The Guv'nor (5 page)

Only the people close to us knew what we were suffering. The rest of the world thought he was a hero taking on a widow and all her kids. Good old Jim, heart of gold. If only they knew the real man behind closed doors. A drunken, childbeating slag.

And so my early years drifted away. Those years that form a child's mind and set patterns for becoming an adult. What a waste.

Suddenly, I'm twelve, Mum's pregnant, Jim Irwin's in the money and we're on the move back to Hoxton.

This time we moved opposite my aunt Rosie Wall, a lovely woman, a real comedienne. All my aunts on the McLean side were comediennes, every one of them could make you laugh until you had tears in your eyes. I thought the world of Rosie because she always talked about my real father. I'd sit in her kitchen listening to all the little stories she could tell me about him and it was like bringing him alive again.

Jim was still being handy with us, but he must have been up to some handy work elsewhere, because his expensive suits and flash car didn't come from a lorry driver's wages. It turned out that he'd been working with Ronnie Knight and a few others running the ‘long firm' racket. The scam was that a few likely lads would get together and take out a short-term let on a warehouse. Then with some dodgy references and a few fancy letterheads they'd set up as distributors. All kinds of goods would be ordered in bulk from the manufacturers and paid for on the nail. The suppliers must have
thought they were dealing with a right up and coming firm. It took a good bit of up-front money and a few months' work, but the end result was still worth it. All of a sudden, business would take off, on paper anyway, so orders would have to be doubled. The suppliers must have thought they'd got a right result, what with all the deliveries of TVs, washing machines and fancy gramophones to the lads at the warehouse – all on the knock of course, because this firm was very credit-worthy. Then … wallop … everything's sold off – all pre-arranged – to receivers all over the country. And all that's left in the warehouses are a few empty boxes, a load of cobwebs and a pile of bills sloping up to the letterbox. It would be a few months before the suppliers would get suspicious, so the villains could be well away, probably starting up somewhere else, before the scam was discovered.

Sometimes, when Ronnie Knight had a bit of business with my stepfather, he'd bring his wife to our house. He was married to Barbara Windsor then, who'd just started in the
Carry On
films, and was on the way to being a big star. I only met her the once, because I always seemed to be at school when they turned up, and then I was so nervous of Jim Irwin digging me out in front of them that I stood behind the settee like a big dummy. I might only have been a kid, but I was knocked out by how beautiful she was with that long blonde hair and how friendly and ordinary she seemed – not a bit stuck up like you'd expect from a film star. I bragged about it at school for weeks afterwards. How we chatted and laughed and how she gave me a big kiss when she left … I wish. Most of the lads thought I was the dogs, but some of them needed a smack in the head before they believed me.

Years later, Ronnie and me met up and became friends, but as he and Barbara had divorced I never did get to know her. Funny, really, I used to look at Ronnie sometimes and think to myself, ‘How could you have been mates with that bastard Irwin?' Then, one day, I came out with what that beast had done to me and the others. He just looked at me and said, ‘Lenny, you're joking me.' I showed him the scars on my head, legs and arms and he swore he never had a clue about what was going on then. If he'd known, he would've had the bastard done away with. I believed him because Ronnie's one of your own. Too late, by then, but it was nice to know he would've been there for me.

At home, Mum had my little sister Sherry and I loved her to death.
Never mind that half of her was an Irwin, she was a little smasher and I never gave it a second thought. Funny, isn't it, that he hated me because I wasn't his, but I thought the world of his daughter? He spent fortunes on her, and still nothing on us, but I didn't mind.

I was about 13 then and knocking about regularly with a little firm of kids. There was Tommy Green, Andy Bradshaw and Joe Kyle. What a team. For starters we were just into the sort of thieving most kids get up to. Over the wall at the back of the sweet shop, pass over a dozen empty lemonade bottles, then nip round the front and collect the threepence deposit on every one. The same thing worked with off-licences as well. Because I was the biggest, I was always the one who was shoved to the front to do the business. One day, the others gave me a leg up over an 8ft high wall, and then to get out all I had to do was unbolt the back gate and bring out the gear. I dropped down, and within a few seconds found the gate padlocked from the inside and a huge great Alsatian looking at me with a big grin on its mug. I thought, ‘Before I'm halfway up the wall this bastard's going to turn me into dog meat.' So I chucked this empty crate at it, opened the back door of the shop, shot through the storeroom, over the counter, and away. I can still see the look on the face of the little bloke who owned the shop. Never had time to open his mouth.

