Authors: Victor Gregg
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 car. 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.
Within a couple of weeks the same delivery van that had brought in the motor in the first place turned up with the new chassis and naturally I get the job of cleaning it up. Lo and behold, this so-called spare chassis had got a registration number on it. So Charlie took it off and replaced it with the number from the old chassis. The new plate was cut up and thrown away. When the car was finally rolled out of the arches the delighted client remarked, ‘better than new’.
It was a trail of Frazer Nash spare parts that had suddenly surfaced on the Warren Street and Great Portland Street markets that led the law to Eddie’s front door.
There was no way that Eddie or anyone else in the scam was going to drop names. He was never going to tell anyone where the chassis had ended up. To keep the law from further prodding, Eddie and Charlie must have agreed to do a bit of time, knowing full well that they would eventually be rewarded by the criminal syndicates that ran these stolen car rackets. It was the name of the game. Everyone understood the rules.
41
It was the weekend that I had parted company with Eddie, a Saturday afternoon, and it was unusually warm and sunny for the time of the year. Out in the backyard at Kenton Street I was giving my grandfather a hand clearing the mountains of junk that had accumulated in the shed that ran along the length of the backyard. My grandmother called it the back garden on account of the small flower patch that she managed to keep alive and in bloom. To everyone else it was ‘the yard’, the place where we kept the dustbins and other rubbish, an area crisscrossed with clothes lines.
‘Your dad built this shed for us when he was courting your mother.’ Grandfather told me this as if it was a vital part of my education. ‘What do you know about him, Granddad, and why do you think he left our mum?’ Grandfather didn’t answer this question right away but carried on cutting up the lengths of lead water piping that he was hoping he could get me to trundle round to the local scrapyard.
‘He was a decent enough chap. He thought the world of your mum. He was a damn good plumber into the bargain, he could turn ’is ’and to anything, reminded me and your gran of our Jack, two of a kind they were. You know that Jack was your mum’s brother, got gassed in sixteen, came ’ome and got sent out again. He was killed at Passchendaele. Your dad went right through the war, must ’ave been underage when he enlisted but ’e was a tall chap, plenty of meat on ’im, that’s ’ow ’e got in, collected a piece of shrapnel in ’is leg, came ’ome. Because of ’is leg they shoved him in the Royal Engineers, that’s how he learnt about the plumbing, when ’e joined he was in the Royal Fusiliers, a machine-gun mob. He met your mum when he was in the infirmary at Richmond and your mum was in the Church Army helping out at the hospitals.’ ‘If you thought he wasn’t so bad why do you think he upped and went?’ By now Grandfather was sitting in an old wicker chair that he kept in the shed. He answered the question slowly and with some thought. ‘Who can tell, Victor? I know your grandmother will never forgive him. For me, I’ve seen what war does to men, seen it meself, I ’ave. My opinion is that ’e’s a goner – dead and gorn. We traced his name to a ship that was going to Australia, an immigrant boat, that’s as far as we got. Remember this, Victor, never condemn anyone till you know the facts. Your mum and dad were married at St Pancras Church. None of his family turned up for the wedding. That alone must ’ave caused ’im some pain.’ This little talk with my grandfather reminded me of the time my dad had taken me to a football match and told me always to love my mum.
42
A month later, driven by curiosity, I cycled down to Eddie’s house and his wife told me the sorry tale. The pair of them, Eddie and Charlie, went down for six months each for handling stolen goods. She thought Charlie had been lucky to get off so lightly seeing as he had previous form. Why was it that I always ended up with the villains? I knew you never earned a real wage working in a factory. I’d tried it. I didn’t have the mentality that would allow me to punch a card every morning and do the same boring job, day in and day out. But that was all very well; I was nearly eighteen and had to earn some money.
That night I was in the café discussing this tale of woe with Rozzie. ‘Yeah, the clowns went and got themselves nicked,’ I said.
Rozzie gave his mates the eye and let out a sort of croaking laugh. ‘Didn’t you ’ear about us, then? Course you wouldn’t, you ain’t been around for weeks. The old man got nabbed and we only got away wiv it by the skin of our teeth.’ ‘’E’s not inside, is ’e?’ I asked. ‘No, the beak said ’e was too old, fined ’im two ’undred quid. ’E says ’e’s skint now but I don’t believe ’im, not my old man, ’e’s bound to ’ave some stashed away under the bed.’
‘What you doing now, then?’ ‘Same as you, Vic, casting me peepers around, no joy in being skint.’
The following day Roscoe’s brother turned up with four tickets for the Ring at Blackfriars. Roscoe’s pride and joy, Harry Mizler, was in one bout and, to top it all off, Tommy Hyams of King’s Cross was on the same bill. ‘F–– the world, let’s go and see a good bundle.’ Harry Mizler won on a knockout. Tommy, who was considered to be on the way out, lost on points, and a good time was had by all.
Another week went by and still no job. I hadn’t seen Roscoe since our night at the Ring. The next day was 15 October, my eighteenth birthday.
