Whatever Happened to Billy Parks

‘Oh,’ I say, ‘that is good news.’ Though in reality I haven’t got the faintest idea what he’s talking about; what the fuck is a plenary session?

‘Actually, I was just off to the bookie’s,’ I tell him and he smiles at me again.

‘Plenty of time for that, old son,’ he says. ‘Come on.’

I follow him like a kitten, and we get into a cab on the High Street.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask him.

‘Lancaster Gate, of course,’ he says.

Of course.

I tell the cab driver. He doesn’t recognise me.

Lancaster Gate, once home of the Football Association. We get out of the cab and I follow Gerry Higgs around to the back of a massive Georgian town house; one of those ones that doesn’t look that big from the outside, but inside is like a fucking Tardis with ballrooms and banqueting suites and all that. We go through a black back door that leads to a well-lit corridor. On the wall are pictures of the greats: Steve Bloomer, the original football superstar, standing upright and handsome with his hair parted like the Dead Sea. Then Dixie Dean, rising to power in a header. Dixie, what a man, bless him, I met him once at a charity do at Goodison Park just before he died. He’d had his legs amputated, the poor bastard; I mean, how cruel is that, taking away the legs and feet of the man who once scored sixty goals in a single season? Then there’s Duncan Edwards, who died in Munich, running on to the pitch all muscle and power knowing that no fucker was going to get the better of him, and Frank Swift, back arched and diving to tip a volley over the crossbar, come to think of it he died in Munich as well, and others, all captured in their prime, beautiful men, athletes, captured before those most horrible devious rotters of all, time and fate, got each and every one of them. Bang, bang, bang, bang.

There are no pictures of me.

At the end of the corridor, Gerry Higgs turns and puts his finger to his lips. ‘Come on,’ he whispers, and he opens a door that leads to a small room with a window in it; through the window I can see another room in which sit a collection of men around three tables that are arranged in a U-shape: I look closer.

Fuck me.

I feel my whole body move towards the men, my eyes wide, bursting out of my skull. I turn to Gerry Higgs, mouth open in wide-eyed-child-like-cor-blimey astonishment.

‘Who are they?’ I ask. But I know.

‘You know who they are,’ says Gerry, grinning like a man who’s just given someone the best Christmas present they’ll ever have and knows it.

‘It can’t be,’ I say and Gerry Higgs just nods at me, the grin remaining on his slobbering lips.

I turn to look at the three tables again. At the top table sits Sir Alf Ramsey. Then at the table to his right is Sir Matt Busby and next to him Bill Shankly, and across from them, scowling at each other are Don Revie and Brian Clough.

‘That’s the Council of Football Immortals, Billy,’ says Gerry Higgs. ‘I told you, didn’t I – the greatest geniuses known to the game of football.’

‘But, Gerry,’ I say, ‘they’re all dead. I mean, I even went to Sir Alf’s funeral.’

Gerry Higgs looks at me like I’m a silly little boy. ‘Billy,’ he says, ‘Billy, Billy, Billy, these men aren’t dead. Men like this never die, they live on and on, way beyond the lifespan of mere mortals. That’s why they’re legends, old son. Proper legends. Not the five-minute wonders you get today.’

I stutter: ‘Gerry, I don’t understand.’ And Gerry Higgs looks at me: ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘for now, just listen. You see, Billy, if you play your cards right, they’re going to make you immortal too.’

I try to listen. But I can’t hear them. I can see that Brian Clough is talking, he is animated and Brylcreemed in a green sports jacket; I see Sir Alf, just as I remember him, quiet and controlled, neat and tidy in his England blazer; I see Shanks in his red shirt and matching tie and Don Revie, looking glum with his thick shredded-wheat sideburns; and Sir Matt, blimey Sir Matt Busby, nonplussed and immaculate. I see them all, and I wonder what on earth is going on. Why are they here? Why am I here?

Gerry Higgs reads my mind. ‘Just listen, Billy,’ he whispers quietly but firmly. So I do. And now, suddenly I can hear them as well as see them. Cloughie is in full swing.

‘No, Don,’ he says in that piercing nasal voice, ‘the game of football is not simply about winning, it’s about winning properly, it’s about playing the game how it was supposed to be played. And kicking and cheating is not how the game is supposed to be played.’

Don Revie blusters a response: ‘Brian, I’m not rising to that, and the reason I’m not rising to that is two league titles, the FA Cup, a Cup Winners’ Cup, two Inter-Cities Fairs Cups and the League bloody Cup, that’s why.’

