Me and My Brothers

by Kray, Charlie

  The old man was sport-mad and was chuffed when I was picked to play football for Laburnum Street School. He always made sure I had the right gear, and when he came to watch I’m sure he took an extra pride in seeing that his kid was one of the best-dressed players on the pitch. Boxing was his passion, though, and when he wasn’t in the pub he would go to professional contests at nearby Hoxton Baths, or other venues. Sometimes, he would take me. I can remember sitting in the crowd in my sailor suit, entranced by the sight of giants thumping hell out of each other.

  The old man’s father, who ran a stall in Hoxton, could handle himself. He was known as ‘Big’ Jimmy Kray and was afraid of nobody. I used to sit on his knee at home as he told me thrilling stories of famous boxers he had known, including Hoxton’s own hero, Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis, who became world lightweight champion. Often I’d go to bed, my six-year-old head filled both with these stories and with the real thing I’d seen with Dad, and I would dream of standing in a ring, the treasured Lonsdale belt round my middle, as the cheering crowd hailed me Champion of the World.

  The brutality of East End life, where most disputes were settled with fists, rubbed off on the children: it was not uncommon for two tiny tearaways to slug it out with the venom of the fighters I’d seen in the ring. I was one of them. I didn’t get involved too often but I quickly learned how to handle myself. Mum didn’t approve of fighting, however, and wasn’t too impressed that I’d inherited Grandad’s natural boxing ability. Whenever I had a scrap at school I made sure I tidied myself up before going home.

  In 1932, we moved to Stean Street, the other side of Kingsland Street. Just along from our new home was a stable yard, and the old man who looked after it let us kids play there. It was an exciting place and I spent a lot of time sitting on a wall, watching the man mucking out and grooming the horses when they came in after hauling the delivery carts. I would go home smelling of manure and with muddy shoes. Mum would tell me off, but in a nice way. She never screamed and yelled like other women in that street…

  One day a year later, when I was seven, I was encouraged to go out and play and not come back until called. Curious, and not a little put out, I watched the house from my wall for most of the day. There was a lot of coming and going and then, in the early evening, I was told I could go in. I went up to my mum’s bedroom and there they were.

  ‘Where did they come from?’ I asked.

  ‘I bought them,’ my mum replied.

  ‘But, Mum,’ I said. ‘Why did you buy two?’

  She laughed.

  It was a little after eight o’clock on 24 October 1933. My twin brothers had arrived.

  Suddenly my aunts May and Rose started coming round to the house more than usual. They adored the twins and begged Mum to let them take them for walks in their brand-new pram. Mum usually agreed and May and Rose would fuss over them like mother hens with their chicks. When Mum was busy I would take them out too, and, like my aunts, I would feel a surge of pride when neighbours stopped to lean over the pram, enthusing about how gorgeous they were. The twins, of course, lapped it up. It did not take long for them to expect to be the centre of attention all the time. And to show their displeasure when they weren’t.

  The Kray family was already well known. Big Jimmy Kray, and Mum’s dad, Jimmy Lee, worked for themselves, and their independence was envied by less ambitious people who were forced to do what they were told.

  Jimmy Lee was a legend in his own time. He had been a bare-knuckle fighter with the nickname ‘Cannonball’ and he later became a showman and entrepreneur. In an area where competition was tough he was an outstanding personality. He was teetotal, which meant he didn’t hit it off with the old man, but he was very fond of me and the twins. He loved entertaining us: his favourite trick involved a white-hot poker which he would lick without burning his tongue. He gave us a scientific explanation –something about the saliva making contact with the hot metal – but it went over our heads. To us it was just pure magic.

  He’d always been an amazing athlete. Once, one of his sons – my Uncle Johnnie – drove a coach party forty-two miles to Southend for the day. As he was preparing to bring them back again, Grandfather Lee turned up – on his bike. He’d cycled there just for the fun of it and was eager to do the return journey, until Uncle Johnnie insisted he took the coach. Grandfather Lee was seventy-five years young at the time.

