Whatever Happened to Billy Parks. Gareth Roberts

am. I am Billy Parks.

      He doesn’t wait for any response, instead he starts to say things to me in a doctor-type of way, talking quickly in heavily accented English. I can’t understand him. What’s he going on about? He tells me something about some tests. Then something about my liver and only 15% of it working or perhaps he said 50%, I’m not sure. But they were going to clean it or something by giving me some medication.

      And how often do I drink?

      ‘Now and again,’ I say, then I try to smile at one of the nurses. ‘The crowd expects it,’ I add. But the nurse doesn’t appear to understand.

      Dr Aranthraman gives me a lecture about not drinking. I’ve heard it before.

      ‘Your liver is in a bad way,’ he tells me, ‘just one more drink could kill you.’ Then he tells me that he’s placed me on the waiting list for a transplant, but I won’t have one if I continue to drink alcohol. As he speaks I start to feel very tired: perhaps it’s his halitosis?

      ‘Do you have any questions?’ he asks me.

      ‘Has anyone been in to see me?’ I ask. The doctor’s lips thin and I see a nurse shake her head.

      When I wake up the third time, I am startled by the sight of Gerry Higgs sitting quietly in the corner seat of my room. What’s he doing here? I stare at him. He appears to be asleep, his hat on his knee and his head bowed. What the fuck is he doing in my room?

      I remember now, his question, and the park, and what was it he told me he was part of? The Institute or something, no, not the Institute, what was it? The Service. Yes that’s right, the Service.

      As I look at him, one of his manic eyes jerks open and stares at me, before the other one joins it. He smiles, like he’s played a really good joke.

      ‘Mr Higgs,’ I say. ‘I didn’t expect you to be here.’

      ‘All part of my work,’ he says, then quickly changes the subject before I can ask him what in the name of God he’s going on about. ‘So, what have the doctors said then?’ he asks.

      I shrug. ‘Oh it’s nothing, something about me liver not being too good,’ I say and I mutter something about a transplant, which gets me thinking that surely I should have some say about whether I actually want a transplant: I mean they just can’t haul out bits of you. Can they?

      ‘You don’t want to worry too much about what these doctors say, Billy,’ says Gerry Higgs, ‘half the time they’re more interested in their statistics: it looks good if they perform so-many operations and procedures and transplants.’

      He’s probably right.

      ‘You see, Billy,’ says Gerry Higgs, who’s now pulled his chair closer to my bed, ‘I need you fit and well.’

      What? I find myself smirking at the incredulity of this. ‘Why’s that, Mr Higgs, does that Russian bloke want to sign me for Chelsea?’

      I watch Gerry Higgs’s face crease up scornfully as I mention Roman Whatshisname from Chelsea. ‘Don’t talk to me about that gangster,’ he says. ‘No, Billy, I’m talking about proper footballing men, geniuses.’

      Now, for the first time, it crosses my mind that Gerry Higgs might actually be a few players short of a full team.

      ‘Gerry,’ I say. ‘Mr Higgs, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

      He leans in towards me, his face close to mine. I can see the hairs that explode from his veined nostrils and the blood pumping to the pupils in his eyes.

      ‘The Council of Football Immortals, Billy,’ he whispers, giving each of the words the heavy weighty air of importance.

      ‘Who?’

      ‘The Council of Football Immortals,’ he repeats putting his face even closer to mine. ‘The greatest footballing minds that ever lived.’

      His lips wobbled as he spoke and spit flew out indiscriminately. He is definitely mad, and if it is his intention to scare me, then he has succeeded, because I’m shitting myself. I consider pushing the red ‘help’ button by the side of the bed.

      ‘That’s why I asked you the question I did, Billy,’ he says, and he asks it again, though this time in a rather sinister rasping whisper. ‘What would you give to have the chance to turn the clock back and put a few things right?’

      No words come to me, instead I move myself as far away from him as I can. Our eyes meet and we stare at each other. Then he breaks off and turns his face away from me.

      ‘That’s why I asked about your daughter, Billy. You see I know that you and her have,’ he paused now, searching for the right words, ‘got a few issues to settle.’

      My daughter. He’s right. My little girl. As soon as he says it, the image of her and her boy, my grandson, Liam, forms in my mind. He’s right. But I don’t want him to be right. I want to tell him that he’s talking bollocks and that everything between us is tickety-fucking-boo, but before I can say a word in response, he’s waving his craggy finger at me: ‘Don’t worry about it, Billy, I understand, old son, it’s not just your fault. But we can help you to sort it all out.’

      ‘We?’

      ‘The Service.’

      Oh, Christ, there it is again, that word ‘Service’. Just the mention of it makes me swoon and slip down my pillows. He watches me, and I wonder what he’s going to do next. To my surprise, he taps me gently on the hand.

      ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he says, still tapping, ‘I’ll leave you now to get some rest; the Council haven’t formally called you up yet, so we’ve got a few days, but I’ll be in touch when I know a bit more. Who knows, they might let you sit in on one of their sessions before you go before them.’

      With that he stood up and was gone.

       4

       Billy Parks’s mum, smells of bubble-gum, Billy Parks’s mum, smells of bubble-gum.

      The three bastards had been keeping their chant up all the way home. Bastards: Eddie Haydon, grinning and gurning like a melon; Pete Langton, shouting at the top of his newly developed, but still squeaky voice; and Larry McNeil, the biggest bastard of the lot, defying me to turn around and confront them so that they could give me a right good pasting.

      I’d been in secondary school for a week: St Agnes School for ruffians, rogues and arseholes. Each day, for some reason, these three had decided to follow me home goading me with their chant. I knew that their words had nothing to do with bubble-gum; this was their assertion that my mother had cavorted with a Yank during the war: it was a suggestion that I was the illegitimate child of an American soldier. A suggestion made solely on the basis that I didn’t have a dad. The morons – I mean I wasn’t even a war baby, I was born in 1948, three years after the Yanks had either gone home or been blown to high heaven in Normandy. Historical detail, though, meant nothing to Larry McNeil and his cronies. I was small, with no dad and that made me an easy target.

      ‘Hey, Parksy,’ one of them shouted, ‘was your dad Frank Sinatra?’ They laughed as though this is the funniest thing any of them have ever heard. ‘Or was he John Wayne?’ said another joining in a thread of mindless abuse that could have gone on for some time had they actually known the names of any more Americans. ‘Perhaps he was a nigger,’ said one of them. I turned to confront them, my teeth clasped together and my fists tight like rocks by my side. Straight away their laughing stopped and they hardened their own stance. ‘Come on then, Billy,’ said McNeil. ‘Come on if you’re going to fight us.’

      I was outnumbered. I was not a fighter. I wanted to protect the honour of my unhappy mother and poor bastard father who went to Burma to mend tanks for these little arseholes and who ended up in the canal – but I couldn’t.