Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (11 page)

I don’t know how much later it was stopped. They’d gone when I came to my senses. I was in a right state. I’d cracked my ribs and I looked a mess, but I knew there was one rule when you got beaten up like that. Don’t grass.

That evening, one of the screws stopped me in a corridor. ‘Who did it?’ he said.

‘I just fell in the shower,’ I replied.

‘Nobody falls in the shower,’ he said. ‘Nobody looks like this …’ He was right. My face looked as if it had burst open. My mouth was swollen, bruised and bloody, although I’d managed to keep my teeth. I’ve always been dead jammy with my teeth.

By the time it had all calmed down and I had recovered, I knew exactly who had beaten me up. So I took them out one by one. I spotted the first one – Marriot – in his billet one day. I walked in and shut the door. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘just me and you. Now.’

He went for me, but I was too fast. I didn’t half smack him. I hit him about forty times before he hit the floor.

The second one was a mixed-race lad from east London. I was in the kitchen pouring custard on the jam roly-poly when he came along. ‘I see you’ve beat Marriot up,’ he sniggered. ‘I’m gonna get you for that. You are gonna get so—’

So I whacked him over the head with a ladle. He screamed as burning custard dripped down the side of his face. The screws were on us in the blinking of an eye, sparing no punches as they pinned us down. Kicking wildly and screaming at the top of my lungs, I was hauled out of the dining room with a couple of screws on each limb. Outside the dining room they beat me until I was limp, then dragged me along the corridor and threw me into a cell. Within days I was at Portland, Britain’s toughest Borstal, a place reserved for lads considered exceptionally difficult nuts to crack.

Situated next to Verne prison and built on the Isle of Portland, a peninsula off the coast of Dorset that juts about four miles into the English Channel and which is battered by winter storms, Portland Borstal was worlds apart from Shaftesbury. At the time it was a top-security institution. I was now mixing with teenage murderers, rapists and young armed robbers. The lad in the next cell to me had poisoned his grandmother.

The first thing I learned – and I learned it very quickly, else I wouldn’t have survived – is that when you enter a place like Portland Borstal you can’t just be yourself. It’s absolutely impossible. You shed your personal identity the moment you walk in through those heavy gates. And in that instant you adopt one of the Borstal archetypes or face the painful consequences. You had to be a poof or a hard case or a gang member or a grass. That was it. You had to fall into one of those personas. So I was in a gang. It meant I had other gang members to look after me and I looked after them. Once in a gang, nobody would come near you.

The other thing you learned double quick was that every day you would see, hear and experience things that you would never mention outside Borstal. Things happened that were kept strictly within the walls of the institution. I’m not proud of what I saw or experienced in Portland, but it all happened. I saw lads
in there getting gang-raped. I saw bullies mentally torment or physically abuse their victims until they were fit only for a straitjacket. There was a gay bloke on our landing who was quite happy to wank off whoever wanted it. I saw him do it to just about every lad on our landing, gay or straight. They were all very happy to be serviced.

Prison and Borstal are always glamorised on television or in films, but it was nowt like
Porridge
or any of those programmes. There were no friendly cell mates who helped each other out. I mixed with a bunch of complete arseholes who would talk about getting out and robbing post offices or killing people. They weren’t sorry for what they’d done and Borstal wasn’t going to make them change their ways. All it did was delay the time until they committed their next crime.

The Portland regime and routine were much tougher than at Shaftesbury. Our cells were inspected daily. We had to polish our boots, buff the floor and make sure the sheets on our beds were as taut as a painter’s canvas. We even scrubbed and dusted the pointing between the bricks in the walls. Everything had to be perfect. If not, you’d be thrown in E Wing, which meant non-stop punishment and running around the assault course with a log on your back at five o’clock in the morning.

