Me and My Brothers

by Kray, Charlie

  It was called Esmeralda’s Barn. And it turned out to be a gold mine which was to open up a new life for the three of us, our mother and the old man.

  The twins particularly were well suited to the West End club circuit and popular among the expensively dressed pleasure-seekers who frequented it. They loved mixing with the aristocracy, showbusiness stars and millionaire businessmen; they rarely missed out on having their photographs taken at social and theatrical gatherings. In their identical, well-cut, midnight-blue dinner jackets, they certainly looked the part. And their behaviour was always respectful and proper.

  Although I was on the spot when it mattered, I preferred to keep in the background. Most of my work was done behind the scenes, keeping a close eye on day-to-day events in a business empire that was rapidly expanding. I had been granted a licence to operate a theatrical agency, which meant I booked all cabaret acts for our own clubs, and others, instead of going through other agencies.

  It also meant I could spend more time at home, which was important since Dolly had made it clear that she was being neglected and was bored and frustrated at spending so much time on her own. Something happened, however, that made me wonder whether Dolly had, in fact, been neglected or bored in my long absences.

  There was a big group of us in a pub called The Green Dragon. I was standing at the bar talking to a couple of friends and Dolly was sitting at a table talking to George Ince. Dolly’s two brothers and the twins were also there.

  Suddenly Reggie came over to me, looking tense. He told me to get Ince out of the place or there would be trouble. I was confused but I knew the look in Reggie’s eyes; it wasn’t time to argue.

  I went over to the table and took Ince out of Dolly’s earshot. I told him I didn’t know what it was about, but he should make himself scarce. He did – quickly. Then I rejoined the twins, who proceeded to tell what everybody, it seemed, knew except me.

  George Ince and Dolly had been having an affair for some time.

  Boiling with rage, I dashed into the street looking for Ince. It was probably just as well for both of us that he was nowhere to be seen. I went back and confronted Dolly, and we agreed to discuss it when I was calmer and more rational. When we did, she denied the affair. But I was not convinced. I had to make a decision: let sleeping dogs lie, or walk out and let her get on with it. In the end I decided to stay, because Gary was at an impressionable age and I couldn’t bear him to suffer the trauma of his parents splitting up.

  But something in me died that night in The Green Dragon. And when just a few months later I was attracted to a young lady, I threw myself into a full-blooded affair, which, ironically, nearly destroyed the family unit I so wanted to save.

  The young woman was beautiful, bubbly and also blonde. Her name was Barbara Windsor and she was an actress.

  Our relationship started when she was appearing in the hit show Fings Ain’t Wot They Used To be in the West End. An actor friend of mine, George Sewell, was in the show too, and arranged front-row seats for myself and Dolly’s brother Ray.

  I had met Barbara only once before, with other people, but as the cast took their bows at the end of the performance she kept motioning to me to go backstage for a drink. The audience must have wondered who I was! Ray and I enjoyed a drink with the whole cast, then I asked Barbara to come to a club with me on her own. She agreed, and afterwards I took her home to Harringay, where she lived with her parents. Apart from being a beautiful young woman, with a sexy, shapely body, Barbara was a joy to be with – everything, in fact, that Dolly was not. We agreed to see each other the next night and, making my way home to Wapping, savouring the sweetness of her good-night kiss, I could hardly wait.

  Being unfaithful to Dolly did not bother me unduly and I met Barbara as often as I could. I saw several sides of her, but one that surprised me was her kindness and generosity. As we all know, showbusiness people are not known for putting their hands in their pockets, but Barbara found it hard to say no if someone said they were in trouble. She was becoming quite a big name then and people – mostly men – were always tapping her for a few quid. I told her she was too kind for her own good and people were taking advantage. Unless she toughened up, I said, she would never have any money for herself when she needed it. But Barbara said she could not help herself, and in a way I loved her all the more for that.

  She worked hard and played hard, and was always lively and happy. Most of the time we were together there was a lot of laughter – something there wasn’t at my home.

