Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (16 page)

Life at Cedar Grove was a litany of attempts to save money or get owt for nowt. We lived for Friday and Saturday nights. Friday night was the lads’ night out – strictly no wives or girlfriends. If I wasn’t working with the band, I’d join my mates and we’d all go into town together, spend the evening in the pub, move on to a nightclub and usually end the night with a fight or a fuck or both.

Walking into a nightclub as a young man, the music blaring, the birds wearing skirts halfway up their arses, you were always going to attract trouble. It was just the hustle and bustle of youth. Some jealous bloke would inevitably come over. ‘You staring at my missus?’ he’d shout over the music. ‘I’ll punch you in the fucking mouth, mate.’ And even if I survived the nightclub and went back to a lass’s house, her boyfriend would often knock on the door and I’d have to scarper. It always happened.

Saturday nights were different. This time wives and girlfriends were permitted, which could make things complicated if the lads had seen some action on Friday night. My best mate at the time was Dave Hewitt, with whom I’d come off the motorcycle given to me by Norman Trevethick. The first thing Dave and I would do when we met at the Clarendon was get our stories straight. ‘Now don’t forget, Dave, you held me down last night, and you give me that love bite, didn’t you, Dave?’ I’d say.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Dave would say. ‘I’ll say I give you the love bite to make Judy jealous and you tell my girlfriend I stayed at your house last night because I was too blathered to get home.’

Some evenings, I’d work on the door of a pub or nightclub – usually the Red Lion – to earn a few extra bob if the band wasn’t playing. We’d all meet at half past seven in the
Clarendon lounge, have a couple of pints, then at ten o’clock I’d go and work on the door until two o’clock, the best place and time to pick up a lass at the end of the evening. The girls would have had a drink and as they were leaving I’d say, ‘What you doing, pet? Do you want to go and have a coffee?’

A lot of my mates lived on their own in flats, so I’d borrow the key and take the lass there. I took a fat girl called Grace home one night. She was hugely overweight, but it was the end of the night and I wanted to get my leg over. At times like that, nothing would stop me. Grace had sunk a few drinks too many and couldn’t get her legs up. Now I don’t have the biggest penis in the world and I couldn’t get it in. In those days, there was nothing in the way of foreplay – I hadn’t even heard of a blow job – and we were struggling to get going. Then I hit on a brain-wave.

‘Fart and give us a clue,’ I suggested.

That was it. We collapsed onto the bed in fits of giggles. The moment was lost, but it paid dividends years later when I remembered it and used it on stage. It got the biggest laugh of the evening and for a while became a regular part of my act.

Given the way in which I was carrying on, it was unsurprising that Judy and I had arguments and fights. They were about women, drink and money. Mostly money, actually – ‘you don’t give me enough’ or ‘I don’t get enough to give you enough’ or ‘you get five pound when you’re on the door at the club, why don’t I get any of it?’ – but it was also about jealousy. I’d see Judy going out in a short skirt that barely covered her crotch and I’d see blokes staring at her. I couldn’t help myself. ‘You’re fucking doing that on purpose,’ I’d say. And then the argument would start.

‘You never took your eyes off that girl last night,’ Judy would snap back.

‘What do you mean? I don’t even know her …’ But women
aren’t daft. And Judy sussed me out straight away. I had a straying eye and that caused a lot of grief.

And as with a lot of couples from Middlesbrough council estates, it often turned violent. When I look back at that time, I’m filled with regrets. I know I have it in me to be cool, calm and collected, but I wasn’t like that then and neither was anyone I knew. And it was always just everyday things that triggered the rows. Us lads didn’t know the difference between right and wrong. We didn’t realise that we were big blokes and they were little women. I don’t agree with slapping a woman but, having done it, I know why it happens. When violence is all you know, it’s difficult not to resort to your fists when you’ve got nothing and you’re living on top of each other and you’re getting at each other all the time. Suddenly the only way to bring a stop to the bickering and the arguing is to pick something up and just throw it. Or to lash out. I’ve done it and I’ve had it done to me. I came from a background where that was the way we lived. And as a result, we never had an ornament in my parent’s house that wasn’t chipped or broken. It was getting to be the same where Judy and I lived.

