The Boyhood of Burglar Bill (2 page)

‘Oh, well he’s in then.’

Whereupon another voice from inside. ‘And in he’s stoppin’.’

Mr Glue, that was.

‘Couldn’t Graham come out and…’ I didn’t give up that easily.

‘He’s havin’ his tea.’

‘After his tea?’

‘He’s helpin’ his dad.’

Voice from inside. ‘’E’s no help.’

At which point Graham’s face, with its shock of almost-white hair, squeezed into view under his mother’s arm. Somehow, without actually speaking,
he indicated that he would see us later up the park with his boots. He’d spotted me with mine and Spencer with the ball.

After Graham we tried Joey Skidmore and he was out, Malcolm Prosser and he was out, and Trevor Darby and he was out. Gone for a haircut, his sister said. So off we trooped to Cotterill’s.

Trevor was kneeling up in the chair when we got there. We could see him through the window. Mr Cotterill, with a cigarette in his mouth and a cup of tea at his elbow, was running the clippers up and over the top of Trevor’s head. The radio was blaring out. Trevor’s mother was in there, clutching her handbag and looking anxious. She instructed Mr Cotterill in the finer points of hairstyling she required for her beloved son. Mr Cotterill adjusted his hearing aid and nodded. His eyes behind the thick lenses of his glasses looked like little blue fish swimming around. Yes, and one thing more to complete the picture: his hand – with scissors, clippers, sometimes even an open razor in it – ever so slightly shook.

Trevor got down from the chair and, though more or less bald, seemed cheerful enough. He was unable to join us, however. Off to the hospital with his mum to see his gran. (And show her where his hair had been!) All this was happening on the
Friday after we had read and heard about the Coronation Cup on the Wednesday and Thursday. We were getting a team up.

It was the end of March now, 1953. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II would take place in June, with half the street crowded into the Skidmores’ watching it all on a nine-inch black-and-white TV The cup itself (the main event, in our eyes) was for under-twelves; there was an under-sixteens one as well, as I recall. It was assumed that mostly schools would enter, plus boys’ clubs, scout groups and so on. Matches would be played throughout April on a knockout basis. The final to be held at Accles & Pollock’s sports ground, with its superior facilities and proper stand, presentation of medals by Ray Barlow himself, on the 22nd of April. The entrance fee was five bob, 25p in today’s money.

Later that evening we sat in the park sheds watching a shower of rain go bouncing across the pond: Graham Glue, Joey Skidmore, Spencer, Ronnie and me.

‘So who else have we got?’ said Joey.

‘Trev’ll play,’ I said.

‘My cousin’s a good ’un,’ Graham said.

‘How about Prosser?’ said Ronnie.

‘He’ll only play if his brother plays,’ said I. ‘His brother’s useless.’

The Prosser brothers were twins and, aside from their footballing skills, hard to tell apart.

‘I know who we should get,’ said Joey.

‘Who?’

‘Tommy Pye.’

‘Tommy Pye, he’s only seven!’

‘Have you seen him play?’

‘He’s a midget.’

‘Have you
seen
him?’

On the way home, we went round to Tommy’s, the whole lot of us. But his mother said he was in bed. Back in the street, we could see his little face up at the bedroom window. He gave us a wave.

We split up then. Eventually, Spencer and I made our way to Cemetery Road. He and I were near neighbours. At the top of the road we passed a couple of the older Toomeys, Albert and Rufus, lounging around outside the Malt Shovel. They took offence at Spencer as we went by. They judged him to be a snob on account of his collar and tie. Albert accused us of looking at them. We kept going. At a safe distance I yelled defiance, partly because Monica Copper, a girl I secretly admired, was out in her garden. The Toomeys came running,
but soon gave up. We had too good a lead.

Spencer was worried, even before the Toomeys. He had missed his accordion lesson. What could he tell his mother?

‘Tell her you asked a man in the park and he told you the wrong time,’ I offered. ‘Tell her you ran from a horsefly.’

My
mum was in the yard beating the daylights out of a rug. A shaft of light from the open doorway illuminated the scene. Half the kitchen furniture was out there. She was laying lino. I made myself a sugar sandwich and, when the coast was clear of Toomeys, took Dinah for a walk.

