The Wrong Boy

by Willy Russell

  And because I could smell fresh apple pie baking in the oven and because I was glad, just glad that I had a Mam who could like The Smiths, I got enthusiastic about it and said, ‘I’ll play another track if you like.’

  My Mam glanced towards the kitchen and then back at me. ‘Go on then,’ she said, sitting back down again, ‘but I mustn’t forget that apple pie.’

  I played ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ for her and ‘Hairdresser On Fire’, ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ and ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’. And as the songs were playing I kept telling my Mam everything about The Smiths and about you, Morrissey, and about the songs and what they meant and how brilliant they were and what influenced them and where they were recorded and everything. And I kept saying, ‘Listen to this bit, Mam, this bit’s great, this is,’ and ‘Just listen to that lyric, Mam, isn’t that brilliant?’

  I suppose I’d got a bit carried away. I even played ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ without thinking. I was so carried away on the tide of my own evangelical zeal that I didn’t even notice that my Mam had started to look at me in a worried, questioning sort of way and that her fingers no longer tapped out time but fiddled nervously with the cloth of her skirt. Then as I pressed fast forward and said, ‘Wait till you hear this one, Mam, this is “Death Of A Disco Dancer”,’ my Mam said, ‘I don’t think I want to hear any more if you don’t mind, Raymond.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘you’ll love this, Mam, it’s “Death Of A Disco Dancer”.’

  But as I pressed the play button my Mam upped and ran through to the kitchen shouting, ‘Oh bloody hell, Raymond, the apple pie!’

  I switched off the tape player.

  When I went through to the kitchen, my Mam was stood there staring down at the charred, charcoal remains of a Delia Smith disaster area. My Mam’s head was bowed and I saw a tear fall from her eye. It landed on the charcoal crust and sizzled. I said, ‘Mam, it’s only an apple pie, it doesn’t matter. We can just have a packet of Angel Delight instead.’

  My Mam said, ‘It’s not the pie, Raymond!’ She looked up at me and a sob shuddered through her. ‘What are you doing, Raymond,’ she said, ‘listening to that sort of music?’

  I said, ‘I like it.’

  She said, ‘But it’s morbid, Raymond, it’s all morbid.’

  ‘Morrissey’s not morbid,’ I told her. ‘He’s not morbid morbid.’

  ‘Not morbid?’ my Mam shouted. ‘Not morbid? “If a ten ton truck should kill the both of us … to die by your side, the privilege, the pleasure is mine”! Not morbid, Raymond? Not mor— “Oh Mother I can feel the soil falling over my head! Heaven knows how miserable I feel.”’

  “‘Heaven knows I’m miserable now!” ’ I corrected her.

  ‘And no bleeding wonder, Raymond,’ she said. ‘I’m bloody miserable myself after listening to that. Not morbid? It’s sodding suicidal. And not only morbid,’ she said, ‘it’s bloody criminal: “Lifting some lead off the roof of the Holy Name church!” What sort of a song is that, Raymond?’

  ‘A brilliant song!’ I told her. ‘You just don’t understand,’ I said. ‘And it’s not morbid like you think it is! Being morbid doesn’t mean being unhappy. You can be dead happy being miserable, like Morrissey; like me!’

  I went back into the front room and started gathering up all my cassettes and putting them back in their covers. When I turned round my Mam was stood there shaking her head as she looked at me with trembling lips and worry in her eyes.

  ‘Raymond, son,’ she said, ‘I thought that phase was over; I thought we’d come through all that. I’d started to believe you were a normal boy; I thought you were normal now, Raymond.’

  And it just brassed me off whenever my Mam said that. I knew it was my Mam’s ambition for me to be normal. I knew it’d be her height of delight to see me correspond to conformity. My Mam was always hinting about that sort of stuff. Whenever the NatWest advert came on she’d look at that prat of a student and say, ‘Isn’t his hair nice, Raymond,’ or ‘That’s the sort of jacket that would suit you, y’ know, Raymond.’

  My Mam’s greatest ambition was that one day I would miraculously emerge from the chrysalis of my own self to become what is vomitingly known as a young person. But I’d never become a young person. I hate young persons; they’ve all got student railcards and high-pitched laughs, and listen to Steve Wright and his pathetic posse. I’d rather be a deceased person than a young person. On balance I don’t think there’s a great deal of difference either way.

  So I said to my Mam, ‘I’m not normal! I don’t want to be normal,’ I said, ‘I hate normality! I’m going back to my bedroom.’

  As I closed the door behind me I heard her shouting, ‘You can’t live your life in a bedroom, Raymond!’

  But I was quite happy to live my life in my bedroom. I like my bedroom. And I might even have still been in my bedroom now if my Mam hadn’t gone round to see my Bastard Uncle Jason. I would have been all right if she hadn’t gone to see him. I would have come out of my bedroom later on and I would have asked my Mam if we were having toast and milky coffee. And although she would have given me one of those looks like a cheesed-off checkout girl, it would have been all right in the end. We would have finished up sitting in front of the telly eating toast and drinking milky coffee and everything would have been all right.

  But it wasn’t all right because when my Mam got back from my repulsive relatives she just stood there without even taking her coat off and looked at me with a glare of suspicion and deep dubiousness.

  I said, ‘Do you want some toast and milky coffee?’

  She just looked straight through me. ‘I had coffee at your Uncle Jason’s,’ she said. ‘Raymond, are you a homosexual?’

