Billy Rags

by Ted Lewis

  I carried on until I came to the phone box. I went in and rang the operator and asked her what I should dial for the time and she said such and such a number but she could give me the time herself, should she do that? Well it was just coming up to twenty-five to eight. I thanked her and put the receiver down. Twenty-five to eight. Twenty-five minutes.

  They’d be here in twenty-five minutes.

  I opened the door and went outside and sat down on the low wall next to the box. About two hundred yards away to my left was the main road. Dual-carriageway. Traffic already zooming up and down it, the morning sunlight flashing on the racing paintwork. That was the way they’d be coming. A right turn, a U-turn, the door would open, and there’d I’d be, sinking in warm upholstery, a steady seventy under the morning sun.

  The street was still empty. The man with the Hillman must have been the only early starter. It would be after eight o’clock before they all started making it for wherever they spent their eight hours a day. But still I was taking a risk by sitting there. My euphoria was making me careless. The milkman hadn’t sorted me but it was the kind of street that wouldn’t be keen on a tramp taking up residence outside the telephone box. A nose between the lace curtains and a quick phone call to the local nick would be enough to put the damper on things. So I got back in the phone box and watched for the Rover.

  I calculated the time to be five or ten minutes past eight. People had started to leave their houses, walking or driving, on their way to work. One or two kids were amongst them, uniforms buttoned, satchels swinging, eager for the new day.

  It must be quarter past eight now, I thought.

  A big car turned into the street off the main road. My heart leapt. The car was white. The right colour. I peered through the dirty panes. Yes. The right colour. But the wrong car. A Triumph. It purred past the kiosk and disappeared down the street.

  Never mind. What’s quarter of an hour? Jesus, if they’re here before half past eight I should think myself lucky. Anything could happen. Traffic bottlenecks. Slow service at petrol stations. Anything.

  More time passed. Clouds drifted across the face of the sun. The street became grey again. Gone half-past now, I thought. Must be gone half-past.

  Another car came in off the dual-carriageway. It was white. I could see that much. And the right size. But this time I waited. The car got closer. A Rover. Yes, it was. A bloody beautiful Rover. I pushed open the kiosk door and ran to the edge of the kerb. The Rover was fifty yards away. It began to slow down. They’d seen me. This was it.

  But the Rover didn’t keep on coming. Instead the car turned left into one of the side streets. All that was left in the street was the echo of the Rover’s engine. Then nothing.

  I felt sick. This time I’d been sure. I stood there on the edge of the pavement staring at the spot where the Rover had turned off. Then I heard footsteps approaching along the pavement. I tinned my head in the direction of the sound. A schoolgirl. About twelve years old. Staring hard at me, almost faltering in her step, wondering whether or not it was safe to pass by. Her parents had done their job well. I turned away again. The footsteps quickened and then she passed me. I watched her as she walked away. She didn’t look back.

  I went back into the kiosk. More and more children appeared. I watched them go by, trying to keep the panic from rising too far up my chest. After a time there were no more children. The street was empty again. Nine o’clock. It must be nine o’clock, I thought. An hour. Where were they?

  Then the phone rang. The sound screamed up and down my nervous system and I whirled round and scrabbled the receiver off its hook.

  “It’s me.”

  Sheila’s voice, crackly and distant.

  “What’s happened?”

  My own voice sounded high and twisted.

  “They won’t be there.”

  I stared into the reflection of my eyes in the kiosk mirror.

  “They won’t be here?”

  “The car broke down. Miles from anywhere, on the way up. Ronnie had to phone a mate to fetch them back.”

  “Why didn’t he come up with him?” I said, already knowing the answer, just letting the panic operate my mouth.

  “How could they? The other feller wasn’t in it.”

  “Why didn’t you come up on the train with clothes and money?”

  “Billy, don’t be a damn fool, you know . . .”

  “All right, all right. So what’s happening. What the Christ is Ronnie doing?”

