Chapter 7

Toil and trouble

Frances and I moved out of the flat we had shared with Keith and Jacky and into what can only be described as digs, a first floor bedsit in a house in Greenwich. Frances found a job across the road in a tyre warehouse and I mooched about looking for work after signing on at the dole office, having given up the tipper driving job out of concern for my health and that of other road users.

My visit to the employment office – a place with which I was fairly familiar – was memorable for the fact that I had a sharp lesson on the boundaries of the welfare state, even then, in the late 60s, when we actually had a functioning one. I was broke and, after queuing for an hour and finally getting in front of a clerk, I asked for a fiver to tide me over as I had ‘just got back from a trip abroad and was a bit short of cash.’ This had the clerk chuckling before telling me that I should ‘sign on’ to receive benefit.

The old ruse of saying that you wanted a job as a deckhand on the Woolwich Ferry, (a legitimate request but one unlikely to be granted as there were only four such positions and the waiting list was three years) didn’t work and I was sent off to look at a number of deathly jobs for which my GCE passes qualified me. All were office based and all had as much appeal to me as snow in July.

My indolence was threatening to get me into trouble. I was always outspoken – lippy, you might say – and my morose state of mind at not being able to find a job, let alone find a career path which might be construed as fulfilling, was prompting me to take a swipe at the world in general and my mates in particular. I was becoming notorious for bristling at the slightest hint of discourtesy or rudeness and provoking ‘an incident’.

I took umbrage at being asked to pay for food in restaurants before we had eaten – this was standard practice in Chinese restaurants – people would often ‘do runners’, eating and then legging it without paying. This was part of a ritual love/hate relationship between alcohol-fuelled young men with a love of Chinese food and the management of the establishments in which we ate, who were anxious to ensure we paid for the services they provided. I railed against stroppy barmen and lying politicians alike. No-one was safe from my vitriol.

I was becoming schizophrenic in that I revelled in being a Millwall-loving, outspoken working class contrarian while at the same time aspiring to be an intellectual – widely read and considered in my views. This dual personality was reflected in the friends I chose, and I was soon gravitating more than ever to two mates in particular, Don Gardner and John Morton. Of my immediate peers, these were the only two who had aspired to a university education and were both accepted at Sussex University in Brighton.

We organised a visit to Brighton on John’s birthday and travelled in a convoy of cars, including Bill Stevenson’s Vauxhall which moved along the road sideways due to severe and clearly critical misalignment of the front and back wheels, a potentially fatal mechanical fault which he ignored with a, ‘Nah, it’s ok. Goes dahn the road, don’t it?’

After meeting up with Don and John, we went to a pub and over the next few hours, we moved from pub to pub to savour different bands and music. I noticed a group of miserable-looking geezers following us and glowering at us. When we moved pubs, they arrived a few minutes later. We were being hunted down.

Towards the end of the evening, we moved along the sea front on our way back to the hotel we had booked in an uncharacteristic demonstration of foresight. The gang of ne’er-do-wells were walking towards us. As they reached us, one pointed at John and began to mimic him, clearly attempting to goad him into a reaction by roundly ridiculing his articulate language. His mates laughed that laugh which precedes a clump. From behind me, I heard John.

‘Am I to assume you are laughing at what my friends and I are discussing because you find our topic of conversation amusing, or because you are attempting to provoke us into a reaction?’ he asked.

Oh, shit, I thought, here we go. He’s studying philosophy, I recalled. This was not exactly the right time to test his theories on real, live hooligans, hell bent on smacking someone in the chops. There was no way we were going to talk our way out of this little corner. The ape to whom John had addressed his question replied with a hay-maker of a right hook which miraculously missed John completely.

His attack was the signal to the rest of the louts waiting in the shadows to get stuck in. I was beaten to a pulp by an unknown number of assailants and, to my utter despair I only managed to land one decent punch before being overwhelmed. I lay on the ground as the thugs finally responded to my pleas for mercy. The last one to get off me took a step back and kicked me full in the face. Fortunately, he caught me on the forehead, the force of the blow causing hairline pressure cuts to appear on my eyelids, top and bottom.

As they beat a hasty retreat, I dragged myself to my feet and noticed Keith lying about ten yards away with his sheepskin coat pulled over his head. To my great consternation, he was screaming at the top of his voice. Fearing he had been knifed, I rushed over to him only to find that he was virtually untouched.

‘Yes, I’m ok,’ he replied to my garbled inquiry after his health. ‘If you scream loud enough, they leave you alone,’ was his philosophical response. John hadn’t fared too badly either. It was me who seemed to have been the target and I was in a right old mess, blood streaming from my eyes and feeling generally as though I’d been run over by a train.

