Fourteen..... Leave.... 1980..... Cry

Fourteen.

On average, during any one day, there are one hundred million acts of sexual intercourse, and today Billy can hold his hand in the air and claim to be a part of that statistic. During the final weeks of the nineteen-seventies while the world waits with open arms for a promising new decade, Billy finally gets it; he understands what all the fuss is about.. he sees life through very different eyes.
The change within him is subtle at first, almost like he has become a member of a secret and exclusive club, in which it is suddenly very clear who the non-members are. Billy walks taller and with extra confidence, and is able to hold the gaze of women and girls alike without feeling in any way inferior, and at times he has a strange compulsion to wink his eye without feeling at all self-conscious—he has passed the test and feels he now has the power to satisfy all.
Billy wants to shout out I have done it..! but is conscious of his own tender age, the tender age of the girl he has just banged; and more importantly, the law he has just broken. So bursting with the news he rushes to find his good friends who he knows will be positively sick with envy.
Noel and Martin are still boys in mind and body, and although they are both fully aware of the female form in all its glory, they can only translate that image into one of dirty sex and soft-core pornography—girls of their own age have yet to bear any resemblance to the women in Penthouse or Mayfair, and are only something to be feared or teased.. (or they are your sister or your friend's sister, and therefore fall into a category which is neither male or female because their social position disguises their sex). The women Noel and Martin know of through magazines and myth are different, they are all sex; they drag their own knickers down whilst looking you in the eyes, inviting you into their world; and that is where the boys long to be, not in an environment of conversations and coy smiles, whispering and giggling, and the ultimate nightmare, dinner with her parents, and the forced politeness, tight collar and false smiles that complete the charade, when all you want to do is rummage through her mum's big bra drawer, or search for her father's collection of hardcore.
Boys' fantasies are rarely matched by their realities, but at least now Billy's fantasies have a solid platform from which to build. Noel and Martin only have a two-dimensional image in their minds, and a very sketchy one it is.
When Billy catches up with Noel and Martin, he finds them, hands entwined, laughing hysterically.
"What the hell are you doing?" Billy asks.
"Making fannies!" laughs Martin, withdrawing his hand from inside Noel's.
"Huh?"
Noel places his hands together as if he is about to pray and then says: "What you do to make your own fanny is this.." Noel stands before Billy and then continues. "Get your hands like this and then open your fingers like a starfish."
Billy puts palm against palm and then with fingers still touching, parts his fingers as instructed.
"Now you keep your palms upright there, that's it, and I put mine like that." Noel turns his own hands so they are at right angles to Billy's and moves forward, ready to fit the space between his own middle and third fingers, into the matching gap in Billy's fingers.
Billy looks bemused, and when he feels Noel's fingertips, and the length of his warm fingers as they slide into place, Billy withdraws his own hands in disgust.
"What are you doing?" asks Noel.
"What are you doing?" Billy repeats with emphasis. "That's sick."
"I hadn't finished."
"Yeah, you didn't get the full effect," adds Martin. "Look this is how you do it." And Martin adopts the correct position while Noel slots his splayed fingers into Martin's waiting hands. With their fingers interlocked, Noel gently opens his palms and gestures to Billy: "Look down there, where our fingers meet."
"What exactly am I looking at?"
"The fanny!" Martin and Noel say simultaneously, directing Billy with their heads to the flaps of skin that are connecting at the root of their fingers.
Billy is getting frustrated now. He had expected to blow his friends' minds with the news of his recent conquest, but now he finds himself caught up in their childish game, when he feels anything but a child. "It's the strangest looking fanny I've ever seen."
"It's the only fanny you've ever seen!" laughs Noel.
"Well.." Billy says, seizing the opportunity before it is lost altogether, "..you're wrong there."
Noel and Martin pull their hands apart, and wiping their sweaty hands down their trousers, they stare blankly at Billy.
"What d'you mean?" asks Martin. "Your mum's doesn't count.. or his mum's." Martin adds, indicating Noel.
"No, no. Nothing like that." Billy stops for a moment and waits, looking from one friend to the other, happy now he has their attention. "The fanny that I was banging today, didn't look anything like that."
"What are you talking about?"
"I.." Billy begins, and then pauses to provide dramatic tension, looking at his two friends in turn, "have shagged."
