Brixton Bwoy Page 10

  On one of his first nights back inside, he headed down to his old hang-out, Shepherd’s. All the Herbies were there, though by now they had changed their name to the Young Rebels. Roland was also there, disc-jockeying and dancing as usual. Looking around him, it seemed to Tee that he and his friends were no longer boys. They were growing up, making their way, trying to make it big, and from the look of everybody’s pockets and clothes, Tee had a lot of catching up to do. He made a start that same Friday night.

  Each morning, he would wake up, get dressed, eat his breakfast and head down towards Brixton. It was a baking hot summer. The sky was always blue and clear, and the trees were alive with birds in full song. The streets were packed. Children played on the street corners, listening out for the jingles of the ice-cream vans, spending their pennies on sweets and lollies. Everyone seemed to be enjoying that summer, but Tee was the happiest of all. He was free.

  Along the Front Line, big men hung out on the street outside the gambling houses, selling weed. Their motors would be parked near by, where they could keep an eye on them. Tee enjoyed watching the cars cruising up and down the Front Line, their drivers blowing their horns, stopping to talk, waving at people they knew, and then speeding off.

  Soon Tee was back to his old tricks, pickpocketing down the ‘Earth’, as they called the underground, or thieving from clothes shops. He would go into the changing-room with various garments and come out with only one in his hand. ‘Nah, too small,’ he would say and leave the shop, a suit and shirt hidden beneath his outer clothes. Soon he was dressed well again, in clothes from Burton or C & A. Joe’s attempts to beat right and wrong into him were long forgotten. He wanted only to be seen as hard and strong and a good thief.

  Although he was still only fourteen, Tee looked older; he was big and broad, and it was rare that anyone even questioned his strength. As he progressed from crime to crime without getting caught, he began to feel invincible. No one could catch him, and even if they did, he would simply fight them off.

  ‘Yeah, man,’ the other boys would say. ‘Ah Tee me ah step wid. No Babylons ah go trouble we from dem sight Tee wid we.’

  Some days Tee and his gang would go from station to station working the earth. If someone felt them taking his wallet they would simply carry on, saying, ‘Piss off or we’ll smash you in.’ The victims would stand there dumbfounded with fright and shock. They even took diabolical liberties with the police. They made blatant takes directly in front of them on the platforms and there was nothing the officers could do because there were too many in the gang. If the police so much as lifted a finger against them, Tee and the rest were ready to start a war.

  And then it was back to Brixton or Stockwell or Clapham. All that mattered was that they had money and that nobody got nicked. There was scarcely time to think of their victims, for before long their heads were filled with weed and drinks, and they were bragging about how successful they had been.

  Shepherd’s was no longer the only hang-out. There were plenty of clubs and pubs and other places to go to: St John’s Church, Lansdown Hall, the Swan, Clapham Manor baths, Mr B’s. They would venture outside the area, too, travelling free on the earth in big gangs, to get to places like the Red Lion pub in Leytonstone, Bluesville at Wood Green, and the Four Aces, Flamingo, Night Angel and 20s in the West End. After a day’s thieving in the West End, they would meet at a Bengal curry house to check their stolen goods or count the money they had acquired, ordering big dinners and drinks while they did so. If the pickings had been good, those who had not had a nice touch that day would get a treat. Usually they would have some cannabis, too, bought from the Front Line. They felt like characters in a gangster movie.

  Life was easy, and Tee never stopped to think about the possible consequences. This was all he wanted – stickdropping, shoplifting, clubbing, partying, smoking, drugs, eating, drinking, sleeping, and then waking up and starting all over again. Mopeds were the rage but the Young Rebels didn’t bother to buy them; they just borrowed one when they needed it. All you had to do was kick down hard on the pedal to jump-start it, and away you would go.

