Gareth Roberts - Whatever Happened to Billy Parks

‘It’s got John Wayne in it,’ she continued, ‘you like him’, and I grimaced at the ironic mention of John Wayne. ‘Well?’ she said, and I nodded and her face broke out into a smile. ‘Good, that’s a date then.’

I knew that by Friday, she’d have forgotten.

‘Come and give your old mum a hug.’

I tentatively got up and slowly walked towards her, my body hardening against the thought of hugging her. And she knew it, and it just made everything bloody worse.

I went outside to the back yard and kicked my football against the target I had drawn on the gate. I kicked it alternately with my right then left foot, 200 times, it had to be 200 times and if I missed the target just once, I had to go back and start again. I kept missing because I was angry.

The next day Larry McNeil and his mates were waiting for me again. This time we were in the changing room before PE. It was my first PE lesson at St Agnes. Pete Langton spotted me: ‘Hey look fellas, here he is, the Yankee Doodle Dandy.’ McNeil joined him and scowled at me as the changing room went quiet. ‘Billy Parks’s mum had it off with a nigger,’ he declared and I had no choice, I rose up and went for him – immediately the whole year of boys closed around us chanting, ‘fight, fight, fight,’ as they did. I put my head down and swung a few hopeful punches in McNeil’s direction, but, as I said, I was no fighter.

Mercifully, the fight was broken up by the muscular grasp of the teacher, Taffy Watkins. He pulled us apart and stared at us. ‘Right,’ he bellowed, ‘what on earth is all this about, I’ve never seen such a woeful fight in all my life: like two squirrels squabbling in a hessian sack.’

It was the first time I’d heard a Welsh accent. ‘Well?’ he repeated, but neither of us responded. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘you two shall come to me after the lesson and I will cane your rotten backsides.’

Then he turned to the rest of the class. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘on to the pitch so that I can laugh at your desperate attempts to play Association Football. The only thing of any worth invented by the English.’

At the mention of football, I felt my insides warm.

Outside on the school pitch, we were put into two teams. To my delight, Larry McNeil and his two mates, Langton and Haydon, were put on the opposing side to me. I knew what was about to happen. The gods of football had meant for this.

I got the ball pretty much from the kick off and set off down the pitch. I knew what I was going to do without even thinking. I could see the space on the pitch, I could feel the desperate lunges by the opposing team as they tried to take the ball from me. I was in complete control, my body responded instinctively – one boy, two boys, three boys, they couldn’t get near the ball as I feinted and shimmied and burst past them. Eventually there was only one player left between me and the penalty area, Larry McNeil. His face contorted with pathetic rage as he rushed towards me; silly arse, never play the man, always play the ball. He tried to kick me and I prodded the ball with my left foot past him and skipped over his trailing leg. Then, as Little Jimmy Cleary, a lad with callipers, who’d been put in goal, stood rooted to the spot, I put the ball in the back of the net.

On the touchline Taffy Watkins watched with his hands on his hips and the flicker of a smile across his chops.

I repeated the exercise seven more times and each time I made a total cunt out of Larry McNeil: this was for my unhappy mother and my unhappy tragic father and for me, Billy Parks, growing a little bit happier with every goal.

At the end, I traipsed off with the rest of the boys. I knew that in the oh-so-important pecking order of eleven-year-old lads, I had risen like a meteor – I knew it, and so did Larry McNeil.

Taffy Watkins held us back. We sat outside the room off the gym reserved for PE teachers; Watkins’s own personal fiefdom where he would reward and nurture the few boys he felt possessed sporting talent, and brutalise the rest. Larry didn’t look at me. He was called into Watkins’s room first and I heard the thwack of the cane as he delivered six of his Welsh best on to Larry McNeil’s arse. McNeil ignored me as he emerged, red faced and gritting his teeth against the tears he knew he couldn’t show.

I braced myself.

‘Right,’ said Watkins and I followed his beckoning finger into the tiny room. It smelled of liniment, dubbin, old leather, dry mud and scared boys. He looked at me: ‘The other lad started it did he?’ I said nothing. ‘I thought so,’ said Watkins, ‘now I’m going to give you one chance – you’re to train with the under-fifteens this Thursday, and if your performance out there was a fluke and you’re rubbish, you shall have ten of what McNeil had – you hear me?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Good.’

‘Right, off you go.’

‘Thank you, Sir.’

He nodded as I got up to leave.

‘Oh, and what is your name again?’

‘I am Billy Parks, Sir.’

Details: Match 2, September 1960

Venue: St Agnes Third XI football pitch (knocked down and redeveloped into a Sainsbury’s in 1991)

Class 1e 10 v. Class 1f 1

Parks (8) Eccles (2)

Gillway

Line Ups (formations a bit fluid)

Class 1e:Charlie Hugheson, Tommy Rigby, Alan Hattersley, Brian Collins, Peter Hirst, Johnny Smith, Paul ‘Donkey’ Edwards, Ed ‘Clarkey’ Clarke, Billy Hindles, George Gillway, Billy Parks

Class 1f:Little Jimmy ‘Four Legs’ Cleary, Unknown boy, described as having a cleft palate, Larry McNeil, Sam Smith, Paul Carrington, Pete Langton, Eddie Haydon, Maurice ‘Spud’ Eccles, Keith Ringer, Richard ‘Paddy’ Murphy, Dave ‘Shorty’ Hopkinson

Attendance: 1 (Taffy Watkins)

I know it’s there. I know it is sitting on the table in my kitchen, at least half-full. It has been growing in my mind over the last few days as I have waited for my release from hospital and is now the size of one of those giant bottles that you see on advertising hoardings: a giant bottle of vodka.

‘No more drinking now,’ Dr Aranthraman says, ‘remember, just one more drink could kill you,’ and he smiles, because he’s a nice fella, and I smile, because I am the twinkling, dazzling Billy Parks. And then Maureen, who has come to pick me up and take me home, bless her, smiles, but she does so with thin lips, because she knows the weakness in me.