Mr Nice: an autobiography (5 page)

The incident did not turn me into an animal lover (though I do like cats best), but it has made me very hesitant of consciously inflicting pain on any creatures. Even cockroaches in prison cells do not have to worry for their lives (except in Louisiana). And if I do have to admit to any religion, I risk the hot flames of a Christian hell and say I’m a Buddhist, especially in Bangkok.

Although most inhabitants of the South Wales coalfield spoke Dylan Thomas English rather than Welsh, my mother was an exception. Her mother hailed from the Druidic wilds of West Wales. For the first five years of my life, I spoke only Welsh. The next five years, I attended an English-speaking primary school in Kenfig Hill, the small Glamorganshire mining village where I was born. Apart from my sister, Linda (a few years my junior), I had just one real friend, Marty Langford, whose father not only owned the local ice-cream shop but also had won a nationwide competition for the best ice-cream. Marty and I were bright infants and most of the time could hold our own in schoolyard scraps.

While waiting for my 11-plus results, I decided to fall ill. I was very bored with school and needed some attention and sympathy. I had previously discovered that the mercury in a regular clinical thermometer could be flicked up almost as easily as it could be flicked down. So long as no one was watching, I could decide what temperature to be. It’s true that near the thermometer’s bulb a gap in the mercury line was visible, but no one examines the end. Occasionally, I could not risk flicking it up without being caught, so I shamelessly fabricated symptoms such as sore throat, dizziness, nausea, and headache, while my temperature when I was unobserved would seemingly oscillate from just below normal to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Very few diseases produce roller-coaster temperature graphs. One is rather unimaginatively called undulant fever, although it is sometimes referred to as rock fever or even Gibraltar fever. It tended to occur in the tropics. Apparently St Paul had it. My father had certainly had it, unless he, too, was scamming. Although the local doctor was sceptical (he knew I was at it), he had little choice other than to agree with the medical specialists’ diagnosis that I, like Dad and St Paul, had contracted undulant fever. I was placed in an isolation ward in the nearest general hospital at Bridgend.

This was great stuff. Dozens of confused and interested doctors, nurses, and students surrounded my bed and were incredibly kind and considerate to me. They gave me all sorts of dope and all sorts of tests. My temperature was taken several times a day, and, unbelievably, I would sometimes be left alone with a thermometer, so I could engineer another fever. I would also take sneaky looks at enormously bulky files labelled, rather unjustly, ‘Not to be Handled by the Patient’. I developed a genuine interest in medicine and an even more genuine interest in nurses. I suppose I must have had erections before, but I certainly hadn’t associated their onset with leering at women. Now I did, but I still had no idea that these sensations were intimately linked with the survival of the human species.

After a few weeks of sex and drugs, I became bored again. I wanted to go home and play with my Meccano set. I stopped flicking up the thermometer and complained no more. Unfortunately, in those days hospital, like prison today, was much harder to get out of than to get into. My anxiety to leave the hospital bed took away my appetite. Accordingly, I was presenting the specialists with yet another symptom for them to log and ponder over. Eventually, by drinking gallons of Lucozade, my appetite returned, and I was discharged to undergo convalescence. My first scam was over.

In South Wales, there were more pubs than chapels and
more coal mines than schools. The local education authority sent me to a school named Garw Grammar School. Garw is the Welsh for rough, presumably referring to the terrain rather than the inhabitants. An old-fashioned co-educational grammar school, it lay at the dead end of a valley which was an eleven-mile, forty-five-minute, fun-filled school bus journey away from my home. Sheep were often to be seen wandering through the schoolyards, and occasionally they would attempt to graze in the classrooms.

I received an intensive crash-course in the facts of life, which form the first few lessons of the unofficial syllabus of any Welsh grammar school. I was told that a carefully handled erection could produce intense pleasure through ejaculation and that a well-guided ejaculation could produce children. The techniques of masturbation were painstakingly explained. In the privacy of my bedroom, I tried. I really did. Over and over again. I tried very hard indeed. Nothing. This was terrible. I didn’t mind not having kids. I just wanted to come, like everybody else, and my inability to do so plagued and depressed me. I had yet to realise that if one had to fail at anything, one would choose failing to become a wanker.

