Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (6 page)

‘Eh, that’s a fucking good idea.’

Outside the shop, I devised our plan of attack. ‘You keep her talking,’ I said, referring to an elderly shop assistant, ‘and ’ave a skeg to make sure no bluebottle’s coming and I’ll pinch the shoes.’

We walked in and I chose a nice pair of brown winkle-pickers, really smart with very pointy toes. I tried them on, and when I’d made sure they fitted I bolted out of the shop. The shop assistant’s screams of ‘Stop! Stop! Stop that lad!’ ringing in my ears, I ran straight into the path of a policeman coming out of the police station. I took off, running down the pavement as fast as my legs would carry me. Behind me, the copper took up the chase, so I circled my school, ducked down a side street and
turned right. I looked round. The copper was out of sight, so I pulled off my new shoes and threw them in a dustbin on a nearby lamp-post. Thinking I’d got away with it because neither the policeman nor the shop assistant would know who I was, I ran home, where I put on some sandals. A little later, Raymond and the lads came round and we all had a laugh about it. ‘Eeeeh, fucking hell, you sure shifted on that,’ one of them said.

‘Where did you put them?’ Raymond asked.

‘In a bin on a lamp-post at the end of Cheetham Street,’ I said. ‘C’mon, let’s go back and get ’em.’

We headed back to Cheetham Street, stopping off on the way at the chip shop and the corner shop, where I spent Dad’s ten shillings on some fish and chips, a bottle of lemonade and a packet of fags for my mates.

We found the shoes, covered in ash and rubbish but still OK, in the bin. I took them home, put them under the tap, cleaned them up a bit, gave them a good polish and put them on. They looked fantastic.

At half past four, Dad came in from work. ‘Did you get some shoes?’ he said.

‘Yeah, Dad – look at them.’

‘What the hell is them?’

‘Winkle-pickers.’

‘Well, you’re not wearing them,’ he said. ‘They’s going back in the morning. Bloody stupid shoes. You’re swapping them.’

‘But they’re all the rage, Dad.’

‘I don’t care. You’re taking them back in the morning.’

There was a knock at the door. Dad went to see who it was. ‘Hello, Colin,’ I heard.

‘Hello, John, how are you?’

‘Bit of bad news for you, Colin.’ It was the copper. He told Dad what I’d done.

‘Oi! Up them stairs now!’ Dad shouted from the doorway. ‘Go on, yer little bastard.’

I heard Dad talking to the copper. Then his footsteps on the stairs. ‘Why do I put up with you, you thieving little bastard?’ he demanded. ‘Where is the money?’

‘I spent it, Dad.’

‘Spent it? Spent it! You’ll get no more money off me – now get in that bedroom and don’t come out. I’ve brought up a thief. A thug! A bloody vandal.’

A few days later I made my first appearance in a magistrates’ court. I was fined twenty pounds for stealing the shoes, which annoyed Dad all the more because he had to pay the penalty. ‘Little bastard, you’re no good,’ he screamed at me as he laced my arse with his belt yet again that night. ‘You’ll never be any good.’

Not long after that, I was sent to Medomsley Detention Centre for six weeks for throwing bricks and bottles and fighting while hanging around outside the Commercial, the roughest pub in South Bank. I’d become the black sheep of the family and visits from the bluebottles had become a frequent occurrence. Usually it was about something missing, often little more than oggy raiding – pinching apples – from the stall outside the greengrocer. They were small pickings, but to us pathetically petty thieves it seemed like gold bullion.

‘The police are here,’ my auld fella would announce with a weary tone. ‘What have you done?’

‘Nothing!’ I would always say. ‘I haven’t done anything. I wasn’t … it was …’

‘It’s always Mr Nobody, isn’t it?’ Dad would say. ‘It’s never you, is it?’

I was more frightened of my auld fella than I was of the filth, even if they took me down to the police station. Dad would have to come with me and promise the police that if they
dropped the charges, he’d go home and give me a good hiding. I felt the back of my father’s hand across my ears or his belt across my arse several times a week in those days. Or it would be his boot up my backside.

