Senor Nice (12 page)

Until 1963 I had thought of crime as violent, cruel, a bit silly and necessarily wrong. The Great Train Robbery, during which £2.3 million – equivalent to £40 million today – in used banknotes was stolen from a Royal Mail train, changed that. The gang fitted the Hollywood image, with each member providing a particular skill. Buster Edwards, a small-time thief, fraudster and ex-boxer, helped out. Bruce Reynolds, an antique dealer, was the brains and meticulous mastermind; Gordon Goody was the muscle. Charlie Wilson was the well-connected underworld crook; John Wheater, a public-school-educated solicitor, was the respectable front man. And Ronnie Biggs recruited a driver for the hijacked train.

At 3.00 a.m., in the grey light of an August morning, the mail train pulled to a stop at false signals erected in the remote Buckinghamshire countryside, and a group posing as railway workers wearing uniform blue overalls appeared on the tracks and quietly took 120 sacks of loot to a nearby rented farmhouse. The plan was for no violence – the gang wanted a victimless crime – but for reasons best known to himself the driver of the train decided to take them on and ended up receiving a thump with an iron bar.

The media jumped on this to demonstrate that the robbers were nothing more than sordid men of violence, but we weren’t fooled. The train robbers were romantic daredevils
who had made a mockery of the foolish and out-of-touch Tory government. They showed what could be done. They were heroes. We loved the reports of how they played Monopoly with real money as they lay low in the farmhouse. I dreamed of one day meeting Bruce Reynolds.

The police closed in and the train robbers scattered. Forensic experts found fingerprints on the Monopoly set. Gang members fled to all corners of the globe. Possible sightings of the fugitives filled tabloid front pages. Occasionally, one of them would be caught and locked up; we would go to the pub and commiserate. Then another would escape from prison; we would go out and celebrate. We were proud to be British. We had the world’s best criminals.

At the time I was completely unaware of any Welsh–English hostility or problem. Neither my parents nor other adults with whom I came into contact taught me that England was anything other than a friendly and powerful parent country. In school we had learned how in the early years of the fifteenth century Owain Glyndwr had failed to drive the Anglo-Norman conquerors from Welsh soil, but since then the two nations had been joined in indivisible union. Wales had no capital city until 1955. Road signs and official forms were in English. The Welsh were just western English. England was no enemy; that epithet applied to the Germans and the Japanese; the hangover from the Second World War continuing to manifest itself in ration books, comics and boys’ games.

There were differences, of course. The Welsh could sing better, but not the songs that I liked. The English had glamour and sex, while the Welsh had chapels and sheep. The English were better footballers; Wales had just four teams in the four football divisions and only one player of note, John Charles, who quickly left Cardiff to play for Leeds. The Welsh were good at rugby union, and it was important to beat England at least in this sport. Although tempers occasionally flared both on and off the field, such as when my grandfather beat the
radio to bits with his hobnail boots when Wales missed an easy penalty, it was just good sports-field rivalry. In 1952, Wales had won the Grand Slam, trouncing Scotland, Ireland, France and England, but that year we joined the English in their mourning of the death of King George VI. His grandson would be the next prince of Wales, the first since the future Edward VIII took the title in 1910. We seemed pleased, and the next year queued outside the few houses that had television to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Knowing and understanding little more Welsh history than that, I remember sitting down with Marty at the Moulders Arms, a rough and ready pub in Cardiff city centre near the edge of Tiger Bay. The Four Seasons’ ‘Walk Like a Man’ belted out of the jukebox. We silently mouthed the lyrics, showing off our knowledge of modern music. Although intending to celebrate prematurely our eighteenth birthdays, we were also drinking in an attempt to cheer up. Wales hadn’t won the Grand Slam or Triple Crown for over ten years, and hopes for any turn in the losing tide had just been dashed by losing 6–13 to England at Cardiff. Welsh heavyweight boxers Joe Erskine and Dick Richardson had lost their British empire and European titles. In ten years there had been only four Welsh singers in the top twenty: Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark, Maureen Evans – who sang cover versions for Woolworth’s Embassy label – and Ricky Valance (‘Tell Laura I Love Her’). To add to our depression, Wales was enduring the worst of British winters, now known as the Big Freeze of 1963.

