Sowerbutt's Challenge

Brendan Bracken blew a series of smoke rings in the air. “Your men were right, Sowerbutt, to let the Haganah or the Irgun, a bunch of terrorists, as I am now led to believe, take the Jerry general. Saved everybody a lot of trouble. The obvious course was for them to take the Jerry general across to Ireland with the plan of scoring points about perfidious Albion. And the good news would be he was off our hands.

Sipping his Black Label, Bracken said: “The only difficulty is they have not gone to Ireland so far. John, here, is keeping a close watch on the ferry ports and no-one has turned up yet. No more private sailing allowed and our fishing fleets have been carefully checked. Ergo, our dear Jerry general is still here and a potential problem for us on British soil.
“According to our Zionist friends, with whom the Palestinians have been in touch, they are threatening to deliver Herr General to the Soviet Embassy and expose our double-dealing. Not that we owe anything to the Russians but the propaganda onslaught would not be helpful. The Commons would not be too impressed and it would give the Isolationists across the Atlantic a field day. What the lunatics want is for the British authorities to open the Palestinian borders to the Jewish refugees from Europe. That’s not going to happen, we need the Arab oil for the war effort. All we can do in the Middle East as ever is a balancing act. Any ideas, Sowerbutt?”
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Sowerbutt's Troubles

“First we are going, then we we’re not. Or at least you say you’re not, James, you are dumping me in the back of beyond, then swanning off somewhere by yourself. I’ve told you before I am not going anywhere by myself. We go together or not at all.” The attractive redhead stood in the private office at the back of the brothel bar, arms firmly planted on her hips.

Her look with her thin smile sent shivers up Sowerbutt’s back. Standover merchants, hard cases, the Stepney Reds did not faze him, but Polly. One look and he was helpless.
“It’s not like that, Polly. We’re leaving London to make sure you are safe from the bombing which is about to start at any tick of the clock. Gingernut has offered me a fistful of readies again to do a job for him which will take a few days. Then I’ll be back, that’s all. Tipper and Nero are staying in the house in Luton with you to make sure everything is good.
“That’s another thing, James if you care to remember,” Polly said angrily, jabbing her man painfully in the ribs with her fingers, a trick she had learnt from her mother when she ran the brothel. “I haven’t seen your wonderful little house, have I? Has it been painted or is there a single stick of furniture there? Do they have proper bathrooms in Luton, I am not using a lean-to. Nor am I living in a slum. You go off buying these places without talking to your partner - is that what I’m called or not these days?”
Sowerbutt was not game to tell her that the builders had been working from dawn to dusk on the building in Cheapside. The shop windows were blacked out and a sign said the cobbler’s business had closed for the duration. The outside toilet had been demolished and a new bathroom and American kitchen complete with refrigerator put in. The latest furniture from John Lewis in Oxford Street had been transported by army lorries up the A1; a local contractor, supplied with petrol coupons, bringing the loads across to Luton.

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Sowerbutt's Mission

 

“I hope you are satisfied, Sowerbutt," Brendan Bracken snapped. "This is the first time I have been on a trolleybus and I can assure you it will be the last. Are they always this empty? I’ll get onto John Reith, the wastrel. Couldn’t run the BBC and useless as Transport Minister, never understood why the Old Man kept him on in Cabinet. Don’t upset the apple-cart, he always says. Bollocks, I say.”

“Tickets, please gents,” shouted the blonde clippie, who worked a regular shift each week for Polly.
Sowerbutt put his hand up as Bracken fished a fiver out of his pocket. The 30-something man winked at the conductress and handed her some silver coins. “Something for your pocket, Betty, we will be getting off in a couple of stops before any of your puffed-up inspectors pay a visit. Can you manage a bit of peace and quiet up here for a few minutes?”
Bracken frowned. “I’ll get to the point as I always do. I need you and your men to escort a certain gentleman from the green fields of Hertfordshire to Dublin in the next couple of days. Yes, I know, your favourite journey from Paddington to darkest Wales. Fishguard and then ferry across to Rosslare is the shortest route. Ferries are running most of the time, unless the U-boats are about. There’s a catch which is why I’m prepared to pay you another £5,000 in small notes.
“Last time we met Sorbay, I mentioned the Official Secrets Act of 1911. That still applies, particularly as the gentleman you are escorting is a Jerry who is kindly helping us out with a few matters."
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Sowerbutt's Fears

“I’ll speak quietly with all the new regulations. But I have told all my people - boys and girls - that disaster could be just around the corner. An invasion will see bloody fighting in the streets of Poplar in a matter of days. A major bombing campaign, which will obviously target the Docks, will reduce Poplar and surrounding communities to rubble," Sowerbutt said.

