Billy Elliot (10 page)

I
t was my own fault in the first place for setting fire to that horse’s arse.

I wasn’t sorry for the horse. I know, it’s a dumb animal, it can’t help it if the coppers use it as an offensive weapon. But think about it – if it was about three hundred years ago and you was a peasant and you had one of those knights in shining armour bearing down on you on a bloody great charger, and it was question of him taking your head off or you swinging your spade into the horse’s front legs, what would you do? No bloody contest, is it? It’s the same thing. That horse was on their side, no matter what. It was the f***ing enemy.

Anyhow, it wasn’t just any horse. That one wasn’t so dumb, it was a bastard. It was always side-stepping into the crowd and getting on people’s feet and kicking out at us. You ask anyone. It was going to have someone’s head off. The horse and the piece of copper-shite on its back were well matched and all, they were bastards together. I wish it had been his arse I’d set fire to. I wish he’d farted himself to Kingdom bloody Come.

They don’t have to be like that. Most of them are bastards – waving their big fat wage packets in our faces, all bloated up with the overtime they get paid for kicking our arses for Thatcher. But some of them are all right. I mean, they’re all
the bloody enemy as far as I’m concerned, as far as the working man’s concerned, but some of them are half decent. Some of ‘em didn’t really want to be there, I reckon – not that it stopped them, mind.

‘You’re on the wrong bloody side,’ I said to one of them.

‘Yeah, well, I haven’t got the option of striking, have I?’

‘Well, you’ve sold out then, haven’t you?’ I said. And then we all started up, pointing at this kid and chanting, ‘SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT!’ Kid didn’t know which way to look.

Alan Tattersley, him that used to have that little toy policeman’s helmet he used to wear on the picket line, he just about almost converted one of them. He used to stick his great big hairy ugly face right up into the police line with that stupid little helmet on, like a great big kid, and every now and then one of them would crack up and start laughing. There was this one young lad started snorting and giggling to himself – he looked a right laugh, did Al, dressed up like that.

‘You’re on the wrong side, mate,’ Al told him.

‘I’ve got a job to do,’ said the kid.

‘So’ve we, if they’d let us do it,’ I yelled.

‘No one’s stopping you. The coach is laid on.’

‘Yeah, for how long, though?’ I said. Anyhow, Al got talking to the copper and a few days later, he turns up one day on the picket with the rest of us.

‘I thought you had a job to do,’ I said to him.

‘I have, but this is my spare time. I can do what I want in my spare time, can’t I?’ he said. Could he f***! Naive little bastard. We never saw him again. He got spotted and whisked away. See? It’s more than just a job, being a copper. You’re taking sides.

Anyhow, this particular horse and this particular copper who rode him were a pair of right shites together. If you ended up next to them on the picket line, you were going to get hurt – trodden on, kicked, batoned, poked in the eye, kicked in the teeth. Something. So some of us decided it was time to get our own back.

Friday afternoon, on the High Street. They should have been back in their bloody barracks or somewhere, the picket wasn’t on until five when the next shift came up. Keeping order, they said. Oh, aye, about six thousand coppers running around the place with nothing to do – bound to cause an outbreak of peace and order, isn’t it?

There was a little crowd around the horse, it was outside the supermarket. They were always showing off their bloody horses to the kids and that. I edged up behind while he was leaning across and chatting to some bird. I think he saw us out of the corner of his eye but he never thought we’d try owt on. I had this tin of lighter fuel and I squirted a bit on the horses tail – just a bit, just enough to get it going, like. Then I clicked my lighter.

WHOOOMPH! It went up like a bloody Christmas tree, right up its crack. Perfect. The horse reared up and neighed, the copper was clinging on for dear life and trying to drag the nag round to stop his hooves coming down on the crowd. We were shouting our mouths off.

‘Whey-hey, whoa, go on, boy!’ we were yelling. Someone slapped the horse on the arse. The copper was spinning round, trying to get control and get a look at our faces at the same time. No chance. It was great. It was only fired up for a moment, I didn’t exactly burn a hole in it. It was f***ing marvellous.

Then we heard horses behind us. Just our luck, there was a whole herd of the bastards just round the corner. As soon as they heard the shouting they were onto us. I chucked the lighter and ran for it.

