I Love You Billy Langley, page 7
‘Yeah. Not Sunday night. During the day. We all meet about eleven and go down the beach. They’ll be loads of us. It’ll be great.’
‘Who are you meeting?’ Netta said, partly worrying about meeting more new people and partly worrying how she would get all her marking done if she spent Sunday with Billy.
The beach was a sea of military green parkas, just like Terry had worn the night before. Billy was wearing one too today as they drove on his scooter the short distance from his house to the seafront. Riding pillion Netta could examine the back of his parka which had Brighton Mods and the British flag emblazoned across it.
‘Bloody hell. There’s more than I expected,’ Billy said over his shoulder and Netta held onto his waist a little tighter as they rode past hundreds of other scooters similar to the one they were on. ‘It’ll be a nightmare to park.’
‘We could have walked. It’s not far,’ Netta said.
‘What?’ Billy laughed. ‘It cost me half a crown per square inch to have these mirrors and spotlights chromed – I’m going to make damn sure everybody sees them.’
Netta had wondered why there were so many mirrors and lights on such a small vehicle, but as they passed others with even more she gathered it was some kind of status symbol. They found a space to park beyond the pier and began to walk back along the promenade.
‘Terry and Rita will be in that lot somewhere. Keep your eyes peeled,’ Billy said bouncing eagerly along just ahead of Netta, like a little boy.
Netta looked at the mass of khaki and bowl-cut hairdos wondering how they would ever find Terry among them.
‘Why do you wear this coat?’ Netta asked trying to keep up with Billy.
‘It’s a bit chilly today, innit, and it helps to keep this clobber clean when you’re on the bike.’
Netta guessed from the gesture he made to his pale grey mohair suit that clobber meant clothes, but that wasn’t what she meant when she asked why, so she clarified. ‘I mean, why do you all wear the same thing?’
‘Coz…’
She could see him mulling this over for a moment, but he seemed more interested in scanning the crowds on the beach. For Netta there was something menacing about the crowds, something terribly homogenised. The khaki colours made her think of the Allied soldiers she used to see patrolling the streets of occupied Germany when she was a little girl and the sense of uniform made her think of St Jude’s and the students tramping the corridors in their identical blazers, being shouted into line by the likes of Thomas Thorpe. Most of these young people on the beach were old enough to have left school, Netta supposed; school where they’d spent all the time cursing their uniform and longing to be free of it so they could express themselves however they wanted, only to find a new uniform to wear as an adult.
‘Coz…’ Billy had no answer for her. Instead he started waving his arms about and shouting, ‘Tel! Tel!’
Terry and Rita started waving back from the beach near the pier, Rita’s red coat suddenly standing out to Netta like a lifebuoy. They congregated on the promenade where Terry reckoned his stomach thought his throat had been cut, while Billy said his mouth was like Ghandi’s flip-flop, which Netta soon worked out meant Terry was very hungry and Billy thirsty, so they went onto the pier to get some fish and chips and a cup of tea.
Fish and chips eaten from old newspaper was another new experience for Netta which she did her best to be enthusiastic about, but as she watched headlines about Australian forces fighting in Vietnam soaking up the grease from the food, she wondered if there were any British dishes that didn’t involve gallons of melted fat.
As they stood around eating, Billy and Terry would greet other people from their ‘army’ and Netta was aware of the disapproving looks from day-trippers who sat under the shelters on the pier – old ladies in their tea-cosy hats and pointed sunglasses and their husbands in loose fitting suits which didn’t hug the body in the way Billy’s and his friends’ did.
‘Ought to be ashamed of themselves,’ she heard one of the women grumble and she wondered who exactly the old lady was talking about and what they had done to deserve her contempt.
Netta tried to keep up with the conversations spattered with slang going on all around her, but she was distracted by the sight of the crowd down on the beach and the sound of the sea trying to hush the chattering people and the seagulls shrieking overhead, as if to try and disperse them, and The Kinks and the Rolling Stones blasting from transistor radios strapped to the back of scooters or at the feet of groups along the shingled shore.
