Sorting Out Billy

by Jo Brand

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Flower.

  ‘Is Charlie all right?’ countered Sarah. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault,’ said Flower. ‘Do you want to come round?’

  ‘No, I’m out shopping. I’ll buy a new skirt, I think, and that’ll help.’ Sarah had some insight into her shopping trips but only on a very superficial level. Flower always said if someone called it retail therapy once more to her face she would hit them, but Sarah wouldn’t even know what retail therapy was.

  ‘Did he hit you?’

  ‘Only with a door and not on purpose.’

  Flower’s hormones dictated that more melodrama entered their conversation. ‘He’s going to kill you.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Sarah.

  ‘What?’ said Flower. ‘You want to be killed?’

  ‘No, I’m having mustard on my hot dog … eating always makes me feel better,’ said Sarah.

  ‘When you’ve had a door on your head?’

  ‘I can’t hear you, you’re fading,’ said Sarah.

  In Flower’s book of mobile etiquette this was always an excuse to get away. ‘Stay on the line,’ she said desperately, sounding like a police negotiator talking to a hostage taker and then she tried, ‘Stop fucking pretending you’re out of range,’ but Sarah had gone. Flower set about texting her, very slowly, as she had learned neither text language nor speed on the keys and ended up doing laborious longhand. Gall me, let’s sort things out.

  This text went mistakenly to Martha who texted back twenty minutes later On my way, too late for Flower to head her off and have a relaxing afternoon obsessively cleaning the flat or being cruel to animals, both of which were the special features of her PMT. Charlie and the cat cowered and Flower cleaned until there was a ring on the makeshift doorbell and Martha rolled in waving a scrappy bit of paper in front of her and announcing, ‘We’ve got to crank things up a gear. I’m assuming you have something to report. Make me herbal tea and I’ll kill you.’ Then she flopped in a big pregnant heap on the mattress.

  Flower explained Charlie’s visit to Billy and Sarah, and Martha admired his courage mixed with extreme foolishness as she felt she could have predicted that poor Charlie might get floored by puffing Billy. She thought Charlie very sweet but a bit useless and decided that given the opportunity she wouldn’t have any sort of sexual encounter with him.

  Billy was different. In a strange echo of her mother’s attraction to the brooding bad temper of Brian, there was something about Billy’s sulkiness that fascinated Martha. She would melt down a drain if Sarah ever found this out though, as it was an unacknowledged cornerstone of their friendship that they would never sleep with each other’s partners. Martha realised she was blushing and that Flower was staring at her.

  ‘Pah, hormones!’ she said in an exaggerated fashion and tried to cover her face. Flower, used to hormonal explosions of her own as well as Martha’s, didn’t connect Martha’s redness in any way with an assessment of the suitability of her and Sarah’s partners for her bed.

  Then the two friends sat down together and re-examined the list which contained the following elements:

  Flower talk to him.

  ‘Not much use,’ said Flower. ‘In fact, a bloody waste of time. I reckon it just made him feel more angry.’

  ‘When did you do that?’ said Charlie who, as usual, was eavesdropping.

  ‘Oh, I just bumped into him in the newsagents,’ said Flower.

  ‘I thought you …’ Martha said. Flower pinched the inside of Martha’s arm really hard ‘…bumped into him in Sainsbury’s.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, girls,’ said Charlie, ‘does it really matter?’

  Flower and Martha exchanged a look.

  M talk to him.

  ‘All right,’ said Martha. ‘I’ll have a go.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Flower. ‘You know he’s getting worse.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be all right,’ said Martha. ‘Surely he wouldn’t whack a big pregger lady?’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Flower. ‘Next?’ Martha showed Flower the list where it said:

  Charlie talk to him.

  Martha put a line through this.

  Anger management?

  Martha put a big question mark next to anger management. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Those are our initial options. I’ll talk to Billy and then we’ll reassess it again, because if he’s as uncooperative with me as he was with you, then maybe we need to go a little more drastic. A little tinkering with their relationship maybe.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure,’ said Flower. ‘Not wimping out, are you?’ said Martha.