  In those early thirties, the Kray family had a sort of local fame. And in their own way the beautifully dressed, scrubbed-clean twins, sitting up in their big double pram, beaming into the faces of all their admirers, were just as famous as their grandfathers.

  I was thrust into the background but I didn’t resent my brothers. If anything I was pleased, because Mum was obviously overjoyed at having them. At night I shared the same upstairs room with them, because Mum’s brother and his family were living downstairs. But neither twin cried much at night and they never disturbed my sleep. When they were put in their cots I would stare at them, trying in vain to tell which was which. Sometimes they looked up at me in a strange, adult sort of way, and I’d have this weird feeling that they knew all about me and what was going on around them. Their dark eyes seemed to lack that childlike innocence. It was as if each boy knew more than he ought to.

  The mental and physical relationship between them was intense. Nobody was more aware of it than Mum – the only person who could tell them apart – and she demonstrated this when Reggie became ill at the age of two. Whenever he got excited his face would turn blue and sometimes he would fall down, screaming in pain. The doctor diagnosed a double hernia and sent Reggie into hospital for an operation. It wasn’t long before Ronnie started to get ill himself at being separated from his twin. And when Reggie failed to improve after the operation, Mum took matters into her own hands. One day she marched into the hospital and announced she was taking Reggie home. Shocked doctors and nurses told her he was not ready to be discharged and insisted he would be better off in trained care. But Mum was adamant; she said quietly but firmly that the child needed to be with his mother and twin brother and that was that. She was proved right. Within days of being reunited, both boys were back to normal.

  While my brothers were toddling about that house in Stean Street I spent most of my spare time running. Like Grandfather Lee I was sport-crazy and as well as soccer I was involved in athletics then boxing. At my senior school in Scawfell Street, off Hackney Road, I was a tiddler in a big pond, but a marvellous all-rounder called Gregory helped me achieve a sporting triumph I’ll never forget. He was the school goalkeeper and wicketkeeper, and it was largely due to him that I got in the school football team that won the district finals. Gregory boxed well, too, and gave me tips on how to improve my ring-craft.

  In the East End in those days, violence was never far below the surface; settling a disagreement with fists was the accepted thing. I forget the name of the boy I swapped punches with in my first serious street fight, but I do remember a crowd of adults loved every bruising minute of it. They formed a circle and watched us slug it out for nearly an hour. Afterwards they made us shake hands, as though we’d been fighting purely for their entertainment.

  There was a wood yard in Hackney Wick where local villains settled disputes between rival gangs. Sometimes the punch-ups would not take place and the gangs would drift off to a pub together. Often, though, a chance remark would upset somebody and fighting would break out. Razors and broken glasses would be used as weapons and blood would flow.

  That was the way of East End life in 1938 as we began to hear stories of a little thin-faced German madman with a moustache who wanted to conquer the world.

  The old man’s business boomed at that time. The factories and docks took thousands off the dole queues and there was more money about. Cash registers sang in the pubs as people talked over their pints about the prospect of war. And householders eagerly chucked out their old gear to make way for the new.

  Oswald Mosley’s fanatical Blackshirt mob marched noisi
ly through Mile End and Whitechapel, striking terror into the Jews. But for me football, as usual, was far more important. One day the old man came home with a new pair of football boots for me; they were the latest style and very expensive. We had a game at the local recreation ground that afternoon and I couldn’t wait to try them out. I trotted off excitedly, the boots dangling by the laces over one shoulder. Suddenly, as I walked under a railway arch, three kids grabbed the boots and ran off. I sprinted after them, shouting as loudly as I could. They dodged round corners, clambered over walls, crossed roads, but I kept after them. It was worth it: first, they dropped my socks, which had been inside the boots, then the boots themselves. I picked them up then dashed back to the park, making it in time for the game.

  When I got home, I told the old man what had happened. He listened intently, then patted me affectionately on the shoulder. ‘You’re a real trier, son,’ he said. ‘A real trier.’ At that moment, I’d never felt closer to him.

