Читать книгу Gypsy Jane - Jane Lee - Страница 14

John was growing up fast. He was so handsome and the perfect son. I was blessed when I had him.

The next ten years were all about trying to be a mum and doing my best for John. But it didn’t work out like that because, every time I tried to go straight, life took a turn. A couple of months after John arrived I met a man called Brett who was three years older than me. He was a mechanic and I fell for him hook, line and sinker. He was a handsome man with blond hair who cared for me and I was truly happy.

By this time I was 19 and the next five years with Brett were blissful, even though we had our rows. My best friend Rosie, our old babysitter, who let me stay with her when I was a kid, was there for me through thick and thin. We didn’t have much but Brett, John and I were happy. We had a caravan at Canvey Island near Southend where we had some wonderful summer holidays together. I was so happy I had found true love after Jamie. Brett was a good father to John. He really cared for him and he loved us both. But Brett wasn’t very successful at holding a job down so he didn’t bring much money in. We survived but life wasn’t always easy.

I was hanging around with a girl named Mary and doing my best to be with John all the time. After I had been with Brett for about five years one of this girl’s mates told me she didn’t like what was going on at Mary’s house. I asked her straight out, ‘What do you mean?’ She looked frightened and said she wasn’t going to be the one to tell me. ‘Don’t play mind games with me because I don’t play them. You will tell me or I’ll do you.’ And she did. Brett and Mary had been having an affair. I couldn’t believe it. My best mate and my man.

I flew round to Mary’s with a knife in my hand but she wasn’t in. She was lucky she wasn’t. So I went to Rosie’s and by now I was sobbing. Rosie said she didn’t believe Mary and Brett were having an affair and calmed me down. We had a drink, got stoned on marijuana and I said, ‘She can have him.’ Then Mary knocked at Rosie’s door and I went for her.

I started to beat the living daylights out of her with my bare hands when she screamed, ‘I wouldn’t do it to you. He tried to pull me but I gave him a knock-back.’ I stopped beating her when she denied it and calmed down. But later that day I confronted Brett but I didn’t believe him when he denied it. He had slept with my best mate. I was certain of it. So I kicked him out of my flat. He kept begging to come back, saying he hadn’t done it. He even took me to Mary’s to get me to confront her again. He got her to say nothing had happened and she even said that she’d lied about him trying to pull her. I knew in my head he had cheated on me but my heart didn’t want to believe it. So like an idiot I took him back. But the love had died. I tried so hard to love him after that but I hated him instead.

We moved to Rainham in Essex to try to make a fresh start and, believe it or not, I stayed with him for another five years but it didn’t matter how hard he tried, what we had was dead. We got married to try to make things work but I couldn’t make love to him anymore. He made me feel sick and, when he tried to touch me, I froze and I made excuses. In fact, I had a headache for five years. We used to fight all the time about it. I really tried to make myself get over it for John’s sake because I wanted us to be a family but, no matter what he did, nothing could bring the love back.

He wasn’t bringing in much money so I turned my hand to collecting and restoring old furniture. That was my escape. The weeks, months and years passed by and, in a way, I was happy because, by staying with him, I was keeping my family together for my son. It was only at bedtime it got bad and most of the time I pretended to fall asleep on the sofa and he would go to bed on his own. I should have left him when he betrayed me but we live and learn and, if there’s one thing I learned about myself, it is that everybody only gets one chance and, if they fuck it up, they won’t get another. I can take a lot on the chin – the fights and the letdowns – but to betray me… well, that’s another story. I am not ever going to forgive. That’s what is inside me. I’m not going to say sorry about it because it is just the way it is. I tried but it just isn’t in me and I reckon there are a lot of people out there who may be able to relate to that.

I used to tell myself that Brett was what I call ‘proper’ but I think I always knew he wasn’t that tough. Sure enough, I soon found out he wasn’t. After we had been in Essex for a few years Brett and his mate rented a garage in Purfleet where they did car repairs. Brett fell out with the garage owner and was shitting himself. I knew they knew where I lived and they had my number. ‘How could you be so stupid to bring trouble to our door?’ I said. I asked Brett how much he owed. But now Brett was as white as a sheet and started panicking.

‘You don’t know them,’ he said and ran out, leaving me and John.