The other three groan. ‘Mr Revie,’ says Sir Alf, ‘Mr Clough. Please, this isn’t getting us any further. You both know the issue that we are here to discuss today.’

‘Well, we know exactly where you stand, Alf,’ says Brian Clough, curtly.

‘Thank you, Brian,’ says Sir Alf with a school teacher’s sarcasm before adding, ‘Sir Matt, I believe we haven’t heard from you on the question before us – what takes precedence: winning or entertaining, style or results.’

Sir Matt thinks for a second, his lips turning over. ‘Well,’ he says in his quiet, Glaswegian drawl, ‘no one ever remembers the losers do they? But if you can manage both to entertain and win, then you’re not far off.’

Shanks joins in, in his more abrasive Glaswegian drawl: ‘The question isn’t about winning or entertaining, I mean we’re not clowns or circus horses; it’s about making the working man who pays his money on a Saturday afternoon happy and proud, so that when he goes back to the factory or the shop floor on the Monday, he feels valuable, vindicated.’

‘Aye,’ says Sir Matt, ‘but in that pursuit we can’t allow football to lose its charm can we?’

I turn to Gerry Higgs. ‘What are they talking about?’ I say. But what I really want to know is what it all has to do with me.

‘They’re asking themselves the fundamental question, Billy,’ says Gerry Higgs. ‘Why are we here? Who should we aspire to be? The poor bastard who lives his life according to the rules, makes sure he gets by, pays his taxes, works nine to five and remembers everyone’s birthdays, or should we aim to be a little bit different to that, live according to our aspirations in one great big nihilistic fantasy? Because after all, we’re not here for very long are we?’

‘Well,’ I say nervously, ‘I suppose we all want to be a bit different, don’t we?’

‘Yes, Billy, old son.’ And he looks at me, and I know that he’s wondering how much of this I understand.

He looks back at the Council of Football Immortals.

‘It sounds so easy when you hear Mr Clough talk, doesn’t it?’ he continues, ‘but sometimes if you’re a bit different, a bit cavalier, you end up hurting the people who love you most. Isn’t that right?’

I shrug. I think I know what he’s trying to say, and I’m not sure I like it. He stares and his eyes shine like cold steel and I realise that he isn’t a mad old duffer after all, he’s actually some kind of genius. I avert my eyes and he continues: ‘Perhaps Mr Shankly’s right,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to make people proud, you’ve got to achieve something worthwhile.’

I feel my face scrunch up in confusion.

‘But what’s all that got to do with me, Gerry?’

‘Well, Billy, you see, Sir Alf has been given a chance to put something right.’

‘What?’ I glance back through the window again at the five men.

‘Poland, Wembley, October 1973.’

‘What?’

‘You must remember that night, Billy?’

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I was sat freezing my bollocks off watching the Polish keeper put us out of the World Cup.’

‘That’s right, Billy, Jan Tomaszewski. The Clown who broke our hearts.’

I nod. Though, if I’m being honest, I don’t remember that much about the game, only Norman Hunter’s grim face and Sir Alf’s desperation in the changing room afterwards.

‘Well,’ continues Gerry. ‘It shouldn’t have happened like that: the Polish keeper kept one or two out that night that he shouldn’t, that he wasn’t meant to, and Sir Alf’s going to have the chance to change things.’

I was now utterly, utterly confused and starting to stutter like an imbecile. ‘What? How? How will that work? That was forty years ago.’

‘The Service has given him a chance to revisit ten minutes of that night and make one change.’ He tells me, and again, the word Service causes a quick pain to my temple.

‘What will he change?’ I ask.

Gerry puts his arm gently around my shoulders and ushers me back towards the window through which we could see the five legends arguing about life and football.

‘He brought on Kevin Hector,’ he says quietly.

I look up at him.

‘And as everyone knows, Billy, Kevin Hector missed the chance to score the winner.’

I stare incredulously as Gerry Higgs ruefully shakes his head: ‘It was a bloody sitter.’

He draws his breath in through his teeth, before continuing: ‘Well, now, thanks to the Service, Sir Alf’s got the chance to put that right.’

Suddenly, like a lovely spring morning, the fog of confusion lifts, the penny drops into the slot and I start to understand. ‘He could have brought me on,’ I say. ‘Me. I was in the squad for that game. I was on the bench. I was sat by Bobby Moore, he could have brought me on, not Kevin Hector.’

