This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood

by Alan Johnson

  That winter it was difficult for Lily to follow the route of the coal trucks, as was her custom, to pick up the precious lumps that fell on to the pavement or into the road. She and I tried it once or twice but the weather was appalling, with ice and snow making all the surfaces perilous to walk on. Besides which, with the hours she was working, Lily didn’t have the time to scavenge for coal.

  Our two-bar electric heater in the front room had to be used as sparingly as possible because of the amount of electricity it consumed. When it was switched on, the little wheel in the middle of the meter accelerated to an alarming whizz and its appetite for coins became insatiable. So we relied on the coal fire in the back room, which also benefited from the heat generated by the cooker. During the winter we spent nearly all our time there and the front room was rarely occupied.

  Linda was spending less and less time at home anyway. I had come out of hospital to find she’d dumped Jimmy Carter after learning from his father that on Saturday nights, once he’d bid her goodnight at around 10pm, he’d head for Soho. There he was frequenting the dives and strip joints, taking purple hearts (the fairly innocuous but notorious recreational drug of choice in the early 1960s) and mixing with shady characters of both genders. In the post-Jimmy period, Linda and her best friend, the slim and attractive Cheryl Roberts, had become Mods and took to going out with a bunch of like-minded friends most evenings.

  As there seemed to be a rule that Mods didn’t fetch coal, the job devolved to me. I had to queue outside the coal merchants’, about ten minutes’ walk from Walmer Road, with my battered pram every day except Sundays, when it was shut, because our budget didn’t stretch to buying it in anything other than small quantities. We never had supplies of anything in reserve, let alone coal. I would wrap up as warmly as I could and try to time my visits to be near the front of the queue when the merchant opened after lunch.

  He’d spend his mornings delivering and the afternoons dispensing, like a GP holding surgeries and then making home visits, only in reverse. My task would have been onerous once a week in that terrible weather; as a daily chore it was debilitating, particularly as Lily insisted that on every occasion I must ask if we could have our coal on tick. In a normal winter, Lily wouldn’t light the fire until the evening, particularly if nobody was in. But during the Big Freeze, and with me at home, she was having to spend far more on coal than she could afford.

  The merchant was a small man with no teeth. Every exposed part of his body was ingrained with dust from the product he traded in. His huge and imposing wife helped to shovel the coal into sacks and weigh it on a set of rusty old scales. Both of them were clear: there would be no credit. There was already a roughly chalked sign on the wall to that effect, as I explained to Lily, to no avail. She insisted that I made the attempt regardless. Her theory was that the more often I asked, the more I would wear them down and the more likely they would be to concede a credit arrangement. Thankfully, I was at least always able to pay when I was knocked back. Lily would give me the few shillings I needed for the single bag that would see us through to the next day, with a few lumps set aside for Sundays. Having tried and failed several times to get credit and being acutely embarrassed in the process, I took the unusual step of ignoring Lily’s instructions.

  I’d wheel the pram back through the treacherous streets, keeping an eye out for pieces of orphaned coal on the ground. If I found any I’d force them into the bulging sack, taking care to ensure that none of my precious cargo was spilled for others to scavenge.

  The snow and ice lasted from December to March, and that January proved to be the coldest month of the twentieth century. There was no football so a pools panel had to be established to predict the results, thus ensuring that this great Saturday evening institution continued uninterrupted. The thaw had arrived before Dr Tanner considered me fit to return to school, and by the time I did I was even further behind.

  At school a majority of the boys were Chelsea supporters – Stamford Bridge, the club’s ground, was barely 500 yards from Sloane. The contempt I attracted for supporting QPR instilled a lifelong antipathy to Chelsea and I tended to avoid Stamford Bridge but in the late spring of 1963, when they were vying for promotion from the Second Division with Stoke City, I made an exception. Chelsea were due to play Stoke at home on Lily’s birthday, 11 May – and the visitors would be fielding the legendary Stanley Matthews on the right wing. I was determined to get there to see the man who, as far as I was concerned, was the greatest footballer who ever lived. As usual, I went alone. Unfortunately, another 66,198 people went as well, and I was very lucky indeed not to have been crushed to death. Incredibly, in spite of periodic tragedies at soccer stadia in Britain and around the world, the potential perils of having vast numbers of supporters crammed into football grounds were not addressed in any significant way until the terrible Hillsborough disaster of 1989 led belatedly to the introduction of proper safety measures and all-seater stadia.

