Whatever Happened to Billy Parks. Gareth Roberts

1

      There are two bar stools on the small makeshift stage.

      One for me, and one for my whisky tumbler. The crowd like that. A little visual joke, just to break the ice, just to make them relaxed. I’ve been doing that for years.

      I’m sixty-odd now. I still tell people I’m fifty-eight, but with the bloody internet and Wiki-whatsit, every bastard knows that I was born in 1948, which makes me, well, sixty-odd.

      Christ, sixty-odd? How did that happen? How did the years crumble away so bloody quickly? Sixty-odd, but still in good nick I reckon; like a well-preserved Dodo, rendered ageless in a glass cage by the blurred images of my youth that I know the crowd prefer to keep in their memories: Sunday afternoons with Brian Moore; Saturday nights with Jimmy Hill after Parkinson with a cup of tea; Peter Jones’s dulcet Welsh tones; Harold Wilson: Ford Capris; the Yorkshire bloody Ripper. It’s all up there in flock wallpaper purple with me somewhere in the midst of it making my way down the wing at Upton Park or the Lane.

      Sixty-odd now. Still got all my hair though – well most of it – even if the happy blond is rudely interrupted by the odd bit of dirty grey. I’ll admit that, but, hey, I am sixty-odd.

      I smile at the crowd. There are about twelve of them here. A few more are by the bar getting a round in before I start. I don’t blame them. This is a drinking afternoon. Drink’s part of it, of course it is.

      They look at me and I know that they don’t care about the deep black ridges under my eyes, or this suspicious purple brown spot that has recently appeared on my cheek. I smile again, with my eyes twinkling just as they remember and my teeth glistening like a Hollywood starlet (courtesy of a bit of work I had done a couple of years ago using the last of my testimonial money). I am still capable of lighting up a room, still capable of sending a full-back the wrong way.

      I am Billy Parks.

      I lift the cheap whisky tumbler, neat, of course, and drink it. That’s for them. They expect it. It’s part of the legend.

      The last of the drinkers take their seats and I notice the poster on the wall above the bar, handwritten in black marker pen proclaiming:

       SPORTSMAN’S LUNCH AT THE ANCHOR,

       This Tuesday, 14th March, 1pm

       Former West Ham, Spurs and England Legend, BILLY ‘PARKSY’ PARKS.

       Ticket £5 (includes free pint of Foster’s)

       (Samantha and her Boa will be back next week)

      Bless ’em.

      They had cheered when I came on to the stage, ‘Parksy, Parksy, Parksy,’ they had chanted. Drink helps all of us.

      I wave in a quiet understated way and they smile and sit back in expectation of an hour’s drinking and a good laugh. I wonder how many of them have actually seen me play? But that doesn’t matter; they all know the stories, and that is what they’re here for – the stories and the brief journey into a world they all feel they know and belong to.

      I like to think that I don’t disappoint; hell, I’ve been telling the same stories for twenty-odd years.

      ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. Good to see that so many of you have used your day release from Parkhurst to be with me today.’

      They laugh. I knew they would.

      I go into my spiel and ignore the two fat City-boy types who are standing at the bar, talking loudly, probably about money; I even ignore the bloody fruit machine by the exit that, for some reason known only to the evil misguided bleeder who designed it, lights up like tracer fire every ten minutes and plays the opening bars from Coronation Street at top volume. I’ve told Alan, I don’t know how many times, to turn the bloody thing off when I’m on stage.

      I tell them football stories, because that is what they’ve come to hear. I tell them about the characters of my era – proper characters, true lions of another better time, long passed over into the realm of myths and legends with the telling and retelling of tales. I tell them of their drunken exploits, their sexual exploits, the fights, the put-downs, the fast cars, the funny stories that made them godlike and mortal at the same time. I tell them of the managers who were hard bastards, and lunatic chairmen. I tell them about magical footballers, old friends, whose very names conjure up colours and tastes and sounds and sensations and people long gone: Georgie Best, Rodney Marsh, Chopper Harris, Norman Hunter, Alan Hudson, Charlie George, Frankie Worthington – legends each and every one of them.

      I tell them about a tot of rum before kick off and a sneaky fag at half-time, fish and chips on the bus on the way back from Newcastle and the time Terry Neill got so angry at Loftus Road that he put his foot through the changing room door and missed the second half as a couple of stewards and our kit man tried to pull his leg out. I tell them that they were good honest pros, though. Good. Honest. Pros. And the crowd fills itself with lager and scampi and smiles and feels, for a few minutes, closer to that time, closer to the legends, and that feeling that if there had been any justice it would have been them. I know that they all think that. I’ve always known it. It’s the way they look at you. You were one of the lucky ones, Parksy. Luck: it’s got nothing to do with luck, son.

      I’ve emptied the glass on the other bar stool, so I turn towards the bar and wordlessly call for another. And another. Fair play, Alan treats me well at The Anchor.

      Any questions?

      The same questions I’ve been asked a thousand times. I don’t mind.

       Who was the best player you ever played against?

      I sip my drink as the question’s asked, then I answer as the alcohol surges down my throat and loosens the connection between my tongue and my mind and my memory. They expect it.

      ‘The best player – that’s easy,’ I tell them. ‘Georgie Best.’ Hushed respectful tones and thin lips when talking about Georgie; the best player ever to grace a football pitch, bar none. God rest his mad Irish soul.

       Who was the hardest opponent?

      ‘Paul Reaney – Reaney the Meanie of Dirty Leeds. The others would try to kick you, but he was the only one who was fast enough to catch you –’ I pause ‘– then he’d kick you.’ They laugh. Oh, yes, Paul Reaney, dirty, hard, fast bastard. I smile at the thought of being kicked by a good honest pro. ‘Good bloke,’ I add quietly, because I mean that. And that’s what good honest pros did – a kick, then a handshake and a few beers in the players’ lounge bar after the match. None of the nonsense you get with footballers these days, with their fancy cars and their fancy agents and their one hundred and ten fucking grand a week.

      Not that I blame them.

      I’ve answered these questions thousands of times. I’ve emptied a thousand glasses. I’ve smiled on thousands of fans. This is easy money, money for my memories and a few minutes of adulation to remind me that I’m still alive.

      I’m getting warmed up now. The crowd is a good one, suitably boisterously pissed and attentive to all my best stories. I’ve become good at this.

      My eyes wander towards the back of the pub, and there, standing close to the blessed Coronation Street fruit machine, stands a man in a tan sheepskin coat and trilby. There’s something familiar about him, something about the thick furious grey eyebrows that explode across a forehead that’s creased and serious. I know I’ve seen those eyebrows before, but where?

      I catch him watching me intently, his face a humourless shade of thunderbolt grey. For a second I meet his stare, just a second. Where the bloody hell have I seen him before?

      I turn away just as the man’s voice cuts through the muggy atmosphere of the pub to ask a question.

      ‘What