A Copper's Tale

Chapter 1

JUST AN EAST END BOY

I WAS born in the East End of London in 1948. In Plaistow to be precise. E13. A stone’s throw from West Ham’s Upton Park.

We were a family of nine. Mum Mabel and Dad Bert.

Bert was a sergeant during the War and he didn’t return afterwards. Mum wrote to the War Department to find out what had happened and they traced him to Catterick Barracks up north.

I gather he just didn’t want to come home, the silly sod.

But home he came – mum made him – and he became a long distance lorry driver. The next-best thing to staying away, I s’pose.

He didn’t have a driving licence, but in those days no-one bothered to check and there were all sorts of cowboys driving all sorts of transport. Bit different to now, when there’s a camera round every corner and a bit of paper for pretty much every moment of your life.

Anyway, mum’s mum was from India. Karachi, I think, although none of us knows too much since the records were all lost in a fire out there.

Me on the right with John my brother. I was destined to be a cop at 3 years old

I had three brothers – John, Phillip and Keith – and a sister, Frances.

If you’ve been keeping up and your maths is good you’ll notice seven names. Not the family of nine I spoke about earlier.

Well, the other two were a cousin, Carol, and her mum, who we called Aunt Nellie. I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think Carol was a real cousin and Aunt Nellie wasn’t my real Aunt. There might be a better story behind that one!

Still, there we were, all nine of us crammed into a four-bed roomed terrace house.

Front door was hardly ever locked. To think of it, hardly ever shut, but in those days there didn’t appear to be so many scum about and chances are your possessions weren’t valuable enough to nick, anyway.

On the few occasions the front door was actually locked, the key would be hanging on a piece of string, tied to the inside of the letter box. If it wasn’t then it was usually me who was chosen to climb down the coal hole (at the front of the house), go through the cellar, up the stairs and to the door, which I could open from the inside.

Burglars probably knew all about coal holes, but I never knew of anyone who had their stuff half-inched.

It would probably surprise many people nowadays to discover that other, luxury items, would find their way down the coal hole.

Meat, tea, coffee, clothes. Things you take for granted now were in short supply then, but dad seemed to find a way to get his hands on what we needed. Seems my dad knew a lot of people who might not have been law-abiding citizens. In the parlance of the time, much of that stuff probably fell off the back of a lorry!

We had an outside toilet which was bleeding ’orrible. The light never worked and you had to use newspaper to wipe your bum. None of this quilted, extra soft, scented toilet paper or butter shea. Oh no. Just yesterday’s Daily Mirror. Or the Sketch. Never the Times.

Hmmm. Nothing’s really changed, has it. You’ve still got newspapers filled with crap, haven’t you?

If you needed a leak during the night it was a bit scary, so I’d generally peed up the wall of next door’s house.

We had a large garden. Well, I thought it was large. About 110ft long it was and at the bottom a shed dad never finished building.

About 100 yards away was the railway bridge which carried the heavy steam trains along the upward gradient. The noise they used to make! And the smell of that light grey smoke they belched out? Disgusting.

The garden was used for ball games and sometimes non-ball games like darts.

I would get my brother Phil to hold the dartboard above his head and I’d go to the end of the garden with the darts. I don’t believe I ever hit that board, although I did manage to stick one in my brother’s head! The dart was OK, thank goodness.

I’ve got a little secret about the garden. Well, two little secrets, really.

Mum and dad are both buried there!

Before you go running off to the Old Bill (if you live in Forest Gate), I have to admit they’re not buried as such. It’s their ashes which have been buried, although I’m sure the present owners of the house wouldn’t be too chuffed to dig up the urns!

What Hitler failed to do, me and my brother almost achieved. The house survived the Blitz and the bombing, but we managed to set fire to the place.

We were home from school, ill, and left to our own devices in the bedroom.

We soon got bored, so I started to make paper planes. After a while, we got bored with this, too, so to liven things up we set fire to the planes by sticking the point of the plane into the gas fire. The old type with asbestos bars.

We threw these lighted planes round the room until we heard footsteps on the stairs.

Had to hide the things, so my bright idea was to put ’em in a cardboard box.

Unfortunately, it was full of rubbish and it caught light.

My second great idea was to push the cardboard box under the bed so it couldn’t be seen.

You know where this is going, I bet? And you’re right.

The footsteps belonged to mum and by the time she reach the room the bed was on fire.

She grabbed us and dragged us downstairs, out of the house and into the street.

I could see black smoke billowing from the back of the house.

A small crowd gathered outside, along with the police and fire brigade.

We knew we were in big trouble. Didn’t matter that I turned on the waterworks and cried.

Playing the sympathy card just didn’t work.

