The Boyhood of Burglar Bill (6 page)

‘
I
know who we should get,’ he said.

11
Why Was He Born So Beautiful?

THE OLDBURY AND DISTRICT
QUEEN ELIZABETH II CORONATION CUP

ROUND 2: (QUARTER-FINALS)
ST SAVIOUR’S R.C. PRIMARY V.
MALT SHOVEL ROVERS

VENUE: PERROTT ST. PLAYING FIELD
DATE: 10 APRIL 1953

KICK-OFF: 5.30 P.M.

Girls did play football in those days. Not often, but now and then. Not many, but some. Girls did most things, of course: climbed trees, scrumped pears, got into fights. (Never got the cane, though, not from Mr Reynolds anyway.) Alice Bissell, Brenda’s cousin, was on probation for shoplifting. Joan Tripp had climbed into Danks’s on more than one occasion. And there were others.

Well, we took a vote and between Spencer, ‘Baby’ Pye and Edna May, Edna May got it. I believe that for some of us the rebellious aspect of this choice appealed. We were a team of outlaws after all. Mr Cork would probably explode, pulverize the entire classroom when he heard. Joey, by the way, was ill at ease. Teased relentlessly by Trevor, he eventually abstained. Spencer voted for Edna May, as did Graham, though he doubted her chances of playing.

‘They’ll not allow it,’ he said.

‘They’ll allow it,’ said Ronnie.

∗

The young man from the Parks and Cemeteries department was worried. He was the same young man who had been at the Tividale match. His name was Mr Ash. He’d worried then about Spencer being the manager, and the size and doubtful age of Tommy Ice Cream. Tommy Ice Cream, in his heavy coat, flat cap and with the hint of a moustache, looked about thirty. Technically, Tommy was still a pupil in the school. In earlier times he had sat in Mrs Belcher’s backward class, playing with Plasticine and reading or not reading baby books. He had stuck this for a while and then one morning kicked his chair over and walked out. Mrs Belcher tried half-heartedly to detain him. Tommy was big even then. He had a temper and felt no pain. So the school let him go and made no great effort to get him back. Thereafter, Tommy roamed the streets like a gypsy, watched over by his hobbling or horse-drawn dad, and educated himself.

Anyway, this time for Match Number Two Tommy had his birth certificate in an envelope in his pocket. As for Edna May, there she was, shirt, shorts, socks, boots – smiling and bold.

Mr Ash, hardly twenty himself, puffed out his cheeks and thought aloud.

‘I’m not so sure about this.’

‘About what?’ said Ronnie.

‘Girls,’ said Mr Ash. ‘This is a competition for boys…’

‘It doesn’t say so in the rules… Sir,’ said Spencer. ‘Just under-twelves.’

‘I’m under twelve,’ said Edna May.

‘Ah yes… the rules,’ said Mr Ash.

‘I’m under eleven!’ Edna May said.

Mr Ash hesitated, opened his mouth to speak, and sighed. He was no match for Spencer and Ronnie, no match for Edna May. To cap it all, reinforcements arrived in the shape of Sister MacPherson. Sister MacPherson was the head of St Saviour’s, an impressive bespectacled lady in nun’s habit and football boots. She felt Edna May should absolutely play; girls were a match for any boy; wished she’d thought of it. A ball being kicked about came bouncing towards her. Sister MacPherson swivelled and walloped it back with interest. Yes, any boy, she declared; let her play.

There was a real crowd this time, a hundred or so. It was an evening match, so some of the dads were there: shy Mr Sorrell, rowdy Mr Skidmore, glum Mr Glue. Mothers, babies, dogs; riotous kids from both schools. A bunch of girls, friends and foes of Edna May. Monica Copper, it pleased
(embarrassed) me to see, was among them. A steady trickle of men from the Perrott Arms with pint mugs in their hands. A policeman on his beat. Ice Cream Jack out in the street, looking in through the railings.

Perrott Street playing field was right in the middle of town. The pitch itself was a beauty, well-grassed and flat with a neat, low, white-painted post and rail running all the way round it, like a picture frame. It enhanced our sense of importance as we finally trotted out. Tommy Pye’s shirt fitted him better now, his mum had altered it, but he still looked like Wee Willie Winkie. Joey’s shirt looked peculiar. In an effort to subdue its colour, he had gone mad with the bleach. The shirt was paler but worn-out, ancient-looking.

