Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (9 page)

‘Well, that’s good,’ I interrupted, ‘because I couldn’t sing before.’

‘You’ve already taken the best steps you could to recovery,’ Mr White said.

‘Oh? What were they?’

‘You’ve never smoked and you don’t drink heavily. It makes a big difference.’

We talked through the procedure and then Mr White ushered me out into a corridor lined with photographs of ear, nose and throat cancers. I tried not to look – I’ve always been squeamish – but I couldn’t stop myself glancing at the pictures. It took me back to when I joined the merchant service and the first thing they did when we had passed all our tests was to show us a film of men and women with syphilis, gonorrhoea and other venereal diseases. They were frightening pictures. Knobs and fannies that looked like lepers’ dinners. Rotten flesh swollen with pus and infection. More than forty years had passed since I joined the merchant navy and saw those pictures, yet here in
the cancer ward of an ear, nose and throat hospital they were using very similar pictures of throats and noses to show the effects of contracting cancer.

I was sixteen and a half years old when I turned up at a dock in Middlesbrough with dreams of life on the open sea. Having passed the entrance test for the merchant navy, I was sent to Sharpness, a training school for about two hundred and fifty boys on the river Severn. For six weeks I learned how to read a compass, tie knots and survive at sea. It was the first time I had buckled down to anything in my life, partly because I wanted to change my life and partly because they had a simple way of dealing with any trouble. If you had an argument with another boy at the training school, you put your name on a noticeboard. The following Friday night, the two of you, kitted out in massive sixteen-or eighteen-ounce gloves, would meet in the school’s boxing ring. For three three-minute rounds you had to box your tormentor, no matter who they were. But because the gloves were so huge there was little chance of hurting each other.

Inevitably, I soon had an argument with a lad. I was serving food in the canteen and he took an extra roast potato. ‘It’s two each, mate,’ I said.

‘Who you fucking talking to?’ he replied.

‘You. And it’s two potatoes for everyone.’

‘Right. In the ring Friday,’ he said.

‘Any fucking time, boy!’ I replied. On Friday I climbed into the ring, expecting a quick fight with the lad, who was a little bit smaller than me. Even wearing heavily padded gloves, he knocked ten colours of shit out of me. At the end of the second round I realised I was in trouble. When the bell rang and my
opponent ran to the centre of the ring for the third and final round, I picked up the stool before the trainer had time to move in. I ran over to the lad and hit him over the head with it. Blood poured down his cheek, the fight was stopped and I was disqualified. The next day I had to go in front of the Captain.

‘He was an Amateur Boxing Association champion,’ the Captain said. ‘You didn’t stand a chance. I’m going to put you in jankers, but it won’t go on your record.’ For the next few days I scrubbed out toilets, peeled spuds and dug the gardens. But I wasn’t barred from joining the merchant navy. I’d got away with a warning.

At the end of the training period, they gave us our papers. They showed us the VD film in the hope that it would stop us getting into port in Africa and going with a prostitute just because it was a shilling a fuck, then told us to head down to the British Shipping Federation Office if we wanted to work. Within days I was on the
McCauley
, casting off from Billingham Reach in Middlesbrough bound for Mozambique (then called Portuguese East Africa) with a cargo of black salt. The first thing the captain said when I arrived on board was: ‘We’ve got too many deckhands. Who wants to go in the kitchen?’

Eh, that’s a good idea, I immediately thought. At least I’d be in the warm there.

To feed a crew of twenty-eight there was a chef, a second chef and me. I peeled vegetables, scraped pans and worked my arse off as a general dogsbody. I was used to it: no change from the mind-numbing work I’d been doing at factories or on building sites. The only difference was that I was now at sea. After my training, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about crewing a ship. But there was one thing they couldn’t teach us: how to deal with seasickness. For the entire twenty-one-day voyage to East Africa I couldn’t stand upright, I couldn’t eat and I coughed blood. Most of the time, I gritted my teeth and tried
not to think about how bad I felt, but there were times when the chef used to say: ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, go and lie down.’ As long as I was lying down, I felt all right. As soon as I got up, I felt ill. I’d never felt so bad in my life.

