Theft #1
by Jilliana
Ranicar-Breese
The first time
I went to The York Minster known as 'The French'
in Dean Street, Soho, was with Seema Malian Ariel,
the Canadian friend I had gone to Spain with,
hitching through France and thence into Spain at
the Basque border in a private French ambulance
with the siren on!
We were not
out to pick up men but 2 guys began to chat us up
as we must have stood out not being regulars. One
introduced himself as BB - Brian the burglar and
the other a sculptor. BB then wanted to accompany
us back to my Lancaster Gate flat but had no car.
He inveigled his shortish older friend at the bar,
a bloke with a navy Greek sailor's cap and side
burns who was propping up the bar drinking a
quarter bottle of champagne, to drive us. The
man was rude, abrupt and disinterested. His name
was Maurice Sumray from the East End of London
and an artist. But Maurice had a car so we piled
in and I sat next to him in the front. The other
bloke vanished and BB turned his attention to
voluptuous large breasted mini skirted Seema.
Somehow it
transpired Seema's Israeli lover Akiva, turned
out to be Maurice's property partner. How that
came up God only knows but it broke the ice so us
Fab Four went back to my place for coffee with
Maurice appearing to be less grumpy and more
sociable.
I lived at 19
Craven Hill, London W2 in a yellow painted
traditional flat owned by an elderly lady
architect who had lived in Paris. She lived on
the first floor and I on the second up a private
flight of steep stairs. Once in my flat, as I was
making coffee, BB commented that my Yale lock was
easy to bust and suggested there and then
knocking nails in so that a burglar could not
slide a credit card down between the door post
and the lock to get in! Bang bang! My landlady
rushed upstairs to complain about the noise as it
was after 11.00 pm. Was BB trying to help me or
help himself?
Our friendship
flourished and Maurice Sumray, a known Soho
character, became my close friend until I went to
South America in 1970 and he befriended my best
friend Helga who took over my flat.
Not long after
the coffee encounter, Seema phoned in tears to
tell me her flat in Swiss Cottage had been
burgled and her gramophone and TV gone. Not long
after that episode, I ran into BB on a Sunday at
the Hampstead art fair and he commented on my
camera.
I shared my
lovely flat with Helga who at the time was
working at night for Reuters as a journalist
after her job finished at France Soir. I had a
guest that Monday evening and did not go into my
bedroom after working at Global Tours on Oxford
Street, to remove my jacket as per normal,
instead I joined my guest in the lounge. After
she had left, when I went to my bedroom, I found
it had been ransacked as had Helga's. All her
drawers had been pulled out and her camera stolen.
My camera had
gone too but tragically an inherited square
engraved silver snuff box cum locket on a silver
chain given to my mother by her brother Lewis
when he returned from North Africa in WW1. A
treasured heirloom. Gone. Stolen! Worst, was a
gold, diamond and emerald little finger ring
given to my mother on her 18th birthday. The box
was still there with the note in my mother's
handwriting that she had given it to me on my 18th.
Gone. Stolen! My record player had gone and two
decorative ethnic wooden masks off my wall of no
value whatsoever.
I immediately
suspected BB. Brian Law of Muswell Hill, Maurice's
friend and neighbour. I called Maurice and told
him BB had 'done me'. He commented BB did not
burgle his friends! I rang the police. Because I
gave the name and the area of where he lived, the
officer laughingly asked me if I had had a row
with my boyfriend! Maurice rang back to say he
had spoken to BB who swore he had not done the
job!
I spoke to my
landlady as the theft had happened the one week
her housekeeper had gone on holiday. She told me
a young man had somehow got into the building and
knocked on her door asking for me by name to
which she replied I was at work. He said he would
check anyway and ran up the stairs to my flat 'like
a cat!' She described him as tall and medium
build but 'light' on his feet.
Sometime later
my new flat mate comrade Liver Bird Patsy Barnes-Ward,
ex wife of the journalist Chris Ward, told me
that she had kept in touch with a fellow
Liverpudlian Gess Whitfield, a dancer but who had
become a professional burglar! Could he have been
my 'cat' burglar?
Years later BB,
out of prison after 5 years for robbing a post
office, came up to me in 'The French' one evening,
accosting me saying, 'I didn't do it, Jilly,
honest!'
So
now I wonder who 'did' me!!!
Written at my flat in Brighton 29.11.17.
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