by John Pearson
Ron’s pathological love of violence could also cause unnecessary trouble between him and Reg, as it did when the minor incident of the Mile End Road second-hand car dealer nearly ended in disaster.
Ever since the Twins had taken on the billiard hall, Reg had begun to make arrangements for regular ‘pensions’ for protecting local businesses. This particularly applied to the many used-car dealers who had been appearing in the neighbourhood. He never had much trouble, persuading them to be sensible. Only in rare cases had force been necessary and even then a can of paint-stripper and a sledgehammer wielded against a car or two worked wonders.
Not that this kind of action was ever needed with this particular dealer Reg had been looking after down the Mile End Road. Reg always said that he was good as gold, never any trouble from his customers, and the money was always paid on time. As Reg put it, ‘he made it a pleasure to do business with him. So when he told us he’d been having aggravation from this docker from the other side of the river over a car he’d bought and said he didn’t like, we took it seriously. Then, when we heard that the docker was now threatening our friend if he didn’t pay him all his money back, it was clearly up to us to do something about it.’
At this point Ron became interested in what was happening, and when he heard the docker was coming mob-handed with a group of other dockers he decided he’d be there to meet them.
Reg was more practical. Instead of resorting to violence, he telephoned the docker, calmed him down, and then told the car dealer not to worry.
But when Ron ’ad the ’ump’, as he often did these days, and all else failed to lift him from his black depressions, there was only one thing – sex apart – which never failed to restore his spirits: violence. Or failing that, the threat of violence. The most exciting moments at the billiard hall were when Ron would announce, ‘Tonight I’ve decided that we’re going to ’ave a little row with someone’ and a fight with another gang would start for the fun of it.
Soon after this the Twins became conscious of their dress and adopted the sharp blue suits of another of their heroes, the film-star gangster George Raft. This formed the basis for what became the uniform of the Twins and the members of their so-called ‘Firm’ – dark blue suits, gleaming winkle-picker shoes, white shirts and tightly knotted slim dark silk ties. They wouldn’t dream of fighting anyone, still less of killing him, unless they were wearing ties. In the same way, no matter how much blood there might be on their clothes when they staggered home to bed after a violent night out Violet would unfailingly ensure that next morning two fresh white shirts would be waiting for them on their beds, ironed with the love that only a devoted mother could give them.
It was during their time at the billiard hall that the Twins’ homosexuality began to give its earliest indication of the part that it would play in the their criminal careers – especially Ron’s. The days when the Twins were satisfied with sex with one another were over, and Ron had started paying local boys for it instead. Reg was warier, so unsurprisingly it was Ron who took the initiative, although Reg usually followed. Both twins were still anxious to keep their pleasures secret, and Ron used to claim that the teenage boys who had started hanging round the billiard hall were his ‘little spies’ and that he used them to pick up information – which, in fact, he did. But when he paid them it was rarely just for information. Although he only he really liked sex with young boys, he was technically not a paedophile but an ephebophile who confined his attractions, when he could, to youths between the ages of sixteen and eighteen.
Ron’s ongoing relationship with his boys became tied up with several of his other fantasies. He once surprised me by saying that his favourite film was Boys’ Town, starring Spencer Tracy as the priest who dedicates his life to saving boys from life on the streets.
Another of his favourite fantasies was what he liked to call ‘politics’, and he liked to see himself behind the scenes, using secret information from his boys to plot the downfall of his enemies. Before long this became an early symptom of his growing persecution complex.
During these carefree days at the billiard hall – at a time when the faintest hint of homosexuality would have shattered the Twins’ credibility as up and coming gangsters – their pre-dilections tied them more than ever to a lasting life of crime.
Among the regulars who joined the Firm, it always seemed to be the same old story. When fresh recruits arrived they’d start off full of excitement and enthusiasm and for a while nobody would seem more devoted to the Twins and the thrilling life of violent action that they offered. Then gradually the new recruits would change, as local girls began to offer different pleasures which were harder to resist. Gradually the apprentice villain would begin to waver and all it needed was a pregnant girlfriend for the would-be gangster to be gone for ever. Cyril Connolly famously gave as the principal ‘enemy of promise’ for an aspiring writer what he called ‘the threat of the pram in the hall’. It was much the same for an aspiring villain in the East End of the 1950s, particularly now that there were beginning to be more well-paid jobs around than there had been even ten years earlier.
‘Fuckin’ women,’ Ron would grumble. ‘Make you end up like a fuckin’ girl yourself.’
But there was no danger of that happening to Ron – nor to Reg either, if Ron had anything to do with it.
As for the billiard hall, its days were numbered. Before long the wreckers would arrive and the blocks of flats of the new East End would take its place. By then an equally dramatic change had hit the Twins as well, and but for an extraordinary stroke of luck their story would have ended there and then.
Thanks to the destruction of the traditional East End, its old gangland culture was in serious decline. This meant that the sort of home-grown violence that the Twins relied on for their fights was increasingly in short supply and on a wet March night in 1954 the Twins led half a dozen chosen followers on what would prove to be their last street battle. The Twins themselves were still unbeaten – and probably unbeatable – but in spite of this the battle turned out disastrously and came within a heartbeat of destroying both the Twins for good.
