Billy Elliot

by Melvin Burgess

  ‘Debbie!’ she yelled. ‘It’s Billy. Come and see to him, will you?’

  I followed her into the sitting room. I don’t think I’d been in a middle-class house before. It was funny. It was, like I say, not much bigger than ours and the furniture wasn’t any better either. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, antiques or something. But it was just normal stuff. Quite old. Tatty, really. I thought, Maybe it’s not so bloody marvellous being middle class after all.

  I sat down on the settee and in a bit Debbie came down and sat next to me. Her dad was sitting there hunched up in a chair with a drink in his mitt.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he went. ‘Everington’s little Gene Kelly, isn’t it? I’ve heard a lot about you. Your dad down the pit, is he?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Must be hard on the family being out on strike. He is out on strike, is he?’

  ‘Course,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry, son.’ He stuck his nose in his drink and swallowed a mouthful. ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘Long as it takes,’ I told him, and he glared at me.

  ‘Tom, be quiet,’ said Miss.

  ‘If they had a ballot they’d be back tomorrow. It’s just a few bloody commies stirring things up. Let’s face it, they don’t have a bloody leg to stand on. It stands to reason. Some pits just aren’t economical. If it costs more money to pay blokes like your dad to dig the stuff up out of the ground than you get when you sell it, well. What does that tell you?’

  I shrugged. I don’t know what he was so cross about. You’d’ve thought my dad was out on strike just to get him. What difference did it make to him anyhow? I suppose he thought that just because I liked ballet, that made me think like him. Well, it didn’t, did it?

  Miss came out of the kitchen and started setting the table. ‘Tom, don’t go on at him.’

  ‘Well, you wanna think about it, son. What sort of country is this going to be if people keep jobs that don’t make any money, eh?’

  ‘Tom!’

  ‘If it were up to me, I’d close the lot of them down tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, but it isn’t up to you,’ I said.

  ‘Now listen, son – ‘ he began, but Miss jumped in right off.

  ‘I said leave him be, Tom,’ she snapped. ‘He’s a guest here, not one of your friends down the pub.’

  ‘What do you do, Mr Wilkinson?’ I asked him.

  ‘He’s been made redundant,’ said Debbie, before he could get a word in.

  ‘Didn’t you go out on strike to save your job, then?’ I said and I swear, he blushed red like a little kid. I thought he was gonna jump up and lump me one. But he sat there scowling and frowning and he never said another word.

  I had dinner there. Later on, up in her room, Debbie told me all about her mam and dad. We were sitting next to each other on her bed, and she had this little doll sat on her lap she was playing with, and she told me everything. It was none of my business really. She said her dad drank too much. She said once, he drank so much he pissed himself in the armchair and they had to get a new cushion for it. She said he’d had an affair, and he was unhappy because Miss wouldn’t sleep with him.

  ‘They have separate beds and everything,’ she said.

  ‘Does she not like sex, like?’ I asked her.

  ‘I think she used to like it,’ Debbie said. ‘Don’t you miss your mam?’

  Well, but I didn’t want to tell her about my mam. I don’t think about her most of the time. Sometimes I forget that she’s dead. I go into the kitchen or one of the other rooms and I think she’s just gone out to the shops, or that she’s next door with my nan, or even once that she was bending down on the other side of the table picking something off the floor that had fallen down. But then she never stands up, and she never comes back from the shops, and when I go next door, my nan’s in there on her own. It seems impossible that my mam’s not there any more. Maybe that’s what she means in her letter, when she says she’s there for me for ever, even though she’s dead. Maybe she really is there all the time but I just can’t see her.

  But I never said any of that to Debbie. ‘So does your mam not have sex at all, then?’ I asked her.

  ‘No. She’s unfulfilled. That’s why she does dancing.’

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I said, ‘You mean she does dancing instead of sex? Your family’s weird!’ I always thought that if you were middle class and you had a mam and a dad and all, then that was all normal, like. But instead of that, here I was in a middle-class house and it was all completely weird.

