For the Love of Brass

Gary London

Description

Could time spent serving with the UK's Special Forces help a man to save his marriage?For the Love of Brass is the bittersweet autobiography of a family man who loses his way and the heater skelter world he falls into whilst searching for the path to happiness. It is the true story of what happens when dad becomes an infatuated whoremonger, living in a world of guns, drugs and corruption.Moments of despair and frustration merge into hilarity and elation as the journey passes through depravity and the seedy side of drug-fuelled London in the 1990s.Can a life be salvaged from the shards of love and deceit?

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Love
• Love (disambiguation)

Informations

• Publié par: Brown Dog Books
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785452604
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published 2018
Copyright © Gary London 2018
The right of Gary London to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk
ISBN printed book: 978-1-78545-259-8 ISBN e-book: 978-1-78545-260-4
Cover design by Gary London Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK
Many thanks to Mr. Andrew Catford for all his help in making this book possible.
CONTENTS
Chapter One The Feeling
Chapter Two Poor Relations
Chapter Three Elaine
Chapter Four Dad’s Funeral
Chapter Five The Art Gallery
Chapter Six Practical Justice
Chapter Seven Practical Shotgun
Chapter Eight The Rottie
Chapter Nine Brief Encounter
Chapter Ten What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Chapter Eleven The New Parlour
Chapter Twelve Anal Specialist
Chapter Thirteen Lettsbe Avenue
Chapter Fourteen Jimmy the Dog
Chapter Fifteen Ryan Gets a Piercing
Chapter Sixteen Unwanted Visitor
Chapter Seventeen Spilling the Beans
CHAPTER ONE
THE FEELING
Driving along the A3 from London, heading towards Tolworth in Surrey. It was 9.30 in the morning and a lovely sunny day in early March 1993, and I had this strange, compelling feeling: the urge to keep on driving, past the Tolworth junction and keep going, and never return home. Just leave everything behind and keep going. No thought to where I would end up.
I pondered on this for a while as I drove and said to myself,“Yes! That’s what I’ll do.” The thought put a smile on my face and lifted my heart.
Then reality hit home. How the fuck can you just run off? How much money do I have? What clothes do I have? How much petrol do I have in the tank? These things all went through my mind in a flash.
Okay. Let’s take stock. If you’re going to do this, what exactly do you have that’s of any use? I’d about 40 quid in my pocket, credit cards, about £20-worth of fuel. No change of clothes. I did, however, have the survival kit I always carried in the van, along with a shotgun and some ammo, which I’d got on board for a job I was going to do later that day. A quick stock-check confirmed that I didn’t have much on board but “Going” still seemed a good idea.
“Hold on, hold on,” I told myself.“You may have been in the Special Forces and well trained but you’re not a super-trooper. You don’t even have a belt kit with you, let alone your Bergan, and this is not an operational mission. You’re going to bloody work. How long do you think you will last with what you have on board?”
All these bizarre thoughts came to a close and there was the slip road for the Tolworth roundabout. I took it, telling myself, no matter how you feel now, just go to work and if you’ve got to think about this sudden adventure, do it another time and when you’re better prepared.
I took the third road off at the roundabout, which would take me through the Broadway and on to Surbiton, to where my job was: the restoration of a very large detached Victorian house. I had four of my men there, two plasterers, a labourer and a carpenter. There was a lot of work of all types to do on the house. The lads were working on the bay window where the roof had failed and water had found its way in. This had damaged the bay ceiling, along with the lovely cornice-work to the inside.
The client, his wife, their baby and a nanny were living in the house, moving from room to room as we were doing the work. One of the corners of the main roof, which we still had to replace, had part of the soffit board missing under the guttering. This provided a nice place for pigeons to live, which was why the ammo and shotgun were in my van. The idea was that I’d shoot the pigeons, go up on a ladder to clear out the nesting materials and cover the hole up with a piece of ply to stop any more birds taking up residence in the roof.
From time to time during the day I found myself thinking about this morning’s sudden urge. To drive off into the sunset, as it were, and never return home. Wow!Where did that come from and more importantly, Why?
Home for me was a lovely mock-Tudor semi-detached house with six bedrooms and a double garage with an electric door that operated from a button in the car. The car was a signal-red Mercedes saloon. I lived here with my wife Sharon and my two sons, Michael and Lee. Life was good. We had everything we needed. You see, I ran a successful building firm, which I’d set up after leaving the Regiment, the idea being that, with my own business, I could earn more to afford a better place to live and a better standard of living for the family. I had men working for me, and company vans and a truck to look after.
