After things ended with Kate, my first love, I had gone through a very bad patch, so far as girls and women were concerned. I had been very attracted to Kate, because she was so pretty, but what I mostly wanted was for her to devote herself to me, to sacrifice her own interests and to be there for me unquestioningly, regardless of what I did, and what happened. I had been desperate for love and affection but, like my father, if I didn’t get what I wanted, I was liable to become aggressive and even violent, although most of my self-destructiveness was aimed firmly at myself.
Jane was a leggy, beautiful blonde, a year or two older than me, who lived in my area. I used to ride past her house on my motorbike on my way home. By now, I was riding my Honda CB72, which had very distinctive-sounding exhaust pipes that attracted attention on the street. I might have felt like shit about being dumped by Kate, but at least I had my bike.
I had seen Jane emerging from her house on a few occasions and one day I decided to stop my bike and talk to her. My first thought on seeing her was, “I want her; she is a tasty bird.” She was the sort of woman who turned heads when she walked down the street; the kind of girl who made other men jealous when they saw her and knew she was with somebody else. She had a great figure, bright blonde hair that bounced on her shoulders and a very pretty face. My idea was that if I could get a woman of that calibre to go out with me, it would mean that I was someone worth looking up to. To be honest, I also thought it would put Kate’s nose out of joint when she found out that I had a new girl, as I was still smarting about the end of our relationship.
I managed to persuade Jane to go out with me, and I took her to the St Helier Arms, one of the roughest pubs in the area, on our first date. The St Helier Arms was on the same street as Jane’s house, Greenwave Lane, so she knew all about it. I was proud of the fact that I was accepted in St Helier’s, among some of the toughest criminals in the neighbourhood, even though I was small fry at this stage. It wasn’t long before Jane and I started seeing each other regularly. I could see her whenever I wanted, because she wasn’t working at the time and was always available.
I met her family and seemed to get on quite well with them. Jane was from an ordinary working-class family with two brothers and a sister. Her mum was a nurse but her dad wasn’t able to work. So far as I could figure out from what Jane said, he had a mental health issue of some sort and was plagued by regular breakdowns. One of Jane’s brothers was still at school, and the other, Gary, worked as a hairdresser and cultivated friendships with some of the shadier members of the neighbourhood. Like me, he was a regular at the St Helier Arms.
I’ve often thought about how hearing music can bring any memory back to mind. Today, when I hear the tracks that I listened to at this phase in my life, and later on, I am immediately returned to the past. Just by listening to specific songs, I can recall very clearly where I was, who I was with, what I was wearing and particularly what drugs I was using at the time. Today, when I listen to tracks by The Rolling Stones or The Beatles, I know that I would have been using LSD and amphetamines back then, because I felt that these drugs complemented the music very well. When I listened to Hendrix, I used coke, speed and dope.
I went to loads of gigs at this stage of my life. I particularly remember going to see Golden Earring at Fairfield Halls in Croydon. I dropped two tabs of white lightning, or LSD, while my mates and I listened to the band, danced with everyone else, and generally had a wonderful time. I remember clearly popping the tablets into my mouth and the sensation of them immediately dissolving. Within minutes, I felt completely on top of the world and really into what was going on around me. Thanks to the acid, all my senses were heightened. The band was accompanied by a light show, and the drugs made it absolutely magnificent, while the combination of the music and the acid made me tremble all over.
By the time the show ended and everyone started filing out to go home, I was unbelievably spaced out. The plan had been that we would all go back to my flat and spend the rest of the evening smoking dope and listening to music. However, on the way back I somehow became separated from my friends and ended up at home on my own, completely out of my head. I still remember very clearly letting myself into the flat and finding everything so quiet that it was spooky and frightening.
I calmed myself, sat down and put on some music. Jane had a pet dog, a boxer, Rover, who was spending the night in the flat and was probably quite lonely. He came over to me to be petted. He reached up and licked my face. As he did so, his face seemed to grow and spread until it looked as though Rover was big enough to swallow me whole.
“Christ,” I thought, “Rover’s fucking tongue is bigger than my whole head.” I was completely freaked out.
“Enough is enough,” I decided. “I’ll take some downers to get back to normal.” I took a couple of Tuinal out of my pocket and swallowed them. After a while these started to work, by slowing my metabolism down, and I went to sleep.
Meanwhile, my old girlfriend Kate called over to Nan’s house to tell her that she was pregnant and that I was the father. She had told me that she was pregnant so many times in the course of our relationship that I assumed this was just one more false alarm that would come to nothing, so I ignored it.