  One Saturday night Tee wanted to go to a party. The hostel had a curfew, but it was never any problem getting around that. He went up to his room at the usual bedtime, but at midnight he got dressed up and climbed out through the window. He walked to a back street where he had seen a few mopeds parked in front gardens. He passed the first one as the lights were on in the house, but the second one looked safe. He wheeled it out on to the road and jump-started it but as he was on his way up the road it suddenly cut out. He got off to check it. He tried jump-starting it again. He tried push-starting it. No matter what he did it wouldn’t start.

  Just then a police Rover came into view with two officers inside. They slowed down and stared at him as they passed. Then Tee saw them turn round, and he flung the moped down and started running at top speed in the direction of the hostel. He was half-way up the road when they caught up with him. The policeman in the passenger seat jumped out, threw him to the ground and got him in a neck hold. Tee tried to shake him off, but he could feel his neck might snap if he struggled too hard.

  ‘Enough?’ the policeman growled.

  ‘Yes,’ Tee managed to scream.

  ‘Good boy,’ he said. His mate helped to handcuff Tee and put him in the car, and they drove him to Carter Street police station on the Walworth Road, where Tee was charged with taking and driving away, and resisting arrest. When Tee got back to the hostel he threw himself on his bed and eventually fell asleep, as sick as a half-drowned kitten. He dreaded being sent back to Stamford House.

  It was several months before the case came to court, and when it did, Tee was given a one-year care order, which simply meant he would stay in the hostel for another year. He didn’t give a damn.

  His fifteenth birthday came and went. By now Tee had discovered interests beyond money, drugs and drink: he had fallen for a girl. Her name was Sharon and she was staying at the same hostel. She wasn’t exactly a beauty, but she had a fit body and laughed a lot, and he found her incredibly sexy. She certainly gave him the come-on. He’d never done it with a girl before, but one day he went out and bought some johnnies. That night he lay in his bed dreaming of Sharon, and when the rest of the hostel was asleep, he crept into her room and slipped into bed with her. Tee put on the johnny while she giggled silently with excitement. When he climbed on top, she guided him into her and for a moment Tee felt as if he could happily have died where he lay. She was butter and Tee was hot bread. She held on to him tightly and he held on to her.

  Suddenly the light snapped on.

  ‘Who is in here?’

  Sharon pushed Tee off her and pretended to be asleep. Tee looked up and saw the old night-watchwoman. ‘Tee,’ she squealed. ‘Back to your own bedroom.’

  Then Tee heard her knocking on Mr G’s door.

  ‘Mr G, I caught Tee in bed with Sharon.’

  Tee never heard any more about the incident, but Mr G did start up at him about working. He was old enough now that if he wasn’t going to school at least he should find a job. Falling for Sharon had made Tee feel differently about things. He was spending less time in Brixton and more around the hostel, and he decided that perhaps now was the time to go straight and see what it felt like to work and hold down a job.

  Every day he went down to the job centre and phoned up about all the vacancies, using his best English. But when he turned up for interviews and they saw he was black, they would say, ‘I’m sorry, the job has been taken,’ or ‘We’ll let you know in a week or two.’ For weeks Tee came back to the hostel without success.

  But eventually he got a job at a meat factory in Camberwell. He set off absolutely delighted to have secured some work at last. He had been told it was near the old ABC picture house; after that, they said, anyone round there would be able to show him where to go. He carried on walking past the cinema in the direction of East Street, and on the corner of Walworth Road he stopped by
two battered old iron gates. There was still a bit of paint on them, the same blue as the gates at Stamford House. A sign was hanging from one of them, and although he couldn’t read too well he recognised the word ‘meat’. There was a terrible smell in the air. As he walked down the path, he passed various entrances where vans were being loaded and unloaded by men in overalls. He asked one of them where to go, and as he walked away he heard the man taking off his accent to his mates.

  The stench was now so overpowering that Tee vomited on his way to the supervisor’s office. The supervisor, a large white man, was dressed in a double-breasted French-cut suit with flared trousers. He told Tee the job was stuffing lorry loads of scrap meat – pork, beef, lamb, goat – into a huge mincing machine. ‘If you want the job, son,’ he said, ‘you’ve got it. Ten pounds a day, cash in hand.’

