Brixton Bwoy Read online

  Eventually, after nineteen months had passed, Tee was given his first home leave. It was wonderful walking down the street to Feltham railway station to catch the train. Tee was full of excitement about seeing his family and friends and Brixton again. He got off the train at Clapham Junction and as he walked up the street to the bus-stop, he passed some men’s clothes shops. They had some beautiful menswear in them, but he overcame the temptation to go back to his old ways, and walked on.

  When he reached the bus-stop, who should he see waiting there but sister Pearl herself. They were delighted to see each other and hugged and kissed. They travelled to Kellett Road together and joined up with Roland, Richie, Selena and Mr H. The house felt so comfortable and familiar, and the air was filled with the mouth-watering smell of Jamaican pepper-pot stew which had been simmering all day in his honour. The whole family gathered around the table to have supper together, and Tee felt happier than he could remember.

  It was a Friday night, and when Tee had eaten he couldn’t wait to go out and see his friends. It felt so good to be free of rules and to be able to do exactly what he wanted. He and Roland headed straight for Shepherd’s. Although his friends hadn’t seen Tee for well over a year, none of them seemed surprised to see him walk in, and they gave him a hero’s welcome. He remembered how nobody had come to visit him inside, but they all slapped him on the back, and gave him weed, and bought him drinks, and soon any resentment he had stored up was forgotten. He was enjoying the smoky atmosphere, trading jokes with his friends and eyeing up the girls just as he always had. It didn’t matter that he had no money, because his friends paid for everything he needed that weekend. All in all, he had a great time. He felt like somebody again.

  It was grim going back to borstal on Sunday evening, but Tee had an ounce of strong black Stevetmas hash in his pocket given to him by Big Youth, which made him feel better. On the way in, he hid it by one of the lights and collected it the next evening. Then he transferred it to a book he had hollowed out in his cell, to keep for Christmas which was only twelve days away. Now he had something to look forward to.

  The next day, he was brewing up tea when an officer came for him to say he was wanted on the house block. When Tee got there he was told his cell was going to be searched. Did he have anything he wanted to tell them about? ‘No,’ he said. Two officers searched the whole cell, all except the book shelf. ‘That’s it,’ one of them announced. But just as they were about to leave, the other said, ‘We haven’t checked the books, have we?’

  He went over to the book shelf, opened up the book and found Tee’s ounce of black hash. Tee was devastated. Not only had he lost his Christmas treat, but now he had to worry about what would happen to his discharge date. Smuggling drugs inside was a serious offence.

  He was taken down to the block and the police were called, and though Tee wasn’t charged he lost another three months.

  He was soon back to his old ways, fighting and abusing the officers and getting nicked and being put under investigation. He seemed to get in trouble almost every day. His weekend out was a dim memory, except for the trouble it had landed him in, and he no longer cared about anything. Gradually the weeks slid into months.

  Then, one morning, two officers came to his cell and said, ‘Up you get, Tee, and pack your kit.’ This was what they always said when he was under investigation or being placed on report.

  ‘What have I done now, guv?’ he asked.

  ‘Just pack your kit and follow us,’ was the reply.

  They led him straight towards the block. When he got there he dropped his kit, waiting for them to open it up. But they kept on walking and did not stop until they reached the discharge room.

  ‘We are giving you a discharge,’ they said when he had caught up. ‘Think yourself lucky we don’t take you back to court and let you start a fresh whack of borstal, because as far as we’re concerned you have learned nothing on this sentence. You’ve got half an hour to get out of the borstal grounds or we’ll call the police and have you arrested.’

  Tee didn’t need half an hour. Within half a minute he was hurrying down the road to the station.

  Tee soon learned that things in Brixton had moved on. Stickdropping and shoplifting were still popular, but quite a few of the lads were now into robbery and putting women on the game. Some had taken to kiting – cheque-book and cheque-card fraud – and others burglary.

  But Tee had a bit of cash to keep him going. While he was inside, the Criminal Compensation Board had paid out for his injuries at the fair, and sister Pearl had put the money, £128, into a post office savings account in his name. Before he started trying to get any more, he had other things to do.

  Tee was sixteen, and he had hardly seen a woman since he was sent away. Sharon, the only girl he’d ever been with, was long gone. He might have been experienced with crime and police stations and prison, but he was still quite new to the world of women. So when he bumped into Girlie a day or two after coming out, he was ready for anything.

  Girlie was a half-caste girl from Peckham whom he had known since his childhood. She was pretty, with a big Afro hairstyle like the Jackson Brothers, and she spoke pure cockney. When they met she was dressed in her school uniform of white socks, blue skirt and white shirt. Girlie promised to meet him at Shepherd’s on his first Friday night out, and the three days until then seemed as long as all the time he had spent in borstal. When the night finally arrived, he asked her if she would go out with him.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  He couldn’t believe his ears. He was so happy. This was going to be the start of something new.

  They decided to go on to a club called the Four Aces in north London. After stopping at the Clapham Wimpy House, they went north over the river. Girlie held his arm as they entered the club and Tee felt as proud as anything. He finally had a girlfriend as beautiful as any girl in London.

