Billy and the Golden Gate

Cover

“…

Days, weeks, months, years

Today is the Day of the Dead. All doors shut tight. Mr. Jackson, the greengrocer, puts his vegetables into the cold storage room. Tomorrow he will sell them at a generous discount.

*

Jasmine, the teacher, sits in her living room and takes extra care over the children's copybooks
¹
. Each one is different. Some are messy, some are neat. Some are written as if the child is being constantly distracted with far more interesting things.

*

Mrs. Spade starts the day sorting laundry and mending socks.

In fact, everybody occupies their own time on the Day of the Dead. There are no gatherings around glowing hearths. Stories of ghosts are not told.

Billy is ten and three quarters. He watches his mum as she sifts and sorts, mends, folds and tidies away. He knows not to question her; these jobs are done because that is the way.

Billy picks up his model soldier. The soldier stands one and a half inches high. His uniform is made up of a deep green jacket and burgundy pants, his boots high and gleaming black. The buckles are silver. His right boot has a small chip off the heel, the colour exposed; a flat gunmetal grey. Billy looks at his soldier. Today would be a good day to send him into battle against the monster hordes. They are a nasty bunch, but Billy has other plans.

“Billy,” his mum calls. “Billy, haven't you got some homework to do? You don't want to disappoint Miss Beetle, do you?”

His earnest eyes turn from the soldier to his mum, and he thinks of Miss Beetle's chin. It juts out when she is annoyed and her eyes narrow. She never looks pretty when she does this, but when she smiles the sun floods the classroom. He doesn't want to disappoint Miss Beetle.

He looks at his mum; she has stopped sifting. She is standing with her right hand on her hip; any moment now she is going to clear her throat.

“Ahem,” she says.

Billy replies, “Yes Mum, no Mum.” He is always very precise when he answers his mum; his mum is a very precise woman.

“Good, hop to it then.”

He puts his soldier back in his box, he swings the lid down – it squeaks with all the effort. His dad always oiled it. No, his dad had always oiled it.

Billy's mum turns back to her sorting, mending and folding.

“Time you oiled that, Billy.”

Billy looks at the hinges on the box. He runs his fingers over them. They feel sturdy and they are cold. He places the box back in its press. It slots snugly between the box of
Connect 4
and the good table linen. Billy stands up; the narrow staircase is just behind him. At the top of the stairs, flanking the landing, there are four doors. Billy's door is easily identifiable with the brass lettered ‘enter at your peril' sign. Billy's room is a bit like a patchwork quilt. The floor is wooden. The boards just inside the door creak, along with a well-worn section at the base of the window.

Billy's copybook is on the floor, face down. The covers spread out like a pigeon rushing to scoop up errant crumbs. One of the corners curls up. Billy picks up the book and turns it over. His writing is very neat but the doodles of monsters – around the edges – show where his real interest resides. They are alive. He lets it fall back down to the floor. He looks at himself in his long wall-mounted mirror. It has a few black spots that snake up its right-hand side, but other than that it's a sensible, honest mirror. In spite of the darker spots, Billy can see his reflection clearly. His skin is milky white, his eyes a gentle quiet blue, like the sea on a calm summer's day. There's a patch over his left knee, where his mum mended his jeans after that day he fell in the quarry. The patch is bright yellow with a sunflower pattern through it.

Billy looks at the edge of the mirror. He starts at the top right-hand corner and follows the rim the whole way round, counterclockwise. He takes a short sharp breath.

“Dad?” he whispers urgently. Just there, at the edge, a shadow falls over the mirror. “Dad? Are you there?”

Disappointment and sadness cloud Billy's face; he breathes out a shallow sigh.

Billy's reflection draws you in to take a closer look; the way his hair spikes just at the top of his head – it's a dark brown colour, the shade of long-fallen autumn leaves, apart from the spiky bit, which is white blond. His face would not look out of place on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

He kneels down, stretches and reaches in under his bed. The floorboards are coated in dust. Each time his hand and arm hit them, they leave a clear glossy streak – the varnished wood exposed.

He stretches and stretches. His fingertips find what he is looking for. They grapple and tap until he gathers the strap of a bag into his hand and pulls it out from its hiding place.

It's a small rucksack, patterned in green camouflage. It has hidden pockets; all of them bulge. It has been packed tightly.

Billy sits with his back to the bed. He crosses his legs into the Buddha position. Billy has never heard of the Buddha position. The yellow knee patch juts up.

He glances first at the window, then at the door. Both are soundly shut. He unzips the bag, the canvas flaps down and he reaches in. Slowly, he pulls out the contents of the bag and arranges them on the floor around him. Everything is there.

There are other items in the bag but if we were to describe them all, well, we would be here all day.

Billy sits back and looks at his treasure. His hand dives into the pocket of his jeans and he pulls out the toy soldier, the one that is supposed to be in the box downstairs. He allows himself a contented smile on a job well done. His mum has eyes like a hawk but she didn't cop it at all.

*

Downstairs, Billy's mum has finished with the sorting, sifting, mending, folding and putting away. The water in the kettle has just reached boiling point and it is whistling and bubbling in the background. She glances at the box in the press, knowing full well the soldier has been siphoned off upstairs by her resourceful son. A day without homework won't do him any harm at all.