  “He’s fixing somebody else. He has to be careful. He can’t risk it again himself so he’s got to spot someone safe.”

  “So what about me? I’ve got to be bleeding careful too, haven’t I? I’ve . . .”

  “Billy, listen. I’m seeing Ronnie at one o’clock. He’ll have fixed it by then. I’ll have to phone you after that.”

  “Just like that. Listen. I wouldn’t be risking hanging round this box if I hadn’t . . .”

  “Billy, be careful. Don’t blow it now. Not now. Phone me back. That’s all you can do.”

  I couldn’t say anything else. I put the phone down in the middle of something Sheila was saying. I closed my eyes and leant against the door. I felt terrible. I’d geared myself up to being collected at eight o’clock, to getting in the car, to eating, to changing. Now I had to wait till two o’clock to find out what was going to happen. I might not even have someone come for me for a couple of days. Christ. And now I had to start the discipline all over again. I had to keep myself together till two o’clock. And then till God knew how long after that. I’d sustained myself for the last twelve hours on the thought of that lifeboat travelling up from London. Now I had to start all over again and it was an adjustment I couldn’t take. The thought of it utterly demoralised me. I felt beaten, and I began to treat my depression with the balm of self-pity. For the first time I began to think I might fail.

  The kiosk door opened a little against my weight. I pushed the door the rest of the way open and walked out. For a moment or two, I just stood there, staring down the empty road towards the dual-carriageway. Then across the road a front door opened and a woman appeared. She was carrying a shopping bag. Her actions were quite normal until she reached her front gate and noticed me. Then she slowed down and gave me a long look. She took her time opening and closing the gate. Her eyes were on me all the time. Even as she walked away she kept looking back over her shoulder at me.

  I had to pull myself together. I’d allowed myself to take too many risks because the thought of the Rover speeding up to get me had made any thoughts of danger seem trivial. But now I was down to earth. I was a million miles from home and I had to be careful. Again.

  I hurried down the road and turned right, back towards the edge of the estate, towards the railway. I had to find somewhere to lie low until two o’clock. On the wasteland to my right there was a row of three hoardings. Nothing behind them except more wasteland and beyond that fields and a few houses. I crossed over and made for the hoardings. One of them was advertising Skol Lager. A picture of a great big glass full of translucent yellow liquid and the glass dripping with ice-cold perspiration. I remembered the swig of lemonade I’d had in the garage.

  I rounded the hoarding and squatted down in the damp grass. At first I closed my eyes and tried to get sleep to blot out my depression but sleep wouldn’t come. The thought that I might fail kept dragging across my brain.

  For the first time I began to feel really thirsty. No hunger, just thirst. I kept thinking about that big yellow glass of lager on the other side of the hoarding. I wanted to get up and walk round and have a look at it, as if just staring at it would make me feel better. The thirst was so bad I was beginning to feel light-headed like a man in the desert with his mirage of a palm-shaded waterhole.

  Then, a long way away, I heard a clock strike. Ten o’clock. Four more hours. But
at least I’d know when to move for Sheila’s call. That made me feel a little better. But not much. My skin had begun to obsess me. I felt like an alcoholic with withdrawal symptoms: every inch of my skin was crawling and I couldn’t stop scratching. I’d scratch in one place and get blessed relief only to have to move on to the next area in a never-ending process.

  Then the rain started again. This time a fine drizzle, as depressing as the view across the dead wasteland. The whole world seemed damp and dead and motionless.

  The far-away clock struck a quarter to two. I stood up and peered round the edge of the hoarding. There was no one about so I walked over to the road and made for the phone box. As I got close to it I tried to fight the uncontrollable hope that was welling up inside me. I had to keep that down in case Sheila’s news was bad. My system couldn’t have taken another bashing.