Noel and Martin's mouths drop open as their eyebrows rise and eyes stare wildly. They can't believe what they are hearing but they know instinctively that Billy is not joking, lying or exaggerating. Noel's expression changes and his open mouth closes to form a smile.
"Brilliant," Noel says.
"Yes it was."
"What was it like?" enquires Noel.
Billy places his arms around the shoulders of his friends and draws them into his confidence. "Let me tell you.."
[the first time]
"..she had her hand in my trousers and I tell you, I had the horn so bad I thought I was gonna explode before I'd even got her knickers off. But I was cool; actually I just kept thinking of big Robbo and his wobbly chins, that stopped me getting too excited too early on.. if you get my meaning. Anyway, my trousers were undone and I was ready for business, so I lifted her skirt and dragged her knickers down just enough to get my old man on target. Did I say we were still standing at this point? Well we were.. standing up against a tree, and let me tell you, it's not easy trying to get it in like that. So I laid her on the floor.. ha, ha! Well I mean we laid down on the floor, I rolled on top of her, pulled her pants right out of the way and then, bang! It's in—it's bloody in. And then in and out, in and bloody out! And she's oohing and aahing and breathing, uh.. uh.. and I'm banging away, thinking to myself 'I'm doing it! I'm doing it!' and my skinny, white arse is bouncing up and down.. and then wallop, I'm shooting my load over her and that's that."

[the first time] #2
The branches of the tree shake lightly as Billy jabs his pelvis spasmodically at the girl. She grips the mossy trunk of the tree for balance, as well as for reassurance; to make sure she is still really there.. that this is really happening. Billy grips onto the girl's tiny behind, trying to manoeuvre his dick under the folds of her skirt; he has no doubt where he is—he's on the verge of manhood, and she has the power to take it all away, or take him all the way. Billy's greatest fear is being this close, and then being denied at the last moment. He would be gutted to find himself so close to victory, only to end up losing on penalties.
Without speaking Billy pulls away, almost shaking with a mixture of frustration and anticipation. He moves the girl gently, but firmly to a space on the ground and lies next to her. With a slight movement of his eye, he indicates to her that he is going to get on top; she does not resist, but remains stolid. Billy rolls onto her front and taking his weight with his right arm, feels with his left hand for her pants. He drags them down with little thought for their owner's, and wrestles like a nesting bird for a comfortable position. The girl winces, but Billy is oblivious, he has found his target. He stares at the patch of ground before him, at the soil, the dead leaves and the collection of twigs, inches away from his face, while his body moves almost independently, up and down.
The girls' eyes are focusing on the clouds gathering in the sky, trying to make shapes out of them, and then at the hundreds of tiny greenflies meandering through the higher branches of the trees, their wings catching the sunlight as they move in and out of the shadows. Billy feels the girl's breathing quicken and takes it as a sign of her excitement building, when actually she is sighing—resigning herself to the fact that her first time will always place her right here, with wood chippings working their way between the crack of her backside, and an over-excited boy groaning wildly as his little balls release their contents along the length of her inner thigh. She had hoped for more, but in the same moment she is filled with a sense of relief, because it is over (like an aching tooth pulled).. and her next time will no longer be her first time, and she will feel the benefit of her experience.
Billy lifts himself, and feels his thighs quiver as he stands up and fastens his trousers. He looks down at the girl on the floor and thinks of something to say, but cannot and so hopes that she will fill the embarrassing silence. She doesn't, and just reaches for her own pants and pulls them up; she does not look at Billy and successfully manages to avoid eye contact altogether. She gets to her feet and tries to smooth the creases from her skirt. Billy waits, wondering whether he should walk her home, or ask to see her again, or simply never to mention the incident again. He hopes that her body language will offer some answers, but her feelings remain well guarded.
Billy's patience finally comes to an end, and he lets go of any hopes, however unfounded, of being this intimate with her again, and says almost routinely: "Thanks for that." The girl looks up, not quite sure how to respond, but Billy has already gone..
Martin and Noel are rooted to the floor as the events of Billy's conquest are disclosed.
"So what does it feel like?" asks Martin innocently.
"I can't describe it," Billy answers. "And you wouldn't understand anyway." And although Billy's honesty hurts Martin, there is no malice intended.
"So who was it Billy?" enquires Noel. "Who was the girl?"
"Didn't I say?"
"No."
"It was Rachel."
