Fighting to the Death Read online

  ‘Go kill him, son,’ said one parent sitting nearby. I turned and tried to make out who it was, whether he was on my side or my opponent’s. Later on in life I wondered why anyone would want to say such a stupid thing to a schoolboy boxer. Hardly sporting, is it?

  Just then another parent yelled at the top of his voice at my opponent ‘Do him, Mark.’ Then the noise became a big blur. All the voices merged into one. The only sound I could hear above it all was my trainer. ‘Remember what I told ya, son …’

  The ref beckoned that we boys should meet in the centre of the ring. Then he told us the rules. ‘First thing, lads, I want a nice clean fight. No head butts, no biting, no elbows and keep it above the belt. Right, let’s have a good bout.’ Then we returned to our corners.

  Ding went the bell and we were off.

  I moved and ducked around a bit at first, just sizing up the enemy. I’m a southpaw, leading with my left side, and that makes me even harder to fight for any orthodox fighter. I was bouncing around, floating like a butterfly, Ali-style, or so I thought. Then I let my opponent come to me so I could try to take control of the centre of the ring. The idea was to let him do all the work. After all I was there to score as many points as I could and to win as quickly as possible. My trainer’s words rang over and over again in my head.

  ‘Win as quick as possible.’

  Ding, ding. It was the end of round one.

  Within moments my trainer and second were around me in my corner. They told me I was doing well. The next round was another classic standoff as me and my opponent tried to resist the temptation to charge in, and so lose control of the contest.

  By round three the speed of both our punches had dropped because we were so knackered. The ref was barking out orders throughout.

  ‘Keep it tight.’

  ‘Watch your heads.’

  ‘Not too close.’

  That’s when I found some extra energy to try one last long flurry to score points as quickly as possible. I charged in for that flurry and this time crunched into my target and felt him wobble under the power of my punches.

  Ding, ding. It was the end of the final round. We were both sweating buckets and my head felt like a hammerhead had been smashing its nose against my temple.

  That last bell left me feeling an overpowering combination of anticipation and exhaustion. The noise of the crowd became clear once again and there was relief that it was all over. I believed I’d won and, in later years, I was usually proved right. But there were times when I kept a low profile, said nothing and wondered why I’d been robbed of victory.

  But the overpowering feeling this time was one of being so knackered it was impossible to speak or think. I sat there in the corner, with my chin resting on my chest, awaiting the final verdict. Then the ref grabbed my arm and yanked it into the air to show I’d won. ‘Carl Merritt.’

  I felt sorry for my opponent that day because I later found out the poor kid was under heavy pressure from his dad, who went everywhere with him. A few minutes later his old man reduced him to tears because he’d lost to me, even though he was fourteen at the time. It was about the only time I was glad my old man never showed up to see me fight.

  It wasn’t until I turned thirteen that I became virtually invincible in the ring. I won all three fights when we went up north to a boxing tournament. I was even awarded a trophy (made of plastic). It was the first thing I’d ever won in my life, and I felt really proud of it. But, once again, no one was there to see me win it.

  Back at West Ham Boys’ Club, I continued being shouted at for going in too hard, especially during sparring sessions. There was this one trainer who’d whack me over the head with a huge brown leather glove every time I lost my cool, which seemed to happen a lot! The tension simmering inside me seemed to be constantly about to explode. Boxing clearly hadn’t calmed me down completely. There were times when I was still definitely out of control.

  I remained quite a loner at school. I was big for my age, so no one tried to bully me but I didn’t make friends easily. There were plenty of battles between my school, Forest Gate, where we wore green jackets and black trousers, and the kids at Stratford Secondary Modern, with their slick all-black uniform. We used to throw what we called Millwall bricks at them, that is newspapers rolled up so tightly they can really sting if thrown in the right way. One night the cozzers turned up in vans and grabbed a load of us and then hit us with our own Millwall bricks. I suppose we deserved it.