Gerry Higgs smiles. ‘That’s right,’ he says, ‘he could have brought you on; but would you have put it away, Billy?’

I nod, my mouth open, ‘Oh yeah, every time, every bloody time, Gerry, you know that. You remember, Gerry? Don’t you?’

He smiles again. ‘Well, you might get that chance, son.’

‘What do you mean?’ I am racing with excitement now; what does he mean I might have the chance? How could that happen? How could I have the chance? I feel my heart beating against my chest.

‘How Gerry?’ I turn to him. ‘How?’ I repeat, forcefully, and the five men in the other room all turn as one and look in still silence.

‘The Service can grant you that,’ he says, then pauses, ‘just as long as Sir Alf picks you, that is.’

‘Sir Alf,’ I state. This isn’t good, Sir Alf hates me: he once called me a lazy useless showboating pony. ‘Sir Alf won’t pick me,’ I say.

‘Probably not,’ says Gerry, ‘but, lucky for you, it’s not just up to him; he’s got Mr Clough, Mr Revie, Mr Shankly and Sir Matt Busby to help him.’

Actually, this isn’t much better.

‘Don’t look so glum,’ says Gerry, ‘look on the bright side, you’ve made the last two.’

‘Two?’

‘Yes,’ says Gerry, then he pauses, ‘not sure I’m supposed to tell you this, Billy. The Council of Football Immortals has decided that Sir Alf can bring on you or Kevin Keegan. So that’s what they’ve got to decide: you or Kevin.’

I take a slow intake of breath, and then sigh.

‘Alright,’ I say, ‘so what happens next?’

‘You just sit and wait until you’re called.’

‘Called?’

‘Yes, Billy, it’s a big thing this; changing history can’t be done lightly: the Council will want to meet you.’

‘What? Like an interview? Or a trial? Bloody hell! I haven’t kicked a ball in years.’

‘Steady on, Billy, I wouldn’t call it an interview, more a little chat. You won’t have to bring your boots. And anyway, you’ve no need to worry, you’re Billy Parks, aren’t you?’

I am not so sure. My cheeks puff out breath at the thought of it all. ‘And what happens then?’ I ask. ‘What happens if the Council picks me?’

Gerry’s face breaks into a big smile revealing yellow chipped teeth. He claps me on the shoulder. ‘Then, old son, everything changes, you get the chance to put everything right. You get the chance to make everything bad that’s happened in the last thirty- odd years disappear.’ He pauses again, adding slowly, ‘If, of course, you manage to put the ball in the back of the Polish net.’

7

I don’t sleep that night.

Of course I don’t.

I mean, this was the biggest thing, the best thing ever. For an hour I lie there. I can just see their faces, the Council of Football Immortals – funny, none of them had aged, they all looked just the same as they used to. I imagine presenting myself before them – answering their questions, but I have to stop myself thinking about that – as the image grows in my mind, a fierce thirst for a fiery drink grows with it.

So I think about something else. I think about what Gerry Higgs had said. ‘The chance to put everything right,’ he’d said, ‘the chance to make everything bad disappear.’

I think about this and a smile breaks out across my mouth. Gerry was right: if I was picked, I would be able to live it all again, have a second chance. The idea gathers momentum in my mind; it doesn’t seem at all strange, in fact, as I lie there, with the noise of the south London train to Lewisham creaking behind my flat and the footsteps of smashed-out kids running along the landing outside I assume that most people have the chance to go back and right a few wrongs: it seems quite normal. It seems absolutely right.

And what wrongs I would put right, oh God, everything would be so much better; Rebecca and her mother, they would be first on my list, well, maybe not her mother, that was complicated, but definitely Rebecca, yes, I would make sure that this time she had everything, that she would be happy. That would be the first thing.

And her boy, my grandson, Liam, there would be no more mistakes there either: he would know me for a hero.

And, of course, Johnny Smith – oh poor Johnny Smith – I would somehow help him, stop him from doing what he did, find him, be there for him: he would know me for the friend I had failed to be.

And so would everyone else; there would be no trying to run rubbish backstreet boozers or drink driving bans or those pictures in the News of the World with that young girl from Gateshead; no begging talentless managers to give me one last chance and being ignored by dishonest chairmen who didn’t know the first thing about the game; no, all that would go. No getting kicked to high heaven by some kid who knows that I’m no longer fast enough to get away before being hauled off at half-time at Brentford, bloody Brentford.

