Billy Elliot by Melvin Burgess

Author:Melvin Burgess
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Chicken House

It was my own fault in the first place for setting fire to that horse’s arse.

I wasn’t sorry for the horse. I know, it’s a dumb animal, it can’t help it if the coppers use it as an offensive weapon. But think about it – if it was about three hundred years ago and you was a peasant and you had one of those knights in shining armour bearing down on you on a bloody great charger, and it was question of him taking your head off or you swinging your spade into the horse’s front legs, what would you do? No bloody contest, is it? It’s the same thing. That horse was on their side, no matter what. It was the f***ing enemy.

Anyhow, it wasn’t just any horse. That one wasn’t so dumb, it was a bastard. It was always side-stepping into the crowd and getting on people’s feet and kicking out at us. You ask anyone. It was going to have someone’s head off. The horse and the piece of copper-shite on its back were well matched and all, they were bastards together. I wish it had been his arse I’d set fire to. I wish he’d farted himself to Kingdom bloody Come.

They don’t have to be like that. Most of them are bastards – waving their big fat wage packets in our faces, all bloated up with the overtime they get paid for kicking our arses for Thatcher. But some of them are all right. I mean, they’re all the bloody enemy as far as I’m concerned, as far as the working man’s concerned, but some of them are half decent. Some of ‘em didn’t really want to be there, I reckon – not that it stopped them, mind.

‘You’re on the wrong bloody side,’ I said to one of them.

‘Yeah, well, I haven’t got the option of striking, have I?’

‘Well, you’ve sold out then, haven’t you?’ I said. And then we all started up, pointing at this kid and chanting, ‘SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT!’ Kid didn’t know which way to look.

Alan Tattersley, him that used to have that little toy policeman’s helmet he used to wear on the picket line, he just about almost converted one of them. He used to stick his great big hairy ugly face right up into the police line with that stupid little helmet on, like a great big kid, and every now and then one of them would crack up and start laughing. There was this one young lad started snorting and giggling to himself – he looked a right laugh, did Al, dressed up like that.

‘You’re on the wrong side, mate,’ Al told him.

‘I’ve got a job to do,’ said the kid.

‘So’ve we, if they’d let us do it,’ I yelled.

‘No one’s stopping you. The coach is laid on.’

‘Yeah, for how long, though?’ I said. Anyhow, Al got talking to the copper and a few days later, he turns up one day on the picket with the rest of us.

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