The most trivial things would trigger arguments. I was watching football on television one day when Judy got up and switched channels. ‘What y’doing?’ I said.

‘Watching
Peyton Place
,’ Judy said.

Or, as I called it,
Paint and Place
. I got up. ‘I’m watching the football,’ I said, changing channels back.

‘No, I’m watching the soap,’ she said.

I saw red. ‘Fucking nobody’s watching it,’ I shouted. And I smashed the television, which was on rent from Burbecks in Station Road. The next day, I went round to Burbecks and said we’d been burgled. ‘You won’t believe this, but our house was broken into. They tried to steal the TV and dropped it climbing through the window,’ I said. Burbecks didn’t fall for that one. I still
had to pay for it. Three shillings and sixpence a week for about three years.

One night, at the end of a gig with the Four Man Band, Dave Hewitt came up to me as I was packing up my drums. He’d been living with a girl, but they’d had an argument and the girl had thrown him out. He’d moved on to his mother’s house, but his mother was fed up with him and had told him to pack his bags. ‘Any chance of stopping at your house?’ Dave said. So I put him up in the back bedroom.

Dave didn’t become a permanent fixture. He stayed maybe two or three nights a week. The other nights he’d stay with a woman or his brother or another friend. We were drinking mates and I liked having him around. Judy was pregnant with our second child and she also enjoyed Dave’s company when I was out gigging with the band, working the door at the Red Lion or out with my mates.

On 12 June 1969 Robert was born in his grandma’s front room at 8 Cleveland Street in Redcar, opposite the post office. I was delighted to be a father again and proud to have two bonny sons.

One Sunday, a couple of months after Robert was born, Judy and I took the kids to visit Judy’s mother. Richard, who was only a year old, picked up one of his toys and smashed it down onto his grandmother’s coffee table, her pride and joy.

‘You little sod,’ I said, wagging my finger at Richard.

‘Don’t you call him a little sod in front of me,’ Judy snapped.

‘He’s got to be disciplined,’ I said. ‘I know he’s only a baby, but look at your face.’ And I slapped Richard on the back of the leg. ‘Naughty, naughty, naughty,’ I said, thinking I was doing the right thing.

You would have thought I’d stabbed Richard. Judy and her mother went berserk, screaming and shouting at me. ‘You’re nowt but a bully,’ Judy shouted. ‘You’re an arsehole.’

‘Aye, and this carry-on is for
your
fucking benefit,’ I said, pointing at Judy’s mother, ‘not for my benefit.’ Slamming the door, I walked out. I got home at about half past four. At six o’clock, the Four Man Band was picking me up for a gig.

‘Where’s Judy?’ Dec asked when he’d come inside the door.

‘Eh … she’s at her mother’s, we’ve just had a barney. Nowt to worry. It’ll be all right when I get back.’

But Judy wasn’t there when I got home that night and it wasn’t all right. I went upstairs. All her clothes were gone. She’d packed up everything and vanished. I’d always thought that kind of thing only happened in trashy novels. I never thought it would happen to me. And, like something out of a Barbara Cartland plot, there was a note on the table. ‘It’s obvious you don’t love me,’ Judy had written at the top of two pages that detailed all my failings and which ended with the words ‘… and I have found love with somebody else. Don’t try and find us.’

I had no idea who my wife had run away with – and the parallels with my parents’ break-up didn’t dawn on me until many years later – but I was hurt and incensed. I’d defy anyone to receive a letter telling them that they’re a cunt and not to lose their temper over it. No man likes to feel inferior and I reacted like any young bloke would. I vowed to kill Judy and to beat up the bloke she’d run away with. When I realised I couldn’t do that, I did the next best thing. I wrecked the house.

I picked up the chairs and tables and threw them at the wall. I swept all the ornaments off the shelves. I kicked a hole in the kitchen door. And I picked up the television – another one from Burbecks – and threw it through the front window.

My temper had got the better of me once again. My wife had fucked off with another bloke and my reaction was to lash out first and ask questions later. I’d never been any other way. It was
just my nature. And, as usual, I was the one who suffered. By the time I’d blown off all my steam, the house was a mess.