  ‘Hardly,’ said Flower. ‘I was going to suggest we by-passed the relationship bit and just had him beaten up. Charlie made his best axe-murderer face behind Flower’s back.

  ‘Silly me,’ said Martha, ‘I was forgetting the old PMT. Look, I’ll talk to Billy-Boy and then we’ll take it from there, all right?’

  Flower nodded.

  The rest of the list said:

  Their Relationship

  1. Split them up.

  1a. Sleep with him.

  1b. Find her new bloke.

  1c. Find her a woman.

  Threaten Him

  Get him beaten up/kill him.

  Flower and Martha left this for another day.

  Martha thought long and hard about talking to Billy. She considered the neutral ground of a pub and then decided it would be difficult to be truly private. She thought of the local café — not a problem being truly private there, because nobody in this working-class area ate health food. Once they realised they couldn’t get a cardiac arrest from the veggie fare on offer they had stopped coming in.

  Martha’s Lump was due in the next couple of weeks and because this was her first pregnancy she had convinced herself that it would plop out on the due date, despite the fact that over three-quarters of babies steadfastly refuse to come out on the day the doctor has predicted. Lump was now more of a human than he/she had ever been and she could feel his/her little hands pushing her skin and occasionally she caught a heel as Lump turned round trying to get comfortable. The only image in Martha’s mind was John Hurt’s character in Alien whose demon baby disgorged itself at the dinner table, a vision that wouldn’t go away.

  It was at this point in the process that Martha started to worry about how she would cope with looking after Lump, especially if it was an alien in some way.

  Greasy Ted had offered to keep her job open for her, still not realising that it was his sperm that was responsible for Martha’s state of approaching maternity and secretly feeling rather regretful and envious that she was having some other bloke’s baby. It had never occurred to Ted to examine dates and compare them with his and Martha’s encounter round the back of the club; he had assumed that some more long-term no-good bastard she had been with had dumped her at the news of pregnancy. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t get any information out of her. As Ted ran a lap-dancing club in Soho and looked like a portly trainee for the Rule 42 area of a prison, one might imagine that he would be seedy and unpleasant, one step away from a rapist, but in fact Ted was the sweetest, gentlest, funniest bloke who, but for his hideous appearance, would have been a real catch.

  Martha was worried that the combination of herself and Ted would produce some minor version of the Elephant Man and it had entered her head that she would have to have the child adopted if she couldn’t bear to look at it, or if it was quite sweet, but had a huge head.

  Martha had done her best through her pregnancy to behave like a demure prima gravida but had found the healthy diet and no drinking and no fags rule extremely difficult to obey. She had not drunk much but had found herself gasping for a drink some nights when she needed to steady her nerves. When she thought about her ‘chat’ with Billy, she definitely needed to steady her nerves.

  She eventually decided to get Billy round on the pretext of helping her with her computer. Martha had managed to set up email
with the assistance of a socially awkward nerdy type on the other end of the phone who kept tutting when she used less than technical language, but now she wanted to expand things and save some of her work onto disc so she didn’t lose it. She had acquired a second-hand CD burner, but had not the slightest idea what to do with it and had been meaning to phone Billy, who worked with computers, to ask for his help. Ted also knew his way round a computer, but Martha was worried that if she invited him back to her place, because he was so funny and she liked him so much, she might cave in and tell him it was his child inside her womb.

  So Martha called Billy at work and asked him to come, and because she genuinely did need help and had mentioned it to Sarah, who in turn had told Billy, nobody was suspicious. After Flower’s rather cack-handed approach to Billy, this rendezvous was set up with all the subtlety of an established computer dating agency. Billy had been only too happy to agree to help Martha because, since the incident with the bathroom door, things had been icy at home. So he set off from work that evening feeling very glad, as he picked up an evening paper and a sandwich, that he wasn’t going home for a bit and that he had Sarah’s blessing because he was helping out one of her friends.