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.. the word repeats on a continuous loop through Martin's head. It distorts and changes as Martin tries to alter the reality that has presented itself.. It was Rachel.. ray, ch, el, rrr, ay, chelray, cheh, ullray, chelray, chel, raych, hell.. but the name remains concrete and is all too real.. IT WAS RACHEL. Martin's world shudders as the anonymous girl in Billy's story is given an identity and suddenly becomes very real. Martin can picture all too clearly the two of them happily banging away in the same corner of the wood where he too once stood at the brink of adulthood, only to lose his way.
Martin finally catches his breath. He chokes back the tears and says to Billy with a devastating remoteness, which veils the furious eruption of emotion behind it: "I thought you were my friend."
"What are you on about?" Billy laughs.
"Rachel.." Martin begins but does not finish the sentence; it forms in his mind, but when he hears his thoughts expressed in words, he realises how ridiculous they will sound. After all there never was anything between him and Rachel, only his longing and her apparent indifference.
"You had your chance Martin," Billy says. "She was obviously looking for someone with a bit more balls."
‘I’ve got balls‘, Martin thinks, as he launches himself impulsively at Billy and knocks him to the ground with the full weight of his body. They have fought before, but never seriously. Martin punches into Billy's side but with little force, and Billy pushes him away easily. Martin attacks again and Billy brushes off the blows with no effort at all, as if Martin is a mere annoyance, like a buzzing insect. Billy can sense the hatred boiling in his friend, but feels innocent of any charges.
"Get off you silly little sod!" he shouts. "She ain't your property you know."
Martin's arms fly wildly as he punches out blindly; his eyes closed tightly in frustration. Finally Billy can take no more and he tightens his fist, draws back his arm and belts Martin cleanly in the face. Martin drops to the floor.
"Fuck off!" Billy roars.
Noel shakes his head, he cannot believe how quickly a simple argument has escalated to punches.. and at the same time he thinks ‘What a right hook!’
"You’ve gotta grow up Martin," Billy continues, his voice breaking with emotion. "You’re just a fucking child."
Martin clutches his face and begins to cry softly, both for the pain spreading across his nose and cheek, and also for the humiliation as his friends see him for the shallow, small-minded boy he really is—a child, as Billy rightly labels him, who drifts sleepily from dream to dream in a world of his own design. It is a world that makes sense to no one but Martin, and his idiosyncrasies, hates and prejudices, although wholly imbalanced, seem completely reasonable. Martin has yet to fully understand the terms, forgiveness or acceptance, nor has he until this moment had to face any great loss. And within the beat of a heart he has lost the two greatest loves of his life: Rachel, the only girl to kiss him with affection, and the best friend he has ever known, Billy.
Martin’s balloon has burst. He remembers the emotions he felt when he lost Debbie Harry to his friend, and how sick he was then to have something special and personal violated, and then taken away, but his feelings are magnified a thousand fold now. Martin had never given up on Rachel, he still had a space reserved for her in the depths of his heart and whenever he saw her, his pulse raced; but Martin knows now he has lost her for good—and even if there was still a chance, Martin could never shake the image of his friend humping away in the woods with a wide grin stretched across his face, shouting ‘Your balls weren’t big enough Mart! They weren’t big enough.’ Martin sits upright, and what little confidence he had managed to sustain throughout his short life, quickly drains away, like the blood from his face as he watches his two friends walk away and leave him on the floor. He realises he has boxed himself into a corner, that the hate he now feels for Billy has been fully expressed, and a simple ‘Soz mate’ will not undo what has occurred between them. Billy has grown up and no longer sees the world as black and white, or right and wrong the way Martin still does. Billy has added phrases like, extenuating circumstances, or mitigating factors to his once limited vocabulary, and grey areas and small print become an everyday part of his life.
Martin is hurt; he feels wronged and has lost all grip of his thought processes which are usually so logical. Like his father, Martin has become blinkered by his own sense of morality. As Martin picks himself up off the floor and wipes the tearstains from his face, he can only see the dreams that were intact this morning are now shattered. Martin cannot understand how, if Billy was a true friend, why he failed to consider his friend’s feelings. Martin feels sick and he feels lost. He is stranded between wanting everything to be as it was, and being unwilling to forget or forgive, or disregard the events which now play endlessly in his mind. He considers his life the way one would a broken mirror, willing the pieces to return to their rightful position and simultaneously knowing it can never happen. Martin must move on and grow up, but the pain he is feeling serves as a harness—the confidence he needs to feel like an adult, is being eroded by the people around him and after all, feeling like an adult is one short step away from being an adult. Martin’s friends had at one time been the one dependable thing in his life; he had been closer to them than to his own family. Martin has noticed the changes in their relationships with one another, and the thought suddenly occurs to him that as they have grown up, they have slowly grown apart.
