Whatever Happened to Billy Parks. Gareth Roberts

at everything, stripped him bare, the images couldn’t be blotted out any more.

      Even me, little Billy, born in December 1948 and loving him from the moment I first formed a memory, even I couldn’t stop the images that came to him each day: of his mate Eddie Hastings from Romford, who had been a postman – a postman, from Romford, he shouldn’t have been in bloody Burma building railways, he shouldn’t have died in my dad’s arms, incoherent with disease and weakness and thirst; and the big Colour Sergeant, Harry Green, who was executed, and how he had shouted out for his wife and his sons just before they decapitated him; and all the others, all the bloody others, who came to him every day and did their spectral dance around his poor suffering head.

      I couldn’t take away those images. Not even when I held my little ball and looked up at him with the same twinkling blue eyes that he had once had.

      ‘Why are you sitting by the back door, Dad?’ I asked, and I curse myself now, because I know now that my presence, my question, my little bloody ball, would have just added to his guilt.

      ‘Will you play with me, Dad?’

      ‘I’m sorry, son, I’m tired. I’m so tired. Maybe tomorrow.’

      My poor scared broken dad.

      I would nod, disappointed. I wanted him to hold me and I know now, I’m sure now, that he wanted to hold me, but it wouldn’t happen. Ever. He would never play with me.

      And as my father sat quietly and neatly waiting for the turmoil in his head to go away, the life was sapped from my mother.

      During the war, she’d worked as a clerk for the east London General Omnibus Company keeping tidy ledgers to try to stop herself from worrying. She had worried though, of course she had, every day for five years. Worrying and fantasising and yearning for his twinkling blue eyes and his sandy hair and his lean athleticism and an end to the crushing weight of loneliness.

      The man she yearned for never came home.

      So she stayed lonely.

      And the local women gathered around, because that was what they did round our way. And they helped her when she fell with me after one of the few times Billy Senior had come to her as a man, and they helped her when he stopped going to work, and they helped her when he woke every night crying. They told her that it was alright to have a couple of snifters of Mrs Ingle’s home-made gin from time to time.

      But from time to time became every day, so they stopped gathering around.

      I would be sent in the morning round to Mrs Ingle’s (always go round the back, Billy) with a coin in my trouser pocket and a note. And Mrs Ingle would ask me how me ma was and how me old man was and give me a flask and send me on my way. Your mother’s tonic, don’t drop it, don’t break it, get home straight away.

      I broke it once. Only once. And that was on the day that I discovered football.

      I always took the same route to Mrs Ingle’s: up our road, past the corner shop and the Nissen huts, through the lane that ran between Eric Road and Vernon Street and across the waste ground that had, until the Luftwaffe had bombed it into oblivion four years before I was born, been Singleton Street and Sharples Street. Now it was just a derelict piece of ground about the size of, well, the size of a football pitch.

      On the day that I discovered football I crossed it on my way to Mrs Ingle’s just like I did most days. Then I went round the back of her house, just as I was told, knocked on the door and was met by Mr Ingle in his vest and braces chewing on a mouthful of thick brown bread. He looked at me witheringly and motioned for me to stay where I was. A little while later Mrs Ingle came to the back door – funny, recently our transactions had become more businesslike. She had stopped asking me about my parents; instead I would silently hand over the money and she would silently hand over the flask, we would exchange a knowing look and off I’d go.

      This particular morning was no different. I took the flask and put it into the little brown paper bag, just as I was ordered, and started to walk back home. When I reached the waste ground at Singleton Street there was a football match going on. I knew a bit about football, not much, just bits and pieces I’d picked up from my cousins. What I did know though was that if the bigger boys were playing I would have to walk around the pitch or risk a cuff around the ear from some twelve-year-old psychopath.

      Wisely, I started to walk around the makeshift pitch, skipping over the puddles that formed in the blast craters to make sure that I didn’t get my shoes wet. It was the last childish thing I would do because halfway around the pitch my life changed for ever.

      ‘Oi you, kid.’

      I turned around to see an enormous nine-year-old shouting at me. Chris Cockle, his name was, a boy with thick arms and legs and a head of dark wavy hair. He wore his grey V-neck jumper taut across his chest like chainmail. I knew Chris Cockle, everyone knew Chris Cockle. He was a fearless slayer of any beast that crossed his path.

      ‘What?’ I said, trying to sound somehow more confident than I actually was – a trait that has got me out of countless good hidings over the years.

      ‘Come on,’ said Cockle, ‘we’re a man short. Put your bag down by the goal, you can play for my team. You can play right-back. You can be Alf Ramsey.’

      ‘He can’t be Alf Ramsey. He’s just a kid, he’s rubbish.’ The dissenting voice was that of Charlie Scott, who was ten and had a dozen brothers and sisters who would hang around outside their house like cats. Chris Cockle wasn’t having that.

      ‘If he’s going to play right-back, he’s got to be Alf Ramsey.’

      I had no idea whatsoever what they were going on about. I had no idea what right-back meant, never mind the name of Tottenham and England’s Alf Ramsey. I assumed that Alf Ramsey was one of the other lads on his team. All I knew was that if Chris Cockle wanted me to play, then I had no choice – Mother would have to wait for her tonic. I put the bag down by the goalposts, which were made up of a mound of rocks on one side and a stick stuffed into a hole on the other, and strutted cautiously on to the pitch, which was marked by a series of jumpers and coats.

      This was serious. This was football and football is more serious than anything else.

      ‘Come on,’ said another gigantic boy. ‘Go and stand over there, we’re playing the lads from Manor Park. Don’t go near the ball unless I tell you, and if the ball comes to you just kick it to me. Alright? I’m Billy Wright, you’re Alf Ramsey.’

      Billy Wright! This was even more confusing, surely the lad who’d introduced himself as Billy Wright was, in fact, Ginger Henderson who lived behind the corner shop and whose dad had been killed in the war. I decided against saying anything.

      The game kicked off with the lads from Manor Park attempting to play a long diagonal ball out towards where I had been told to stand. Ginger Henderson (or Billy Wright) went to head it, I moved out of the way, Ginger missed the ball completely and the Manor Park left-wing was left with only the goalie, Lanky Johnson, to beat: thankfully, he put the ball wide of the pile of rocks.

      Ginger picked himself up, Lanky Johnson, or Bert Williams as he had taken to calling himself, gave him a bollocking, so Ginger gave me a similar bollocking and the game continued.

      This was football.

      There were goals and movement and swear words and arguments and kicks and shoves and I loved it all. Lads became spitting, snarling men imbued with a sense of purpose. I started to relax. I started to watch the ball and work out, instinctively, where it would go. I started to watch the movement of my teammates; I worked out that Chris Cockle was good because he was big and fast, but little Archie Stevenson who was sat in the middle of the park, just in front of the enormous water-filled bomb crater (If the ball goes in there, we restart with a drop ball, OK?), was by far the best player, as he could spray passes out to the right and left. On the right, was a little fat boy called Stanley Matthews who was quite good, but the tall gangly boy, called Tom Finney, on the left-hand side, was rubbish because the ball would just bounce off his legs.

      Impulsively,