Billy Liar

by Keith Waterhouse

  The classical department, usually deserted on a Saturday afternoon, had an almost public-library air about it. It was thickly carpeted, with a single glass counter and a row of grey record booths. The rest of it was empty and light and spacious, and quiet. Liz was standing behind the counter, handing a record album to a middle-aged man in a black overcoat. She was talking to him in her comfortable, plummy voice. I knew that she had seen me out of the corner of her eye, and was putting the moment off, the same as I was.

  I was trying on expressions, as though I carried a mirror about with me and was pulling faces in it. I tried to look stunned, because after all there was the material for it, and I tried to assemble some kind of definite emotion that I wasn't putting on or concocting out of the ingredients of the atmosphere she carried around with her. I found that what I had was a sensation of singing.

  The man picked up the record album and went into one of the record booths, closing the door behind him.

  I walked slowly forward to the counter.

  ‘Hullo, Liz.’

  ‘Hullo, Billy.’

  I spoke in what I hoped was the low, husky voice, indicating the end of a long journey or something, but she spoke frankly and happily, as though she were delighted to see me and had no reason to hide what she felt.

  We grinned at each other, full of relief, like people who have found each other again in a crowd. She was still wearing the same old things, the green suède jacket and the crumpled black skirt. But the crisp white blouse went well with her round, shiny face, the mousy hair, and the eyes that laughed aloud.

  ‘It's been a long time,’ I said, knowing it was a cliché, in fact selecting it as a cliché, but trying to put some meaning into what I was saying.

  She shook her head from side to side, happily, considering the point.

  ‘Oh – a month. Five weeks.’

  ‘I ought to say it seemed like years.’

  She grinned again. Liz was the only girl I had ever met who knew how to grin, or anything about it. ‘Isn't this grand?’ she said.

  ‘I could even remember how you smelled,’ I said.

  She gave me a mock bow. ‘Thank you, kind sir, she said.’

  ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Thank you very much for ringing me up and telling me.’

  She wrinkled her nose, not in the same way as the Witch but in a friendly, candid way. Liz never gave excuses.

  ‘I would have seen you tonight, anyway,’ she said. ‘Are you going to the Roxy?’

  Who isn't? I thought. I started rapidly disposing of personnel. The Witch, for one, would quite obviously be going into a nunnery or somewhere after this afternoon's business. Rita, if I stood her up, would not dream of paying her own way into the Roxy. I did not care, anyway, knowing that I could tell Liz all about it if I wanted to.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I wish you'd rung me up.’

  ‘I hadn't time.’ She grinned broadly again, telling me not to believe her and not to worry because it didn't matter, and it didn't. ‘Ask me what I'm doing here.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Helping Maurie out for the day.’ No time to ring me up, but time to help Maurie out. It still didn't matter. The only thing that crossed my mind was the vague question of how Liz knew Maurie. She seemed to know everybody. It was part of the enigma, one of the things about her that I could never get into the test tube and examine.

  ‘Well what have you been doing all these weeks?’ she said, bubbling over with it all. ‘How's the script-writing? How are the songs? How's Arthur?’ She was the only girl I knew who cared, or who could talk about things as though they really mattered. We began chattering, eagerly interrupting, laughing, grinning at each other as though we knew the whole joke about the world and understood it. We talked until the man in the record booth, whom we had both forgotten, emerged with the record album and paid for it and went away. It was nearly closing time.

  ‘Ask me where I've been all these weeks,’ said Liz.

  ‘No,’ I said steadily, not laughing this time. It was the one standing challenge between us and I had always told myself that I would never ask. I did not know any longer whether I was afraid to, or whether it was out of some kind of respect for her, or whether it was just an obsession like growing my thumb nail until it was a quarter of an inch long.

  ‘But you might have sent me a postcard,’ I said.

  ‘Postcards next time. If there is a next time,’ she added softly.

  I went downstairs again, waving to her. The crowd had thinned out, leaving a litter of discarded records and cigarette packets on the floor and on the glass showcases. Arthur had gone, and so had his friends from the band. Most of Stamp's crowd had gone too, but Stamp was still there, sniggering with Maurie at the counter.