The more I got in trouble, the less I worried about it. I’d thieved so many times that it had become an everyday thing and I’d become immune to the threat of punishment. And as I became more blasé, I reasoned why pinch apples when I could rob a bank? With my mates, I climbed up church towers to remove lead from the roofs. We’d take it to Elsie Hines, a scrapyard in Slaggy Island. We all thought we were commandos or cat burglars, not petty thieves. To us, thieving seemed glamorous and exciting.

My greatest coup came one evening when I’d gone down to the Unity Club to see if my Dad would give me some money for some chips. When the doorman went in search of my auld fella, I noticed a big black bicycle with a light on it.

Fucking hell, I thought, that’s a cracking bike.

So I took it. It was that large, I couldn’t swing my leg over the crossbar, so I put my leg through the frame and pedalled it home like that.

Everyone had a wash-house at the back of their house, where they kept their mangle, a few spades, some tools and maybe a wheelbarrow. Digging around in the dark, I found some spanners in a toolbox and removed the bike’s wheels, the seat and the light. Finding some paint, I sprayed the bike white and black. I was capped with it. Hey, I’ve got myself a proper bike, I thought.

At about quarter past eleven that night, my father came in.

‘I was gonna come down and get some money for chips off you, Dad,’ I said, ‘but the man at the door said you were too busy.’

‘Aye, some bastard’s pinched Sergeant Carr’s bike from outside
the club tonight.’ Sergeant Carr was our local bobby. And he was a right bastard.

Shit, I thought. That bike was now standing in our wash-house.

‘If Sergeant Carr finds out who’s took his bike,’ Dad said, ‘he’ll get ten years in prison. He’ll get the worst …’

My heart was thumping in my chest and my legs were wobbly as I went up to bed that night. Lying awake as rigid as a corpse, I waited until my auld fella went to sleep and started snoring. I knew that once he started, nothing would wake him. I went down to the wash-house, got the shovel out and carefully lifted up all Dad’s prize cabbages in the back garden. Digging about a foot down, I buried the bike in the vegetable bed, covering it with soil and carefully placing the cabbages back in their precise rows on top of the bike. I was petrified Dad would find out.

Dad got up at half past seven the next morning and went to work, walking straight past the cabbage patch. He hadn’t noticed a thing. Out in the garden, even I couldn’t see any sign of the cabbages having been moved.

I never removed Sergeant Carr’s bike from the vegetable bed. With the police often automatically assuming that I was behind any theft, Sergeant Carr was a frequent visitor to our house and I was always worried that he’d somehow stumble on his bike, maybe spotting its handlebars poking out of the cabbage patch.

‘Your Roy broke into Roger’s fruit shop last night. He was clearly seen,’ Sergeant Carr insisted to my father on one of his many visits.

‘Oh aye, was he?’ Dad said.

‘Yes, he was seen climbing the back-alley wall, breaking in the shop, and we’ve got a witness.’

‘I don’t think you have. If you did then Roy must have fucking
long arms because he’s sixty miles away camping. He was only talking to me on the phone last night.’

Sergeant Carr gave Dad a blank look.

‘Our Roy is with the Grangetown Boys’ Club. He’s camping in Scorby.’ It was near Scarborough. ‘He’s been there since Friday. So if somebody saw him in Grangetown, our Roy would have walked sixty miles. I think you better get your facts right.’

It was one of the few times the auld gadgie was really chuffed with me, although it was short-lived. Dad had paid seven and six for me to go away for the week with about a dozen other lads. We slept in a big tent beside a lake. Most days were spent rowing tubs on the lake, but one day one of the supervisors made a big target out of straw so that us lads could make spears to throw at it. When it come to my turn, I let go of my spear too early and it went straight through Edmond Saul’s leg, so I returned home under a cloud and had to visit Edmond in hospital. Shortly after that, I was in even bigger trouble with my auld fella.