‘Oi, Langley! Who’s the bird?’ someone was asking Billy.
‘This is Netta,’ Billy announced to the short lad with albino white hair and his mates.
‘Funny name, innit?’
‘She’s from Germany,’ Billy explained proudly.
‘Oh Germany, ey?’ the white haired lad guffawed. ‘Surprise you’ve got the front to show your face round here.’ And he began to sing, ‘4-2, 4-2, 4-2, 4-2!’
His mates joined in without really knowing why they were singing the World Cup final score, but it clearly didn’t matter to them why, it just mattered that they were part of the country that had scored the four. Even Terry had joined in.
Netta looked to Billy for that protective arm or those kind words she had come to expect from him and instead found him smiling at the floor without an ounce of mirth in his eyes and shifting about awkwardly, drawing hard on his cigarette. Rita, however, had no such trouble finding something to say.
‘Oi, you bleeding apes. Shut your faces!’ she screeched, whacking Terry on the arm.
‘All right!’ Terry moaned, ‘Who rattled your cage?’
‘You did,’ Rita snarled at him, ‘when you had a go at my mate.’
‘We’re just celebrating a win,’ the white-haired lad laughed at Rita. ‘We won the footy, just like we won the war.’ Then he turned to Netta and hissed, ‘It must be tough being on the losing side all the time, ey, love.’
‘You won the footy? You won the war?’ Rita sneered, ‘I don’t think you had anything to do with either, mate. You clearly couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag and as for kicking a football, well I’m sure my granny could kick harder – and she’s got a wooden leg.’
Everyone in earshot laughed and jeered at the lad whose reddening face was amplified by the contrast with his white hair. Everyone except Netta. She was focused on Billy who laughed at the lad along with everyone else; who looked like everyone else; and it was then that Netta realised he had not leapt to her defence because doing so would mean attacking one of his own tribe. Netta didn’t need a man to fight her battles for her, but she was undeniably hurt that Billy had not said one word in protest of that little… And then she couldn’t shake the image from her mind of her Opi’s disapproving eyes that came glaring at her through the crowd.
‘Ought to be ashamed of themselves.’
But she didn’t think those eyes were disapproving of her for a change, and she suddenly felt a wave of homesickness rush over her.
‘Here we go,’ Terry said and nodded towards the road where row upon row of motorbikes – not scooters, Netta was sure these machines would be called motorbikes – came growling and prowling, ridden by young men in black leather jackets and jeans, many with their hair shiny with Brylcreem and styled high in a pompadour, a stark contrast to the dapper mods. There were women among this tribe too, dressed similarly and riding pillion mostly. Jeers welled up from the crowd on the beach and the collective resentment towards these ‘greasers’ frightened Netta. Many of the riders stuck two fingers up at their adversaries as they drove past and Netta felt and saw the horde of mods start to shift in the direction the riders were going.
‘Come on,’ Terry said.
‘Where?’ Rita said.
Terry didn’t seem to know. ‘Well… where them lot are going.’
‘I ain’t going to get in the middle of a scrap.’
‘Nah, Tel, it ain’t safe for the girls,’ Billy said.
‘You what? We can’t let them off that lightly.’
‘Look,’ Billy pointed at the promenade where hundreds of police were amassing forming a barrier between the mods on the beach and wherever the rockers were going. ‘They ain’t mucking about after last year, they’ll bang us up as soon as look at us.’
And yet the crowd kept moving, like the ocean, gradually eroding the coastline and Netta found they were all getting closer to the line of police whether they wanted to or not. Beyond the line she could see the petrol tanks and wing mirrors of the rockers’ bikes glinting in the afternoon sun as they parked near the lawns at the end of the beach, then she heard someone saying, ‘I’ll give you five bob each to give me a picture worth taking. A bit of action, like.’
‘Piss off!’ Billy said.
‘How much?’ Terry asked.