The phone rang and I answered it. The bloke on the line asked for Brett and I told him he wasn’t in. He said, ‘I’ve told your bloke I’m coming around tonight for my money and, if he hasn’t got it, I’ll leave that house looking like there has been a bloody massacre.’

Well, as I listened on the phone, I wasn’t happy with Brett but, at the end of the day, he was my Brett. I did exactly what my mum would have done in the same situation and protected my family. I took a deep breath and then I said, ‘You come down my path and you won’t ever be getting off it alive. I’ve got two rottweilers and a sawn-off waiting for you. Come on. Bring it on.’

He hung up on me. I hadn’t got two rottweilers really. I’d got a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Buller, and my sawn-off was buried at the pickle factory. I couldn’t even go and get it as I didn’t know what time they would be coming. My 15-year-old cousin Kathy was with me and she had more balls than most grown men. I knew they were coming that night at who knew what time. So Kathy and I were all alone and Brett wasn’t even answering his phone. He was hiding.

Coward, I thought to myself. He had got us into a war and it was me that was going to have to stand and fight and get us out of it. I was so pissed off with Brett. By bringing his problems to my door he’d shown himself to be a bigger idiot than I thought he was.

I boiled up a big chip pan full of fat and I gave Kathy the sledgehammer while I armed myself with my samurai sword. Then we waited with my loyal Staff by our side. The Gran had taken over and I was ready for a war.

These men are scum, I told myself. Just like Brett. I mean, if you’ve got a problem with someone, you don’t go trying to scare their bird and kid, do you? Whoever this garage owner was, if he turned up he would come proper unstuck, as I was not your normal bird. In situations like that I’m not afraid to admit I am one sicko. Especially when I think me and mine are in danger. I’m sorry but that is the way it is.

We sat up all night waiting and I love Kathy with all my heart for sticking with me. It looked like we were in an old-school war and she was as loyal as they come. After that night she became my soul mate and will be until the day we both die. I was so proud of her. But I was relieved that it hadn’t come to anything. Of course, I’d have gone to war and given it my best and, believe me, a few of them would have got hurt. And yet all I wanted was to lead a violence-free life and look after my son. Oh, how I tried to have a normal, happy family. Brett phoned the next day, still shitting himself, and I told him it was safe to come home. When he got back I told him he was out of order and that he should have sorted something out before it had come to this. ‘You’ve been asking for trouble and don’t you ever bring it to my door again,’ I told him. I thought how I would have died for that man when we first got together. But first he betrayed me with Mary and now he had left me to face the consequences of his falling out with the garage owner and I just didn’t know how he could have done that to me. But I just told myself that he was part of my family and I would just ignore him. I was going to live with him but I didn’t have to love or trust him. I knew I had to be prepared for it to happen again. I also knew that I couldn’t rely on Brett for my safety, much less to bring in money. I decided that the only way was for me to start looking after myself. I’d had enough. I had tried to turn my back on crime for John’s sake but life just wasn’t letting me go straight. It was then that I decided to get right into guns and, believe me, I put my heart and soul into it.

I knew it was no good having a gun that was buried miles away at the pickle factory. So I went and dug up the sawn-off in case of future emergencies. I only knew a little bit about guns. Basically, I knew how to load one and pull the trigger so I decided I needed to know more. I went to my local library and got loads of books and read up. I found out that, if a gun is over a hundred years old, you can own it legally as an antique. And it can work just as well as any other gun. So you can legally own a Colt .45, for instance. Bullets, however, are not legal but I discovered bullet-making gear is legal. Shells are legal and so is the firing cap. The only thing that is not legally available is gunpowder. I needed some black powder and I got it from fireworks.

I learned how to make a bullet in ten seconds. That meant I could put together six bullets in a minute. I learned to strip a gun down to all its parts so that you wouldn’t even know there was a gun in the house. In ten minutes, I could put it back together, fully loaded and working. I bought a rifle at a military fair that had been used in the Boer War. This rifle could blow a hole through a elephant but it was legal because it was an antique. Soon I had a collection of weapons – and they were all legal. I could go and put the sawn-off back in its place at the pickle factory.

Now it was time to learn how to use my weapons properly. I joined a gun club in Brentwood, Essex and quickly realised the big difference between me and most of the other members when it struck me how people went out shooting birds and animals. I could shoot wrong ’uns all day long but a defenceless animal that never hurt anyone? No, sorry. It’s not me.