Martin walks home sadly. His thoughts flying between the loss of his closest friends, and the hole in his life where once he had held the warm kiss of a girl.




Leave.

When Martin comes home from school, he is surprised to see his dad already home. Martin goes straight to his room as he always does, and can barely believe his ears when his parents’ raised voices drift up from downstairs. Martin feels his chest tighten, as an argument in the Noone household is a very rare occurrence. He quickly changes out of his school uniform and stands listening at the top of the stairs. His mum’s voice is strained as she tries to keep her voice down, but she is clearly very upset. Martin cannot work out what they are saying and after a moment’s silence, he strains to hear them, concentrating hard. Suddenly the door downstairs opens and his mum begins to climb the stairs wiping her eyes. Startled, Martin runs softly to hide in the nearest room. It is too late to change his mind when he finds himself in his parent’s bedroom. Panicking, Martin dives under the bed, shuffling into the centre where it is darkest, praying that his mum is going to the bathroom.
Martin counts the footsteps along the landing and is terrified to see his mum’s slippers enter the room. She is sniffing and whispers under the breath, her voice breaking, "Selfish bastard." There is then the heavy sound of his dad mounting the stairs and reaching the top in a few bounds. He enters the room and closes the door behind him.
"What can I do?" he says, "What choice have I got, love?"
"You said this would be the end of it.. you said we could settle down here now."
"But what do you want me to do?"
"Stand up for yourself you spineless prick. They’re walking all over you, and you let them."
"I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I work my balls off for this fuckin family. I keep the roof over our heads, the food on the table, the clothes on your fuckin back. And I don’t get a bit of appreciation…"
"It’s your fuckin responsibility; you don’t expect a medal surely?"
"No, of course not, don’t be so facetious. Look, at least we will be nearer my mum and dad, that‘ll be better for the kids, if they can see them more often, won‘t it?"
Martin watches as his father paces the floor and his mother anxiously kicks at the carpet. He feels sick because he knows something terrible is happening, and he now appreciates how lucky he has been not to have to live with this day in day out like his friend Billy. Martin wants to hold his mum and put everything right, but he knows that although his position under the bed is accidental and not premeditated, it would look to them, under the present circumstances that he is spying on them. So he remains there, wishing that they would make up and that everything would be back to normal. He now begins to appreciate how unstable family life is, and that keeping it together is a constant struggle.
"It’s just," Martin’s dad continues trying to control himself now, "I just expected a bit of support from you. I can’t help that my job is moving us two hundred miles away, I can’t help that we’re all gonna be uprooted again. But the choice is that or joining the millions of unemployed.. and losing this house.. and having to move anyway because we haven’t got a penny to live on."
"I’m sorry," she says, "it was a shock.. I’m upset. I‘m just very pissed off that you think that everything will just work out. What about Mandy, how‘s she going to cope with the change? She‘s at a funny age when she needs friends, and if we move her to a new school now she might lose all the confidence she has built up. She‘s gonna be so upset, and that‘s why I am. I just can‘t believe you didn‘t consider this."
"Of course I’ve considered it, but I don’t have a choice."
"You don’t have a choice," his wife repeats in a monotone, "you don’t have a choice. Yeah I‘ve heard it already."
"Mandy’s stronger than you think, she’ll be fine… and Martin. Come on love, let‘s have a cuppa. The move won‘t be for months yet, there‘s plenty of time to get used to it. The kids‘ll be okay, you watch."
"It’s not fair… why is it always you that has to move? They know you have a family."
The room is silent.
"I just want us all to be happy," Martin’s mum whispers.
The door opens as Martin‘s dad moves to leave the room. "We will, love. Come on now, let’s put on a brave face and tell the kids.. it‘ll be okay, you‘ll see."
"I want more than just okay."