‘Who was that?’ Netta said to Billy as they shuffled on, looking back at the man with the large camera in his hands.
‘A bloody journalist, trying to encourage us to fight, so he can splash it all over tomorrow’s paper.’
Just as Netta was about to say she didn’t think too much encouragement would be needed, she noticed a small group of rockers slip down onto the beach and attempt to throw a couple of isolated mods into the sea. In response to this the crowd surged, but the police line moved too in order to head them off.
‘Go round!’ someone shouted and Netta felt the crowd split.
‘Come on!’ Billy said, grabbing her hand and they ran with hundreds of other mods away from the police, who were occupied with keeping the rest of their clan apart from the rockers. Their section of the mob ran out onto the road and around the back of the police line so they could charge the rockers relatively unimpeded. Deck chairs and holiday makers were scattered in all directions and Netta realised she was not running away from the fracas but straight into it.
‘Billy!’ she screamed over the noise of the crowds, stopping and wrenching her hand from his. ‘Where are you going?’
Billy seemed stunned by Netta’s reaction and the pair stood there in the road, staring at each other trying not to be knocked over by the elbows and shoulders of those stampeding around them. He seemed to be trying to process her question, find an acceptable answer to it just as he had tried and failed to find one to her question about his attire.
Three, four, five vans skidded to a halt nearby and emptied more and more policemen onto the road. This seemed to bring Billy to his senses, who grabbed Netta’s hand again and shouted, ‘My place.’
Outside Billy’s house Netta breathlessly cried that she wanted to go home and though Billy assumed correctly she meant to her flat in George Terrace, he would have been just as right if he’d thought she meant to Mengede, West Germany.
‘You can’t go there now, the streets are not safe. Just stay here for an hour or two, then I’ll walk you home.’
‘What is happening?’
She looked back in the direction of the seafront and replayed the scene as they’d run away, Netta scanning the crowd behind them for Rita’s red coat, but it was nowhere to be seen.
‘Come inside,’ Billy said, his eyes darting about at the neighbours’ windows where curtains had already begun twitching, ‘let me make you a cuppa.’
She allowed herself to be ushered into the house and past Billy’s father who was sitting, as ever, in front of the television, a football match in full swing. Once safely in the kitchen, the kettle on, Netta asked again, ‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s just mods and rockers. It’s harmless fun, most of the time.’
‘People were getting hurt out there today. That wasn’t harmless fun.’
‘You saw that journalist. They’re the ones who wind us up, the spineless bastards.’
Netta was exasperated, ‘What’s wrong with you people?’
‘Who?’
After everything she had seen since she arrived in this country, after all the embarrassments and incidents she had endured, she was dying to say you English, but she knew that by doing so she would be as bad as a rocker or a mod, tarring everyone else with the same brush. Besides, no matter how disappointed she was in him, Netta didn’t want to drive Billy away. And that made her even more angry; angry with herself for becoming so used to having him around after such a short time.
‘If they’d fought in a real war, these kids might not be so bloody quick to go inventing one, ey, girl?’ came the voice of Billy’s dad from the next room as the kettle began to whistle.
Billy was about to protest, but Netta poked her head into the living room and with a smile asked, ‘Can I make you a cup of tea, Mr Langley?’
‘Er… Thanks… Milk and two.’
8
Eddie Carstairs, like most of the students in the class, eagerly leafed through his exercise book to find out the mark he got for his homework.
D-minus!
He flung the book across his desk and it skidded off onto the floor. Netta saw and walked over to pick it up. Usually she would have made a student behaving in such a way pick the book up for himself, but she saw an opportunity. When she crouched down to get the book she was eye to eye with Eddie and she could say quietly to him, ‘Don’t worry, Eddie. You will do much better next time if you make sure you answer all the questions. The ones you answered were… quite good.’ She smiled warmly, but Eddie just glared and stabbed at the desk with his pen.
