The following Christmas Day, Judy’s children were with their father –her ex-husband–so we decided to go to the Croydon Park Hotel with Gary for lunch. The quality of service from the friendly staff matches the exquisite food and we had a lovely time. The only worry I had as we left was Gary; he wasn’t feeling very well and, to be honest, he didn’t look too clever.
Over the next few days he seemed to perk up and said he was going to see the new year in with a friend of ours, Roy, at his home in West Norwood. But when I got a phone call from Roy on 2 January, saying that Gary’s back was so painful he was taking him to his doctor, my heart sank; I had a feeling that something was dreadfully wrong.
The doctor arranged for Gary to have an X-ray and when we went back for the results the next day, Gary was so weak, he couldn’t walk. The doctor immediately called an ambulance to take him to King’s College Hospital, in Camberwell, where he spent the next seven days. He was allowed home for the weekend, but had to go back on the Monday. He was given all sorts of tests, but nobody was saying what was wrong with him. Finally, the following Friday, 19 January, a doctor called me into his office and confirmed my fears.
‘Mr Kray,’ he said, gently, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that your son has lung cancer.’
All I could think to say was: ‘How bad is it? Can you operate?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘It has gone too far.’
‘How long are we talking about?’ I asked. I was hoping for a year, possibly two, but knew in my heart it was unrealistic. What that doctor told me, however, knocked me sideways.
‘Eight weeks,’ he said. ‘At the most.’
I walked out of the office in a daze. My Gary. My poor Gary, who had never done anything wrong, never hurt anyone in his life. All I could think was: why can’t it be me? I’m coming up to seventy. I’ve had my life. Why does it have to be him? He’s only forty-four. He’s in the summer of his life.
I made a decision then and there that Gary would not be told the truth; he was not a strong boy and would not be able to handle it. I told Judy and said I had to let Dolly, Gary’s mother, know, even though she had not set eyes on him for years. I went to a pine furniture shop in the East End, where Dolly’s sister, Elaine, and niece, Pat, worked, and broke the tragic news.
‘Would you tell Dolly that Gary is in King’s College, and she can visit him if she wants,’ I said.
‘Is it all right if I tell Nancy?’ Elaine asked.
I didn’t know what to say to that. Neither Gary nor I had seen Nancy for nearly twenty years; I did not know how she would react to hearing that her brother was dying. I knew that Gary would love to see her, though, so that solved my dilemma.
‘Yes, Elaine,’ I said. ‘Please tell Nancy.’
Later that day, I got a call saying that not only did Nancy dearly want to see Gary, she was going to visit him that very evening. Sitting in a communal TV room with Gary later, I said: ‘You’ve got a surprise visitor coming tonight, Gal.’
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘Your sister, Nancy,’ I said.
Gary’s face broke into a wide smile; he was thrilled, really made up.
‘That’s lovely, Dad,’ he said, ‘I’d love to see her.’
Half an hour later I spotted a beautiful blonde at the far end of the corridor and knew at once it was Nancy. She was with Pat. I walked towards them and hugged Nancy tightly.
‘Hello, darling.’
‘Hello, Dad,’ she said.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘He’s waiting to see you.’
‘I’m so pleased you let me know. It’s been so long. I should have tried to contact you both before.’
Now wasn’t the time for recriminations. ‘We’re to blame, too, darling,’ I said. ‘It’s the way of life.’
If Nancy was shocked to see her brother in a wheelchair, looking terribly frail, she didn’t show it. She walked straight up to him, bent down and cuddled him. Gary’s face lit up; it was the happiest I’d seen him since Christmas Day when he first complained of being off-colour.
Nancy, it was clear, was a very tactile person: she kept touching Gary, couldn’t leave him alone the whole hour she spent with us. It was a joy to see.
What made the visit so good was that Nancy made a determined effort to be as natural as possible. When Gary asked her to get something for him, for example, she laughed: ‘Hey, stop bossing me about, just ‘cos I’m your little sister.’ When he asked the time, she pointed at the clock and said: ‘What time does it say up there?’