  The old gramophone record still under my arm, I remembered what I had come into the Disc Bar for in the first place. I was loth to approach Maurie without Arthur to back me up, but I decided to do so for Stamp's benefit.

  ‘Hey, Maurie!’ I said. ‘Can I have the money back on this record?’

  He glared at me, a sour look that was unusual for him, and snapped: ‘Why?’

  ‘It only plays one tune.’

  Maurie rang open his cash register. ‘Yes, I've been watching you,’ he said venomously. ‘I've been hearing about you.’ Stamp was leaning on the counter, trying to look as though he didn't know what was going on. ‘You're another of these who come in here, thinking you own the shop. Well I don't know where you get your money from.’

  Maurie always dribbled when he spoke. He sucked in vigorously with his upper lip, retrieving the thin spittle that had been trickling down his chin.

  ‘Well we're having a big clear-out. From now on it's a shop, not a market-place. Take the money and clear out.’

  He flung some coins on the scratched glass counter. I had to scrabble at them to pick them up. Stamp was finding it difficult not to break out sniggering again.

  ‘And don't come back again!’ said Maurie.

  But I was whistling as I walked out of the shop, and I whistled all the way down the Arcade.

  9

  I DID nothing but walk around town for an hour and a half, watching Saturday evening begin to happen and the slow queues forming outside the Odeon and the Gaumont. The people walked about as though they were really going somehere. I stood for a quarter of an hour at a time, watching them get off the buses and disperse themselves about the streets. I was amazed and intrigued that they should all be content to be nobody but themselves.

  When it was half past seven I got on a bus myself, on my way to the New House, the pub where I did my club turn. As a rule I could not face this experience without a stiff shot of No. 1 thinking, seeing myself returning to Stradhoughton as the world-famous comedian, doing charity concerts and never losing the common touch. But tonight I did not think about it at all. When Liz was in Stradhoughton I could transport myself from hour to hour like a levitationist, so that all events between one meeting and another were things that happened to other people and not to me.

  It was only when I got off the bus at Clogiron Lane and the New House was in sight that I began to unload the ballast and I was left, as usual, with nothing but a kind of desperate inertia.

  The New House was an enormous drinking barracks that had been built to serve Cherry Row and the streets around it. The New House was not its proper title. According to the floodlit inn-sign stuck on a post in the middle of the empty car park, the pub was called the Who'd A Thought It. There had been a lot of droll speculation in Man o' the Dales' column about how this name had come about, but whatever the legend was it had fallen completely flat in Clogiron Lane. Nobody ever called the pub anything but the New House.

  There was a windy, rubber-tiled hallway where the children squatted, eating potato crisps and waiting for their mothers. Two frosted-glass doors, embossed with the brewery trademark, led off it, one into the public bar and one into the s
aloon. It was necessary to take one route or the other to get into the concert-room; the only other alternative was to approach the concert-room direct through its own entrance and run the gauntlet of fat women, sitting in rows with their legs apart, shrieking with laughter and gulping down gin and orange. Either that or climb in through the lavatory window.

  I decided on the public-bar route. I smoothed my hair back, straightened my tie, and went in. I preferred the public bar, anyway. The men who sat here were refugees from the warm terrace-end pubs that had been pulled down; they sat around drinking mild and calling to each other across the room as though nothing had changed. ‘Have you got them theer, Charlie?’ – ‘Aye, they're up in our gar-ridge.’ – I'll come down for ‘em tomorrow morning.’ They seemed to have secrets between them, and they reunited into a world of their own wherever they went. The few items in the New House that gave it anything like the feel of a pub – the dartboard, the cribbage markers, the scratched blind-box, and the pokerwork sign that said IYBMADIBYO, if you buy me a drink I'll buy you one – were all part of the same portable world, as if they had been wheeled here in prams in the flight from the old things.

  Through the smoke, a voice croaked jubilantly: ‘Here he is – the boy!’ and I realized at once that I had made another mistake. From this point I had to walk through a barricade of Formica-topped tables where all these men sat clacking dominoes and making their observations. I waved my hand flaccidly at one or two of the people I recognized. A man called Freddy Platt, who never did anything else but sit around drinking beer all day, started up.