“As I say, most of our people are staying put, they're Londoners. I just hope they don’t regret their decisions.”
Madame Komarovski smiled. “Thank you for your concern, I lived through the horrors of the Revolution in Moscow. A terrible time, blood literally flowing on the streets. Hopefully, my luck and that of your girls will hold out.”
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Sowerbutt's Cellar

“Aladdin’s Cave,” whispered Tipper as Sowerbutt turned the key in the solid wine cellar door at the Savoy. From floor to ceiling, the racks were full of dusty bottles, many with copper-plate written labels detailing the vintage and the year.

“One of the best cellars in London,” Sowerbutt smiled. “They’ve been laying down the good stuff for 50 years or more. Pop told me his dad was a waiter here for a spell when it opened back in Queen Victoria’s day. I only want the Pol Roger, lads, over there on the left. I’ve got a special client in mind.

“Box them up and start getting it out to the cart. Plenty of straw there for the bottles. Keep the noise down, don’t want to wake any of the distinguished guests up. I’ll take a few notes of what’s here for future reference, then I’ll give you a hand. Before we slip away, Tipper, make sure you have a go at the door-lock to make it look like a break-in. Nothing too extravagant, just a few scratches. No need for them to notice in a hurry.”

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Sowerbutt's Tuxedo

“Takes the biscuit, Mr Sorbay,” Tipper whispered. “I’ve never worn fancy gear on a break-in before. I look like a penguin at the zoo.”

Sowerbutt nodded: “You do, too. Just in case anyone is around, we’re guests in the hotel who’ve had a few too many and got ourselves lost.”
Sowerbutt, Tipper and Missionary were wearing evening dress complete with well-polished shoes and white silk scarves. Polly had been impressed how good Sowerbutt looked in his suit, his long hair tucked carefully up under a rakishly-tilted trilby. As she whispered to her man, the two young lads looked like fish out of water.
The three men had slipped a catch on a kitchen window at the back of the Savoy Hotel in The Strand a few minutes earlier.
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Sowerbutt's Justice

Pushing his face close to the skinny youth’s, he said quietly: “What happened to the call-up, son. You’re old enough to serve King and Country?”

“Dicky ticker, mister. My mate too. We’ve got the papers to prove it.”
“Courtesy of the Scribe, no doubt. Biting the hand that feeds you, son?” Sowerbutt said. The Scribe, who operated out of a small garage in Peckham, was the best forger in the East End by far. Since the war started, he had cornered most of the profitable market in London for forged medical exemptions, petrol coupons, ration books and approvals for the myriad of wartime regulations.
He said: “I’ll sell the coupons back to the Scribe, should be worth a few quid. And I’ll give the elastic to some ladies who work for me. It’s scarce like everything else.
“You know the rules, son. I’m always ready to talk business. But no-one comes onto the Family’s patch without permission. If you are too young to know that, you shouldn’t be out alone on the street.”
He nodded to Nero and Tipper. In seconds, the youngsters’ cheap black shoes were off and tossed out onto the road, one landing in a pile left behind by a horse-drawn cart. Next came the suit trousers and the baggy underpants. Without a second glance, the young lads were racing westwards along East India Dock Road, suddenly swerving down a side street to avoid Poplar Police Station and the elderly reservist standing guard on the steps.
In the surrounding shops, the women onlookers were giggling and pointing, the men were looking embarrassed. “A bit small from what I could see, or couldn’t see, Betty,” said one woman to her fellow shopper in the greengrocer’s opposite. “Wouldn’t worry you, Irene, would it? What with your old man locked away in a PoW camp,” her friend giggled.
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Sowerbutt's Inquiry

    

One-Line, a giant of a man, held the skinny youth by the neck at arm’s length, his legs kicking in the air. “You’re strangling me, mister, I can’t breathe,” gasped the 17-year-old. “I haven’t done nothing wrong, I was just passing by.”

