Mr Nice: an autobiography (32 page)

The first morning in Corfu began to fulfil Durrell’s promises. The house we shared was perched on a cliff near Kassiopi and surrounded by sandy beaches and lush vegetation. It was very early, and I was the only one awake. I put on my track suit and started jogging down the path to the beach. Long before I reached the sand, I ran out of breath. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Then my right knee gave in. All the prison nights spent dreaming of beach and wave jogging seemed more wasted than ever. I thought yoga made you fit. It clearly wasn’t good for stamina or knees and was no preparation for jogging. I hobbled back to the house and looked forward to resuming a life of complete debauchery, devoid of inner peace and physical fitness.

Through exhaustion, knee damage, and retsina hangover, I stayed bedridden for most of the next few days. Then sunbathing, sea swimming, and more retsina combined to remove the jailbird pallor from my skin and the smell of the nick from my nostrils. I played with my three daughters and fell deeper in love with each of them. We explored the island in our rented car. Sometimes Masha would baby-sit, so Judy and I could enjoy ourselves like never before.

Our immediate neighbours were long-time residents of Corfu and significant figures on the island. Through them we met the former British Consul in Corfu, John Fort, and a selection of retired English gentry. They were typical expatriates: former Foreign Office employees, news
correspondents, and arms dealers. They were riveted to coverage of the Falklands war, then in full swing. As long as the war kept going until Wimbledon fortnight and the cricket Test matches, the summer would not be boring. Any lull in the reporting was filled by a round of golf followed by a plate of fried eggs washed down by large glasses of cheap Greek gin at a modest local taverna known as the ‘nineteenth hole’. Judy and I were frequently invited to play golf, but after a few painful lessons, I realised the game was not for me. However, the fried eggs and gin were not to be missed, and I enjoyed these ‘après-golf’ sessions immensely.

‘What’s your line of country, dear boy?’ asked John Fort.

‘Borderline,’ I said without really thinking but recalling days of crossing frontiers. What the hell! I’ll level with them.

‘Well, to tell you the truth, John, I’m a convicted marijuana smuggler that’s just come out of the nick.’

The ‘nineteenth hole’ was suitably silenced. Judy raised her disapproving eyes to the ceiling.

‘How absolutely fascinating!’ burst out a gin-and-egg-yolk-saturated ex-arms dealer called Ronnie. ‘Do tell us the whole story.’

I gave a censored version, leaving out the IRA and MI6 stuff, and was the hero of the hour.

‘I say, but aren’t you that spy chappie the papers talk about,’ asked Ronnie, ‘from Oxford? Balliol, wasn’t it?’

This had gone far enough. Judy went to the ladies’.

‘Yeah, but none of that is very interesting any more,’ I mumbled with contrived bashfulness. ‘It’s not like the old days.’

‘You’re right,’ agreed Ronnie. ‘You’re right. Precious little is. Look at that awful business in Goose Green, for example …’

To my relief the conversation moved on to the Falklands conflict. Just a few minutes later, Ronnie gripped my arm and guided me to a quiet corner of the room.

‘Do you miss it, Howard?’

‘What?’ Was he referring to Oxford or prison?

‘Smuggling, old boy. It must have been thrilling stuff. What on earth can you do now without getting bored?’

‘Maybe I’ll start smuggling again,’ I said.

‘Could do worse,’ encouraged Ronnie, ‘a lot worse. Here’s my card. Although we all have to have a home on a Mediterranean island, you can’t beat travelling for my money. I still keep my hand in – a few irons in the fire. Must hold on to our talents, whatever they are.’

Back in England, I devoted several weeks to the family. We drove to Kenfig Hill to stay with my parents, my first visit back there for almost ten years. Although I was easily the locality’s most notorious wandering boy, reactions to me from people in the streets and pubs suggested I’d never been away. We talked about the weather and the Welsh rugby team. No one mentioned my boyhood friend Marty. It was complicated. I was free, he was still in prison. He’d been convicted of working for me, and I’d been found not guilty of employing him. With Judy and the children I walked over Kenfig dunes to Sker Beach and thought of boats unloading hashish on to the sand, guarded and protected by R. D. Blackmore’s mermaid, immortalised in his
The Maid of Sker
. The shore was deserted. Anchored in the distance were the massive hundred-thousand-ton iron-ore ships that my father used to discharge after he left the sea and came to work ashore. The blast furnaces and chimney stacks of Port Talbot’s giant steelworks still made most of the sky invisible. On the walk back we noticed the turrets of the buried city’s castle just poking eerily through the sandy ground. Where the dunes meet the road lies The Prince of Wales, old Kenfig’s medieval town hall and home of the finest draught Worthington in the world.

