Pretty Boy - If I Come After You Beware 'Cos Hell's Coming With Me. Roy Shaw
had swerved out of control. One of the pedals on the motorbike hit the kerb. Jock had been thrown clear. Dad tried to regain control of his bike, but it was no good. He hit a lamppost head on and was killed instantly. It must have been fate that he didn’t take me with him that night.
Over the following week, I wandered about in a dream. I didn’t cry, not once. At night, I lay in bed listening to my mum and sisters weeping into their pillows. I couldn’t believe Dad was dead; it was so unreal.
On the day Dad was buried, there was a lot of activity in the house and far-flung relatives wearing black arm bands arrived. I sat on the sideboard watching it all. I watched them slide Dad’s coffin into the back of the hearse and Mum putting on her best black coat.
‘Where’s my Roy?’ she called out.
Mum looked round the room and saw me sitting on the sideboard. She smiled a beautiful smile full of reassurance and love. Her motherly instinct was to make me look right, so she spat on the corner of her handkerchief and wiped the dirt off my face, as if it mattered.
I sat in the church and played with my toy motorbike, the one Dad had given me. I didn’t take in what was going on until we stood round the freshly dug grave. The vicar stood at one end. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …’
They started to lower the oak coffin into the ground and it hit me like a ton of bricks. That was my dad they were putting into the ground. I shrieked at the top of my voice, ‘Don’t go, Dad,’ and hurled myself on top of the coffin. My uncles grabbed my legs. ‘Come on, Roy, you’ll be all right.’
I held on to my father’s coffin for dear life. I didn’t want to let him go. I didn’t want him to be in that cold grave on his own. Who would I go to speedway with? Who would cut my hair? Who would help me chop the wood? In that moment I realised I would never see my dad again.
Three days later I was back at school and back to the bullies. The bell rang sounding the end of the school day. I bolted out of the classroom eager to get home. For a change, I managed to get through the main gates with no one chasing me. I breathed a sigh of relief, loosened my tie, took off my blazer and wondered what was for tea. I looked up and, to my horror, standing directly ahead of me were eight boys. The bullies. I turned and ran in the opposite direction, my fear giving me extra speed. But it was no good, two more were waiting to ambush me. I was scared. My heart was pounding like a runaway train and my chest heaved as I struggled to gulp in air as they grabbed me. But this time when the bullies circled me, I felt different. Strange. I was still frightened but my fear turned to anger. An anger so deep inside of me it erupted. I was angry that my dad had died and left me, angry because one minute I was sitting on an upturned bucket next to Dad and the next minute he was gone. Where? Why? A million questions ran through my mind. Now the bullies wanted to take things from me, too; well, I had nothing left to give. I was angry. Fucking angry. I felt it was me against the whole male world.
That was the first time I felt the adrenalin rush. It started with a tingle in my feet. The anger welled up through my body like an electric current. In a flash, I felt I had the strength of ten men. It was such a high. I lashed out. BANG. I hit one of the bullies on the chin. He went over. Then another. Then another. I felt the anger and frustration come out in those first few punches.
I found a strength I never knew I had. I lashed out for all the times the bullies had taunted me, all the times I had been frightened, all the times I’d been hurt and, from that day on, I realised that bullies are cowards, and if you hurt a coward they cry the loudest. I started to whack the bullies and anyone else who stood in my way. God had given me a gift. I lost my fear and gained a power. I knew I was never going to be frightened or ever run away again. From that day on, I moved slowly, ’cos I didn’t have to move for anyone.
I started to do well at school. My dad’s brother, Uncle Alf, took me under his wing. Alf was a big man with thick ginger hair that was cut in an old-fashioned pudding basin style. Dad had four brothers, all tough, hard-working men. Alfie was into boxing in a big way and took me to the local boxing booth held on the bombed-out site in Commercial Road, Stepney. There, anyone could challenge anyone for a fight. The first time I went, my uncle shadow boxed around me, ducking and weaving, tapping my cheeks and teasing me: ‘So you think you can hold your hands up, boy?’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll have a tear-up.’
Uncle Alf grinned, then disappeared for a while. He came back chatting to a man with a towel around his neck and holding a bucket.
‘Come on then, son,’ the man said, ‘let’s see what you can do.’
I followed him into a huge circus tent, which held a boxing ring. Two boxers were slugging it out. Spectators were shouting, ‘Go on, knock ’im out.’
I was led into a makeshift dressing room to get ready, but I didn’t have anything to wear except my swimming trunks, because earlier that day I’d been swimming with my sister. I unrolled the damp towel and to my horror I saw a girl’s green seersucker swimming costume and a rubber swimming hat. I looked at the trainer. He tutted, spat on the floor, sniffed and growled, ‘Get it on.’
I was a bit nervous as I climbed into the ring. I saw my opponent standing in his corner warming up. He was wearing a long silk dressing gown, proper shorts and boots. He was on his toes, dancing like a pro. He looked at me and smirked. There I was, a skinny kid, wearing my sister’s tucked down swimming costume as shorts, plimsolls and a pair of big brown leather boxing gloves. They were huge, as big as my head and still damp inside, from the sweat of the previous fighter.
I looked at my corner to the man with the bucket. I don’t know why, maybe for reassurance.
‘Use yer jab, kid. Look busy. Move about and jab,’ he hissed.
Before I could answer the bell rang. DING DING.
My opponent rushed at me, bobbing and weaving. I stood in the middle of the ring holding my hands up. The fucking gloves were so big I could barely see over the top of them. He was boxing clever, and kept jabbing me. I couldn’t catch him because of my inexperience. Then he caught me with a good punch. In that moment, I had a flash-back to the playground bullies. I felt the anger, the adrenalin rush.
Then he made a fatal mistake and stepped within my reach. I let the big one go. BANG. He was on his arse. All I could see over the top of my gloves were the soles of his feet. The crowd erupted. Uncle Alf went wild. After that fight, I can’t remember a single fight when I was frightened.
That day I won £3 in the boxing booth. Uncle Alf realised my potential and urged me to take up boxing. I started training, and boxing became my life. By the time I was 16, I’d won the Area Championship, the Essex Championship and the Schoolboy Championship trophies which were held at the Albert Hall. Winning all the trophies boosted my confidence. I’d found the one thing I was good at – boxing – and through that I earned respect, and I liked that.
Respect and trophies were one thing but I had to earn money. So every week I continued to go to the boxing booth with Uncle Alf to put some money in my pocket. In fact, he took me to any boxing show he could, anywhere to earn cash, even a police show. The place was full of Old Bill. My uncle hated them, and knew it would be the only chance I’d get to knock out a policeman legally.
‘Make me proud, son. Knock his fucking head off,’ he laughed.
I took great delight in doing just that.
Mum got me my first job working with her in a factory as a machinist making ladies’ dresses. There were only three other men there: the manager, the cutter and the presser. The rest were all women, a gaggle of loud, mouthy factory girls, all turbans and curlers. And I was a shy, awkward boy who’d never had a girlfriend.
The women sensed this and teased me relentlessly.
‘Royston, come ’ere me little darling.’
I dreaded going to work. I’d hide behind the presses and listen to them gossiping. All I wanted to do was training and boxing. I was boxing crazy. I hated that fucking factory and I hated those fucking women. I’d rather