Common As Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown

by Roy Chubby Brown

  And there was no shortage of places in Grangetown for my auld gadgie to go out drinking. Cardboard City had been a godless community for many of its early years. Without churches, the locals got used to congregating in the dozens of shebeens, pubs, clubs and dives that sprung up and became the heart of our neighbourhood. But by the time I was a kid there were four churches in a row in Bolckow Road, including the Methodist chapel, where Dad’s twin sister Connie was a lay preacher and where I started in the choir as a young boy, loving Sunday school because, like many of the kids, it gave me an opportunity to take more money out of the collection tin than I put in it.

  Dad had another sister, Ruby, but nobody talked owt about her. She was a schoolteacher who’d moved to Stokesley at the posh end of Middlesbrough and didn’t want anything to do with us. It left just Connie, a spinster in love with a married policeman, to look after my grandparents. My grandfather, Thomas Vasey, was chalk to my father’s cheese, a miserable old bastard who never said two words to me in all the time I knew him. He was such a grump that other people used to take bets on when they’d see him smile. He’d been a crane driver at Dorman, Long and seemed to me to spend most of his long retirement, until he died at ninety, sat in an old stiff-backed leather armchair, a spittoon beside him, placing bets on the horses and glowering at anyone who entered the room. In those days there were no legal bookmakers in Grangetown. Instead my grandad would use bookies’ runners who stood on street corners, taking bets and paying out winnings. They always used to be short fellas in flat caps, with one eye permanently on the road in case a copper appeared. There were hundreds of them in them days, all over Middlesbrough and its surroundings. It was part and parcel of life.

  And if you won something on the horses, you spent it straight away. There was no saving for a rainy day. No one in Grangetown saw a future beyond the steelworks, which meant you lived every day as if it was your last. You grabbed your pleasures when you could, so a win might mean a night getting blathered in the local dive or pub, which we called the claggy mat because your feet would stick to the floor. Or if you were that way inclined, you might head up to the black path that ran parallel to the steelworks, which was where all the prostitutes used to ply their trade. At times, particularly on a Friday night, there would be dozens of women up there, looking to pick up steelworkers walking home with their pay packets in their back pockets. As kids we used to point at them in the street. ‘Eh, she’s on the scut,’ or ‘She’s on the batter,’ we’d say. And we’d shout a few insults or throw a stone, and then run away.

  Other than illegal bookmaking, prostitution and drunkenness, there was very little crime in Grangetown. Everyone in Middlesbrough knew that if you lived in Grangetown you had nowt. You could see it from the houses. No one had carpets down or curtains up – instead, we put cardboard on the windows – and at Christmas the most you hoped for in your stocking was an apple, an orange, some nuts, a colouring book and, if it was a good year, a little toy. That was it.

  I’d like to be able to say I can remember happy times when my auld fella, my mam, Barbara and I all did something together, such as going to the park or the seaside as a family, but I can’t remember it ever happening. My parents couldn’t even agree on what to call me. Dad had called me Royston, but Mam didn’t like it. She said it was a snobbish, poncey name. Telling my auld fella that she was ‘sick of people shortening it – either he’s Royston or he’s Roy’, she went down to the registry office and had my name changed in the official register from Royston to Roy.

  Given their many differences, it was perhaps unsurprising that few people ever saw my parents together outside the house. Funerals, maybe, but even that was unlikely as my father was one of the first people in Grangetown to turn his back on the church. It made him the black sheep of the family and maybe it played a part in the warfare between my parents. Theirs wasn’t a passionate relationship; they just didn’t get on. As soon as a row broke out between my mam and my dad, my sister and I would have to scat upstairs as fast as we could. Something would go flying and they’d start bawling at each other. Frying pans, ornaments, you name it, it became a missile. There was nothing in our house that wasn’t chipped or broken.

  My father once said something wrong as he was eating his tea at the kitchen table. Mam walked over, picked up his plate, opened the dustbin and threw it all out. The plate, the food she’d taken an hour to cook, everything. She had a wicked temper.