‘Howard, what do you think about the talking wall by here?’ a fellow drinker enquired. ‘Bloody amazing, really, when you think about it.’

‘What talking wall?’ I asked.

‘The one upstairs by here, mun,’ he emphasised. ‘You know, it’s in what used to be the old council room. On some nights the wall starts talking in very old Welsh. They’ve had the professors from the University here loads of times. Hard to explain, mind, isn’t it? Walls talking, like, you know.’

‘Were the lads who heard it drunk?’ I asked.

‘Oh aye, but no more than normal, like.’

Sure enough, there was a talking wall upstairs. Drunk and sober people from all sorts of different places had made a special journey to Kenfig to hear it. Various audio experts from the BBC had recorded and analysed the wall’s spooky emissions. Welsh-language experts from the University of Wales had identified masses of medieval Welsh vocabulary whispering away in nooks and crannies. Specialists in solid-state physics and integrated-circuit theory suggested complicated theories to explain the phenomena. I couldn’t find out much more. I kept being told it was ‘something to do with the silicon in the sand’. The wall still hasn’t talked to me, but I’ve yet to give it a proper opportunity.

Judy, the two girls, and I also spent a few days in Upper Cwm Twrch at my father’s smallholding, stuck in the middle of nowhere with a view of everywhere. An almost completely overgrown path meandered from the dwelling, through the Black Mountains, to an otherwise inaccessible lake, Llyn Fan. Many Welshmen (including all the locals) believe this lake to be the one featured in Arthurian legend. It certainly looks the part. Sheer cliffs form the banks. There are no fish. There are no waves, even when the wind is blowing. Weird and large birds hover over it.

The weather was unusually sunny, and we took many walks, picking berries and mushrooms. The surrounding area was littered with everything from ruined Roman castles to disused coal mines. The native sheep were friendly. Some even belonged to us and had large M’s branded on their sides. Most of the sheep-shit trails ended in little pubs that
served delicious beer and enormous portions of disgusting deep-frozen food. I’d brought my own hashish, and some of the mushrooms had psychedelic properties. Life was good, but the money stash was dwindling. And Ernie hadn’t got in touch.

Back in Brighton there were messages to call Bernie Simons, my solicitor. Since my release, a number of authors had contacted him expressing an interest in writing my biography with my co-operation. They included Piers Paul Reid, author of
Alive
and the latest book on the great train robbers. Bernie said there could be good money involved, but I would have to be careful. There could be legal complications.

The Inland Revenue had also been in touch with Bernie. I hadn’t paid any tax since 1973. The Revenue said I’d made lots of money from dope, whatever the Old Bailey jury thought, and they wanted their cut. Bernie said I needed an excellent accountant, both to sort out my taxes and to ensure me a proper income from any book written about me.

I kept wondering about the thirty thousand pounds Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise had seized from the Hans Court flat when I was arrested. I had ‘proved’ that the money had been given me by the Mexican Secret Service.

‘Bernie, can’t we sue the Customs for that thirty grand they nicked?’

‘Howard, you were astonishingly lucky to get acquitted. This would be pushing your luck a bit, don’t you think?’

‘But, Bernie, not suing them would be like admitting it was dope money. An innocent person would do exactly as I suggest.’

‘Are you instructing me to sue them?’ asked Bernie.

‘Yes. Yes.’

Bernie initiated proceedings for the return of the money. The Customs went berserk. They assured Bernie I’d never get a single penny, even if I won the court case. Bernie’s reluctance disappeared. We’d go for them. We’d get them.

