Billy the Kid Read online

  For Francis and Nan.

  MM

  For my sons Jack, Ben and Mark

  and all fans of the great game.

  And for Gianfranco Zola.

  Thanks for the memories.

  MF

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Billy the Kid

  Keep Reading

  About the Author

  Author’s Notes

  Also by the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Billy the Kid

  I shouldn’t be here really, not by rights. I should’ve been pushing up the daisies a long time ago. But I’m not. I’m here, and I’m eighty years old, eighty years old today. One way or another I’ve been a lucky old beggar. I’ve got my eyes, my ears – all right, they may be a bit on the fuzzy side, but they work – and I think straight, most of the time. Of course, the old knee gives me a lot of grief, but it always has done, ever since the war anyway… I’m used to it. Can’t complain, not on a lovely day like this.

  Tenth of April and I’m sitting on my favourite park bench under my favourite tree, a great spreading chestnut tree. And the bees are out. Lovely. I’ve got my picnic on my lap, and there’s a bunch of kids playing football. What more could I want? One of them’s good too, skinny like I was, a bit scrawny, little bandy legs, but he leaves them all standing. Like I did, once.

  I think the boys are going to put on a bit of a birthday party for me tonight. I’ve got to be back by six at the latest – that’s what they said. I’ll do my best, but it’s Chelsea against Liverpool, and I’m not missing a single minute of it, party or no flipping party. I couldn’t sleep last night, I never can before match days. Too wound up. I’ve always been like it. “It’s only a game of football, Billy,” – that’s what the boys keep telling me. But it’s more than that. A lot more. I know I should’ve given up by now, but I haven’t. When it comes to football I’m like a little kid, like those kids over there in the park, the same park I scored my very first goal – that’d be well over seventy years ago now.

  Dad sometimes got tired in the afternoons, and had to go and lie down, then I’d practise by myself up against the brick wall – with both feet. Dad always made me do it with both feet. He told me two things I’ve never forgotten: that if I wanted it badly enough I could be the best footballer in the land, and that I must never go fighting in a war, any war. I tried to do what he’d told me, but things didn’t quite work out the way he’d have wanted. The sun was shining that day too, but it was cold, and Battersea power station was belching smoke out of its chimneys. My dad was standing there watching me score my very first goal. We went off to the Chelsea match afterwards – against Preston North End – and Chelsea lost, but that day I didn’t mind, neither of us did. Happy as a lark I was, and so was my dad. He carried me all the way home on his shoulders. He never said much, he never did, but he was proud of me that day, I know he was. “One day,” he said, “One day Billy, you could play for Chelsea. All you’ve got to do is work at it.” And I believed him.

  That’s what my dad did for me, and then later on Ossie – Mr Osborne from school. They gave me self-belief, and that counts for just about everything in this life. If you haven’t got that, you haven’t got anything, and I should know. Like that scrawny kid out there I was a natural. I had a lucky gift. For a start I was nippy. I was best out on the wing, the right wing. No one could catch me out there. I was faster than all the kids twice my age. And somehow I could always make a football do whatever I wanted it to. It just came easy to me, I don’t know why, but it did.

  We always kept the special football on the shelf in the kitchen greased up so it wouldn’t crack. Dad had brought it back from France when he came home from the First World War. He’d found it in the mud on the Somme – the only good thing he ever brought back from that war, that’s what he told me. The trouble was that he’d brought something else home as well – gas in his lungs. I can remember his cough better than I remember his voice. Sometimes he’d be coughing his heart out all night long, and I’d lie there listening in the dark and crying because I could hear how it was hurting him.

  I grew up knowing him a lot better than I knew my mother. He couldn’t go out to work on account of his lungs, so we were together a lot. Mum would take in washing and be working all day every day, to keep the wolf from the door; and then she had my little brother Joe to look after as well. Dad and me played football for hours on end – in the street, in the park, in the back garden, anywhere. I was only allowed the special football at weekends and even then only when it was dry. He didn’t want it getting wet. We played with a tennis ball. Dad said if I could do it with a tennis ball, then a real football would be “easy-peasy”.