Well, that was my mistake. It turned out that it hadn’t been another false alarm, after all. Kate duly gave birth to a little boy, my first child. We named the child Lee, but he took Kate’s surname. Kate and I fell out and I didn’t see Lee very often. I didn’t know how much I wanted to be involved in his life and I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I accepted that I was the baby’s father, but did not think at any length about what that meant in terms of my responsibilities towards him. I met Kate and Lee in the park a few times and played with him, but I was a terrible father and not really that interested in my son. After a while, even this contact petered out, which meant that I was doing just what my parents had done: having a child and then not taking care of it.
I was still angry with Kate about the way she had behaved towards me and for having betrayed me, and I didn’t really want to have anything to do with her or the baby, which I considered to be her affair, not mine. I abandoned my first child without so much as giving it a second thought. I was summoned to court and told that I would have to pay child support. I had no intention of doing anything of the sort. I remember the day I went to court vividly; I was full of indignation and self-righteousness. Who did Kate think she was, trying to get money out of me?
“Well, Mr Walker,” the judge said. “You seem to be doing quite well for yourself. You have a good job and you have a nice flat. I can’t understand why you’re not paying your maintenance money.”
I was cheeky. “I’m not paying for something on the hire purchase that I never get to see,” I said.
Kate and I weren’t getting on by this stage and I never saw the baby.
“Well,” said the judge, “your lovely little flat will probably soon have bars around it.”
I didn’t stay at the flat much longer, because I didn’t want to end up behind bars. As soon as my relationship with Jane became established I moved into her place to get away from the maintenance and the whole situation. I never saw Lee again.
I was reasonably happy living at Jane’s. I got along quite well with her mum and her brothers, Gary the hairdresser and Joe. Jane’s mum was kind and understanding, although I never knew exactly how she felt about our relationship. She seemed to realise that it didn’t matter what she said to us or how she told her daughter to behave, because we would just do our own thing anyway.
A nurse, Jane’s mother knew that I was involved in taking drugs, and of course she wanted me to stop, because she was aware of the dangers involved. She tried to be supportive in helping me sort out my addiction, but while I gave the impression of going along with it, I didn’t see the drugs as a problem.
A few months passed, and I decided that Jane and I should get married as soon as possible. I was still seventeen at the time, coming up to eighteen. I obtained an engagement ring from the Freeman’s catalogue that my auntie Pat ran. The Freeman’s catalogue sold all sorts of things through a hire-purchase scheme. I never paid Auntie Pat the money I owed her for the ring.
“Do you want to get married?” I asked Jane. I proudly showed her the ring that I had bought. She said yes, so I gave her the ring and decided to proceed with the marriage as soon as possible. Jane went along with it, although she never seemed entirely convinced of the whole idea. I believe one of the reasons Jane was keen to marry was that she wanted to leave home and get away from her parents, especially her dad, whose psychiatric problems made him difficult to live with.
We set a date for the wedding, and Jane and I got married at a church in Rose Hill. I smartened myself up and wore a jacket and trousers. Jane was traditional, in white. My best man Brian, who had never been involved with drugs and was increasingly concerned about me and disapproving of my behaviour, failed to turn up. He had told me when we got engaged that he didn’t believe that Jane and I loved each other and that we were getting married for all the wrong reasons. “I’m not going to be a part of that farce,” he said. I hadn’t quite believed him until he didn’t show on the day. Fortunately, I was carrying the wedding ring myself, so I got somebody else to stand in at the last minute.
It was strange, seeing my side of the church so empty. Even Nan and Grandad hadn’t come. Auntie Pat was the only person from my family to come, although she had questioned my decision and said that she didn’t think the marriage was a good idea. At the time, though, I honestly didn’t care what anyone thought about me or anything I did. My feeling was that it didn’t matter. Life was what it was and you just had to deal with it one day at a time. I mostly dealt with it by taking amphetamines.
Of Jane’s family, only her brother Gary turned up, and he walked her down the aisle. It was not a good start to married life. We all went down the pub afterwards for a drink, and that was that.
After our marriage, Jane and I went back to live in her parents’ house for a while. This was supposed to be a temporary measure, until we organised our own place. I didn’t mind living with her parents for a little while and they were extremely patient with me, considering that I was the teenage drug addict who had just married their daughter against everyone’s good judgement. Jane’s mum was supportive of me, although she must have been concerned about what my heavy drug-taking and erratic behaviour meant for her daughter.