As we lined up for the kick-off, the cry arose from the assembled fathers and other pint-holding experts, ‘Get stuck in!’ And before even we had kicked anything, ‘Get rid of it!’ Urged on by Sister MacPherson, St Saviour’s pursued the ball into every corner of the pitch. Once again we found ourselves on the losing side, 1–0, 2–0. Spencer’s tactics had their drawbacks. Wyatt, with the promise of goal-scoring opportunities, was holding his position on the left wing. Edna May was out on the right. Consequently, in the main mad chase for the
ball, we were outnumbered. According to Spencer and Stanley Matthews, positional play was vital. But St Saviour’s with their ‘tactics’ effectively had ten of everything, right backs, left backs, centre forwards. They were everywhere in their hooped old-gold and black shirts, like a swarm of bees.

A lucky rebound got us back in it. A mighty clearance from Tommy Ice Cream bounced awkwardly and caught their goalie a glancing blow on the side of his head. As he spun round looking for the ball – ‘It’s behind you!’ – Tommy Pye arrived, undetected at knee level, and poked it in the net.

Now we were starting to play. Arthur got the ball, passed to Wyatt and, urged on by Spencer, ran beyond their defenders for the return. Wyatt, though, had only undertaken to receive passes, not give them. With Arthur and others creating confusion, and me yelling at Wyatt to pass it – ‘Bloody
pass
it!’ – he moved serenely inside, took a couple of galloping strides and slammed a goal from twenty-five yards.

It was still 2–all at half-time. Tommy Ice Cream had blocked shots with various parts of his body. He was fairly well covered in mud. (The pitch was lush, low-lying and cut up easily.) Edna May had
distinguished herself with some bold tackles and a cross-cum-shot which skimmed the opposition’s bar. The crowd was struck by the unusual composition of our side: girls and infants on the pitch and a grown man in goal. The traffic of alcoholic refreshments from the Perrott Arms continued: full pints one way, empty the other. Most of the men were in overalls, their hands and faces grimed and dirty with work, only their mouths washed clean by the beer.

We gathered on the halfway-line in a cluster around Spencer. Mrs Pye was giving her Tommy a clean-up of his own with spit and a hankie. Mr Glue gloomily anticipated defeat unless Graham pulled his socks up. Mr Skidmore urged all of us to get stuck in and stop ‘faffin’ about’. Wyatt had befriended a passing dog and was busy turning its ears inside out. Rufus and Albert Toomey came forward shyly almost,
conspiratorially
, with a paper sack, buttoned up inside Rufus’s coat, of oranges. Albert produced a fearsome-looking knife and cut them up. Tommy Ice Cream ate his bit and, before anyone could stop him, swallowed the peel with it.

The second half was a disjointed affair. Perrott Street playing field was small: one pitch with a path around it, shrubberies and flowerbeds, swings,
toilets, and that was it. This did not prevent gangs of kids from (dis)organizing rival games of their own on the touchline and behind the goals. Sometimes we found ourselves with three balls to choose from. Dogs sauntered on to the pitch; a pair of them got into a snarling vicious fight and had to be separated. The referee was gradually losing his temper. He urged the grown-ups to control their kids, and their dogs. But the dads in general were no help, becoming, as they did, increasingly light-hearted and rowdy. They passed loud comments about the match and the referee, who got grumpier still. A short fat man with yellow hair and a penetrating pub voice climbed up on a bench and began singing:

‘Why was he born so beautiful?

Why was he born at all!’

Anyway, they scored another but we scored three. The first, a composed,
placed
penalty from me – I had been practising; the last, the best, the most ‘faffed about’ one of the lot: Joey to Ronnie – Ronnie to Edna May and back to Ronnie (a wall pass!) – down the line to Tommy Pye – square ball to Joey, who had not stopped running – Goal!

A word about celebration. There was less of it then. We’d leap about and yell all right, get a pat on the back maybe, but none of this kissing and
cuddling stuff, high-fives and all that. Some of the mothers though… Mrs Skidmore, for instance, made an embarrassing fuss of Joey when the final whistle went. Tommy Pye was ambushed by female relatives: mother, auntie, gran. They surrounded him; you could hear him in the middle protesting. Seconds later he wriggled free and bolted, leaving their loving circle briefly hollow, like a human doughnut.

