Foreigners (16 page)

THE COMEBACK ROAD

The comeback road is hard and long
The boys I'll meet will be hard and strong,
But my patience is good,
And my willpower strong.

I'll hear the bell
Which means time to go
But I'll do my best, and I'll have a go
Cause I've got someone to back me.

The manager I've got
Is the one for me
As I know he'll stick
In a real rough sea.

They say I've finished
But I'll prove 'em wrong
And I'll have a go
Cause my patience, willpower, and heart
are strong.

If I make the grade,

On that one big day
We can look at them all
With a laugh and say,

We've done our best
For the game we love
Now there's no more kicks
And that's real good.

So we'll leave this game
Which was hard and cruel
Then down at the show, on a ringside stool
We'll watch the next man, just one more fool.

The money that Turpin was earning driving around looking
for old cars and engines, and then cutting up the debris
for George Middleton in his scrapyard, was barely enough
to support Gwen and their growing family. Already there
were two daughters, and Gwen was pregnant with a third
child. Turpin was also finding it difficult to deal with the
humiliation of such a public fall from grace. On 15 February,
1959, the
New York Times
ran a story entitled 'Turpin: A
Story of Riches to Rags'. It reported that, 'Today, the
one-time world champion, who earned more than $500,000,
is a junk man. He drives about little Leamington Spa in
an old truck picking up scraps of iron, derelict motors
and hunks of metal nobody else wants. He takes the collection
to the junkyard, batters it and sells the scrap. Turpin,
now thirty, does not own the sledgehammer, the truck or
the business. But once he was paid $200,000 for a single
fight. In those days Turpin wore Savile Row suits and
bench-made shoes. Today he wears grubby work clothes.
At the peak of his career, he traveled around Europe and
America living in the best hotels. Usually he had a few
hangers-on. Now his home is a small house on a backstreet
of an unlovely section of Leamington.'

Being a relatively fit coloured man, who was still a
household name in England, there
was
one profession that
would welcome Turpin with open arms – the burlesque
of wrestling. The bouts were fixed, often crudely so, and
the fighters divided into 'good' and 'bad', heroes and
villains, with the coloured wrestlers – who fought under
pseudonyms such as 'Johnny Kwango' or 'Masambula' –
little more than novelty ring-fodder to be thrown around
for the comic entertainment of the masses. Turpin began
to travel around the country and 'fight' for cash payments
which averaged about twenty-five pounds per bout. The
money was not great, but the risk of injury was, and
Turpin soon began to pick up leg and back injuries, which
only added to the ignominy of his present situation and
began to depress him even further. By the early sixties,
the former world boxing champion began to develop a
reputation in wrestling circles for being late, or sometimes
forgetting about engagements altogether, and there were
rumours that he had started to drink. Friends and family
began to notice that his speech was sometimes slurred,
and that he was beginning to display a number of signs
that he might be growing 'punchy' from his many years
in the boxing ring. However, given Turpin's current difficulties,
his income as a wrestler was important to him
and so, despite his own reservations and his evident discomfort,
he persisted with the charade knowing that at some
level at least these fight people were 'his people', and
wrestling was certainly preferable to making pennies
labouring in George Middleton's scrapyard.

Turpin continued to be hounded by the Inland Revenue
for taxes that were payable on money that the authorities
claimed he had earned at the height of his boxing career.
In July 1962 he was formally declared bankrupt with assets
of £1,204 and liabilities owing to the taxman of £17,126.
This was a sum that had already been considerably reduced
from a figure nearer to £100,000 by the tenacity of Max
Mitchell, Turpin's accountant. Mitchell had detailed the
unorthodox accounting procedures of the promoter Mr
Jack Solomons, and he had drawn the Inland Revenue's
attention to the fact that his client had assumed that income
tax was being paid by his promoter and his manager.
Furthermore, the sums that the Inland Revenue claimed
had been paid to Turpin were, according to Mitchell,
nowhere near the amounts that Turpin actually received.
While Mitchell could not deny that Turpin had made a
series of spectacularly bad investments, including the property
at Great Orme (which, following an unpleasant split
with Leslie Salts, had now been purchased by the Llandudno
Urban Council at a loss to Turpin), he pleaded that the
Inland Revenue should take into consideration the fact
that Turpin was both naïve and somewhat innocent. For
instance, everybody knew that Leslie Salts was a con-man,
and Turpin was the last to realise that the staff at the
Great Orme complex, including John Beston, his brotherin-law,
were 'on the take'. In fact, Turpin's belated discovery
that Joan's husband had been swindling him prompted him
to break the man's nose. Part of Max Mitchell's plea to
the Inland Revenue contained the following statement: 'As
time goes on, the punching power of a boxer is enfeebled
the longer he pursues his profession. His brain through
constant pummelling becomes bemused. His eyes are
affected. Deafness overtakes him. And in effect he is lucky
if in the prime of his manhood he doesn't turn into a
two-legged vegetable.'