  ‘No, they’re not,’ said Debbie. She put her doll down and shifted over closer to me. She was so close we were almost touching and it made me feel uncomfortable. I moved away slightly.

  ‘They are, though,’ I said. ‘They’re all mental.’

  She shuffled up closer again, so I bonked her on the head with a pillow. She ducked round to grab one and we had this great pillow fight, whacking each other with the pillows. I didn’t do it too hard, though. She was just a girl, I didn’t want to hurt her. I kept pushing her away and holding her wrists with one hand and bopping her with the other, and then I climbed on top of her and sat on her legs. She was screeching and giggling. And then, you know, while I was struggling for her hands, my hand brushed against her top and I felt her tits. I never realised she had tits yet, they were only small. It was a bit of a shock. I stopped and she stopped and we looked at each other. It felt funny, then, sitting on top of her. She reached up and stroked my face. It felt nice, she was very gentle but it was embarrassing because – you know – it made my willy go stiff.

  I got off.

  ‘See. You’re a nutter, you,’ I told her.

  She sat up and looked the other way. I didn’t know what to do. There was feathers floating on the air where the pillow had leaked. I wafted them at her so they landed on her jumper, and she sat there picking them off.

  ‘Debbie, it’s time for Billy to go home.’ It was Miss calling up the stairs. I jumped up. What would she say if she thought I’d been touching her daughter’s tits in her bedroom? Even though I never meant it.

  ‘Come on, Billy, I’ll give you a lift to the corner.’

  ‘See you, Debbie.’

  ‘Bye, Billy.’

  She sat there with her hands on her lap not looking at me as I walked out the door.

  Miss gave me a lift just round the corner from where I lived. She would’ve taken me all the way home but I didn’t want to get caught in her car. She pulled up on some waste ground near our house.

  ‘Right then,’ she said. I didn’t move, though. I just sat there for a bit. We hadn’t said anything about it, not really. She turned the car off, sighed, and took herself a fag out.

  ‘This’ll sound strange, Billy,’ she said. ‘But I was thinking of auditioning for the Royal Ballet School.’

  I thought, Jesus, she’s keen on that dancing then. I thought – I know this is stupid but it was just after that talk with Debbie, like – I thought it must be having no sex was making her want to do something stupid like that.

  ‘Aren’t you a bit old, miss?’ I asked her.

  She snorted. ‘Not me, Billy. You. I’m the teacher. Christ!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘They hold auditions in Newcastle,’ she said, and gave me a long look.

  Ballet school? Me? But that’d be ... something else. I mean, it was a hobby, that’s all. But if you went to a special school ...

  ‘Can you do it as a job, then, miss?’

  ‘Course you can. If you’re good enough.’

  ‘I’d never be good enough. I hardly know owt.’

  ‘Look.’ She twisted round in her seat to face me and blew a spurt of smoke over her shoulder. ‘Listen. They’re not interested in how much ballet you know. They teach you that. That’s why they’re a ballet school. It’s how you move, how you express yourself that’s important.’

  ‘Express what?’ I didn’t know what she meant. It’s just dancing, isn’t it?

  ‘I think
you’re good enough,’ she said. And that was the only time she ever told me I was any good. ‘It’d be an awful lot of work,’ she said.

  ‘I’m banned,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Aye, well. Maybe I should have a word with him.’

  ‘No!’ I almost jumped out of the seat. ‘Miss! Don’t.’

  ‘For god’s sake.’ She puffed away on her fag for a bit, then she said, ‘You know, I could teach you on your own if you want.’

  ‘I’ve got no money.’

  ‘I’m not doing it for the money,’ she snapped, as if I’d offended her.

  ‘But what about Dad?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to know, does he?’

  ‘What about me boxing and that?’ I wasn’t asking her just about the boxing, like. I wasn’t even allowed to do that any more. It was about ... being one of the lads. You know. Being a boy. That sort of thing.

  ‘For f***’s sake, Billy. If you want to piss around with your little mates, that’s fine by me. This is serious.’

  ‘All right, don’t lose your blob.’

  ‘Blob?’ she said, and we both laughed.