  Tee wasn’t sure he would be able to stomach it, but he wiped his mouth and decided to give it a try. The man told him he could start straight away, and he got one of the other workers to show him the ropes. They were all about his own age. There wasn’t another black face in sight, but they looked friendly enough. All around him there were men coming and going, pulling or pushing barrows piled with filthy-looking meat, some of which was tinged with green.

  The smell of the place was unbelievable. As the supervisor left him beside the biggest mincing machine in the place, Tee tried not to be sick again. He was terrified even to breathe, and wondered how the others managed.

  The other lads gathered round Tee. ‘What’s the matter, mate? You don’t look too happy with your new job.’ When he told them it was the smell they just said, ‘You get used to it.’ Then they went back to their machines and started laughing and joking again as they got on with their work. Tee couldn’t join in; he was afraid to open his mouth too wide in case the foul air filled his lungs.

  ‘You just stuff all the scrap meat in this big hole,’ said Ginge, who was showing him what to do. ‘When the box under the mincer is full you move it over there, and start on the next one.’ Then he left him to it. Some of the meat had obviously been sitting there for weeks and was half rotten. Tee started picking up great lumps of it and stuffing it in the hole, where the blades were going round and round. It reminded him of one of those comic-book spaceships. He pushed the meat in one end, and it came out in red and brown and green twists at the other. Gradually Tee’s stomach began to settle down. For some reason he hadn’t been given any gloves and he worked as fast as he could to keep his mind off the feeling of the rancid flesh on his bare hands. It was only when the machine started making a strange whining noise that he saw it had stopped spinning and was completely clogged up with meat.

  ‘Turn it off!’ he heard someone shout. ‘The red button at the side!’

  Ginge came over. ‘Try not to put too much in at once, mate, or you’ll spend the whole day clearing out the mincer instead of working it.’

  Tee thanked him.

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Just give me a shout if you’re not sure about anything.’

  One of the other lads was a Hell’s Angel, and he seemed to fool around all day. He claimed that he stuffed his machine with anything he could find – dead rats, blackbirds, baby mice. ‘Throw it all fucking in, mate,’ he said. ‘Who gives a fuck anyway? All you do is make sure you don’t eat no mince from round here.’

  Somehow Tee made it to the end of the day. But that night, on the way home, people held their noses on the bus. He was so embarrassed that he got off and walked the rest of the way. When he got back to the hostel, Sharon wouldn’t go near him. He had four baths before he could get the stink off him, and threw the jacket, jeans and monkey boots he had been wearing into the bin. The next morning, when the staff woke him up for work, he told them the only way they would get him back to the factory was as dead meat himself.

  Tee soon found another job, this time in a carpentry workshop. It was easier work and the only smell was of wood shavings, but sliding planks through a rotary saw all day was very boring. It was not long before he became restless. Working life didn’t compare to a life of crime. There were no thrills to be had, and it certainly didn’t pay so well. Tee started on a Monday, and by Wednesday his attention had turned to a full-length, brand-new sheepskin coat hanging on the rack. Just before dinner he took it and left, and headed to Brixton, dressed in his new finery. The coat was much admired, and eventually Tee swapped it for a leather suit and twenty pounds in cash.

  He was right back into his bad ways. Every morning he would make straight for Brixton and join up with all his friends. His gang began to have run-ins with the Old Bill, but there were usually just a couple of policemen and half a dozen big Brixton boys. If the pigs grabbed anyone, the others would rush to help, with Tee usually at the lead. When Tee heard a policeman refer to him as ‘that big black police GBH-er’, it only boosted his ego further. He thought he was the up-and-coming notorious ‘bad bwoy’ and he loved it when friends patted his back and shook his hand. Everywhere he went he got respect. He was seeing less of Sharon, but now that he was back out on the streets and making a success of it, other girls were starting to show an interest.