Aside from bad investments and questionable payment
practices, it was apparent that the main reason for Turpin's
financial hardship was his propensity, at the height of his
earning powers, to give away his money to people who
were almost complete strangers. He helped those who
claimed that they wished to start taxi companies, or buy
pubs, or pay off their mortgages; almost any hard-luck
story might well be concluded by a soft-hearted Turpin
putting his hand into his pocket and pulling out a bundle
of cash. But despite his almost reckless generosity, a part
of Turpin remained practical, and after his bankruptcy
hearings, Turpin, together with a few friends, began to
search out those who had 'borrowed' money from him. He
threatened more than one man in an attempt to retrieve
his cash, but while some fearfully agreed to reimburse him
with a weekly payment, most claimed that they had either
lost the money, or it had been stolen from them. Somewhat
bitterly, Turpin reflected, 'It cost me bleeding money every
time I shook hands with somebody, didn't it?' Keen not
to compound his present circumstances by ending up in
jail on assault charges, there was little that Turpin could
do beyond threaten, but by the mid-sixties most people
were no longer in awe of the 'Leamington Licker'.

Back in 1959, Turpin had bought a run-down café in
Russell Street, Leamington Spa, called Harold's Transport
Café. The place was in a terrible condition, and most
people could not understand why Turpin would want to
invest in such a low-class, and decidedly unglamorous, business.
However, they knew enough about Turpin to know
that whatever reservations they might have about this
venture would be ignored by him. What made Turpin's
acquisition all the more puzzling, and illogical, was the
fact that the property had already been condemned for
demolition to make way for a car park. Obviously there
was no long-term future to this purchase, but Turpin nevertheless
went ahead. He renamed the café for his loyal wife,
Gwen, and his mother joined the new Mrs Turpin, the
two of them working behind the counter serving mixed
grills, bacon sandwiches and mugs of tea to lorry drivers
and labourers, while upstairs there was a room to rent out
should anybody require lodgings. Although his mother was
by now almost blind, she enjoyed the work, but her son
soon grew to despise Gwen's Transport Café. The income
dribbled in as loose change, and the money did absolutely
nothing to alleviate his debts, while the customers were
often rude, abrasive, and had stopped by merely in the
hope of achieving a glimpse of the once famous fighter
who had now fallen on hard times. There were those who
wished to arm-wrestle him, or even challenge him to mix
it up in a fight, but Turpin generally made his excuses and
withdrew to the family's small flat above the café where
he would read one of his comic books. The half-dozen
plain tables were seldom full, but at least the place kept
Gwen and Mrs Turpin busy. Sadly, Turpin's mother aside,
the rest of his family did not feel welcome in the café.
Their relationship with Gwen was, at best, cool, and should
any of her husband's brothers or sisters wander in then it
was more than likely that Gwen would charge them for
their cup of tea. She sensed that as an 'outsider' from
Wales they somehow held her responsible for taking Randy
away from his close-knit family, but to her way of thinking
they were, at the height of his fame, as happy as anybody
else to accept his money and exploit his success. She felt
that now, when he had little left, they should be made to
pay like everybody else. On the wall of their transport
café, Randy and Gwen hung a sign which read: 'That which
seldom comes back to him who waits is the money he
lends to friends.'