  I got in the phone box and waited. Half an hour went by. Maybe I’d got the time wrong. Maybe she’d phoned just before I’d got to the box. But if that was so, she’d keep ringing wouldn’t she? I picked up the phone and got the operator to dial Sheila’s number. No reply. Maybe she was still with Ronnie. Ronnie could be having trouble fixing things up and that’s why she wasn’t back. Or she could have been picked up. The Filth could have sussed out the new flat. They’d never be able to hold her, but they just might play awkward to make things difficult for any arrangements we were making. Anything could have happened.

  I leant on the metal directory holders and looked out at the drizzle. The box was warm from my body heat. I began to feel drowsy. I wanted to sleep. Maybe when I woke up I’d find it was all a bad dream, and in fact I was lying next to Sheila between clean sheets.

  There was a rat-a-tat on one of the glass panels. I jerked upright. A woman, waiting to use the phone. I pushed the door open and stumbled out, saying something about being sorry, waiting for a call, and the woman glared at me and frowned as the warm smell from the kiosk hit her. But I was too numb either to react to her or to worry about any consequences there might be. I just sat on the wall and stared at the houses opposite and waited for her to come out again.

  She didn’t take long. The door swung open and she bustled out, pulling on her gloves and giving me all the contempt she could muster. I avoided her gaze and stood up and went back into the box. Now there was a faint female smell mixed in with my own, a pleasant furry glovey silky smell that made me feel nostalgic for a past experience I couldn’t quite define.

  And still there was no phone call. After about an hour I phoned again. No answer. I began to sink into a maudlin apathy. The whole thing was becoming too much of an effort. I had a pain in my chest and my breathing was becoming shallow and rasping. The warmth of the kiosk was hatching out all kinds of wishful thinking in my passive brain. One idea that kept drifting in and out of my mind was to get myself committed to hospital. At one point this really became a very attractive proposition. A nice crisp clean bed and something to drink. Some hot soup, say. Tomato soup. That would be fantastic. Hot tomato soup. I rationalised it by telling myself that they wouldn’t check me out, but really it wasn’t a rationalisation at all, just an example of the weakness that had crept into my brain.

  Children began to pass the kiosk on their way home from school. The chest pain was getting worse. Breathing was very difficult now. Purely psychological, I thought. A way out of the impasse. A way of excusing myself if I failed. I could say that I couldn’t go on, my chest was too bad, I had to give in, how could I go on? If I hadn’t gone to the hospital, well . . .

  More time passed and the decision to risk the hospital got stronger and stronger. A couple more people arrived to use the phone and each time I left the box I almost kept on walking, but out in the cold drizzle my thoughts would take a reverse. The phone box was my life line, my oxygen mask. Outside the box, all I wanted to do was to get back into the warm, near to the phone.

  When the street lights came on I tried to get Sheila again.

  This time she was there.

  “Where were you?” I said.

  “Ronnie’s had problems.”

  “I’ve been here all the time, waiting . . .”

  “I phoned twice. The line was engaged. Listen . . .”

  “I just . . .”

  “Listen. They’ll be there at eight. Eight o’clock. They’ve got everything you need.”

  Outside on the pavement there was a young fellow waiting to use the box, looking in at me.

  “They’re on their way?”

  “Yes. They’re in a red Morris Oxford. One of them will be wearing a sheepskin jacket. Are you listening, Billy?”

  The young fellow on the pavement kept looking at me.

  “I’m listening.”

  “They’ll stop by the box and the one in the sheepskin will get out and go into the box. They’ll do this every quarter of an hour until nine. Right? Then they’ll go. They’ll have to go at nine. So you’ve got to be there.”

  I don’t care what main-liners say about the heroin racing through their bloodstream or what women say about having a baby, this news was the complete ecstatic experience. They were on their way. The weight of the last few hours fell away from me. I was alive again. The transfusion was working.

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  “They can’t wait after nine.”

  “I know,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there.”

  I put the receiver back on its cradle. This time the face in the mirror was smiling.