‘Jump ups' was another good earner. We'd wait until we saw a lorry pull up outside a shop, let the driver take his first delivery inside, then we'd be up and in. You grabbed the first thing you set eyes on; it didn't matter what it was. In those days most of the lorries just had a big sheet down the back, not the metal doors they have today. We never got big stuff – it was mainly fruit or meat, but once we got about sixteen pairs of ladies' shoes. Anything like that, or full boxes of peaches or grapes, we'd fence off to an old character down the Nile. I won't mention his name in case he's still working, but if he is he must be about 90 now.

The trouble was nothing that was nicked could ever be taken home, and the money we earned had to be spent so that it didn't show. The reason was that our parents had a sort of double standard of what was right and wrong. I've already said that everybody in the neighbourhood was at some kind of villainy, some of it mild, a lot of it serious. Dad was a thief, using crime to put steam on the table. But just let them catch their kids up to any nonsense – it'd be a good hiding. It wasn't a big problem, though, all we earned went on the pictures, in the machines or into our bellies. We weren't into clothes,
not like today where kids will kill for a pair of fancy trainers or a jacket with the right label.

We became more daring as time went on. My cousin Tony McLean had joined our little firm and he always thought big. It was his idea to start ‘creeping'. It had loads of variations, but usually it meant going into a big office block and pretending that we had a message to give our mum or dad or uncle or whoever. Because we were kids, nobody thought much of it. Then when we found an empty office we'd collar anything portable that could be turned into a few bob – stationery, petty cash boxes, handbags, even typewriters if they weren't too heavy.

We didn't all go in, just two of us at a time. We were never nicked, though Tony and me got caught red handed once in one of the offices. I made myself look innocent and Tony pretended he was going to burst into tears. He was all choked up and said we were only looking for somewhere to have a pee and we'd got lost. What an actor! But it worked, though, and we got away.

A bit more serious was nicking wages from factories on a Friday. The set up was the same, really, but as the haul was in cash it was well worth the risk. We weren't stupid though, we spread our little operation all over the place. Then as we picked up a few quid we could afford to travel out a bit on trains or buses. It couldn't go on, though. The law of averages said that, sooner or later, we'd take a tumble.

It came sooner. On one of our trips out we were heading for Romford in Essex. The three of us, (Tommy, Andy and me) had just jumped on the first train that came in. We were in a carriage all on our own and, as usual, we were messing about – we didn't know what to get up to next. Tom had the bright idea of nicking the pictures from the walls. That was in the days when every carriage had a couple of country scenes screwed up behind glass to brighten up your journey.

He took one off and was just starting on the other one when Andy pulled the communication cord. Suddenly, it's like the train's run into a brick wall and we ended up on the floor. We started shitting ourselves. We opened the door and jumped on to the grass bank, looked up and down the track, then somebody shouted, ‘Oi, you little bastards!' and we took off up the bank, over the fence, and just ran and ran over the fields. So now we were miles from anywhere, covered in shit and mud and scratched from head to foot. Tom had lost one of his shoes.

We wandered about for hours, mostly walking behind hedges or in woods in case Old Bill was looking for us. Tom never stopped moaning about his foot, but he did look funny hopping along. It had just started to get dark when we came across a big garage, all lit up, with nothing else around.

I said to Andrew, ‘Andy, do you reckon you can cream that place?' He said, ‘No problem, just keep a look out for me.'