‘Marty, I think Liverpool should have been made capital of Wales. There’s probably more Welshmen there than in Cardiff, and a lot more happening with music and football. There’s nothing here – it’s dead. I’m going to London for a university interview soon. I can’t wait.’

Marty leaned over to whisper, ‘I agree with you, but I wouldn’t say how great Liverpool is in too loud a voice. Liverpool council have drowned the Tryweryn Valley just to
get cheap water. Loads of families lost their homes. They were just told to bugger off and live somewhere else. There’s a lot of bad feeling about it, especially round here.’

Marty’s warning came too late – I had been overheard.

‘So you’re an English-lover, are you?’ asked a red-headed bloke with arms of pure muscle.

‘I’ve nothing against them.’

‘And you call yourself Welsh?’

‘I am Welsh and probably speak the language better than you do.’

Welsh was my first language; I learned English at the age of four. At the same time my father, recently retired from the Merchant Navy, began to learn Welsh. I was quicker so we conversed in English while my mother and I continued to speak to each other in Welsh. A year later my sister was born, and both my parents and I spoke to her in Welsh. My father and mother talked English to each other. I attended an English-speaking primary school where fewer than 5 per cent of the pupils spoke Welsh and quickly became more articulate in English than Welsh.

‘All the more reason for you to hate the fucking English then. Have you got any idea what they’ve done to us?’

‘Yes, but that was hundreds of years ago,’ I said.

‘Was it indeed? Hundreds of years ago? Time you learned something other than the words of English pop songs.’

‘American, actually. That was the Four Seasons.’

‘Same fucking thing. The English might suck up to the Yanks; fucked if I will. Hundreds of years ago? When did the English charge us for using our roads? When did the English physically force us to stop speaking Welsh by putting Welsh Nots around our necks? When did they rape our country by turning it into a heap of slag? When did they send starving Welsh children down the pits so they could steal our coal, our tin, our lead and even our gold? When did they flood our valleys to steal our water? Hundreds of years ago? I don’t
fucking think so. It happened during our parents’ time. It’s happening now, and wankers like you just sit back and watch them take the piss out of us, silence us, and starve us to death while they use our money to build bloody Polaris submarines. You may as well fuck off to Liverpool or London; you’re no fucking use here, you groveller.’

Marty stood up. ‘Come on, Howard, let’s get out of here.’

‘Go on, you English-loving yellow-bellied chicken. Go and pollute some other pub.’

Marty and I scarpered. We knew we didn’t stand a chance.

‘What was all that Welsh Not stuff about?’ I asked Marty.

‘Haven’t you heard of that? I thought you were doing A levels this summer.’

‘I am, but in science and maths not Welsh history.’

Marty patiently explained that a hundred-odd years ago, when popular disturbances and riots were common in Wales, MPs had asked in Westminster why the Welsh people were so prone to lawlessness. Parliament decided the Welsh language was the problem: Welsh was not an official language and simply wasn’t a suitable medium for education. The moral and material condition of the Welsh could only be improved by force-feeding them English. To accomplish this piece of cultural oppression, schools introduced the Welsh Not. Any child heard speaking Welsh during school was given a plaque to be handed on to whoever next spoke the language. At the end of lessons, the child left with the Not was punished.

‘But that stuff doesn’t happen now, Marty.’

‘I know, but it wasn’t that long ago, not hundreds of years ago. That hard nut in the pub did have a point, as he did about the mines. Don’t forget the English poured into the Welsh coal mining areas and tipped the language balance forever.’

‘They weren’t trying to destroy the Welsh language; they were just looking for work.’

‘I’m not saying it’s the workers’ fault,’ protested Marty. ‘The English fat cats never came to the mines; they just owned
them and packed people off to work there. They didn’t care what was happening to the Welsh language and culture. The Welsh cared, all right, but no one listened. There’s still plenty of resentment against English domination; you’ve just experienced some of it.’