3
The Strong Man’s Daughter

We alight at Oldbury, in Worcestershire, a place of smother amid smother, and, on leaving the station, can count seventy-nine furnace and factory chimneys without turning round, all of which pour forth their cloudy contributions, varied by the blue and yellow smoke of copper-works, while noises resound afar.

Walter White,
All Round the Wrekin
(1860)

My mother loved me. Though she hit me with a broom handle, she loved me. Though she locked me in the coal-shed sometimes, still she did. I know this now. She was, I remember, angry and strong. I’d come home from school and find she’d moved a wardrobe. There were startling rearrangements of the entire house every few months. Also we seemed to move house – exchange houses – all the
time. Before I was eight I had been to three different schools and made no friends in any of them.

My mother was a bit mad. She roamed the streets in her nightgown sometimes, at two in the morning – in the wind and rain, it didn’t matter – till Dad caught up with her and brought her home. In all the photographs I have of her, not many, she’s frowning, squinting at the sun whether it was out or not.

But still she loved me. She wrapped a hot plate from the oven in a towel and put it in my bed on winter nights. She took my side when a neighbour accused us (rightly, as it happened) of breaking up her fence and stealing it for bonfire night. She worked all hours and spent the modest sums she earned mostly on me.

We moved to Cemetery Road when I was nine and a half, having arrived from Stone Street and before that Birchfield Lane and before that… I don’t remember. After the war Mum led us on a zigzag course across the town, in one side and out the other. It was the latest step in her secret plan (not so secret, really, I just never thought to ask). That town, it was a sort of Venice; you could not get in or out without crossing a canal. It was a town of industrial noise and fog. In those days I could have
told you where I was blindfold, just from the various and famous factory smells.

When I recall my mum, I often picture her as
Pansy Potter, the Strong Man’s Daughter
in the
Dandy
, out-removing the removal men with her mighty forearms. She had, as they say, an arm like a leg. Her anger, though, was like a compass needle that all too often swung to violence. This was not all bad. On one occasion the Toomeys chased us, me and Spencer, down the entry. We barricaded ourselves in the wash house, where they discovered us and banged on the door. Mum came out and drove them off with her bare hands. Only then, losing her Boadicea image somewhat, she did the Toomeys’ work for them and clouted me herself.

My mother had a tiny birthmark high up on her forehead, almost in her hair. It resembled a bunch of grapes. She was partially deaf in one ear from a blow to the head received in childhood from
her
mother. She had her own distinctive smell: washing and ironing, the minty aroma of her medicine, and Bible scent-cards.

Bits of my mother, aspects or versions of her, have appeared in other books of mine over the years. She was the mother, for instance, in some of the
Please Mrs Butler
(1983) poems:

Our mother is a detective.
She is a great finder of clues.

That was her.

I did a bad thing once.
I took this money from my mother’s purse.

Yes, Mum again – her purse – and me. Anyway, here she is, my old mum, with a part to play in
this
story. She moved me into it, as I have said, and will move me out when the time comes.

4
Squealing Pigs and Too
Many Toomeys

Saturday morning was a scramble. By lunchtime we had three-quarters of a team and had handed in our entrance form plus five-bob fee at the town hall. The money was mostly mine and Spencer’s at this stage. I earned money doing jobs for Mrs Moore, collecting pennies on empty beer and pop bottles taken back to the Malt Shovel, and helping Stan Pike on occasion with his paper round. Spencer got pocket money.

We needed a name for our team to put on the form, and the name and address of our ‘club/school/team’ secretary. Spencer put his dad’s name down for that. As for the team name, that was a subject for discussion. Ronnie came up with Cemetery Rovers, guaranteed in his opinion to petrify the opposition. Spencer said Rood End Rovers. I wanted something with Albion in it.

‘How about “Odds and Sods”?’ said Joey, Mr
Cork’s usual name for us. ‘Odds and Sods United.’

‘You can’t have “Sods”,’ said Trevor. ‘They’d not allow it.’

‘How about something with Albert Park in it?’ said Graham. ‘Or Tugg Street?’ where he lived.

By and by, but only because we had to get the form filled in, we settled on Malt Shovel Rovers. There’d be no other team with a pub in it, we reckoned. Not for the under-twelves.