  ‘Nah lad, Billy! Where's thi dog?’ The others laughed, and he looked around eagerly for someone to egg him on. ‘He's forgotten t' dog ageean! Ask him what he's done wi' t' dog, Sam!’

  ‘Where's thi dog, Billy?’

  Once, in some kind of effort to prise myself into this community of theirs, where they were always selling each other things and sharing the same interests, I had asked Freddy Platt if he wanted to take a dog off my hands. For about five minutes it had worked like an open sesame, with everybody in the bar shouting about dogs, and me in the middle of it, but when they found out the truth I had to pretend it was a joke.

  ‘Nay, it's in t' dogs' home!' I called back in the hearty voice. They laughed indulgently.

  Freddy Platt winked elaborately at his mates. ‘When's ta bahn off to London, Billy?’ he called. He started nudging the man next to him and urging: ‘Go on, Sam, ask him when he's off to London.’

  They were always bringing that one up, too. I had told them months ago, prematurely as it turned out, that I had a job in London waiting for me. I had been gratified, and then alarmed, at the way the story had spread through the pub, like a dangerous fire. They were still at it with the embers.

  ‘When's ta bahn off to London, Billy?’

  ‘I'll be going, don't you worry!’ They laughed again, shaking their heads. ‘He's a bugger, i'n't he?’ said Freddy Platt. ‘He is. He's a bugger.’ I gave them the deprecating smile, cornered again into the position of village idiot or licensed clown or whatever it was they imagined me to be. Freddy shouted across the room: ‘Has ta fetched that stuff down, Walter?’ and they were back with their repertoire of secrets.

  I walked through into the concert-room, a hideous cork-floored drill hall with buff walls and fancy strip-lighting fitments that looked like rejects from a luxury liner. The concert was already warming up, with the Clavioline thumping away and an Irish labourer, grasping the microphone as though it were a pint pot, singing, ‘Blais this house, nya Lard we pray.’ Johnny the waiter moved round the room with his tin tray held high above his head, and the fat women sat at the bowlegged tables eating packets of nuts and knocking back the shorts. Their husbands stood at the long bar at the end of the room, where you didn't have to watch the concert if you didn't want to.

  The long bar was where the members of the Ancient Order of Stags or whatever it was gathered on Saturday nights, waiting for their lodge meeting to begin upstairs. They were there now, all lean-faced men calling each other brother, for ever shaking hands and digging in their pockets for penny fines. In their own way they were as bad as Freddy Platt and his crowd and I gave them the same limp wave and looked away.

  There was a patter of applause for the Irish singer, and Johnny the waiter cried: ‘Can I 'ave your orders please before the next turn!’ He started hustling round the room with his tray under his arm and a fistful of silver. Behind me a ponderous voice said: ‘Now then, young man!’

  I turned round to see another group of Stags padding in from the saloon bar, all holding pints of beer. In the middle of them was Councillor Duxbury, wearing the chain of past grand warden or something. He did not often come to this lodge, and when he did I managed as a rule to avoid him. I was not sure what my status with him was after our encounter on Stradhoughton Moor; I played for safety with a non-committal smile.

  One of the men he was with said with heavy jocularity: ‘Well, is the worthy brother bahn to give us a turn toneet?’

  Councillor Duxbury gave me a solemn wink and said: ‘Nay, he is but an untutored apprentice, brother deacon.’

  Brother deacon winked too. Practically every man in the pub made a practice of winking before he opened his mouth. ‘And what about thee, brother warden? Art thou tutored?’

  ‘Aye, it's not me that wants tutoring.’ Councillor Dux-bury was looking at me pointedly, and I knew that I was supposed to get some kind of hidden message out of what he was saying. I was wondering already what I had found so understanding about him on Stradhoughton Moor. Then it occurred to me that he had probably heard about Shadrack's audit of the postage book since then.

  ‘Tha'rt initiated, then?’ said brother deacon, staggering on with the joke. ‘Give t' password.’