What both of them had been expecting was another bout of old-style gangland fighting, but this time it transpired that they were living in the past. The good old days had gone and the Watney Streeters weren’t a proper gang. Some of them were drinking in a pub called The Britannia but they wisely disappeared when they heard the Twins were coming, leaving behind a local boy called Terry Martin who was simply finishing a game of poker with a friend.
Because Ron was expecting a full-scale battle and the red mist had descended, he wanted blood. Recognising Terry Martin – who had played no part in what was going on – he dragged him out of The Britannia, beat him up as only Ron could beat up someone and left him lying in the gutter. Those who found him thought that he was dead. He wasn’t quite and the doctors at the London Hospital worked all night in an attempt to save him. But for the next few days it was a matter of touch and go whether he would survive.
During the days that followed, the lives of the Twins were hanging by the same slim thread as Terry Martin’s. In 1954 capital punishment was still the mandatory sentence for murder and had Terry Martin died, as once or twice he very nearly did, the Twins would finally have proved Aunt Rose had been right as they took the dreaded nine o’clock walk together, Ron for murder and Reg as an accessory to the crime.
Instead, Terry Martin, by recovering, saved their lives as well as his own, but that was the only favour he would do them. When he recovered consciousness the police were by his bedside. And when they questioned him he talked – and went on talking when the case came up at the Old Bailey and he was the principal witness for the prosecution. By then the Twins had decided which of them should take the blame. Ron accepted that it was him and counted himself lucky to escape with only three years in prison. Reg was luckier still to be acquitted, and for the first time in their lives the Twins were parted.
9
WHEN RON WENT off to prison, Violet was desperately worried. How could her precious Ronnie cope without his mother? Equally important, how could the Twins cope without each other?
At first, to everyone’s surprise, the answer to both questions seemed to be extremely well. Overcrowded Wandsworth Prison had a reputation as a ‘tough nick’ but after the baptismal fire of that month in Wormwood Scrubs while serving in the army, followed by the harsh regime of military detention centres, Ron was prepared for whatever was in store for him and seemed in the best of spirits. Priding himself on his toughness, he actually enjoyed the challenge of what others saw as unacceptably harsh conditions. If the prison authorities believed that they could get him down with that, he’d show them all what toughness really was and make them think again.
Besides, in Wandsworth he was in good company. Dickie Morgan, old friend, ex-burglar and fellow deserter from the army, was there already, having been caught attempting to hijack a lorry-load of meat. Along with him there was the small but influential jail fraternity of those who called themselves ‘professionals’.They liked to see themselves as the elite of the prison and regarded those beneath them as ‘civilians’. Reg understood this perfectly, of course. Most of the ‘professionals’ actually came from the East End and through them he found it easy to arrange things so that brother Ron’s life in prison was a little easier.
He told him to obtain the family addresses of a number of his fellow prisoners, then arranged to send their wives regular small sums of money on the understanding that in return their husbands would make sure that Ronnie was all right. Soon Ron began finding fellow inmates offering to do his work for him. He started getting extra cigarettes, and since cigarettes were the unofficial currency in jail he could have anything he wanted, sex included.
What was the old lag’s saying? ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’ Ron was perfectly prepared to do his time, no problem, and if this meant being parted from his all-important ‘other half’ for a period, so be it. Ron could cope – and so could Reg. For now that Reg was on his own, life without Ron was turning out to be much simpler than he had suspected. So were his ambitions as he started to enjoy his life in what would soon become the Swinging Sixties.
He had learned a lot from the experience of the billiard hall, and since the place was no more he started a new club of his own in a former fish shop up the Mile End Road. To set Ron’s mind at rest and reassure him that the club was essentially a joint venture, he tactfully called it ‘The Double R’ – but unlike the long-lost billiard hall, the ethos of the Double R was far more social than criminal. As he put it, he was aiming at ‘the young East Ender who wants somewhere he can take his girl for a safe but fun night out’, which was very different from anything that Ronnie would have wanted.
In fact, The Double R brought something of a sea change into Reg’s life. He would still have considered himself a criminal – and a number of his old rackets continued, together with a tidied-up version of the existing protection business – but no more violence for the hell of it, no more imitating Al Capone; and for that matter, no more gang fights without Ron to start them. On the other hand, Reg did not follow the advice of some old friends who urged him to reapply for his professional boxing licence. He bought himself a flash blue Pontiac instead.
Soon The Double R was making money and it was clear that with the club Reg had hit upon the formula for success – a clever combination of the authentic flavour of the old East End, the sentimental cockney ballads of Ron’s favourite pianist, the hunchbacked Queenie Watts, and a handful of authentic underworld characters to convince the couples on a night out from the west of the city that they were experiencing a real-life adventure. As The Double R caught on, it was taken up by various showbiz celebrities like Jackie Collins, Sybil Burton and Barbara Windsor who liked the atmosphere and encouraged Reg to call them by their Christian names. For Reg’s presence was crucial to The Double R’s success. No longer overshadowed by Ron’s dominating presence, he was in danger of becoming something of a celebrity himself. He started dressing well, and for the first time in his life began to take an interest in something else that had also been impossible when Ronnie was around – women.
