Paper Money

TWO P.M.
26

Young Billy Johnson was looking for Tony Cox, but he kept forgetting this.

He had got out of the house quite fast after they all returned from the hospital. His mother was doing a lot of screaming, there were a few policemen hanging around, and Jacko had been carted off to the station to help with inquiries. The neighbors and relatives who kept dropping in added to the confusion. Billy liked quiet.

Nobody seemed disposed to get his lunch or pay him any attention, so he ate a packet of ginger biscuits and went out the back way, telling Mrs. Glebe from three doors down that he was going up to his auntie's to watch her color television.

He had been getting things sorted out as he walked. Walking helped him to think. When he found himself baffled, he could look at the cars and the shops and the people for a while, to rest his mind.

He went toward his auntie's at first, until he remembered that he did not really want to go there; he had only said that to stop Mrs. Glebe making trouble. Then he had to think where he was going. He stopped, looking in the window of a record shop, painstakingly reading the names on the gaudy sleeves, and trying to match them to songs he had heard on the radio. He had a record player, but he never had any money to buy records, and his parents' taste did not suit him. Ma liked soppy songs, Pa liked brass bands, and Billy liked rock-and-roll. The only other person he knew who liked rock-and-roll was Tony CoxThat was it. He was looking for Tony Cox.

He headed in what he thought was roughly the direction for Bethnal Green. He knew the East End very well-every street, every shop, all the bomb sites, patches of waste ground, canals and parks-but he knew it in bits. He passed a demolition site, and remembered that Granny Parker had lived there, and had sat stubbornly in her front room while the old houses on either side had been torn down, until she had caught pneumonia and died, relieving the London Borough of Tower Hamlets of the problem of what to do about her. Billy had followed the story with interest: it was like something on the television. Yes, he knew every particle of the East London landscape; but he could not connect them together in his mind. He knew Commercial Road and he knew Mile End Road, but he did not know that they met at Aldgate. Despite this, he could almost always find his way home, even if sometimes it took longer than he expected; and if he really got lost the Old Bill would run him back to the house in a squad car. All the coppers knew his pa.

By the time he got to Wapping, he had forgotten his destination again; but he thought he was probably going to see the ships. He got in through a hole in a fence: the same hole he had used with Snowy White and Tubby Toms, that day when they caught a rat and the others told Billy to take it home to his ma, because she would be pleased and cook it for tea. She had not been pleased, of course: she jumped in the air and dropped a bag of sugar and screamed, and later she cried and said they shouldn't make fun of Billy. People often played tricks on him, but he did not mind, because it was nice to have pals.

He wandered around for a while. He had the feeling that there used to be more ships here, in the days when he was little. Today he could see only one. It was a big one, quite low in the water, with a name on the side which he could not read. The men were running a pipe from the ship to a warehouse.

He stood watching for a while, then asked one of the men: "What's in it?"

The man, who wore a cloth cap and a waistcoat, looked at him. "Wine, mate."

Billy was surprised. "In the ship? All wine? Full?"

"Yes, mate. Chateau Morocco, vintage about last Thursday." All the men laughed at this, but Billy did not understand it. He laughed all the same. The men worked on for a while; then the one he had spoken to said: "What are you doing here, anyway?"

Billy thought for a moment, then said: "I've forgot."

The man looked hard at him, and mumbled something to one of the others. Billy heard part of the reply: "-might fall in the bleeding drink." The first man went inside the warehouse.

After a while, a docks policeman came along. He said to the men: "Is this the lad?" They nodded, and the copper addressed Billy. "Are you lost?"

"No," Billy said.

"Where are you going?"

Billy was about to say he was not going anywhere, but that seemed the wrong answer. Suddenly he remembered. "Bethnal Green."

"All right, come with me and I'll set you on the right road."

Always willing to take the line of least resistance, Billy walked alongside the copper to the dock gate.

"Where do you live, then?" the man asked.

"Yew Street."

"Does your mother know where you are?"

Billy decided that the policeman was another Mrs. Glebe, and that a lie was called for. "Yes. I'm going up my auntie's."

"Sure you know the way?"

"Yes."

They were at the gate. The copper looked at him speculatively, then made up his mind. "All right, then, off you go. Don't wander around the docks no more-you're safer to stop outside."

"Thanks," Billy said. When in doubt, he thanked people. He walked off.

It was getting easier to remember. Pa was up the hospital. He was going to be blind, and it was Tony Cox's fault. Billy knew one blind man-well, two, if you counted Squint Thatcher, who was blind only when he went up West with his accordion. But really blind, there was only Hopcraft, who lived alone in a smelly house on the Isle of Dogs and carried a white stick. Would Pa have to wear sunglasses and walk very slowly, tapping the curb with a stick? The thought upset Billy.