  One afternoon, down the earth, Tee took a wallet from a tourist’s handbag and found it contained £1,800 – the most money he had ever seen. For weeks he was splashing cash all over the place, treating friends and buying things for girls, and the next time a party was heading for the earth, he still had £500 left. Everyone else was stickdropping like crazy but Tee was just watching, his pockets already full. Suddenly, four uniformed policemen showed up and went straight for him. There was a big fight, but eventually they overpowered him and took him to West End Central police station, where they gave him a good hiding.

  They asked who all the other kids were, but Tee told them he didn’t know. Then they locked him up.

  A little later, a big plain-clothes policeman came into the cell. He looked rough and mean, like the Devil himself. He walked over to Tee, grinding his teeth, his face all vexed up. Two others came in behind him and locked the door. Tee stood up and stared at this man, wondering what he had got himself into. Suddenly Tee was really frightened.

  Without warning, the copper grabbed him, almost lifting him off the ground. ‘You see this, sonny Jim?’ he said, showing his clenched fist. It was like a sledgehammer that had seen better days; Tee couldn’t see the knuckles for all the lumps and scars. ‘I did this on a black man’s head. Unless you want me to do it all over your little black face you’d better give me the names and addresses of some of them boys who were pickpocketing with you today in the underground. All right?’

  ‘I don’t know them,’ Tee insisted.

  ‘Listen!’ he growled, ‘I won’t tell you again what I’ll do to you.’ And he pushed his fist into Tee’s face.

  ‘I don’t know them,’ Tee said again.

  ‘Names,’ he said, forcing his fist harder into Tee’s face, almost blocking out the light. ‘Names and addresses.’

  Tee was frightened now and he began to whimper. He wasn’t so tough any more. Then the other two men moved in.

  ‘Come on, Harry, that will do,’ said one of them.

  ‘But I’ll make him talk.’

  ‘Nah, we’ll just charge him.’

  They had found about four empty purses in the station, and after charging Tee with theft, two assaults, resisting arrest and attempted theft, they let him out on police bail.

  When he reappeared in Brixton a couple of days later, he was given a hero’s welcome for not grassing anyone up, and he was showered with money, weed and drinks. Within a few days he had forgotten how scared he’d been at the police station and was at it again, but determined not to get nicked this time. He bought a big lock knife, and carried it everywhere.

  Some time later, dropping sticks down at Victoria station, Tee noticed one of his pals being arrested. He ran over and pulled out his knife. The policemen backed away and Tee and his friends jumped on a train, but just as it was pulling away another co
pper appeared. He was one of the policemen from West End Central who had arrested Tee, and he called out his name. But the doors closed, Tee gave him two fingers, and in a moment the train was pulling away down the tunnel.

  That night, they all ended up at the Sundown across the road from Brixton police station. Tee was having a really good time, drinking, smoking, laughing and dancing with all his friends. When the club closed, like a fool Tee went back to the hostel and climbed into bed with Sharon. A couple of hours later they woke up to find the room filled with police officers. Tee was handcuffed and taken down to West End Central where he was locked up. The next day they took him to court for all the pickpocket charges, the knife, assault and more, and this time Tee was remanded in custody.

  He was kept on remand for two months. He hated every second. The staff were bullies and he was locked up for hours at a time. The food was awful, he had nothing to smoke and nothing to occupy him, and not a single friend. Nobody visited him except Pearl. Time dragged by.

  Eventually Tee was found guilty on all counts and taken to the Inner London Crown court for sentencing. He looked around the courtroom but his friends had all abandoned him. The only person he knew was Pearl.

  ‘Madam,’ the judge asked her, ‘do you have anything to say on behalf of your brother before I pass sentence?’

  ‘Yes, your Honour. I beg you, please, not to send him to prison but to deport him to his mother and father in Jamaica.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the judge. ‘Baccass, stand up! You are here to be sentenced for a number of very serious offences ranging from pickpocketing to assault to offences with a knife, as well as many lesser crimes, which have been taken into consideration. But before I pass sentence I must ask you whether you would like to return to your mother and father in Jamaica. You do realise that if you stay in this country you will have to behave yourself.’

  ‘Yes, your Honour.’