Martin’s mum stands up and they both finally leave the room. Martin breaths out heavily, the sickness that has built up through his body, is slowly being replaced by an intense sadness. Martin had always thought his family was okay; boring and not particularly colourful, but a strong unit. He now realises that life really is unpredictable and no matter how stable you think things are, something can come along unexpectedly and turn everything on its head.
Moments later, Martin sneaks out of his house without being seen by his parents. He feels lost and walks without direction, just following the slope of the estate away from his house. Martin desperately wants to talk to his friend Billy; he feels that Billy would be the only one who would understand the way he is feeling now. But then Martin remembers Rachel, and this causes him to stir up intense feelings of jealousy that remain with him until he recalls the loss of the companionship he felt by being a part of a gang, and how this has left a big vacuum in his life.
Minutes pass and Martin finds himself at the base of a large oak tree. He climbs up the branches until he is completely obscured by foliage and sits down. He grips onto the branch with one hand and holds onto the tree trunk tightly with the other. Martin rests his head against the bark and closes his eyes.
‘This tree has stood here for over a hundred years,’ Martin thinks. ‘If only everything in life was so reliable.’
And as summer turns to autumn and the seasons move on, the October wind blows and shakes the oak’s great branches. Brown and orange leaves fall from the giant oak, and their descent is as erratic and unpredictable as the lives of the human beings that pass by it. As Martin grows up he will see that it is only when we take control of our lives that in some small way we can take control of our destiny. For now, Martin is but a dying leaf on a journey to who knows where.





Nineteen eighty.
It is New Year's Day. The final moments of a dying decade fade faultlessly into the next. The ever efficient wheels of time roll on and the civilized and developed, western world marks the occasion with a skin-full, an auld song and a drunken fight. The seventies are dead, long live the eighties.
It is ten minutes past midnight on the first of January and Billy receives the first bruising punch of the recently unwrapped year. He drops to the floor clutching his aching cheekbone and watches helplessly as his father strikes his mother again and again. Billy's two brothers hide in a corner of the room and hold each other tightly. Their faces buried in each other's shoulders, they whisper quietly to each other, "No, no, no..."
A month earlier Billy had attended the wedding reception of his aunt; his father’s sister—her second wedding, and Billy’s first. It had been a wonderful evening; the only fight that had broken out was between two women on the groom’s side, after a spilt drink of lager and black and a ruined dress. For everyone else, including Billy, the night passed peacefully. Billy’s dad was in good humour, laughing like a young boy and holding his wife’s hand tenderly, while the others danced into the early hours.
Billy sat quietly all night watching the party, sensing his increasing dislocation with his immediate surroundings, as well as an undercurrent of revulsion for all those in the room: from his fat, drunk aunt, bursting out of her tight, white dress, to his cousins, boys a little older than himself, who spent most of the evening on the dance floor, moving their bodies badly out of time to the music, eyeing up the girls in the short dresses and brightly painted faces. But especially for his father, who sat lovingly caressing the fingers of his mother with the same hands he had battered her with the week before. The sick irony was that all those in the room (most of whom were directly related to Billy’s father) were aware of Billy’s mother’s predicament, but pretended that it didn’t really happen; or if it did, then they believed she was asking for it.
Billy did not feel any sense of belonging with the people around him—he was not a part of the family. The last time there had been a gathering of Billy’s relations, was for his grandad’s funeral, four years ago. Billy had felt equally uncomfortable then; the same faces that surrounded him there, turned up at the wedding reception—their frowns and looks of concern, and the tired, old platitudes expressed without any real feeling at the cremation, were exchanged for the weary smiles and hackneyed pleasantries associated with the strange other-world that the wedding day had become.. where no-one was comfortable, because everyone was scared of causing an upset, so when in any doubt, the wedding guests all reverted to the old favourite; the unoriginal, the meaningless, dispassionate phrase that was devoid of any real tenderness or warmth, like ‘Nice day for it‘, or ‘Doesn‘t the bride look radiant‘ (even when she looks like two walruses fighting under a blanket), or ‘Mmm tasty vol-au-vents‘. Billy could see through their fake sentiment and it made him very uncomfortable.
"Cheer up misery guts." Billy had heard his dad say to him, and if that hadn’t been enough of an indignity, he then proceeded to alert the other guests and show what a dreary son he had the displeasure to have dragged up. Billy tried to hide behind his glass of flat lemonade, but soon his fat aunt had her sweaty hands locked around his arm, and she proceeded to drag him onto the dance floor. He could hear his dad calling out above the sound of Blondie’s "Heart of Glass": "You’ve got no legs.. come on and dance you idiot." The bride encircled Billy with her powerful arms, and although he believed the whole room was watching and laughing, everyone’s attention had turned back to their drink, or their girlfriend, or their cheese and pineapple on a stick.
