A Night In Brighton

Friday 28 November 1952

Our one night together in Brighton began by us meeting as arranged in the concourse of London Bridge railway station, at five in the afternoon to catch the 17.15 train. I had already picked up the first class tickets from the office. There was a freezing pea-souper in London that Friday afternoon in late November and you could barely see a hand in front of your face. As the weather was so bad I left my rented house in Croydon half an hour early so I was waiting for her when she suddenly appeared out of the mist and kissed me on the cheek.

"Oh, your cheeks are cold, have you been waiting long?" she asked, her voice cheerful, perhaps even excited at the prospects of going away with me for a night and a day.

Frieda is tall, slim, elegant, and very beautiful. Me? I'm no oil painting. I'm just over six foot and slim, well, pretty well everyone in London was slim after thirteen years of deprivation through relentless war and eternal rationing. But I kept myself fit, clean-shaven and I dressed well, as I used to sell men's clothing lines before the war and was always expected to be well turned out and, besides, I liked to look smart, and comfortable in any strata of mixed company. I still had a full head of light brown hair, cut short, Brylcreemed and combed under my trilby, with only the odd grey hair to show I was just over 40. I was born in 1911, and thought I was probably fifteen years older that the wife of a seriously nasty gangster, so this affair was a little out of my comfort zone. Frieda's husband Richard was at least five years older than me, was much bigger in build, but starting to run a little to fat and unfit, being a heavy drinker and smoker. I didn't smoke because I'd been brought up by parents who smoked heavily and both suffered ill-health for it. Both my parents were in their mid-sixties and had long ago moved away from London because of the killer smogs.

"Just got here a few minutes early to get the tickets and make sure I didn't keep you waiting," I said, my face open and expressing my pleasure at seeing her, "Shall I take your case?"

Her case was very light. "You always travel this light?" I asked as we started walking down the platform to where our train waited, it still had a few minutes before it was due to pull out and head south.

"It is only the one night and I am wearing most of my clothes," she laughed, "it is so cold, I have several layers on and my fur coat on top."

We settled into the carriage and we were both delighted that by the time the train moved off we were alone together in our relatively comfortable first class compartment. Only the best for this girl, I thought. Soon the heaters under the seats came on and warmed up the carriage and I was able to stand up and take off my heavy trench coat, revealing my best suit, a smart double-breasted in blue pin-stripes made for me a few weeks earlier in Jermyn Street, the tailors begun to make it almost as soon as clothing rationing ended.

"Lovely suit, Jack," complemented Frieda, as she sloughed her fur coat to reveal a nice dark blue figure-hugging suit over a lemon blouse, with her skirt just a daring inch below her knees and the edges picked out in lemon piping.

Outside, as we travelled away from the city into the countryside, the suffocating yellow-grey smog of London thinned and disappeared, leaving the clear black night all around us.

London in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a hell of a mess, with bombed out buildings still on every street, the country completely bankrupt with war debt. Even families who had relatives abroad were receiving food parcels from the colonies, we were that badly off. We'd thrown everything we had defending ourselves from the Nazis, spent every last penny and borrowed so much we'd be paying interest to the Swiss and American banks for the next half century or more. Everyone was depressed, fogs and smogs strangled London throughout the winter, so people needed what I traded in to cheer them up.

"No trouble getting away?" I asked as I tugged up my trousers from snagging on my knees and sat down opposite her, my back to the engine. This was a modern line, electrified all the way between London and Brighton, the ride smooth, the first class carriage clean and comfortable.

"No, Richard and his two brothers actually left yesterday afternoon, to make a long weekend of it. He's been quiet all week, unusually reflective, so maybe his bookies have a lot riding on this boxing match. He will be drinking heavily from the time they drive off until they come back, and he never thinks it worth bothering to ring me when he's away. He'll just come back on Sunday morning or Sunday night stinking of sweat, beer, chips and cheap whore's perfume." She smiled a false smile, I thought. "I feel so naughty. Are we signing into the hotel as 'Mr and Mrs Smith?'" she asked.

"No, 'Mr and Mrs Freddie Tavistock', I have his wallet and driving licence."