Between his wrestling, the meagre income from the café,
and labouring, Turpin managed to earn a living in the early
sixties, but he continually worried about his mounting
debts and his unpaid bills. He was also tormented with
concern about the effect that his predicament was having
upon Gwen and his daughters, who formed the loving
centre of his life. He worked hard to hide his distress from
them, and he was largely successful in maintaining the
image of a trouble-free, happy, loving father and husband.
However, his anxiety over his debts was compounded by
the frustration of knowing that he had foolishly allowed
others to take advantage of his generous nature and, to
some extent, the present situation was entirely one of his
own making. Turpin was well aware of the fact that he
was hardly the first boxer to fall into financial hardship
once his career had concluded. He knew that his own hero,
Joe Louis, was struggling with similar problems in the
United States, and that he too had taken up wrestling as
a way of paying his bills. Joe Louis' wife, Rose, once
commented that 'watching Joe Louis wrestle is just the
same as watching the president of the United States wash
dishes,' to which her husband replied, 'Well, it ain't stealing.'
But these problems were not confined to the United States,
for back in Britain there were countless examples of once
well-known boxers who were now destitute. However, no
British boxer had ever risen to the financial and professional
heights of a Randolph Turpin, so his fall from grace was
spectacular for others to witness, and for Turpin it was
excruciatingly painful to endure. In a state of desperation
he made two brief, and somewhat embarrassing, returns
to the ring, winning a sixth-round knockout over Eddie
Marcano at Wisbech, Norfolk, in March 1963, and then a
second-round knockout in Malta in January 1964 over
Charles Seguna, but neither opponent could really box,
and Turpin collected mere loose change for a fee. Both
fights were an exercise in humiliation, but at least Turpin
finally acknowledged that he could never again fight seriously,
for his eyesight had deteriorated to the point where
it would be utter folly to fight even an exhibition bout.

In December 1965, Turpin was invited to New York,
with all expenses paid, to be part of the extravagant celebrations
at Madison Square Garden marking the retirement
of the five-time middleweight champion Sugar Ray
Robinson. Together with Carl 'Bobo' Olsen, Jake La Motta,
Carmen Basilio, and Gene Fullmer, the other men who
Robinson had beaten to claim his five titles, Turpin had
the opportunity to enjoy one final night in the spotlight.
A photograph of Turpin in the ring with the other fighters
that evening tells its own story. While everyone gazes at
Robinson, Turpin's face is frozen in a half-smile and he
stares into the middle distance. His mind is elsewhere,
perhaps wondering why he is even present, and he stands
awkwardly to one side as though not really a part of this
celebration of boxing history. This is particularly ironic
given the fact that Robinson made no secret of his admiration
for Turpin the man and the boxer, and went to great
lengths to make sure that his old adversary would be present
on this special occasion. Later that evening, Turpin joined
Sugar Ray Robinson and the other dignitaries, including
the mayor of New York City, John Lindsay, and a young
Muhammad Ali, at a sit-down dinner at the famous
Mamma Leone's restaurant on West 48th Street. This
would be Turpin's last glimpse of the glamour and celebrity
that a decade earlier had been an integral part of his life.

Late in 1965, a now financially desperate Turpin wrote
to Jack Solomons and asked the promoter to help him
sell his cherished Lonsdale belt. Turpin hoped that the
belt, plus his other trophies, might raise somewhere in
the region of £10,000, but Solomons was either unable or
unwilling to help. Early in 1966, Turpin turned to another
promoter, Alex Griffiths, and he begged Griffiths to help
him sell his Lonsdale belt, but although Griffiths tried
to attract interested buyers nothing ever came of this
effort. The sense of anxiety was palpable in Turpin's
actions, and photographs of the former fighter from this
period show a man who has visibly aged and whose face
is tramlined with streaks of worry. Some thirteen years
earlier, in May 1953 as he prepared for the Charles Humez
title eliminator fight, the
London Illustrated News
had run
an extensive feature on Randolph Turpin and the opening
of his Great Orme complex. It began, 'When Randolph
Turpin ducks under the ropes at London's White City
stadium on 9 June, he will be the first big-business man
to fight for a world title . . . The all too frequent story
of the ex-champion who dies in poverty, or falls on hard
times, is not likely to be applied to Turpin.' Sometime
in the spring of 1966, Turpin changed his mind about
selling his Lonsdale belt and his boxing trophies, and in
a letter to his wife he wrote, 'They are yours. As long as
you keep them, you have a part of me. Don't ever sell
them.' Those around Turpin, including Gwen, could see
a quiet desperation beginning to descend upon the
'Leamington Licker' as he withdrew into introspective
silence.