Pretty Boy - If I Come After You Beware 'Cos Hell's Coming With Me. Roy Shaw

      ‘THERE’S SHAW.’

      I looked round. Four boys were running towards me.

      ‘Get him,’ they yelled.

      It was the bullies. I ran as fast as I could across the school playground. Every day was the same. I knew what was coming. I was scared – bloody scared. My heart started to pound faster and faster. The harder I ran, the faster it beat. Again, I glanced over my shoulder. As I turned back, two more boys appeared from behind a wall directly in front of me. One of them grabbed me.

      ‘Let me go, let me go,’ I shouted.

      They started to laugh. The other boys who’d been chasing me caught up. All of them circled me, laughing and jeering. I felt helpless. Scared.

      ‘Leave me alone,’ I yelled.

      One of them shoved me hard in the back. I banged my head as I hit the ground. I pleaded with them to stop but they didn’t listen. I felt a hard blow to the back of my head as one of the bullies screamed, ‘Shut the fuck up.’

      I struggled and struggled, trying to break free, but it was no good. Suddenly, they all started punching and kicking me. Blows rained down on me from every angle.

      Instinctively, I curled into a ball while they bashed me. That’s how it was throughout my school years. I was taunted and bullied relentlessly. I don’t know the reason why I was picked on; maybe it was because I was small for my age, or because I was a loner. Who knows?

      One thing’s for sure – I dreaded the sound of the school bell. To a child, the future is the next five seconds and a day seems like a lifetime. I was kicked and punched through the infant and junior school. In retrospect, five years of being bullied seemed an eternity and, at times, I hated the world for being born.

      I was born in Stepney, East London, on 11 March 1936, within the sound of Bow Bells. I’m a true cockney, a Londoner through and through. It was the calm before the storm, three years before the Second World War started.

      London was a great place to live; it was a time of ease and peace. The only force to be reckoned with were East End women, who were all gas and garters, wearing paisley pinnies with a no-nonsense look on their faces and a Woodbine cigarette hanging from the corner of their mouths. They were found daily, on hands and knees frantically scrubbing their doorsteps as though it was the only thing that mattered, or leaning over the garden fence discussing Mrs What’s-Her-Name at Number 43: ‘’Ere … you know her lodger …?’

      Us kids played nearby in relative safety. I was a street urchin, a ragamuffin searching the pavements for dog-ends, using the extra tobacco to make roll-ups for my dad.

      Times were hard – we didn’t have much but we were happy and content, unaware of what was ahead of us. No one could have foreseen that Hitler was about to invade Poland and every Londoner’s life would change for ever.

      I was just six years old when I was evacuated to the country – Chippenham in Wiltshire – with my three sisters and my mum. We were lucky because we were packed off together as a family and I was delighted when I arrived at the rambling farm and saw two beautiful Labrador dogs. From the day I arrived, they became my best friends and the memories of those dogs remain with me to this day.

      Wiltshire was different to London – bigger, cleaner, quieter. There were many farms, huge country houses and sprawling open fields, which I would run through with the two dogs for hours. When it started to get dark, Mum would send out a search party. Often I could be found with my gas mask and two knackered dogs slumped under a tree fast asleep. Mum never knew whether to kiss me or scold me.

      We returned home from Wiltshire before the war had ended. The devastation in London was obvious, even to me. Complete areas of East London were flattened, reduced to rubble. Whole communities were moved out of the city and into the sticks; we were moved to a house in Dagenham which had a back garden. My first reaction was ‘Great, a garden … I can have a dog.’ I badgered Mum and Dad. I kept on and on about a dog. Dad had other ideas – a vegetable plot. I hated that garden plot; Dad made me pick up all the stones if I was naughty.

      After the war, Dad was de-mobbed, and worked as a lorry driver for a timber yard and often brought home the excess wood to sell.

      Half of the garden was taken up with his prize lettuces and the other half was used for chopping firewood to make into bundles and sell round the houses for extra money. I would spend hours in the backyard helping Dad. Whenever I asked for a dog he would wink and say, ‘We’ll see. Let’s get this wood chopped and sold first, then maybe.’ I never did get the dog.

      Dad had two passions in his life – his garden and speedway racing, although motorbikes were his first passion. I would sit on an upturned bucket next to him for hours while he fiddled with a motorbike engine. I was Dad’s little helper. I went with him to every race meeting on the back of his bike, holding on tightly round his waist. He would watch me in the wing mirror as my lips contorted uncontrollably in the wind and he would laugh.

      It was a hot afternoon on the last day of July. As usual, I was pottering round the garden with Dad. There was a big race meeting that night at West Ham speedway and I was excited about going. Jock, our lodger, came into the garden for a smoke and started chatting with Dad about the bike.

      ‘I wouldn’t mind going with you tonight,’ Jock said. ‘Perhaps we’ll have a pint afterwards.’

      As soon as he said the word ‘pint’ I knew I wouldn’t be going. I was disappointed. I desperately wanted to go and protested.

      ‘But, Dad …’

      Dad threw me a look. ‘You can come another time.’

      It was all arranged. Jock was going and I wasn’t. For the rest of the day, I slumped around the house sulking. I kept looking at Dad with big cow eyes hoping he would change his mind. I even followed him to the bathroom and watched him shave. When it was time for him to go, I got his crash helmet and gloves from the cupboard under the stairs and handed them to him with my head bowed. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t look at him. Dad, realising I was so disappointed, pulled on a big leather glove and ruffled my hair, trying to make me laugh. He pointed to the ceiling and said, ‘What’s that up there?’

      Instinctively, I looked up. He tickled me in the ribs and teased, ‘Caught you out there.’ I squealed with laughter as Dad slammed the door behind him.

      That was the last time I ever saw my dad alive. I was ten years old. Later that night, the police came. I was lying in bed when I heard Mum scream. My older sisters looked after me while Mum went to the hospital. When she came back, her face was ashen. She sat me down on the sofa; her eyes were red and puffy.

      ‘Daddy’s dead,’ she whispered.

      At first, I couldn’t take it in.

      ‘Daddy’s dead?’ I repeated.