"A friend?"

"No, he's deceased, I bought his identity for a fiver and use it on occasions when I want to be discrete. I have no other identification on me and have paid for everything in cash. Richard, will never have evidence that either of us have ever been to Brighton."

"Sometimes, I think it would please me to let him know, but you are right, it is best he not know."

"We are only booked into The Grand at Brighton for tonight," I said, "did you remember your passport, as I have booked a day trip to France for tomorrow?"

We had already agreed that she dared stay only one whole night. She had to get home by Saturday evening, in case the boxing match went bad and Richard wanted to drive home in the early hours of Sunday morning.

"Yes, I remembered it, and some spending money, just in case I see any Chanel No 5 for sale in France."

"Oh, I can get hold of plenty of that for you, got two whole lock-up garages full of the stuff."

"Ah, you're his 'Mr Fixer', huh, Mr Jack Tucker? Richard tells me that you can buy anything and sell anything. He said you once bought a battleship and a squadron of bombers. Did you?"

I've been an independent buyer since demob, a bit of a wheeler dealer really, not exactly a spiv but then again not too dissimilar. I basically put together people who've got something to sell, with someone who wants to buy, or I may take a chance to buy for myself what I think is a bargain and then look for a buyer. A lot of my deals were not strictly legal and this got me involved with criminals connected to the black market, namely East London gangs. I took personal charge of these miscellaneous items, to protect the other people working for me. They were on a wage and had to do what they were told, I was earning the profits, so I had to step up to the mark and do what I had to do, which was still basically what I was told to do. Gradually, rationing restrictions were lifted and so by late 1952 most, but not quite all, of my importing was strictly legal and more and more transactions were going through the official ledgers and I had to start paying bloody taxes again. I got around some of that using false inflated invoices "from abroad" to kid the Inland Revenue that I was making a whole lot less money than I actually was. It was easy to falsify accounts at the time because most of my customers paid cash on the nose and I had a dodgy printer who forged invoices, cargo manifests and other useful documents for me.

I served my country all during the war, as Sergeant Jack Tucker, I even signed up before conscription officially began in 1939. I was a commercial salesman at the time, working for a men's outfitter wholesaler, hawking designs of men's clothing up and down the High Streets of towns in the Home Counties. I knew this war, that we'd been expecting ever since the Nazis took over Germany, would last at least as long as the Great War did. My old man was caught up in that one and he still coughs his guts up every morning and all winter long because of the effects of gas, and he was gassed by his own side, not the bloody Germans!

Anyway, I could see that war-time rationing, make-do-&-mend, utility wear and half the country wearing bloody khaki for the next four or five years, would mean that my end of the clothing business would go down the toilet. I thought that if I signed up first I could learn the ropes and get two or three stripes on my arm and earn a bit of seniority and therefore a better share in whatever privileges of the lower ranks that was going spare. So I joined the local county regiment the day war was declared, for basic training, and found out I had a good eye, steady hands and was a damned good shot. I was encouraged to transfer to the Rifle Brigade and trained as a sniper, and worked my way up to three stripes during the phoney war period. Saw a fair share of action in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany and came through it all almost without a scratch, just a bit of shrapnel in a shoulder from a mortar in Italy. Managed to get demobbed a few months early too, as we were told London needed builders to rebuild the houses destroyed during the Blitz. So I put my hand up saying I was experienced in procuring building materials and they actually believed me. What can I say, I've got an honest face!

Getting home to South East London, I did start building up new contacts in the building game and marrying up builders with supplies and materials for my first few months in civvies. It was the first industry that got going in those early months of peacetime. Then I got involved with buying up old Army and Royal Air Force surplus and selling them to scrap merchants, all the while building up some capital. I got an office and put in a bank of telephones and staff to use them and soon I had a well-oiled operation up and running, with the money rolling in nicely. I had teams specialising in construction, scrap dealing, confectionery, petrol, clothing, cheese and meat, all goods in short supply and therefore rationed, impossible to find unless palms were greased and you made friends with dangerous people. People like Frieda's husband, now, he was seriously dangerous.