Every summer, Crow’s Fair pitched up on a patch of wasteland at Slaggy Island, near where we’d catch the trolleybuses into Middlesbrough. I loved the smell of hot dogs and candy-floss, and I would go on all the rides with my mates. The waltzers had always been my favourite, but this year we were more interested in the tattooist’s tent. After much egging-on, Robbie Hutchinson went in first for a tattoo and promptly passed out. Thinking I was the hardest, I went in last and made sure that I got the largest tattoo of the four of us, gritting my teeth and pretending it didn’t hurt at all as the tattooist carved
True Love Jacqueline
and a red rose on my left arm. Jacqueline was a girl in my class. We hadn’t even spoken; I just liked the look of her.

For the next few days, I kept my sleeves rolled down at home. After about five days, the scab fell off and the tattoo was revealed in all its glory. I was so proud. I thought I really looked
the part. I dabbed a bit of Vaseline on it and rolled my sleeves up as I waltzed into school, swinging my jacket over my shoulder so that everyone could see it. I thought I was the hardest nut in Grangetown.

The next night, there was a letter waiting on the kitchen table when my auld fella got home. ‘Can I have a look at your arms?’ he said after reading it.

I rolled up my right sleeve. ‘Nowt there,’ I said. ‘See?’

‘And your other one.’

I rolled up my left sleeve.

‘What’s that?’ Dad demanded.

‘A transfer.’

‘A transfer? What kind of
a transfer
?’

‘It’s just like a transfer, like.’

‘Does it wash off?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Well, go and wash it off then.’

‘Can I not leave it on for a couple of days?’

‘No! Get it washed off now!’

I went upstairs, shitting myself. What am I going to say? I wondered. What am I going to do? I went back downstairs. ‘Dad, it won’t all come off ’cos it’s like ink, you know.’

‘Go and wash it off.’

‘Er, I’ve got a confession to make …’ I said. ‘It’s a tattoo.’

‘
You stupid
… you bloody stupid … you’ve marked yourself for life!’ Dad screamed. ‘Where do you get your brains from? You really are as thick as shit. You stupid …’ Once again, the day ended with me in trouble and my father’s belt lacing my arse.

CHAPTER THREE

FIRST STEPS

NEWS OF MY CANCER
spread around the comedy circuit like wildfire. Within days, I’d received hundreds of phone calls and emails. Letters arrived from America, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong, from fans and from other comedians, all of them wishing me the best.

‘I wish I could come and put my arms around you,’ one of the letters said. It was from someone I’d never met, a fan in Canada. It touched me deeply, the thought of complete strangers wanting to see me fit and healthy back on stage. And closer to home, friends and relatives dropped by to wish me good luck. People I hadn’t spoken to for years crawled out of the woodwork. And, best of all, I started to see my kids again. They began coming around the house every other day or so.

Amidst the gloom and my worries about my future, glimmers of hope emerged. If the cloud had a silver lining it was that for the first time in my life I felt that when I really needed support I got it. Everyone was there for me. I’d thought I was losing my family for the second time in my life, that they were
too busy for me, that they were doing their own thing, forming their own lives with their children and my grandchildren. But as soon as they heard I was ill they all came around.

To be honest, all the sudden attention was a bit of a pain in the arse. I was forever opening the door to visitors at a time when I didn’t want to strain my voice as I still had a few shows to do. The tour was off, but it was too short notice to cancel five imminent gigs. I was contracted to do them and I wanted to do them. Thinking it might be the last time I would ever work on stage, I put every last ounce of energy into preparing for those performances but, try as I might, my mind wasn’t quite on the job. I wasn’t as good as I would usually be. I knew it and by the final night, I pulled myself together. The last show was a barnstormer.

As I walked off stage, the theatre packed to the rafters, the audience chanting ‘You fat bastard, you fat bastard’, the tears rolled down my cheeks. The stage had been my salvation, delivering me from a life of trouble and crime. Without it, I was little more than the urchin who’d caused so much trouble in Grangetown.

The only thing that slowed my mischief-making was a growing interest in girls and sex. Dad had been bringing women back to the house for a couple of years by then and by the time I was fourteen I’d got my first tantalising glimpse of a naked woman. I’d walked into Dad’s bedroom to find one of his conquests standing in the middle of the room with absolutely nothing on. I’d never seen anything like it and I was shocked as much as I was fascinated. ‘Get out, you mucky little bastard!’ she shouted. I was confused. What had I done wrong?