  Inside school, PE teacher Mr Draper was always blowing his top at me and my mate Alex Dyer because we were always larking around with the weights in the school gym. ‘I’m going to make an example of you two,’ he’d often say, pulling a slipper out of his desk drawer. Then he’d bark, ‘Hands on knees, sonny.’ I’d see him turning towards me as he prepared to swipe me. It used to scare the life out of me and it was also very embarrassing because he did it in front of the class.

  The headmaster, Mr Dipsdale, used the cane and I was regularly punished by him as well. There would often be a queue of boys waiting outside is study for a whacking It was like a conveyor belt some days.

  Around this time, I started playing rugby at school. It’s another very physical sport and I was soon getting in trouble for fighting during school matches. I played prop forward and, one time, I gave this kid opposite me an upper cut and knocked him out cold. I was sent off and then hauled before the headmaster and banned from playing for a month.

  At school in the summer I did athletics, especially the shot put. I was also quite partial to the javelin- until the time I missed Mr Draper by inches when I launched it over his head. My favourite sport after boxing was really swimming. I loved. going to Romford Baths and Beckton Lido in the summer. But I often got into aggro there when I fought with other boys about who should be first off the diving board.

  Throughout this time the boxing bug grew even stronger in me. I continued watching all the fights on telly at every opportunity. I was glued to the screen for the Mexico Olympics heavyweight boxing championships when that massive Cuban Teofilo Stevenson won it. I even got Muhammad Ali to sign a book he’d written when he made a personal appearance at a bookshop in the City of London. I waited three hours to meet him and was well chuffed when he winked at me and did a quick one-two with his fists to show who was boss. It was well wicked. My legs were like jelly for hours afterwards: I couldn’t believe I’d just met my all-time hero.

  Meanwhile me, my brother John and our mates continued getting up to mischief, although it was never too bad. I pinched a scooter when I was thirteen and we ended up smashing it into the doors of a garage because we didn’t know how to drive it properly. We also did a spot of shoplifting at Woollies. I bought a brilliant fishing rod for next to nothing one time by swapping the price tags. Another day I managed to nick a pair of trousers by putting them over my own strides and walking out of the store.

  Most Saturdays my brothers and me went to the kids’ matinee at the local Odeon. I started wearing nicked Farrar slacks with new Remington shirts. But most of the time I stuck to jeans and Adidas trainers. I suppose you could call me a bit of a soul boy back in those days. At the local picture house, I eventually got barred for popping some kid who put chewing gum in my hair. So I started sneaking in through the back exit near the toilets. It was all good, clean fun.

  One of my best memories of growing up was when my younger brother Ian and me went on holiday to Jersey Islands. We were taken by some rich friends of Mum’s who’d taken pity on us because we still didn’t have a bean to rub together. I must have been about twelve years old and I’d never been on an aeroplane before. It was fantastic to escape East London, all the domestic chores and boring old school. I felt a sense of freedom I’d never experienced before in my life. We stayed at this family’s house on the island and it seemed like a palace. I even kissed a girl for the first time on that holiday. I met her on the beach and I remember her mum and dad lived nearby and had a swimming pool in their back garden. She w
as about a year older than me, with lovely long, golden hair and a gorgeous smile.

  But nothing much had changed when we got back to Forest Gate. Poor old Mum was still struggling to make ends meet. Oh, and school was still a waste of time.

  The green grass of Wanstead Flats provided the perfect extra training ground for my boxing. Me and my brother John and a couple of mates would run right round it two or three times a week because it was exactly three miles, which was what I was expected to run every day. Back in those days, the late seventies, there was a lot of racial tension round where I lived, which was something I definitely disapproved of. And sometimes it spilled over into my life.