“Check the suitcase, Nero,” Sowerbutt snapped. “Let’s see what wonder boy is selling.”

the battered brown suitcase.

Unsnapping the locks of the battered suitcase., Nero grinned: “Petrol coupons, guv. Hundreds of them. And a few cards of knicker elastic.”

Sowerbutt walked over to the skinny youth, dangling from One-Line’s powerful arm. The 17-year-old’s face was pasty white.

“You would be one of the Scribe’s runners or you were. He told me the other day he was losing a few petrol coupons. No wonder you had a crowd around you, worth a few bob, aren’t they?”

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Sowerbutt's Favour

"Jimmy knew a lot of the high-ups. He met Mr Churchill and did some work for one of the Ministers. But it all changed after the war; things went back to normal," the retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still treasures the notebook from his early 1960s interview with Jimmy Sowerbutt, said. "But he got a phone call about a year after the war ended from someone he knew. Some idiot had broken into No 11 Downing Street where the Chancellor lived - a sour-faced bloke called Dalton - and stolen his briefcase, full of important papers.
"You wouldn't read about it. Didn't take Jimmy long to find the briefcase - it had been sold to a pawnbroker in Charing Cross Road for a couple of bob. The old pawnbroker had been about to put the papers on his fire.
"A young smart-arse had been causing trouble around Jimmy's manor - in one of his brothels and a couple of the pubs. So Jimmy dropped the briefcase off at his lodgings and tipped off his contact. Jimmy got £100 reward, the smart-arse learnt his lesson with a six-month stretch and Mr Dalton got off the hook. He only lasted another year or so anyway."
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Sowerbutt's Mistake 2

“I’ve moved some of the Family’s larders out of the Smoke already, not too far away but in safer spots. We’ll do the same. Commuting distance as long as the trains keep running, be out of the way of the worst of the bombs."

Sowerbutt smiled broadly. “I’ll buy you a lovely new hat. They make lots of them in Luton, not far by LMS and plenty of trucks going up there from the Docks. I’ve got us a nice place near the shops and some good warehouses are just round the corner.”
The slap could be heard outside in the bar. The angry redhead leant over the desk, her finger inches from Sowerbutt’s surprised face. “You bastard. We’re partners, you said, you discuss things with me first. You have bought somewhere already, assuming I would agree. You can stick your Luton you know where, nice place indeed.”
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Sowerbutt's Concern

Sowerbutt took a mouthful of tea. “The fact remains we are all in danger of getting killed if we stay here. Look at the fight the Brylcreem Boys are putting up to stop the Jerries. Day after day and planes dropping like flies. I heard they downed tools at Manston the other day, had enough of it.

“The Jerry bombers are going to come for the Smoke and the Docks soon and the RAF can’t stop them. That means we will get it in the neck. What about that raid last weekend, the City and Millwall copped it. Just the start. I saw it all in Guernica, death and destruction. You can’t imagine what it’s like.”
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Sowerbutt's Dance

Coach blurted out: “We’ve started ballet lessons, Jimmy.”

Seeing his old friend’s mouth drop, Coach quickly added: “It’s improved the boys’ balance in the ring and their reflexes out of sight, Jimmy and we’ve only been going a week or two.”
Shaking his well-cut long hair, Sowerbutt said: “I just cannot see you in a pink tutu, my  friend.”
Coach, thickset and bald, smiled: “Don’t you worry, Jimmy. When I heard you were back from the wilds of Wales, I put you down for this week’s session. Don’t be late, Madame Dragon-fire will have your hide.”
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Sowerbutt's Shovels

