Gangster by Jackie Penticost
It’s the glamour, see? You get brought up in them charity buildings in Hackney, an’ all of a sudden you’re in the West end flashing cash, with a posh car and a nice suit. And everyone looks at you with a bit of respect, an’ the birds think they can live a bit dangerous and still come home to a Chelsea mews at night.
My old Mum was so ashamed, and she told me to stop while I could. But crime, it’s a slippery slope, and there’s no way out. You can’t back up and do an apprenticeship, or turn your back on your friends, or you’ll end up in Regent’s Park canal. So you have to keep on going, don’t you?
We had a good run of it, in the fifties and sixties. It was all coppers on the take and narks, and all you had to do was wipe off your dabs. The money was all paper, so knocking off a van was easy. Then the Old Bill started to get all scientific, and the money went electronic, and it got all nasty. Drugs and Russians, that’s what did it for me.
Some of us went to Spain, some got put away, and quite a lot got put under. There was a lot of knifing, and some very showy killings, like Reggie done to Jack McVitie.
I did five years in Parkhurst, and I kept my mouth shut, and by and large I got left alone. But when I got out I had a couple of unfriendly visits, so I decided to fade away. I had a bit stashed, and I bought a little flower shop up the Old Kent Road.
Ironic, really, ‘cos I did all the funerals for the big names up the East End, and they really liked a flashy send-off.
It was a nice little number. The council said I had no assets, so they put me up in a council flat in Bermondsey, and my daughter come to visit me once a month. I liked it, you could see to Crystal Palace on a clear day. I’d be up to Covent Garden every morning, pick the best flowers, and ready to set up by 9.
So one day this young shaver comes into the shop and starts getting all mouthy, and he says if don’t give him money each month then he’ll do me. So I put my pruning knife up to his eye, and get right up close, and I tell him he won’t look so pretty when I’ve finished with him.
He turns white, and legs it, and I lock up tight, and go home. And now I’m waiting for a fire, or maybe someone waiting in a dark alley, ‘cos he can’t afford to let me get away with it. I’m not scared, I’ve seen worse, but I’m not young any more. And I haven’t got a pension, have I, so I have to keep the shop open. But, you know, I really regret not kicking that young so-and-so halfway to Marble Arch. Maybe if I’d been kicked good an’ proper when I was a kid, my Mum would have been proud of me after all.
Simon says:
I like the unsentimental practicality of this piece, which is reflected in the narrator’s manner of speech. The point is made that a life of crime involves as many basic decisions as more traditional careers. You have to know when to ride the wave of success and when to back off. The narrator’s move into floristry after he comes out of Parkhurst is a pragmatic, logical decision (shades of Buster Edwards…?). I like the irony of his keeping in touch with his criminal past by providing flowers for the funerals of his former associates. ‘Going straight’ seems to have compensations for him. Then comes the moment when his new life and old life meet. The ‘young shaver’ who arrives in his shop and tries to extort protection money from him is, of course, a reminder of himself at the same age. I find his reaction to the incident interesting, from the moral point of view. He regrets ‘not kicking that young so-and-so halfway to Marble Arch’. The narrator is reminded of how much his old Mum disapproved of his criminal activities and wishes that he’d been deterred from that way of life by being ‘kicked good an’ proper’. Within its short span, the piece raises an interesting moral question.