for psychics, money trees, life coaches, ‘The Truth about Israel – the Key to World History’ booklets, and ‘Hard-To-Believe-But-It’s-True-We’re-Giving-It-Away-Today-And-Today-Only-Its-An-Unbelievable-And-Unrepeatable-Bargain-But-All-Stock-Must-Go!!!’ furniture stores, cut-price supermarkets and wood flooring specialists. Billy had submitted his work by post, enclosing a small fee, and he had received a letter in reply just a week later, much different from the replies he usually received from publishers: it described his work as ‘original’, ‘extraordinary’ and it went on to use the kind of adjectives which Billy had secretly known for many years might properly be applied to his work, but at which he had blushed on reading and rereading. As well as its obvious literary merits the book, he was told, in the opinion of the publishers, could be a major commercial success. The publishers believed that they could guarantee reviews in national newspapers, magazines and literary journals, and prominent displays in all the major bookshops. Because of the extra distribution and publicity costs that this would involve, they wondered if they could possibly ask Billy to contribute about £1000? Out of this sum Billy would receive two free copies and he had an option to buy another 500 at a greatly reduced rate. The publishers said the initial print run was going to be about 1000: an enormous number for a first book by an unknown author.
Billy had inherited some money from the sale of the butcher’s shop and its fittings after Hugh’s death, so he gladly paid up, sat back and waited, and he believed for a long time that he was actually going to see the book.*
But after the humiliation of the bookless book launch, days turned to weeks and then to months, and there were still no books received, and Billy’s letters and telephone calls went unanswered, and in the end Billy decided he was going to have to go and see his publishers personally. He wore a suit and tie, as for a business meeting, asked for a day’s leave from the dump and took the train.
* We were renowned at one time, of course, for our annual Bicycle Polo tournament, held out on the fields that people called the Bleaches, which were used many years ago for bleaching linen, but which have long since been buried under the Frank Gilbey roundabout on the ring road. The tournament had been founded by Field Marshal Sir John Hillock in 1933. Like Tolstoy, the Field Marshal took to cycling in old age and became an enthusiastic advocate of the sport. His bicycle polo team, the Rovers, sponsored by Raleigh, had achieved some small national fame, and the tournament had brought crowds to the town every May Day until 1947, when tragedy struck: a young man, Elvin Thomas, just twenty-one years old, who had survived Tobruk, died from a punctured lung sustained from an injury caused by a loose spoke during the tournament finals. The Field Marshal disbanded the team and bicycle polo has never been played again in town.
The highlight of Frank Gilbey’s inaugural and one-and-only week-long jazz festival, meanwhile, a few years ago, was a performance on the Saturday night by Chris Barber and his band, the keepers of the flame of British trad jazz. No one at all had turned up to hear them play and they went home without even opening their instrument cases. Frank had had to bail out the festival from his own pocket.
† Tiberio Scarpetti and his family lasted here for nearly ten years, which is not a bad innings, actually, for incomers, but unfortunately they were ten years too late for the worldwide craze for espresso bars, which had orginally sent the older Scarpetti brothers out into the world to make their fortunes – Domenico to Australia, Bartolo to Los Angeles – and twenty years too early for the coffee shop revival, which meant that in the end Tiberio, the youngest of three brothers, who had a lot to prove but who had drawn the historical and geographical short straw, returned to his home town of Termoli in Italy with nothing except his Gaggia machine and a lot of unsold stock of fizzy mineral water and canned ravioli. Tiberio had worked like a dog for years, turning what was once Thomas Bell’s dank, dark little hardware shop, ‘Whistle and Bells: All Your Hardware Requirements’, on Market Street into our own local little Italy, all black-and-white tiled floors, indoor plants and mirrored walls, with a state-of-the-art red Formica counter. He held out for a long time against offering chips with everything and all-day frys, but in the end he gave in and lost heart. He’d kept a bowl on the counter for tips and when a decade had passed without a single person ever placing so much as a penny in the bowl he knew it was time to pack up and leave: this was not a place Tiberio intended to grow old. His daughter Francesca remains, of course, married to Tommy Kahan, but Tiberio has never been back to visit, has never even been tempted; he has sworn never to return. The sign above the door of the café still says Scarpetti’s, but apart from the Parmesan and the Nescafé espressos there remains no other indication that this was ever the town’s Italian quarter: Pukka Pies™ have long since replaced the ravioli. Mr Hemon’s only improvement on Tiberio’s original decor has been to put up tourist board posters on the walls showing scenic sights in Bosnia, but all meals come with chips.
* Actually, there was one that he let slip, when he was on a camping holiday with the children in the south of France, many years ago, and he’d got into conversation one evening with an expat at a bar near the campsite, and somewhere into the second shared bottle of the local red he confessed that he was a solicitor and started complaining to the stranger that the worst thing about his job was always being asked to pad people’s insurance claims and become party to petty frauds, and he happened to mention to the expat the name of a client, Trevor Downs, from up there on the Longfields Estate, whom Martin believed to be faking his own whiplash injuries. Some time later the expat happened to mention this story on the telephone to his brother, who happened to be a minicab driver in Glasgow, who then happened to mention it in turn to someone in the back of his cab who turned out to be Trevor Downs’s wife, Tara, in Glasgow on a shopping spree funded by her husband’s considerable personal injury income. It may be a small world, but it’s also a messy one, thank goodness: in the retelling of the story the name Trevor had been translated into Terry and the Downs had disappeared, which is the only thing that kept Martin Phillips from being sued and out of hospital. These days compensation claim racketeering is so widespread and so common, even in our town, where everyone seems to have slipped and fallen, that Martin no longer even bothers to mention it, even when abroad.
* It exists still only in typescript, the book. The only two poems of Billy’s ever to have seen the light of day were published in the first edition of the magazine The Enthusiast (PO Box 239, Bangor, BT20 5YB, www.theenthusiast.co.uk). The first of these poems, ‘To the Reader’, seems to be some kind of uncompromising envoi:
Listen: you don’t like it, then leave.
My aim has only ever been to be popular with the less sophisticated type of audience, especially in the suburbs and provinces.
The second poem, ‘I’m Nobody, Who Are You?’, runs to over a hundred lines and considerations of space obviously preclude us from reprinting it here, but readers who have attended Robert McCrudden’s popular Creative Writing class (Poetry) I or II at the Institute, or similar, might be able to detect throughout this longer work the influences of Arthur Rimbaud, George Herbert, C. P. Cavafy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Hart Crane, Bertolt Brecht, John Berryman, Emily Dickinson, the Gawain Poet, William Blake, A. E. Housman, Francis Ponge, Marianne Moore, Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, or Pam Ayres.
A Good Friday Carvery and Gospel Night (Featuring the Preaching of the Word by Francie McGinn, Country Gospel Music by Bobbie Dylan and All-You-Can-Eat Barbecued Meats)
The sun finally came out on Friday, breaking through after what seemed like months of gloom, what seemed like years of low grey cloud and drizzle, what seemed,