  At Stamford Bridge in 1963, my main concern was that I wouldn’t be able to see any of the action. Squashed against the big men around me I had only one small area of the pitch within my vision. Happily, it turned out to be the particular patch of grass patrolled by the great Matthews during the first half. He was forty-seven years of age by then and had been brought into the Stoke side for his crowd-pulling ability rather than his fading skills. The Chelsea left back, Ken Shellito, seemed frightened of Stanley’s venerable status – in truth, I think nobody wanted the dubious honour of accidentally injuring him and putting an end to his long and illustrious career – and as a result, I saw the famous Matthews body swerve take him past the Chelsea defender two or three times. In the second half I saw nothing of Stanley Matthews and not much of anything else. Stoke won1–0 and I struggled to get out of Stamford Bridge in one piece.

  Six days later, I celebrated my thirteenth birthday. In the space of a week, I had become a teenager and Lily had turned forty-two – the age at which both her mother and her grandmother had died.

  Chapter 13

  I DON’T REMEMBER his name, if I ever knew it. He’d come to our house with a crowd of Linda’s friends when Lily was in hospital for a few days of tests.

  He was older than my sister, about nineteen, and the most impeccably dressed of all her friends. Indeed, I’d never seen anyone dressed like him. This was no apprentice Mod, like Linda and Cheryl: he was the genuine article.

  It was a Sunday afternoon and I’d just got back from my milk round. Whisper it softly, but I suspect my sister had been at an all-night party. She’d borrowed some of my precious records to take with her. By now, I’d discovered Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters on the Pye International label. There was a record shop in Roehampton, close to our school sports ground, which sold less mainstream music unavailable on the high street. My milk-round money would be spent on these exotic rarities with their distinctive red and yellow labels. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had sparked interest in the middle-aged, black American artists whose songs were now being recorded by white English boys and would soon be sold back to American kids during the Beatles-led ‘British invasion’ of the US charts.

  At Sloane, among those of us who were ‘aware’, a form of oneupmanship developed based on who could discover the most obscure American blues artist nobody else had heard of. Thus a liking for Howlin’ Wolf would be countered by John Lee Hooker, only to be trumped by another boy with Blind Lemon Jefferson.

  Chuck and Bo and Muddy were soon old hat, although my fondness for Chuck Berry was enduring, enhanced by the fact that he was serving a sentence in a US penitentiary for smuggling a girl across the state border. I had no idea what this meant (which was, of course, that the girl was under the age of consent in her own state and had been taken to a neighbouring state where it was lower), but it sounded romantic and rebellious and added to Chuck’s allure.

  When I arrived home that Sunday lunchtime, Linda, her friend Cheryl and six or seven others were draped around our small f
ront room drinking tea, listening to records on the Dansette and recovering from their party night. Linda insisted on introducing them all to ‘my little brother’ and they talked to me in the patronizing tone so often adopted by adolescents to address those younger than themselves. Linda and her girlfriends wore skirts cut above the knee and their hair was in transition from beehive to bob. The lads wore Ben Sherman shirts and jeans, apart from the Real Mod. He was exquisitely turned out in a pale grey suit and white shirt with little silver cufflinks. His hair was short but thick on top with a high parting and neat fringe. His Italian shoes were polished to perfection.

  The Real Mod was interested to learn that the Pye International records Linda had taken to the party were mine. Following me out to the back room (from which Linda had tried to keep her friends away), he talked to me normally, as if I were his equal.

  I was annoyed to discover that Linda hadn’t brought my records back with her. The Real Mod said he would take me in his car (in which they’d all arrived, packed together like a box of dates) to pick them up.