None of this. None of this. None of this. All of this would disappear, Gerry Higgs told me.

Just as long as I score the goal.

I sit and consider it all.

And then my smile disappears.

I want a drink. I want a drink so bad. I can taste it. I can feel the glass in my hand, rounded, beautiful, fitting perfectly in the fleshy arc between my thumb and finger, as the malted liquid glints and sparkles like a midnight lake. Christ. Would one drink be so bad?

I sit up. I wipe the sweat off my forehead. I put the light on and everything evaporates in the yellow of the sixty-watt bulb.

I sigh then I make another start on the bloody London Marathon jigsaw. And as I try desperately to try to find the head of a bloke dressed up as some kind of giant Yorkshire pudding, I vow that tomorrow I’ll make a start on finding Rebecca. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll find her, because everything bad will be about to disappear for her too. I’ll find her and make it better, because, if I’m picked, there’s no way on God’s green earth that I’ll not score that goal.

I am Billy Parks and this will be my chance to make everything better.

8

‘This is your chance, Billy. This is your opportunity to prove to everyone that you are the best young footballer in the country. Do you understand?’

I nodded.

Taffy Watkins had cornered me in the toilets at White Hart Lane. I was about to play for London Boys against Manchester Boys and I’d snuck off for a piss. Bless him, old Taffy probably thought I was nervous, but I wasn’t. Perhaps he thought that my confidence needed boosting – but it didn’t. He was more nervous than me: there was a lot riding on the game. There was a crowd of about 5,000 and scouts from every club in England. Or that’s what we were told.

‘You see, Billy,’ he continued, looking down at me, his hands on my shoulders and his neck arched in my direction, searching for my eyes which I had cast downwards, ‘there is nothing greater than football, it’s what we’ve been left with, as men. Do you understand?’

I nodded, but I wasn’t really sure that I understood him. Not then.

‘And you, boy, have a God-given talent.’

He paused and I nodded, dutifully, again.

‘You could be a person who makes grown men cry or sing. You could be the person they think about last thing at night and the first thing in the morning. You could be the man they worry about when they’re doing their shift in the factory or down the mine, or on the docks; you could be the man they want to be. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, still averting my gaze from the intensity of his glare.

‘Good,’ he said, then repeated softly, ‘Good. Now, there are scouts from all over the country watching this game, watching you, my boy. Remember, the ball is your ball, the pitch is your pitch, there is no other boy on that field who can do what you can do – it’s your stage – do you hear me?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Good, now go and prove yourself.’

Finally I looked up at him, my lips sucked into my mouth and nodded, mute, before taking myself off on to the pitch.

‘Oh, and Billy,’ he called after me and I turned around, ‘pull your socks up and tuck your shirt in, man!’

I smiled my sparkling smile and took myself out and into my position on the left-hand side of the pitch.

It was raining that night; great bucketfuls of splodgy cold rain that seemed to cascade like a dirty waterfall through the dingy yellow of the floodlights. Not really the conditions for a mercurial, sparkling forward like me. I could feel my boots squelch against the cold turf and knew the ball would sting against my thighs.

Opposite me the Manchester right-back scowled. He was a horrible, ugly, bow-legged, northern monkey called Feeney – he probably knew nothing other than bloody rain. He pointed at me, said something I didn’t understand, then tried to laugh. I sighed, intimidation was lost on me: I was more worried about the bloody cold.

They kicked off; Brian Kidd passing to Stan Bowles, who had his shirt-sleeves pulled over his hands and wore the expression of a kid who wanted nothing better than to get back on the team bus.

They had a good team did Manchester, plenty of their lads went on to forge decent careers in the game, but we had a brilliant one – Trevor Brooking, Dave Clement, Frank Lampard (senior not junior, obviously) and Harry Redknapp – true greats, all of them. We were just kids then: all with hopeful faces and bandy legs. Apart from Trevor Brooking, of course; he seemed older by miles than all of us. Good old Trev, I met him for the first time that evening; he wasn’t quite so posh back then, still immaculate though, still brainy and good with words. ‘I’m Trevor,’ he said. ‘You keep making runs inside their full-back and I’ll try and play you through.’

I nodded. I just wanted him to pass me the ball. I didn’t care where he put it.