  Once, early in our relationship, Barbara and I were having a drink in a Wardour Street club with some of the cast of Fings when a row broke out and someone went tumbling down the stairs. Barbara and the others, worried about their reputations, wanted to get out quickly, but one of the guys in the fight warned everyone to stay where they were: nobody, he said, was leaving the club that night; anyone who tried to would be in trouble. That suited us all fine: we ordered more drinks and carried on enjoying ourselves.

  After an hour or so, however, the cast started getting worried, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I went to the top of the stairs and shouted out that whoever was barricading us in had better get out of the way because we were all coming down. With a friend called Harry, I bounded down the stairs and charged down the door leading to the reception foyer. It opened very easily…because it wasn’t locked! No one was there. Our captors had probably left hours before. We never did find out what the row was about, but Barbara found it very amusing that we’d waited all that time and I’d charged down that door for nothing.

  In her early twenties, Barbara had one of those eye-catching figures that was quite dangerous: how many young men, I wonder, walked into lamp-posts or trees because their heads had been turned by that pert little bottom, tiny waist and big boobs? Even today, Barbara and I still laugh at the time a railway porter at Eastbourne thought he was seeing things when the famous Windsor bustline turned up at his station at the unlikely hour of six in the morning. Barbara and I had been in the Astor Club. Remembering that I had an appointment in Eastbourne later that day, I asked Barbara if she fancied riding down there with me. She phoned her mum to tell her where she was going and we got a train. At the other end, Barbara was clip-clopping along the platform in monstrously high-heeled boots, short skirt and clinging white jumper when the porter, eyes out on stalks, mouth open, stumbled over his trolley. Barbara, used to such attention, just giggled. ‘’Ere Charlie, look, that bloke’s fallen off his barrer!’

  The laughing could not last, of course. All the time I was married, I could not devote as much time to Barbara as I wanted. And although she never put any pressure on me, I knew I had to decide whether to leave home for her. If it had been a straight choice between Dolly and Barbara I would have walked out of my Wapping flat without a second thought, but Gary was still my main consideration. I would not do anything to hurt him.

  It was a hard decision to make because I loved Barbara and really cared for her. I agonized over it for months, but in the end I said we had to finish because I couldn’t bear to put Gary through all the upset of a divorce. I told Barbara she needed a fella who could take care of her, and I was so happy when she told me some time later that she had met someone she loved and was getting married. His name, she said, was Ronnie Knight, and she was sure she was making the right decision.

  Chapter Six

  Mum, as always, was the centre of our lives. And when Esmeralda’s Barn started lining our pockets, the twins and I were keen to give her everything she had ever wanted. She wanted very little, however; she certainly didn’t want to leave Vallance Road for a bigger house in a posher street. But she and the old man did not say no to holidays. They had never been further than Southend in Essex, and now there was some money around they seized the chance to be more adventurous. Mum had had nothing for herself all her life and I was thrilled to be able to give her a taste of the ‘jet-set’ life. We went to Tangier, Italy, the South of France, and even lashed out
on a wonderfully expensive cruise. It was lovely to see someone who had been nowhere suddenly going everywhere, and enjoying every sun-soaked minute.

  Exotic places abroad were all very well for a couple of times a year. But we wanted to enjoy Steeple Bay, a nice little spot I had discovered near Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, so I bought a caravan and a little motor cruiser and I’d pop down there with Mum and the old man every weekend. They were blissfully happy times. The twins were very funny about me going away at weekends. They would say: ‘Going away again! Leaving us to do all the work!’ We’d argue every weekend. They would call me a playboy and it really got on my nerves. Then they would suddenly turn up in Steeple Bay with their mates. They always had loads of people with them; they attracted people all the time.

  Mum lapped up the good life at home, too. Two good friends of ours, Alex Steene and his wife, Anna, made a point of taking Mum to the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium every year, followed by a slap-up meal in a top restaurant. Mum always looked forward to that.

