The Guv'nor (13 page)

This is supposed to be a straightener, but he's kicking like a donkey, then stamping on my feet, and he hasn't even thrown a punch yet. I swung one into his derby and he woofed like a dog. I followed it with a really low one, right in the assets. Got to hand it to him, he didn't drop his guard but his eyes crossed for a second. His team are doing their nut. ‘Finish him, Sean. Kill him.' Their shouts seemed to perk him up and he came at me in a flurry and planted one right between my eyes. Fucking hell, he could throw a good one. But he never got his guard back up quick enough and I crouched and sunk two into his ribs. He fell forwards on to his knees just as Kenny gave the gas bottle a belt. End of round? Was it bollocks! I jabbed one into his throat and one into the side of his head, and he just laid forward, nose in the dirt, arse in the air. I'd done it again.

What I'm pleased about isn't that I've won a fight. I never expect to lose, and I've had hundreds. It was the fact that there were these mugs queuing up to stick a monkey in my hand for five minutes' sparring. Good stuff, Kenny, set them up.

Another time, he said, ‘Len, the fair's over Leytonstone next week. We'll get ourselves over there and drum up a challenge – could be some good dough in it.'

‘Lovely,' I said.

I told you Kenny knows all the gypsies and tinkers, so it's not like they think we're a couple of mugs. It took about five minutes after we got to the common, where the fair's blaring out the music, and we had a deal. Ken said, ‘Give us ten minutes, Len, while I sort the money out, then meet me over the back where the generator is.'

I wandered around, had three hot dogs, a go on the rifles, lost a few bob throwing a load of bent darts, and was just giving a couple of young birds a bit of the McLean charm when up comes Kenny all red in the face. ‘Fucking hell, Len, I said ten minutes. They're all waiting.'

I said ta-ra to the girls and followed Ken round the back of the caravans and into this monster on two legs. There were about 20 pikeys surrounding this bloke who looked like he should be in a cage. I swear he was 6ft 8in and about the same across. His boat had been shifted around so often he didn't look human. I whispered to Kenny. ‘Hope you got a better deal than 500.'

He said, ‘We'll walk away with two grand from this one. He ain't as tough as he looks.'

I said, ‘How do you know?'

I just got that big grin again. ‘I don't, I'm just trying to cheer you up.'

We all moved back away from the flashing lights of the rides, and they formed a large ring. No formalities, no bell. Just, ‘Go on, boys.'

I steamed straight in putting all my weight behind four or five solid belts. Every one connected on his arms. I tried to come up under and do his ribs in but I couldn't get round those massive arms. It was like he was holding sandbags up in front. He threw a couple but his eyes gave him away before he even started to swing.

I tried again. Bang. Bang. Bang. This time I got through and put a nice split in his forehead; good bit of claret. Then he grabs me, pins my arms to my sides, and nuts me full in the face, trying to get his teeth into my nose. I could smell his breath – a mixture of shit and beer. I brought my knee up into his sack and he let go with a surprised look on his bloody face. Got you now, you bastard. I slammed into him, but he'd got those fucking great arms up and I'm punching sandbags again.

Round and round we went. I had him sussed now. He's not a fighter, he's a steamroller. He wanted to tire me out then drop 20 stone on top of me. He's got the right idea; I'm knackered. It's dead quiet except for faint music from the fair. There's no cheering encouragement, just a ring of brown faces watching us both with cold eyes. Kenny's looking worried. Fuck it. I shouldn't have looked
round; he's caught me with a right-hander full in the side of the head. My head's ringing, I've gone deaf on that side and now I'm really pissed off. This has gone on for long enough. I had to take a risk.

I turned my back on him, raised my arms in Kenny's direction and said, ‘When are you going to ring the fucking bell?' At the same time, I spun round and, as I'd hoped, the big animal was so surprised at me turning my back he dropped his arms. Everything I've got went into a straight punch to the heart. He fell backwards and down like a falling tree.

After Kenny had dropped me off back home and divvied up the winnings, he patted me on the arm and said, ‘We done well there, old son.' I'd had the bollocks battered out of me. I had lumps, bumps and bruises, and he's sitting there as cool as a cucumber talking about ‘we'. I didn't have the strength to argue, so I just gave him a friendly tap on the chin and agreed, ‘Yes, mate, we did,' and went into my Val.