I hadn’t seen Gary laugh since Christmas, but Nancy brought a smile to his face. He thought she was fabulous; he liked everything about her.
When it was time for us to leave, Nancy told Gary not to worry, she would be back the following night.
Walking away from the hospital, she looked at me, sadness clouding her eyes. ‘What a waste, Dad,’ she said. ‘All the years we’ve been kept apart. We could have had a marvellous time together. And now he’s going to die. What a terrible waste.’
With Gary so desperately ill, I did not want to dwell on the past; there was no point. I wanted to see the positive side of Nancy turning up in his life, no matter how late.
‘Seeing you together, so happy, pushed all those years away, darling,’ I said. ‘You made up for all those missing years just by being there tonight.’
And I meant it. One only had to look at the sparkle in Gary’s eyes to know that seeing his sister again made his day.
It was not possible for Gary to stay at King’s indefinitely; on the other hand, it was a non-starter for him to go home to his flat. The obvious answer was for him to move in with Judy and me at Sanderstead, but how could I expect a mother of three teenage children to help care for a dying man in our crowded home as well?
I had to ask Judy, though; I didn’t have a choice. To her great credit, Judy’s reaction was positive and immediate.
‘Of course, Gary can stay,’ she said. ‘I’ll convert the downstairs front room into his own bedroom.’
What a blessed relief that was. Having Gary with me twenty-four hours a day would give me the opportunity to make sure his last weeks were as comfortable as possible. My respect for Judy, which was sky-high anyway, soared. With a full-time job to hold down, plus three children to bring up at crucial and difficult times in their lives, she could have been forgiven for saying she could not cope with Gary as well. But she didn’t, and I shall be grateful to her for ever for that.
We turned that front room into something resembling a hospital ward and looked after Gary there for the next three weeks. I hardly slept; I would lay awake upstairs, listening for the slightest sound from Gary, then get up to tend to him as necessary. Judy, bless her heart, would often get up even though she had to be up early for work. Her children were as good as gold, too, always popping in and out of the room, when they were home, asking if Gary wanted anything. He was in good hands and I know he appreciated what everyone was doing for him, because he would often say: ‘They’re lovely people, aren’t they, Dad?’
I was so pleased that Nancy had come back into both our lives, but I did worry that she might not make contact, given that we were many miles apart–she in north London, on the borders of Hertfordshire, and us in Surrey. My fears were unfounded: no sooner had we settled Gary into his ‘hospital ward’ than the most touching card from Nancy arrived, assuring Gary that ‘I Am Thinking of You’. The words on the front, written by Susan Polis Schutz, read:
I have no definite purpose
for writing to you
other than to say that
I am happily thinking
about you right now
and when you read this
I know I will have captured
a small part of your day,
causing you to think about me.
Gary was very moved by the sentiment, but what Nancy had written inside brought tears to his eyes. And mine, I have to admit. She wrote: ‘It was so lovely seeing you again. W
here have all the years gone? You would think that we had never been apart–God only knows what happened. Time goes by so quickly. I have always thought about you, but I suppose thinking is not enough. I SHOULD have made the effort to get in touch with you–there are no excuses. But now you’ve got me and I’m not going to let you go again! You’ve had too many years without your ‘pest’ of a sister driving you mad!! Gary, I love you so much, and to see you again made me SO happy. I’ll always be here for you. I’m just sorry it took so many years. Love always, Nancy.’
Gary put that beautiful card in pride of place on the mantelpiece beside his bed. I lost count of the number of times he read it.
Nancy came regularly to be with Gary. She always arrived laden with little delicacies; salt beef, bagels, cakes, fruit – anything that might tempt him to eat. I’d take the opportunity to get out and run some errands, knowing Gary was safe in his sister’s loving care. But no matter how much we all did for Gary, it was painfully obvious he was slipping away fast: he had never been a strapping lad, but now he was nothing more than skin and bone, and unable to do anything for himself. Steroids prescribed by King’s combated his pain and gave him an appetite for a while, but it was short-term relief. My son was dying before my eyes and, as much as I did not want to believe it, I knew he would not last as long as we had been told.
