Whatever Happened to Billy Parks. Gareth Roberts

It just seemed the most natural thing for me to do, as though it was where I belonged; I wanted the ball, I wanted to play football, I wanted to kick it, I wanted to be part of this, to feel the rush of scoring a goal, a prospect that caused a pounding of excitement that I had never felt before. Now, playing football, I was alive.

      And then it happened. I scored my first goal.

      Stanley Matthews, who I would later come to know and adore as Johnny Smith (oh poor, lost Johnny, Johnny Smith), cut in from the right and tried to swing over a cross for Chris Cockle: Chris jumped marginally early and the ball glanced off his bouncy brown hair across the face of the goal towards me. It dropped perfectly. I controlled it – alright, not particularly elegantly with my knee (my beautiful close control would come later) – and then instinctively, without considering anything, without a conscious thought in my little mind, found that my body had naturally formed itself into a position to shoot at the goal.

      ‘Shoot!’

      I shot. With all my tiny six-year-old frame behind it, I shot and the ball headed towards the piece of rusty iron railing that was the near post of the Manor Park goal. Then, with the assistance of the uneven pitch the ball bounced over the goalkeeper’s leg (if he had dived with his hands he would have prevented my first ever goal, but such are the vagaries of sport) and inside the near post.

      Goal. Goal. My first goal. My first bloody goal.

      I felt my body and mind surge with the glorious fresh air of life. My face beamed triumphantly for the first time. Chris Cockle came over and ruffled my hair. ‘Well done, son,’ he said. ‘What’s your name again?’

      ‘Billy Parks,’ I said and Chris Cockle smiled at me: ‘Well done, Parksy,’ he said, then turned to the opposition with a bellowing, captain’s roar: ‘That’s eight all. Next goal the winner.’

      Next goal the winner. Next goal was a cause of problems and strife.

      As I chased everything on the pitch, and some of the lads started to feel a bit tired, our team became vulnerable to a break-away attack. The Manor Park centre-half, Lennie Hansen, kicked long, Ginger didn’t deal with it and the Manor Park striker, a talented little lad called Spider, who was later destined to drown in an accident involving an old well, nipped in and steered the ball past Lanky Johnson. The ball clipped the piece of wood knocking it over on to the paper bag that contained Mother’s tonic.

      All hell broke loose. As Spider reeled off in celebration, Chris Cockle, Ginger Henderson and Charlie Scott declared that it wasn’t a goal as it had hit the post. Lennie Hansen wasn’t having this and he and a couple of the other Manor Park lads squared up to them.

      As Chris and Lennie, now reinforced by most of the other players, exchanged blows, I ran over to my brown paper bag and surveyed the damage: the flask had smashed and the tonic had seeped out emitting a pungent oily smell. I put my hands up to my head. This was bad.

      I walked home. I knew that the broken flask was a tragedy. I knew I had to think of a good lie, a good story, but all I could think about was my goal. How the ball had left my foot and how the other boys had shouted ‘Shoot!’ and I had smashed it into the near post, and how everyone had smiled at me, and how Chris Cockle had ruffled my hair and asked my name and christened me Parksy. This was what life was about. This was an elevation above and beyond the mere existence of my usual days. This was living.

      But the flask was still smashed. The goal couldn’t mend that.

      Back at home Carol was waiting for me. Her face swollen with tears and rage.

      ‘Where have you been, you idiot? Mum’s been waiting for you all morning. You know you’re supposed to come straight back from Mrs Ingle’s. Where have you been?’

      ‘I’ve been playing football,’ was all that I could muster.

      She screamed at me, ‘Football? Football? Who cares about bloody football?’ She paused, then seethed through gritted teeth, ‘Just give me the bottle.’

      She held her hand out and my head dropped.

      ‘It got broken. It was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen,’ I was mumbling.

      Carol started screaming at me again.

      My mother appeared at the bottom of the stairs: her face was lined and taut and anxious. ‘Where’s the bottle from Mrs Ingle’s, Billy?’

      ‘He’s broken it, Mum,’ my sister squealed. ‘He’s been playing football.’

      I saw my mother’s face break into a desperate ugly rage, and she advanced on me and rained down blows on my head and back in syncopated rhythm as she scolded me.

      ‘You silly, silly boy. I-only-asked-you-to-do-one-thing. You silly, silly boy.’

      As the force of the blows diminished, I looked up, my own face now a mass of rushing tears, and I could see through the kitchen the back of Father’s head tilted upwards, looking, as ever, towards the heavens.

      ‘Dad,’ I shouted through sobs. ‘Dad, I scored a goal. You should have seen my goal. Stanley Matthews crossed it and I smashed it into the net.’

      Father didn’t turn around.

      A few weeks later they fished him out of the canal.

       Details: Match 1, March 1955

       Venue: The Waste Ground by Singleton Street

       Chris Cockle’s XI 8 v. Lads from Manor Park 8

       (Match abandoned after brawl erupts following Eddie ‘Spider’ Linton’s controversial disputed winner)

      Line up: Lanky Johnson (Bert Williams), Billy Parks (Alf Ramsey), Tommy Weston (Bill Eckersley), Ginger Henderson (Billy Wright), Topper Winters (Jimmy Dickinson), An Other (some lad with glasses who was never seen again), Archie Stevenson (Alfredo Di Stefano), Peter Scott (Wilf Mannion), Johnny Smith (Stanley Matthews), Chris Cockle (Ferenc Puskas though changed to Nat Lofthouse shortly after half-time), Brownie Brown (Tom Finney)

      Sadly, other than Lenny Hansen and Eddie ‘Spider’ Linton, the Manor Park line up has been lost in time.

      Attendance: 6 (including Charlie Scott’s little sisters and a policeman who arrived to break up the fight)

       3

      The first thing I see is the drip. I know it’s a drip and that must mean that I’m in a hospital. But I can’t for the life of me think why? The last thing I remember is looking at the grass on Southwark Park. What was it about the grass?

      I look at the drip and see a little blurry bubble – which may be a droplet of my blood – make its way down the drip-line towards the needle that leads, via a vein in my hand, to me.

      I’m uncomfortable: I’ve been sleeping at a weird angle with my neck turned sideways in a different direction to the rest of me.

      I turn my neck – that’s better, that’s comfy. My eyes close again and I give a warm welcome to the wondrous feeling of sleep without giving any more thought to where I am or why, or the drip that’s happily filling me with some kind of liquid.

      Funny how sleep can do that.

      The next time I wake up there’s a doctor staring down at me; a smiling Asian fella, who’s close enough for me to taste the cheese-and-onion butty he’s had from the canteen. Behind him are two nurses; one of them is looking at a clipboard and nodding at something the doctor is saying, the other one is smiling at me like I’m some kind of half-wit.

      ‘Ah, hello, Mr Parks,’ says the doctor. ‘Nice to have you back in the land of the living. How are you feeling?’

      ‘I’m fine,’ I say, and instantly try to get up on my elbow. One of the nurses