On the strength of that little earner Val, the kids and me had a bit of a holiday. Nothing flash, just a bit of time in Clacton – laying on the sand, getting a bit of sun, watching Jamie and Kelly making sand castles and running in and out of the sea. I thought, ‘It seems a 100 years ago that I was doing my little bit of bird up the coast at Hollesley.' Everything had changed – Jim Irwin was out of the picture, my family had split up and were living all over the place, and where was my cousin Tony? We were so close and now I never saw anything of him. And Mum, God bless her, how many times did I forget and think about calling round for a cup of tea? Then a little hand put a live crab right in the middle of my chest and brought me bang up to date again. Lovely days to remember.

So things were looking up for me. I was offered bits of work here and there, nothing heavy, but it was bringing the money in. Kenny reckoned that after the last do I should cut down on the beer and shape up a bit. I wasn't keen on either of these two ideas because I never hung about long enough in a fight to get out of breath. I know the last one dragged out longer than usual but that was a one-off. I ask you, how many blokes do you come across built like two brick shithouses?

He kept on though, so to shut him up I went down his gym, as he called it. Nobody else would have. It was just a big old shed in his yard, full of straw and horse shit, and the training facilities were a bag of sand strung up from the rafters.

I know I kept larking about and taking the piss, but Ken's heart
was in the right place. He took everything so serious with that stopwatch of his. Ten minutes round the yard, ten minutes on the bag, five on the bench (well, bale of straw). I couldn't go a second over the time, or a second under. It was bloody torture.

Still, it was for my own good and giving me a good wind. Bit on and off, though. Too much like hard work. I told him, ‘I'm a cobble fighter not a fucking Olympic contender.' What I didn't know, because Kenny had kept quiet about it, was that he'd taken up a challenge from some tinkers and he was making sure his investment was safe by getting me fit.

I had a few more fights down the car lot and one over at Blackheath when the fair was on. But we were back on the 500s and they were nothing special. I smashed my way through all of them, though.

A friend of mine, Danny Kylie, came to see one of these fights and when it was all over he pulled me to one side and said, ‘Len, my dad's just taken over a nut house in Commercial Road called the White Swan, and it's fucking murders every night – shootings, stabbings, the lot. I'm getting worried he'll get done himself, so can you go over and look after him?' I went over there that same night, had a bit of a chat with his old man, and we struck a deal. If I kept the peace I could keep the door money. Good dough in them days.

Fuck me, it got worse for a bit. I was a new face on the manor so every Jack the Lad in town turned up to try me out. I fought them all and bashed them up, even the tastiest amongst them. I didn't need the publicity but my reputation went up in lights when this mug pulled a gun on me.

The barrel of a gun doesn't look much on the films but you try looking down one when it's between your eyes – the fucker's like the Blackwall Tunnel. Some of these kids are all show, you get a gut feeling about whether they'll pull the trigger or not. This one was just playing cowboy. I took the gun out of his hand and broke both his cheek-bones with it, then tucked it in my pocket. I'd chuck it in the river like the other one on the way home. Guns I don't need. My fists are my weapons and if the day ever comes when I need a shooter to get myself out of bother, I'll be ready for the knacker's yard.

I was at home getting ready to go to work at the Swan when Danny's old man rang me. This was about half-seven. He said, ‘I've had a Scotch bloke in here mob-handed and looking for a bit of protection money. I think it's the same firm that did that publican with axes last week.'

I said, ‘Are they coming back?'

He said, ‘Tonight, and they want the cash.'

I was on the door later on when four blokes came in. They didn't know me, they were polite, ‘How you doing?' and all that bollocks. They paid their money so I let them in. But I followed them up.

They made a little ring round Bill, the governor, and they started giving him some verbal. All I could see were these padded shoulders going up and down. Bill gave me the nod and I took three of them out with belts to the back of the head. They've gone down – didn't even know it was coming. I held the Scotch bloke against the bar and told him nobody gets a tanner out of this gaff except me and my mate. As he's trying some of that ‘Hold on, Jimmy,' shit, I pinned his arms to his sides, looked at Bill and said, ‘Go on, son, help yourself.' And Bill did him across the nut with half a bottle of whisky.