Billy’s aunt held him tightly as she moved mechanically around the floor to the pounding bass drum and blistering hi-hat on the record. Billy could smell the powerful odour emanating from her armpits as she pulled him close into her body, he could see her breasts bursting out from within her dress and he prayed for the song to end. "What’s the matter Billy?" she had asked. "Don’t you like dancing?" Billy had wanted to say something cutting, but instead he simply shook his head and was led back to his seat, to his warm glass of lemonade and to the grinning face of his father. "He’s a useless lump, isn’t he Chris?" Billy’s dad said. "Oh he’s all right; he’s just shy!" she had replied, much to Billy’s eternal embarrassment.
Billy feels like a child. Not like the boy who can shag, drink and smoke, not like the leader of a gang.. and then Billy remembers, his gang is no more. He thinks about Martin, and how they have not said a word to each other for almost three months, and the pain it still causes him. Billy wants to make up with Martin, but feels, justifiably, that he is right, and that Martin is being unreasonable, and as such, Martin should be the one to make the first move.. a move which has never materialized because Martin also feels he too is very much in the right.
Billy is tired of who he is, and where he is.. he is tired of taking the punches for his mother, sick of watching her take shit without a struggle, weary of his friends and their infantile perspective on life—Billy feels like a boy, but he knows it is his circumstances that keep him in this position, when experience is slowly teaching him he is no longer a boy, but a young man.

There is a strange calm that occurs every January 1st. For many it is their way of getting over the overindulgence from the previous evening; for others it is a time of quiet reflection of the year that has just passed, and contemplation for the coming year. For Billy it is a day to lick his wounds and try to work out a way to shake off his family ties. On the night of his aunt’s wedding, as he watched his mother and father carry his two brothers to bed, he had felt that he did not fit within the family unit; that by his very presence he causes the pain that is felt by all of them. The thought has stayed with him and become clearer through the last week. Gavin and Alastair were showered with Christmas gifts, while Billy had to be content with a pair of shoes for school.. shoes he now places in a bag with two changes of clothing and a toothbrush. Billy has no definite plan, he knows only that he must leave today.. a new year, a new start.
Everyone in the house is asleep after a late Hogmanay. Billy kisses his two brothers, whilst trying to hold back his tears and after almost changing his mind altogether, finally leaves the room. He had been composing a farewell note in his mind for weeks, that began with great pretensions, explaining how he felt and how much he loved his mum and brothers, but he finally wrote, simply:
I’M LEAVING. DON’T BOTHER TO LOOK FOR ME,
I’LL BE OK -BILLY
Billy steps out of the house for the final time, he swings his bag over his shoulder and is a little concerned that all his essentials, everything that is his in the world, can fit into one small holdall. Billy walks slowly away from the house he grew up in and turns to take one last look at the shithole he has had to call home.
He desperately tries to remember one good memory from his years there and struggles to recall two: the day the rain poured through the estate, when he finally knew he must leave, and the night Martin stayed over and was pissed on by Alastair. Billy now thinks about his friend and how he misses the days when they were altogether and really had no worries.. and then he comes to his senses and considers the reality of what actually has happened over the last three years, only joy interspersed by the back of his father’s hand.. or maybe the other way round.
Billy takes a deep breath and walks away from everything he ever had. He realises that from now on he will be in control of his own destiny, that he never has to fear anyone and that he has started with nothing, so has nothing to lose.
Billy has no definite idea where he is going, only that he needs to get away from the estate and into town, hopefully without being seen, and take the first bus to anywhere. He fancies the coast, but does not know if the money he has will stretch that far. He is bursting with drive and determination, and knows that what distance he can’t make by bus, he will make by his own legs, or the power of his hitching thumb. Billy knows that today is the beginning of a new decade and he will live every day of the next ten years as if his life depends on it.
With a heavy heart Billy releases himself from his family life sentence and says a fond farewell to his childhood and to his home.




Cry.