  It was all a dramatic change from the modest lifestyle Mum had previously enjoyed. But the money that was suddenly available did not change her one bit: although she now mixed with dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, she was always herself. She wasn’t one for intellectual conversation, but what she had to say was said with a simple honesty that endeared her to everyone she met. The twins and I were proud of her.

  Ronnie and Reggie never put on airs and graces either. Far from being ashamed of where they came from they were proud, and took a delight in taking friends and business acquaintances home to meet Mum over a cup of tea in the upstairs sitting room.

  I was sitting in that room talking to Ronnie one day when the phone rang: it was Lord Effingham, whom we paid to sit on the board of The Barn for prestige. When Ronnie put the phone down he said the friendly peer had told him he needed two hundred pounds immediately; if he couldn’t get it, he was going to kill himself. When Ronnie told me he was arranging for someone to deliver the money within an hour I went spare. I said it was an obvious ploy to get money, and Ronnie was mad if he fell for it. But he would have none of it; he said he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to Effingham. I suppose I should not have been surprised. Nothing had changed; Ronnie had been a soft touch when he didn’t have much money and now that he had it coming out of his ears he was even more charitable. I’m sure that the word went round London that if you were plausible you could get anything out of Ronnie Kray.

  Lucien Freud, a heavy gambler, owed the club £1,400 and I told Ronnie that someone should speak to him about it. A few days later he came up to me and said triumphantly, ‘It’s all sorted out.’

  Relieved, I asked, ‘He’s going to pay up?’

  ‘No,’ Ronnie replied. ‘I told him to forget it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said we wanted to see him back in the club,’ said Ronnie casually. ‘It’s better for us to have his custom.’

  I tried telling him he had made a bad mistake but Ronnie just said, ‘Don’t go on about it. I’ve done it now.’

  My dismay at his misguided generosity deepened a few days later when I learned that Freud had offered a very valuable painting as collateral for his debt and Ronnie had turned it down.

  One of our customers was Pauline Wallace, a lovely, well-dressed, well-spoken Irish lady. What she didn’t know about gambling was not worth knowing, so when she hit hard times we gave her a job supervising the croupiers. A month or so later she told Ronnie she was being evicted from her Knightsbridge flat unless she paid £800 rent arrears. Quick as you like, Ronnie took the cash from the club coffers and gave it to her. When I had a go at him he said, ‘It’s all right. I can use the flat whenever I like.’

  When Pauline got on her feet she never forgot what we had done for her. She would visit Mum in Vallance Road, always with some beautiful flowers. Then one day she told the twins she wanted to give them some money every week to repay them for helping her when she needed it most. The twins refused, so Pauline said she would give it to Mum. They told her it was not necessary, but she insisted. Every week Billy Exley went to Knightsbridge and collected some cash. It was something Pauline wanted to do; she was that kind of woman.

  A couple of years later she married a multi-millionaire in Texas and the last I heard of her she was running all the greyhound racing in Miami.

  Ronnie did not spend all his time playing the nice guy, however. If someone stepped out of line he’d be swift to crack down on them. Lord Effingham was given a fee, plus all he wanted to eat and drink, but that was not enough for him. One of our senior employees complained that the noble lord was interfering in the running of the club, so Ronnie asked to see him.

  ‘Yes, Ronald?’ Effingham said.

  ‘Mowbray,’ Ronnie said quietly, using the peer’s Christian name. ‘You’re getting above yourself. You’re getting paid for nothing, so you can shut your mouth or leave.’

  Effingham knew what side his bread was buttered. ‘You’re so right, Ronald,’ he said. ‘I do apologize.’

  The people who flocked to The Barn in 1960 seemingly had money to burn; it would shake me when I watched thousands of pounds being risked on the turn of a card at the chemin de fer tables.

