang poured in with exclamations of astonishment and wonder. We stole armfuls of clothing, shirts, dresses and rolls of cloth, tasted every brand of chocolate and cake. We were in heaven. We found a Milner’s Church Door safe, so-named for its church door shape. We searched for the key but couldn’t find it. We tried everything, even dropped it from a bridge. But it held.
The back of our car was packed close to capacity. Dids announced he would drive and sat in the front with Johnny. Murdoch and I had no alternative but to crawl on top of the gear at the back and lie pressed against the roof in acute discomfort.
Dids drove the gear to Rosyth in Fife, where he had relatives. Wartime Rosyth was a restricted area because it was a naval base. Many roads had been blocked off. There were a lot of military police about. How the hell we drove through Rosyth to Dunfermaline with a load of knocked-off gear in the car is still a mystery. Our arrival was not appreciated by the elderly relatives, who watched in mounting concern as we hid our gear in their house.
Over the days following we went around local housing estates knocking on doors. We’d present the merchandise as cheap bankrupted or fire-salvaged stock, and disposed of a lot this way. But if we’d had any real intelligence, we’d have realised nobody in the Rosyth area could go unnoticed, let alone a bunch of deadlegs like us.
Murdoch and I were arrested by some detectives who’d found the remainder of the goods still stashed in the house. I think Dids’s relations dobbed us in. When Johnny returned and found out what had happened, he took off to Kilmarnoch. The police knew Dids was our gang leader and soon arrested him. Murdoch and I were remanded to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow.
I’d heard of Barlinnie. In the 1920s and 1930s razor gangs worked the streets of Glasgow. Often a gang member would carry an axe under their coat; most preferred steel combs sharpened like razors. Most of these thugs ended up in Barlinnie and continued their feuds inside. It was a dangerous and lonely place. You spent 23 hours in your cell and had one hour for exercise.
We were arraigned before a sheriff in a Glasgow court. Murdoch and I were sentenced to two years of institutional training. Lack of evidence meant Dids was not convicted for the same crime and we didn’t dob him in. Instead, he got eight months in Barlinnie Prison for a previous offense.
In early 1943 Murdoch and I entered the Polmont Borstal Institution in Sterlingshire, the only borstal in Scotland. It was on a small estate with work sheds and dormitories for inmates. Instead of a high wall, the institution was surrounded by a. river, effectively a moat to prevent the prisoners escaping, and a neck of prison staff houses.
We were issued with a brown uniform and put in B wing. Mr Watt supervised the daily tasks. He wore his peaked shiny cap like a gestapo agent, brim pushed down to just above his eyes. One of his lips had an ugly twist, giving his face a nasty expression. He wore highly polished boots, you could cut your throat with the sharp creases of his trousers, and not a hair on his head was out of place. Mr Watt made us feel like animals. He was the most hated screw there.
I was to be in Polmont nine months. Although I had a two-year sentence and told I’d be out in one, I improved on this by shrewdly doing a welder’s apprenticeship, getting on well with the instructor. He told the authorities the war effort was hampered by a lack of welders and set the ball rolling for my early release.
Dids was out near the end, not far away. I’d kept my mouth shut about his involvement. He could have made contact, but he didn’t care enough.
My final weeks in borstal were marred by the death of half-brother John of TB at 27 after a fight weakened his lungs. I walked around like a zombie. The Principal Officer Fairburn knew of John’s death and shook me up and kept me busy. When he drove me to the station he reminded me of the incident and s
aid he did it for my benefit, to stop me falling apart. Like Sergeant Towie, Fairburn was a tough but fair disciplinarian, driven by a desire for excellence. But I didn’t see it at the time. I remembered our first meeting, while I was scrubbing floors on hands and knees.
A huge pair of boots appeared beside my fingers, touching one. I looked up at the broad stout officer’s chubby face. ‘Less blather, more work.’ I stared in defiance. ‘Never mind the evil eye. Less blather, more work.’ At inspection he singled me out, ‘The name’s Fairburn. We’re going to see a lot of each other.’
