Connolly, but one quiet afternoon when security was relaxed three burly coalmen barged in. They were covered in coal dust and leaned against the newly decorated wall, demanding drinks. Reggie quietly asked them to leave. They started to argue and one of them aimed a punch at Reggie. I was serving behind the bar and raced round to give Reggie a hand. It wasn’t necessary. By the time I arrived all three were laid out.
Reggie was extremely swift to nip problems in the bud. He hit first and did not bother to ask questions afterwards. One night an over-enthusiastic customer made the mistake of trying to take the microphone from a woman singing on stage. Reggie took the mike away and handed it back to her. The customer’s second mistake was trying drunkenly to pull our mum up from her table to dance when she was happy minding her own business. Reggie felled him with a right hook then ordered him to be carried out. Two days later the customer came back and, rather sheepishly, apologized.
I’d always settled disputes with words, not fists. And up to the day we opened The Double R. I’d never had a fight outside the ring. I had had arguments with the twins over this when they resorted to violence. I told them they should not get involved in fights, but they would sneer and say I had no idea what was going on, what it was like when someone was spoiling your business.
I found myself taking a different view when the troublemakers started getting busy at The Double R. After all the hard work that had gone into transforming that Bow Road house I was damned if I was going to stand by and watch some mindless Jack the Lads ruin the venture before it had properly started. So: when there was no other way out I met violence with violence. I spoke to the idiots in the language they understood and, since I was fit and technically well equipped, I was able to handle myself more than adequately.
Reggie was amused and quietly pleased by my attitude. The afternoons were worst; if there was going to be trouble, that was the time. I had asked Dolly to stay away during the day but one afternoon she came in for something. Three blokes were drinking at the bar and one said, ‘Hello, darling.’ I let that pass because I was all for being friendly, but then they all started making stupid, unsubtle remarks, generally being lairy and showing a lack of respect to a woman. I was serving behind the bar and politely asked them to be quiet because Dolly was my wife.
Unfortunately, they took no notice and finally I went round the other side of the bar to show them the door. One of them threw a punch and before I knew it I was having a row with all three.
Bill Donovan, who had been badly hurt in the Coach and Horses battle several years before, was on the door, and helped me out. We finally sent the troublemakers on their way with a message not to come back.
When Reggie heard about it he said, ‘Now you know. Sometimes you’ve got to fight.’
I could not argue. But all the aggro got on my nerves and made me sick. I found it hard to understand the mentality of people who took a delight in smashing up something that was nice.
We turned the room above the club into a gymnasium and, although I left it very late to ask him, Britain’s favourite boxing champ, Henry Cooper, came along with his manager, Jim Wicks, to open it. This helped publicize The Double R and more and more people came along to see what it was like. The message finally got home to the sort that took pleasure in trouble, and gradually the club became the sort of establishment we had wanted in the beginning. The twins attracted all sorts – good, bad and indifferent – but everyone knew the rules and respected them. Some hard gangland men from South London crossed the water to drink there. They may have been enemies with some of the East End clientele but after those first six months there was hardly any hint of bother. The Double R, it seemed, was welcome neutral ground, a ‘Little Switzerland’ in the middle of Mile End.
Reggie, who had a natural flair for mixing with all types, was the perfect host, and I ran the bar with Barry Clare, an engaging homosexual, who also doubled up as compere, calling up amateur talent from the customers.
One night a lady asked Barry if she could sing a number. It was a beautiful blues song and she was so good I asked her if she would come along and sing a couple of times a week. She was thrilled and said, ‘I’d be delighted.’
‘How much do you want?’ I asked.
The lady laughed. ‘I don’t want any money for singing.’
But I insisted and she finally gave in to shut me up. I forget how much we agreed; it was probably a fiver.
After her first performance I went up to her and tried to give her the money. She refused, but I forced her to take it: she had been excellent value and had earned it. She immediately went to the bar and put the money on the counter.
‘What are you doing?’ I said.
‘You’ve paid me, Charlie,’ she replied. ‘I can do what I like with my own money. And what I’d like to do is buy everyone a drink.’
And she did. Not just then, but every time she came in. She was a lovely woman who just loved to sing, and her name was Queenie Watts.
For the rich and famous, the West End had always been the place for a night out. But in the middle fifties the other side of the river became fashionable, and wealthy, titled gentlemen and showbusiness stars – including Danny La Rue and Joan Collins’s sister Jackie – started coming to The Double R.
For me, the work was tiring. But it was our own business and the financial rewards were worthwhile. Most of the time, too, I was meeting very nice, genuine people. It certainly beat life on the knocker.
With business booming, Reggie and I decided to expand into gambling. At that time it was illegal: bookmakers were not Turf Accountants with shops in the High Street; they operated on street corners and anyone who wanted to put a couple of bob on a horse risked being nicked. Card games, too, were against the law. Anybody who wanted to play for money had to go to a spieler – a club, normally in a basement, where chemin de fer and poker were played away from the prying eyes of the police.
Reggie and I saw the financial possibilities in spielers and we acquired one across the road from The Double R. Within a couple of months, we opened two more. Money, suddenly, was coming out of our ears.
To make life even sweeter, a member of The Double R tipped me off about an empty flat in Narrow Street, Wapping. It was a two-bedroomed flat on the second floor of a shabby block called Brightlingsea Buildings, built for dockers and their families nearly a hundred years before. A palace it wasn’t. But it was a place Dolly, Gary and I could call ours at last and I snapped it up the same day. I had the money to move to a posher pad away from the manor, but the thought didn’t occur to me. The East End was in my blood, and anyway, that was where we were making a very good living.
Dolly adored the new lifestyle. She had always dreamed of being rich, and now that there was a few bob around, she made the most of it with lots of new clothes and regular hair-dos. We went to West End clubs with upper-crust patrons of The Double R who accepted us as friends, cockney accents and all, or we enjoyed ourselves with old friends in the East End. Wherever we went, Dolly always looked lovely and attracted a lot of attention. I was proud of her.
One bloke at The Double R seemed to be taking more than a passing interest in Dolly but I felt secure in our marriage and didn’t think much of it. She was a stunning looker and it was hardly surprising that other men found her attractive. My life was full to the brim with money and excitement and plans for the future, and I didn’t give George Ince another thought.
In Wandsworth Prison Ronnie was delighted that business was going well on the outside; he knew he would have a share in it when he was released, and because he’d earned full remission through good behaviour in his first year it seemed he would be home in time for Christmas 1958.
In one day, however, the whole situation changed. From being more or less a model prisoner without one black mark on his record, Ronnie found himself in a tiny, concrete cell in a strait-jacket. Dreams of freedom vanished. The nightmare from which Ronnie never escaped had begun.
During the year he’d been in jail, Ronnie had been a loner. He had had his place