  Only a few days after I scored that first goal out there in the park, my dad died. Suddenly there was no more coughing in the house. Mum let me carry his football to his funeral. I held her hand all the way through. For the first time it was me holding her hand, not the other way round. We buried him in Putney churchyard, down by the river. It was a grey day. He always loved the river. We’d often go feeding the ducks down there, then we’d sit and watch the boats go chugging by. So it was just the right place for him. You’ve got to be in the right place when you’re dead, that’s what I think. I mean, after all, you’re dead for a long time, aren’t you? I greased the football up when I got back home and put it back up on the shelf in the kitchen, and that’s where it stayed. I never kicked it again after that.

  I grew up quick after Dad died. We missed him, of course we did; but there wasn’t time to go all tragic about it. For a start, Mum had another baby on the way. There was little Joe to look after and school to go to, and the washing to fetch and carry for Mum. But every spare five minutes I’d be out the back with my tennis ball, shooting or heading or trapping or dribbling. And I never missed a match day at Chelsea, not if I could help it. That was why I turned professional, sort of, at the age of eight – to pay for my ticket. But then I got caught. And that was how Ossie came to be my coach – in a roundabout sort of a way.

  Emmy was just born. Mum needed every penny she could earn from taking in washing to keep us all fed and clothed, so I knew I couldn’t ask her for money. If I wanted to go to the match, then I had to earn it somehow, or steal it. Ossie said it was stealing, but it wasn’t, not really. It was just a bet – a bet I knew I’d win, but a bet just the same. In break-times I’d dribble a tennis ball from one end of the school playground to the other, and there was a farthing in it for anyone who could take the ball off me – one at a time and no fouling – and a farthing to me if they couldn’t. They all knew I was good, but they all fancied their chances. Nine times out of ten I’d manage it. I’d send them one way and go another, or push it through their legs, or just dribble round the outside of them. It was easy pickings, and I always had enough for a ticket at the Shed End on Saturdays – I’d always gone in the Shed End with Dad, right behind the goal. My favourite spot in the whole world – still is.

  One morning I was called out of lessons and sent to Ossie’s room. I could see straight away that he was none too pleased with me. He told me I was a gambling good-for-nothing scallywag, that it was as good as taking money out of other kids’ pockets, as good as stealing, he said; and he wouldn’t have stealing in his school. Then he told me to bend over. Three whacks he gave me. Didn’t hurt that much, not really. And afterwards, just as I was going out, he said: “Now that’s over and done with, Billy, there’s something I want to say to you. I’ve been watching you. You’re young, but you’re good, good enough to be in the school team already. More than that, I think one day you could be very good – maybe. But if you want to be the best, you’ve got to be more than a fancy dribbler. I can coach
you if you like, help you along a bit.”

  And he did. He most certainly did. Ossie took over where my dad had left off. Three, four times a week, in all weathers, we’d be out practising, me and the rest of the school team, and Ossie kept us at it. He’d lay his handkerchief down in front of goal and we’d have to cross the ball from the wing so it landed spot on. And he’d run the legs off us too, tire us out. “Clever isn’t good enough, Billy,” he’d tell me. “You’ve got to be tough with it.” It was Ossie that made me tough, who taught me to think football, to know what was going on around me and on the other side of the pitch; and it was Ossie who went to my mum and paid for my first pair of proper football boots. We hardly ever lost a match. And if I didn’t score in every match he’d want to know why. “You’ve got to be hungry, lad, goal hungry,” he’d say.

  Most of the others were eleven and I was still only eight, but I wasn’t too cocky about it – they made sure of that. They’d slap me down good and proper if I got any airs and graces. Besides, they liked having me there because I’d score goals, lots of them; and like me, they liked winning. I was a sort of lucky mascot for them. “Billy the Kid,” they called me. If we won three matches on the trot, Ossie would take us all to see Chelsea, and he’d pay for the lot of us. He may have whacked me from time to time, but Ossie had a heart of gold, a real heart of gold.