The usual routine was rise at six-thirty to slop out, clean, wash and polish. Then we had to stand to attention outside our cells with our uniform pulled tight and our closely shaved hair brushed. A screw would shout ‘Right turn!’ and we’d all march down for breakfast, which was palatable but paltry. We’d take the meagre breakfast back to our cells and be locked in to eat it and get on with our work. We used to sew mailbags or count seeds into envelopes for gardening companies. Some of us were allowed out of the cells to shovel coal into the boilers or to tend the vegetable gardens. At dinner time we’d put on our shorts
and vests, run around the yard for twenty minutes, then walk for the rest of the hour, after which there’d be classes in the afternoon. After school it was back to sewing bags or metalwork until we were locked up in our cells at four o’clock. We’d put on our muck – our overalls – and queue up for our tea, which we ate in our cells or in a mess hall. Usually, we’d be banged up at six o’clock, but occasionally we’d be given an hour’s recreation from six until seven o’clock, during which we could watch television, read a book, or play snooker, table tennis, cards or darts. Lights were always out by eight-thirty, when I would just lie in my cell, talking to the blokes I was locked in with or counting the bricks just to keep myself sane. I’d start at one end of one of the walls and keep going until I’d counted every single brick in my cell. It gave me a tiny sense of achievement that wasn’t part of the prison regime.

On arriving at Portland, I was assigned to Nelson House and shown to my cell. I’d been in my cell for only a few minutes when a message was passed on to me, the first contact with anyone on my landing. ‘Barney Mulraney wants a word,’ it said.

As soon as I got a chance I made contact with Barney. ‘You from Middlesbrough?’ he said. I recognised him from Teesside and nodded. ‘Any trouble you come and see me,’ he said.

The rule of a Borstal like Portland was simple: kill or be killed. You had to play the part. It meant never letting your guard slip, night or day. Having Barney on my side was more valuable than anything else in that place. Status among the inmates usually depended on the seriousness of the crime that had put you in Borstal. Barney was inside for beating up a rent man and stealing his bag. It wasn’t on a par with murder or armed robbery, but Barney was so rough it didn’t matter. Everybody was frightened of him and he saved me from all sorts of trouble that I might not have survived without him as my guardian angel. I know he still lives in Middlesbrough
because a friend saw him recently. ‘Tell Spud he still owes me,’ was all Barney said.

But Barney had a rival, a lad called Godson who was just as much a hard case. He was always winding me up, trying to bait me into fighting him. One day we were on parade in the yard and Godson was having a go, pushing and digging me in the back. He bent down to fasten his shoelaces, so I booted him in the mouth. He fell to the ground, clutching at his throat. The screws came running. We all stood to attention while we watched the screws trying to help Godson breathe. My kick had made him swallow his tongue.

‘Step forward the lad who kicked him, or punched him,’ the Governor said.

Nobody moved. I’d done it so quick that nobody knew it was me. And anyway, you didn’t grass in Borstal.

‘Well, one of you must have done it,’ the Governor said. ‘Come on.’

Again, nobody stepped forward. And no one looked around. Every pair of eyes on that exercise ground was pointed forwards. So they took Godson inside. I knew they’d try and get him to tell, but he didn’t give in.

Godson never came near me again. The screws made us run around the yard fifty times. And I realised that if I didn’t get my temper under control I would soon get myself into serious trouble. Not much later, I did.

Morgan, a screw who ruled my landing in Nelson House, had taken an instant dislike to me. He had a down on me and that was all there was to it. ‘You’re too big for your boots, Vasey,’ he’d say. ‘Nobody comes to Borstal and acts the way you do. Who do you think you are?’

Morgan never missed an opportunity to make my life a misery. ‘Vasey, get yourself a bucket of cold water now!’ he shouted at me one day. ‘And bring your toothbrush!’ It was
coming up to recreation time and I was looking forward to watching television or playing snooker. I’d done nothing to provoke Morgan. He just fancied having a go. I wanted to tell him to get lost, but I did as I was told and turned up in front of him, bucket and toothbrush in hand.

‘This landing is a fucking disgrace,’ Morgan said. ‘Now get down on your hands and knees.’ He made me scrub chewing gum, mud and straw out of the cracks in the floor with my toothbrush in my hand. ‘Vasey! Change that filthy water,’ he shouted every ten yards or so. And I would trot off to the washroom to get a bucket of clean water before continuing my task.

The buzzer went, signalling the beginning of recreation time. I stood up.

‘Where are you fucking going?’ Morgan growled.

‘It’s recreation time, Mr Morgan.’

‘Not for you it isn’t,’ he snapped. ‘I want you to start again.’