I wasn’t that good a shot at first but with practice I got a lot better. By this time John was about eight and I soon saw that he was a natural. The boy didn’t even need a sight. He just pointed and hit the target every time. I remember there was a clay pigeon show, which John entered, and he scored an incredible 39 out of 40. I was so proud. In fact, he had only missed the first one as he had never used a shotgun before and the weight of it threw him off a bit.

But more than winning competitions, the best part of our new ability was that, if we received any more threatening phone calls from dodgy garage owners – or anyone else, come to it – we were ready for a war. Now, I can hear you asking yourself – why didn’t I simply call the police and let them deal with everything? Well, as I’m sure you have gathered having heard about my background, you just didn’t do that. And anyway, I knew no fear. You see, blokes think us women are helpless. But, believe me, boys, there is a lot more to some of us than meets the eye. One of my friends went on a job and his gun blew up in his own hand. I’ve never had one blow up on me. Why? They are all tested and ready to go before I use them. Then there was the mate who did a jeweller’s. This one was a success but the getaway driver had some trouble and couldn’t do it so they got a replacement. But when they came running out the shop with bags of gold and diamonds and their sawn-offs, they found the car was not there. They had to run back into the shop, alarms going off everywhere, when the driver suddenly pulled up outside and they ran out, all panicking. When they asked the driver where he had been, this idiot said he had been to the shop to get a can of Coke. I think I would have shot him myself if he was on a job with me. I couldn’t stop laughing. Oh, it did get funny, you know. Nothing is ever perfect, is it? We can only try our best but you do need good common sense. No education can beat a bit of common sense.

I had got myself properly armed and my cousin Kathy had moved in, as she was now my best friend as well as family. Kathy had come over to England from her home country of Ireland when she was ten or eleven. She was my saviour, as having her around made it easier to live with Brett. John was growing up fast. We hadn’t got much but I hadn’t done anything that could get me shot or ‘lifed’ off. He was so handsome and the perfect son. I was blessed when I had him. He was the most precious thing life could ever give me and I didn’t want to put that in jeopardy. But Brett had been on the dole for a while after the garage incident and he couldn’t provide for himself, let alone me and John. In fact, it was still the other way around. I knew I could provide if I needed to and it looked like that was the way things were going. We were paying everything between us but now I was paying it all. But for the time being I wasn’t breaking the law. I was just bending the rules a bit.

Brett’s sister-in-law owned a cafe and I was running it for her. Meanwhile, Kathy was looking after John indoors during the day while I was at work and we were surviving. But it’s a small world and I was in the cafe one day when a rich-looking man came in. He was known in the area. He was a regular at the cafe and I’d seen him around enough to recognise him, though I didn’t personally know him. But Brett seemed to – at least, he did a strange thing. He turned absolutely white, dived to the floor and, trying to stay out of sight, slipped out the back way. When I looked up again, that bloke was just standing there. He came up to me and said, ‘I thought I recognised your voice. You’re the bird on the phone with the sawn-off and rottweilers, ain’t you?’ That was when the penny dropped.

‘And you’re the coward that still hasn’t found his balls and brought it on yet, ain’t you?’ I said. I had a big blade from the cafe in my hand under the counter and I was waiting for his next move. I’d come to like this man. He was respectful and it was obvious he fancied me. But although I wasn’t sleeping with Brett – and I couldn’t even stand him anymore – he was still my old man. To the outside world we were a normal family. I despised him but I wouldn’t do him wrong. Now it seemed that the balance had changed. Bring it on, I thought. I know that was a mental thing to wish for but that was just me. Things had happened and I couldn’t go back and still hold my head up, could I?

Then he said, ‘Can I shake your hand, love? I truly apologise for my words on the phone. And, girl, you’ve got some balls on you. Most men would have shit themselves but here’s a woman and she wants a war? I could hardly believe my own ears. I’m truly sorry for putting you through that. I was a bit caught out because you answered the phone instead of your Brett.’

I laughed and accepted his apology as I put the blade under the counter. But I still had to tell him straight about how I felt. I told him he was out of order by involving a bloke’s bird in something she hadn’t had a hand in. He accepted my reprimand like a gent and told me that Brett’s garage debt had now been forgotten by way of an apology to me and that he didn’t have to worry. ‘He wasn’t worried about you anyway,’ I lied, thinking what an embarrassment Brett had become after diving for the floor and running out the back.