  Don’t get me wrong. Although the old man was away a lot, he was a good father. He loved the booze, but he never put that before his wife and kids. Unlike many East End wives Mum never had to go out to work, which meant that the twins and I were never left to roam the streets like other children.

  I can remember only one time when she had the hump with me. I came running along the courtyard where we lived and crashed through the front swing door frightening the life out of her. I was twelve at the time and thought it was a funny practical joke. But Mum was angrier than I’d ever seen her. Her blue eyes hardened and she shouted, ‘I’m going to whack you for that, Charlie!’

  This terrified me because Mum always spoke in a soft, calm voice. But she didn’t hit me; she would not have known how to. The old man handed out a few whacks, but I was a bit of a mummy’s boy and she would always step in and put it right for me.

  Mum had great will-power. Once she had set her heart on getting something she would persevere until she got it. She had no ambition in life but to bring up her children as well as possible, and she placed a lot of importance on having her own house, with a back garden and a front door that wasn’t shared. One day, Aunt Rose came round excitedly, saying her next-door neighbours were leaving. Something in Mum’s reaction told me we would soon be on the move ourselves – to that house. I was not mistaken.

  Vallance Road runs between Whitechapel Road and Bethnal Green Road for about half a mile and is roughly parallel to Commercial Street, which lies to the west. Number 178 was a terraced house with two rooms, a kitchen and a scullery downstairs, and an outside loo. Upstairs there were three rooms and out of two of them we could see the trains thundering along a raised track between Liverpool Street and Bethnal Green stations. When we moved in late that summer of 1939 it was just a humble East End house. But it was not long before Mum made it into a warm, happy and secure home.

  With the excitement of moving, the outbreak of war meant little to the twins and me. We’d been told that enemy planes would be dropping bombs on to our home, but all we could see around us were sandbags being packed around public buildings, gas masks being handed out, and men in makeshift uniforms dashing about. When I wasn’t at school, I was playing football, running or boxing. The twins, coming up to their sixth birthday, spent their time either with Aunts May and Rose, Grandpa and Grandma Lee, nearby, or in Uncle Johnnie’s cafe across the street. If it was time to eat, they would be at home. They loved Mum’s cooking.

  The twins were fascinated by Grandfather Lee’s stories of when he fought bare-knuckle in Victoria Park for a few shillings on Sunday mornings and whenever I knelt down to spar with them they shaped up like miniature prize-fighters. Even at six, they were tough and incredibly fearless, and sometimes they would catch me with a punch that surprised me with its speed, accuracy and power.

  When the bombs began to fall and the anti-aircraft guns opened up, the twins showed no fear. They had always been content in each other’s company and in the Blitz that contentment deepened into security. While other kids cried in terror as the shells dropped, the twins just clung on to each other’s clothes and shut their eyes. And when Mum said she was taking us to the shelter under the railway arches they would toddle along unconcernedly, hand in hand, more excited than afraid.

  But the East End in the Blitz was no place for kids, and soon someone somewhere decided women and children should go away until it was all over. Mum didn’t fancy the idea much; she had only just moved into her long-sought-after house. But as usual the twins and I came first, and she prepared for our evacuation. The old man wasn’t coming. His business was still booming and he needed to stay in London. He would be recruited into the Army, of course. But he had other plans for when his call-up papers arrived.

  We had no idea where we were going. All we were told was that we would be living in a house in a country village, fifty miles further east of London. To many, the massive exodus from Liverpool Street Station that January in 1940, was The Evacuation. But to the twins and I, who had seldom left the narrow, crowded streets of Bethnal Green, it was An Adventure.

  The village was Hadleigh, in Suffolk, and the house was a huge Victorian building belonging to a widow called Mrs Styles. After the cramped terraced house in Vallance Road it was a palace, and Mrs Styles went out of her way to help us adapt to the traumatic change in our lives.

  I quickly got a job in the local fish-and-chip shop and later worked full-time as a tea boy in a factory making mattresses. The people there were friendly, but we didn’t have much in common and I missed the East End, particularly my football and boxing. The twins, though, were happier than ever. In fine weather they would spend hours scouring the fields and woods for miles around, revelling in the fresh air and boundless freedom of country life. When the snow came, Mrs Styles’s nephew lent me his sledge and I’d take the twins to the nearest hill. I’d lay full-length on the sledge with the twins on my back and push off. We nearly always ended up in a heap of tangled arms and legs, laughing. It was great fun.

