Black Rose: A Midsummer Night's Chutzpah

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Black Rose - book excerpt

Prologue - The Crumpet

Misery rife, fear endemic, because of a dodgy crumpet. Burned, one bite taken, preserved, and dating back to just after the First World War. The whiff of undertaker’s formaldehyde would be sickening if ever you took it from the glass display case, sat on the back bar where it had pride of place. However, that crumpet stood as a marker of an uneasy peace in the East End of London. Lost and found, lost and found again, amongst the bodies of retribution and counterattack, always recovered, signal in the strength of one family, the Saints.

The family factions, long established in the East End of London, were the Saints and the Larkins. The Saints, the larger, more established, villainous family, held in check, one could say, by the precocious, lunatic may be more appropriate, Larkin family, who knew no fear when all around knew they should. And so, the lines of friction between the two families became white hot and sparked whenever the crumpet went missing.

And the O’Neill’s? Not much was known of this mysterious Irish immigrant family, said to hail from County Clare, West of Ireland and, seemingly uninterested in owning a pub and disinterested territorially. Yet nevertheless, they asserted an untouchable presence.

Regardless of the ephemeral O’Neill’s, the familial territorial headquarters was always the pubs, Dad’s and Arrie’s, both colloquial names, long established in local culture and street mythology.

Dad’s was located in Stepney, deep in the heart of the East End of London and, Arrie’s, in what can only be described as an uncomfortable distance away, next door. The two mutually dependent, though independent, pubs, were competitors and, the proprietary families as adversaries, extraordinarily, had a shared support of each other. You could not raze one pub to the ground without the other suffering a similar fate. Or so it was thought.

It was from here in semi-detached disquietude that the Saints controlled the Docks, their ground, and the Larkins, the gambling houses, brothels, and most other satellite industries, servicing mainly the docks, the dockers and the sailors. So it was that the families needed each other in another twist of fate. Which was the most fertile business depended on your point of view. Either way, the businesses were bombproof in that the docks were untouchable and, you could maybe destroy one or two of the Larkin properties, but not all, and then you would have a war so brutal and what would be the point, after all, the Saints and Larkins were neighbours, literally.

The crumpet was the symbol of a capricious peace. Every now and then the confection disappearing and later returned, the Saints temporarily vulnerable.

            To understand the ground, you need to comprehend the history of the two families, though it would be more appropriate to say that the umbilical reason for the current violent turbulence of street politics, would be just that, and, in that maelstrom of tinder dry factional streets, was born and nurtured, in a non-maternal sense, an unlikely nemesis. And so it was, from this most unusual and unexpected direction, the life-sustaining chord of palpitant peace, was cut. The bête noire scourge, emancipated. Although, as it transpired, the adversary was totally unaware he was even free or, was a preceptor of ruination, being insensitive to his latent genetic chutzpah. This was a man destined to be Public Enemy number one. To be pursued by the Metropolitan Police, Special Branch, MI5 and, closer to home, The Saints and, to a lesser extent, The Larkins. And in all of this, there was The Black Rose.

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The Saints

Bessie Saint had been the fierce landlady of the Dog and Duck Pub in Stepney, the East End of London. The locals, in the vernacular, called the pub a Rubbadub and, colloquially, Dad’s, as in the initials of Dog and Duck, but mainly in memory of Dad, old Mickey Saint, Bessie's beloved and sadly departed husband. He was said to have copped it at Passchendaele in the Great War, November 1917. Dad Saint, Dad's owner, was dead. It was, however, business as usual, as in reality Bessie had run the pub and just about everything, as was the East End matriarchal way. Old Mickey thought he ran the family firm, but he didn’t. The brains of the outfit was Bessie and she had taken on the role from Mickey’s Mum and, before her, Nan Saint. Bessie was highly suited for the job and had been selected for Mickey. Extraordinarily, this arranged marriage produced a love match, at least this is what Bessie told everyone, and who would be brave enough to contradict her? Certainly not Mickey, who was not averse to a bit of kneecapping and murder, but only if Bessie said so.

When news reached Dad’s of Mickey’s demise, Bessie had been conspicuously devastated. Under her guidance, he had run a tight ship in the principal family businesses: control of the Docks; extortion; violence; robbery; with the occasional dispatching of the unwanted, those who had transgressed the unwritten law, Bessie’s Law. And what was that law? Nobody knew, she was not one to write things down, administration not being her bent, though she was firmly on the opposite side of law and order in just about everything else. The Saints were gangsters and had a serious rep.