Then we suffered a tragedy. Rosie’s ten-year-old daughter, Heather, died of a brain tumour and it crippled me. It was, and still is, the saddest thing that has ever happened to me. I went back to Silvertown and stayed with Rosie for the next two weeks. So did Paul, Rosie’s brother and my lifelong friend. Me and Paul were like brother and sister but I developed other feelings for him during that time and a few months later I met him at the flat and we made love. Brett and I hadn’t been together in that way for the past five years. We were together but more like enemies, just living together. Paul was one of my best friends and he made me feel special, wanted and loved. Something I hadn’t felt for so long. I left Brett that same day and I’ve never seen him since. I also gave up working in the cafe, as it was Brett’s sister-in-law’s, and I was back to ducking and diving to make ends meet. I had known in my heart that this day would come from the night Brett left me and John after he received the phone call that sent him running. I had to fend for myself and I was one step away from being back in the criminal world – the same world I had so desperately tried to leave behind.

But it was Brett who had caused these problems with our once happy family, by sleeping with Mary. It was Brett who brought a night of trouble into our home. And it was the Gran who had brought the guns back into our lives for protection. Jane was slowly slipping away.

Paul, who was five years older than me, moved in but it only lasted a year. To be honest, it all got a bit ugly. We should have never got together because we ruined a lifelong friendship. To cut a long story short, I had heard that Rosie thought I wasn’t good enough for her brother, which was hard to take coming from such a good friend. Rosie and I fell out over it, which I regret to this day. And if I could change anything that I’d ever done, I’d take back my row with Rosie because I lost the best friend I ever had that day. I also regret having been with Paul. Yes, we had our happy times for a while. We even got married. But he had three teenage girls by his ex and they hated me because they thought I was standing in the way of their mum and dad getting back together. The kids were wrong because Paul and his ex had been living separately for two years before I came on the scene. I would never come between a man and his woman. Paul had lived with Rosie for over a year after splitting up and by the time we got together he was living in his flat on his own. It didn’t matter to the kids and that simple fact doomed my relationship with Paul.

I had told him we needed to do his flat up for the kids when they visited him there. So we did it up. It wasn’t much but it was clean and homely. A proper nice flat and it was a clean place for him to see his kids. He needed somewhere like that because he couldn’t see them with his ex. But the children said they wouldn’t go up to the flat if I was there. One day the tyres on my car were slashed outside Paul’s flat so I stopped going. Lies were being told about me to everyone, even after I’d made that shithole of a flat into a home. At the end of the day, his kids weren’t babies. They were teenagers and, to tell you the truth, I’d have liked to have slapped them but I just took it all on the chin because these were Paul’s kids and I knew they were hurting over their mum and dad. I understood but they did piss me off. Still, looking back, I have to take my hat off to them. The loyalty they showed their mum was priceless and I would have done the same in their position.

To make matters worse, I started getting mail from the ex. I tried not to take any notice because she still loved him and this was her cry for help. Although I wanted to batter her, I put those thoughts out of my head because this was the mother of his kids and all that would do was make it worse for him. So I suffered it until one day I was in Prince Regent Lane in the East End, when all of a sudden the ex appeared in front of me. She had about six mates on the other side of the road. I now had a license to batter her. I never stole her bloke, I thought to myself. They split up long before I was with him. I gave her a bit of a pasting and, when I got home, the police were waiting for me. She was in hospital, they told me, and I was arrested for GBH. Would you believe it?

I told the law it was self-defence and they said Paul’s ex had written a statement against me and it looked bad. I told them she was nutty and it was all lies, and I produced the letters she had sent me. They dropped the charges. But two months later I got another letter from her saying that she and Paul were carrying on behind my back. I confronted him about it and he denied sleeping with her and I believed him. He did admit going round to her house for the sake of their kids. I couldn’t believe it. We had done his flat up so his kids could visit him, yet he was going to her house instead. I lost it. I started hitting him for just that reason. This woman had sat in a police station and written a statement against me and he was still in contact with her. He’d betrayed me and by now I knew I could never forgive a traitor. What a disappointment he had turned out to be. It was over. I’d looked up to this man, trusted him and would have died for him, and he wasn’t what I believed he was.