"One thing about Jimmy is that he was a natural businessman, he had a nose for a good opportunity," the retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still treasures the notebook from his early 1960s interview with Jimmy Sowerbutt, said. "Once the big freeze started in January 1947, there was a shortage of shovels and brooms. Most families in the East End were alright, but the la-di-dahs in the West End had never bothered with such menial matters and couldn't get out of their houses.
"Jimmy supplied scrap iron to the CW Gill foundry in Millwall, so he got them to make the blades and he persuaded his NUR mates in Norwich to transport a wagon-load of ash  from one of the timber plantations down to Polly's joinery in Dunstable where they made the handles. He was selling them for a fiver apiece in the West End; normally they'd go for 4/- in those days.
"He also bought up the whole stock of a broom-maker in Catford. Paid the bloke there 2/6 each which was more than generous and sold them for £2 to the silly sods up west. He always said his job was the redistribution of wealth."
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Sowerbutt's Lady 2

Polly had had enough. “It’s always about your stupid Family, isn’t it,” she exploded. “What about us, James? You and me? No, it’s always the Family with you, every time. Fine, go and find your murderers? Beat them, cut their silly balls off, kill them, you violent bastard. I really don’t care. But don’t expect me to be waiting around for you whenever you come back with more blood on your hands. I’m sick of all the violence and trouble.

“Look at what you did to poor Nero. He is terrified of you, he was still shaking when I saw him up at the stalls in Chrisp Street. He showed me the mark you made on his neck, you could have killed him. Was that really necessary, you sadistic bully?
“He made a bad mistake, a terrible mistake, but he might have got a knife in his ribs if he had been there. Did you ever think about that? Then there would have been two terrible murders. You are hardly high on the Mr Clever list, are you James?”
Sowerbutt looked blankly at his lady love with whom he was enjoying a rare quiet evening. What was upsetting his red-haired beauty all of a sudden? He could spot danger at a hundred yards and had an unerring nose for mischief on the East End’s back streets, but he could never be sure of his lady’s moods.
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Sowerbutt's Papers

Detective-Sergeant Le Clay did not like the sound of James Sowerbutt, a thug to use the Indian Army vernacular. A dangerous but careful thug, according to the restricted Metropolitan Police file that Le Clay had  read from cover to cover. Apart from details of suspected, but unproven, criminal activities and former membership of the banned Blackshirts, the slim file contained a copy of a document issued under the Government’s recent Emergency Powers Defence Act, exempting the said person from military call-up as required by the National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. The top of the document was stamped “Unsuitable, Security Risk”. Le Clay suspected the rest of Sowerbutt’s gang had forged papers and medical exemptions to avoid the call-up. Save a lot of trouble when the invasion came, he thought, as they were all fascists, sympathetic towards little Adolf, and not to be trusted to fight for Britain. The peace posters appearing across Poplar were their work, he was sure, though one of his better contacts said the Stepney Reds had been spotted pasting some up on a row of empty shops.

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Sowerbutt's Sacrifice

"Why don’t we organise a special Family Day like the Fascisti do and you can be the sacrificial offering. Spitted, roasted and carved, yes?”

A long sigh escaped from the scrawny man’s quivering lips. His thin face was whiter than the  streets of  French surrender flags that welcomed the German Blitzkrieg on its relentless progression across northern France in recent weeks.
“I’ll change, Mr Sorbay, I promise I will."
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Sowerbutt's Fires

"The lads visited one posh house in Chelsea during New Year's Eve 1947 while the owners were dressed up to the nines at the Chelsea Arts Ball at the Royal Albert Hall and got a real surprise," the retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still has the notebook from his early 1960s interview with Jimmy Sowerbutt, said. "The storeroom at the back was chock-a-block with electric fires. Packed to the ceiling. They'd had a cold spell already and, as Jimmy said, the owner must have bought up an entire run from a factory ready to triple the price if there was another cold spell which, of course, came about.
"They didn't have the space in the lorry to take them that night. They put back the valuables so there was no trace of a break-in and scarpered. Jimmy put Nero on duty to watch the place and a couple of days later when the owners were out socialising again, the lads cleared the lot.
"In the end, Jimmy gave most of the fires away to local families when the Big Cold came later in January. Probably saved a few lives. He sold a few to the high and mighty in the West. He got 10 times the shop price, he said."
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