Since the demise of her husband, Bessie, overtly ran the Saints gang with an iron fist and, she ran a tight ship in Dad’s. When her eldest son, Mickey junior, who would have been the natural de facto successor, was, towards the end of the Great Conflict, declared missing in action, a military euphemism for dead, Bessie was truly devastated. She didn’t give a toss about her husband, but she missed her Mickey Junior sorely. She set a tradition to commemorate her beloved son Mickey’s birthday, and, on the 8th June every year, she would bake his favourite crumpets. These would be shared in the pub where everybody would salute Mickey Saint, eat heartily of the tasteless and often burned, small and round, perforated, bread-like confection, either dripping with melted butter and a green parsley sauce liquor or topped with jellied eels. At regular intervals, as if eating the vile crumpets was not bad enough, you were expected to raise your pint glass in a toast and shout, “Mickey Saint - the little devil”, because Mickey had been a dirty, rotten scoundrel. He had been evil through to his core and ever since he could toddle, Mickey Saint had scared the living daylights out of everybody he met. This was the Saints; a villainous family and they learned their trade early on in life.

            And so it was, on the 8th June 1924, Bessie had burned a large batch of crumpets, as had become the tradition and the crowded pub was effused with the charcoal aroma of the nauseating delice-confection. The clientele, scared for their lives if they didn’t attend this auspicious occasion on the East End of London calendar, were all in attendance, waiting to share in the ceremonial crumpets, when the door opened and in walked Mickey Junior, as large as life and twice as dangerous. Nobody knew where he’d been, what he had been doing since 1918, for it had been just a few weeks before the end of the war when he had gone missing. People later suggested stories, all in the realms of fantasy, but one thing was sure, Mickey, the little devil, was back, rolling in filthy lucre and ready to resume control of his Manor, as was his right, because Bessie deemed it so.

That auspicious evening, Bessie declared free drinks, and the party, which was to last well into a third day, got under way to the smell of more burning crumpets, singing, dancing, and the occasional bottle on someone’s head (that unwritten law again). At one point, Bessie panicked and retrieved from the bin the blackened crumpet she had been eating when her son had miraculously appeared, she’d taken one bite out of it. This would be a keepsake, a charm and she set it on the back bar shelf, announcing, “This is one lucky fucking crumpet”, and thus it was given its place in Dad’s. And, over time, the revolting crumpet became imbued with powers beyond its indelicate taste as Bessie further announced, it was the Saint Crumpet. It was never to be touched by anyone other than a Saint, on pain of, well, loads of pain and, if you were lucky, death. Another unwritten law that everyone acknowledged need not be written down as they, in their turn, would pass the knowledge onto their children and their children’s children, in the way of all good diabolical East End myths. But, on that day of great joy for Bessie, she doled out the Saint largesse in the name of charcoal crumpets as if they were a true East End delicacy, topped with jellied eels or the green parsley liquor, to cover up the black surface and, people ate them, mumming and aaahing in feigned delight, as if their lives depended upon it, which they did.

The party had been well into its second day when the door of the Public bar crashed open (can nobody open a door quietly?) and Ancient Mickey, the grandfather, entered and announced the birth of Sam, Bessie’s first grandchild, whom Bessie immediately rechristened Mickey. This had truly been an auspicious time for the Saints and Bessie put this turn of great fortune down to the burned crumpet, not so much the jellied eels or the green sauce and, drawing everyone’s attention to her, she pointed to the crumpet on the back bar shelf, the bite marks of Bessie's false teeth evident, and she announced to all that this crumpet would be the symbol of the future prosperity and immunity of the Saint family.

The customers in the crowded pub parodied great hurrahs whilst under their breath muttered in trembling fear, “Just what they needed, a bullet-proof Saint family dynasty”. Which is what they got. The success believed by everybody, but no more than the Saint ascendency, to be attributed to the burned crumpet.

And even to this day the preserved crumpet sat on the back bar of Dad's. It had pride of place in the Dog and Duck pub.

When I say, “until this day”, I should have said, up until this day. For this day, this ominous and dark clouded, foreboding day, someone had entered Dad’s in the dead of night and purloined the Saint family’s lucky charm and replaced it with a crumpet, similar in appearance, but one imbued with malevolent juju. You could say that on this portentous day, the Saints were doomed.

But what of the Larkins?