It’s good to cry; to release pent up emotions and exorcise the ghosts that weigh down so heavily. God, it’s good to cry. However, if you are a boy growing up on a council estate, you better make damned sure you never do it, especially not in front of your peers.
Over the last few months, Martin had become used to the idea that the family were to be uprooted again, but now the move is only days away, the original sickness he felt last year returns. He knows only too well he will have to go through the difficult process of going to a new school in a new area and making new friends from scratch again. He knows that he will have to enter a classroom full of strangers and feel totally alone for a couple of weeks, before he works out with whom it would be most suitable to make friends. He is so aware that each class has a different dynamic, lots of cliques and groups, and groups within groups, loners, bullies, victims, losers and the self-elected over-confident cool ones. Comprehensive education, really means comprehensive, everybody from the wealthy middle classes (with working class pretensions) to the actual working classes, to the poorest of the poor, who wear torn clothes, have hair styles based around the cooking basin, but cut with a knife and fork, and who always smell of piss and stale sweat. Martin always hopes that he will start off as a loner and work his way up to being a just a plain and simple loser, hopefully missing out the victim stage that almost always connects the two.
Martin is considering this as he walks through the estate, and dreams of a perfect new start in his new school, where he immediately falls into the cool group and has a girlfriend by the end of registration. He prays that his new town is slightly behind the times, so when he goes to school on the first day, casually wearing his schoolbag that has Bowie, Human League, Theatre of Hate, The Clash, Joy Division and Sex Pistols scrawled all over it (the name Blondie, which once had pride of place, was painted over when they became too successful and a little less punk), he will instantly be accepted as a boy who knows what is fashionable. He will gain notoriety as the new kid who is untouchable due to his incredible taste in music; he will make tapes of all the best new songs for his friends and say earnestly, ‘You need to hear this; listen and digest’.
Martin wakes from his daydream and finds himself outside Billy’s house, he had walked their without realising, as if on autopilot. Billy’s family had maintained that Billy had gone to live with his aunt, but Martin knew that this could not be true and suspected that Billy had run away. This could never be confirmed however, as Billy’s dad forbade his wife to list their son under missing persons and his disappearance was left a mystery to his friends, who were surprised that Billy never said goodbye.
Martin had wished beyond anything that they could have made up before parting and little by little he came to understand that it was actually his own failings with Rachel he hated, and not his friend at all. Sadly he was never able to tell Billy how he felt.
Martin sighs heavily and walks back across the road to the wasteland and on towards his own house. As he steps away from the houses, he hears a yelp and looks across to see three large boys standing over an animal by the bushes. His heart sinks because he thinks they may be taunting a dog, but as he looks closer, he see that it is a boy on the ground, curled up in a ball, trying to protect his head and his balls from the kicks that are raining down on him. The boy lifts his head between kicks and cries out for help. Martin’s knees give way in shock as he sees it is his friend Robert. Martin notices that Robert’s trousers have been removed and are hanging in the bush above him and can only imagine that the boys discovered Robert as he was taking a shit amongst the foliage. Martin can only imagine the terror his friend must have felt when being found, and how helpless he would have been with his trousers around his ankles, trying to run but falling over with his fat arse sticking upwards.
Martin remains rooted to the spot, his self-preservational head telling him to stay out of it, while his heart is tugging him over there to help his friend. His head argues that they both will get beaten up and that won’t help Robert anyway, followed by his heart saying it is better to be a battered and bruised hero, than an undamaged coward.
The boys stop beating Robert now and Martin breathes easier for a moment. However, instead of leaving him alone, two of them clamp him to the floor with their boots, while the third pisses on him. Martin steps back into the shadows of the houses and thinks he will vomit. When the boys are finished they walk away with Robert’s trousers and hurl them on top of a nearby garage. Martin runs back into the estate and hides as the three of them pass him by. He remains in hiding and pictures Robert racing back home, desperately pulling his jumper down to cover his privates. Martin feels both sorry and angry; sorry that Robert should be degraded in such an evil manner, but also angry that he has been made to feel so guilty about deserting his friend. ‘Why do you have to be such a fat useless lump?’ Martin thinks. ‘You’re an embarrassment and I’m glad I’m leaving you behind.’
When Martin thinks that the coast is clear, he walks gingerly back towards his house, taking the long way home to ensure he doesn‘t accidentally bump into Robert, or the gang of bullies.