  Martha, on the other hand, was in a frenzied state of anticipation. The bit of her that fancied Billy and that she had barely acknowledged, to save her the embarrassment of having to admit it to Sarah, had dictated that he could not be entertained in a flat that smelled of many unpleasant substances, from washing waiting to be done, to last night’s dinner. As Martha slogged furiously, feeling that this must be what it was like laying waste to rainforest as she chopped through the flat with a hoover and dustpan and brush, polish, duster and a sweet-smelling spray to squirt at anything that ponged, she had a strange sense of fear mixed with a tiny bit of deliciousness that Billy was going to be in her flat alone with her for at least a couple of hours.

  Martha had not totally ignored the fact that she was going to give Billy a stiff talking to, but like many women, she truly believed that if Billy was with her, he wouldn’t hit her. She pulled herself up when she realised that she was feeling too fond of Billy and kept telling herself that he was a violent person who hit her friend and therefore was not deserving of little thrills of anticipation.

  Foolishly, given her pregnant state, Martha, then began to consume a six-pack of strong lager that she had found at the back of her wardrobe, obviously placed there at some time or other by a selfish party-goer who did not want to waste the alcohol content on a lesser man or woman. Martha thought she would have half a can to steady her nerves as she began to get the speech together in her head that she would give to Billy. As she hoovered, she slurped, and suddenly three cans had gone and she felt a bit drunk and a bit guilty. It was rather late in the day to get Lump pissed before she/he left the all-encompassing safety of her womb, but she was sure Lump could handle his/her booze. Martha could think of nothing nicer than floating pissed in a warm sea.

  By early evening, she still had lots of clearing up to do, but unfortunately her enthusiasm for the job had dribbled away with the fourth can, so she gathered up armfuls of rubbish and threw it all under her duvet: a cat tray, some pudding, a heap of dirty knickers, a cheap bottle of wine with the top not quite on, some leftover pizza and a home colonic irrigation kit. Just as the duvet floated over this bizarre collection of goods, there was a knock at the door. Martha got up to answer it, stumbled and realised she was quite pissed. I should be ashamed of myself, she thought, but I’m pissed so I won’t bother.

  ‘Hiya,’ she said to no one in particular, well practised in disguising her pissedness, following many a Sunday dinner at home after a session in the pub. She felt warm and altruistic towards the world as she opened the door, although this leaked away when she saw how unsmiling Billy’s face was. He had been in the local pub and was the worse for two barley wines, an uncommon drink these days, but which could be labelled the tipple of the unreconstructed psychopath, so often has it featured in scenarios in which some blokes go off to kick the shit out of some rival football fans, burgle an empty property or bring some woman to the point of tears.

  ‘Come in,’ urged Martha, trying hard to remember whether Billy would know she knew about the bathroom door incident. Of course he fucking well does, she said to herself, then realised she was slurring her unspoken words and swearing in her thoughts, which was a very bad sign.

  Billy came in showing a remarkable degree of restraint at the sight of the recently tidied earthquake that was Martha’s flat. For Martha, each can of extra-strong lager had given her flat that gloss of neatness and a cachet which it simply didn’t possess.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, pointing to the kitchen table.

  ‘Shall we just get started?’ said Billy, looking at his watch. ‘I’ve got quite a lot to do this evening. Where’s your computer?’

  Martha led him through to the room where the computer sat; the room was currently being occupied by Pat, who had decided to stay a few days but, because Martha had thought she would definitely screw things up if she was around, she had persuaded her mother to go to the West End and see a show ‘Seeing a show’ was something that Pat’s generation thought was a huge treat and she did not need much persuading, saying she would be back at eleven. Martha looked at her watch. It was 7.21 p.m. so she had almost four hours to get round to the topic of Billy’s violence, have him lose his temper and retrieve the situation with her remarkable people skills before Pat got in. After half a lifetime Martha still didn’t realise that she had no people skills.