We went bombing up the High Street, trying to get lost in the crowd, but we ran smack into a load of riot police coming the other way. Someone grassed us up, I reckon, they knew there was some trouble coming. We turned off into a side road and ran hell for bloody leather downhill with the f***ing cavalry clattering away behind us.

Have you ever been run down by the cavalry? Don’t try it, it’s f***ing horrible. Simon James fell, they had him. Whack whack whack. Blood everywhere. Those sticks are bloody great long things, they get a real swing in on them. They don’t like you setting fire to their horses, they were really pissed off. We had no chance of outrunning them, so I turned off and dashed in through one of the houses. It was Jeff and Alice Thomson’s place. As soon as she saw us, Alice ran through and opened the door at the back so’s I could get out quick. Her old man even handed me a biscuit on a plate as I went through, and I snatched it and stuffed it in me mouth as I went, even though I didn’t exactly feel like a snack at the time.

Out the other side – and the bastards were waiting for me. They were everywhere! I ran four or five houses down till I got to Jamie’s place, banged on the door, it opened, pushed through it ...

‘Go on, man!’ yelled Jamie. They were pounding at the door behind us before I even got out of the front room.

F*** ‘em!’ Jamie yelled. I was out the back already ... and would you bloody believe it, it was washing day out there.
The whole street had filled their yards with white sheets and knickers and god knows what else. I jumped up on top of the outhouse and down into the next yard and up the next out-house. I could see the police coming down one side of the street. I wasn’t far off our place. I could see our Billy standing on another outhouse shouting summat at me. I stopped and had a look around. There were coppers chasing people all over the place, knots of fighting. It looked as though the whole thing had turned into a major confrontation. Then a whole bloody battalion of them turned the corner on their horses and came galloping along towards me. I jumped down and ran through the yard but I got tangled up in a sheet. I pushed me way out of the yard, trying to get the sheet off me face, but it was wet and sticking.

‘Tony! Tony! Not that way!’ I heard Billy shouting at me, but it was too late by then. The sheet was sopping. I stopped, just for a second to get it loose, and I tripped up. I could hear them coming. I got back up, I tripped again, I got back up ...

Whack whack whack whack. One two three four. They must have been taking it in turns. And that was about the last thing I knew until I woke up in the cells hours later.

They kept me in overnight to go in front of the court Saturday morning at ten o’clock. They have special sessions to deal with us, they make so many arrests. It’s a foregone conclusion, of course. Justice? It’s not justice. It’s whose side you’re on. Whose side are you on, comrade? Ask yourself. Don’t bother asking the police or the magistrate. They know very well what they’re doing.

They almost had to let me go, actually. The cowardly bastards must have had a go at me while I was out cold, because
I was black and blue from head to foot. I could hardly bloody walk. Well, that’s usual, but they’d made a bit of a mistake when they batoned me with that sheet over my head. They hadn’t been able to see what they were doing, so they got me on the face. The side of my face was out here, black and blue, red and yellow. It was practically green in places. Christ, it was painful. It was gorgeous. Not the sort of thing they like to put up in public. If you get beaten up like that, they usually let you go rather than let people see what they get up to when they’ve got you on your own, but in my case they wanted to make an exception because of the horse’s arse. They love their horses so much, you see. In the end they decided to say that the horse had kicked out at me in self-defence. Everyone would feel sorry for the poor horse, no one would blame it. What a load of shite! But it was going to work for them, and they knew it.

My mate Billy Watson got knocked about badly one time – they hated him because he wound them up so much, so they beat him black and blue, but they did it so you couldn’t see a mark on him. All on his upper arms, his back and his legs and his stomach. But he got back at them. He waited till they had him up in court, and while the copper guarding him was looking the other way, he wiped off his top.

‘This is the side of the story they don’t want you to see,’ he said. He was a total bloody mess, they’d really gone to town on him. The courtroom went really quiet. And guess what? He got let off? The coppers got prosecuted? Did they f***! He got an extra month inside for contempt of court. For taking his shirt off. You have to be dressed proper in Her Majesty’s court of law, see.