She pulls a china mug out of the cupboard and plops a futuristic teabag into it, shaped like a pyramid; apparently they make the tea taste better. She is not so sure; they are devils for slipping off the teaspoon. It would've been nice to take that trip they'd always planned, to the Sphinx. What was the tour called? ‘The Great Mystery of the Valley of the Kings?' Oh well.

She pours in the piping hot water. It makes a tinkling chime-like sound as it splashes around the mug. The china is slightly chipped on the lip of the mug but it is immaculately clean. For a moment the teabag rises triumphantly to the top, but its success is short-lived and it then slips to the depths of the mug. A slight white scum sits on top. Their water is just full of lime.

She stirs it briskly, fishes out the teabag and, once satisfied that it is drip-free, posts it in the bin. A splash of milk completes the task.

She catches her reflection in the circular groove of the kettle; no makeup, bags under her eyes that are the size of God-knows-what. Two small countries, perhaps. Hair crowned in grey with the odd brown bit unravelling like bindweed in a hedge.

Before she turns her back on the kettle, she picks up her mug. Sitting at the kitchen table with the mug resting safely on it, she tilts her head.
What is Billy doing?
Better not to dwell on it,
he is a bright sensible boy
.
He's grand
.

*

Billy closes his eyelids, only a sliver of light is getting through, patterned with his eyelashes, as if he is standing immediately in front of a forest of long skinny trees with the sun setting in the background.

He breathes out through his nostrils, opens the tin box and rolls the glass marble across the floor. As it turns, it glints in the cold winter sun. On the floorboards it sounds like a heavy hollow nut, rolling. Billy scratches the side of his face and sneezes – a loud, noisy
tchew!
– and rubs his nose.

The copybook is back lying face down. It reminds Billy of the paper flattened onto the footpath, close to Murphy's corner, that day. Billy remembers it clearly. He remembers everything about that day.

Billy looks first at his copybook and then back at his backpack. His hand reaches in to the backpack for the final item, and he pulls out the book. Its cover is made of leather, bound by a woven spine. There are slim lines through the weave. The book looks like it has been opened many, many times. Billy flips it open. On the inner sleeve, there is a pocket. Inside the pocket, there is a folded sheet of paper.

*

The first time Billy had seen the book he was with his dad. They had called in to the library. The old one, in what used to be the Anglican Church. Billy's dad was looking for the classic
Gentleman's Own
D.I.Y. book. While rummaging through the books on display, his dad had pointed at the book Billy now holds in his hands and said, “Look, Billy, there's the Book of the Dead.”

Billy's eyes had widened and he'd said, “From Egypt?”

His dad had shaken his head and said, “No, Billbob, this book belongs to us, to our community, it is magic, tells everyone the story they are supposed to hear.”

“Wow!” Billy had replied. “So if I opened it now, I'd be able to read what I am supposed to read?”

His dad had shaken his head at that. “No, it doesn't work like that. You could open that book now, Billbob, and all you'd see are blank pages. It only presents itself at the right time.”

“Dad, I bet you are making this up, aren't you?” Billy had replied, but his dad had shaken his head again.

“And what's more, it contains a map; not any old kind of map but a map you can only see on the Day of the Dead. It leads you to the Golden Gate,” his dad had finished.

After that they had found the D.I.Y. book, checked it out and spent a productive afternoon scouring the gutters.

“What's at the Golden Gate?” Billy had asked.

His dad had looked at him earnestly.

“That's where the dead go, Billbob.”

As keeper of the library, Miss Beetle
²
would be livid if she found out that Billy had taken the Book of the Dead from the library. Well, if everything worked out, Billy would have it back before she twigged a thing.

*

Miss Beetle finishes her tea; the children's copybooks stand in a tidy pile on the table, stacked one on top of the other. She pauses then and remembers where she has put her red pen, gets up and climbs the stairs. Her hair is dark and cropped short back and sides with a slightly longer quiff on top. It's just enough to accommodate a rebellious spike.

Before meeting Miss Beetle for the first time, people tend to have certain expectations. It's all in the name you see. Before clapping eyes on her one visualises a mature lady, rotund, perhaps sagging slightly, but not overweight. The ‘Miss' bit doesn't seem to fit with the ‘Beetle' bit. But coupled together this woman, in the mind's eye, is precise, quick, singular, independent and determined. Perhaps she loved – who knows – but either way, people in their fertile imaginations assume those days have passed.

The reality of Miss Beetle is an entirely other experience that shatters this carefully constructed image of invention. She is young-ish – it's difficult to put an age on her. She wears tight jeans that highlight her skinny legs. The denim is rolled up at the ends, displaying a flagrant disinterest in hemming. She matches her jeans with sensible leather hiking boots that, in contrast to the jeans, are always carefully polished and minded. Normally to top off the look she wears polo necks that come in monochrome shades; she favours earthy browns, reds, charcoal greys. In summer, they are replaced with plain cotton shirts and tank tops. The jeans and boots are a constant all year round.

Her cottage in the village is ridiculously chaotic; books and bits and bobs strewn on the floors, countertops, chairs, beds – you name it. The place is clean but messy. The kitchen, or to be more precise the cooker, is pristine, gleaming and utterly absolutely unused. Oddly, for such a lived-in cottage, it is impersonal. There are no photos, mirrors or snippets of much-loved poems. No pets. Nothing to suggest a strand of her character; even the books give no real hint as they scatter over the widest ranging interests and topics.