  Neither the twins nor I were gamblers, but I do remember one night I tried my hand at chemmy and won £350. Well pleased, I told Reggie, who immediately thought he’d have a go. I saw him about two hours later and he was falling about laughing.

  ‘How much did you win?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Reggie, highly amused. ‘I did £750 in an hour.’

  Reggie was not as careless with money as Ronnie, but when he had it he was not afraid to spend it.

  It was during the early days of The Barn that Reggie developed an outside interest that in time was to change his personality and, eventually, his life.

  She was a sixteen-year-old girl and her name was Frances Shea. Like us, she was from the East End and Reggie had watched her grow from a child to a beautiful young woman. When he fell in love with her it was with the same intensity, commitment and passion he showed in everything he did. Although eleven years younger, she was everything he wanted in a woman; it was as if even then he knew that this was the girl he wanted to marry, and he courted her in the old-fashioned sense, with roses and chocolates, the deepest respect and impeccable manners. Reggie put Frances Shea on a pedestal that would eventually destroy him.

  Early in 1961 we got our first warning that the police were not impressed with the Kray success story and that someone somewhere had decided a couple of East End tearaways and their elder brother had no right making a few bob and mixing with wealthy folk far above their station.

  Ronnie and I were at Vallance Road when Big Pat Connolly’s wife phoned from a call box saying Pat had been taken to hospital. A friend of ours, Jimmy Kensit, ran us to the Connolly home to see if there was anything we could do. When we arrived, we discovered Pat had suspected polio: since we had all been in recent contact with him my first thought was to tell Dolly and Gary to go to the hospital for an anti-polio injection. I made a call from a kiosk in Queensbridge Road, then we all headed back to Mum’s house where we could phone everyone who had been in contact with Pat.

  We did not get there until several hours later – after a spell in Dalston police station.

  Jimmy Kensit had decided to call in for something at his flat in Pritchards Road, in Haggerston. Ronnie and I were sitting in Jimmy’s banger when a squad car roared up. We thought there must have been some big robbery – a murder perhaps – but in fact we were the lucky ones to be under investigation. A detective constable called Bartlett started asking Ronnie and me who we were, where we were going, etc, while two uniformed constables inspected Jimmy’s car.

  Fortunately, just as Bartlett was preparing to take us to Dalston nick for further questioning, a friend of ours named Billy Gripp walked by. Billy, who trained for judo at the gym above The Double R, was a res
pected citizen of Bethnal Green and I admitted to him I was worried about a frame-up: would he mind searching Ronnie, Jimmy and myself, and the car, to satisfy the police and a gathering crowd that we didn’t have anything we should not have? Bartlett objected, but Billy went ahead anyway. Then we were taken to the police station. While Bartlett strutted around, warning us that we’d be inside soon, our homes were searched – without warrants – and later we were charged with…loitering with intent to commit a felony!

  Poor Pat Connolly had to take a back seat for a while, as did all the people we were keen to warn to have anti-polio jabs.

  The case actually went to court but, happily, did not last too long. Bartlett told the Marylebone magistrate under oath that Ronnie and I had been seen in Queens-bridge Road trying the door handles of parked cars, and that we fled after Kensit hooted his horn to warn us we were being watched.

  Jimmy’s car horn was found to be out of action, and we proved we were somewhere else at the time of the alleged offences. But we were far from happy walking out of Marylebone Court that day. It was obvious we were marked men.

  Bartlett – a pervert later convicted of molesting young girls – was merely a pawn in a game controlled by far more senior and influential officers.

  A few days later I arrived at Vallance Road to find Mum comforting Frances, who was crying: some policeman had turned up and arrested Reggie for breaking and entering an East End house. Seething, I raced round to Bethnal Green nick and told them I knew it was a ‘get up’; that they were framing Reggie for something he didn’t do.

  The police said they had a witness – a Jewish woman in her seventies called Lilia Hertzberg who claimed to have seen Reggie and another man running out of her husband’s Stepney home with jewellery and cash valued at £500.