  My mam’s other affliction was that she was an epileptic at a time when there was no real treatment for it. Her fits were frequent. She once fell off the platform of the bus during a seizure and ended up in hospital. Another time she had a fit while cooking the tea and fell in the fire, burning the side of her face and her arm. And when I was a baby she had a fit while bathing me, trapping me in the bath. Fortunately, Aunt Alice was after a cup of sugar and found us. She pulled me out from underneath my mam, held me upside down and emptied me of water. If it hadn’t been for Aunt Alice, I was frequently reminded, I wouldn’t have lived to see my first birthday.

  I’ve always suspected that my mother’s epilepsy was triggered by the frequent beatings my father dealt out. In that, our home was no different to any other in Grangetown at that time. It was the way things were in those days: married couples settled their arguments with their fists and their feet. I’m not making any excuses for it, but on rough council estates where times are hard and there’s not a lot of money about, people hit out when they don’t get what they want and need. It’s nowt to be proud of, but it goes on. Walking home along our street you’d often hear, ‘Aaah! Fuck off!’ and then a door would slam and you’d hear heavy footsteps pounding into the distance. Or a window would smash as something went flying.

  Whether my mother’s epilepsy was brought on by violence and depression, I’ll never know. Although I’ve asked many doctors, I never got a proper answer, but no doubt it played a part in making my mother among the most negative and disillusioned people I’ve ever known.

  So perhaps it was no surprise that Mam was well versed in catching the eye of other men. She was an attractive woman and there were loads of men after her. My auld fella once brought his foreman, Ted Bridge, home for tea. Ted was tall, wore a trilby and had a little moustache. Within weeks of Ted coming to our house, Mam was meeting him for walks and Dad was accusing her of doing the dirty.

  In the midst of this domestic warfare, my sister and I tried to get on with our little lives. My mates and I would have clemmie fights against rival gangs of kids, hurling lumps of clay and mud at each other. Or we’d go down to the river and float on the water on big inner tubes that we found on a nearby rubbish dump. We were toughened against the cold and would spend hours drifting in the heavily polluted Tees. Once we ended up floating out to sea. The lifeboat had to come for us and I inevitably got a clout from my father when I got home.

  I was always getting in trouble, which inevitably meant a hiding. On Sundays we were allowed to wear our best clothes and shoes, but God help us if we got them dirty. I’d gone down to the Veck, a little stream near our house, to throw matchsticks into the water and watch them race each other. Having got my shoes filthy and terrified of a beating, I hatched a plan. I’d take my vest off, use it to clean my shoes and throw it away. Convinced I’d pulled off my scam, I kept my head down all through tea that evening, praying that my dodge wouldn’t be discovered. It worked until my mam, filling the tin tub in the kitchen, saw my sister and me getting undressed. ‘Where’s your vest?’ she demanded.

  ‘I didn’t put one on this morning,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not true,’ my mam said. ‘I put a vest on you this morning. Where is it?’

  ‘I didn’t have a vest on. Honest.’

  My mam shouted: ‘Colin!’

  Dad was in the back kitchen and came through. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I put a vest on him this morning and he hasn’t got it on,’ said Mam.

  ‘Where’s your vest, boy?’

  This called
for some quick thinking. I turned on the tears and through them I blubbered: ‘These lads held me down and took it off me! These lads got me!’

  ‘You lying little bastard!’ my father screamed. The back of his hand lifted me clear off the ground. The next few blows took the skin off my arse. Then I was dispatched to bed without a bath.

  As kids, we were left largely to our own devices. It meant we inevitably got up to no good, but it also meant we learned to fend for ourselves. If you had an old pram, pushchair or some worn-out tyres, you didn’t bother taking them to the municipal dump. You just got rid of them on a strip of waste ground behind the King’s Head. It was where the locals used to dump things. One day we found an old car. We played on it for ages, pretending to be cops or robbers in car chases. Over the next few days, the windows got broken and the doors were pulled off, but our games came to a sudden end when Leslie Dobson, a kid from my school, removed the cap from the petrol tank and threw a firework down the pipe. The car went up and Leslie passed me doing about thirty miles an hour. I think he ended up in hospital.

  Next to the wasteland was a hut that sold fish and chips. The smell of fried food that drifted from that shop was a constant source of temptation to me, but I had no money so I’d run around all the houses in Grangetown, collecting old newspapers to exchange for chips. Most nights, there’d be a race between all the kids to be the fastest round the houses and get the most chips.

