Billy -- by Tonyellis

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It was once said of the infant Billy Parker that he could fill the Albert Hall with emptiness. This was said by Billy’s uncle Dave, whom you are not to suppose to be an especially cruel person. He had been the only member of the extended Parker family to go to University and felt obliged by this singularity to contribute some wittily contrived conceit to any conversation he happened to be part of. Had the present discussion turned upon a more felicitous aspect of Billy’s nature, you can be sure that he would have spoken equally hyperbolically in his praise. A comforting thought for a seven year old, had he only been aware of it.


It was, in fact, something of a rarity for such a conversation even to be taking place, hinging as it did on Billy. It was generally felt, when anybody did feel anything about Billy, that he lacked personality; presence; whatever it is that makes us stand out in the world. When the family stories were relived for the entertainment of visitors, Billy’s role tended to be forgotten. The other two children, Ken and Maria, had only each other to fight for protagonism as the stories were recounted. If Billy ever raised an objection to this brazen usurping of his meagre contributions to the Parker family mythology, no-one ever heard him.

Not only were the rules of history thus violated. Even vocabulary was changed when referring to Billy. While other children’s’ existence was acknowledged by such everyday verbs as ‘be’, ‘arrive’, ‘come in’ or ‘approach’, Billy would ‘lurk’ or ‘sneak up’; his sudden coming to notice often causing no little alarm to the victim.

At school too, Billy failed to call much attention to himself. Were it not for the attendance records assiduously kept by most of his teachers, Billy could have committed the perfect truancy, had he so chosen. His form teacher, not insensitive to such behavioural problems would often offer an encouraging “speak up, boy”, echoing his mother’s kindly advice to “put yourself forward a bit more.”

Between the ages of eight and eleven, Billy became almost entirely invisible, at least to the adult world, and had begun to develop a taste for this. Other children were still aware of him at this stage, although they rejected his attempts to introduce ‘The Invisible Man’ to their repertoire of playground games on the justifiable grounds that there were no clearly defined roles left for them to play, and since neither Cowboys and Indians nor Commandos and Germans were to Billy’s less boisterous tastes, he began to slip beneath their notice too.

If I say that, by the age of fourteen, Billy could pass entire days without saying much more than “here, miss” (sometimes being forced to repeat this several times) during the calling of the register, you might think that I have painted a rather bleak picture of Billy’s existence in those days. However, not all was darkness, for three reasons.

At home his more visible and voluble siblings were far easier to find when some odious task like going to the shops or changing the cat litter was required. At school he was the only one of his male peers to leave without any personal experience of corporal punishment; an achievement almost impossible at that time. Once, stung by a classmate’s accusation of goodness, he had attempted to break this unbeaten run, launching a paper aeroplane in full view of his famously irascible geography teacher. This act of rebellion was met by a rather puzzled frown and the admonition “don’t be stupid, boy.”

Secondly, he began to develop almost supernatural powers. His knowledge of family affairs was second to none. Not only did he predict Uncle Dave’s divorce months before the shocked respondent received a letter from his wife’s solicitor, he could also advise Ken and Maria when their whining Christmas present campaigns had borne fruit, sparing them any further efforts to appear deserving. The gratitude and lionisation this brought him at home was very occasionally granted him at school, too; most famously when he became the only one to realise the schoolchild fantasy of obtaining a copy of an exam the day before its appearance on class 4E’s desks. Finally, he even gained a small group of admirers who joined in his now more sophisticated version of ‘The Invisible Man’, known as football dodgems. This game inside a game required one always to be where the ball was not, accurately judging the trajectory of each pass so as to be able to run away from the target area. Great skill was necessary since the rules stated that neither the players of the official game nor the overseeing sports teacher should become aware of the game within. Each unwilling touch of the ball would earn a minus point.

Billy’s third advantage was that he had begun to write at an early age, using the insights gained from invisibility to produce work considered by his English teachers to be extremely observant for his years. By the time he left University he had written his first novel, a fairly well received science fantasy work about a future world whose immortal inhabitants were unaware of each others’ existence, until a prince from another galaxy arrived to enlist them for a war to defend his world from annihilation.

As the fashion of the day sent thousands of his generation scurrying to therapists, where they found themselves to have been the victims of all manner of abuse, Billy stayed home and continued writing, gaining a wider audience for his now more serious works; so serious that he had to change his name to William for his public appearances and his wife.


Sadly, as his reputation waxed, his powers waned; until one day I discovered that they had disappeared altogether. I went to ask him for my pocket money. “Jesus Christ, Billy, don’t ever sneak up on me like that again!”

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