I knew he was hurting about our break-up but he was out of my life for good. I was gutted and sad but I knew there was no going back. But then one day I was told he had accused me of grassing him up after the police pulled him up on his bike for stealing scrap metal. I couldn’t be sure he had said it, but I had a reputation to protect. To make things even worse, by then I had got my fingers in a lot of criminal pies. I went mad. Call me what you like but not a grass. Nobody believed him but it had been said and I had to defend my reputation. If he had said it, he couldn’t have realised how far I would go to protect my name. He thought that, because I loved him, I wouldn’t blow him away. Well, sorry, I love my reputation more. I went home and got my guns. I was going to war. I was going to blow his fucking head off. I’d had enough.

I knew he was living at the flat we had done up and I set myself up in the flats opposite with a sniper’s rifle. It was an M16 carbine with three settings. Automatic, semi-automatic and single shot. I had it on the single-shot setting because I had a bullet with Paul’s name on it. I know it was mad. But I wanted to kill him. He wasn’t there and I waited for days but then I was spotted. It soon got around that it was me in the flats opposite with the rifle and now Paul was saying I was a hit woman but I didn’t care. As I said, call me what you like apart from a grass. And anyway, ‘hit woman’ had a sort of ring to it. Luckily for him, I never saw him. And I’ve never seen him since. The marriage was over. That’s one relationship I regret, as we were the best of friends all our lives and a lifelong friendship was ruined within a year. But time is supposed to heal everything and I even came to regret the way we split. I have no hard feelings towards him now. I wish him and his family all the happiness in the world. Maybe this had only been retribution anyway. I believe God pays debts without money. I was still with Brett when I slept with Paul so this was payback.

I was still OK. I had my son and we were very close. John was growing into a handsome young man. He was a lot like me in many ways. He was so loyal and his personality was amazing considering he was an only child. He didn’t have a nasty bone in his body, even though I spoiled him rotten. He had a heart of gold. Don’t get me wrong. If you mess with him, he will do you. That’s how he was, just like me. But if you were good to him, he would die for you. Everybody loved him though.

I had only given birth to one child, yet it was like I had a hundred, as John’s mates practically lived at our place. I bought him a caravan and parked it on the drive. It was like the local youth club in there. They had a stereo, PlayStation and everything they needed, and they loved it. It was better than them walking the streets, in my book. He was happy and that was all that mattered.

I was on my own though, money was short and, to tell you the truth, I was bitter. As I’ve said, I always knew there was another side to me but now it was out and here to stay, at least for a while. If there’s one thing I always tell people it’s that there were two of me. There was Jane and there was the Gran. And my advice to them was to be friends with Jane and not enemies with the Gran. Jane will love you, look after you, help you and never do you wrong. The Gran will shoot you or stab you. She will destroy you and love every minute of it. The choice was yours. It wasn’t that I wanted to be the Gran. Life just didn’t seem to let me be Jane.

I was told about a particular security guard who regularly took some £10,000 from businesses to the bank. I watched him for a couple of weeks before I took on the job. It was a success but I will be honest – I just about got away with that one by the skin of my teeth. After I grabbed the money bag, the guard started chasing me and he was not only bloody fast but seemed to have forgotten about my sawn-off. Now there was one man who did actually have balls. But I just made it to the car ahead of him and sped off. I couldn’t believe he had come after me. I mean, I hadn’t wanted to shoot him. Not really. On my jobs a shooter was just there as a deterrent. You never really wanted to use it. Anyway, I got away with it. Just.

I had just bought a car for £2,000 and I was able to pay off that debt. I paid the bloke who gave me the information and I ended up with £5,000 left over. With that I bought a kilo of speed and a kilo of puff to sell on. I always liked puff myself, as it calmed me down – not a bad property for it to have in my case. When my world seemed like it was surrounded by barbed wire and thorns, I had a smoke and everything turned to roses and lilies. It was an illusion, I know, but sometimes, when everything is dark, who can blame you for putting the lights on, even if it’s a false light? It helped and, God, by now I needed a bit of help. Some people’s vice is drinking but mine was always puffing.

Now the Gran was really taking over because Jane couldn’t cope anymore. Everything she did just got stamped on and abused so I had to put her away where nobody could hurt her. If anybody tried to hurt the Gran, well, it would be their funeral.