In the afternoon we continued our search for players. We needed a goalkeeper, an unsought-after position for most boys. You’d get fifteen centre forwards on the bottom pitch with hardly a goalie in sight. Billy Shakespeare was proposed – ‘Shakespeare in goal!’ – but proved unavailable. Snapped up already by the Cubs.

Then Spencer had a brainwave. There was a man named Ice Cream Jack. He kept a shop – Capinelli’s – at the top of Tugg Street which sold loads of stuff, including his own home-made ice cream. He also travelled the streets in his horse and cart selling cornets, wafers and such from a milk churn. Anyway, Ice Cream Jack had a son, another Tommy as it happened. He was big and slow-witted, never went to school; never talked much either. Now and then he’d wander into the park and join in a game, if he felt like it. And
he
was a goalie; sort of.

‘He’s too old,’ said Graham.

‘No, he’s not. He’s younger than you. I heard Mrs Milward telling somebody.’

‘He’s too big,’ said Joey.

‘Yeah, and Tommy Pye’s too little.’

‘Add ’em up and divide by two,’ suggested Spencer. ‘Take the average.’

‘That’s fair,’ said Ronnie.

‘Pickin’ a team by weight!’

‘He’d fill the goal, though,’ Graham said.

So on we went through the day, knocking on doors, bumping into boys in the street, rushing off home to do jobs for our mums, charging out again with biscuits, bread and jam and stuff. Feverish, intense,
scalded
really, with life. Up for it. Getting a team up.

Here’s a thing that may surprise you. The players that we already had, not to mention those we still had hopes of getting, were good. Some of them, me for instance, were potentially brilliant. Give me a ball and try and get it back. I was like a slippery eel. The ball stuck to my foot like glue. We owed it all, I realize now, to Mr Cork and the bottom pitch. The boys on the bottom pitch, a great soup of boys, a swamp of them… played football. In September when we started none of us were much
good. Otherwise we’d have made it to the top pitch. But six months later, by Easter, it was a different story. Evolution it was: the survival of the fittest. If only Darwin could have seen us, he’d have worked his theory out a whole lot sooner. To get hold of the ball, even for an instant, to get a kick even, you needed determination. To hang on to it, dribble with it,
score
… well.

Sunday was a wasteland. Everywhere shut up. Sunday school (they had a team up) in the morning. A visit – three buses! – to Great-Aunt Phoebe’s over Brierley Hill in the afternoon. A cup of her lethal tea, brewed so long it was like liquorice. A trip to Brierley Hill cemetery. Flowers on Mabel’s grave. The squealing of the pigs in Marsh & Baxter’s sausage factory. A clip round the ear from Mum for something or other. Home on the buses. Bed.

By Monday morning back at school we had ten players, including Tommy Ice Cream, Tommy Pye and both the Prossers. We got our final player at playtime: Arthur Toomey. There’s something else here I should explain. All those boys, you’d think we’d be spoilt for choice. But it had also to do with
where you lived
, which streets you lived in: territory.
It wasn’t laid down, there were no boundaries marked. Only some sort of early knowledge that kids, boys especially, acquired, not long after they could walk and toddle off somewhere.

Arthur Toomey was, I suppose you’d say, the white sheep of the family: an easygoing, scruffy of course, dirty even, boy who rarely if ever punched other boys or acquired their possessions. He didn’t have many friends in the school, but, being a Toomey, no enemies.

There were too many Toomeys, an entire dangerous tribe of them living in a pair of knocked-together (and knocked-about) council semis behind the Malt Shovel. An intimidating, lawless crew who settled their quarrel with the world collectively with clenched fists.

Where we lived in those days, the people were poor, all of them, all the time. Even so there were degrees of poverty. Think of all the shades of green, say, in a paint shop. The Sorrells, Spencer’s family, were respectable. Mr Sorrell wore a jacket with a collar and tie and worked in a wages office. We were poorer but respectable too. The insurance man called once a week. We saved regularly in two clubs for bedding, clothes and Christmas. The unrespectable poor, the Skidmores for example, spent too much time in pubs and too much money
on the dogs. As for the Toomeys, Mr Toomey mostly did not wear a
shirt
. Their garden resembled a bomb site. On the only occasion I entered their house, there was a newspaper on the table for a cloth and jam-jar cups.