When I broke down with speed psychosis as a result of my amphetamine abuse, she took me to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, where I was registered as an addict. Speed psychosis is like temporary schizophrenia. My imagination ran wild and I could hear voices telling me things, even though nobody was talking to me. When I calmed down, I was put on Dextroamphetamine Spansules, which were time-release capsules of amphetamines that were supposed to keep me under control by releasing the drug gradually into my bloodstream.
Fortunately, I had learned something from my experience with Kate, and Jane and I were sensible about birth control, so at least she didn’t get knocked up. I was hardly in a position to be a good father.
Two weeks after the wedding, I was arrested for robbery and put on remand in Ashford in Kent. I was very definitely guilty as charged. I had been trying to get some extra money together so that Jane and I could get a flat of our own, and stealing was the brightest idea that I had come up with. I think I thought Jane would respect me more if I was able to come up with the cash without help from anyone, and I knew that I wanted to get out of living with her parents as soon as possible. I did a smash-and-grab at a local jewellery shop with a couple of friends. The robbery was poorly planned and badly executed: I crashed the getaway car straight into a police car that was in pursuit.
So instead of moving into my first home as part of a married couple, it was the detention centre for me. Considering how I was apprehended, I could hardly plead innocent, so I pleaded guilty and got six months. My friends claimed innocence, but ended up getting put away for twelve and eighteen months.
I was sent to Latchmere House, which was considered to be the hardest detention centre for young offenders out there. I got there by police bus and entered a completely different world. Arriving in reception, I could not believe my eyes. Or my ears, for that matter. A screw – what we called the prison guards – came up to me and stuck his big, red face in mine.
“From now on,” he said, “everything I say, you say, ‘Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir’. Have you got that?”
I was full of bravado. “Since when have you been fucking knighted?” I asked. “If you want to be called ‘sir’, maybe you should think about that.”
His face grew even redder as he took in my words and then he bellowed at me, spit flying from the corners of his mouth, leaving me in no doubt whatsoever as to who was boss.
Giving cheek to the screw was my first big mistake. In places like Latchmere House, the screws stick together and I had just guaranteed myself a hard time for the entire duration of my stay.
My cell was quite a dismal place with one bed, one cupboard, one piss pot and one chair. Everything had to be folded up or put away neatly every day. I had to square my blankets off and polish my floor. My cell was spotless, because my grandfather had taught me well and I hated it when things were dirty or disorderly. The point of detention was that I would be given the rehabilitation that I needed, and would have the time and space to focus on my educational deficits.
I was furious and felt very demeaned about being kept locked up and had little or no interest in working towards anything. I was angry, fiery and difficult to deal with, because I found it impossible to contain my resentment and rage. Once again, I found myself in a situation in which I was under threat, and it soon got out of hand. One day, another inmate and I started to fight in the cable shop – where copper was stripped out of lead pipe and cables. We had been working with chisels and club hammers, so there were plenty of weapons to hand. The argument had started over comments that he had been making about Jane.
Jane, my wife, never came to see me, which was bad enough, and now this bastard was saying that she was a slag and that she was sleeping around behind my back. I could not let that lie. I went to smash his head in with a club hammer, to teach him a lesson that he wouldn’t forget. I was removed from the cable shop and taken down to the block where we served solitary confinement.
After a few days, I was allowed back to the normal routine, but it had been decided that I should be taken to see some doctors and psychiatrists to see if they could figure out what was wrong with me, and why I consistently acted without thinking. I was sent to a hospital in London to have ECGs and other tests, to try to determine where my unstable behaviour originated, and whether there might be treatments and medications that could help. I didn’t mind going; in fact, it was quite nice to have some time away from Latchmere and all its rules and regulations.
I stayed in hospital for three or four days and remember lighting up under the noses of two of the prison guards while the doctors were talking to me.
“Oy!” said one of the guards. “He’s not allowed to smoke, you know. They’re not allowed to smoke while they’re in detention.”
“Well,” said the doctor. “He’s not in detention now. He’s in hospital. So he can smoke if he wants to.”
So far as the tests went, I just took everything in my stride. For as long as I could remember, people had been suggesting that there was something wrong with me, but I felt that I was reacting normally to the things that happened in my life. I was prepared to be poked and prodded and prescribed medication, but I didn’t really know what it was all supposed to be about.