  I pushed open the door. The man who’d been waiting had gone. I didn’t look to see where to. All I could think of was the phone call. This time I knew I’d be all right. It had that feel to it. Adrenalin pumped my elated thoughts through my brain as I strode back towards my hoarding. Just a couple of hours. Nothing. A couple of hours meant nothing. Not now. I was breathing properly now and I could smile at the pathetic defeatism of the hospital idea. I knew that even if the car never showed I would be able to adapt accordingly. The spell was broken. My strength and self-reliance had returned and I was determined not to rely on anything but my own abilities again.

  I began to cross the road to the turning that led to the hoarding. Three men stepped out of the darkness of the turning. One of them was the guy from outside the phone box. There was no mistaking who they were. The Filth. The elation I’d got from the phone call had furred up my other faculties. I should have tagged the rozzer outside the kiosk as soon as I’d seen him, no trouble. But I knew I had no worries. They were as surprised to see me as I was to see them. They’d probably been called out on a routine check because somebody had phoned in to say they’d seen a tramp hanging round the phone box obviously up to no good. And so the Filth had come out, just in case, but not really expecting to come up with Billy Cracken, so they’d only sent them three-handed. And when the young rozzer had copped for who the tramp actually was, they’d got no choice but to come at me before I cleared off, while the uniform in the car radioed in and upset half the dinners in the town.

  I stopped walking. They stopped as well. There was about twelve feet between us. The soft drizzle was still falling. Behind me, at the far end of the road, the traffic swished by on the dual-carriageway.

  The young rozzer was the one to speak.

  “Can we have a word with you, sir?”

  You really had to hand it to them. Faced with Billy Cracken, a twenty-five year man, they still kept themselves covered. They still gave you the “sir.”

  One of the other rozzers had been staring at me particularly closely. Eventually he gave the nod and said: “That’s him.”

  They began to walk forward again. They moved with a controlled casualness, as if they weren’t really closing in on Billy Cracken, as if there wasn’t going to be any trouble at all.

  There wasn’t.

  I let them get to within six feet of me. Then I took off. Strai
ght down the road towards the dual-carriageway, the wind roaring in my ears, the rain flicking in my face, coat flying, my face grinning a wild grin that described my feeling, my knowledge that nobody was going to take Billy Cracken.

  Fighting with the wind in my ears was the voices of the rozzers, calling for me to stop, and I thought, Silly bastards, of course I’ll stop, I never realised that you wanted me to stop, or else I wouldn’t have taken off in the first place.

  As I neared the dual-carriageway I checked the traffic as I ran and I gauged that if I kept running straight on, straight across the opposing flows of traffic I’d get over without being run over. Which I did. Cars braked and swerved but I made it. I glanced behind me and saw two of the rozzers hesitating while the traffic dispersed. The other rozzer must have been beating back to the squad car. On my side of the dual-carriageway was a low slatted fence, the perimeter of one of those multi-purpose school playing fields with a dozen football pitches crammed end to end and side by side. I clambered over the fence and took off into the flat darkness. Eventually I reached a concrete playground and beyond the playground there was a bicycle shed and behind the shed another fence. I went over this fence and I was in allotments again, but this time they were the real thing with sheds and neatly dug vegetable patches and the rusty paraphernalia of the suburban gardener. I paused for a moment. I couldn’t see the rozzers against the lights from the dual-carriageway but that didn’t mean to say that they weren’t there, beating across the field after me. I took off again. Over another fence into a street of small flat-fronted terraced houses. I kept going. This street would be alive any minute now. Patrol cars would be screaming on their way. I turned right as soon as I could, into another street with the same kind of houses. Then I turned off left and then right until I was a good three or four streets away from the allot-ments. But I couldn’t just keep on running. I’d be picked up in no time. I had to find somewhere to hide. But whatever I found was bound to be chancy, especially if they did a house to house. But there was no choice. I was finished if I stayed on the streets.