  The music was kicking up like an excited donkey and Tee bought them drinks at the bar. Girlie started dancing in front of him, and soon he was dancing with her. After a while, Tee reached out and touched her and she came into his arms and he held her tight.

  Later that night they danced the rubberdub, which was as close as you could get to making love without going to bed, and then they talked and laughed, as if they belonged to each other. It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that they left to make their way back over the river.

  Tee had fallen in love with Girlie. She had been around while he was growing up and had always been sweet. But now, on top of that she had grown into a woman with everything a man could wish for. Over the weeks that followed they grew closer and closer. Tee had never been happier.

  Tee’s love life might be going smoothly, but in other ways the officers at Feltham were proved right – he was as far from learning his lesson as he had ever been.

  When he ran out of money he joined up again with the stickdroppers. It didn’t matter whether he was on his own or with other people, he went wild at it. Once he was seen by a policeman, but he managed to beat him up and get away. Fortunately, it was not a policeman who knew Tee. But then came the day when he was arrested again for pickpocketing. This time his violent attempts to escape were not successful and he was remanded on the usual string of charges of theft, assault and possession of an offensive weapon – a new knife he had taken to carrying wherever he went. So there he was, only months since he had left Feltham, back inside, with only the compensation of being visited by Girlie. She was doing all right. She had left school now and was working as a telephonist.

  From remand, Tee went to the Scrubs, then Feltham again, and then on to Finnemore Wood. It wasn’t easy for Girlie to get to see him there but she came when she could, and although he was only in for six months this time, it was long enough for him to realise how much he loved Girlie and wanted to be with her. She was the first person he went to see on his release, and she greeted him with delight. This time, he told her, he was determined to go straight, to make
her proud of him. He was living with sister Ivy now, and he got a job with the council as a gardener, working in Stockwell Park. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. His friends would come by, trying to persuade him to give it up and go stickdropping with them, showing him the wads of money they had in their pockets. Helped by Girlie, Tee ignored them and kept working hard. But then one day the council discovered he had a criminal record, which he had not told them, and he got the sack. He tried for a bit to get another job, but nobody was interested in him, so he was soon back to his life of crime.

  This time he had a longer run before he had any trouble with the police, but eventually the inevitable happened and he was picked up. He got bail, and when he saw Girlie she was furious with him. He didn’t like to make her unhappy, but he was getting used to doing what he wanted – sister Ivy was no better at controlling him than Pearl had been – and he resented being told how to behave. Girlie backed off and he carried on with his way of life regardless, heading helter-skelter to his next meeting with the law.

  It came when he was stickdropping from bus-stop to bus-stop in Clapham Common. Two plain-clothes policemen tried to grab him and a big fight ensued. They were no match for Tee. A black bus inspector even came to their aid, but he ended up getting beaten along with them. Tee made his escape down Crescent Lane and hid up in Grovesnor House flats, but they came after him, carrying out a door-to-door search until they found Tee and dragged him down to Clapham station.

  The coppers at the station made it clear that they were going to give Tee a good hiding, but he was saved by the arresting officer who said, ‘It’s all right, lads, he’s going to give us a long statement.’ Then he turned to Tee. ‘Aren’t you? Say yes, for fuck’s sake.’ Tee realised he had better do as he was told, so he agreed.

  ‘What?’ one of the other policemen shouted. ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘I’m going to write a long statement,’ Tee repeated.

  ‘What?’ they all screamed, their hands at their ears.

  He shouted his reply this time, so that they could hear it loud and clear. They all looked disappointed. He signed the statement without bothering to find out what was in it. He was beyond caring and they had so much on him anyway that it didn’t matter what was written down. The only thing that interested him was the parcel of fish and chips which sister Ivy sent when she was informed of his whereabouts.

  He was taken to South-western magistrates’ court in Lavender Hill where the magistrate said bail was out of the question – he was sending the case to the Inner London Crown court, recommending that Tee go to prison for a long, long time. Then he was taken off to Wormwood Scrubs on remand. The procedure was becoming routine to him. When the case came up at the ILCC, Tee pleaded guilty. The judge stared down at him and gave him a lecture about his crimes.

  Then he said he was giving Tee a sentence of eighteen months, suspended for two years. Tee was amazed and delighted. He had been given one last chance.

  But even so, and even with Girlie’s love, he still could not stay out of trouble. He liked taking her out at the weekends and showing her off, but her telephonist job kept her busy during the day, and often when she finished she was too tired to go out clubbing. Staying in and watching television didn’t interest him – he’d had enough of that in the nick – so he was soon meeting up with his old friends, Rodent, D, Staff, Igus, Boobs, Big Youth, Mike, Jack Ranking, Natty Dennis, Dirty H, Chipper and Buzzer. Some had jobs, but it was difficult even for those who did. While Tee was inside the notorious Sus laws had been passed, and even innocent black boys in Brixton were being stopped simply for walking down the street. There were boys Tee knew who wanted to go straight, or were going straight, or had never been anything other than straight, but who were stopped so many times on Sus that they gave up and started doing what the police assumed they had been up to in the first place. But most of Tee’s friends were into crime anyway, and even though Girlie pleaded with him to live an honest life, he was soon back at picking pockets.