At one time I had 16 men working. One of them was Ron. He was the foreman: a foreman bricklayer, a blinding bricklayer and an excellent all-rounder. Having him on board meant I could go and price jobs, meet clients, arrange and source materials. Also, deal with banking and any office work that needed doing. When I wasn’t busy with those tasks, I’d be on site helping out and on the tools myself. There was always lots to do. Then, for me of an evening, I’d get home, get cleaned up, have dinner, then get into the office for paperwork. There was always pricing and estimates to do. Once I’d drawn up draft estimates and invoices, Sharon would type them up ready to go out in the post the next day. It was a full on life. I was able to take some weekends off to get out with the boys fishing or out in the country in the summer. Or of course we’d go shooting. I’d always take my boys with me as much as possible: handguns at the pistol club, shotguns out in the sticks, hunting. Camping out in the woods, sometimes all weekend. I’d teach my boys how to hunt and how to prepare game, a skill they still have to this day.
When we bought the house, which was on the border of Sutton and Morden in Surrey (closer to Morden in fact), it had only three bedrooms. It was in a bad state of repair, so much so that in the flank wall there was a crack that ran from the damp course up to the side flank window and on up to the roof plate. It was interesting because when we viewed the house you could stand in front of the crack and put your hand side-on into it. It was just over an inch wide. You could look through and see the orange wallpaper and orange gloss woodwork – highly fashionable in the 1960s.
What had made the house desirable to me was that it had a block of land next to it with an old garage. I could foresee a large double extension on this land. It also had a long garden, some 120 feet, backing onto Morden Way Park. So, with some money and a lot of hard work, I could really do something with this house.
We’d bought the house from a man known as “Slippery Mick” and his wife, Jackie. I’d wanted to move to Morden Way but the houses always sold very quickly, so it was hard to get a look in. Sally, one of the mums from the school, lived in the road, so we asked her to keep an ear open for any news, should one come up for sale. Well, it hadn’t taken too long before Sally knocked on our door and said her neighbour was about to put her house on the market. This would be an ideal opportunity to go and have a look.
“Thanks Sally. I’ll go straight away.”
I turned up at the door to be met by Mick and Jackie who invited me in. The house was in a state but I walked through the kitchen and on into the garden. I particularly wanted to see the garden. I knew this house had a lot of land. It was at this stage they informed me they’d sold most of the garden to a builder for development, seeing as how the land backed onto another road behind their house.
“Okay,” I informed them. “It’s not really what I’m looking for now. I think I’ll give it a miss. Thanks anyway,” I said.
As I was leaving Mick piped up again.“We own another house up the road by the park entrance. Would you like to see that place?”
“Yes, I would, please.” So off we went. We walked up the road to see the house where Jackie’s mother lived. Mick went on to tell me they were selling both houses and moving away to Gloucester.
I looked at the house from the outside. I didn’t go in at that point because the old lady had dogs and didn’t look after them very well. Peering over the side gate I could see lots of dog shit on the path between the house and the garage and on into the back garden. Mick opened the front door calling out to the old lady that it was just him and somebody to look at the house. To my surprise the house smelt of dog shit as well. There was the odd turd here and there on the carpet. I quickly said I’d seen enough for now but I’d like to make an appointment to come back with my wife, so she could have a look. I thought it might give them a chance to clean up a bit.
Sharon came with me the second time after making an appointment but the dog shit was still there along with the smell. Despite a few things that needed doing, like replace the roof and fix the crack in the flank wall, replace the rotten windows, build a new double extension, re-plaster, rewire, re-plumb, sort out the completely overgrown garden and, of course, deal with the dog shit, we agreed a price, £63,000, with Mick and Jackie. We shook hands and bought the house.
“You’ll find this interesting,” says Sally the next time we met at the school. “You’ve just bought a house off of one of the robbers from the great train robbery.”
“No way, really?” I said.
“Yeah. That’s why he’s called Slippery Mick.” He’d had a part in laundering the money. Old Slippery stayed out of the hands of the Old Bill for qu