When the fire was eventually put out, we were taken to a house nearby and this bleeding great big fireman in a bleeding great big black helmet gave us a bedtime story.

One that didn’t begin with Once Upon a Time and ended with the words dead and lucky.

Whether he meant we could have been dead or dead lucky I don’t know, but I didn’t feel very lucky when mum had finished tanning our backsides.

All that for a little bit of damage.

Dad’s answer to it all was to threaten I’ll kick the frame of your chest in. It was his favourite saying, but I don’t recall any chest kicking.

Chapter 2

A HOLIDAY NOT TO REMEMBER

ONE day when I was about six, dad told us boys that we were going away for a while.

We’d never been on holiday before, so were very excited as we packed our bags.

We were ready to go the next morning and I remember staying awake most of the night. The anticipation of sandy beaches, sand castles and ice creams almost hurt.

In the morning that great big smile was wiped off my face. Holiday? It wasn’t a holiday we were going on at all. We were going to be placed in a children’s home.

I don’t know why even to this day. I think it was because mum wasn’t well, but all I know was I kept asking why.

Why were we going, dad, when Aunt Nellie and Carol were still at home?

So there we were. In the Barnardo’s home in Barkingside. It’s still there now; well, not as a children’s home, anyway.

As we passed through the large gates it probably looked quite nice. A big old grass area surrounded by cottages.

To a six-year-old, though, it was more Hell than Heaven because we had been taken from our family for no reason we could think of and dumped in a strange place with loads of other kids and grown-ups we didn’t know.

I was put in the cottage called Salaam. Don’t ask me why it was called that, but I gather, now, that it was for non-permanent guests.

Not that we knew.

My brother and me felt so lonely we decided to leg it. I went to the room and got the tool kit dad had given me for my birthday and with hammer and saw we went to the fence at the back of the rear garden.

It took a bit of doing, but I made a hole big enough for us to crawl through. Freedom never felt so good as we walked along the pavement, round the corner and back through the front gates!

Didn’t dawn on us until they found us outside the front. I know we were punished, but I can’t remember how, but they were fond of corporal punishment, I know that.

For years I told everyone I couldn’t remember much about the place we were in for some three months. I understand now that my mind didn’t want to recall the man and woman who came round every night and played with a very personal part of my body.

I don’t know who they were even now and I can’t remember if it was the man or woman who did the fiddling. All I know was they did it to every boy; they told us they were making sure it didn’t fall off.

Now I wish I could forget.

Apart from that episode, I seem to remember growing up was fun. We were always out in the fresh air, being nuisances to someone, somewhere.

Still, while me and my brothers were tough sods we were never disrespectful, violent or destructive.

Yeah, we caused a few problems here and there, but nothing outrageous.

Three of us were even choirboys at the local church, St Mark’s. I was actually head choirboy. Perhaps I had an angelic face …. Then again, perhaps not.

We went to church three bleeding times on Sundays. Three times!

Around that time there was a lot of religion in my life. Perhaps because mum was brought up in a convent.

Me and my brother weren’t yobs, but we had a few so-called mates who weren’t very nice.

Billy the Undertaker was one, Sam the Slam another. Terry the Dustman and Baby Face – right little bastard he was – were others. They’ve all done time for murder, GBH or ABH and I suppose one or all of ’em might still be inside.

God must have been on my team then. I could easily have turned out like any one of them.

Chapter 3

SCHOOL DAYS

I went from Godwin Road Junior School to Whitehall Secondary.

I was in bloody short trousers until the second year and I can tell you that wasn’t fun.

I hated the bloody things.

It was a big school, three storeys high with a playground on top.

Only fourth year pupils could use it and it was surrounded by a 3ft wall with black iron railings on top. Gotta say I’ve never heard of a playground on top of a school since.

Perhaps it was unique.

We always had that bottle of milk at playtime, a third of a pint and I remember, one time, Billy (not the Undertaker but another mate) chucking a full bottle over the railings.

It was lucky no-one got hurt in the playground below. Nasty little sod was Billy, but he wasn’t even suspended for that joke although he did get detention.

The old school’s gone now. In its place a faceless, character-less, modern Forest Gate Community School. A bit sad, that.

Later in that school year, someone smashed a milk bottle over my head. It bleeding hurt.

The boy who did the smashing thought I was eyeing up his girlfriend.

I wasn’t. I was eyeing up my future wife. More about her later.

The kid who hit me regretted it later, but then there were always fights and I seemed to be involved in most of them.

This one time I was in the cloakroom hanging up my coat when this little git came up to me and said: I hear you think you’re the best fighter in the school. I want to fight you.

I remember saying to him: I don’t want to fight you. f… off.

He was insistent. He stood there staring at me,