I had stopped scrapping and fighting, partly because I had lost the knack, i.e., I was getting beaten, and partly because I couldn’t stand physical contact with boys. The nurses had spoiled me. God bless them.

Mutual masturbation in the sports and physical training lessons was not unknown, and the idea of being coerced to participate and admit my shortcoming (and demonstrate my no-coming) terrified me. Relying on my increased medical knowledge and, once again, flicking the mercury thermometer, I developed a mysterious illness and was excused from all school physical activities. This rendered me a wimp (though the word then and there was sissy) in the eyes of my peers. My ability to do well in school examinations made me into a swot, which in some ways was worse. My life was not
going the way I wanted it to: girls ignored me and boys made fun of me. Some radical changes were necessary.

Elvis Presley clearly suffered from none of these problems. I watched his movies and listened to his records endlessly. I read everything about him. I copied his hairstyle, tried to look like him, and attempted to sound and move like him. I failed. But I was getting there, or so I thought. After all, I was slim, tall, dark-haired, and thick-lipped; and by standing up straight I could even lose my round shoulders and pot-belly. Also, since the age of six, I had been taking twice-weekly piano lessons at a neighbour’s home. To my parents’ dismay, I now stopped practising
Für Elise
and the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata in the early morning and directed my talents towards giving note-perfect renditions of
Teddy Bear
and
Blue Suede Shoes
to an imaginary audience.

At school, I decided to become really mischievous. This, I hoped, would make me unpopular with the staff and popular with my classmates. To a large extent it did, but my lack of physical toughness continued to bestow upon me an aura of wimpishness, and I was subject to occasional bullying. I didn’t yet have sufficient pluck to pull out my Elvis card. What I needed was a bodyguard.

There were no organised extra-curricular activities at the Garw Grammar School because most of the pupils lived in scattered and fairly isolated mining communities. Each village had its own social life and its own youth, only a few of whom attended a grammar school the other end of the valley. Each village also had its tough kid. Kenfig Hill’s was Albert Hancock, an extremely wild and strong James Dean look-alike, a few years my senior. I used to see him around, but I was scared stiff of him. So were most people when they were sober. It was impossible to conceive of a better bodyguard. How on earth could I befriend him? It was easier than I thought. I supplied cigarettes and asked him to show me how to inhale. I made myself available to run errands for him. I ‘lent’ him money. A long-lasting alliance began to
develop. My schoolfriends were too intimidated to taunt me further: Albert’s fierce reputation was known for miles around. When I was fourteen, Albert took me to a pub to sample my first pint. There was an old piano in the bar. With alcoholic courage, I strolled over and accompanied myself singing
Blue Suede Shoes
. The clientele loved it. The good times had begun.

The good times ended about a year later when my father discovered the diary in which I had foolishly recorded the cigarettes I’d smoked, the beer I’d drunk, and my sexual adventures. He grounded me. I could go to school, but nowhere else. He insisted I cut off my Teddy Boy hairstyle. (Fortunately, Presley had just had his hair cut for the United States Army, so I used this punishment to some advantage.)

My ‘O’ levels were six months away. There was nothing to do but study for them, which I did with surprising obsession and tenacity. I passed all ten subjects with very high grades. My parents were delighted. The grounding was lifted. Astonishingly, Albert was also over the moon about my results: his best friend was a combination of Elvis and Einstein. The good times began again.

My new-found freedom coincided with the opening in Kenfig Hill of Van’s Teen and Twenty Club. Visiting bands would play at least once a week, and more often than not, I was invited to sing a few numbers. I had a very small repertoire (
What’d I Say
,
Blue Suede Shoes
, and
That’s All Right Mama
), but it always went down well. Life became almost routine. Weekdays at school were devoted to the study of my ‘A’ level subjects of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. Week nights from 5.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. were similarly devoted. All the rest of my waking time was spent drinking in pubs, dancing and singing in Van’s, and taking out girls.