The doctors decided that the left side of my brain was not working as quickly as the right one, creating a sort of psychological imbalance that was leading to my erratic behaviour. I have never found out if there was any truth to this theory or not, but it was very clear that something was definitely wrong. I was prescribed Largactil, to help get my unruly emotions under control. This is considered now to be a “liquid cosh”. Most people who take it find that it completely knocks them out, leaving them in a rather zombielike condition. I can’t say it had a strong effect on me, maybe because I was already so very used to mind-altering substances. Despite being on Largactil, back in detention I continued to work out in the gym and to behave pretty much as I always did. I took the drug for the whole time I was serving my sentence.
On entering detention, I had been told that I should use this time to further my education. Sick and tired of putting in time at school to little or no effect, I decided that I would devote myself to physical education. All the inmates had to attend some classes, but they could choose what to focus on, and I decided that body-building and fitness would be my thing. The only obligatory classes were religious instruction, presumably in the hope of instilling some morals into us. It had little impact on me either way. I had no idea what I did or didn’t believe in, and the Church of England instructor was not particularly engaging.
I used my time in detention to get physically fit and strong. The atmosphere was very controlled at the detention centre, and for a kid who couldn’t read there was very little to do to pass the time and alleviate boredom. I felt hungry for physical exercise and went to the gym every day, often for hour upon hour. I did colour circuits every day. These were training regimes, with the colour identifying how intensive the course was. Black was the hardest and yellow the easiest. I started out with yellow and quickly worked my way up to black. I pressed weights and watched with approval as my body became stronger and more muscular. I had always had a low opinion of myself in general, so it was nice to feel accepting of the way I looked, at least. By the time I had served my sentence and I could go home, I was stronger than I had ever been and extremely fit. I was like a bull. I was ready to take anybody on and confident that I could win. I felt like the cock of the walk.
My grandparents had visited me faithfully throughout my sentence. Perhaps they had told me to leave Jane, and had refused to come to my wedding, but blood is thicker than water, and Nan in particular clung – despite all the evidence to the contrary – to the view that I was a good lad, really. I was in Richmond, which wasn’t that far away from Carshalton, but it was a bit of a trek for them because they were getting on in years and beginning to get a little frail.
They must also have been growing tired of hearing that their grandson was in trouble yet again. Every time they came I would get quite upset and promise to be good when I got out. I would feel awfully sorry for myself and desperate to have a life of my own again. I would blame everyone else for the situation that I was in. I didn’t think about how difficult I had made things for the elderly couple that had always done the very best they could for me and who now sat in front of me. I took as my divine right the fact that they would come to visit with presents and treats to make my stay behind bars that little bit easier. I expected no less and gave nothing in return.
While I was serving my sentence, I was served with divorce papers. Jane cited the non-consummation of the marriage as grounds for ending it. The fact that I was unable to read the documentation made me even angrier. Even when it was read to me, I struggled to understand the legal language and the full implications of what had happened. At the same time, I knew that there wasn’t much I could do about it. By now I had found out that Jane had been sleeping with a bloke called Mickey, whom I already hated. This made it even worse. I felt very low, completely rejected, and it hurt much more than any beating would have. It was even worse than when Kate had left me, because I’d thought that the whole point of my relationship with Jane had been to make me feel better about myself. Now I felt even worse than I had before we got together.
My interest in Jane in the first instance had been spurred by a desire to increase my status. Her leaving me like this made me feel like a worthless piece of shit. I handled the situation very badly and started pumping iron like there was no tomorrow, with the poorly thought-out idea that if I was strong, fit and muscle-bound, I would be in a better position to take care of myself the next time shit happened. I might be a pitiful figure of fun, but at least I didn’t have to look like one.
To be fair, the people at the detention centre did try to help me. They knew I was illiterate, and efforts were made to help me address this. But I just didn’t give a damn about that any more; I had resigned myself to being thick and had decided that while I couldn’t read or write, I could focus on being physically fit and strong and on fighting my way through every difficult situation. I put in the time, managed not to learn anything at all and was finally allowed to go back to where I had come from. I came out of Latchmere and went back to Carshalton to Nan’s for a while, picking up some work on the buildings with Tony Spooner.
Now that I was out, my friends were quick to tell me everything that Jane had been getting up to while I was away. Apparently, she had been messing around with some of the guys that I knew – not just Mickey, which had already been bad enough. I had been made a laughing stock! Jane and I had been far too young to get married, and it had just been a game to her, but I was furious and felt that I had been belittled and humiliated and that I had lost face and honour among my peers. Every time I heard someone laughing as I walked down the street, I was sure that I was the object of their ridicule. I became determined to search Jane out and make her pay dearly for what I saw as a personal slight against me.