  One night on Wanstead Flats a Mark III Cortina rolled up alongside myself, a mate called Andy and my brother, and out popped a bunch of Asian blokes holding bicycle chains. They were obviously after aggro and I later heard they were known as the Chain Gang. We gave them a right pasting when they started trying to swing their chains in our direction. Cars were driving past and watching all the action but luckily no one called the law. A bunch of people out walking their dogs didn’t even try to intervene. We never saw those Asian fellas again, but I heard they’d been pouncing on people in the area for months and we were the first ones to really take them on. After we’d sorted them out, we just carried on jogging.

  My nickname at that time was ‘Blue’ because I wore all-blue boxing gear. My brother was known as ‘Nelly’ and then there two other mates called ‘Smudger’ and ‘Hodge’. But I was never too keen on nicknames and so ‘Blue’ soon disappeared, never to be replaced by anything else.

  Naturally, many of my mates at that time were into football, and the violence on the terraces at my nearest club, West Ham, was notorious. Every time you turned up for a match, there were fisticuffs. As I wasn’t that interested in football, I didn’t pay much attention to all the aggro, until I made a rare visit to the North Bank terraces for the Hammers’ game against Chelsea and a copper got stabbed just next to me. I didn’t like what I saw one bit. They just rounded on this cozzer when he tried to break up a scuffle. In. those days there was a group of West Ham soccer hooligans called the InterCity Firm, who were notorious for carrying blades. There was even a junior version known as the ‘mini-ICF’.

  I had run-ins with many of the junior members because I had a sideline going at the time minding kids’ front doors when they had parties at home, to stop gatecrashers, The mini-ICF was always turning up on doorsteps, making out they were armed with blades and bottles. But me and my mates Smudger and Nelly sorted them out when they came looking for aggro one night. They were right nutters, but we never had any more problems with them after that tear-up. Violence seemed to underpin all aspects of my life at that time.

  At home, we were now living with our latest ‘new dad’, a miserable bastard called Terry. One afternoon I walked in on him trying to slap my beloved mum. I ran after him into the kitchen so the arsehole went and shoved a meat pie in my face. I was mortified. I burst into tears and ran out of the door. My mum was shouting at me to come back but I just kept going. I didn’t even have any shoes on but didn’t once look back.

  All my feelings of grief, loss, relief, guilt, anger and helplessness came out as I pounded the pavement through the driving rain that miserable day. I ran straight through puddles without even hesitating. I shed tears, torn by the sadness of not having a father around to help and support me.

  I eventually ran into West Ham Park, more than a mile from home. It was about midday and there I was, a barefooted waif charging across the park as if I had a firework up my arse. I remember it was very muddy and my feet were caked in the stuff.

  I found a quiet bench, sat down and sobbed. I just wanted to get away from all the violence and unhappiness. What was it about men that made them bring violence into our home? Around this time I’d realised most of the families round our way were in just as much chaos. Poverty and domestic bliss don’t exactly go hand in hand, do they?

  Eventually, darkness started to fall in the park and I began shivering. What could I do? I didn’t want to go back to that bastard Terry, so I stayed put. Eventually my older brother John turned up with Terry. I felt like screaming blue murder at them, but what was the point? I shrugged my shoulders and eventually walked home with them but I refused to talk to Terry, who glared at me for the entire journey. I really hated his guts. Our war was only just beginning …

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Fighting Monsters

  With my nasty ‘stepdad’ Terry on the scene it seemed like my mum had gone from one waster to another. Dad was well upset that Terry was going out with Mum because they’d been mates since school. Terry was always tense whenever my dad turned up to see us. But when I look back on it, Terry was tense all the time. He was tall with blondish hair and a broken nose, and always looked a bit mad, if you know what I mean. He was always ducking and diving and I think that’s why he flew off the handle so easily. He’d been inside, where he’d met some right hard geezers. I reckon he was watching his back because other villains were after him. Yet for all his hard ways, he wasn’t much of a boozer.