And in spite of the camaraderie with the other crew members, I found life at sea to be lonely. I spent most of each day on my own, either working in the galley or lying on my bunk. Sometimes I would stand for hours on deck, gazing at the ocean. There was a lot of time for thinking and I spent hours wondering what I was doing with my life. I was too young to have any easy answers, but I had a sense that things weren’t going quite to plan. I would sit and draw and write down little lines or compose poems. But writing poetry is like songwriting – you don’t know if they’re any good unless you try them out on someone – and if I had told one of the lads on board that I was writing poetry, at best I would have been called a ‘big soft fucking shit’. At worst I would have had my head kicked in.

By the end of my first voyage, I’d worked up to second chef and become a dab hand in the kitchen, particularly at Yorkshire puddings. As soon as we docked, I took the trolleybus from Smith’s Docks back to Grangetown. I saw Sandra and picked things up with her. I was paid only two pounds, ten shillings a week, but I’d saved most of it. During a fortnight’s shore leave, I spent it all on Sandra. I bought her handbags, clothes, shoes, perfume, anything she wanted. I’d lost touch with my family and many of my friends in Redcar, so I spent every moment I could with Sandra. I’d fallen in love with her.

Shortly before my time ashore was over, I went down to the Federation Office. ‘We’ve got another job for you,’ they said. ‘The
King Malcolm
. It’s sailing from Smith’s Docks to Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Dar es Salaam, Mombasa and back through the Suez Canal. It’s nine months. Do you want it?’

‘What’s my job?’ I said.

‘In the kitchens. Or Purser’s second officer.’ That meant waiting on the officers. It sounded an easy number. ‘I’ll go with the Purser as second officer,’ I said.

That night, I smuggled Sandra on board. I showed her around and then took her back to my cabin where no policeman, mother or Aunt Pat could disturb the proceedings.

We sailed the next morning, carrying mixed cargo and ore to South Africa. I was in the pantry one day when a couple of lads approached me. ‘Can you get us a couple of tins of lager?’ they said. Lager was rationed to two tins a day, which came out of our wages. I couldn’t see why they shouldn’t have more. And anyway, we were all Middlesbrough lads who believed in sticking together, so during the next meal I went into one of the big fridges where the lager was kept. I put a tin in the bottom of a jug and filled it with milk.

‘The lads just want some milk,’ I said to the Purser before taking it to the table where the lads were sitting. ‘Don’t forget, lads,’ I said as I dropped it off, ‘keep a sip for me.’

The scam worked for weeks until one day the Purser stopped me. ‘Where are you taking that milk?’ he said.

‘The lads just asked me for some extra milk,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ll have a glass,’ he said.

‘I’ll get you one, boss.’

‘
No
. I’ll have a glass now. Out of
that
jug.’ He held his glass out. I poured some milk, then the tin fell out. ‘What’s that?’ he said, as if he didn’t know. Somebody had obviously grassed on me.

Sent in front of the Captain, I was severely reprimanded for theft and my papers were stamped. Three stamps and I’d be thrown out of the merchant navy. As usual, I couldn’t see what I’d done wrong. The lager wasn’t for me. It was for someone else, but I’d taken the blame.

After we dropped off our cargo at Cape Town, we took on some massive boxes that were strapped down on the main deck. It was fairly obvious what was inside the boxes. Ostrich heads poked out of one of them. They contained animals – monkeys, zebras, lions, ostriches and others – for Whipsnade Zoo. A rota was drawn up for the job of feeding them. When it came to my turn, I held up a bucket to the ostrich box. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then an ostrich head darted out so fast and so hard that it dented the bucket. If the ostrich had targeted me, it would have killed me on the spot.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, one of the chefs had taken a fancy to me, always putting his arm round me and trying to feel my arse. I warned him a couple of times. ‘I’m not a poofter, you know,’ I said. ‘Will your take your fucking hand …’

‘Oh, I think you’re gorgeous’, he said.