I went to the washroom, cleaned out and refilled the bucket, and walked back to the beginning of the landing. I got down on my knees, dipped my toothbrush in the water and started scrubbing all over again. Morgan came over. Bending down until he was inches above my head, he shouted directly into my ear. ‘And this time, I mean
clean!
’ he screamed. ‘
Clean
, boy!’

I continued scrubbing. Just keep your head down, Roy, I told myself. Don’t lose it. Don’t do anything stupid. Keep your cool.

I’d scrubbed about ten yards of the landing when Morgan approached again. Expecting him to tell me to change the water, I was getting ready to stand up when Morgan kicked the bucket over, spilling water and muck all over the landing I’d just scrubbed clean for the second time. I completely lost it. My temper burst and my Grangetown instincts took over. Screaming at the top of my voice, I picked up the bucket and smacked Morgan over the head with it. There was a small amount of water left in the bucket. I threw it in his face, then
flung the bucket with all my might at his open mouth. Morgan fell over, so I kicked him several times as he tried to crawl away from me along the landing. Seeing him reach for his whistle to call for reinforcements, I stopped kicking him in the kidneys and booted him as hard as I could in the face. Eventually more screws arrived and laid into me with their batons. By the time they’d finished with me I was in a straitjacket in solitary confinement.

For days I lay in my cell, trying to come to terms with my life. I’d had enough of fighting almost every day, but I couldn’t see an alternative. When I wasn’t contemplating the mess I’d created, I would spend hours screaming and shouting at the screws until my lungs ached and my throat was raw. I felt I’d lost everything. This is it, I thought: why don’t I just kill myself? I’d always thought I was above suicide. Grangetown had taught me that I could always fight my way out of trouble and that if theft didn’t work, violence would get me what I wanted. But now I was beginning to doubt it. And I didn’t have an alternative. I simply didn’t have the skills or the wisdom to find a different way to lead my life. I was ruled by my quick temper. I could take as much shit as anybody could dish out, but I had a button. And if someone pressed that button at the wrong time, then everything changed. I’d stop saying ‘Hey, cut it out’ and they’d have to take the consequences. It would be me or them. One of us had to win and one of us had to lose. The time for compromise and conciliation would be over.

Trapped in that cell, on my own for days on end, I realised for the first time that resorting to violence wasn’t getting me anywhere. Trouble was, I didn’t know what to do instead.

The fights continued after I was released from solitary confinement until the Governor sent for me. ‘Vasey, you’ve been nothing but trouble since you came here,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to stop this. I’m going to make you my monitor. Every morning, as
soon as you wake, you’ll come to this office. The warden will bring you down. You’ll eat alone here. Then you’ll clean this office. You’ll make the tea. You’ll polish all the wood and the floor. You’ll be working for me all day, every day. At four p.m., you’ll go back to your cell and you’ll stay there. That’s what you’ll do every day until you’re released from this Borstal. You won’t mix with the other boys. I am sick to death of you.’

I couldn’t have cared less. I thought if you’re going to stick pins in me, then stick pins in me. I’d given up thinking about myself as a person. I felt like a caged animal and I was happy to act like one, all my decisions made for me.

The other lads thought I was a lucky bastard, but they had no idea what it was like to be on my own all the time. My only human contact came from the screws or the letters that my sister had recently started to write to me. She’d moved back to Redcar, discovered I was in Borstal and hunted me down. Mam, her letters told me, had married Norman Trevethick and moved back to Teesside, so I wrote to Mam, asking her to visit me at Portland.

Mam came down to Dorset on the train. ‘Can you tell me where Portland Borstal is?’ she asked the ticket collector at Weymouth station.

‘That’s it on the hill,’ he said, pointing at the prison and the Borstal. Mam passed out. She couldn’t believe that her son was locked up in a building on a remote peninsula lashed by the sea.

‘How did you end up in here?’ she asked me when we met. It was the first time I’d seen her for more than ten years.

‘Well …’ I said, ‘when nobody wants you …’ I was trying to make Mam feel bad, but it didn’t work. A few weeks later the Governor called me in to tell me that I was eligible for early release provided that someone would take responsibility for me during my parole. I wrote to my auld fella and to my mam, asking them to sanction my release and to take me in. Both wrote
back to say they didn’t want me and that I didn’t have a home to go to. The Governor read my father’s letter out to me.