Me and My Brothers by Charlie Kray Read Free Book Online Page B

decision in Reggie’s favour and he was granted his licence. But within a few months he had lost all interest in the sport: he felt that all the managers and agents were too ruthless and only wanted to know those fighters who were going to become champions. The irony was that Reggie was good enough to become a champion; I didn’t doubt that for one moment. But he didn’t like the atmosphere and that was the end of that. Reggie never went in the ring again, although I believe he knew in his heart that he was good enough.
    It quickly became clear that the twins were not cut out for a life on the knocker. I lent them some money and they did spend several weeks trying to generate some business, but they were always looking for something else. It came in the form of a filthy, neglected billiard hall in what had once been a small cinema in Eric Street, off the Mile End Road. The takings were low, mainly because the manager preferred playing snooker himself rather than encouraging business. But the twins saw the potential and put a proposition to the owner: they would take over the place, smarten it up and make it pay; in return, they would give him a weekly cut of the takings. Since the owner was receiving next to nothing; he accepted the deal. The manager was fired, the former ‘flea pit’ spruced up and, at just twenty-one, the twins were in the entertainment business.
    They had the Midas touch. Word spread that the twins had taken over the billiard hall and business boomed. One aspect, however, I found disturbing: the clientele. No one expects an East End billiard hall to look like a church fête in Cheltenham, but I was shocked at the number of young tearaways and villains who gathered there, simply idling their time away. Some, who had been with the twins in Shepton Mallet glasshouse, should have been given a cool reception. But that wasn’t in the twins’ nature: it is a family characteristic that we accept people for what they are, not what they have done. Others who came to regard the billiard hall as a regular meeting place were hard people, who were not fussy how they earned a few bob.
    I had no idea Ronnie was homosexual until he told me himself a few months after the billiard hall opened. As well as all the tough nuts, a lot of younger, very good-looking guys used to congregate there and I noticed theyalways stopped laughing and joking whenever I walked in.
    After a while I got a bit paranoid. ‘Why have you suddenly gone quiet?’ I’d ask.
    Someone would snigger. And I’d say, ‘I don’t find it funny.’
    They would say they meant nothing by it. But it would happen again and I’d get really annoyed.
    Finally, Ronnie said to me one day, ‘You don’t know, do you?’
    ‘Don’t know what?’
    ‘That I’m AC/DC,’ Ronnie said.
    ‘Leave me alone,’ I scoffed.
    ‘It’s true. That’s what I am, whether you like it or not.’
    I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at him, shocked. I knew he had not had many relationships with women, but I certainly hadn’t given a thought to him being the other way.
    ‘That’s what we’d be talking about when you walked in,’ Ronnie said. ‘They all knew and would be laughing about it. Then I’d say, “Sssh, here’s Charlie.” And they’d all shut up.’
    All I could think to say was: ‘I can’t believe it.’
    ‘Well, it’s true,’ Ronnie said. ‘That’s how I am and you’re not going to change it.’ He went on to say he’d always been that way and could not care less who knew. He could not understand why so many people took a pop at homosexuals. ‘They can’t help what they are,’ he would say.
    In the main, though, the billiard hall was a place for hard, tough men. One such man was Bobby Ramsey, and he, more than anyone at that time, was to influence the course the twins’ lives would take.
    Ramsey was an ex-boxer who could have made a good living from the sport. But he fell into bad company andhad settled for being ‘minder’ for