So Nan Whitton taught me to carry two cardigans with me. I always used to have a little bucket bag in which I put a spare cardigan. I used to wear one while I was with the dogs or cats then change over. I would take the cardigan covered in hairs around to Nan Whitton. She must have been a magician, because somehow she always got the hairs off.
And it was she who helped me spend time with Digger, the first dog I really considered my own.
Digger belonged to our friends Peggy and Eddie, who lived in East Molesey. He was a little sandy-coloured Cairn terrier, a great little dog, hardy and a lot of fun. He and I got on like a house on fire. Whenever I went there, he was as pleased to see me as I was to see him. He would be up on his hind legs. He was my boy. He was there for me. Every time I looked at him or spoke to him his tail wagged.
With Digger, as with all the dogs I met at the time, I felt there were no conditions, I could be myself rather than the person that other people wanted me to be. He didn’t make me feel as if I was in the way.
I was so fond of Digger that I went to great lengths to orchestrate time with him.
Once I feigned sleep in order to stay the night at the house rather than go back to Fulham. I lay on a sofa with my eyes closed and heard my dad saying: ‘She’s exhausted.’
My mum said he should carry me out to the car. Finally Peggy said: ‘Oh, let her sleep here the night, we’ll run her back tomorrow.’
I thought: ‘Yes.’ Isn’t that pathetic?
I had to go along with the charade now and it was very odd lying there as my dad carried me up to a strange bedroom. Of course, as soon as the house was quiet I slipped down to give my canine pal a cuddle and I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning playing with him.
It was during a summer holiday that Nan Whitton helped me to effectively adopt Digger. Uncle Eddie used to work in Munster Road in Fulham where he had a workshop. Every day I went round to collect Digger from him, then took him to my nan’s house. Of course my mother knew nothing about this. It only lasted a few weeks but I still look back on it as a great time.
My secret friendship with Digger taught me much. Being with him seemed to change the world around me. Confined within my mother’s world no one spoke to me. Out walking Digger that summer I found people stopping for no apparent reason and talking away to me. I saw that dogs were great icebreakers.
I can remember how people used to tell me stories about their dogs. I could see the happiness they brought into their lives. By the end of the holiday, my nan and I had our own favourite memories of our time with Digger; we nicknamed him Digger Doughnut because of his love of the buns we’d slip under the tables of cafeterias we visited together during that long summer.
It only strengthened my determination to form more lasting friendships like this.
My mum had her secrets too, hidden parts of her life that only increased the distance between us. It was while we were out shopping one day around this time that I got a glimpse of a darker and more dangerous aspect to her 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