Bernie took me to meet Stanley Rosenthal, a brilliantly astute accountant working in a nondescript office off Marble Arch. He suggested that a company be formed to receive money from publishers of any book about me. It was called Stepside Limited. Stanley said he would inform the Inland Revenue he was representing me. I told him about suing Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. He laughed.

The Revenue called a meeting for June 30th, 1982. I turned up at the Inland Revenue’s Special Office (A10) with Stanley and Bernie. We were greeted by an extremely amiable Welshman named Price and an English prick named Spencer. When Bernie introduced himself, Spencer said that solicitors were worth respect only when their clients pleaded guilty. This was a bad start. We should have walked out. Price and Spencer questioned me. My lines were easy: I had no money. I’d never made a single penny out of cannabis dealing. I tried to once in 1973, but the load was busted, and I got a conviction. Any evidence of my ever having money was either due to the kindness of other people giving me loans or to large advances from the Mexican Secret Services. Price and Spencer didn’t believe it. Despite my being cleared by the highest court in the land of any cannabis dealing, they felt I’d made some income over the last nine years. They’d be in touch.

To ensure against arrest, Old John had spent the last couple of years in Kathmandu. We wanted to see each other for old times’ sake and celebrate August 13th, my birthday and that of Old John’s lady, Liz. Appleton had extended my passport for another two months, so with our wives and children we met in Lyons, a good place for Leos. It didn’t take long to adjust to hotel room service and French restaurants. We went to the Beaujolais vineyards and drank a lot of Fleurie.

‘The thing is, what we should do, is bring this in and forget all the other kinds of madness, for now.’

Old John was still a little obscure, but he clearly wanted us to become wine merchants and importers, at least until things cooled off.

‘That’s not a bad idea, John. We could both put in a bit of money, re-rent the top floor of Carlisle Street and use it as our central office. But we don’t know much about wine.’

‘Yeah, but there’s the Mad Major, isn’t there?’ said Old John. ‘We sold him a stove, and the thing is, we then saw him in Greece. A complete lunatic, but the man is a total gentleman. Knows everything about wine.’

The Mad Major, whom I’d yet to meet, was Major Michael Pocock, a military alcoholic who had spent some years in the past exporting wine from France to England.

‘Okay, John, let’s do it. Judy will be pleased to see me doing something straight.’

Judy, the children, and I went back to England via Ticino, Switzerland. We wanted to see Campione d’Italia while it was still summer, relive some good times, enjoy the views, and eat in the Taverna. During our first evening we were given a warm welcome by our ex-neighbours, bar-keepers, and restaurateurs, who seemed not to know of my recent incarceration. Aware that, unlike last time here, we didn’t have unlimited money, we checked into a modest hotel just outside Lugano. The next morning, we took a lakeside stroll and sat down in a café in Piazza Reforma, the main square. Every building there is either a bank or a café. We were sipping
cappuccinos
and watching the children play when Judy suddenly sat bolt upright, caught hold of my arm, and pointed towards the Union Bank of Switzerland.

‘Howard, I’m sure I opened an account there. I think it was quite a bit of money you gave me to put in.’

It was possible, I suppose. Money was a bit like snow in Switzerland. It came in avalanches, and I often lost track of it. It was, after all, over two years ago, and there’d been some water under the bridge.

‘Was it a lot?’ I asked.

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Is the account in your name?’

‘I think so.’

I watched Judy disappear into the bank. She was there a long time. I began to worry. She’d probably opened the account with her Mrs Tunnicliffe passport and forgotten. Maybe she was being grilled by the police. After half an hour, she emerged with an extremely broad smile.

‘Over twenty thousand pounds.’

We checked out of the Ticinese doss-house and into Lugano’s Hotel Splendide. The mini-bar was emptied in about twenty minutes. Room service brought up several bottles of champagne. We got roaring drunk and had our first furious quarrel since my release. The next day, neither of us could remember what it was about.

On our return to England, feeling considerably richer and furiously scratching my head to think of any more banks that might be holding my money, I re-took possession of 18, Carlisle Street, that small part of Soho that the prosecution had alleged I used as my dope-dealing headquarters. The electricity bills were still in the name of Mr Nice. I met Old John’s Mad Major. He was a pleasant man, and knew his wine. He would do as our connoisseur, but it was a pity he drank so much.