A policeman finally arrived on the scene, ushered in by some concerned by-standers. His only retort was, ‘Come down from London and let yourselves get turned over by a bunch of yokels? Should be ashamed of yourselves.’

We walked to the university for the final hour of music but I was refused entry – not surprisingly – due to my grotesque appearance. Not to be denied, I found a back entrance and bunked in over a wall. As I dropped to the ground, I came face to face with a bouncer. He blanched when he saw my blood-covered face. ‘Jesus! You frightened the life out of me. For Chrissake get yourself cleaned up.’ He led me to the washroom. My reflection in the mirror was not pretty to behold. Even after washing off the congealed blood I looked like a Quasimodo double.

As time passed and as our lives in and around Deptford and Blackheath wove their mysterious patterns, it became clearer and clearer to me that my wandering lifestyle of not being able to settle into a decent job, let alone my inability to form a lasting relationship, would have to change. I could no longer blame my frequent depressions on the anger of a young man growing into adulthood. Everyone else seemed to be able to deal with their burdens although John Morton was indeed going through a particularly rough patch. It seemed as though he was oblivious of anything going on around him. He was withdrawn to a painful degree and carried his cares and woes deep within him. He would sit for hours saying nothing, doing nothing and almost transfixed in one position. We took him to parties and to our social events all to no avail. It took a move to Australia, years later, to finally and totally lift John out of the depression which had beset him.

Keith Hunt threw a ‘vicar and call-girl’ party. My partner at the time, a lovely Irish woman with long, ginger hair, agreed to swap roles, something I thought most couples would do. It was to be my first and only foray into cross-dressing. But we were the only couple bold enough to do so and I arrived in a short skirt, suspenders, wig and lipstick. None of my mother’s shoes would fit so I was forced to wear my work boots. The party was a roaring success and we had a great time, but even at the height of jollification, John sat in the corner, sipping a beer and wrestling with his thoughts in his own private hell.

John, Don, Keith and I were in and out of driving jobs like ferrets in a maze, John and Don taking up these positions to supplement their grants as they strove for their degrees; Keith and I because we had nothing better to do. It was John who was to provide the impetus for the turning point in my life but not before my notorious bad luck gave me an insight into the dark side of the law enforcement business and brought me within a whisker of being sent down.

One particular evening, we were having a drink at the Old King Ludd in Luddgate Circus (now a Pret a Manger outlet, I noticed recently) and planned to attend a pop concert at Hampstead Heath later. Emerging from the pub and bristling with self-induced indignation which some said you could see shimmering around me from the distance of a mile, two guys hovered in the shadows next to Johnny Raggett’s car. Upon inquiry, they turned out to be plain-clothes policemen and not too friendly either. I gave both of them a volley about ‘skulking around trying to nick ordinary people when the City of London was stuffed full of the real criminals’ (at which everyone yawned) before we headed off to the concert in Hampstead.

There was no trouble and everyone we met was friendly and jovial as they listened and danced to some good rock and roll. The smell of dope permeated the air (which probably had a lot to do with the convivial atmosphere). As we wandered through the crowd, I became separated from the rest of my friends but caught a glimpse of them sauntering along towards the exit about ten yards away.

‘Hey, Don!’ I called, through a group of people. ‘Where are you guys going?’

‘Come on Wilky. We’re heading off. Raggett’s got to go to work in the morning.’

‘Well, fuck work! Let’s stay. I’m enjoying . . .’ Crunch! I was hit from behind by what felt like a ton of bricks. Three guys pinned me up against a wall. A knee went into my back and a hand twisted my hair into a ball. Don saw the attack and alerted the others who began barging their way back through the crowd to assist me. As they approached and prepared to knock shit out of my assailants, the three guys flashed their ID.

‘Stay there lads! We’re police! And you . . .’ The knee in my back indicated he meant me, ‘are under arrest.’ With that I was frog-marched out of the park and towards a squad car into which I was bundled unceremoniously.

Every time I opened my mouth to ask what I had done to deserve being arrested, I was shouted at, ‘Shut the fuck up, you, hippy!’