  So it was that we left Linda and her friends lounging at Walmer Road and journeyed a few miles across West London to Kilburn, where the party had been held, to retrieve my precious 45s. My new hero obviously worked and earned. This was only the second or third time I had ever been in a car but I knew a lot about them, not least from my old collection of Matchbox toys. His was a 1950s Cortina with a bench seat and column gear change.

  We talked all the way there. The Real Mod told me how much he liked Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and asked if I’d heard Sonny Boy Williamson or Lead Belly, Elmore James or Mose Allison, providing me with valuable ammunition in the battle to be top dog in the musical knowledge stakes at school. He told me about the clubs he went to and the bands he heard. Best of all, he passed on his own maxim: the philosophy, in a nutshell, of the West London Mod. ‘You may be poor, but don’t show poor.’ These were kids from the slums, like me. Infatuated with Italian style, they saw no reason why they couldn’t match it. Scooters were cheap to buy and run; the clothes could be expensive but if you saved and bought wisely, you could look good with fewer clothes of better quality. Decent second-hand suits and ties could be picked up in the Portobello Road or Shepherd’s Bush market.

  At the Kilburn party venue the Real Mod left me in the car and went in to collect my records, returning with each one neatly replaced in its paper sleeve. He assured me he’d wiped them carefully with a tea towel and he was so meticulous about everything that I believed him. On the way home I listened as he relayed sacred advice about the beauty of a tonic suit with five-button cuffs and six-inch vents; how cufflinks must only be worn on shirts with double cuffs, never in single cuffs; how important it was to wear long socks so that you didn’t show acres of bare shin between sock and trouser leg when you sat down.

  Although he’d progressed to a car, the Real Mod still revered the scooter and spoke of the joy of riding a Vespa through London on a sunny day, wearing a Fred Perry with Levi Sta-Prest trousers (never, never, jeans, which were a nasty American garment worn by greasy Rockers) and a pair of brown Hush Puppies.

  I soaked it all up, every word. Here was a role model with whom I could identify: a young man from the slums who dressed with a style and confidence that personified his attitude. By the time he dropped me back at Walmer Road, the others had dispersed and Linda had gone with Cheryl back to her home in Sutton Dwellings. I sat alone in the front room pondering a new approach to life: ‘You may be poor, but don’t show poor.’

  I’d known since primary school I wouldn’t be a draughtsman. I might be a musician. I would certainly be a Mod.

  While Linda continued to take care of me during Lily’s spells in hospital, I needed less and less looking after as I got older. With Tony Cox in a different class from me at school, and our interests diverging outside it, we had completely grown apart by this time. Instead I’d become friendly with Colin James, a classmate who lived in Elthiron Road in Parsons Green. Colin came from a middle-class home but was doing his damnedest to rebel against his background. His father, who was a senior officer with Hammersmith and Fulham Council, would plead with me to exert a calming influence on his errant son.

  The courtesy Lily had instilled in me often gave the parents of my friends (and later my girlfriends) the mistaken impression that I was more sensible and virtuous than I was. In truth, I didn’t have a great deal to rebel against, but I had certainly emerged from my shell and Linda didn’t have to worry that I was moping around at home on my own when she was out.

  Colin badly wanted to be so many things he wasn’t. For a start, he wanted to be a tough street kid. It was becoming fashionable to be working class. On the London stage, aristocratic drawing rooms were giving way to kitchen-sink dramas as the spotlight was turned towards ordinary lives. On television, politicians were being lampooned and the workings of the Establishment held up for public scrutiny by That Was The Week that Was, which brought satire to viewers for the first time. The city was starting to swing and the cultural explosion of the 1960s was catapulting talented role models from humble backgrounds into the limelight. From East London came the photographer David Bailey and the actor Terence Stamp, the son of a Thames tugboat captain. West London produced the hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, scion of an immigrant family and pioneer of the iconic geometric cut.