Scrubbing the hall floor was pointedly pointless. It would be spotless, gleaming, antiseptic—and we’d do it all over again. Always to the tune of ‘Pop goes the Weasel’. It was easy to lose one’s cool. Mr Watt refused me soap and I told him, ‘Get lost.’ He advanced on me, stick in hand. I grabbed the bucket and emptied it on him. He was furious, then looked at his soiled uniform, matt boots. He bellowed an order and I was sent to Fairburn. This was a serious misdemeanour. Four weeks solitary confinement.
Fairburn and a guard led me by my hair and ears down a corridor, into a corner of the gymnasium, through a trapdoor there, down some stone steps into a semi-circular area with cell doors set into the walls. Fairburn threw me through one. When the trapdoor closed on their way out, I was in total darkness, though when my eyes grew more accustomed to it I was surprised what I could dimly make out from a weak shaft of light from a ventilation panel. The stone cell smelt musty and dank. My ears and head ached. I was afraid about how I could last a month there.
Then it seemed a herd of cattle was passing above. The heavy mob were on their way. The whine of the trapdoor. Several sets of feet on stone. Keys jangling. The cell door opening in a flood of blinding light. They came straight at me. I kicked and bit and punched in impotent rage, but I was soon knocked to the ground and swimming in and out of consciousness, raked by sharp toe caps, kicked, walloped. I saw Mr Watt’s smug victorious face, felt the surge of hatred inside me.
I sat in an introspective trance for weeks while my body healed. I ran out of things to occupy my mind - I’d counted things, felt the walls and floor, recollected memories—until I grasped onto playacting. My first role was a re-make of a film starring Errol Flynn, They Died with their Boots On. I was the bugler. The sound effects of galloping horses, shots and the bugle brought an eye to the Judas hole; he probably thought I’d gone crazy. Foul food and taciturn warders were distractions, but there was never any news, never a letter as my family were all illiterate to some degree—never mind that I couldn’t read, the sense of human contact would’ve been enough. I had two unexpected and wondrous visitors, beetles. I enjoyed their antics, fed them crumbs, trained them to run up my arm and looked forward to their emergence from their home in a crack in the wall. When I found one lying on its back motionless, when it didn’t respond to my picking it up and blowing gently across its body, I started to sob uncontrollably. I’d lost a friend. The beetle’s death cracked open a part of my consciousness I’d buried years before.
In the depression that followed, I thought about my dad a lot, how I yearned for his love but never got a kind word, how cruel he had been yet how much I needed him, and the more I thought of him, the more the rejection cut into my still raw wounded psyche, the source of the rebel, the defiance, the striking out, the attacks.
In Polmont’s solitary I came to understand how a caged dog feels when a man walks up to it, what’s behind the look in its eyes: hope. Will he feed me? Will he be kind?’ A soothing voice, a stroke, can make all the difference.
I was released to the comparative luxury of cells linked to other cells, the welcome noise of humanity. There was an air raid that night. We heard the sirens, the anti-aircraft guns popping, the bombs exploding in Glasgow. ‘Let me out, please let me out, please … ‘ a Glaswegian prisoner screamed at the top of his voice. A guard responded, ‘Keep quiet, you big girl.’
14 Santa
[Zeppo, holding shredded contract]
Groucho: What’s that?
Zeppo: That’s the sanity clause.
Groucho: There ain’t no Santa Claus.
[Tears off another strip of paper]
Marx Brothers, Night at the Opera
Mum was in her mid fifties and seemed smaller and more frail. When she told me dad had left her again, this time for good, I embraced her protectively, gently clasping her head to my chest the way she’d comforted me when I was a child. Threats of what she’d do to dad if he ever returned seemed paper thin. It wasn’t so much that her spirit had been broken but that her love for him endured, despite everything.
She’d moved to Caygill Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, an old rotten house but cheap. It was difficult keeping the place warm. Next door was an old disused cemetery. When we went down to the cellar to put a penny in the gas meter, we were level with the graves. The cellar wall had crumbled and parts of coffins poked through. Coffin wood was prised out to feed the fire. But one cold winter’s night, mum tore up all but one of the hallway floor planks for the greedy flames.