  That bandy-legged kid out there, he’s got it, he’s really got it. Balance, ball control, grit, he’s got the lot – just like Stanley Matthews, Jimmy Greaves, Georgie Best, and that Michael Owen. Head right over the ball, knows just what he’s doing without even thinking about it. But he needs to look up more, look around him, know what’s going on. He’s not looking.

  Sausage rolls. Just how I like them, crisp and flaky. I’ll have one to keep me going. Lovely. Mum used to do sausages on Sundays. Toad in the hole and bubble and squeak and gravy. Loved her sausages. Loved her gravy. Loved her.

  My boots have got a bit muddy. I polished them this morning too. That’s the only trouble with the park. Still, who’s looking?

  Little Joe always scuffed his shoes at the toes, and tore his trousers out at the knees. Mucky little chap he was, never wiped his nose or washed his face unless Mum made him. But he was always a chirpy sort, big too and healthy. He grew fast. By the time I was fourteen and he was twelve, he was already as big as me. More like a twin he was. Real good chums we were.

  Emmy was never well, not really, not after the whooping cough. She nearly died of it. Mum sat up with her night after night till she got better. She lived for us kids. She didn’t spoil us, nothing like that – she could be strict enough if she had to be. She fed us, clothed us, kept us warm – I don’t think she ever had a thought for herself. She only ever had one luxury – lavender. She always smelt of lavender. Once a year we’d all go down to the seaside for a week, at Broadstairs, and stay with her sister, Aunty Mary. We loved it down there – the beach, the boats and the donkey rides. Emmy loved donkeys. She always wanted to bring one home with her and she’d cry buckets when she couldn’t.

  Summer of 1935. I was fifteen, and we were just home from Broadstairs when Ossie called at the house. He had something important to discuss, he told us. Mum sat him down and gave him a cup of tea. He’d been talking to Mr Knighton, the manager at Chelsea Football Club. It turned out that Ossie was a Chelsea scout, that he’d recommended me to Mr Knighton and Mr Knighton had seen me play and would I sign forms for Chelsea? Twelve and sixpence a week and all the football I wanted to play. I’d be cleaning the players’ boots, keeping the ground spick and span, but there’d be a place in the Chelsea side in a few years’ time, if it turned out that I was good enough. What did we think? I could have hugged him. Mum took it all very calmly. She sipped her tea and put her cup down slowly. “Well,” she says, “it’ll be up to Billy to decide of course, but I think that sounds most acceptable.” Most acceptable! She always had a way with words did my Mum, bless her. The very next day I kicked my first football at Chelsea Football Club, and cleaned my first pair of boots too.

  I was like the cat that had got the cream. I couldn’t believe my luck. None of my school chums had found work – there wasn’t much about, not in those days – and here I was, being paid for what I loved doing best.

  There was a whole bunch of us lads who started on the ground staff at Chelsea that September, and all of us lived and breathed football. There was a lot of skivvying; but we didn’t mind, none of us did, because the rest of the time we got to practise, and sometimes with our heroes too – the first team. Best of all was when Burgess or Mills or Sam Weaver – the skipper he was – or Hanson, would come and kick a ball about with us.

  I got a bit of a shock in the early days when I found there were others just as fast as me, stronger than me and every bit as determined too. I was used to playing with bigger lads of course, but these lads were good, and the trouble was that as the years passed I didn’t seem to be getting much bigger. “Legs like sticks of celery,” that’s what Mr Knighton the manager said, and he wasn’t far wrong. I knew that if I was to have any hope at all I had to build up my strength and my speed. So Ossie would take me out for training in the park each evening when I got home. Joe would often come along too and practise with me. I could see how proud he was of me and that made me want to practise all the harder. It was thanks to them, as much as anything, that I held my own at Chelsea, despite my size. By the time I was seventeen I was selected for the Chelsea Reserves side – on the right wing, where I belonged, where I was best.