I climbed out of bed early the next morning, saw Emmy off to school and then set off to see what I could find. It wasn’t a good day for walking the streets but I made it down to Drury Lane and eventually to Horse Guards Parade, where the redcoats on their horses were doing their daily stint. I was in a dream world drifting along, not connected to anything, when, suddenly, I got tapped on the shoulder. ‘You all right, son?’ says this giant of a man standing behind me. ‘Yeah, I’m OK.’ ‘Care for a cup of tea and a bun, all on the ’ouse?’ I must have nodded or something. ‘Follow me then, let’s see what we can grab hold of.’ Then this figure, resplendent in his highly pressed uniform with his rows of medals glittering in the morning light, led me across Whitehall and into Great Scotland Yard, under a darkened archway up the stairs. The doors shut with a whoosh, a strange sound that seemed to warn me that nothing would be the same again.
Twenty minutes later I emerged from the gothic mausoleum of a place with a railway warrant to Winchester. The rain was pelting down, a real miserable day. There was a poster on the wall opposite. It showed a soldier boy, lounging in the sunshine on some foreign shore, eyeing up the dusky maidens in their grass skirts. ‘Join the Army and see the World’ it said.
OK, I thought, might not be too bad. Give it a go, Vic.
43
The gas lamp out in the street was still flickering away when, after a sleepless night, I rose and gave myself a good rinse down. The water was freezing but that’s what I wanted; today I would be leaving my family and they were quite unaware of the fact. Half of me wanted to stay but the other half wanted to go off into the unknown. I got up at the same time as Mother. I knew my mum enjoyed these occasions when I got up early and put the tea on. Sometimes on a Sunday I would bring her a cup before she got up. At times like that I felt that she wanted to give me a big kiss, but I was too old for that sort of thing; but on this particular morning I would have liked my mum to have given me that one last kiss. ‘You going to look for a new job today, Victor?’ ‘Something like that, Mum, got to do something.’ My mum finally put on her hat and coat and off she went on the walk to Bridle Lane and the sweatshop. Little Emmy was tarting herself up, getting ready for another day at school, although she wasn’t so little any more and was fast learning the art of turning the local boys’ heads. I become aware that I’m going to miss all of this.
I could hear my gran downstairs singing some song. I sat down at the table and I wrote out a short note to Mum, telling her not to worry about me and that I would write as soon as I got settled in. I could only manage about six lines and a dozen kisses. I folded up the notepaper and stuck it under the carriage clock which had pride of place on the mantelpiece. The clock had been a wedding present from one of her friends and my mum treasured it. She would see the note directly she entered the door. I remember writing that she was not to start crying as I was not leaving, just working away for a time.
I took the 68 bus to Waterloo and, armed with my free travel warrant, boarded the train that was going to take me to the unknown place called Winchester. Aboard the train, I had more second thoughts as I realised that with every clack, clack of the wheels I was getting further away from those I loved and respected. As the train sped through the suburbs of London I looked at the backs of the houses with their little gardens. In some of them I could see spades and wheelbarrows neatly stacked. Why didn’t we have a nice house and garden instead of the rat hole I’d been born in? These thoughts filled my mind as the train carried me further and further away from King’s Cross.
I remembered the time at the Shaftesbury when the head told me that big boys didn’t cry. I pulled myself together and squared my shoulders as I arrived at Winchester. A sergeant was waiting for new arrivals and he tried to call me to order. I felt like sticking my tongue out at him and giving him a bit of lip. Luckily I didn’t attempt to assert my independence. Instead I formed up with the other six lads who had been on the train. The sergeant led us the short distance to the Rifle Brigade barracks which was perched on top of one of the hills that surround the city.
We were marched through the barrack gates, great iron things, and called to a halt outside the guardroom. Any ideas we had about a return to yesterday vanished as the soldier on guard shut the gates. There was a clang and a screech as the huge bolt was slid into place. We realised that this was it. The guardroom was spotless; anything made of metal glistened; the few pictures on the whitewashed walls were hung with mathematical precision. The wooden table was scrubbed to a surgical whiteness, and of course there were the soldiers themselves. Their trousers and jackets had creases that looked as if they could cut through steel. These men seemed to have been ironed and polished along with every other object in the room. Nothing was out of place. ‘Wipe the dirt off them filthy shoes before any of you lot enter ’ere,’ shouted a corporal.
After we had given our names and details the sergeant took us round to the stores where we were issued with our kit, which we had to sign for. Then we were led to a huge room which we were told would be our home for the next six months. ‘All of yer git down to the showers and scrub off all that filthy muck you’ve accumulated in Civvy Street. You can throw those rags you’re wearing into the bin, you won’t need them any more. Boots and shoes as well, sling the lot. I want to see you all in the canteen at sixteen hundred hours sharp, scrubbed and looking sharp in all that expensive kit you’ve just been issued with. And in case you don’t understand, all that shiny brass and scrubbed table and chairs is done by blokes who think they can take the mickey. You’ve got an hour, get to it.’