  This time he had a good run of about six months without any trouble from the Old Bill. Then one day he was with some lads down the earth, doing the Piccadilly line. They were now rougher and braver than they had ever been and some of the time they scarcely bothered to pick pockets – they just robbed passengers at will, taking their wallets and bags in front of their eyes. The train they were on pulled out from Russell Square, heading north, but it stopped as soon as it entered the tunnel, and stayed there for several minutes. Someone must have raised the alarm, because when the train finally pulled into the next station, King’s Cross, uniformed police officers were waiting. They came on board and as they started searching people, one of them practically pounced on Tee.

  ‘I know this one,’ he said.

  ‘Leave him,’ the sergeant replied.

  ‘But it’s Tee, the police GBHer,’ the other shouted out.

  ‘All right, keep an eye on him.’

  Pretty soon Tee and his friends had been arrested for conspiracy and attempted theft. After some weeks on remand, although the lads who had been with him when he was arrested got off, Tee was found guilty and given twenty-one months at Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution.

  Aylesbury was a step up from Feltham, much tougher and tenser. The regime was hard, but as at borstal, the other inmates presented more of a worry than the screws. The boys here were only a step down from full-grown men and they carried themselves as such. Here were some of the toughest young criminals in England. Some of them Tee already knew from Stamford House, like the Carbury brothers and Steve – who were part of the Deptford Axe gang which had gone on a rampage of armed robberies – others like Mastive, Patrick, Jimmy and Fingers were Brixtonites. There were hard nuts from Birmingham and places further north, and muggers, burglars and even killers.

  His first few days, Tee felt very small and sad, and he kept to himself and busied himself in the laundry house where he was put to work. The cells at Aylesbury were real cells, with bars on the windows like in an adult prison. In that hot summer, it was like an oven in there. But Tee’s reputation preceded him, and it did not take him long to start to live up to it and to find his place among the toughest of the Aylesbury inmates.

  In the laundry, Tee soon took the best position, which involved searching pockets before clothes went into the wash. Anything like money or tobacco that had been carelessly left in a pocket became Tee’s.

  His anger and frustration still sometimes got the better of him. Although he was seldom challenged by the other boys he did occasionally get into fights, and ended up down in the block. But as the weeks went by, Tee adapted to life in Aylesbury as he had at Stamford House and Feltham, and soon the weeks grew into months and the months into a year. And eventually, his sentence came to an end, and it was time for Tee to rejoin the world, to return to Brixton and Girlie and whatever life had in store for him.

  6

  Girlie

  The first thing Tee did when he returned to London was go to a sauna and steam the grime and smell and memories of the prison out of his pores. Then he went to find Girlie, who was there waiting for him, beautiful as ever. He felt like a man, twenty feet tall, having a stunner like her.

  His room at Kellett Road was waiting for him, too. He was welcomed home and heard all the news. Roland was still writing songs, singing and dancing, playing the superstar he wanted to become. Richie and Selena were both growing up. Pearl’s cooking was as delicious as ever, and she and Mr H even agreed to Girlie moving in as well. They thought she might steady him.

  Girlie was working hard. She had never committed a single crime in her whole young life. Tee knew that he loved her, and had decided in prison that he wanted to have a baby with her. She thought it was a good idea too, but it meant he would have to go straight, so for a few weeks he looked for a job. But when he didn’t find one, it was as if something inside him simply shrugged away memories of prison and fears of returning in the future. He didn’t know what to do with his blotted life
, and once again it was not long before he was drifting back in the wrong direction, towards trouble.

  All around him, the people he knew were involved in criminal activities. The big men were selling weed and hash, running gambling houses, keeping clubs. Some were into armed robberies. Others were notorious pimps and ponces.

  At weekends, Girlie and Tee were always together, but during the week when she was off at work he started picking pockets again, working bus-stops, pubs and anywhere else there were crowds of people, like Madame Tussaud’s or Victoria coach station. He was nineteen years old now, still young, but big and tough.

  Tee used the money he stole to buy himself smart new outfits, and with these he was ready for a new crime he had learned about in prison, called creeping.

  One day, he went out dressed in a white shirt, black tie and black wool suit, with a reversible raincoat thrown over his arm. He looked like any other hard-working office employee, or at least that was what he hoped.

  He walked past a big office building, checking to see who was on the front desk, then did a U-turn and entered, behaving as if he was looking for somebody. When no one noticed him for what he really was, he took a lift up to one of the floors and walked about confidently, making out that he had as much right to be in the office as anyone. He had picked a good time, dinner hour, when people were relaxing or were out of the office. He knocked on several doors. When someone said ‘Come in,’ he would ask for Mr Taylor or Mrs Galloway or Miss Collins, and when he was told they did not work there, he thanked them and left. These offices did not interest him. It was the ones where he got no answer that were Tee’s aim. When he knocked and heard nothing he opened the door and crept in.