My case didn’t take long. In and out like a dose of salts, I
was. If I’d been a big union man they’d have put me away inside, out of the way. But I was just a working man with no work so they fined us instead. One hundred quid. They know we’ve no money. Just before f***ing Christmas and all. Happy New Year, you bastards! Thanks a bunch. Where were we going to find that sort of money? Eh, with a bit of luck the Miners’ Social might help us out – they do with fines quite often. But then again, when they found out why, about the horses arse, maybe not. It’s not the sort of public image Arthur Scargill likes for his boys.

Dad and Billy came along, anyhow, to lend us a bit of support. Dad did anyway. From the look on Billy’s face he’d’ve rather have been somewhere else, but I expect Dad made him come. Dad was furious with me, I could tell, but I wasn’t in any mood for it and he had the sense to keep his mouth shut. The fact is, I was f***ed. There’s no other word for it. There was a little bit of me kept wanting to giggle because of the memory of that horse with its arse up in flames – just a little bit – but the rest of me was just f***ed. They’d done me over good and proper. I was pissed off for getting caught, I was pissed off for being beaten to buggery by the police. I’d spent a night on a concrete floor in the cells, getting woken up every half an hour for a ‘safety check’, and I’d been charged a hundred quid for doing it. I was depressed, if you want another word. I felt about half an inch tall. I felt like a piece of dirty little shite.

We caught the bus back and came up the road with the sea at our backs, up to our road, the three of us together. I just wanted to get to bed and weep my heart out like a little kid.

And you know what? It still hadn’t finished. There was
this woman waiting there, outside the house. I’d seen her somewhere before, god knows where. She seemed to know our Billy, though.

‘What’s going on, Billy?’ she asked.

‘Please, miss, don’t,’ he said.

‘Where were you?’

‘Our Tony was up in court, I had to go,” he hissed. “I tried to ring you, miss, but you weren’t in.”

‘Who the f*** are you?’ I asked her. I looked at Dad.

‘I think we’d better all go inside,’ he said.

So we trooped in. I was looking at Billy. Was he in trouble? Because I was going to bloody leather him if he was. We’ve got enough on our plates without some middle-class bitch poking her nose around.

‘Have you been mucking around at school?’ I asked him.

‘Get off!’ he said.

We got into the front room and turned to face her. She sighed and crossed her arms.

‘I know this might seem difficult for you,’ she began, ‘but today Billy has missed an important audition.’

‘What?’ I couldn’t believe me ears. ‘Audition? For what?’

‘For the Royal Ballet School.’

‘The Royal Ballet?’

I could not even begin to imagine this. Here I was, I’d just had the living shite beaten out of me by the bloody coppers, I’d been shat on by the court, I’d been without a wage for over half a year ... and oh, dear me! Our Billy was missing an important audition with the Royal Ballet School. Dear, oh, dear!

‘You got to be joking, though,’ I said.

‘I’m perfectly serious.’

I looked at Billy. ‘Ballet?’ I could feel myself going. I was
really getting ready to blow.

‘Yeah.’

‘Whose side are you on?’ I asked him.

‘It’s not a question of sides,’ she began. But I’d heard enough. I just went mad.

‘Have you got any idea what we’re going through?’ I yelled, right in her face. I could see her flinch, but she stood her ground. ‘And you come round here spouting this shite. Ballet? What are you trying to do, you stupid bitch, turn him into a f***ing scab for the rest of his life? Look at him! He’s only twelve for f***’s sake.’

‘You’ve got to start training when you’re young,’ said Billy.

‘Shut it!’ I had really had enough of it. I was about ready to take a swipe at the pair of them. ‘I’m not having any brother of mine running around like a right twat for your gratification,’ I told her.

‘Excuse me, it’s not for me,’ she snapped. She’d gone as white as a sheet. She had every right to be. I was that far off twatting her one.

‘What good’s it going to do to him? He’s just a kid. What about giving him a childhood, eh?’

‘I don’t want a childhood, I want to be a ballet dancer,’ the little bastard bawled.

‘Give the boy a chance,’ she began.

‘And what do you know about it anyhow?’ I mean, who the hell did she think she was? What right had she got to come in here like this, offering the Royal Ballet on a plate? ‘What qualifications have you got?’ I asked her.