Every time I walked in the kitchen he’d try to touch me, until I lost my temper and lamped him. He flew about two feet in the air and landed on his arse. Getting straight back on to his feet, he picked up a knife and ran at me. I sidestepped him, then dodged his second lunge at me with the knife, lifting my arm up to protect my face. The knife slipped between the two bones in my lower arm, the tip coming out the other side. The head chef and a kitchen hand grabbed the gay chef as blood poured everywhere. The Captain had him locked in his cabin and sent for the Royal Navy to take him away. Meanwhile, I lost so much blood that I got the shakes. A few hours later, a frigate came alongside and took us both on board. The gay chef was bound for England, where he was charged with violent conduct, but first they took me to Malta where I was dropped off at the hospital. They patched me up and gave me a blood test. I had malaria. By the time I’d recovered, the
King Malcolm
was almost home.

My next trip took me west to Florida and Mexico. On the
return voyage, we detoured into the Mediterranean and stopped at a port in Algeria for two days. Called Bône then, it has now been renamed Annaba. Algeria was in the midst of a vicious war to win its independence from France. Buildings were being bombed and people were getting shot or kidnapped every day. We were told not to go ashore, but a boatful of young Teesside lads desperate for a drink and female company was unlikely to heed the Captain’s orders. Billy Loadwick, a lad I knew from Middlesbrough, Ray Blenkinsop, another Teessider, and about ten other lads decided to go ashore.

The uniformed watchman at the bottom of the gangplank was a local. If we were going to get ashore, we’d have to find some way of getting past him. Realising that money was unimportant to him, I offered him my shirt to let us through and tell us where to find the nearest decent bar. He immediately gave in.

In the blistering late-afternoon heat, we crept down the gangplank onto dry land, crossed some railway lines, sneaked through a massive paper mill and emerged on a bush road. Everybody was dark-skinned and most of the buildings looked like mud huts. We walked for a couple of miles, sweating like pigs, until we came to a small village with a shop and a couple of bars with swing doors like on the saloons I’d seen in Western movies with my auld fella.

We walked into the first saloon and Billy walked up to the bar. ‘We are from England,’ he said. ‘You speak English?’

‘Little, little,’ the barman said.

‘Drink?’ Billy said. ‘Money … er … English, you know? No francs. No Algerian money.’ Not having any foreign currency, Billy was trying to find out if we could buy a drink with some pounds.

‘Your watch,’ the barman said, pointing at Billy’s wrist. Billy took it off and passed it over the counter. The barman gave us a round of drinks. Then Ray handed over his watch. Before
long, the barman had five watches on his arm and we were on our way to getting gloriously blathered. After weeks at sea, stumbling upon that bar was like passing through the gates of heaven. Cigarette smoke, alcohol, sweat and cheap perfume made a heady cocktail after the stench of engine oil, and it was a relief to be away from the constant thrum of the ship’s engines. I looked around. The bar was little more than a dusty-floored room, with a curtain along one wall, through which some of the lads periodically disappeared. I assumed they were going to the toilet.

I was lapping it up, savouring the atmosphere and wishing the evening would go on for ever when a siren sounded briefly. Then:
Bang!
There was an explosion outside and the doors to the bar flew off their hinges. ‘Fucking hell!’ Billy shouted. ‘What the fuck was that?’

‘Keep down,’ the barman shouted. Terrified, we all dropped to the floor, one or two hands cautiously rising through the swirling dust to feel along the tops of the tables for our drinks. Fortunately, we were drinking out of bottles, so there was no chance of dust ruining our pints. We lay on the floor for a short while, waiting for the commotion outside to calm down. Then the barman opened the back door. ‘You go, you go,’ he shouted, beckoning us through the open door into the night.