The next day Martin walks to Robert’s house on the pretext that they will exchange addresses so they can stay in touch after Martin has left, but also, after a sleepless night plagued with nightmares, he wants to make sure his friend is okay; and at the same time act surprised when he hears what happened on the wasteland the day before. Martin is fully prepared to use the face he wears on Christmas morning (the one of total surprise when you open a present you had already discovered weeks before, when searching the house for presents)… he hopes it will be enough to give the desired effect.
Martin does not need to use this manufactured face however, because the actual shock of seeing Robert’s swollen and blackened face is enough to produce a look of genuine concern.
"What happened to you?" Martin cries with real anxiety when Robert opens the door.
"A big gang from the other estate came looking for a fight, and found me," Robert explains.
Martin can already see that Robert’s story is protecting himself now, so he doesn’t have to let his mum know he was caught with a turd hanging out of his arse in a bush, by three lads who thought that a little freaky.
"I think there was five or six of them," Robert continues, embellishing a little. "Of course I tried to protect the sacred name of our estate for as long as possible.. yes.. I pushed my face into one fist and then threw my ribs into another’s knee, you know, gave them a good hiding the best I could.. but they eventually overpowered me, so I cracked my head off their boots to finish them off. They knew by the end that they had been well and truly Robert Smalled." He laughs, but the twinkle in his eyes disappears very quickly.
"Shit though, that looks really painful."
Robert touches his eye softly. "It is… d‘you want a drink or something?"
Robert changes the subject, not wishing to divulge to Martin the events of his journey home yesterday, when he seemed to pass every girl from school and they all saw him with shit and piss up his bare legs. Robert knows that Martin is leaving tomorrow and so is aware that it is something he will never find out. After all there is no shame in being beaten up by a gang, but he couldn’t live with himself if Martin’s lasting memory of him was running through the estate half-naked and being laughed at by everyone he knows.
The two boys exchange addresses, promising to stay in touch and then say their last goodbyes.
The following day, Martin and his family leave the estate for the last time, feeling that nothing will ever be as good as it had been here, again. The family car is silent as they pull onto the motorway slip road and on to their new life. Martin’s dad looks in his rear view mirror at his son and daughter, and places a hand on his wife’s knee.
"It’ll be all right," he announces, "you’ll see… we’re gonna be okay."
As the car accelerates, the road noise increases and no one hears Martin as he mumbles: "I’m surprised you remembered to take me with you."
"What was that son?" his dad asks.
Martin looks up, thinking quickly, "Er, I just said I hope we remembered to take everything with us."
"It’s all in the van, don’t worry."
Martin’s mum turns around and says, "And Martin, we have a special surprise for you when we get to our new home.. a present.. well a present for the whole family really. But it‘s yours."
Martin’s head straightens up and he is excited for the rest of the journey wondering what it could be that they have got for him.. a life-size cardboard cut-out of Carrie Fisher perhaps, a guitar, a drum kit?
Hours later as the Noone family pull onto the drive of their new home, the door opens and Martin’s Gran and Grandad come out of the house to greet them. Martin and Mandy jump from the car into their waiting arms. From inside the house, there is the sound of high pitched barking. Martin looks up at his dad, who indicates with a nod of the head that Martin should go and see.
Martin enters the empty house alone and the barking echoes around the uncarpeted rooms. He goes through into the kitchen to find the source of the noise. There, lying in a large bed of blankets, is a small puppy. A mongrel, with the colours of a German Shepard, but with the rounder features and floppy ears of a Border Collie. Martin bends down and strokes the young dog.
"Hello," he says. The puppy turns on his back and begins to nibble at Martin’s fingers playfully. "You’re beautiful."
Martin’s family enters the kitchen behind him and smile to see the two getting on so well, so quickly. "He’s yours Martin," his mum says, "a friend for you, while you settle in."
Tears flood down Martin’s face as the dog gets to its feet and begins chewing on Martin’s sleeve. "Thank you.. thank you so much."
"So what are you going to call the newest member of the Noone family?" his dad asks.
After a moment’s consideration Martin says, "I think I’ll call him Mick."
"Mick?" the family say in unison.
"Yes Mick," Martin repeats, thinking to himself, ‘I am David Bowie and this is Mick Ronson, or maybe I am Marc Bolan and this is Mickey Finn‘.
"Mick it is then," Martin’s dad calls out and then cheerfully, "welcome to our new home everybody, welcome home."