Billy Liar

by Keith Waterhouse

  The door-bell tinkled and we put on our funeral faces but it was nobody, only Councillor Duxbury. He crossed the floor to his own office with an old man's shuffle, putting all his thought into the grip of his stick and the pattern of the faded, broken lino. A thick, good coat sat heavily on his bowed back, and there were enamelled medallions on his watch-chain. At the door of his room he half-turned, moving his whole body like an old robot, and muttered: ‘Morning, lads.’

  We chanted, half-dutifully, half-ironically: ‘Good morning, Councillor Duxbury,’ and directly the door was closed, began our imitation of him. ‘It's Councillor Duxbury, lad, Councillor Duxbury. Tha wun't call Lord Harewood mister, would tha? Councillor, that's mah title. Now think on.’

  ‘Ah'm just about thraiped,’ said Arthur in broad dialect. The word was one we had made up to use in the Yorkshire dialect routine, where we took the Michael out of Councillor Duxbury and people like him. Duxbury prided himself on his dialect which was practically unintelligible even to seasoned Yorkshiremen.

  ‘Tha's getten more bracken ivvery day, lad,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, an' fair scritten anall,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Tha mun laik wi' t' gangling-iron.’

  ‘Aye.’

  We swung into the other half of the routine, which was Councillor Duxbury remembering, as he did every birthday in an interview with the Stradhoughton Echo. Arthur screwed up his face into the lined old man's wrinkles and said:

  ‘Course, all this were fields when I were a lad.’

  ‘– and course, ah'd nobbut one clog to mah feet when ah come to Stradhoughton,’ I said in the wheezing voice.

  ‘Tha could get a meat pie and change out o' fourpence –’

  ‘Aye, an' a box at t' Empire and a cab home at t' end on it.’

  ‘Ah had to tak' a cab home because ah only had one clog,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Oh, I'll use that,’ I said, resuming my normal voice.

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Bar-steward,’ said Stamp, automatically.

  Every Saturday night I did a club turn down at one of the pubs in Clogiron Lane, near where we lived. It was a comedy act, but not the kind of thing Danny Boon would be interested in: a slow-burning, Yorkshire monologue that was drummed up mainly by Arthur and me at these sessions in the office. Arthur was more interested in the singing side. He did a turn with the band at the Roxy twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, trying vainly to get them to play the songs we had written between us. When my own turn was finished I would hurry over to the Roxy to listen to him, pretending that I was whisking from one theatre to another to catch a promising act that I was thinking of booking.

  As for Stamp, he did nothing at all except loll about in the Roxy, waving his arms about and mouthing ‘Woodchopper's Ball’ when the band played it.

  ‘Saw that bint you used to knock about with 's morning,’ he said, when the Duxbury routine was over.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘That bint. Her that always used to be ringing you up.’

  I ran flippantly back through the sequence of disasters, Audrey, Peggy, Lil, that bint from Morecambe. A depression grew inside me as I traced them back almost to my schooldays. When I recognized the depression, I knew whom he was talking about.

  I said lightly, knowing what was coming: ‘What bint, for Christ sake?’

  ‘That scruffy-looking one. Her that always wore that suède coat.’

  I poured unconcern into my voice. ‘Who – Liz What's-her-name?’

  ‘Yer, Woodbine Lizzy. Shags like a rattlesnake, doesn't she? She hasn't got a new coat yet.’

  So Liz was back in town. I liked the phrase ‘back in town’, as though she had just ridden in on a horse, and I toyed with it for a second, so as not to think about her. Drive you out of town. City limits. Get out of town, Logan, I'm warning you for the last time.

  It was a month ago since she had left last, with only a chance good-bye, and this time there had been no postcards. It was part of the nature of Liz to disappear from time to time and I was proud of her bohemianism, crediting her with a soul-deep need to get away and straighten out her personality, or to find herself, or something; but in less romantic moments I would fall to wondering whether she was tarting round the streets with some American airman. I had no real feeling for her, but there was always some kind of pain when she went away, and when the pain yielded nothing, I converted it, like an alchemist busy with the seaweed, into something approaching love.

  ‘Where did you see her?’ I asked.

  ‘I don't know. Walking up Infirmary Street,’ said Stamp. ‘Why, frightened she's got another boy friend?’ he said in his nauseating, elbow-prodding way.

  I said carefully: ‘Thought she'd gone to Canada or somewhere,’ naming the first country that came into my head.

  ‘What's she come back for, then?’ said Stamp.

  I was trying to find a cautious way of going on with it when Arthur came to the rescue. He had been handling the switchboard.

  ‘Never use a preposition to end a sentence with,’ he said.

  I often told myself that I had no friends, only allies, banded together in some kind of conspiracy against the others. Arthur was one of them. We spoke together mainly in catchphrases, hidden words that the others could not understand.

  ‘I must ask you to not split infinitives,’ I said gratefully, in the light relieved voice.

  ‘Hear about the bloke who shot the owl?’ said Arthur. ‘It kept saying to who instead of to whom.’