The first half was difficult; the ball kept getting stuck in pools of standing water and even Trevor Brooking couldn’t get it to go where he wanted. I hardly got a look in and was getting a bit bored with the northern monkey Feeney telling me how he was going to kick me all the way ‘oop the Thames’ if ever I got the ball. So I drifted infield and out of position; if the coach of the London Boys, an old pro called Barry Hickman, shouted at me, I didn’t hear him, because I was stood in the centre circle, with my back to goal, when the ball finally came to me.

It was another one of those moments – moments that you can’t predict, moments that change your life. Fate. As the ball slowly made its way across the quaggy turf to my feet, big Tommy Booth, the Manchester centre-half, a great oaf of a boy, tried to clatter into me from behind; as fortune would have it, though, rather than knock me over, he just managed to put himself off balance and force the ball to wriggle away from us to my right, which also happened to be where the ground was driest; in a flash I was on to it and turned towards the goal.

Ahead of me was a mass of open field. Instinctively, I knew that if I hoofed it forward the wet pitch would stop it carrying through to their keeper. I knew this without a moment’s conscious thought. I knew it and I did it: I hoofed it towards the edge of the penalty area where it stuck fast in the mud. Now, there was just a foot race to the ball between me, northern monkey Feeney, who was charging from my left, the Manc goalie Joe Corrigan and Big Tommy Booth. But I was away, my feet gliding along the glistening grass, water sputtering upwards as I went. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Feeney coming towards me, while straight ahead was the massive frame of Joe Corrigan. If Joe had been more decisive, he’d have got there first, but he held off just a second, just long enough for me to reach the ball a moment before he did, a tiny weeny insignificant moment, nothing in the great encyclopaedia of time, but long enough for me to clip the ball over him, hurdle him, and steer the ball into the empty net as Feeney crashed into his own goalkeeper.

I trotted past the mud-splattered defender, grinned at him then shook the hand of Trevor Brooking. ‘Well done, Barry,’ he said, and I grinned at him as well. ‘It’s Billy,’ I said. ‘Billy Parks.’

It was the winning goal.

Afterwards I sat in the changing room, listening to Stevie Kember, Harry and Frankie Lampard; they seemed so confident, so aware, so much bigger and older than me with their skinny ties and winkle picker boots. They were all going to play for Crystal Palace or Chelsea or West Ham. They were all going to be footballers. I thought about my dad. The Hammers were his team. Perhaps I could play for West Ham.

Taffy Watkins stood by the door. ‘Parks,’ he bellowed, and I looked up as he beckoned me.

‘There’s someone who wants to meet you, boy,’ he said and turned, so I followed him up the corridor, up some stairs and into a lounge bar, which smelled of cigar smoke and booze.

Two men were standing by the bar; by the welcoming looks on their faces I could tell that they were waiting for us to join them.

Taffy led me over. ‘This, Billy,’ he said proudly, ‘is Mr Matt Busby. Mr Busby, this is Billy Parks.’

Matt Busby smiled at me; thinning hair and squint-eyes smiling a lovely warm straight-to-your-soul smile, like the uncle we all wished we’d had.

‘Good goal out there, Billy,’ he said, or at least that’s what I thought he said; to my ear, untrained in Glaswegian, it sounded more like a collection of ‘grrs’ followed by my name. I nodded, though, and smiled, and muttered something about it being difficult conditions as I sensed that Taffy wanted me to sound vaguely intelligent and interested.

‘Billy,’ he continued, ‘we’d like you to come up to Manchester for a week’s trial at our football club, Manchester United, next week. Would you like that?’

Taffy answered for me. ‘Of course you would, wouldn’t you, boy?’ he said. And I smiled again.

Of course I would.

Manchester United.

Manchester bloody United. Of course I wanted to go there. Sod West Ham. Man United – Busby Babes, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, plane crashes, FA Cups – I would have crawled there. This was going to be brilliant. Taffy beamed down at me, Matt Busby beamed down at me; I beamed at me, all the gods in their heavens beamed down at me. It was all going to be brilliant. I was going to be a Busby Babe. I was going to play for Manchester United and win the FA Cup.

I got the tube and the bus back to Stratford. I wanted to tell my mother. I wanted to tell her more than anything. This would surely make her happy. I rushed through the front door. Exhilarated. The house was dark, still, lifeless. ‘Mum,’ I yelled, there was no answer. ‘Mum,’ I yelled again, ‘I’m going to play for Manchester United.’ Again, no answer. I screamed up the dark and silent stairs. ‘I’ve just met Matt Busby and I’m going to play for Manchester United.’