So while we hid in a ditch opposite, he sneaked over and tucked himself behind a van. After a bit, a motor pulled in and the bloke in the office came out to fill it up with petrol. It wasn't self-service like it is now. From where we were hiding we could see Andy, and as soon as the coast was clear he was in the office. Half a minute and he was out. We lost sight of him for a bit, then we saw him running like mad up the road. Still in the field, we started running after him, laughing and giggling. When we had a divvy up there was £69.00. We could easily afford a taxi to get home if we could find a phone or a village.

We were just heading for some bright lights in the distance, with all the money in our pockets, when a jam sandwich pulled up beside us; that's what we called a white police car with a wide red stripe down the side. We kept walking, pretending we hadn't noticed it, until another one, coming from the other direction, cut in front of us and we were lifted.

Because we were so young, they didn't put us in the cells, just stuck us in an office while our parents were sent for to take us home. Later on, we were found guilty at the court in Hertfordshire for stopping the train and for robbing the garage. Being first timers, all of us got probation, which was no big deal.

Though we were warned by our parents to keep away from each other, we did meet up at school and we compared the good hidings we'd got. I envied the smacked legs and bums the other two got. I had been punched and kicked, and sometimes now when I'm shaving, I can't help looking at the scar above my left eye. A nice little reminder of that time.

Still, it wasn't long after that that two incidents cheered me up and kept me smiling for ages – and one of them made me feel I'd got my own back.

I was sitting in the front room, flicking through the
News of the World
, waiting for my Sunday dinner, when an argument started in the kitchen. Jim Irwin had come home pissed and had laid into my mum. She was screaming and my little sister was crying. I ran
through and he had Mum over the table, banging her head in the food she was getting ready. I was so wild I wasn't thinking. I ran straight in and punched him in the back shouting, ‘Leave her alone, you big c**t … if you want to fight, fight me.' My punch hadn't made much of an impression because he just turned round and said, ‘Oh yeah … you'll do,' and hit me four times in the face. Left, right, left, right, and I ended up in the passage, spark out. Well, nearly spark out, because I could still hear him, as though from a distance, shouting, ‘Come on, tough guy … get up if you wanna mix it.'

The fight had been knocked out of me, but …at least he'd stopped hitting my mum. She put a plaster over my cut eye, gave me a cuddle and said, ‘He didn't mean it, son, he's just had a few too many.'

See what I mean? Mum loved us all, but she still blanked the way that animal treated us.

About a week later, Nan Campion was round for a cup of tea. Jimmy Spinks was dead by then. We were in bed but she came up to see us. When she saw the cut on my head she just shook her head and said, ‘You're just like your uncle, always fighting.' ‘I ain't been fighting, Nan,' I said, ‘Jim Irwin gave me a belting.'

Down she went, and I laid there listening to her and my mum arguing and shouting. Irwin was out, so poor old Mum was taking some stick for trying to defend him. I found out what happened next from Billy Hayes from Godwin House, who was in the same pub when our nan came steaming in the door. She was a typical East End nan, a big strong woman who could've taken on Rocky Marciano.

Irwin was at the bar with all his mates. As the door burst open, he looked round and Nan punched him smack in the face. This big coward went white and tried to duck round the stool to get out of her way. As he turned his back, she picked up a big glass ashtray from the bar and did him right over the back of his head, splitting it wide open. It's a wonder she didn't kill him. She was hustled out, he was taken down the hospital, and the law was never involved.

When Billy told me all this it put a grin on my face as though I'd been razor cut from ear to ear. And every time I looked at Jim, I could see those ten stitches in the back of his nut, and I thought, ‘Good girl, Nan.'

A little after that, something even better happened. At about six o'clock one morning, we were all in bed when we heard a banging at the door. Mum went down, opened the door, and suddenly Old
Bill's swarming all over the place. I thought, ‘Fuck me, I've got some hooky gear of me own stashed under the bed.' But I needn't have worried; it was Jim they were after, and once they'd got him they only had a quick look round. One of the coppers stuck his head round the door and said, ‘All right, kids?' and I must've sounded like I had a spike up my bum when I squeaked, ‘Yes, thank you.' It was a close call; I was nearly joining Jim in the van. Next thing he's up in the court with a few others and they all got 18 months for fraud – what the busies call conspiracy. Time for the big grin again.