Mum, as always, was the centre of our lives. And when Esmeralda’s Barn started lining our pockets, the twins and I were keen to give her everything she had ever wanted. She wanted very little, however; she certainly didn’t want to leave Vallance Road for a bigger house in a posher street. But she and the old man did not say no to holidays. They had never been further than Southend in Essex, and now there was some money around they seized the chance to be more adventurous. Mum had had nothing for herself all her life and I was thrilled to be able to give her a taste of the ‘jet-set’ life. We went to Tangier, Italy, the South of France, and even lashed out on a wonderfully expensive cruise. It was lovely to see someone who had been nowhere suddenly going everywhere, and enjoying every sun-soaked minute.
Exotic places abroad were all very well for a couple of times a year. But we wanted to enjoy Steeple Bay, a nice little spot I had discovered near Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, so I bought a caravan and a little motor cruiser and I’d pop down there with Mum and the old man every weekend. They were blissfully happy times. The twins were very funny about me going away at weekends. They would say: ‘Going away again! Leaving us to do all the work!’ We’d argue every weekend. They would call me a playboy and it really got on my nerves. Then they would suddenly turn up in Steeple Bay with their mates. They always had loads of people with them; they attracted people all the time.
Mum lapped up the good life at home, too. Two good friends of ours, Alex Steene and his wife, Anna, made a point of taking Mum to the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium every year, followed by a slap-up meal in a top restaurant. Mum always looked forward to that.
It was all a dramatic change from the modest lifestyle Mum had previously enjoyed. But the money that was suddenly available did not change her one bit: although she now mixed with dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, she was always herself. She wasn’t one for intellectual conversation, but what she had to say was said with a simple honesty that endeared her to everyone she met. The twins and I were proud of her.
Ronnie and Reggie never put on airs and graces either. Far from being ashamed of where they came from they were proud, and took a delight in taking friends and business acquaintances home to meet Mum over a cup of tea in the upstairs sitting room.
I was sitting in that room talking to Ronnie one day when the phone rang: it was Lord Effingham, whom we paid to sit on the board of The Barn for prestige. When Ronnie put the phone down he said the friendly peer had told him he needed two hundred pounds immediately; if he couldn’t get it, he was going to kill himself. When Ronnie told me he was arranging for someone to deliver the money within an hour I went spare. I said it was an obvious ploy to get money, and Ronnie was mad if he fell for it. But he would have none of it; he said he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to Effingham. I suppose I should not have been surprised. Nothing had changed; Ronnie had been a soft touch when he didn’t have much money and now that he had it coming out of his ears he was even more charitable. I’m sure that the word went round London that if you were plausible you could get anything out of Ronnie Kray.
Lucien Freud, a heavy gambler, owed the club £1,400 and I told Ronnie that someone should speak to him about it. A few days later he came up to me and said triumphantly, ‘It’s all sorted out.’
Relieved, I asked, ‘He’s going to pay up?’
‘No,’ Ronnie replied. ‘I told him to forget it.’
‘What?’
‘I said we wanted to see him back in the club,’ said Ronnie casually. ‘It’s better for us to have his custom.’
I tried telling him he had made a bad mistake but Ronnie just said, ‘Don’t go on about it. I’ve done it now.’
My dismay at his misguided generosity deepened a few days later when I learned that Freud had offered a very valuable painting as collateral for his debt and Ronnie had turned it down.
One of our customers was Pauline Wallace, a lovely, well-dressed, well-spoken Irish lady. What she didn’t know about gambling was not worth knowing, so when she hit hard times we gave her a job supervising the croupiers. A month or so later she told Ronnie she was being evicted from her Knightsbridge flat unless she paid £800 rent arrears. Quick as you like, Ronnie took the cash from the club coffers and gave it to her. When I had a go at him he said, ‘It’s all right. I can use the flat whenever I like.’
When Pauline got on her feet she never forgot what we had done for her. She would visit Mum in Vallance Road, always with some beautiful flowers. Then one day she told the twins she wanted to give them some money every week to repay them for helping her when she needed it most. The twins refused, so Pauline said she would give it to Mum. They told her it was not necessary, but she insisted. Every week Billy Exley went to Knightsbridge and collected some cash. It was something Pauline wanted to do; she was that kind of woman.
A couple of years later she married a multi-millionaire in Texas and the last I heard of her she was running all the greyhound racing in Miami.
Ronnie did not spend all his time playing the nice guy, however. If someone stepped out of line he’d be swift to crack down on them. Lord Effingham was given a fee, plus all he wanted to eat and drink, but that was not enough for him. One of our senior employees complained that the noble lord was interfering in the running of the club, so Ronnie asked to see him.
‘Yes, Ronald?’ Effingham said.
‘Mowbray,’ Ronnie said quietly, using the peer’s Christian name. ‘You’re getting above yourself. You’re getting paid for nothing, so you can shut your mouth or leave.’
Effingham knew what side his bread was buttered. ‘You’re so right, Ronald,’ he said. ‘I do apologize.’
The people who flocked to The Barn in 1960 seemingly had money to burn; it would shake me when I watched thousands of pounds being risked on the turn of a card at the chemin de fer tables.
Neither the twins nor I were gamblers, but I do remember one night I tried my hand at chemmy and won £350. Well pleased, I told Reggie, who immediately thought he’d have a go. I saw him about two hours later and he was falling about laughing.
‘How much did you win?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Reggie, highly amused. ‘I did £750 in an hour.’
Reggie was not as careless with money as Ronnie, but when he had it he was not afraid to spend it.
It was during the early days of The Barn that Reggie developed an outside interest that in time was to change his personality and, eventually, his life.
She was a sixteen-year-old girl and her name was Frances Shea. Like us, she was from the East End and Reggie had watched her grow from a child to a beautiful young woman. When he fell in love with her it was with the same intensity, commitment and passion he showed in everything he did. Although eleven years younger, she was everything he wanted in a woman; it was as if even then he knew that this was the girl he wanted to marry, and he courted her in the old-fashioned sense, with roses and chocolates, the deepest respect and impeccable manners. Reggie put Frances Shea on a pedestal that would eventually destroy him.
Early in 1961 we got our first warning that the police were not impressed with the Kray success story and that someone somewhere had decided a couple of East End tearaways and their elder brother had no right making a few bob and mixing with wealthy folk far above their station.
Ronnie and I were at Vallance Road when Big Pat Connolly’s wife phoned from a call box saying Pat had been taken to hospital. A friend of ours, Jimmy Kensit, ran us to the Connolly home to see if there was anything we could do. When we arrived, we discovered