Billy Rags Read Online Free PDF Page A

with Terry he must have thought he was in luck because apparently even a blind man playing with an eel for a cue could have beaten him.
    But Harold hadn’t been able to resist brushing a cuff against the pink and Terry had taken him apart and finished up by putting Harold’s fingers on the edge of the table and giving them one with the stick.
    But tonight Terry was his usual grinning self.
    â€œWhat is it, Billy?” he said. “Planning to walk through the walls? Like Superman?”
    I let the weights go and picked up my towel and draped it round my shoulders.
    â€œYou’ve got muscles on your muscles,” he said.
    â€œNever know when you might need them,” I said. “Got a snout?”
    â€œNaw,” he said. “Right out. Got some news, though.”
    â€œNews?”
    â€œThere’s something else to look at in the TV room.”
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œMoffatt’s invited Hopper and Rose out to watch TV.”
    I stared at him.
    â€œYou’re joking,” I said.
    â€œRose had more sense,” Terry said, “but Hopper’s out there now, looking for a friendly face. Course, with Strachey, it’s different. He’s going to be allowed to see Watch with Mother during the day.”
    â€œHow long’s Hopper been up there?”
    â€œBout an hour.”
    â€œAnd nobody copped for him?”
    Terry shook his head.
    â€œWell, I hope they have before I get up there,” I said. “Otherwise I might wind up behind my door again.”
    I went into the shower and ran it cold. I thought about Hopper. Just Terry saying his name had been enough to tie my stomach up in knots.
    I’d been in the nick at the time he’d made the papers. Usually I avoided reading stuff like that, but this I’d read and I’d been shocked to tears, the kind of tears that pop out of your ducts when grief chills the skin on your face. The bit that had affected me really badly had been the part where the father of one of the kids had found his own daughter where Hopper had left her. I could imagine myself standing over the body, looking down at what Hopper had done to it, done to something that had once belonged to me.
    I toweled myself down and dressed and walked upstairs to the TV room.
    I stood in the doorway and looked round the room.
    Hopper was sitting near the door with his screw, well apart from the rest of them. The others, eleven or so of them, were sitting in a semi-circle around the room. Everybody was watching TV as though they’d never seen it before. Not one of them was cracking on to Hopper. It was as if he wasn’t there. Maybe they were ignoring him because none of them wanted to go behind their doors. Or because just to acknowledge his presence would make them sick to their stomachs. But whatever the reasons I wasn’t standing for this. I looked at Hopper who was staring hard at the box. He didn’t look more than seventeen, let alone twenty, with his fair hair brushed straight back and his bony cheeks and the straggly bumfluff along his top lip he looked like something out of a sepia photograph around 1914. He was sitting bolt upright, his hands gripping his kneecaps.
    The only person who’d cracked on to my being in the doorway was Terry Beckley, who’d fixed himself up with a place next to the TV set so that he’d have a good view of my entrance.
    â€œTurn it off, Terry,” I said. “He’s not watching that.”
    Terry was well pleased to do something. He promptly stood up and turned it off and grinned his grin in Hopper’s direction.
    The room was so quiet it could have been empty. Everybody was looking at Hopper. I began to wind them up.
    â€œYou got any kids, Tommy?” I said to Tommy Dugdale. Tommy inclined his head slightly and massaged his bald spot with the flat of his hand.
    â€œYeah, Billy,” Tommy said. “I got a little girl.”
    â€œWhat sort of age is