I already sported some tattoos, but now that I was eighteen, I decided to have a few more. One day, I met my mate Kenny at the Elephant and Castle, and we decided it would be a great idea to have a tattoo each. We found a tattooist, and Kenny went first. He had two small snakes tattooed discreetly behind his ears. Then it was my turn. In my wisdom, and under the influence of alcohol, I decided to have a spider tattooed on each hand. Not one of my better decisions, I have to say, but I have learned to live with them.
Within a few months, I was taking drugs heavily again, mostly amphetamines, and getting myself into a terrible state of rage whenever anything happened that I didn’t like. People told me to forget about Jane, that time heals all wounds and that eventually I wouldn’t care about her or feel bad any more. They told me that I would meet someone else and that there were plenty more fish in the sea. But I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t move on. I was obsessed with how bad she had made me feel and how much I wanted to get my revenge on her.
I organised a car, a Morris Isis, and obtained a snub-nose revolver that had started life as a starting pistol and was later honed to fire bullets. I liked the weight of the gun in my hand, and the smooth feel of the metal. It was easy to find out who would sell me a gun, and one of my friends had been only too pleased to help, no questions asked and no explanations required. I thought that I would use the gun to hurt Jane and frighten her. For the moment it just felt good to know that I had a weapon and would be able to look after myself, whatever came up.
A couple of months later, I was driving about in my untaxed, uninsured banger when I saw Jane walking down London Road towards Mitcham. All that blonde loveliness seemed to be taunting me with each step. “You cheating, double-crossing bitch,” I thought. “I’ll be fucking having you.”
I saw red as the mist descended. I mounted the kerb in my car and tried to run her down. I wasn’t thinking consciously about killing her; I just wanted to make sure that she couldn’t walk down the street with her blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders, showing me what I couldn’t have any more. I could not accept the fact that she had deserted me and had sent me divorce papers without so much as an explanation or an apology. Who the fuck did she think she was? All of those angry, insecure feelings rose up in me and I could feel my pulse beating in my temples. How could she have been screwing about while she was supposedly married to me? So far as I was concerned, the worst thing anyone could be was disloyal and it was especially bad when the disloyal person was a woman.
High on drugs and rage, I tried to run her down; only the lamp-post that the car crashed into saved her life and prevented me from going down for murder. As it was, I was sent to jail for six months for driving without tax or insurance and for having an illegally held gun in the glove compartment of my car. I was very lucky that I did not manage to kill Jane, because that would have made me a murderer, and there is no coming back from that.
I was taken to Ashford Remand Centre. I will never forget the sound of the door as it closed behind me, leaving me in a lonely, barely furnished cell. I was on my own. There was nothing in the room. There was a Bible in the cell and a couple of pieces of basic furniture, but nothing else. It was cold. I was trying to take it all in my stride, but I was absolutely petrified of being on my own. I wanted to cry, but of course there was no way I could let that happen. I remember picking up the Bible and trying to read it, but finding that I could hardly make out anything at all. There were lots of very, very big words and I wasn’t even able to figure out most of the small ones. The print was very small and fine and it all seemed to run in together. It was gibberish to me.
I was in that cell on my own for a few weeks, and the boredom and loneliness were such that I actually tried to read, just to pass the time. That was the first time I really tried to get my head around the whole idea of reading. Despite my best efforts, I made no headway whatsoever. It was a relief when I was moved into a cell with someone else, because finally I had someone who could write letters for me to my friends and family, and someone to talk to.
I found those weeks of solitude painfully difficult and I still don’t know how I managed to get through them without cracking up. I didn’t tell anyone that I was a drug-user because I was scared of the consequences, so I had been going cold turkey on my own. In those days, drug addicts who were detained were put with the nuts and kept in a padded cell, segregated from the rest of the prison population. Having gone through a few days of being on my own, I definitely did not want that.
Like anyone in that situation, I had to try to figure out a way to make ends meet. The prisoners all ate in a big dining room, so that gave me an opportunity to meet people, get to know them and even make friends with some of them. Exercise time was also quite social. But those were the only two opportunities for conversation – I was banged up for about twenty-two hours a day.
I was very lonely, especially as I couldn’t read to pass the time, which was what most people did, and I couldn’t write letters to my friends on the outside without help. Although I would never have admitted it to anybody, I was scared of everything; the other prisoners, the screws, the system. I was used to having all the drugs I needed at my disposal and without them I felt naked and vulnerable. I had been a big boy on the street, but I was just a small fish in the prison and nobody was impressed by me in the least.