There is a rattle of small stones and a thump as the first lump of clay hits the lid of the coffin and no one hears me cry, Billy, Billy. The thumping sounds of clay on wood increases, as the gravediggers get down to work. Billy with his Buddy Holly glasses and his slicked back hair. It is quieter now, only the sound of soil on soil and the whisper of shifting earth, as the grave begins to fill.
Billy liar, my Gran used to call him. My Gran was right, Billy was a liar. Only it took me a while to find out and even when I did, I couldn’t see the harm in his lies. But that was then and this is now, and I know different now.
I was into motorbikes then, not riding them, well not when anyone was looking; I didn’t have my licence yet. I was more into doing bikes up and selling them on. Anyway, I was sitting on the drive fitting the timing chain onto an old Royal Enfield, when I heard a voice.
‘Hello.’
‘Hang on,’ I muttered, without lifting my head. ‘These spring clips are tricky.’
The clip slipped into place and I looked up to see him standing there with the sun glinting off his trademark specs. ‘Hello.’ I said.
‘Nice bike.’
‘Thanks, you into bikes?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got a trials bike.’
‘Great, can I take a look?’
‘Er, you can’t, it’s at my uncles farm, I keep it there.’
‘Shame.’
Pity, I would have liked to have had a look at his bike. Still it couldn’t be helped and he did tell me all about it, and the competitions he’d won. We swapped names, and he told me that they’d just moved onto the estate but we got no further because my mother called me in for tea.
‘Got to go Billy,’ I said with a grin. ‘She’ll go nutty if I don’t get it while it’s hot.’
‘It’s OK Jim, mine’s the same, I’ll see you later.’
That was our first meeting and although Billy was nearly two years older than me, we became friends. Billy used to call around our house while I worked on a bike. Later on when I got the Singer Convertible, he would call around to the lock-up behind the shops and chat while I worked. He never helped, but he would pass over a spanner if I told him which one. We only went out two nights a week, Wednesday for a game of darts and a spot of underage drinking on my behalf, in the Fisherman’s Arms and Saturday night for two pints in the Ship and then on to the Store Hall Dance.
The Saturday night dance was where Billy strutted his stuff. We would stand on the edge of the dance floor and look around. Then he would run a comb through his hair, push his glasses up with his forefinger and he was off, heading towards a pair of girls. I didn’t have the nerve, but Billy had nerve enough for two. He would strut up to the best looking of the two and ask her to dance and I never saw any girl turn him down. Me, I would blush and ask the other one up and to my surprise more often than not she would say yes.
After a couple of dances Billy would make an excuse and drag me away. We would move to the other end of the hall and the process would be repeated with two different girls. This would happen three or four times on a Saturday night. Then having picked the girl he wanted Billy and the girl would disappear and I would be left fending off questions from the other three.
Mind you I had no complaints, I met and made friends with the girls I’d asked up, plus quite a few of those Billy had danced or gone out with too. In fact it was one of Billy’s ex’s who confirmed that my gran was right and Billy was a liar. She asked me about Billy’s trial bike and the cups he had won and even worse she asked if I enjoyed going out in Billy’s sports car at the weekends. What could I tell her? I’d never seen Billy’s bike or cups and the only sports car I knew of was the old 1934 Singer le Mans I’d been doing up for the past year. I now knew Billy was a liar, but didn’t see any harm in his lies. After all he was only using them as a chat up line and if he needed an imaginary trial bike to boost his ego, there wasn’t any harm, was there?
I received my provisional licence in the June and my dad began to give me lessons on the Singer but only when he had time, which wasn’t very often. I needed to get more experience and it was Billy who came to the rescue. He’d passed the test first time fourteen months ago, he said, and wouldn’t mind sitting in the car with me as the experienced driver. It was great and for half a dozen Sundays I drove us all over the place. Then one Sunday morning Billy asked if he could drive. I wasn’t keen, but what could I do?
I gave him the keys and had my doubts about his driving ability when we set off with a grinding of gears. But he apologised, saying that he wasn’t used to the clutch. Grimacing at the sound, I nodded and prayed. The prayer must have worked because his gear changing smoothed out and we began to pick up speed. Soon we were doing seventy-five, which wasn’t bad for such an old car. Looking down I saw Billy had his foot flat to the floor trying to coax more out of her. Then I looked up saw the bend and the bridge coming up fast and I screamed, ‘Billy slow down.’
Billy jerked his foot from the accelerator and began to spin the wheel, but it was already too late. The front of the old car crumpled and the engine was rammed back into the front of the cab as we slammed head on into the corner of the bridge buttress.
It is silent now in the churchyard, the gravediggers have gone and in the dark beneath the mound that is the grave, no one hears me cry.
