Billy Elliot by Melvin Burgess
‘Good lad,’ she said. She pulled out a fag from the packet in her pocket and lit it in the corner of her mouth. ‘Let’s get back to it, shall we?’
You’ve got to hand it to her, haven’t you? And you know what? She never even asked me what the matter was.
Well, but I was glad she did make me, because the dance was the one thing that was going right for me. I wasn’t doing well at school, either. I mean, not bad, but not all that good, you know? But the dance was going well and I felt good about that.
On the other hand, the audition was getting closer and I felt really bad about that. It was scary, you know? Trying for something like that. If it worked, if I passed, what then? I’d have to tell me dad and he’d go mental. And even if he let me, then what? Leave home? Go to live all the way in London on me own? No way! It was bonkers. What was it going to cost? Christ!
But I had me dad right fooled. I was doing ballet every night and he never had a clue. He thought I was out playing with Michael. I had it all arranged. Michael’d come and call for me, or I’d go round to his, and we’d go out together as if we were just hanging around together. He’d even come into the Social with me, but then he’d sneak out the back way and go off to do whatever it was he did with himself on his own – dressing up or whatever, I expect, the big pansy.
You know, I wonder about Michael. I wonder if maybe he really is a poof and maybe he thinks I might be one too, because I like ballet. Well, I’m not, no way, but something happened a little while ago that worried me, with that Debbie. She used to come along sometimes to watch me do my stuff. She was jealous because Miss was her mam but she wasn’t putting Debbie in for the Royal Ballet School. When I asked her why not, Miss just shrugged and said she wasn’t good enough. Anyhow, this one day, I was pulling my top on after the dance, I was all sweaty and stinky, but I was happy, because it’d gone really well that day. Debbie was sitting there sucking a lollipop and watching me.
‘Billy,’ she said. ‘Do you not fancy me at all?’
‘I dunno,’ I said. I mean, I’d never really thought about it. It made my heart start beating, though, because I was scared she was going to ask me to go out with her. One thing I was clear about, I didn’t want to go out with Debbie Wilkinson. Debbie’s pretty bloody odd herself, if you ask me. If I had to have a girlfriend, it wouldn’t be her, that’s all.
By the week of the audition, I was more scared than I’d ever been in my whole life. I still hadn’t told me dad. The audition was on the Saturday morning at half ten. He didn’t have to know, I didn’t need time off school or owt. I just thought, Well, if I don’t get in, he never has to know, and if I do – well, maybe he’ll bloody kill me, but maybe he’ll be so amazed that I’ve actually gone and done it that he’ll let me go.
Anyway, I couldn’t believe I was ever going to get it. I kept saying to Miss, ‘It’s a waste of time, miss, I won’t get in.’
‘Yes, you bloody will, Billy Elliot, you’ll get in if it’s the last thing I do. You’ll sail in. They’ll never have seen anything like you, and that’s the truth. Right! Let’s get on.’
There was no one to talk to about it. She was no use, all she ever did was push. There was Michael, he was OK, but ... well, it made me miss Mam, that’s all. I could have talked to her about it. She’d have known what to say, what to do. She was the only person in the world I could have talked to, and she wasn’t bloody there. See, all that stuff in her letter was just tripe, really. She was dead. Dead and stopped. She couldn’t tell me anything, could she? She couldn’t even hear anything. I don’t blame her for writing that letter. I suppose it was to make her feel better, and to make me feel better too, but it was tripe all the same.
And then this thing happened. It was just a couple of days before the audition. You won’t believe me. I don’t believe it all that much myself, but it did happen and there you go, and I’m going to tell you anyhow.
The audition was half past ten on Saturday morning, and this was the Thursday before. The Social was being used for a fundraising event for the miners that evening, so we drove out to this school where she knew someone and used their gym and we had to go across on the transporter bridge. It’s an old iron thing made of girders, and instead of spanning the river it has this carriage which gets hauled across, first one way, then the other.
On the way back, we were waiting in the car for the transporter to come and I was bored, so I asked if I could put a tape on. Miss was fagging away as usual. She smoked as if the whole world was waiting for her to finish her fag and she had to really concentrate on it to get it done properly.
‘If you must,’ she said.
There was one lying on the dashboard. It didn’t have any name on it, it was one she must’ve made. I put it on. It was classical stuff – not something I’d ever usually listen to. Rock and pop was more my kind of thing, but – maybe it was because I’d been hearing that sort of thing on the piano from Mr Braithwaite during class, I dunno, but I listened to it this time. And you know what? I liked it. Once you got into it, it was really something else.
She sat there watching me listen for a bit. Then she stubbed her fag out and turned the sound up. The transporter came over and we drove on, then we sat still and listened.
The thing was, I knew that music. I’d heard it before, I’m sure I had. Maybe I’d heard it on the radio years and years ago when I was still a little kid, and I’d never paid any attention to it. Not like now. Now the music came out and filled up the car, and it filled me up too. It was beautiful. It was fantastic.
Then the tape ran out.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s off the radio. I didn’t get all of it.’
‘It’s cush, innit?’ I said. ‘What is it? Is there a story?’
‘Swan Lake,’ she said. ‘It’s a ballet. Of course there’s a story. It’s about this woman who gets captured by this evil magician.’
I pulled a face. I might have known. ‘Sounds crap,’ I said. But Miss was on a roll. It really meant something to her.