I went down the pub, sunk seven pints and went to the police station. Banging on the duty sergeant’s counter, I demanded to know where my wife had gone. The sergeant just shrugged. ‘This is a domestic argument,’ he said. ‘Nothing to do with us.’

‘If I get my hands on my wife or that fucking shite she’s run away with, then you will be getting involved,’ I said before storming out and marching round to Judy’s mother’s house.

‘Where is she?’ I shouted between threats to put a brick through her mother’s front window. ‘I want her back!’

‘She wants nowt to do with you,’ her mother shouted. ‘And good luck to her!’

I didn’t hear word of Judy for more than six months. Dave had stopped staying over a couple of nights a week and I was living alone in our former family home when a letter arrived.

‘Dear Roy, I know you have been wondering where we are,’ it said. ‘We have been living in a rented house in Bellingham. It’s very overcrowded and Dad’s ill …’ There was a bit of news, but no mention of who her new fella might be. ‘If you want to see the bairns, we are here,’ it ended.

I borrowed a small van, drove up to Bellingham and sat in it at the end of Judy’s street. In the distance I could see a little boy, playing with a ball beside the front gate. Could that be Richard? I thought. The last time I’d seen him, he was a toddler clutching on to his grandmother’s coffee table. And sitting on a towel in the front garden of the house was a little baby. I wondered if it was Robert.

I waited in the van for half an hour, watching the two kids play in the summer heat. Then I saw Judith come out of the front door with a drink and give it to the older child. I started up the van and pulled up outside the house.

‘Hiya,’ Judith said, as if we’d just seen each other the day before.

‘All right?’ I said. We got talking, nice and gently. There were no accusations or recriminations, just a serious, adult conversation. We both realised the relationship was dead and that we had nothing in common. We’d been married less than two years, but we’d married too young and in that time discovered that we were two quite different people.

‘I know you want to see your children,’ Judy said. ‘So could you find us somewhere to live in Redcar? We’ll come back and live near you. We’ve got nothing here. Dave has left.’

‘Oh, right,’ I said. It was the first time I’d heard Dave’s name mentioned. Suddenly it all made sense. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Driving home, I thought it all through. It was classic stuff. While I had been out drumming, Judy and Dave must have formed a relationship and fallen in love. No wonder I’d not seen him since the day Judy scarpered. Judy had been waiting for an excuse to walk out and I’d given it to her when I slapped Richard at her mother’s house. Like my mam, Judy had just wanted a happy home relationship straight out of
The Waltons
– playing cards and watching television together, going to the club once a week for a game of bingo, the kind of things that most domesticated women want – but I was looking for something else.

Judy had accused me of being a ladies’ man, but that was a load of bollocks. Why? Because my fucks only lasted three minutes and there had to be more to life than that. I loved playing the drums. I loved being up on stage. And when I told a joke and everybody laughed – well, there was nothing better. That to me was a marriage made in heaven and far more tempting than sex.

Only entertainers will ever understand the attraction of that nervous anticipation when you’re standing in the wings or waiting in the dressing room, that clearing of the throat as the
adrenalin tightens your voice just before you go on, the audience lapping you up and that feeling that you can do no wrong, that you’ve got complete control of a room of a thousand people. And then coming off and the buzz hitting you full on because now you can relax. It’s a high that any entertainer will tell you is irreplaceable. With that to compete against, Judy didn’t have a chance.

As I drove home, I also thought about the best way forward. Having seen the bairns again, I knew I had to be part of their lives. I decided to give Judy the house in Redcar that we’d shared and find myself somewhere else to live.

A few weeks later, I’d moved into a flat in Westbourne Grove and Judy and the boys were back home. On Saturdays or Sundays I’d take them down to the sea for a couple of hours. We’d kick a ball about on the beach and I’d buy them an ice cream or some chips. I only got a few hours a week with them, but owt’s better than nowt.

Judy and I were lucky really. We had no money, we weren’t really suited and, like most youngsters, we were too possessive of each other. But in spite of all the trials and tribulations of a doomed marriage, we still have good memories. We’re still good friends – Judith does my washing every week and we chat all the time – but, best of all, we produced two fabulous sons.

If I had been more of a concrete bloke, we would still be together today, because I’m not one for ducking responsibilities. I can put up with most things, but I needed my space away from two screaming kids.