  I thought about it a bit. It was a bit much, wasn’t it? Doing things behind me dad’s back and that. Training to be a ballet dancer. But – wow! You know? That’d be summat, wouldn’t it?

  ‘So we could do it in private, like?’

  ‘Just you and me. No one else need know.’

  I dunno. Behind me dad’s back. And her doing dancing instead of sex, it was all a bit ...

  ‘Miss, you don’t fancy me or owt, do you?’

  She turned and stared at me in amazement. Then she looked furious. ‘No, Billy, I do not fancy you, strange to say. Now piss off, will you?’

  I stared at her. She was really cross. There was a long pause. She nodded at the door. ‘Go on, then,’ she told me.

  I thought, f*** it. What had I got to lose?

  ‘Piss off yourself,’ I said. Then I smiled at her, and she smiled back. I turned to get out of the car

  ‘See you Monday, then,’ she said. ‘Six o’clock at the Social Hall. I’ll be waiting.’

  I didn’t say yea or nay. I just stood there facing away from her with the door still open.

  ‘And bring something with you. Something personal. Anything you want. Something to give us an idea for the dance.’

  ‘What dance?’

  ‘Your audition dance, blockhead.’

  I shut the door and she drove off. I thought, What am I getting into? I still hadn’t got a clue if I was going to go there or not.

  The doorbell went and I sneaked to the bedroom window for a peek down. I was wearing a violet frock, a pair of tights, me mam’s red shoes and a little crocheted cardigan me sister used to wear. It looked outrageous. If it’d been anyone else down there I’d’ve pretended I was out.

  I thought, I’ll show him. I’ll show Billy Elliot. Well, he couldn’t say owt, could he? He’s the bloody ballet dancer, not me.

  I ran downstairs and opened the door and he nearly fell backwards off the step. Then he pushed me back in through the door before anyone saw.

  ‘What are you doing, man?’

  ‘Nothing, just dressing up,’ I said.

  ‘Whose dress is that?’

  ‘Me sister’s. Are you coming up or what?’

  He followed me up the stairs to Mam’s bedroom. ‘Eh, you,’ I told him. ‘Are you trying to look up my dress, you dirty little bugger?’

  ‘Get off. Has she given it to you?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. All right, man, it’s just a bit of fun. Look!’ I did a little swirl and curtsied. He was worrying me, he looked so scared. You know what I felt like doing? Just to scare him, like? I felt like running across and giving him a big kiss. That’d scare him half to death. Billy Elliot! What’s he got to talk about?

  ‘If you can prance about in ballet gear, I can wear me sister’s clothes, can’t I?’

  ‘I don’t prance about in ballet gear.’

  ‘What do you wear, then? Don’t you wear one of them tutus?’

  ‘No, you dope, they’re just for the girls.’

  ‘What do you wear then?’ I asked him.

  ‘Just me sports gear. My shorts and T-shirt and that.’

  ‘Really?’ I’d thought he must wear a tutu or something like it. But it was just his shorts and his T-shirt. I think, you know, if I’d known that I might not have let him see me wearing me sister’s gear. But it was too late now. I began to root about in the wardrobe for something that’d suit Billy. It’d be a right gas if I got him to dress up too.

  ‘What about this one?’ I pulled out a skirt, but he shook his head. ‘No? I suppose it’s not really your colour, is it?’

  ‘I don’t care whose colour it is, I’m not wearing a bloody skirt.’

  ‘I thought you’d like it.’

  ‘Just because I dance doesn’t mean to say I’m a poof, you poof.’

  ‘Just because I’m wearing me sister’s dress doesn’t make me one, either, you poof.’

  I said that just to stick up for meself, but to tell you truth I do wonder about myself sometimes. I mean, putting on my sister’s stuff, that’s just a gas. It doesn’t turn me on or owt. On the other hand ... well. I like Billy. I like it when he shows me his dance moves under the old bridge when we should be doing cross-country. I like it when he jumps and spins. I like it when he sits close and tells me his secrets and when we have little fights. So I do wonder about meself. But he doesn’t have to know that, does he?

