Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse

Author:Keith Waterhouse [Waterhouse, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780141958033
Google: rTYr5lWGtfcC
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 1960-01-01T12:00:00+00:00

7

THE Witch was already fishing in her handbag for an orange, but I was in a rare mood of optimism, as though I were starting a new life or something. We were on top of the No. 17 bus, bound for the Corporation Cemetery. I was humming quietly, and fingering two or three of Stamp's passion pills in my pocket. The Witch was fuming to herself over the approaches that had been made to her by various men in raincoats while she waited for me in St Botolph's Passage. Luckily for me the experience had put her out of mood for window-shopping.

Half-way to the cemetery, she was still going on about it. ‘There are some nasty people about.’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Have a passion pill.’ I held two of the little black beads out in the palm of my hand. ‘Energy tablets, they are,’ I added hastily, realizing what I had just said. ‘We always call them passion pills. They're supposed to give you energy.’

The Witch was digging her thumbnail viciously into the peel of her orange. The bus was passing a row of advertising hoardings.

‘Look, there y'are,’ I cried excitedly, clutching her sleeve and jabbing at the window. ‘Too late. It was an advert for them. P.P., they're called. That's why they're nicknamed passion pills. You're supposed to take two.’

The Witch, stuffing bits of orange into her mouth, gave me her pitying look. ‘What is the boy talking about?’ she said.

I put on the frank and open grin and held out the two black pills. ‘Very nice with fruit!’ I said in the persuasive voice.

The Witch made some heavy weather over a sigh. ‘Better humour the boy,’ she said with an attempt at mock-resignation. She took the two pills in her mouth and knocked them back with a slice of orange. ‘Satisfied?’

I sat back contentedly and lit a cigarette.

‘Fifth today.’

‘Last one,’ the Witch cautioned.

Life seemed temporarily good. We got off the bus at the cemetery gates and walked up the broad red-gravel avenue between the white gravestones. Sometimes, in expansive moments such as this, I could understand what the Witch found so fascinating about this place. In fact it sometimes fascinated me. It was open, tidy, and secure, like the campus in an American college musical. After the black, streaky tombs of St Botolph's churchyard there was something pleasantly normal about the symmetrical rows of neat headstones and the tidy oblongs of clean pebbles. All the people here seemed to have died a modern, healthy sort of death.

We strolled on to the grass verge between the graves, making our way to the public shelter outside the red-brick chapel at the end of the long drive. The Witch, completely in her element, darted busily from one grave to another, admiring the angels and the September flowers, and crying ‘Oh, look, pet, isn't it sweet!’ whenever she found a stone crib. From time to time she would stoop reverently over a headstone and read out one of the verses chipped in gold, square lettering.

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