"Yes, the battleship was stripped of armaments before I got it, but I sold it onto the Chilean Navy about four years ago and it's just finished its complete refit, it was on the Pathé News at the flicks a couple of months ago. The squadron of Lancaster bombers were just about flyable but too bad to sell on except to a small scrapyard next door to an airfield. I got an old pilot with only one leg to fly them down one by one, then catch a train back to pick up the next one. Kept the pilot happy in a job he loved for a month and the scrap yard's been working their way through the blasted things for the last five years cutting them up and separating the ferrous metal from aluminium and carting them off to be melted down to make ... tin cans, I expect. The flying club at the airfield are gradually getting more of their airfield back."

"So where did you get the Chanel perfume?"

"When I first got out of the Army, I worked for the building trade, one of the jobs being reclaiming old bricks from a bombed warehouse in the East India Docks. Basically, chipping off the old mortar and trimming up broken bricks into decent half bricks. The warehouse was over one hundred and fifty years old and some of the solid floor joists and floor board timbers that weren't burnt were also cleaned up and used for new flooring and stairways. Hard work but profitable. When we worked our way down to ground level, we found there were undamaged basement storerooms underneath, full of stuff. Some of the smaller stuff got pinched before I found out about it and secured the site with guards, but there was a load of high quality personal hygiene goods still packaged up in the original packing crates dating from the late-1930s, including the Chanel."

"So, did you buy the warehouse or just the bricks and timber?"

"You're right, of course, I only bought the building materials that I could salvage, but I was also required by the owners to remove all the 'spoil', such as the unusable timber, broken bricks and mortar, and those goods we found sure looked 'spoiled' to me. I didn't need a second opinion, so I got them shifted by the truckload that very first night."

"Then you are to be commended for carrying out your duties to the letter," she laughed with a lovely tinkly bell-like laugh.

"And I thought so too," I agreed.

We had a pleasant trip down, an hour and one minute was all it took. A quick cab ride to "The Grand" and we were in our suite by half six.

"We dine at seven, Frieda," I said, with a smile, "then we can dance until midnight, if you like."

"Good, I like to dance and I rarely get the chance these days. You look light on your feet, Jack, do you dance well?"

"I dance, that is about the size of it, but dancing with you I know that I will look as though I dance well, because, of course, everyone will be looking at you, not me."

"You are a charming man, Jack. I have been looking forward to tonight all week. What made you ask me here?"

"I have been obsessed with you ever since I met you, Frieda, but I didn't want to risk either of us being exposed to the temper and vengeance of your husband."

Now, by the early 1950s, the member of the Williamson family I mostly had to deal with was Richard, Frieda's husband, who hated being called 'Dick'. He was the youngest brother of three, all of them mean-looking killers, and was in his late forties in 1952. Richard Williamson had a mean reputation for extreme violence, not executed by him nowadays, as he played the role of the successful business tycoon, even if he did make his money from brothels and protectionism, but by other thugs on his behalf. In his early years as an extortionist, his favourite way of dealing with bankrupt debtors or rival gang leaders was to tie them up, gag them, tie a coal sack half full of bricks to their legs and a long rope tied around their chest. He'd drop them in the Thames off a wharf that ran right inside a riverside brick warehouse he owned. Once the bubbles stopped coming up, "Bricky Dicky" as he was then known, would haul his victim up, untie the body and dump it downstream. In the late 20s and early 30s there was any number of bankruptees jumping off London bridges, a few more went unnoticed. Richard would cheerfully repeat the process nowadays if you crossed him.

Recently, Richard had been inviting me over to his luxury West End flat, maybe once or twice a week for the last couple of months. Richard had aspirations to be a respectable businessman and could afford an expensive apartment. On my visits I was invited to share a meal with him and his beautiful missus in the early evening, all sitting together in his posh dining room, and he expected me to dress up like a bleeding penguin for his formal dinners. They had a proper cook and a stuck up butler who served the meal with his nose pointing at the ceiling. Richard's lovely wife Frieda was ever present in the room with us while dining, until we menfolk retired to his private sitting room to discuss whatever dodgy business he needed me for.