Less than a week later a professionally made gelignite bomb blew up a transformer at the Tryweryn Valley dam site. Other blasts followed. Mudiad Amddyffyn Cymru, the Movement for the Defence of Wales, had dramatically announced its existence and purpose. Plaid Cymru, the largely ineffectual forty-year-old Welsh nationalist party, quickly distanced itself from the attacks, preferring to carry on whining. The police quickly caught the bombers but English-owned cottages in Wales started to go up in flames and Welsh language societies mounted demonstrations tinged with confrontation. Some of the protesters carried placards bearing the slogan ‘Free Wales Army’ and sported the emblem of a white eagle in tribute to the legendary White Eagles of Snowdon, who from their lofty crags would swoop down on any invaders. A militant Welsh terrorist group had briefly overtaken the IRA as a thorn in England’s side. There would be no more grovelling to the English. Welsh patriotism was no longer safely consigned to history. The Welsh had the most beautiful flag in the world, the most stirring national anthem and one of the oldest living languages. Wales, with its vast resources, could become the envy of the world’s independent nations. I would never again forget I was Welsh.

Despite these distractions, I managed to do enough revision to get three grade As in my A Levels. I celebrated by going to see the Everly Brothers’ midweek concert in Cardiff. Unfortunately, one of the brothers was ill, but the solo performance was excellent. After the show, special buses took us back to the valleys. I sat next to a beautiful girl who smiled shyly.

‘Great show, wasn’t it?’ I said.

‘Yes, but I wish both the brothers had been there. I love them.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Ireland, but my family have just moved to Kenfig Hill.’

‘That’s where I live,’ I said with unconcealed excitement.

‘I know. I’ve seen you a few times waiting for the school bus in the morning when my dad drives me to my job. I work in the council offices. You’re called Howard, aren’t you?’ Her smile broadened at the look of pleasure on my face. ‘My name is Susan.’

‘Any chance of a date?’

‘OK, but I can’t come out until Friday. Dad doesn’t like me going out in the week much. I could only come to the concert tonight if I promised to stay in until then.’

‘Let’s make it Friday then.’

‘OK, but where shall we meet?’

‘Elim Chapel Youth Club. I’ll be there from eight o’clock.’

‘OK, my dad will drop me off there. Look out for me won’t you?’

Now, almost forty years later, I was on my way back to Britain to meet for the first time the outcome of that chance meeting, my daughter.

I already had four children. Four years ago Myfanwy, now thirty-two, had provided me with a delightful grandson and was living on a farm in Devon studying to become a Rudolf Steiner teacher. She had been just one year old when I left her and her mother Rosie for life on the run as a fugitive, but we never lost our love for each other and still spent wonderful times together. Amber, my first of three children with Judy, was twenty-seven and a brilliant barrister who would go on to work for the Court of Criminal Appeals. Francesca, twenty-three, had qualified as a yoga teacher and would soon gain a philosophy degree from Trinity College, Dublin. Patrick,
sixteen, was convalescing from a number of serious and lengthy surgical operations on his back.

He had been born with scoliosis, a helical twist of the spine, and had aggravated his condition by jumping off a roof, breaking both his legs, when four years old. Despite Judy’s unceasing efforts to improve his condition through treatments other than surgery, nothing worked. Mustering more courage than I had ever had to, Patrick submitted himself to the surgeon’s knife. The operations worked, and he is now a tall proud teenager with a will and a spine of steel.

The pride I have for each of my children continues to make my life the most precious joy, but it wasn’t all happy families. My relationship with Judy did not outlast the seven years of separation caused by my imprisonment. Survival in prison forces you to abandon, or at least significantly reduce, emotional attachments to those outside. Failure to do so is a prescription for vulnerability and continuous psychological pain. I left the penitentiary with emotions and ideals hardened to the limits. Judy had kept the family and family house together without the children calling someone else ‘Daddy’ and I am certain that had the positions been reversed I would not have been a model loyal husband. However, I found it impossible to accept her admitted infidelities as insignificant, had no intention of being faithful myself, and found the prospect of renewed marriage vows a restriction on the precious freedom I had regained on my release from prison. So I had got my bedsit in Shepherd’s Bush and was seeking a divorce.

At Gatwick the immigration queues doubled back on one another several times. Mobile phones beeped despite the notices commanding them to be turned off. Two-way mirrors gave distorted reflections, and several hundred CCTV cameras swept every inch of airport space. I wondered how difficult drug smuggling must be these days. Passing through passport control, I picked up my bag and strolled through the
green channel. A dog with brown and white patches slightly resembling a spaniel ran its snotty nose over my luggage, emitted a machine-gun burst of hard sniffs and winked knowingly at its handler.