  When I was about six, we moved from 78 Broadway to a brand new council estate. Our new home was at 30 Essex Avenue, a street in the far corner of Grangetown, next to the main road and the railway tracks, which carried coal to Dorman, Long. When a train was parked in the siding next to our house, my auld fella would hog me over the fence with a bucket to refill our coal bunker from the wagons. I’d be there for ages, passing buckets back to Dad and nicking coal for all our neighbours.

  We’d steal anything we could get our hands on, but like most petty criminals we believed there was honour among thieves. Shops or businesses were fair game, but we wouldn’t steal from each other because no fucker had owt. The exception was parents, who by the standards of us kids were loaded. On one occasion, I came home to find no one in the house and a pound note on the mantelpiece. I immediately snatched it and ran up to Baxter’s, the local cake shop. Unsure of what to do with a whole pound, I spent it all on broken biscuits. They handed over a massive sack, enough to feed a cow. ‘What do you want all these for?’ Mr Baxter said.

  ‘Er … we’re having a party,’ I replied. I hadn’t realised I would get so many biscuits for a quid. I invited all my friends round and we sat in the back alley behind the shop, eating our way through the mountain of broken biscuits.

  Meanwhile, my mother must have sent for my father and told him that a pound note was missing. I was lying in the alley, my stomach as full as a butcher’s dog, when my auld gadgie appeared on his bike. As he pedalled down the alleyway, I saw him and jumped up. ‘Come here, you little get!’ he shouted.

  I ran as fast as I could, so my father threw down his bike and chased after me. About fifty yards from the house, he caught up and lifted me right off the ground. ‘Don’t you lads ever come round to our house again,’ he shouted at my mates as he gave me a bloody good hiding in the street. ‘He’ll never come out again!’

  My sister, my mother and our next-door neighbour said that they could hear me screaming all the way home as my father dragged me along the street and into the house. There were twelve steps in our house and I didn’t touch one of them, my father ran me up them to my bedroom that fast. ‘You stay there now. Don’t you move! If I hear one peep out of you, I will lace your arse!’ he threatened and I never took another pound off my mother.

  I did, however, dip into my mam’s handbag when I thought I’d spotted some silver paper, the type that would normally be wrapped around a chocolate bar. I lifted it out and found just what I hoped for inside it. She won’t miss a few squares, I thought, stuffing them into my mouth. And then I ate a few more. And some more.

  Half an hour or so later, I was out in the street, playing cricket. I’d just bowled out someone and I was taking my turn with the bat in front of the lamp-post that we used as a wicket when I felt the need to blow off. What I thought would just be a silent, surreptitious fart turned into something much more unpleasant. All my mates looked shocked at the sight of a streak of shit running down my leg.

  I ran home, straight past my mother in the kitchen, to the toilet at the back. I couldn’t stop shitting. ‘What’s happened?’ my mam asked.

  ‘There’s sommat wrong with my stomach,’ I groaned.

  ‘Have you eaten anything?’

  ‘No … just a bit of chocolate.’

  ‘Where did you get the chocolate from?’

  ‘Er, your handbag.’

  ‘You little swine,’ my mam said. ‘It’s laxative.’

  My family dined out on that story for years, laughing at how my thieving fingers had landed me in trouble yet again.

  My mother used to say that I got my light-fingeredness from my father. It certainly seemed that, like him, I lived by my wits rather than my brains. If I liked the look of something, I just took it, and, like him, I had itchy feet – I couldn’t wait to get out of the house every day. Because of our similarities, my mother was convinced that my auld gadgie spoiled me. She never let me forget the day when Dad won some money at the York races and returned home with a red wooden train under his arm. I was thrilled, but my mother went mad.

  ‘You haven’t brought Barbara anything back,’ she screamed at my auld fella. Dad just shrugged, but I never lived it down. Forty years later, my mother would still throw it in my face. ‘A train set for you! And nothing for Barbara! What was your dad thinking of?’

  It was a fair criticism. Dad always had time and a few spare bob for me, but little for my mother or sister. And I couldn’t see any wrong in him at all. He seemed kind and generous. He always had time for people, especially down at the club, where I’d often wind up of an evening.