My sisters Sylvia and Barbie lived there too. Sylvia was learning machinist skills so that she could get a job. She’d become an attractive teenager. Barbie was good looking in a tall slim way. She had a quiet, almost weak disposition; mum suspected a bad heart. Although Barbie was only 13, she’d left school and was trying to get a job as a machinist, packer or some other factory work.
Granny Gilbert’s fortune had gone and she was broke. The enterprising 70-year-old filled empty sauce bottles with home-made furniture polish which she sold door-to-door. She also sold linoleum and would heave the heavy rolls on her shoulders and carry them around the streets.
Tony tried for months to make a go of his cobbler’s shop but eventually sold it for beer money. My granny was furious; he had a family to support. Tony was married to a plain shawl-clad woman called Annie. Annie was always worried and chain smoked. Her hands were coarse from hard scrubbing and washing work. Her loud abrasive voice became piercingly shrill during the frequent rows she had with Tony over his boozing and infidelities. I suspected she put up with it all for the sake of their three young children and an illegitimate child of her own. She raised them almost single-handedly; Tony was more often in prison than out.
Diana, then in her thirties, had fallen on hard times. When her husband Dids was released from prison, they travelled through Scotland and Ireland, thieving and conning as they went. They were eventually caught in possession of stolen goods and Diana served three months in prison in Glasgow. Despite her tough exterior, the experience had been traumatic, leaving her very depressed and disturbed. Dids was in Glasgow serving a longer sentence.
Diana stayed at our place intermittently, and so did Mary, then about 40. The two of them loved ridiculing Sylvia’s appearance and abilities. Sylvia was much smaller than them and although she no longer wore callipers, her legs were slightly bowed. Plucky Sylvia tried to defend herself but it was difficult and stressful; her older sisters being so domineering.
In the morning Diana and Mary would fill up on cheap Red Biddie wine which would make them silly and dizzy. In the afternoon they’d go to places like the Cotton Club for companionship and drink. Alcohol made them aggressive and unpleasant. They’d swear, curse, stomp and stagger through the house while the sober tried to sleep. While Dids was in prison, Diana dated and flirted with American servicemen, chinking and smoking marijuana at the nightclubs they frequented. Diana would flaunt her affairs; wearing nylon stockings was a dead giveaway. Diana didn’t know but news was leaked to Dids and he burned with jealousy.
I got a job electric welding, a skill from borstal. It didn’t last long; I was breathing galvanised fumes, mum feared that I’d get tuberculosis, so I packed it in when she asked me to.
I worked for a colourful elderly Gypsy called Zingari Petrelengro. His fleshy face was decorated with a Van Dyke beard and bushy moustache. His head was wrapped in Gypsy scarves topped off with a grey Stetson. Another silk s
carf was tied around his huge belly. He worked at the Stanley Park fairground in Liverpool, ‘specialising in horoscopes and fortune telling. Zingari was very well known throughout England and highly respected in Gypsy circles. Besides his psychic abilities, Zingari entertained with panache. If a tree was handy to his tent, preferably an oak, he’d get customers to press one hand against the trunk while he held the other hand. He’d close his eyes `to absorb all the vibrations’, then maintain penetrating eye contact as he spoke his truth. Some customers went weak at the knees after the experience.
Zingari dressed me as a Gypsy with lots of £1 notes stuck to my jersey. I had to stand near him holding a tray of horoscope dates and a notice that read ‘Ten pounds if I’m wrong’. Nobody ever won the £10.
Crime was more rewarding and more fun. As a gang leader the peer pressure to lie, bash, thieve and not to be a chicken was immense. I’d walk an emotional tightrope planning a job, high until it was over. We’d spend the proceeds within days or weeks celebrating and then need to pull another. The risks were great. Dodging police was exhilarating.
Parcels were a breeze. I’d meet a crooked young railway driver as arranged and take the most valuable parcels off his cart while wearing a peaked cap with a pencil over my ear, then duck off in a cab or train, cutting him in later. Or I’d step into a carriage at 6 am from the platform at Victoria Railway Station and a crooked railway porter I knew would throw parcels off his barrow as if they were my luggage. Sometimes I’d just saunter over to the part of the platform where parcels were placed for delivery and stick labels over the existing ones, and they’d deliver the parcels to my door.
Hellbent: Ces Waters & Me Page 11