I had to take Gary to Maidstone Prison and I dreaded it: he was so frail that even the shortest journey was a painful effort, but I feared for Reggie, too. He knew Gary was very, very ill, but had no idea how bad he looked, and I was worried he would be shocked at what he saw. I asked our dear friend Laurie O’Leary to drive us down and we set off in his white Mercedes, just after midday on Monday 5 February. Gary’s wheelchair was in the boot and he lay, stretched out, on the rear seat with me, his head in my lap. He was in great pain, but never once complained, and whenever we hit a bump in the road and I looked at him, concerned, he gave me a little smile to let me know he was all right. I was taking him to see his Uncle Reg for what I knew was the last time and it was all I could do to stop myself falling apart in front of him. Funerals apart, it was the saddest journey I’d ever made.
I had notified the prison about Gary’s condition and we were allowed a special visiting time, so that the four of us could be alone. We still had to have a security check, however, and were asked to walk through one of those invisible screens that detect metal objects. I followed Laurie, then turned to push Gary through. What I saw made my blood boil: a prison officer had an arm down Gary’s back, searching him.
I could not believe it. They knew how ill he was. Did someone seriously think a dying man would be smuggling something illegal in to one of the highest profile prisoners in the country?
All the emotions I had been fighting to keep under control, for Reggie’s sake as much as Gary’s, came gushing out in one long agonizing scream and tears started rolling down my face.
‘Take your hands off my son, take them off NOW. My son is very ill. You know that. You’ve been told that.’
I was shaking and my fists were clenched. ‘Lay one finger on him and you’ll have me to deal with,’ I yelled.
Dear, dear Gary. He looked up at me, shaking his head. ‘Don’t get upset, Dad,’ he said. ‘I’m all right.’
Fortunately, the security man saw sense and allowed me to wheel Gary through the screen without further physical searching. As we waited to be escorted over to the visiting room in Weald Wing, Gary said: ‘Dry your eyes, Dad. Don’t let Reg see you’ve been upset.’
Which, of course, nearly set me off again: Gary, just skin and bone, wasting away, but thinking of me.
Reggie was sitting in a chair when we walked in. He got up and came over and put both arms round Gary, fighting to hide the sadness he felt. ‘How are you, Gary?’ he asked – a ridiculous question, but what else do you say in such tragic circumstances?
We sat there, the four of us, chatting about this and that, nothing very important, and all the time Reggie was rubbing Gary’s shoulders and stroking his hair. After just half an hour, though, I could see that Gary had had enough; the strain of the journey was beginning to show.
‘Well, Gary, I think I should be getting you back home now,’ I said.
‘Yes, Gary,’ Reg said. ‘Don’t tire yourself out too much.’
All Gary did was nod in agreement. He was exhausted. He just wanted to get home and get back into bed.
As we prepared to leave, Reggie hugged Gary’s tiny shoulders. ‘God bless you, Gary,’ he said. ‘Hope to see you again soon.’
I wheeled Gary to the exit door. Waiting for it to be unlocked, I turned round to give Reggie a farewell wave. Tears were streaming down his face.
He knew he would not see his nephew alive again.
It was at this time that a close friend told me about St Christopher’s Hospice, at Crystal Palace. Until then, I had no idea there were establishments that cared for terminally ill patients. I am so relieved I was put in touch with St Christopher’s, because the lovely, caring people there made Gary’s last days peaceful, comfortable and, although it may sound strange, enjoyable.
From the moment he went there, on 12 February, those kind, unselfish people loved Gary; they said he was one of the nicest people they had ever met–so polite and appreciative of all they were doing for him. After eight days, we took him home, knowing that, when the end was in sight, we would have to take him back.