We dragged them outside and dumped them on the pavement. They must have ended up in the hospital because it wasn't long before the police were at the door. They said, ‘You should both be looking at a section 18, but we know what this firm's been up to. Take a warning, though, don't go at it too strong.'

Later in the week, a message filtered through the grapevine that Jimmy Boyle, one of Scotland's hard men, was sending some of his firm down to get us sorted. One of the blokes who worked in the pub, whose neck was on the line, same as all of us, said to me, ‘How do you reckon we should handle it?'

I said, ‘Fuck ‘em. We'll let them have it.'

His answer was to go off and come back with enough guns to start a war. He's got some handguns, three 12-bore shotguns, and a 20-bore. I didn't know there was such a thing – it would've brought down an elephant.

I said, ‘Look, Baz, you know how I feel about them fucking things, what's the game?'

‘I've got to make him right,' he said. ‘We ain't all built like you, Len, me an' the others are going to feel a lot safer with that lot by the door. You got to think, we might be on our own when they turn up.'

I said, ‘OK, it's no skin off my nose, but if the governor finds out that you've brought shooters into his pub he'll do his nut and sack the fucking lot of you. You know how straight he is.'

‘Don't worry, Len, we'll park them up where he won't see them.'

So to keep him and the others happy, I let him hide all those guns in a cubbyhole by the main doors and things carried on as normal. In the next few days, while we're waiting, I've got this young kid who comes in the club, Freddie Fox. I couldn't let him right in the club,
because he'd been barred for causing aggro and fights. To be honest, he was a nice enough kid but he could be a bloody nuisance. He could come in as far as the coconut mat just in the doorway. We'd stand there while I was working, having a chat and a smoke.

This kid never stood still; he's fiddling here, fiddling there, next minute he's opened the cupboard and he's sizing up the armoury. ‘Fuck me, Len,' he said, ‘what are you up to?' To shut him up I told him what was happening. He goes home and tells his father, and we've got a spot of bother. I didn't know Freddie's dad, but I understand that he spoke to someone and eventually it got to the ears of another man I didn't know but had heard of, by the name Ritchie, a Scotchman himself who is a good friend of Arthur Thomson, the top name in Scotland. Ritchie got in touch and said he'd make a few phonecalls. It turned out that the whole business was a lot of bollocks. Some mug was throwing names up to put the frighteners in. It didn't come to anything, but you were there, Ritchie – good stuff.

Some time later, I learned that Jimmy Boyle, even though he was in prison at the time, really did send down one of his firm to find out what was going on and to sort things out. I won't put a name to the man who came down from Glasgow, but his instructions were to give the first Scotch geezer a seeing to for putting up Boyle's name without permission and for leaning on friends of friends on the firm. I believe he ended up in the same hospital as before.

A bit of time went by and Kenny told me about the fight he had set up. It was to be at Epsom, Derby Day. Some geezer was coming over specially from Ireland and the prize was £4,000. I said to Ken, ‘Are you carrying that sort of folding?' and he said, ‘Don't worry, I've spread it around a bit, but I know you won't let us down.'

Come the day of the races, I was feeling good. Top of the world. Tell you the truth, though, I might as well have been on my own on the way down, because I hardly got two words out of Kenny. I guessed he was thinking about all that dough if anything went wrong and I suppose I should have got the hump over his lack of confidence in me, but I didn't. Let's face it, nothing's guaranteed. Even the oddson favourite can take a tumble at the final fence; it doesn't mean it's not a great runner. Tell you what, though, I've never in my life gone into any fight thinking that there's a possibility that I might lose. I've always been 110 per cent behind myself.

It took us about an hour in the motor to get down to Surrey. By the time we got to the other side of Croydon, we were in a different
world – beautiful it was, all little country lanes, fields and trees. A lot of East Enders wouldn't give tuppence for all that wide open space; they'd think they were on the moon. Not me though, and as we we drove along, I thought, ‘One day I'll buy a little cottage somewhere like this for my Val and the kids, away from all the aggro.'