Every time there was always business to discuss, whether it be chasing progress on his previous requests, or adding something new for me to find or get rid off for him. Some items were straightforward, the odd Luger pistol and ammunition, and a shotgun going out, with imported German cheeses and beers coming in. Some of his requests were more difficult or took time to get hold of, like wanting authentic silk kimonos from Japan, cut crystal glass from Bohemia. Some items he explained were personal for his wife or him, some were presents for family and friends, and with Christmas coming up fast, he had a continual flow of requests and seemingly bottomless pockets. I was the one dealer known by Richard to be able to find a buyer for anything and find anything a buyer wanted. I was there for business, friendly, but we were never friends. I daren't not attend either the meeting or the meal. There was one other reason why I didn't mind visiting as often as he requested I attend. Frieda.

He had actually married one of his brothel 'working girls' about two years earlier, a classic German beauty, tall, elegant, dark haired, blue eyed with translucent white skin. Her name was Frieda and I assumed that she was half his age, in her mid-to-late-20s. Not far off about half my age either. She was stunning, always done up to the nines in an evening gown to die for, absolutely spellbinding she was. I had to keep as focused as I was when I was an Army sniper to concentrate on what Richard was saying over our succulent dinner, rather than stare at Frieda all night with my eyes glazed over and my tongue hanging out to dry.

Richard told me, on one of my first visits when we were alone after the meal, that I had actually brought Frieda over to England and one of his brothels in '48, but I really couldn't remember her. I couldn't remember any of them. He thanked me, while we were alone later, and told me that she was the best dick sucker he'd ever had and that's why he had to keep her for himself.

Frieda'd probably worked as a prostitute in Germany, as I'd had a deal with someone in West Berlin who shifted the working girls around, "to keep the brothels 'fresh' for regulars" he said. For for a couple of years or so I had paid for regular shipments of a couple of dozen of the younger, less well worn ones each shipment, smuggled over in lorries with false compartments. The girls were often refugees from all over Europe and the Williamson's expanding brothels couldn't get enough of them. It wasn't a trade I was proud of and I was pleased when the demand seemed to dry up naturally around 1949/1950 and didn't have to do much more of it by the time we are talking about.

So, I was visiting Richard one, two, even three evenings a week, in company with the beautiful Frieda, and several times over those eight weeks or so, he'd had a phone call emergency and left Frieda and me alone to eat the meal. I couldn't just leave, as he tended to discuss business after the meal, with strong coffee and brandy. Each time he left he promised he would be back in an hour or two. As I was clearly attracted to Frieda, any red bloodied man would be, and she was nervous being left alone with me, it made an awkward hour or two for me, especially the first time we were left alone.

The second time Richard took the call and left, he kissed her on the cheek and I heard him whisper that she should look after me. So, as soon as the dishes were cleared away and the paid help left us, she took my hand with a smile and started to lead me to the bedroom.

I was really attracted to her, but if there's an unwritten rule that you don't mess with these gangsters, with Richard Williamson I thought that was a solid golden rule. I would rather swim in safe waters than sink like a brick in the river.

Now, if he had said something to me about "help yourself, mate, fill yer boots!", then maybe I would seriously consider finding out how good at sucking dick his missus really was, but I felt she had misunderstood Richard's request and I stopped her in her tracks before we even left the dining room. Her English was excellent and I explained what I understood was a clear misunderstanding between the three of us and we ended up drinking coffee and brandy in the sitting room for a couple of hours until Richard returned.

Alone later, he asked me about whether I enjoyed the meal, which I said was up to his cook's outstanding standard, but I didn't say anything about his wife's approach, and I'm pretty sure she didn't say anything to him either. Over the next couple of months, Richard would disappear every third or fourth time I visited and Frieda and I would simply enjoy our meal and sit around in relatively comfortable and relaxed conversation. She was an attentive hostess and good conversationalist and I really enjoyed our brief interludes alone together. As we were all quite friendly now, she often greeted and said farewell to me in front of her husband, with a friendly kiss on the cheek.