Early one spring evening, at the request of several Chubby Checker imitators, I was trying to play
Let’s Twist Again
on the piano in the lounge bar of The Royal Oak, Station Road,
Kenfig Hill. The already fading light was suddenly further darkened by the arrival of five large local policemen who had come to check the age of the pub’s customers. The landlord, Arthur Hughes, was never very good at guessing ages. I was not yet eighteen. I was breaking the law. One of the policemen I recognised as PC Hamilton, a huge Englishman who had recently taken up residence in the village. He lived a stone’s throw from my house. Hamilton walked up to me.

‘Stop that racket right now.’

‘Carry on playing, Howard. It’s not illegal. It should be, mind,’ said Albert Hancock.

I played a little slower.

‘I’ve told you once to stop that racket,’ snarled Hamilton.

‘Bugger ’im, Howard. He can’t stop you playing. Fancy doing the twist, Hamilton, and get some of that fat off?’

The pub cackled with laughter at Albert’s audacious wit.

‘Watch it, Hancock,’ warned Hamilton. ‘I’ve got a Black Maria outside just waiting for you.’

‘Well, bring her in, Hamilton. There’s no colour bar here.’

To the accompaniment of more laughter, I started to play the first few bars of Jerry Lee Lewis’s
Great Balls of Fire
. I played loud and fast. Hamilton grabbed my shoulder.

‘How old are you, son?’

‘Eighteen,’ I lied confidently. I had been drinking in pubs for over three years, and no one had ever questioned my age. To add some insolence, I grabbed my pint of bitter and drank some of it. I was already too drunk.

‘What’s your name, son?’

‘Why do you want to know? If I’m eighteen, I can drink here whatever my name is.’

‘Come outside, son.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do as I say.’

I carried on playing until Hamilton dragged me outside. He took out his notebook and pencil, Dixon of Dock Green style.

‘Now, give me your name, son.’

‘David James.’

To my knowledge, there was no such person.

‘I thought I heard your friends call you Howard.’

‘No. My name’s David.’

‘Where do you live, son? I know I’ve seen you around somewhere.’

‘25, Pwllygath Street.’

There was such an address, but I had no idea who lived there.

‘Where do you work, son?’

‘I’m still in school.’

‘I thought you looked young, son. Well, I’ll just check on this information you’ve given me. I’ll find you if it’s wrong. Goodnight, son.’

I went back inside and got bought loads of drinks.

It wasn’t until I got up the next morning that I realised how stupid I had been. Hamilton would quickly find out that there was no David James at 25, Pwllygath Street, and I was as likely as not to run into Hamilton the next time I ventured out of the house. I began to get worried. I was going to get caught and be charged with drinking under age and giving the police false information. There would be a court case. It would be written up in the
Glamorgan Gazette
alongside Albert Hancock’s latest vandalous exploit. I would certainly be grounded, maybe worse.

Although my father disapproved of smoking, drinking, and gambling, he always forgave any of my transgressions if I told him the truth. I confessed to him the events of the previous night. He went to see Hamilton and told him what a good boy and clever student I was. Hamilton expressed scepticism, citing Albert Hancock as an unlikely source of good influence. Somehow or other, my father won the day. Hamilton agreed not to pursue the matter any further.

My father delivered me a serious lecture. I learned a few things: I, like most people, behaved stupidly when drunk,
policemen could cause problems, my father was a good man, and criminal charges could be dropped.

King’s College, University of London, had invited me to be interviewed for a place to read Physics. I looked forward to the trip, the first one I had ever undertaken alone. Physics was still coming easily to me, and the interview presented me with no worries. My mind was more concerned with visiting Soho, a place Albert had discussed at length with me on several occasions.