Gangsters, Guns & Me - Now I'm in Eastenders, but once I was on the run. This is my true story. Jamie Foreman
up from school for the holidays. He never missed one end of term. I remember standing at the dorm window and looking out across Blackheath until I spotted his car, a beautiful postbox-red Mercedes 220SE. It was a real tool, that car – beautiful black leather seats, chrome hubs, eight-track stereo, tail wings at the back – and I loved watching it arc over the hill and down towards me.
It was Christmas, and the first end of term since Dad had been locked up. My uncle John Fitzgerald, Nellie’s husband, was due to pick me up. I was fine with that, but what I didn’t know was that he’d be driving Dad’s red Mercedes. Much as I loved my uncle Fitzy, it was a tough pill to swallow seeing that car speed towards the school without my dad at the wheel.
Until that moment it hadn’t quite hit me that my dad wasn’t going to come back to us for a long, long time. A few months had already felt like an age, but it hurt seeing that wonderful car again and knowing I’d be able to drive it myself by the time Dad became a free man again. A sense of how long ten years really was began to dawn on me, and it was nauseating. The previous Christmas, Dad had whisked me and the family off to the Bahamas. This Christmas was going to be the worst we ever had. The first of many hollow, empty holidays. How times had changed.
And how times were changing. Going home wasn’t the same any more. The pub was still busy – business was even brisker for a while, thanks to a bit of post-trial notoriety – and our family was surrounded by good people who rallied around and looked after us. It helped, of course, but Dad had been such a momentous presence that his absence was always gnawing away.
Nobody’s life got easier once Dad went away. It was the end of an era for many of his firm as well. It was as if they’d all run out of time. So many were nicked for one thing or another. The sixties had been a momentous, special time for them, then suddenly it all felt like it was over and everything seemed miserable.
Yet, despite everything, I was holding it together. So far.
There was a German with a bomb and he was waiting to jump out and kill me. I was convinced of it. He was hiding behind a lorry near the pub. In a few seconds, I was going to be blown to smithereens. I couldn’t move – fear had rooted me to the spot – and, boy, did I need to get out of there. But it was no good: I was stuck. Panic gripped me and I began to scream, and as I screamed I found I could run, but instead of retreating I leaped forwards and dashed past the lorry towards the pub. Yelling, I collapsed at the door.
A couple of regulars scooped me up and took me inside to safety. My mum was beside herself. ‘Where have you been, Jamie? What’s happened to you?’
I didn’t have an answer. I was delirious, deranged even. There’d been a German outside, I’d panicked and now I was in the pub wearing my pyjamas and crying with confusion and fear. That was all I knew.
The episode was a bit of a mystery. I’d been outside, that’s for sure, but there had been no German, and there was no explanation as to how and why I was out on the street in my pyjamas. Minutes before everything went off, I’d been snuggled up in a chair watching a war documentary on telly in the lounge above the pub, and I remember I had a bit of flu coming on. Next thing I knew, I was a block or two away from the pub, waiting for the traffic on Marshalsea Road to pass so I could cross and get home. Then I’d seen the lorry and wound up in a terrible state.
The weird thing is, nobody could work out how I’d managed to leave the pub unnoticed. There was no way I could have gone through the bar without raising eyebrows. The only likely explanation was that I’d fallen asleep and then somehow dropped myself out of the first-floor window. If that’s what happened, never mind the German: I was lucky I hadn’t done myself some serious damage.
The family doctor, Leo Barry, was called. I can’t remember what he asked me, but I now know that during his hushed conversation with Mum he told her he thought I was having a bit of a breakdown. Things had obviously got to me, he said, and what I needed was some rest and a bit of TLC. Looking back, I can see how right he was.
Around the time of this incident, my mum had started to really get herself together, and I’d been so relieved to see her getting back to somewhere near her best again. Her condition had been very, very worrying. I felt such admiration for her – to go through what she’d gone through and to come out the other side had required real strength. I’d done as much as I could to support her, and now that the pressure was off a little I was left with feelings I’d put aside for Mum and Danielle’s sake.
Confusing states of sadness and anger left me pretty emotionally vulnerable, I suppose, and in the end I wasn’t equipped to deal with them at my age. It was as if I’d been in an emotional strait-jacket until that night, and the delirium outside the pub was my feelings wrestling free. My safety valve blew and I was left in a tangle of upset about everything that we’d been through after losing Dad.
Mum followed the doctor’s orders, making sure I got the rest and care I needed. I was off school for a while and I remember spending a lot of time just crying and crying. Letting it all out was a positive thing, a cathartic process that did me a lot of good. For so long I’d hindered my acceptance of the situation by trying to stay strong, but now it was time to cut myself some slack and allow myself a bit of natural, human weakness. It was a case of having to hit rock bottom before picking yourself up and really taking control of things.
My dad was gone, but he was coming back. That was the thing I needed to keep hold of – I had to accept a positive and a negative at the same time. I’d get to see him on visits, but otherwise I just had to get on with it. End of story.
School had always been a constant in my life, but as time went on I started to go off it. I’d been growing up pretty fast and it became increasingly hard to see the point in studying when I had so much else on my mind. ‘Just getting on with it’ was all very well, but when I was around 13 I realised school was no longer much of a priority for a number of reasons. For starters, I was no longer a boarder. I’d become a dayboy so I could be around for Mum a lot more, but the change meant I no longer felt part of the school’s team spirit. It was all a bit depressing; my heart simply wasn’t in it any more.
Things weren’t looking too rosy outside school either. The sixties had been an amazing decade. Everybody had money in their pockets and the good times had rolled in our pub and elsewhere besides. But, as the seventies loomed, all that joie de vivre started to slip away. In its place you suddenly had the three-day week and a feeling of austerity everywhere. Maybe it’s just me, but it felt like everything changed almost in the blink of an eye. Where you’d once had a world exploding with colour and noise, you now had one filled with darkness and gloom.
Slowly but surely business dropped off at the pub until it wasn’t the same place any more. Gone were the days of players and pretty ladies filling its four walls on a Friday. There were some nights where it just felt dead, with Dad’s jukebox playing to just a couple of regulars. And the deader our beloved little pub got, the more we were reminded of the good times with Dad. Happy memories that also made us sad.
Nostalgia’s all well and good, but Mum didn’t want to hold on to a business for the sake of it. Financially it wasn’t making sense, so we took the hard decision to sell up. We needed a clean break, not so we could forget Dad, but so we could stay focused on building a future with him when he got out. It would be sad to say goodbye to the place, but a relief at the same time. You can’t hold on to anything for ever.
The pub sold quick enough. It was time to move and, thanks to Dad, we had somewhere to go. Before he went away, he had invested in a beautiful five-bedroom house in Red Post Hill, Dulwich, and now it was to be our home. We moved in and it felt good to be in a new place where we could give attention to each other as a family without the