  ‘At my initiation I was taught to be cautious. I will letter or half it wi' thee, which you please,’ recited Councillor Duxbury.

  The Stags spent half their time fooling about in this way, and some of them I knew had long ago stopped speaking in any other manner. Councillor Duxbury and brother deacon were settling down for a long, pedantic cross-talk; but before they had the chance to go rumbling through their passwords, the third man in the group spoke huffily: ‘The lodge is not yet tiled, brothers!’

  Through the crackling microphone, Johnny the waiter announced: ‘Quiet, please! Can I 'ave a bit of quiet? And now, two very clever young men who've come all the way over from Dewsbury to entertain us tonight, Bob and Harry! Quiet now, please!’ Two young men with fresh, eager-to-please faces bounded on to the low platform and started miming facetiously to a record of ‘Baby it's cold outside’. They were making an elaborate strong-man-and-coy-girl act of it, fluttering with the eyelids and slapping each other, and I found it embarrassing to look at them.

  ‘Well we'll go up and get t' lodge tiled, then, if tha'rt so particular,’ said Councillor Duxbury.

  ‘Shall we tak' t' untutored apprentice up wi' us?’ said brother deacon, clawing at me playfully. ‘Come on, lad, ther'll be someone tha knows up theer.’

  ‘The craft will keep its omnipotent eye on t' untutored apprentice,’ said Councillor Duxbury.

  They were all winking at each other like maniacs, and shoving each other's elbows. Filled with an accumulation of nausea I muttered: ‘Excuse me,’ and sidled out of their way. I meant to take refuge in the saloon bar but, hardly knowing what I was doing, I found myself slipping through the first door I could find, and I was back in the public bar. The old voice cried: ‘Here he is again – the boy!’ I stopped, feeling trapped in the haze of faces. I looked wildly around the bar, searching for a beer barrel or something that I could focus my eyes on without any harm coming from it. I saw an old man like a tramp, hobbling about the room trying to sell an armful of comic papers. I gazed at him steadily as though trying to place his blank face.

  Out of one of the close, anonymous groups I heard the honking voice of Freddy Platt: ‘Ther's thi paper here, Billy! Give 'im t' paper, Sam!’<
br />
  ‘Billy's Weekly Liar!’ roared somebody else. ‘Go on, Sam, give 'im it!’

  ‘He doesn't want it – he's t' editor!’

  We had been through this one before, many a time. Billy's Weekly Liar was the comic paper that was peddled about the pub on Saturday nights, along with the War Cry and the Empire News. They would buy one copy between four of them and sit around pointing at the jokes with their stubby fingers. When they saw me coming they would bring out their own old joke.

  ‘Billy's Weekly Liar! Here y'are, Billy!’ Somebody was trying to shove the paper into my hand.

  ‘Billy Liar!’ laughed Freddy Platt. He was shouting at the top of his voice to compete with the noise from the concert-room next door; the miming act was climbing up to a screaming, oscillating crescendo, and it needed nothing but a couple of policemen running about blowing whistles to complete the sudden, hysterical chaos. ‘Billy Liar! We'll call 'im that, eh? We'll call 'im that, Sam! Billy Liar. By! Where's thi dog, Billy?’

  He did not get any response from me. I could not even see him. I stared sightlessly around the public bar, darting from one object to another without recognizing anything. ‘He's a bugger!’ shouted Freddy Platt. ‘He is, he makes me laugh! By!’

  I felt someone prodding me from behind. I staggered a little under the impetus and wondered whether there would be any future in letting myself go on falling until I was flat on my face on the floor and they would have to carry me out into the cool, quiet air. It was Johnny the waiter with his tray loaded with empty glasses and bottle tops. ‘You're on next, Billy boy.’ Without caring much what I was doing I stumbled back into the concert-room. ‘Billy Liar and his talking dog!’ shouted Freddy Platt. I whipped round angrily, and saw that the whole lot of them had got up and were following me into the concert-room. I shambled across the cork floor through the troops of women, buckling at the knees in case I should retrieve the idea of dropping in a dead faint.