  At thirteen, none of this registered with me and I doubt it did with Colin, either. But in keeping with the spirit of the times, he resented the stable, middle-class lifestyle his mother and father had provided and his resentment seemed to increase with every dirt-poor blues artist he discovered. Worst of all, try as he might, he found it impossible to upset his kind and loving parents. When he grew his hair his mother said it looked ‘nice’. When he informed his father that he and I (aged fourteen and thirteen respectively) would be hitchhiking around the south coast that summer, his dad merely offered to give us a lift to the station. He told both parents of our intention to spend Saturday night in Soho and they were unworried, saying only that we should be home by midnight. I could stay over and Mrs James would leave out a couple of glasses of milk and some biscuits in the kitchen for us when we got in. The more Colin attempted to rebel, the less inclined his parents seemed to give him a cause.

  Colin longed to emulate his heroes, the Rolling Stones, but had no ear for music. There were three boys in our year at Sloane who could play the guitar, and he wasn’t one of them. As well as myself, there was Paul Swinson, whose father wrote comic songs for the Parlophone label, recorded by the likes of Peter Sellers, and a tall lad whose Mod stylishness was rather spoiled by Hank Marvin-type horn-rimmed spectacles. His name was Stephen Hackett, or Steve Hackett, as he was better known later, when he became famous as a guitarist with Genesis and GTR.

  Stephen hung out with the toughest kid in our year at Sloane, Terry Lawrence. Colin wanted to hang out with him too, but Terry considered him a wimp, unworthy of his patronage. Colin reacted by constantly seeking fights and improving with practice. He was tall and well built, but his major asset was his sheer bravado. He enjoyed walking on the wild side. If we were heading for somewhere in Fulham, for instance, and saw a crowd of rough-looking kids horsing around way off our route, he’d insist that we change direction in order to walk through the middle of them looking ‘hard’. Nine times out of ten it would be OK and our chutzpah would carry us through. As for the tenth time … well, we were very fast runners.

  The fact that Colin could neither sing nor play any instrument didn’t deter me from making him bass guitarist in my band, the Vampires. The line-up was me on my Spanish guitar, Jimmy Robb, a Sloane pupil who was small, blond and good-looking, on drums (or, to be accurate, on Tupperware bowls) and Colin, thumping away on an old acoustic guitar to which I’d affixed four bass E-strings. We played in the cellar retreat Colin’s parents had kindly put at the exclusive disposal of their eldest son and his friends.

  Those friends included two from the hitherto alien species commo
nly known as girls. Yvonne Stacey and Pauline Bright were in the corresponding year at Carlyle, the girls’ grammar next door to Sloane. They were also Colin’s neighbours. Pauline lived almost opposite him in Elthiron Road and Yvonne in a huge house overlooking Waltham Green.

  The concept of having girls as friends was novel to me. Although Carol Smith had been in our little Bevington gang in the days when I knocked around with Tony Cox, she had been such a tomboy that we never really thought of her as a member of the opposite sex. Now that I was a teenager, girls had become more interesting – and more frightening. After my trysts with Edna in Denmark the previous year my shyness had dissipated but the first time I went round to Colin’s house and found two girls in his cellar, it still came as a bit of a shock.

  Colin introduced this duo – both dressed in identical slacks (as they used to be called), royal blue cotton and polyester stretched tight by stirrups at the ankle that had to be secured under the arch of each foot – as his friends. I think they’d all been to primary school together, but unlike Carol Smith, Yvonne and Pauline could hardly have been described as tomboys. We played records on the sleek, polished wood gramophone that was another excellent feature of this refuge. As was the cushioned seating area that Colin had arranged on the floor against the rear wall and under the stairs, out of the line of vision of any prying adult who might open the door to peer in and check up on us. Any uninvited guests would have to walk halfway down the wooden steps and look over the banister to see us, thus giving us plenty of warning of their arrival.

  After a while, Colin suggested that we sit on the cushions. The four of us lined up with our backs against the wall: me, Pauline, Yvonne and Colin. The light from the single naked bulb that hung from the centre of the cellar failed to penetrate our shadowy corner.