‘This woman, this beautiful woman, she’s turned into a swan, you see, except for a few hours every night when she becomes alive. I mean, when she becomes herself again. When she becomes real. And then one night she meets this young prince and he falls in love with her, and she realises that this is the one thing that’ll allow her to become a person again. A real woman.’
I looked sideways at her. She was really looking flushed. I don’t know why some old story should make her feel like that.
‘So what happens?’ I said.
‘He promises to marry her and then goes with someone else, of course. The usual.’ I had to smile to myself, because she looked all sour again – back to her usual self.
‘So she has to be a swan for good, then?’
‘She dies.’
‘That’s a bit steep. Because the prince didn’t really love her?’
‘Come on, it’s time to go. It’s only a ghost story.’ And she started up the car and drove off.
It was dark by the time I got home. It was getting cold – the leaves were all off the trees, it was just about winter. The house was freezing cold because we couldn’t afford to turn the central heating on. We’d finished burning up the old shed ages ago. I put me dressing gown on over me clothes to keep warm. Dad and Terry were out, which was odd; I remember wondering, where on earth were they? Dad was always in at that time. The do at the Social should have finished. Nan was in, that was all. I went to peep in through the sliding door to her room to see if she was all right.
‘No!’ she shouted when she heard the door open. ‘No. No.’ It was one of her bad days.
‘It’s only me, Nan,’ I said. I waited for her to recognise me, but she just stared. ‘It’s Billy,’ I said. She lay back down.
I went back to the kitchen and opened the fridge. I don’t know why we bother keeping the fridge on, it costs money and the place is so cold it’s like a fridge anyway, you could keep the food on the table and it wouldn’t be any colder
I took out some milk and had a swig.
‘Oi. Little ‘un.’
I turned round. It was Mam. She was standing there with a glass bowl in one hand and a cloth in the other, wiping the bowl clean. ‘What have I told you about drinking out of the bottle?’ she said.
‘Sorry, Mam,’ I said. I thought nothing of it. It was just like normal. I took a glass from the table and poured myself a glass properly, like, and put the bottle on top of the fridge while I drank it.
‘Well, put it back,’ she said.
I picked up the bottle, opened the door, put the milk back, turned around and she was gone and ...
It was only then that I realised. It was only then. Mam. She’d been there. The bowl and the cloth were lying there on the table where she’d been. I walked over and picked up the bowl and it was still warm where her hands had been on it. See? It wasn’t a ghost, she was real. I looked behind me. I wasn’t scared. I knew she wasn’t there any more so I didn’t call for her or owt. I just stood there, not thinking. Then the sliding door opened and Nan came out.
‘Now, Billy, it’s in here,’ she said. I thought, typical, I’ve just seen me mam and now Nan’s having a barmy. She tottered over to the cupboard near where Mam had been standing and bent down to open the door.
‘What, Nan?’
‘The records, you dope.’ She took a record out of the cupboard and grinned at me. She tapped her nose. ‘I know,’ she said. Then she turned and went next door.
‘What do you know, Nan? What do you know?’ I asked her. I followed her. She was in the front room putting a record on.
‘Listen,’ she said. The needle came down, the music came on.
Swan Lake. Same as I listened to an hour before with Miss.
I just stared at her. How had she known? You see – that’s where I’d heard it before. It was one of Mam’s old records. She had a box of records she used to play from time to time when I was small. No one ever played them now, they’d been put away to keep them safe for years.
‘Did you see her too, Nan?’ I asked. But Nan was gone. She began moving around the room, dancing. I’d seen her do those movements loads of times before, but I knew what they were now. Plie. Ballet. She used to do ballet when she was a girl.
‘Like this,’ I said. I came over to her and took her arms and we went through a few moves together, me and me nan. It was amazing. She was slow and stiff, but she knew what she was doing all right. Maybe she was right, maybe she did use to be good, once upon a time, long ago. We did a slow dance together, and it really was quite beautiful.
Then the door banged and before I could do owt, there was Tony standing in the door with me dad peering in over his shoulder.
‘Who told you you could use my record player?’ he said.
‘It’s not yours, it’s Mam’s,’ I complained.
‘You don’t have any records, it’s no use to you,’ he said. He went over and took the needle off, all rough so it scratched.
‘Oh, we were dancing to that,’ complained Nan.
Then me dad joined in. ‘You be bloody careful,’ he yelled. I thought he was shouting at me, but it was Tony he was cross with for scratching Mam’s record. ‘You take a bit more care with things that aren’t your own,’ he told him. He took the record off him and wiped it carefully on his shirtsleeve.
‘No one ever plays it anyhow,’ said Tony.
‘And you,’ said me dad to me. ‘Who told you to play this?’
‘Sorry,’ I muttered.
‘I could have been a professional dancer,’ said Nan, and she did a little curtsey. Dad turned away and banged the door on his way out. It was horrible the way the two of them came banging in like that. I felt more sorry for Nan than anything, but it didn’t matter to me, not just then, anyhow. I knew what it was about, see. Mam wanted me to go for it. That’s what it meant. And I knew then, if Mam thought I should go for it, that maybe it wasn’t just a stupid dream. Maybe it really could come true.
On the other hand, maybe I was just going bonkers meself, like Nan was. But now I was going to go for it as hard as I could. I was going to do me best. The audition was the next morning at half past ten, and I felt ready to do anything for it – for me and for Mam. I went in on Friday afternoon after school to do the final practice, and it went perfect. I was up for anything. And then on the way home, there was a bloody riot.
It 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 t
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.