People usually thought he was incapable of getting upset, because he never shed tears. That was how they found out he was different, when he was a baby: he used to hurt himself and not cry. Ma sometimes said: "He do feel things, but he don't never show it."

Pa used to say that Ma got upset often enough for two, anyway.

When really awful things happened, like the rat joke that Snowy and Tubby played, Billy found he got all boiled up inside, and he wanted to do something drastic, like scream, but it just never happened.

He had killed the rat, and that had helped. He had held it with one hand, and with the other banged it on the head with a brick until it stopped wriggling.

He would do something like that to Tony Cox.

It occurred to him that Tony was bigger than a rat-indeed, bigger than Billy. That baffled him, so he put it out of his mind.

He stopped at the end of a street. The corner house had a shop downstairs-one of the old shops, where they sold lots of things. Billy knew the owner's daughter, a pretty girl called Sharon with long hair. A couple of years ago she let him feel her tits, but then she ran away from him and would not speak to him anymore. For days afterward he had thought of nothing else but the small round mounds under her blouse, and the way he felt when he touched them. Eventually he had realized that the experience was one of those nice things that never happen twice.

He went into the shop. Sharon's mother was behind the counter, wearing candy-striped nylon overalls. She did not recognize Billy.

He smiled and said: "Hello."

"Can I help you?" She was uneasy.

Billy said: "How's Sharon?"

"Fine, thanks. She's out at the moment. Do you know her?"

"Yes." Billy looked around the shop, at the assortment of food, hardware, books, fancy goods, tobacco, and confectionery. He wanted to say, She let me feel her tits once, but he knew that would not be right. "I used to play with her."

It seemed to be the answer the woman wanted: she looked relieved. She smiled, and Billy saw that her teeth were brown-stained, like his father's. She said: "Can I serve you with something?"

There was a clatter of shoes on stairs, and Sharon came into the shop from the door behind the counter. Billy was surprised: she looked much older. Her hair was short, and her tits were quite big, wobbling under a T-shirt. She had long legs in tight jeans. She called: "Bye, Mum." She was rushing out.

Billy said: "Hello, Sharon!"

She stopped and stared at him. Recognition flickered in her face. "Oh, hi, Billy. Can't stop." Then she was gone.

Her mother looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry-I forgot she was upstairs still-"

"It's all right. I forget a lot of things."

"Well, can I serve you with something?" the woman repeated.

"I want a knife."

It had popped into Billy's head from nowhere, but he knew straightaway that it was right. There was no point in banging a strong man like Tony Cox on the head with a stone-he would just hit you back. So you had to knife him in the back, like an Indian.

"For yourself, or your mother?"

"Me."

"What's it for?"

Billy knew he shouldn't tell her that. He frowned, and said: "Cutting things. String, and that."

"Oh." The woman reached into the window display, and pulled out a knife in a sheath, like Boy Scouts had.

Billy took all the money out of his trouser pocket. Money was something he was not good about-he always let the shopkeeper take however much was needed.

Sharon's mother looked and said: "But you've only got eight pence."

"Is it enough?"

She sighed. "No, I'm sorry."

"Well, can I have some bubblegum, then?"

The woman put the knife back in the window and took a packet of gum from a shelf. "Six pence."

Billy offered his handful of money, and the woman took some coins.

"Thanks," Billy said. He went out into the street and opened the packet. He liked to put it all in his mouth at once. He walked on, chewing with enjoyment. For the moment, he had forgotten where he was going.

He stopped to watch some men digging a hole in the pavement. The tops of their heads were level with Billy's feet. He saw, with interest, that the wall of the trench changed color as it went down. First there was the pavement, then some black stuff like tar, then loose brown earth, then wet clay. In the bottom lay a pipe made of clean new concrete. Why did they put pipes under the pavement? Billy had no idea. He leaned over and said: "Why are you putting a pipe under the pavement?"

A workman looked up at him and said: "We're hiding it from the Russians."

"Oh." Billy nodded, as if he understood. After a moment he moved on.

He felt hungry, but there was something he had to do before he went home for lunch. Lunch? He had eaten a packet of biscuits because Pa was up the hospital. That had something to do with why he was here in Bethnal Green, but he could not quite make the connection.

He turned a corner, looked at the road name on a sign tacked high up on a wall, and saw that he was on Quill Street. Now he remembered. This was where Tony Cox lived-at number nineteen. He would knock on the doorNo. He didn't know why, but he felt sure he ought to creep in by the back door. There was a lane behind the terrace. Billy walked along it until he came to the back of Tony's house.

All the taste was gone from his bubblegum, so he took it out of his mouth and threw it away before quietly unlatching the back gate and walking stealthily in.