Mrs Pye looked puzzled.

‘Puppy?’ she said. ‘Did he say “puppy”?’

‘Yes, puppy,’ said her mum.

‘Puppy,’ her sister said.

Mrs Pye stuck out an expert hand to grab little Albert as he went flying past. ‘C’mere, you.’ The puzzled look persisted on her face, joined now by a shadow of suspicion.

‘What puppy?’

12
The Ball inside the Full Back

The ever-increasing variety of the town’s industries augurs well for the future prosperity of Oldbury. Besides the wide range of its hardware output, from edge-tools to bicycle frames, and of its chemicals, from alkali to phosphorus, it produces blue bricks and cardboard boxes, tar, jam, and pale ale, immense engine boilers and delicate surgical dressings, and a catalogue of other manufactures equally strange in their diversity, to say nothing of the railway carriages and the canal barges by which they may be expeditiously carried away.

Frederick William Hackwood,
Oldbury and Round About
(1915)

We walked home through the darkening town, up Perrott Street, round behind the covered market, past the town hall and the library, past the shops.

‘I don’t like it at left back,’ said Graham. ‘I’m better at right half, really.’

A low sulphurous fog, expelled from Danks’s furnaces, fanned out across the road. Street lamps floated like jellyfish in the spooky yellowish light. The smoke stung in our noses, prickled our eyes, shortened our lives.

‘I don’t like it at right back,’ Malcolm Prosser said.

We paused from time to time to gaze into some lighted window. Sturgess’s, the butcher’s, had a model of a pig in a butcher’s apron waving a cleaver at us. There was the sound of singing from the Zion Chapel, set back from the road behind a wrought-iron fence and pair of gates. Singing too, and cigarette smoke from the Blue Gates pub close by. Interestingly, both establishments were adorned with stained-glass windows.

‘Edna May likes it on the wing,’ said Brenda, walking beside Edna May who was riding her bike. ‘You should pass to her more.’

My invisible dad appeared, and soon after disappeared, on
his
bike. He tinkled his bell and waved. He’d arrived straight from work, plus overtime, five minutes before the end. Almost as shy as Mr Sorrell, he’d come up to us when the
whistle went, slipped me a sixpence and melted back into the crowd.

‘I’d pass to her,’ said Brenda.

‘I’d pass to you,’ Edna May said. She pedalled up alongside Joey, who was kicking a ball in a sprout bag. ‘Who we playin’ next?’

We had reached the boundary of Danks’s private fog and were out into clearer air. Haywood’s Outfitters loomed ahead, its double window occupied by posing dummies, suits and dresses and hats, sheets, tea towels, pillowcases, school uniforms… and sports kit. Ten days ago half of this impressive frontage had been boarded up, the window smashed, stock removed, suspects sought. Ronnie had seen it the morning after, broken glass and splintered wood all over the pavement, blood too, Ronnie said. Dummies in even more preposterous attitudes, slumped sideways or hanging out beyond the jagged edges of the window. Blood, yes. And Rufus Toomey had that progressively dirtier bandage on his hand for days after.

‘Who we playin’ next?’ said Edna May again.

‘Aston Villa,’ said Joey and flicked his sprout-bagged ball – playfully, flirtatiously – in Edna May’s direction.

A pungent smell of a different sort was reaching
us now from the green and curdling waters of the Tipton canal. As we crossed the bridge, a woman came up from the towpath hauling a small boy behind her and clipping him round the head. The boy was stoical and made no sound. An elderly dog followed on at a safe distance.

Monica Copper was with us with two other girls. Their white ankle socks shone luminously in the dark. Trevor – don’t ask me how, I had not told a soul, except Spencer maybe – had picked up on my partiality for Monica and was doing his best to further our romance.

‘He loves you,’ Trevor said. ‘He said –’

‘No, I never.’

‘She loves him,’ said one of the other girls.

‘I don’t!’ said Monica, rather too emphatically for my liking.

‘
You
love ’
er
,’ said Joey, joining in. But with his face in shadow it was not possible to tell who this particular attachment referred to.

The Birmingham Road was quiet; it was almost eight o’clock. Joey spilled his ball from its net and began dribbling along; passes were given and received. Spencer had dropped back and was talking to Tommy Ice Cream. Tommy had his collar up and his flat cap on. He looked like a column of cloth.