Reluctant Hero. John Hickman

and disjointed, he wondered what joints might be broken. He had more discolouration than if he’d been wrapped in cases of fruit fallen off a lorry. His knee cap swelled-up and swirling purple galaxies of blue-black bruises spread across his entire back, which he kept hidden. His damaged hand was twice its normal size and throbbed like hell. As he limped about his breathing was ragged; word was he passed blood in his urine for days.

      When he was asked what had happened to him, Alf evoked the Notting Hill code of silence. No one suspected Bill. Everyone thought Alf’s comeuppance was from bigger boys he’d upset. After much shaking of heads the matter quickly became old news.

      From then on Bill changed. He became more confident and strutted around like a cock in a henhouse but always with his comforter, the bat. When Alf’s crew were nearby he turned and faced them. Bat high in the air ready to strike without taking his eyes off theirs. But as predicted, Alf and his mates gave Bill a wide berth and left him alone.

      ‘For Christ’s sake leave him be,’ Alf told his cronies. ‘If yer don’t, he’ll come up behind yer with that bloody bat in his hand.’

      ‘He’s not that big. We could always take his bat from him, again,’ suggested Stan.

      ‘Fuck no! Without his bat he might use something worse,’ said Jack. ‘Like a claw hammer.’

      ‘Just leave him alone,’ groaned Alf.

      The tables had turned and Bill savoured his hold over them. Their talk near Bill was conducted in knowing nods and shrugs and whenever they could they avoided him.

      Bill became cocky and baited them.

      ‘Come on then you arseholes. Let’s see how tough you are now. Weekend warriors are yer? I dare yer. Try to take me bat and I’ll fuckin’ kill yer with it!’

      ‘Fuck-off, Billy boy,’ Stan said nervously, ‘we’ve got no fight with you.’

      Bill continued to provoke them. ‘Love me or hate me, yer bastards. But yer can’t ignore me! If yer do, I’ll have yer.’

      And Bill, without any provocation, would wade into them with his bat, scattering them and causing those big bully-boys to back-off and run away.

      Like kicked mongrel dogs they looked for easier prey to intimidate. They never messed with Bill again.

      Lily was supportive. ‘Whoever Alf’s God is in his mercy, He might forgive him for your missing teeth,’ she sniffed. ‘But I never will.’

      ‘Thing is, Dad, when the worst of the damage was being done to him, it didn’t sound that bad.’

      ‘I told you, Son. Sometimes it’s more blessed to give than receive,’ smirked Fred.

      CHAPTER 3

       CUT-THROAT 1937 TO 1939

      Bill did what was expected of him and left school at fourteen.

      ‘It’s all to do with combinations of seven, Son,’ Fred beamed. ‘At seven you’re a child. Fourteen is twice seven. Time to move on. Most men marry and have kids by twenty-one. That’s three times seven. You’re back’s buggered by fifty-six, that’s eight times seven. And you’ll be pushing up daisies by seventy.’

      ‘Ten times seven,’ laughed Bill.

      Bill craved to be successful but didn’t know how. He wanted to belong, to fit in, but for him that became a worry. In his topsy-turvy way, he felt sure to remain in Notting Hill, meant he had to stagnate. And that he refused to do. His emerging competitive nature became stonewalled. He felt lost, up against formidable odds, while his parents worked as hard as ever to pay rent and provide food on their table.

      ‘What I can’t stomach, Mum, is hypocrisy, idleness or fraud,’ raged Bill.

      ‘No, Son. You tell them!’ You’re dumber than a bag of wet mice, she thought.

      But Bill had decided he didn’t want to be part of life in Notting Hill. His problem was how to achieve it. If only it could be as easy as when Alice in Wonderland followed the rabbit. He was about to exercise an exceptional will to improve and get out of the slums, to find something better.

      ‘It’s not only the greyness and the drizzle of the weather depresses me, Dad.’

      ‘You can’t escape that, Son. Not even your Uncle Charlie does that by living in a posh suburb.’

      ‘It’s the greyness of the people, Dad. They look unwashed.’

      ‘Working class coarseness, yer mean. We’re not good enough for yer, Son?’

      ‘It’s not that. What’s happened to all the greenery and trees we only seem to see in picture books? Why in the parks are we forbidden to walk on the grass?’

      A lack of answers and the deafening sound of silence, threatened to capsize Bill.

      ‘I’m dragging myself up by my bootstraps,’ announced Bill. That was how he liked to explain his slow progress. It was an exceptional attitude for a man so young.

      He begged Uncle Charlie for an opportunity in his betting business but was turned down flat. ‘It’s a risky business, Bill. Up one day, down the next. I’ll be getting out soon myself, with a bit of luck before I lose everything. I’m doing you a favour, Son, I really am, by not taking you in.’

      Bill was devastated. He’d thought fish might fly before his Uncle Charlie turned against him. A major escape door had closed in his face. Rejection by his uncle was a new experience for Bill and the hurt cut him deeply. *1st Footnote

      Short on qualifications Bill decided to become an apprentice of something. He chose a manufacturing jeweller in Portobello Road. They used concepts of basic arithmetic. Unlikely to induce any awful recurring headaches, thought Bill.

      ‘Bill’s got it made, Girl.’

      They were sure he had, until a critical day when Bill used cyanide to clean gold unsupervised. Without thought he placed his tobacco pipe down on the workbench. Its stem, the part he put into his mouth, had come into contact with the smallest trace of deadly poison and he almost died.

      Bill came to, dizzy and disorientated. His mind clouded with half-forgotten names of long dead relatives. He’d been laid-out on the floor amid spinning rooms and nausea for several minutes. When he recovered, he was wiser and none the worse for the experience but hungry to learn.

      There were clouded hints of self-improvement without support of his under-arm symbol—the bat. He continued to educate himself. The flame to learn burned brightly but only one flaw could be improved at a time. The opportunity of going back to full-time school was rarer than wedding tackle on an action man.

      At sixteen Bill had health issues; awful abdominal pains. Doctors misdiagnosed he’d poisoned himself at work then realised he had appendicitis. An appendix operation was major surgery in 1939. Bill was lucky to survive.

      After convalescence he reviewed his dental plan. He acquired false upper and lower dentures. It was a big improvement at meal times but when he whistled, it was never quite the same tune.

      New teeth or not he felt cursed with a natural pessimism, which he blamed on being born in the slums. This became his Achilles heel. Disillusioned by what he perceived as dread came upon him in waves, similar to grief. He feared mediocrity, which threatened to overwhelm him. Scared of sliding into obscurity in Notting Hill, Bill couldn’t wait to plan his great escape. But how could he make it happen? As he pondered he became more aware of his every failure. He saw clear contrasts between the brightness of his dreams and the utter botch-up of their carry through. But this was to become an even greater recipe for deep despair.

      At home Lily and Fred never talked about what interested Bill. He became a loner. He took long walks unaccompanied and became an avid reader. Technology, high-class fashion magazines, diets and clothes fascinated Bill. That better educated people tried to lose weight intrigued him. His mum Lily could have benefited from losing