billy (william hitchman) was ‘uncle bill’ to me. he was my grandmother’s (’ivy’) brother and lived with us. he had never married and - as i was enlightened a few weeks ago - was part of an unusual tradition our family had, where one of the sons would never marry, staying instead in the family home to look after the ageing parents (especially their mum).
billy was tall. probably no taller than i am today, but as a child, he appeared very tall: a giant even. when i knew him, he was an alcoholic and a very heavy smoker. he was always drunk and would regularly have arguments and fights with ernie, my grandfather (ivy my nan’s husband).
billy used to be a ‘barrow boy’, selling fruit and veg(etables) from a stall on jamaica road in the heart of bermondsey. he used to get up every morning, go to the stables, collect his horse and cart, take these to the fruit and veg wholesalers at the borough market before going to his plot just off surrey docks (now surrey quays). he did this everyday.
he did this until he was served a notice by the local council that they were planning to build a post office on his plot. with the loss of his plot, billy also lost both his livelihood and life.
being unmarried and without anything to fill his time, billy quickly turned to spending his time in pubs and bookmakers, borrowing money from my nan and my mum (ivy also) to feed his lifestyle. regularly he would come home drunk wanting more money and whilst my nan would try and give him what he wanted, ernie would step in to try and stop her. inevitably, the arguments and fights would ensue.
one of the few things i remember clearly about billy occurred one night probably in the late 1960s. i remember him coming home and he had a ‘jolly bag’ in his pocket. a ‘jolly bag’ was a little joke/ toy that when pressed, made a strange (scary) laughing noise: not quite real, but not quite unreal enough for someone under five to know the difference. all i remember was that i couldn’t work out where or who was making the noise and whilst crying because i was scared, everyone else was laughing more and more. even when everyone else thought that enough was enough, billy continued to make the thing laugh.
soon after, the drinking and smoking struck a series of ultimately lethal blows on billy. from 1970 through to 1973, billy had three strokes that left him largely paralysed. his speech was slurred and he was unable to feed or clothe himself. he was also incontinent and so we permanently had a cammode in the front room of the flat. it is quite surreal seeing a grown man going to the toilet in the middle of a room whilst others watch television and eat their dinners.
just before his third and fatal stroke, billy was transferred to new cross hospital. i remember travelling to see him on the evenings but never who with: i would guess, that it was my nan. we would get the bus - probably a number 53 - from the bricklayers arms and get off just before new cross. whilst i can’t remember ever seeing him in the hospital, i do remember watching the cockroaches in the corridor outside the ward. more pertinently though, i remember seeing the poster for ‘carry on abroad’ at the bus stop where we used to get the bus home from. it seemed, in those days at least, slightly more exotic than anything i had experienced.
‘carry on abroad’ was released in december 1972. billy died in january 1973.
