Jan Fennell - Friends for Life

Shopping was the one subject my mother was happy to talk to me about. Her love of clothes was great. And it formed the centrepiece of our weekly expeditions down the North End Road.

We would start with a meal at Manzi’s, the famous eel and pie shop. I would have pie, mash and liquor, she would have eels, mash and liquor. Then we’d head off to pick up the week’s provisions at the local stores. My mother would always look in Madam Lee’s fashion house. She’d spend what seemed like hours there, looking at things and trying them on. She’d ask the proprietor to put things by for her until the following week. She bought a lot from there. When we’d finished our expedition we’d head to Dawes Road and a bus back home, laden with shopping.

While we were waiting for the bus home one day I became aware that my mother was angry. We had seen two large men walk by us and head into a doorway. As they had done so they had recognized my mother and said something to her.

I knew who they must be, but – as I had been taught – I said nothing.

The London of the 1960s was run by gangs. Fulham’s leading gangster was Charlie Mitchell, or King Charles as he was known locally. The men who worked for Mitchell were enormous gorillas; their hands looked like bunches of bananas. Bits of their ears were missing, they were gruesome. But you didn’t ask questions. That’s what I was always told: ‘Don’t open your mouth, their business is their business.’

My mother’s connections with Charlie Mitchell were shadowy but I knew they were mainly through her brother George, who was his book-keeper. Mitchell had a number of legitimate businesses – things like money lending and bookmaking – and George looked after the books for him.

I would continue to be given glimpses into this murky world in the years that followed. A friend of my Uncle George, Mickey Salmon – Mickey the Fish – took a dive for Charlie Mitchell for dog doping. He came out of prison when I was about fourteen, and we all went to a club for a party for him. Prison hadn’t been good to him; he looked terrible. It was a private party and I remember the owner asking me to fetch some glasses. I went over to a table and I can recall a man with terrifying eyes looking at me, smiling and saying: ‘Hello, love.’ I replied: ‘Thank you.’ When I asked my Uncle George who they were, he just said: ‘You keep away from them, just keep away.’ It turned out to be one of the Kray twins.

After Uncle George died unexpectedly in his early fifties, leaving his second wife and their four young children, my mother went to see his widow and asked her if she was going to be OK. She just told my mum to go upstairs. My mother went up to the bedroom and found rolls of money strewn on the bed, hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

It was George who was at the root of her anger that day, it turned out. Being a child I only heard part of the story, but I do know that my Uncle George’s personal life was a bit of a problem. He used to take off every now and again, just disappear. He would take time out.

It seems that on this occasion the rumour was going around that Uncle George had absconded with some of Charlie Mitchell’s money. It was absolutely untrue but the situation was complicated by the fact that Mitchell’s colleagues needed George’s signature to actually get to their money. So for a while all their businesses were tied up.

The two men my mother had seen that day worked for Mitchell. Something they said to her must have set her off, because suddenly she grabbed me by the arms and said: ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

Charlie Mitchell’s main offices were right opposite the bus stop. She went through the front door and barged straight in. There were five huge guys around a desk. My mum said: ‘Now look, I’ve had enough of this, my George is as straight as the day is long and you know that. Any more of these lies and I will bring the law into this office, I know enough to have you put behind bars.’ I stood there and thought to myself, ‘What’s she doing? She’s lost her mind.’

I was thinking, ‘Someone’s going to pull a gun.’

Charlie Mitchell sat behind the desk. He was scary. Instead of standing up and threatening her, however, the mood was conciliatory. Mitchell said: ‘Nona, come on, sit down, let’s talk about this.’

But my mother was having none of it. She stood up with her shopping and stormed out again, leaving me in the room. It was only when she got to the bottom of the steps that she shouted: ‘Janice, come on.’ I was still shaking when we got home that night.

Looking back, it was a terrifying yet intensely revealing moment in my young life. It showed me a woman I had never seen before.

She loved her baby brother and was prepared to go to any lengths to protect him. In some ways I admired her for doing that. Yet in others it made her seem an even more distant, almost unknowable figure. I felt I knew her less well than ever.

It was the one and only time I came across Charlie Mitchell. Not long after that incident he survived an attempted shooting in Stevenage Road, near Fulham Football Club. Some time afterwards, like so many of London’s gangsters, he fled to Spain and the so-called Costa Del Crime. His exile in the sun didn’t get him far enough away from his enemies, however. He was shot dead there in the 1970s.

At the age of five I began attending the local school, Sherbrooke Road Junior. It was little wonder I didn’t warm to the place. From the very beginning, it had painful connotations for me.

I had been looking forward to starting school for one reason: my cousin Les was due to start at the same time.

I had come to know and love Les when my mother returned to work. Mum’s absence meant I spent most of my time at Nan Whitton’s flat in Alistree Road. For the first time I got to know her niece Joan and her son Les, who lived on the second floor of the same block.

Les was two months younger than me. His father, Uncle Alex, was an ex-Army man and very strict and austere. We weren’t allowed to play together often, but when we did we really got on like a house on fire. He was as close as I had to a brother and I treated him with all the affection I would have shown a brother.

I can remember that in the run-up to my first term, Les and I had heard a lot of talk about us starting school. We both fully expected not just to be in the same school but in the same class.

On the first morning of term we discovered our parents had made other plans. I was being walked to school by Nan Whitton while Les was being taken by his mother, Aunt Joan. I have a memory of the two of us skipping along, tugging excitedly at the adults’ arms, hardly able to contain our excitement at getting to the school gates. Our mood changed when we reached a zebra crossing on Munster Road.

‘Say goodbye to your cousin Les,’ my nan said to me.

‘Why?’ I replied, baffled.

‘He’s going to a different school to you,’ she explained.

I was devastated, as he was. We both started crying. As he headed off in one direction and I went in another, we were both tugging again, but for different reasons. I can still see Les looking back at me, tears in his eyes.

It was only in the ensuing years that I learned what had happened. Les’s father Alex had very clear ideas about what he expected for his son. From the beginning the family had plans for him. He was to study hard and go to university. He was to get a profession and get on in the world.

When he and I had reached school age, it had apparently been decided that it was ‘for the best’ if we were separated. Basically I was considered a ‘bad influence’ by Uncle Alex and Aunt Joan. Apart from anything else, I was a girl, and the family’s expectations for me were zero. This could only mean that I would be a distraction for Les. So while he was put down for the better school in the area at Munster Road, I was to be sent to Sherbrooke Road.