He loved the idea of being at home, fussed over by all of us, but St Christopher’s was so wonderfully peaceful and efficient he would not have minded staying. In fact, after a week or so, something happened that made me feel he would be better off there. He woke in the middle of the night, all hot and bothered, saying he had had a strange feeling, which he couldn’t explain. I sat him up in bed and told him to take deep breaths. It was nothing to worry about, I assured him. But I was worried, because I was not a nurse and had no idea what to do in an emergency. When I suggested we ought to consider getting him back in St Christopher’s, he seemed relieved.
‘I don’t mind going back, Dad,’ he said. ‘I love it. I love them up there.’
My concern at not being equipped to deal with a crisis was genuine, but if I’m honest, I seized on this as an excuse to get Gary back into St Christopher’s: I wasn’t blind; I could see the end was very close.
The hospice confirmed that I’d done the right thing: Gary had only a few days to live. He went in there on 1 March and I let all those close to Gary know that, if they wanted to see him, it would have to be sooner rather than later.
With all the stress that lay ahead, the last thing I needed was another emotional trauma. But I got one the following Sunday when I opened the News of the World and saw a huge headline across two pages that screamed: THE GREAT BRAIN ROBBERY, and a sub-heading below shouted: DOCS HAVE PICKLED RONNIE KRAY’S BONCE IN A BOTTLE–NOW HIS WIFE HAS HALF A MIND TO SUE.
The jocular cynicism of that last line made me think it was some sort of sick send-up–a mickey-take, based on Ronnie’s notorious insanity and schizophrenia. But the story was deadly serious. Apparently Broadmoor’s top medical staff had secretly ordered Ronnie’s brain to be removed before his funeral, and sent to a laboratory in Oxford for scientific examination. The results, it seemed, could be of vital interest to scientists who believe criminal behaviour may be brought on by chemical imbalances in our little grey cells.
The horrific revelation came to light, the story claimed, after a tip-off to Ronnie’s ex-wife, Kate, who, it was clear, had wasted little time in making money by passing the information to the newspaper. She accused Broadmoor of theft and said she was contemplating legal action. In the meantime, she wanted Ronnie’s brain returned for burial with the rest of his body. She was outraged, so the story said, to learn that there was part of Ronnie imprisoned in a jar with a little paper label.
If the former Mrs Kray was outraged, I was beside myself with fury, and so was Reg when he heard. He rang me, shattered, and wanted to know if anyone
had asked my permission for the bizarre operation. I told him No, and he said: ‘How can people do this without asking permission from the deceased’s family?’
I said I didn’t know. But I did really. So did Reg. It was the same old story: if your name is Kray, they can do what they like with you – without fear of any comebacks. Hadn’t the hospital authorities – Broadmoor and Heatherwood–allowed the media to hear of Ronnie’s death before having the common courtesy, let alone the decency, to notify Reg and me first?
Proof of the latest couldn’t-care-less attitude became evident a few days later when Reg asked his solicitor to contact Broadmoor to find out (a) who gave the go-ahead for Ronnie’s brain to be removed; and (b) why the next of kin had not been asked to give permission. The solicitor got nowhere.
The same week a Tory MP, Peter Cohen, took up the case, describing Broadmoor’s action as ‘gruesome’. But he got nowhere, too.
I found the whole business unsavoury and disgraceful– and, more importantly, hypocritical. If Britain discovered Saddam Hussein was experimenting on dead people behind their families’ backs, we would be the first to condemn him as a monster.
How would other people in this country feel if they picked up a paper to read that their dead parent or brother or sister had been buried without their brain? To realize suddenly that all the time they had been praying their loved one would rest in peace, the deceased relative was lying there with part of their body stolen?
It’s inhuman, isn’t it?
My mind went back to when Reg and I spent those quiet, private moments alone with Ronnie in English’s Chapel of Rest. I could see Reg, stroking Ronnie’s face and shoulders, saying over and over again: ‘You’re at peace now, Ron, you’re at peace.’ And I felt quite sick, knowing that Ronnie, after all those nightmarish traumas caused by an appalling sickness, was not at peace; and that we had been deceived–no, duped!–in the most cynical, callous, uncaring manner possible. It is a terrible memory to have.
Me and My Brothers Page 30