hospital. His mother was doing a lot of screaming, there were a few
policemen hanging around, and Jacko had been carted off to the station
to help with inquiries. The neighbors and relatives who kept dropping in
added to the confusion. Billy liked quiet.
Nobody seemed disposed to get his lunch or pay him any attention; so he
ate a packet of ginger biscuits and went out the back way, telling Mrs.
Glebe from three doors down that he was going up to his auntie’s to
watch her color television.
He had been getting things sorted out as he walked. Walking helped him
to think. When he found himself baffled, he could look at the cars and
the shops and the people for a while, to rest his mind.
He went toward his auntie’s at first, until he remembered that he did
not really want to go there; he had only said that to stop Mrs. Glebe
making trouble. Then he had to think where he was going. He stopped,
looking in the window of a record shop, painstakingly reading the names
on the gaudy sleeves, and trying to match them to songs he had heard on
the radio. He had a record player, but he never had any money to buy
records, and his parents’ taste did not suit him. Ma liked soppy songs,
Pa liked brass bands, and Billy liked rock-and-roll. The only other
person he knew who liked rock-and-roll was Tony Cox That was it.
He was looking for Tony Cox.
He headed in what he course: she jumped in the air and dropped a bag of
sugar and screamed, and later she cried and said they shouldn’t make fun
of Billy. People often played tricks on him, but he did not mind,
because it was nice to have pals.
He wandered around for a while. He had the feeling that there used to be
more ships here, in the days when he was little. Today he could see only
one. It was a big one, quite low in the water, with a name on the side
which he could not read.
The men were running a pipe from the ship to a warehouse.
He stood watching for a while, then asked one of the men: “What’s in
it?”
The man, who wore a cloth cap and a waistcoat, looked at him. “Wine,
mate.”
Billy was surprised. “In the ship? All wine?
Full?”
“Yes, mate. Chateau Morocco, vintage about last Thursday.” All the men
laughed at this, but Billy did not understand it. He laughed all the
same. The men worked on for a while, then the one he had spoken to said:
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Billy thought for a moment, then
said: “I’ve forgot.”
The man looked hard at him, and mumbled something to one of the others.
Billy heard part of the reply: “-might fall in the bleeding drink The
first man went inside the warehouse.
After a while, a docks’ policeman came along He said to the men: “Is
this the lad?” They nodded, and the copper addressed Billy. “Are you
lost?” “No,” Billy said.
“Where are you going?”
Billy was about to say he was not going anywhere, but that seemed the
wrong answer. Suddenly he remembered. “Bethnal Green.”
“All right, come with me and I’ll set you on the right road.”
Always willing to take the line of least resistance, Billy walked
alongside the copper to the dock gate.
“Where do you live, then?” the man asked.
“Yew Street.”
“Does your mother know where you are?”
Billy decided that the policeman was another Mrs. Glebe, and that a lie
was called for. “Yes.
I’m going up my auntie’s.”
“Sure you know the way?”
“Yes.”
They were at the gate. The copper looked at him speculatively, then made
up his mind. “All right, then, off you go. Don’t wander around the docks
no more-you’re safer to stop outside.”
“Thanks,” Billy said. When in doubt, he thanked people. He walked off.
It was getting easier to remember. Pa was up the hospital. He was going
to be blind, and it was Tony Cox’s- fault. Billy knew one blind
man–well, two, if you counted Squint Thatcher, who was blind only when