Backstairs Billy Read Online Free PDF Page B

then he seemed a bit showy – he had what we called ‘airs and graces’. His slightly aloof manner wasn’t too obvious and I don’t remember him being bullied for it, but he was definitely different. He worried about things such as breaking his nails and was worried about his appearance in a way that other kids definitely were not.
    Other friends recalled a boy who developed a closed inner world; a boy who became secretive and a bit of a loner. It would be glib to put this down to his growing realisation of his homosexuality, but that no doubt played a part. Billy’s childhood friend Dick Smith lived just a few hundred yards from him in those early years and he stayed in touch after Billy moved to London. He saw him now and then during his first decade at Clarence House. He describes the teenage Billy as having a detached air, always seeming to be on his own, and by the age of fourteen he had certainly lost whatever interest he had once had in the rough and tumble of street games.
    I remember the day we all left Barker’s Butts School. We were fifteen. At the end of the day we all sat on Billy’s wall just chatting about this and that. A few days later and without a word, he’d gone – to London, I mean.
    Word quickly spread that Billy had managed to get himself a job in the kitchens at Buckingham Palace. Billy’s mother Mabel allegedly dropped it into the conversation whenever she could, but she was vague about what exactly he was doing. Billy’s friendsthought she was proud of the fact that he’d got himself a job in London but was less pleased that people thought he was working in the kitchens, which she felt was beneath her Billy. And, besides, it was not true.
    In the streets of Coundon the words ‘Buckingham Palace’ had a glamour that made people indifferent to the details.
    Dick Smith said, ‘We were amazed and, in fact, we didn’t believe it at first, but then none of us at that time knew Billy had been writing to the palace for years. That only came out much later when he was well known.’

Chapter Four
Glamorous worlds
    B ILLY’S LONGING FOR a more glamorous life came to dominate his early teens; but where was this life to be found? Well, surprisingly, Billy found it initially all over the city in the form of newspaper stories and magazine features about the doings of the royal family. Likewise, the radio held a fascination for the young man because it regularly broadcast the voices of the royals, as well as news about their trips around the country and abroad.
    The old Bakelite wireless at home where the family would sit and listen to the news became a vital means by which Billy, in his mind at least, could wander far away. And news about the royals was far more uncritical at that time than it later became. Journalists wrote in hugely deferential terms, as if their role were to pay homage to the royals, and that, of course, is in stark contrast to more recent times when journalists began actively to try to uncover damaging stories about them.
    But in Billy’s early days, radio bulletins would solemnly report the mere fact that the family had travelled from Windsor to Sandringham, or from Buckingham Palace to Balmoral. The tone of reports in those innocent days was one that only hinted at the sort of glamour that so captivated Billy. Here was a world, he thought, that was filled with golden beings far removed from the grime of everyday life in Coventry; beings who travelled the country and the world staying in glamorous places and who were seemingly above criticism, their every move a source of wonder to the British public. Even the coats and dresses worn by the family were described at length in the newspapers and magazines of the time.
    So, deeply moved by all that he saw and heard about this glamorous distant world, Billy began, aged about eight, to collect every possible scrap of information he could lay his hands on about the royal family. He filled notebooks with jottings about the family