As she continued the lesson she noticed Eddie chewing up blotting paper until it was a sticky pulp and throwing it at the ceiling where it would stick for a while before falling onto the student sitting underneath. The harassed student would turn and strike out at Eddie or throw something if they were further away, which pleased Eddie no end.
‘OK, OK!’ Netta said in German telling them to pay attention: ‘Passt auf!’
‘Piss off?’ Eddie said and his friend Peter sniggered, ‘Did she just tell us to piss off?’
Netta unusually switched to English which grabbed everyone’s attention, ‘Right. Peter.’
Peter went pale.
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’
‘A builder,’ he said, slightly bemused. ‘My dad says there’s good money in that.’
‘I do not want to know what your father wants you to do, I want to know what you want to do. What is your dream job?’
‘Oh. Musician.’
There were snorts of derision from the class, mainly from the brighter kids, which Netta silenced instantly. ‘That’s a great dream to have. Which instrument?’
‘Guitar.’
‘Good! So Peter wants to be a guitarist. Patricia?’
‘A fashion designer.’
‘Lovely,’ Netta smiled though the vocation sent images of Rita flitting across her mind – Rita whom she hadn’t seen since Sunday at the seafront.
‘Rebecca?’
‘Doctor.’
‘Trudy?’
‘Vet.’
‘Richard?’
‘Pilot.’
‘Samuel?’
‘Footballer.’
Eddie sang, ‘Millwall!’
Samuel snapped, ‘Shut up!’
‘OK, quieten down everyone. Eddie?’
‘Tiler.’
‘Pardon?’
‘A tiler.’ It took Netta a moment to understand what he meant, so Eddie added rather impatiently, ‘I want to lay tiles, on floors and walls in kitchens and bathrooms, and that.’
Sniggers, to which Netta raised a warning hand and said gently to Eddie, ‘Why do you want to do that job, Eddie?’
‘My dad showed me how to do it and I love it. And he said I’m good at it.’
‘OK,’ Netta smiled and made a note in her diary.
After school she waited in her class alone for Rachel Cohen to arrive for her extra lesson. Rachel was late, so as she waited Netta looked over the list she had made in her diary of her fourth form class’s aspirations for employment.
‘How are things, Netta?’ Mrs Turner, head of languages, was at the door.
‘Things are good…’ Netta said thoughtfully.
‘Do I sense a but?’
‘Well, the way children of many different abilities are all put together in one class, it seems like a bad idea.’
Mrs Turner raised her eyebrows.
Netta went on, ‘The children with lower ability are struggling so they disrupt the class. The children with high ability are bored so they disrupt the class. We have to try and teach three different levels at the same time, which is of course impossible to do well. If we divided the children up into classes based on ability, then I’m sure the children would flourish in a way they are not doing now.’
‘And who would be the poor teacher who got the lower set?’
‘I would be happy to do it.’
Mrs Turner took a deep breath and smiled condescendingly at Netta. ‘I admire your enthusiasm, I really do, Netta, but as you gain more experience you will see that you’d be just wasting your time with most of these students. Mr Johnson will not allow any disruption to the timetable like that. And I’m inclined to agree with him. Now, why don’t you just run along home.’
‘I’m waiting for Rachel Cohen. Extra lessons,’ Netta said groggily, still trying to find her way through the fog of what her superior had just said.
‘Oh, no need. That’s what I came to tell you. Rachel will not be having extra lessons any longer.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘Erm… She’s had enough of German, apparently. She’s not interested in learning more – more than anyone else anyway. You know these young girls. Fickle as you like.’
In her flat that night Netta sat beneath the skylight looking for answers in the inky evening clouds, until Rita appeared at her front door and Netta was suddenly more concerned with where her friend had been since Sunday morning.
‘Where did I go? Where did you go? When it all kicked off Terry went straight into the thick of it. One of them rockers was about to punch me, I swear, but Terry just picked up a deck chair and walloped him with it. He went down like a sack of spuds, I tell you, the silly sod. Serves him right, an’all. And then I got my coat caught on something or someone and ripped the sleeve. Lucky I could mend it easily…’