  I put the skirt back and went over to me mam’s dressing table where the makeup was, and I dusted a bit of blusher onto me cheeks. I was doing it to tease him as much as anything.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ said Billy.

  ‘I’m just trying it on.’

  ‘Christ.’

  I smiled at him in the mirror and he smiled back. It was just a gas. I was a bit disappointed he didn’t want to join in, though.

  ‘Come here, you.’ I jumped up and grabbed him, shoved him back onto the bed.

  ‘Gerroff!’

  ‘Stay still!’

  He did as I said, and I started to put lipstick on him. It was funny – him sitting there holding his face up to me while I put it on. You know what? He looked good. It really changes your face, lipstick. I wonder that more men don’t do it. It’s quite fashionable nowadays to wear makeup. He had nice lips, Billy – a pretty bow on top. The colour suited him and all.

  ‘Won’t we get into trouble?’ he asked. He got up and looked in the mirror.

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Eh, Michael, look!’ He leaned forward and kissed the mirror. There was a lovely kiss shape on the glass. Billy leaned forward to have a better look.

  ‘Just like a girl’s kiss,’ he said.

  ‘Girls’ lips and boys’ lips are just the same,’ I told him.

  ‘Do you reckon?’

  I stared at the kiss. I wanted to kiss the kiss, but I didn’t. ‘It’s just the lipstick and stuff makes them look different.’

  ‘You’re weird. What if we get caught?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. My dad does it all the time.’

  It’s true. Well, not all the time, but I have seen him wearing makeup and putting me mam’s clothes on and stuff. There was no one else in the house, he thought I was out. He was just doing it to please himself, I reckon. If he did it once, I reckon he must do it all the time.

  ‘Really?’ Billy was amazed.

  ‘All the time,’ I told him. I just wanted him to know it was perfectly normal. I’ll bet everyone does it when they think no one’s looking. It’s fun.

  Billy sat down at the dressing table and looked at himself in the mirror.

  ‘Michael, do you think being a ballet dancer would be better than being a miner?’ he said.

  That was a tough one. ‘I dunno,’ I told him.

  ‘It’s just ... I’ve got this audition in Newcastle in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘
For to go to ballet school.’

  ‘Ballet school? In Newcastle?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘Would you have to go with your Tony and everybody?’

  ‘No, I’d have to go on me own.’

  ‘Eh, that’s a bit steep. Can’t you be a ballet dancer here, then?’

  ‘Divvint be stupid.’

  Aye. Ballet in Newcastle! No chance of that. You know, when he first started dancing he asked me to join in with him, but I said, No way! No way! Can you imagine it? You have to admire him, though. He’s always getting teased at school and that. Kids picking on him. But he was never scared of a fight, our Billy. Well, he’d never have stuck with the ballet if he was, would he, because he was bound to get one. Round here it’s about the quickest way of getting your face kicked in, I reckon.

  Look at me. I’d run a mile to get out of a fight, it’s a waste of time. But people are always picking on me anyhow. If there was something I could give up that would stop people picking on me, I’d do it. But there’s not. You can’t give up being just yourself. My dad always says that I’m different and I should be proud of it, but round here being different isn’t such a good thing at all. It’s a bloody problem. In infants I was always getting picked on. In primary I was always getting picked on. We’re going to be starting high school soon and I’m going to be picked on there and all, I bet you.

  But Billy’s always been a good friend to me. He never minded me being different. I don’t know why, I always thought he wasn’t at all different himself, he always seemed to be exactly the same as everyone else except that he stood up for me instead of picking on me. I always thought he could have got on with any of them, except for some reason he’d ended up with me, like a sort of accident. Like he’d made friends with me before he realised how weird I was and then just stuck with me. It always used to worry me that one day he’d realise I was all wrong and drop me, but he never did. And then he took up ballet and after that he was just as weird as I was, and I stopped worrying about it.

  And now here he was planning on going down to London to be a ballet dancer.

  ‘So when are you going?’ I asked him.

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t even got in yet. It might never happen.’