11.30am, The Prince of Wales, Billy (the third of the Billy stories)

 *

 

 *

 

"Hello, Schweppes Corporation -Hello, May I speak to John Fisher?"

 "John Fisher is in a meeting. Can I ask him to call you back?"

 It was 10.45, then 11.00, then 11.15. No call. 

 Enough: I put on my coat and started for the Prince of Wales.

 But as soon as I got outside it started to rain. Insane weather, so suddenly switching on like that, and so heavily wet. I ran to hide in my car.

 I sat in the Rover, smoking. An old friend: the seats of worn green leather creaked reassuringly in the same way every time I sat ; the instruments solid, designed to reassure. It had been inherited from an uncle who died when he was driving across the South Downs when he stopped and went under a tree to relieve himself and got struck by lightening along the stream of his urine. 

I drove the hundred yards to the Prince of Wales, pressing my face close to the windscreen to see, the rain so heavy, it was like sitting inside a drum. Thankfully, there was a space right outside the pub. The pub is cavernous, Victorian, and designed for the needs of hundreds of thirsty dockers. But the mechanisation of the port, and use of containers means that it rarely serves more than 20 people at any one. That’s fine by me.

 It has a giant, circular bar, so grand it dwarves the barman, a silent, pale, northern fellow . I guess he moved down here and just swallowed up by the giant sad bar, losing all colour.

 I entered: as always there below enormous plate windows seated on the maroon vinyl banquette, the elderly solitary drinker. I look across to him and nod: he raises his glass in his thin white arm. “Here’s to your lordship’s health!”

 There is a billiard table there. I like to play in the silence of the pub with the guys who hang about there. I am an excellent player and that secures me a place in The Prince of Wales socially. In any case, the players don’t talk. They just stand about sipping pints of beer and all you hear the resonant clink of the balls and the murmur of people at the bar, and occasionally the scrape of chalk on a board if they decide to keep a score, which isn’t often. It’s very satisfying and makes a gorgeous contrast to the brittle world of celphones and emails at the desk in my office.

Anyway, that’s where I met Billy.

 Billy was a scrawny dilapidated sort of guy who appeared here and there except when you might want him to. I never quite figured out what he did or why though. I never imagined for a second that it might be legal.

*

Illustration: a sly fellow, April 2021

 

*

Billy again

 *

 

The phone rang. I could see from the screen that it was Billy. Probably he wanted money. It was sure that he wanted something. 

 I opened the phone. "Billy, "what do you want?"

 It was necessary to sound harsh when answering the phone to Billy because it was sure he wanted something. Usually I felt guilty about that right afterwards. It was like shouting at a dog that has been sick on your carpet. 

 "I'm stuck", said Billy.

 "Stuck where?"

 "In a shed."

 Back then, I worked for myself in a room near the harbour on the 6th floor of an old warehouse a street back from the dock. From the window, across some corrogated concrete roofs you could just about see the cranes unloading giant containers which then were shunted into warehouse.But today it was quiet and there was no movement in the cranes I could see. Anyway, I went to this room which had a phone and a desk and an old computer and I 'phoned people and then wrote bits and pieces analysing marketing strategies.

 I affected scorn, but secretly, I was happy about Billy's interruption. No-one was returning my calls, and the article I was writing had an aimlessness to it that I didn't know how to overcome. 

The reason for being harsh to Billy which was that he never felt the least shame for bothering you. Or just maybe he detected that I secretly liked being distracted as I could then blame him for my low productivity: though more likely he didn't give a damn.

The shed was in a field. "You can't miss it," Billy had told me- which always means the contrary in my experience. The shed was somewhere on the north approach road. I knew that quite well, but there was a turn off at a farm, said Billy, which because a minor road. My old Rover chunted along happily and sure enough there was the turn off, and beyond it a copse, then some uneven fields Cattle grazed in one, in another some doleful crows pecked. It looked as if it might rain. 

 Then, said Billy, there were some giant hay barns, painted dark pink, and the shed was in an adjacent field. I stopped the car by the wooden gate. There was no one in sight. There was the shed, a wooden thing, the size the size of a car garage some hundred yards insode the field. What on earth was Billy doing there?

 I started across the field which was muddy with the hoofprints of cattle. The mud stuck and my feet got wet through my city shoes and I started to dislike Billy. He hadn't mentioned the mud.

 I reached the shed and shouted, "Billy, I'm here." 

"I'm stuck" replied Billy, "open the fucking door".

 There was the door, heavy and wooden. The door had a huge metal closer and the doorframe had a corresponding hoop so it could be locked with a padlock. There wasn't a padlock there, but someone had inserted a screwdriver in it. Billy had pushed against the door, but hadn't managed even to bend the screwdriver or buckle the latch. 

 "There's a screwdriver stuck in the padlock", I said.

 "Fuck," said Billy. 

"How long have you been in here, Billy?" 

"Open the fucking door"

 "Come on Billy, you've got to be polite if you want favours?"

 "Two hours" said Billy quietly. "open the door."

Billy didn't say anything as we drove back. There was a piece of straw in Billy's hair and his sweater was had some brown smears down the shoulder. He sulked as we made our way back through drizzle to the city. He wouldn't tell me why he was in the shed- probably he was looking for something to steal and the farmer saw him entering the barn.

He asked to be dropped at the bus station. I pulled into the concourse outside the bus station. 

"Can you lend me ten quid?" asked Billy, the straw trembling.

 I laughed.

 

 *

 Illustration: doodle, pen, paper, April 2021

*