  The first match I ever played for Chelsea Reserves was against Arsenal Reserves. There weren’t many there to watch, but Mum came, and Joe and Emmy and Ossie, and they saw me score two goals. One was a simple enough tap-in. The other I really enjoyed: a dribble in towards goal, slipping the ball through the legs of one defender, round another and a little chip over the goalie. I can still see the look on his face as the ball floated over his head and into the goal – horror, disbelief, despair all in one. Lovely.

  I was in the newspapers the following day. ‘Billy the Kid bamboozles the Arsenal’. For the whole of the next year I was a regular in the Chelsea Reserves, and a regular in the newspapers too. I didn’t think life could get better. But it did – for a while at least.

  1939 began as the best year of my life. Towards the end of that football season I was picked for the first team. Twelfth of March 1939, just a month or so before my nineteenth birthday, I trotted out in my Chelsea shirt for the very first time. I was on cloud nine, seventh heaven. We were playing Preston North End away, and we lost, badly. No one was looking at me, that was for sure. I was awful, leaden-legged and useless. Ossie, who came to all my matches, took me on one side afterwards and said I had to forget the shirt, forget who I was playing for, where I was playing, all that, and just play my game.

  When we played Sunderland the next week at home, it was like I was in the playground again at school, or out in the park with Joe. I ran rings round them, laid on a couple of goals and scored one myself. That was the first time I heard the crowd at the Shed End chanting my name – “Billy, Billy the Kid! Billy, Billy the Kid!”

  It sends warm tingles down my spine even now just to think of it. Before the season ended three weeks later I had scored seven more goals and all the papers were saying I’d be playing for England within the year. One paper called me ‘Billy the Wonder Kid’. Another said I was ‘as good as Stanley Matthews, maybe better’. It would have gone to my head a lot worse than it did, if it hadn’t been for Ossie.

  “Don’t read all that stuff, Billy,” he told me. “Don’t even look at it. Not good for you. Let your mum cut it out and stick it in a scrapbook. You can read it later when you’re older – can’t hurt you then.”

  Mum did put it all in a scrapbook – she was always taking it out and looking at it and showing it – but it disappeared, like everything else.

  That summer Mum married again, married Ossie – and I never even saw it coming. Joe and me were both ‘
best men’, and Emmy was the bridesmaid. So the man who’d whacked me at school, who had taught me most of my football, who had been like a father to me since Dad died and a real friend to the family too, became my second father. It couldn’t have been better. It was a great day for all of us, confetti everywhere and a huge wedding cake made like a football pitch in Chelsea-blue icing. And then they went off to Broadstairs for a week’s honeymoon.

  They were still away on the third of September when war was declared – another thing I hadn’t seen coming. I’d been too busy with my football to worry about what was going on in the world outside. To start with the war didn’t seem to matter that much anyway. Not a lot happened. What did the newspapers call it, ‘the phoney war’ or something?

  Then suddenly in our house it wasn’t phoney at all. Joe made up his mind that he ought to go and join up. He’d be seventeen in a month and he’d join up as soon as he could. I thought he was joking at first. We all did, but he wasn’t joking at all. He was so determined about it, and so sure he was right too. It was simple, he said. Hitler was evil, just plain evil. He’d invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland. What was to stop him from coming over and invading England if we didn’t fight him? Mum said he was far too young to go, so did Ossie. And I told him that our dad wouldn’t have wanted it, how he’d warned me never to go to war. I told him what I believed too, that it could never be right to kill another human being, no matter what. We had our first big blazing argument. He wouldn’t listen, not to me, not to anyone. It was his life, he said, and he’d live it or lose it the way he wanted. The argument went on and on. I said terrible things I can’t forget; and he said terrible things too, things I can’t forget either – about how he’d always looked up to me, until now, about how all I wanted was to play my lousy football and to hell with the rest of the world. It didn’t come to fisticuffs, but we weren’t far off. In the end we just stopped speaking to each other.