  Terry and I were never going to hit it off as pals so, by the time I was thirteen, my hatred for him was pretty intense, and I was quite a big lad for my age. One day he set about punching my tiny little mum yet again – and this time I really snapped. I’d just walked in from school with my brother John and we opened the door into the kitchen to find Terry lashing out. Mum was cowering beneath him. That was it: we both grabbed him and started throwing punches. But then Terry got me by the throat. I thought he was going to kill me. John smashed him over the head with a vase and he let go. That’s when I completely lost it and tried to beat him to a pulp. How dare he even lay a finger on my mum? In the end, I had to be dragged off him before he was severely injured.

  John and I then stormed out of the house after my mum made it clear she’d give this arsehole the benefit of the doubt. We couldn’t understand why she put up with it. But there would be a lot worse to come.

  I know a lot of people will think I was nothing more than a punch-happy bully, but I was far from it. I only ever got into fights as a last resort. And some of the younger kids at school even asked me to help them out if they were being bullied by older kids. I reckon you have to stand your ground in life and help others less fortunate than yourself. My mum always brought us up to respect other people’s feelings. ‘If they don’t bother you,’ she’d say, ‘you leave them well alone.’ As a result, me and my brothers were never involved in any school bullying or stuff like that. It just wasn’t our style.

  So when my older brother John had a bust-up with a kid called Robert Allen at Forest Gate High, it almost sparked World War Three. John had come home one afternoon with his face looking like the Khyber Pass. Terry went crazy because he thought John should have put up a better fight. Terry was a racist bastard and he didn’t like the fact that Robert Allen was a black kid. Later that afternoon he dragged me and John out by our ears and forced us to go out in his motor, looking for this kid. It was all well out of order. Terry kept ranting and raving about how ‘that black bastard should be taught a lesson.’

  We eventually spotted Allen on Wood Grange High Road. Terry pulled his car up around the next corner and grabbed a length of hosepipe filled with sand out of the boot. Then he turned to John, pushed it into his hand and told him to use it on Allen. John looked terrified but shoved the hosepipe up his sleeve. Then he and I began walking down the street towards this kid Allen. We knew Terry was watching us closely.

  Allen turned round as he sensed we were closing in on him. He smashed a bottle against a wall and pointed its jagged edge at us. He knew what we were after. We wanted revenge. I started running towards Allen but then a hand grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and pulled me back. It was Terry, and he insisted John should be the one to get in the first hit with his lethal hosepipe. Terry was one sick puppy.

  John looked more scared than his prey, but then he whipp
ed his weapon out and smacked it across Robert Allen’s face, slicing open the flesh on his cheeks and forehead. Then John got hold of Allen’s ears and started smashing his head on the pavement over and over again. It was not a pleasant sight. And throughout all this, that evil piece of dirt Terry was egging him on, ‘Come on. Kill the black bastard.’

  But we only wanted Allen’s head on a plate because he was a school bully, nothing more, nothing less. John completely lost it that day and continued giving Allen an almighty pasting. A couple of women across the street began shouting at us to stop it. Then someone else yelled: ‘We’ve called the Old Bill.’ Terry immediately screamed: ‘Get in the car – quick!’

  We drove off just as the cozzers came screeching around the corner. But I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. That night Terry tooled us up and warned us that Allen would most probably be back with reinforcements. He handed me a machete blade and John was given a cutlass as long as a cricket bat. Terry had his own butcher’s axe. He told us to keep our weapons near us at all times. That vindictive nutter was loving every minute of it.

  The following day Terry’s prophecy carne true. Robert Allen turned up with his two older brothers outside our house. I was just looking out the window for the milkman when I spotted them coming up the garden path. They stopped about five yards from the front door and one of the two brothers started taunting us to come out and face them.

  Just then, at least a dozen other kids wearing Forest Gate High School uniforms swarmed along the path behind them. It was a matter of now or never. We had to catch them off guard. So me, John and Terry came charging out of the front door like a herd of rhinos. Terry slammed his axe over the gate, just missing one of the brothers. ‘Come here! I’m gonna cut you in half!’ he yelled; and I for one believed him.