  ‘Shouldn't it be Who's Whom instead of Who's Who?’ I said, not for the first time that week. Even our ordinary conversations were like the soft-shoe shuffle routine with which we enlivened the ordinary day. I was perfectly aware that I was stalling, and I turned back to Stamp.

  ‘Did you speak to her?’

  ‘Speak to who?’

  ‘To whom. Woodbine Lizzy,’ I said, burning with shame for using the nickname Stamp had given her.

  ‘No, just said hullo. She was with somebody,’ he said, as though it did not matter. But it was my first bit of emotional meat this morning, and I was determined to make it matter, and to get the pain back inside where it belonged.

  ‘Who was she with?’

  ‘I don't know, I don't ask people for their autographs. What's up, are you jealous, eh? Eh?’ He pronounced the word ‘jealous’ as though it were something he had dug up out of the garden, still hot and writhing.

  The door-bell tinkled again. ‘Shop,’ called Arthur softly, getting up. A small woman, all the best clothes she had collected together on her body, peered round the door. ‘Is this where you come to arrange for t' funerals?’

  Arthur walked respectfully over to the counter.

  ‘Ah've been in t' wrong shop. Ah thought it were next door.’ She leaned heavily on the counter, her arms folded against it, and began to spell out her name.

  I got up, stiffly, feeling the calendars under my pullover, and the waft of cold air when I separated them from my shirt. ‘Off for a slash,’ I muttered to Stamp and went downstairs among the cardboard boxes of shrouds and coffin handles. I pottered aimlessly among the wreath-cards and the bales of satin lining, looking for something worth having, and then went into the lavatory.

  The lavatory at Shadrack and Duxbury's had a little shaving mirror on the door, where Shadrack could inspect his boils. More as a matter of routine than anything else, I put my tongue out and looked at it. There were some lumps at the back of my throat that I had never noticed before. Putting the subject of Liz on one side, I began putting my tongue between my fingers, seeing if the lumps got worse farther down and wondering if this were the beginning of gingivitis which Stamp, with some justice, had suffered the year before. The sharp pain in my chest I located as the edge of the calendars shoving against my ribs. I checked the bolt on the door again, and took the calendars out from under my pullover. They were dog-eared now, with well-established creases across the envelopes. The top one was addressed to an old mother superior at the nu
nnery down by the canal. I took out the calendar and folded the envelope in four, a surprising bulkiness. I rammed the envelope into my side-pocket, where the passion pills were, and held the calendar in my hands, the other three grimly gripped under my arm.

  There was a brown-printed page for each month. The months tore off, and at the bottom of each month was a quotation. I knew some of them by heart. ‘The only riches you will take to heaven are those you give away’ – January. ‘Think all you speak, but speak not all you think’ – February. ‘It takes sixty muscles to frown, but only thirteen to smile. Why waste energy’ – April. I tore off the leaves one by one and dropped them into the lavatory. When I had reached October, ‘It is a gude heart that says nae ill, but a better heart that thinks none,’ I decided that that was enough for the time being and pulled the length of rough string that served for a chain. As the screwed-up pieces of paper swam around in the water I tried hurriedly to count them, January to October inclusive, ten pages, in case I had dropped one on the floor for Shadrack to find and investigate. The water resumed its own level. To my horror, about half a dozen calendar leaves, soggy and still swimming, remained. I began gnawing at my lower lip and checking the signs of panic, heart, sweaty palms, tingling ankles, like a mechanic servicing a car. I flushed the lavatory again but there was only a heavy zinking noise and a trickle of water as the ballcock protested. I perched myself on the side of the scrubbed seat and waited, staring at the mother superior's calendar. ‘Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves’ – November.

  I could hear Councillor Duxbury clumping about upstairs, aimlessly opening drawers and counting his money. Without much effort, I drifted into Ambrosia, where the Grand Yeomanry were still limping past the war memorial, their left arms raised in salute. ‘It is often wondered how the left-hand salute, peculiar to Ambrosia, originated. Accounts differ, but the most widely-accepted explanation is that of the seven men who survived the Battle of Wakefield all, by an amazing coincidence, had lost their right arms. It was necessary for them to salute their President –’

  The stairs creaked and there were footsteps on the stone floor outside. Somebody rattled the loose knob of the lavatory door. I waited for them to go away, but I could hear the heavy breathing. I began to start up a tuneless whistling so that they would know the booth was engaged, and to back-track through my recent thoughts to check that I had not been talking to myself. The door-rattling continued.

  ‘Someone in here,’ I called.

  I heard the voice of Stamp: ‘What you doing, man, writing your will out?’

  It was the kind of remark Gran would shout up the stairs at home. ‘Piss off,’ I shouted, as I would dearly have loved to shout at Gran in the same situation. Stamp began pawing at the door. If there had been a keyhole he would have been peeping through it by now.

  ‘No writing mucky words on the walls!’ he called. I did not reply. Stamp began quoting, ‘Gentlemen, you have the future of England in your hands.’ The last few words were breathless and accompanied by a scraping noise on the floor, and it was obvious that he was jumping up and down, trying to peer over the top of the door. ‘Naff off, Stamp, for Christ sake!’ I called. I stood up. The soggy little balls of paper were still in the lavatory but I dared not pull the chain again while Stamp was still there. I picked up the other calendars from the floor where I had put them and stuck them back inside my pullover, trying not to let the stiff paper crackle. Outside, Stamp began grunting in what he imagined to be an imitation of a man in the throes of constipation.

