Gareth Roberts - Whatever Happened to Billy Parks

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Good, now go and prove yourself.’

Finally I looked up at him, my lips sucked into my mouth and nodded, mute, before taking myself off on to the pitch.

‘Oh, and Billy,’ he called after me and I turned around, ‘pull your socks up and tuck your shirt in, man!’

I smiled my sparkling smile and took myself out and into my position on the left-hand side of the pitch.

It was raining that night; great bucketfuls of splodgy cold rain that seemed to cascade like a dirty waterfall through the dingy yellow of the floodlights. Not really the conditions for a mercurial, sparkling forward like me. I could feel my boots squelch against the cold turf and knew the ball would sting against my thighs.

Opposite me the Manchester right-back scowled. He was a horrible, ugly, bow-legged, northern monkey called Feeney – he probably knew nothing other than bloody rain. He pointed at me, said something I didn’t understand, then tried to laugh. I sighed, intimidation was lost on me: I was more worried about the bloody cold.

They kicked off; Brian Kidd passing to Stan Bowles, who had his shirt-sleeves pulled over his hands and wore the expression of a kid who wanted nothing better than to get back on the team bus.

They had a good team did Manchester, plenty of their lads went on to forge decent careers in the game, but we had a brilliant one – Trevor Brooking, Dave Clement, Frank Lampard (senior not junior, obviously) and Harry Redknapp – true greats, all of them. We were just kids then: all with hopeful faces and bandy legs. Apart from Trevor Brooking, of course; he seemed older by miles than all of us. Good old Trev, I met him for the first time that evening; he wasn’t quite so posh back then, still immaculate though, still brainy and good with words. ‘I’m Trevor,’ he said. ‘You keep making runs inside their full-back and I’ll try and play you through.’

I nodded. I just wanted him to pass me the ball. I didn’t care where he put it.

The first half was difficult; the ball kept getting stuck in pools of standing water and even Trevor Brooking couldn’t get it to go where he wanted. I hardly got a look in and was getting a bit bored with the northern monkey Feeney telling me how he was going to kick me all the way ‘ oop the Thames ’ if ever I got the ball. So I drifted infield and out of position; if the coach of the London Boys, an old pro called Barry Hickman, shouted at me, I didn’t hear him, because I was stood in the centre circle, with my back to goal, when the ball finally came to me.

It was another one of those moments – moments that you can’t predict, moments that change your life. Fate. As the ball slowly made its way across the quaggy turf to my feet, big Tommy Booth, the Manchester centre-half, a great oaf of a boy, tried to clatter into me from behind; as fortune would have it, though, rather than knock me over, he just managed to put himself off balance and force the ball to wriggle away from us to my right, which also happened to be where the ground was driest; in a flash I was on to it and turned towards the goal.

Ahead of me was a mass of open field. Instinctively, I knew that if I hoofed it forward the wet pitch would stop it carrying through to their keeper. I knew this without a moment’s conscious thought. I knew it and I did it: I hoofed it towards the edge of the penalty area where it stuck fast in the mud. Now, there was just a foot race to the ball between me, northern monkey Feeney, who was charging from my left, the Manc goalie Joe Corrigan and Big Tommy Booth. But I was away, my feet gliding along the glistening grass, water sputtering upwards as I went. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Feeney coming towards me, while straight ahead was the massive frame of Joe Corrigan. If Joe had been more decisive, he’d have got there first, but he held off just a second, just long enough for me to reach the ball a moment before he did, a tiny weeny insignificant moment, nothing in the great encyclopaedia of time, but long enough for me to clip the ball over him, hurdle him, and steer the ball into the empty net as Feeney crashed into his own goalkeeper.

I trotted past the mud-splattered defender, grinned at him then shook the hand of Trevor Brooking. ‘Well done, Barry,’ he said, and I grinned at him as well. ‘It’s Billy,’ I said. ‘Billy Parks.’

It was the winning goal.

Afterwards I sat in the changing room, listening to Stevie Kember, Harry and Frankie Lampard; they seemed so confident, so aware, so much bigger and older than me with their skinny ties and winkle picker boots. They were all going to play for Crystal Palace or Chelsea or West Ham. They were all going to be footballers. I thought about my dad. The Hammers were his team. Perhaps I could play for West Ham.

Taffy Watkins stood by the door. ‘Parks,’ he bellowed, and I looked up as he beckoned me.

‘There’s someone who wants to meet you, boy,’ he said and turned, so I followed him up the corridor, up some stairs and into a lounge bar, which smelled of cigar smoke and booze.

Two men were standing by the bar; by the welcoming looks on their faces I could tell that they were waiting for us to join them.

Taffy led me over. ‘This, Billy,’ he said proudly, ‘is Mr Matt Busby. Mr Busby, this is Billy Parks.’

Matt Busby smiled at me; thinning hair and squint-eyes smiling a lovely warm straight-to-your-soul smile, like the uncle we all wished we’d had.

‘Good goal out there, Billy,’ he said, or at least that’s what I thought he said; to my ear, untrained in Glaswegian, it sounded more like a collection of ‘grrs’ followed by my name. I nodded, though, and smiled, and muttered something about it being difficult conditions as I sensed that Taffy wanted me to sound vaguely intelligent and interested.

‘Billy,’ he continued, ‘we’d like you to come up to Manchester for a week’s trial at our football club, Manchester United, next week. Would you like that?’

Taffy answered for me. ‘Of course you would, wouldn’t you, boy?’ he said. And I smiled again.

Of course I would.

Manchester United.

Manchester bloody United. Of course I wanted to go there. Sod West Ham. Man United – Busby Babes, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, plane crashes, FA Cups – I would have crawled there. This was going to be brilliant. Taffy beamed down at me, Matt Busby beamed down at me; I beamed at me, all the gods in their heavens beamed down at me. It was all going to be brilliant. I was going to be a Busby Babe. I was going to play for Manchester United and win the FA Cup.

I got the tube and the bus back to Stratford. I wanted to tell my mother. I wanted to tell her more than anything. This would surely make her happy. I rushed through the front door. Exhilarated. The house was dark, still, lifeless. ‘Mum,’ I yelled, there was no answer. ‘Mum,’ I yelled again, ‘I’m going to play for Manchester United.’ Again, no answer. I screamed up the dark and silent stairs. ‘I’ve just met Matt Busby and I’m going to play for Manchester United.’

Silence.

I went up to her bedroom and stood by her closed door. I wanted to turn the handle. To rush in and tell her my news: I was going to be a professional footballer. I knew I was, and with Man United. But the door was closed and I’d never disturbed my mother in her room, and I never would, it just wasn’t right. I decided to save my news for the next morning.

At breakfast, I told her; not in the euphoric way I’d wanted, but in a quiet, brooding, matter-of-fact way. She stood with her back to me by the sink. ‘I’ve been asked to go to Manchester next week for a trial with United,’ I told her. But she didn’t turn towards me. The only reaction was the sudden stillness of her arms as she stopped drying the plate she was holding.