Ronnie had always treated any show of interest in the opposite sex by Reggie as out and out betrayal, as in a way it was; for Ron knew that if ever Reg became seriously involved with a woman he would lose him. Not that Reg was ever likely to get sexually involved with a woman on a long-term basis. The ties that bind identical homosexual twins together are usually too strong for that. But with Ron no longer there, Reg could at least enjoy female company. He realised he was good-looking and when women started finding him attractive he felt flattered and made the most of it. He also started cashing in on the fact that the old East End was becoming fashionable and it only needed a few more show-business celebrities to arrive for The Double R to get a reputation as the ‘in’ place for an adventurous night out. Reg found it easy being independent. True, life was no longer as exciting as it was with Ron around but there were other pleasures to enjoy. He still lived at home in Vallance Road and enjoyed having Violet to himself. He even got on better with his father. The next eighteen months were probably the happiest of his life.
As for Ron, he too continued to cope rather well in prison. Wandsworth was a tough nick but he could deal with that. He kept himself largely to himself, apart from his ‘pensioners’ and the company of a few close friends. Something about him made the warders treat him cautiously but the family kept in close touch with him and he had made a wonderful new friend – a good-looking giant of a man called Frank Mitchell who was so strong that he could lift Ron up with one hand. Frank Mitchell was in fact a gentle psychopath, childlike with those he trusted, dangerous with those he didn’t.
Ron soon discovered they had certain things in common. As with Ron, the warders kept clear of Mitchell and having spent most of his life in institutions of one sort or another he was proud of being able to take any punishment the prison authorities could inflict on him. Ron admired him for that and did his best to cheer him up by promising that, after his release, he and his brothers would look after him.
As for Ron himself, he seemed in danger of becoming the last thing anyone would ever have predicted – a model prisoner – and ironically it was the prison governor’s decision to reward Ron for his good behaviour that brought disaster. Having become eligible for an easier existence in a first offenders’ prison Ron was sent to Camp Hill Prison on the Isle of Wight.
From the moment he stepped off the ferry from the mainland Ronnie hated everything that Camp Hill Prison represented. He was uneasy with the more relaxed regime, he detested games, which he couldn’t play, and after the company of his hardened criminals at Wandsworth he despised the company of what he regarded as ‘straight’ prisoners. He also resented the staff trying to teach him a worthwhile trade to save him from becoming what they called ‘a hardened criminal’. He had no intention of ever being anything else. In Wandsworth all the other old lags had respected him. Here there were no old lags, and nobody respected him or even bothered with him.
Had Reggie been with him none of this would have mattered. But Reggie wasn’t with him, and without the presence of his ‘other half ‘ to help restore the all-important balance of the twin relationship, he had no way of controlling its ‘discordant’ element and really started going mad.
What was happening was that the mental sickness which had been lurking in Ron’s damaged psyche since illness had struck him at the age of three was following the course that the doctors had predicted. He started to withdraw into himself; he refused to talk to anyone, and he lost the ability to read. All he could do was watch the world go by, and as he watched he realised the truth. Everyone had turned against him. He told himself that he was Ron Kray, and in the past Ron Kray had always been a match for anyone. But now Ron Kray was helpless and it was from his sense of helplessness that his fears beg
an. When he and Reg had been together, they could make everybody fear them but now that he was on his own his enemies were out for their revenge. He couldn’t sleep at night and lay awake for hours, brooding about what he’d seen and why everybody hated him. Obsessed by not knowing what he’d done, he began to fear that somebody had planned to kill him.
Suddenly he realised the truth. Everyone was thinking he had grassed. That explained everything – the silences, the way everybody turned against him, the sudden isolation. He had been brought up to believe that betraying anybody to the law was the most despicable act of all, so if those around him thought that that was what he’d done, they would feel justified in hating him.
He tried to tell himself that this was nonsense. He, Ronnie Kray, had never grassed to anybody in his life. It was ridiculous. He never could and never would. So all he had to do now was stay calm and tell himself that his time in jail would soon be over and he’d be back again with those who loved him and respected him. Take it a day at a time and after three hundred and sixty-five days his sentence would be over. All he had to do was to survive a year; but in the end a year proved far too too long.
By now he was clearly very sick. ‘I was seeing secret agents everywhere, working on a plot to torture me. Somebody I didn’t know was out to get me.’
Then came the final straw which broke him. Aunt Rose, his favourite aunt who could beat any two women in a stand-up fight, had lost her battle with leukaemia. When a warder gruffly told him that Aunt Rose had died it sent Ron off his head. From then on his condition worsened rapidly, and the prison authorities had to confine him in a straitjacket for his own protection. When his condition worsened two psychiatrists came and certified him insane. When they’d done this they sent him to a locked ward in the Long Grove lunatic asylum near Epsom.