  ‘Bet you're reading a mucky book,’ he said in a hoarse whisper through the door. I let him ramble on. ‘Bet y'are, bet you're reading a mucky book. “His hand caressed her silken knee –”’, and excited by his own fevered images, he began to mouth obscenities through the cracks in the deep green door.

  There was another sound on the stairs, this time the furry padding of light suède shoes, and I could imagine the yellow socks and the chocolate-brown gaberdines that went with them. I heard the nasal, nosey voice of Shadrack: ‘Haven't you anything to do upstairs, Stamp?’ and Stamp, crashing his voice into second gear to simulate something approaching respect, saying: ‘Just waiting to go into the toilet, Mr Shadrack.’

  ‘Yes, it's thought some of you spend too much time down here. Far too much time,’ said Shadrack. He picked at words as other people picked at spots.

  Shadrack was not the stock cartoon undertaker, although he would have made a good model for other stock cartoons, notably the one concerning the psychiatrist's couch. He was, for a start, only about twenty-five years old, although grown old with quick experience, like forced rhubarb. His general approach and demeanour was that of the secondhand car salesman, and he had in fact at one time been one in the south. He was in the undertaking business because his old man was in it before him and old Shadrack had been, so to speak, young Shadrack's first account. After that he rarely attended funerals and would indeed have found it difficult in view of the R.A.F. blazer and the canary-coloured pullover which, sported being the word, he sported. But he was useful to the firm in that, besides having inherited half of it, he could get round old ladies. He was a member of most churches in Stradhoughton and to my certain knowledge was a card-carrying Unitarian, a Baptist, a Methodist, and both High and Low Church.

  ‘You'd better get up into the office,’ I heard him say to Stamp. ‘I've got to go out.’

  Stamp shuffled off, murmuring inarticulate servilities. I called: ‘Is that you, Mr Shadrack?’

  He either did not hear or did not choose to hear, but started fidgeting among the coffin handles, just outside the lavatory door.

  ‘Is that Mr Shadrack?’

  ‘Yes, there's someone waiting to come in there,’ he said testily.

  ‘Shan't be a minute,’ I called in the high monotone of a man hailing down from the attic. ‘I was wondering if I could see you before you go out?’

  ‘What?’

  The voice I had chosen was beginning to sound ridiculous. ‘Was wondering if I could see you, 'fore you go out.’

  Shadrack called back: ‘Yes, I've been thinking it's about time we had a little talk.’ Perched in my cold cell, I wondered miserably what he meant by that and skimmed quickly through a condensed inventory of the things he might know about.

  ‘Well I can't see you now, Fisher, I've got to arrange a funeral. You'll have to come back after lunch.’

  Every Saturday afternoon, after the firm had closed for the day, Shadrack started messing about with a drawing-board he kept in his office. He was trying to design a contemporary coffin. So far he had not had the nerve to try and interest Councillor Duxbury in the project, the Councillor being an oak and brass fittings man, but he spent a lot of time drawing streamlined caskets, as he called them, on yellow scratchpads. One thing he had succeeded in doing was fitting out the funeral fleet, including the hearse, with a radio system. When there was a funeral Shadrack would sit in his office saying ‘Able-Peter, Able-Peter, over’ into a microphone. So far as I could remember, nobody ever answered him, and I could not think what he would have said if they had, except: ‘Divert funeral to Manston Lane Chapel, over.’ He kept a copy of The Loved One in his desk, but only to get ideas.

  I called: ‘Righto, Mr Shadrack.’ I did not know whether he had gone back upstairs or whether he was still prowling about outside. Not to take chances, I flushed the lavatory again. When the water had flowed away there were two little balls of paper still floating about. I took the thick, folded envelope out of my pocket and, my face disfigured by nausea, scooped the two soggy leaves of calendar out of the lavatory. I stuffed them inside the envelope and crammed it into my pocket. Then I unbolted the door. Shadrack was standing immediately behind, and he glanced me up and down like a customs officer as I passed.

  Upstairs, Arthur had his raincoat on, waiting to go out for coffee. Before I could speak, Stamp called: ‘Here he is! Reading mucky books in the bog!’ I reached for my own raincoat.
Stamp shouted, hoarsely so that Shadrack could not hear downstairs, ‘Let's have a read! What you got, Lady Chatterley's Lover?’ He dived forward and began scragging me around the stomach. He felt the stiff calendars under my pullover and bellowed in triumph: ‘He has! He has! He's got a mucky book under his jersey! Coarrr! Dirty old man!’

  I seized his wrists and snapped: ‘Take your frigging mucky hands off my pullover, stupid-looking crow!’

  ‘Give us your mucky book,’ pleaded Stamp, wheezing in his joke-over way.

  Arthur was twiddling the door-handle impatiently. ‘Are you coming out for coffee?’ I pulled my coat on.

  ‘Don't be all day, you two, I want some,’ said Stamp.

  ‘Get stuffed,’ I said.