  ‘Is Colin in?’ I’d ask the doorman.

  ‘Yes, son,’ the doorman would say. ‘Your father’s in, all right.’

  ‘Can I see him?’ And Dad would come out. ‘Dad, can I have some money for a bag of chips?’

  His hand was in his pocket straight away. ‘Here, that’s all you’re getting,’ he’d say. ‘Now, bugger off.’

  When I was eight years old, the Queen came to open a new part of the ICI chemical plant in Grangetown. The smells from ICI used to take the wallpaper off our walls. ‘What are they making in there?’ we’d say. ‘Dead rats?’

  The Queen made her way from Middlesbrough to the Grangetown ICI plant along the main road that linked South Bank – or Slaggy Island, as we called our neighbouring suburb on account of the many piles of coal, coke and iron slag that surrounded it – to Grangetown. My mates and I climbed up to the main road, which ran along a viaduct in front of the house, and waved at the Queen as she drove past. Having come up from London, the Queen seemed so glamorous to us urchins and ragamuffins. We’d never been beyond Middlesbrough. Anyone who’d visited Redcar, five miles away on the coast, was thought of as exotic, so the day when the Queen passed through our little community was one I thought I’d always remember.

  After the Queen’s Daimler had passed by, I clambered down the bank to our house in Essex Avenue and walked into the kitchen. There, lying on the kitchen table, was another reason I’ll never forget that day.

  My mother had left home. The only explanation was a note saying she’d had enough. She couldn’t live under the same roof as my father any more, it said. She had to go.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MOTHER LOVE

  ‘I’VE GOT CANCER?’ I said slowly. ‘Cancer? … Are you sure? Because I’ve been clean-living … I haven’t smoked, you know …’

  Dr Martin looked at me in the way I’m sure he’s previously looked at hundreds of patients – that unique combination of professional sympathy and emotiona
l detachment that medics have made their own. ‘I’m afraid you have,’ he said.

  I felt as if I was never going to leave that dark, stuffy little room, with its surgical bed, its oxygen tank and its dipped blinds. I’d never suffered from claustrophobia, but when someone is sitting in front of you, telling you that you are dying, your body does strange things. And at that moment I felt like a prisoner. More than anything, I wanted to be outside that room, away from that man and his bad news. I felt like shouting out ‘I know I’m going to die one day, but I just want a bit longer. I just want to see my kids grow up.’ But instead I found myself saying ‘Could you hold my glasses, please?’ as the room started spinning ten to the dozen and I tried to look out of the window, where everything was a blur.

  ‘He’s coming round, sir.’ It was a woman’s voice, coming from somewhere above me. ‘He’s coming round.’

  I opened my eyes to find myself lying on Dr Martin’s surgical bed. There was a burning coldness on my head – a towel filled with ice. And in my mouth, a lump of ice. ‘Your temperature went sky-high, dear,’ the nurse said. ‘Right through the roof. And then you fainted.’

  I smiled weakly.

  ‘You went down like a sack of coal … we had some trouble getting you up on here,’ the nurse said, pointing at the bed. She explained that it took three nurses to lift me off the floor.

  ‘Eh, I’m not surprised,’ I said. ‘The last time I looked, I weighed nineteen stone. Where did you hire the crane?’

  The nurse giggled. At least I hadn’t lost that skill. ‘Roy, you know there is a lot we can do for you now,’ the nurse said. ‘You’ve had some bad news, but things can get better.’

  The doctor said he would refer me to a specialist. He told me I might need chemotherapy, I might need a major operation and I might lose my voice box, but that it was early days and, at the moment, nothing could be said for sure.

  I went outside and sat in the car. For ten minutes I stared through the windscreen, wondering what to do. I’ve always been pretty good at instinctively knowing the next move in any given situation. But this time I was baffled. If someone had told me that if I bungee jumped nude off a mountain it would cure my cancer, then I would have done it. Even if they’d told me that sleeping with Ann Widdecombe was the only cure, I’d have agreed there and then. But having cancer was a totally new experience and I hadn’t a clue how to react. Should I get out the trumpet and start playing ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ as if everything was okay? Or should I ring up the bank and say: ‘I’m on my way round to pick my money up. I want to have a last bet on the horses’? I just didn’t know.