I was addressed in this way for the duration of the trip to the police station, a trip which was interrupted by radio messages to which my charming captors responded in a stream of profanities and racist language. They marched me to a cell on arrival at the station. I was then transferred to another cell which required me being marched through the lobby of the police station where I saw my friends – every one of them – gathered there to demand my release. I shouted at them to get my father on the phone – and get me a lawyer! I was bundled into a cell and two officers stood at the door until the arresting officer arrived. So aggressive were these officers that I honestly thought I was going to be beaten. One of the Neanderthals walked up to me and swung a left hook into my stomach which doubled me up. ‘Sleep well. See you in the morning.’

The following morning, the door to my cell opened to admit a policeman carrying a tray. A plate of eggs and bacon was placed before me. A spoon was the only implement I was given with which to eat the food. I laughed as I saw it.

‘Is this to make sure I don’t cut my wrists to avoid the humiliation of getting stitched up?’

The arresting officer arrived. Gone was the hippy garb he had used as a poor and unconvincing disguise last night, replaced by a smart, three-piece suit. ‘Good morning Mr Wilkinson,’ he said with clipped politeness.

‘Before you are allowed to see your friends and family outside, I’m here to tell you that a lawyer has been summoned for you and that you will be charged this morning before the circuit judge with assaulting a police officer and with abusive language. I strongly advise you to plead guilty to both charges and I can assure you that the maximum penalty will be £40 fine.’

‘Go to hell. I’m innocent and you know it.’

‘Very well. If you insist on pleading not guilty, you will be risking a much more onerous punishment.’

The trial came up a month later. My father gave me a character reference. My friends, one of whom, John Ragget, was a stockbroker, spoke up for me and told the court what had happened. John Morton did the same. The judge had clearly heard enough and waved a hand to indicate as much. It was time for the verdict.

‘On the charge of assaulting a police officer, I find you not guilty on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Do you have anything to say?’ he said.

‘Yes, your honour. I take your verdict as a euphemism for saying that these officers are liars.’

After warning me about contempt of court regulations, he added, ‘On the second count of using abusive language, I find you guilty and fine you £5. Do you have anything to say?’

‘If it’s wrong to say ‘fuck’ in public, why wasn’t Kenneth Tynan fined when he said it on live TV a year ago? And what’s more, I suggest you send the entire Metropolitan Police force to Covent Garden any day of the week because there you’ll be able to nick someone every five minutes as the word ‘fuck’ is used in public as common parlance.’

‘Yes, yes, very well. Court dismissed.’

As I walked from the court, I took a detour in the direction of the arresting officer. As I passed him, I bent down so that my face was inches from his. I gave him a softly spoken but vitriolic broadside, just sufficiently loudly to make sure he heard it. I thanked all my friends and family who had so staunchly supported me. But the episode confirmed my deepest fears about the police and changed my attitude to them forever. I shuddered to think what sort of treatment would have been meted out to me if I had been black.

Shaking off the smell of Hampstead police station and the low-life that worked there, I began to cast around for another relationship. Friday nights at the Bali Hi were the highlights of our lives for a time. Often we would go mob-handed, but Bobby Baker and I tended to sneak off regularly on our own since we felt we had a better chance of meeting women, or ‘pulling’, as it was ungraciously known.

Meeting women at the Bali Hi required nerves of steel and a thick skin. Invariably, the dance floor of the club was populated by women dancing together around handbags parked on the floor at their feet. To ‘pull’ required the ‘walk of terror’ – stepping out onto the dance floor, an act which, in itself, drew all eyes towards you as less confident groups of guys watched to see the result of your foray into this bobbing mass of womanhood. Then it was necessary to negotiate several dancing couples to reach the two you were after (Bobby Baker would ‘spy’ the likely women and I would lead the ‘bunny’, i.e. do the talking). Once in front of the identified pair of women, the chat would begin while we did our best to demonstrate our dancing prowess.

‘Hiya. What’s your name, then? Do you fancy a dance?’

‘Nah,’ would be the invariable reply, whereupon the remaining task was to choose your moment to make the ‘walk of shame’ back to the periphery of the dance floor, fortify yourself with another bottle of light ale and prepare yourself for another foray. Bobby and I were the recipients of seven consecutive ‘blanks’ on one evening, but generally, we were successful and mostly left with two women who were, it must be admitted, a little nonplussed when asked to sit in the back of Bobby’s A35 van in which we travelled.

We went on holiday together to what Bobby described unflatteringly as the ‘centre of the universe for chicks’ – Torquay – and we set ourselves a target of taking different women to a particularly nice pub overlooking the bay on every night of the week. We scored five out of six which we felt was a passable success rate.