  Martha turned on her computer and Billy set about plugging bits in and clicking the mouse on a confusing array of icons at a remarkable speed. Martha felt too confused to ask him what he was doing. She had always had terrible trouble with electrics. Only last week, for example, a charming old West Indian guy like the universal grandfather of the world had come round and fixed her video for what seemed a laughably small fee and Martha had felt so grateful towards him she nearly cried.

  ‘Can I try my handiwork?’ he had asked and Martha had gestured at the pile of videos and said, ‘Pick any one.’

  As the picture spread onto the screen she realised that there in front of their eyes were two naked men one of whom was anally penetrating the other with gusto. ‘It’s an Italian art film,’ she managed to get out as she observed the horrified look on the poor guy’s face and thought to herself, Why did I even bother to say that?

  The grandfather repair man left, sadly turning down her tip.

  Billy seemed to be coming to the end of whatever complicated thing he was doing to her computer. He’d saved various files for her and the technical language swam past her like hieroglyphics made verbal as she nodded, pretending to understand. How to keep him there and talk about Sarah was now the problem.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she said and was surprised when he looked enthusiastic about that idea. She found some vodka and scrubbed at a glass in the sink. Billy swigged it back in one, smiled and the evening seemed to begin.

  Martha felt relaxed. Lump had drifted off to sleep inside her and chatting in a friendly fashion, she and Billy strolled into the lounge. Billy walked out onto the balcony and, in an extreme and by now predictable hormonal mood swing, an idea occurred to Martha in her drunkenness that she could throw him off the balcony and make it look like an accident. End result: a favour would have been done all round.

  She began to estimate how much force she would need to run at him, and tip him over into the blackness of the South London night. She started to convince herself that this would work, and even with the handicap of Lump, set off at a trot towards the balcony to see whether she could go through with it. As she got nearer and the ridiculous idea became more of a reality, her heart started to pound. ‘I am a murderer,’ she said to herself under her breath and prepared to launch herself at Billy.

  ‘Hi, Martha.’

  It was Junior from next door, the biggest, most mature teenager in the universe, who was water
ing something that Martha had always assumed was cannabis, but was in fact lemon verbena.

  ‘Junior, hello,’ Martha said breathlessly.

  ‘And who’s this?’

  She introduced them. There was some boring banter and then she and Billy went inside.

  ‘Look, I want to talk to you about Sarah,’ said Martha. Then, with absolutely no warning, Billy kissed her, a proper hungry kiss with a pushy tongue involved.

  I can’t believe this is happening, they both thought simultaneously.

  Then the kiss turned into physical contact which was hard, fast, urgent and, thought Martha delightedly, really really filthy. Clothes were ripped and unborn babies were woken as the pair somehow got to the bedroom.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Martha.

  ‘What’s the best way to fuck you, baby?’ said Billy.

  He ruined that by adding the ‘baby’, but I can allow a few minor blips past my style radar, thought Martha.

  In the darkness of the bedroom, they threw back the duvet and jumped onto the pile of rubbish. Some crunching and splatting occurred, accompanied by some sounds of disgust and then normal service was resumed.

  When Pat returned humming ‘Climb Every Mountain’ she was faced, looking from the lounge through into the bedroom, with a framed arse rhythmically penetrating her daughter. She turned and went to bed tutting, not even stopping for her customary glass of water.

  The first of Martha’s senses to be assaulted the following morning was her nose, when she realised that cat litter had somehow worked its way into the equation of debris on which they had slept. Yes it was foolish, perhaps, having a cat that she hardly ever saw and living on the twelfth floor of a council block. She spent far too long worrying about Plop too, fantasising about her being captured by local schoolchildren and arriving home minus vital organs or limbs. But all Plop ever did was live up to her name by defecating copiously in her litter tray and occasionally elsewhere in the flat, a situation which had become blown out of all proportion since Martha’s pregnancy with the risk of that unpronounceable disease that can be picked up from cat excrement.