  Mum, however, was not enjoying being away from her family and friends. She never complained, but I sensed her unhappiness, especially when the old man visited us. He was popular in the local pub, with his news of what was going on in London, but he was always keen to get back after a day or two.

  We’d been in Hadleigh for about a year when rumours of a German invasion on the east coast started sweeping the village. Mum got more and more worried until one day she announced that she was taking us back to London.

  Mrs Styles tried to dissuade her, but Mum said she had given it a lot of thought and her mind was made up. Later, it was found that the rumours were unfounded, but by then it was too late: Mum and I and the twins were back in Vallance Road. I was pleased; I couldn’t wait to see my mates and take up boxing again. But the twins were not. They had fallen in love with the countryside and preferred green fields and animals to teeming streets and noisy traffic.

  The old man’s call-up papers finally arrived. He’d made up his mind that he wasn’t going to serve, and promptly went on what was called the ‘trot’. He reasoned that he didn’t start the war, so why should he help finish it? The police called at the house from time to time looking for him, but the twins and I had been told to say nothing. Lying for the old man didn’t bother me; he was my dad and he’d done his best for all of us all his life. Now I was in a position to do my best for him, and I lied without so much as a blush.

  It did affect the twins, though. Soon they started seeing the coppers’ uniform as The Enemy. Aunt Rose didn’t help: if she was around, she’d have a right go at the officers, four-letter words and all. If the twins were there, they would stand side by side, gravely taking it all in. Whatever they thought, they kept to themselves, but I had a feeling then, even though they were just eight, that they were beginning to distrust uniformed authority.

  With so many men in the Army there were plenty of jobs, and I became a messenger boy at Lloyd’s in the City, within walking distance of Vallance Road. For five and a ha
lf days a week, I was general dogsbody for eighteen bob. In the old man’s absence, I wanted to do my bit as the man of the house, so every Friday night I proudly gave Mum my wages. She didn’t need the money, but she took it to make me feel good. Needless to say, I got most of it back during the week, one way and another.

  Boxing now dominated my spare time. I went to the local institute for training three nights a week and Grandfather Lee fixed up a punchbag in the top back room of our house. The twins would watch me hammering away, and now and then I’d stand them on a chair so they could have a go. Mum wasn’t that keen on the preoccupation with boxing; she probably remembered her dad coming home from Victoria Park, looking the worse for wear after his bare-knuckle scraps. But when I told her amateur boxing was safe and the gloves were like feather pillows, she seemed satisfied. Anyway, she didn’t put up much of a fight. I suppose she thought boxing was the lesser of two evils: if I wasn’t down the institute, I’d more than likely get into bad company – or worse, start showing an interest in girls. Both had their dangers: if boys of my age weren’t breaking into shops or factories, they were going too far with girls and walking down the aisle almost before they’d drawn their first pay packet. I think Mum was secretly pleased that my only passion at that time was not for kissing the opposite sex but for belting the daylights out of the boy in the opposite corner.

  I had not touched alcohol or smoked a cigarette. I was as fit as a fifteen-year-old can be. And then suddenly I was whipped into hospital with a mystery illness that was to terrify me so much I thought of killing myself.

  It started with a sore throat. Gargling with salt water did no good, so Mum took me to hospital where doctors wasted no time taking me in. I was put in a bed and told to do nothing but lie still; I wasn’t even allowed to get up to go to the toilet. The illness was diagnosed as rheumatic fever and it kept me in that hospital for four weeks. The enforced idleness was maddening and I counted the minutes and hours between the visits of Mum, my aunts and my friends. Lying on my back helpless for a few weeks was one thing, but then I learned that I might become a permanent invalid with a heart condition. I was terrified. For someone so energetic the thought was too much to bear and it was then that I seriously thought about doing myself in.