With the small amount of money I could muster from the various short-term and casual jobs I took, mostly on building sites as a labourer, gambling seemed to be a sensible way of speculating in order to accumulate. Every third Friday or so, we took to playing cards after the pubs had shut. At the outset of the evening, maybe fifteen of us would stand on the corner of Adolphus Street and deliberate for an hour about which pub we would go to: the Apples and Pears at Bermondsey, the King Ludd at Ludgate Circus, the Tiger’s Head at Lee Green? After a few bevvies, we would have a meal and then head back to John’s dad’s flat for cards.

Increasingly, the act of gambling and the challenges it posed conditioned my angst and gave me another focus. But while one undesirable trait diminished, the other, gambling, was becoming more accentuated. The copper we played for soon turned into silver and soon the silver gave way to ‘folding’. And news of our card school began to spread. Don Gardner’s mate, a lovely man even smaller than me (which is probably why we got on so well), called Paul Ruocco, was a member of the school and he introduced one of his mates, known to me only as Fat Len, to the circle. Len cleaned us out.

His wealth apparently came from the café run by his parents who allegedly sold five hundred cups of tea a day in their Elephant and Castle-based establishment. Wherever it came from, Fat Len had the ability to out-bluff us all: he would simply bet ‘a fiver blind’ on any three card brag hand and thereby require other members of the school to either go with him at a fiver a time ‘blind’ or a tenner ‘open’. After two or three bets, it would clear most of us out of any money we might have accumulated for the game.

We quickly excluded him from the school although it didn’t seem to have a lasting effect on the alarming speed with which the stakes were being raised. It was soon not uncommon to have close to a hundred pounds in the ‘pot’ and many’s the time one of the guys would walk away ‘quids in’ – as much as a hundred pounds to the good. More often than not, the money we lost would have previously been borrowed from one of our closer friends in the school and these sums, running into multiples of tens, would be classified as ‘card debts’ to be hawked around, bartered, transferred along with fortunes at the card table and only occasionally repaid over months or even years. I think Johnny Morton still owes me a twenty pound card debt to this day.

The sign of a good night was running to catch the night bus being weighed down by the ‘clods’ in your pocket. At least it meant you weren’t cleaned out. One notable occasion, as everyone settled in for the card school, I went upstairs to take a leak. On my return, the cards for the first hand had been dealt and I took my seat as others were chatting and pouring beers. I casually glanced at the three cards before me and tried to keep a poker face as I saw three aces – the second highest hand possible in three-card brag. I feigned disinterest as the betting went round the table, fussing with my drink, talking to one of the guys to the annoyance of others.

‘Come on Wilky! You in or what?’

I bet a modest ten pence, the better to put people off the scent. Two guys stacked their cards and I thought I was about to go the classic route of winning a few pennies on a prile of cards – a hand which is rare. To my delight – which I was careful not to allow my face to betray – Don raised the stakes to ten bob. He clearly had a decent hand. John went with it and so did I after putting in a mild and unconvincing moan which was an attempt to convince them both that I really didn’t want to continue gambling on my ‘average’ hand.

Don raised it to a pound. John stacked. I went. Just Don and I left now and the kitty already stood at close to a week’s wages for me. I tossed in another pound note and looked Don in the eyes.

‘Well, Wilky, I’m not giving in. I should tell you that I have a very good hand. I don’t want to see you do all your wonga on the first hand,’ came Don’s warning.

‘I also have a good hand, Don. I’m in and what’s more, I’ll raise it to two quid.’

We were now into IOUs, a familiar part of the evening, based on the fact that if you won the kitty you could honour the IOUs, and if you lost, a monumental card debt would result.

It had now become a battle of wills. I had borrowed everything I dared from friends and had immediately gambled it. Don had done the same. The kitty stood piled high with pound notes and fivers on top of a cascade of silver coin. There must have been close to £100 quid in the kitty. I placed my cards face down on the table. We agreed to turn the cards over and end the gambling frenzy which was threatening to ruin us there and then. I turned over one ace after the other, slowly.

‘Told you, Don. I had an unbeatable hand.’

A smile flickered across Don’s face. He turned his first card over – a three. No, it could not be that he had three threes. He was bluffing. The chances against three threes when three aces were out were astronomical. His second card was a three. I groaned. He took an age to reveal the third card: it must be a king or a ‘rag’ card and he must have been bluffing all this time. A three!

Three threes! I had lost on a prile of aces. Unthinkable! We all sat stony faced in silence looking at the two hands on the table. My mouth hung open. Then they all erupted with laughter and rolled about on the floor. It was a stitch up. While I was in the loo, the cards had been dealt so as to force this battle of the two priles. Just another aspect of Friday night entertainment.