  I looked at her. ‘Well, do you just want toast then?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want toast, Raymond!’ she said. ‘Your Aunty Paula did spam fritters for us all. On pitta bread. Now are you going to answer me? I want the truth, are you a homosexual?’

  ‘Who said that about me?’ I asked her.

  ‘Never you mind who said it. I just want to know if it’s the truth!’

  I didn’t say nowt. I just thought of my Mam and how she’d betrayed me by going and talking about me to my Uncle Bastard Jason, conversing with him even when she knew that he was the felonious one who’d appropriated my Gran’s satellite dish. I could see my Mam sitting there on my Aunty Paula’s brushed Dralon pouffe with my reprehensible reprobate Uncle on one side and my unspeakable Aunty Paula on the other as the three of them sat there eating spam fritter pitta and speculating on the nature of my sexuality.

  I said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with homosexual people.’

  She said, ‘I never said there was, Raymond; I’m just asking you what you are.’

  I said, ‘Y’ know what I am.’

  ‘What’s that?’ she said. ‘You tell me, Raymond. What are you?’

  I just looked at her. I shrugged. And I was trying not to cry. I said, ‘I’m just a boy,’ I said, ‘that’s all. I’m just a boy with a thorn in his side!’

  My Mam stood there looking at me like I was an inscrutable puzzle that would never be solved. And I stood looking back at her. I wanted her to put her arms around me. And hug me. And tell me that she never should have gone round to my Uncle Jason’s and that he was a thieving bastard. I wanted her to make me laugh and tell me stories about my Aunty Paula’s Venetian bathroom suite from Texas Homecare. I wanted my Mam to be on my side. I wanted to sit down with her and eat toast and drink milky coffee and even be a young person, and explain to her that I wasn’t homosexual, just a lad who seemed to be having great difficulty in becoming hetero-bleeding-sexual. I wanted my Mam to hug me and understand. But she just kept looking at me; looking at me the way she’d looked at me all those years ago when everything had happened at the canal. And the little girl had gone missing.

  I said, ‘What y’ staring at me like that for?’

  But my Mam just shook her head all slow and sad like a woman
of constant sorrow. ‘Jesus,’ she said, taking her coat off, ‘Jesus, Jesus!’

  And because I couldn’t bear the pain of my Mam’s despair, because regardless of owt I wanted her to be happy, I agreed. About going to Grimsby!

  It was my Bastard Uncle Jason’s idea. He came round the next day and told my Mam that he had a mate who was working in Grimsby building a thirty-two-screen cinema complex with ancillary services including major retail emporia, environmentally enhanced parking facilities, premier fast-food outlets and a themed public house with a seafaring ambience housed in an architect-designed reproduction trawler boat. And as a special favour to my Uncle Jason, his mate was willing to give me a start. Just a bit of labouring and making the tea at first. But if I showed real promise I could get promotion, go on the hod and have the chance of earning some real money. My Mam said it was the answer to everything, that what I’d always needed was a job, something to get me out of the house, to get me mixing with people. I just stared at her, stricken dumb with incredulity. I didn’t want a job. I didn’t want to be out mixing with people. I don’t like people. From what I’ve seen of them, people are a very overrated species; especially people on building sites. I hate building sites; it’s a well-documented fact that building sites are crucibles of brutality with frivolous bastards full of sweat and epithet and ‘I luv u mam’ tattooed on their gnarled knuckles. I didn’t want to go on a bleedin’ building site. I didn’t want a sodding job. I was perfectly happy being a failure in Failsworth. But my Mam glowed and beamed, as though she was imparting the news that I’d just been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

  ‘It’s a chance, Raymond,’ she said. ‘It’s the chance you’ve always deserved. Come on,’ she said, ‘you get yourself dressed, I’m taking you out for Sunday dinner as a celebration.’

  And that’s when my Mam did hug me. And it was like all her sorrows had been assuaged and the balm of delight that was upon her brought back something of her girlish bloom. So that when she planted a big kiss on the side of my face and said, ‘Aren’t you just thrilled, Raymond? Aren’t you thrilled?’ I said, ‘I am, Mam. Thrilled!’

  And all that week, as the day for my departure drew nearer, my Mam continued to blossom and the house was filled with ever more delicious smells of gourmet cuisine created especially for me. Normally my Mam complained about me being a vegetarian and said I was dead awkward to cook for. But the week before I left was a week of vegetarian cornucopia and every dish was prepared and served with love and happiness and hope for the future. So I couldn’t say nothin’ and I couldn’t do nowt. Apart from pray that the place that is Grimsby could be visited by a freak but benevolent tidal wave, or an earthquake or a nuclear bomb, obliterating that town and its embryonic thirty-two screen picture palace. But as Grimsby didn’t receive so much as a mere mention on this morning’s news I must regretfully conclude that Gruesome Grimsby is still there, where Grimsby has always been (and that I’d better do something about getting there).

  But I do remain, Morrissey,

  Yours sincerely,

  Raymond Marks

  A bench,

  The Railway Station

  Concourse,

  Halifax,

  West Yorkshire

  Dear Morrissey,

  I asked the ticket clerk for a single to Grimsby.

  He said, ‘That’ll be fifteen pounds ninety please.’

  I said, ‘Fifteen pounds ninety!’

  He just nodded.

  I said, ‘But it’s only nine pound fifty if you go by coach and that’s from Manchester!’

  He said, ‘Listen, do you want this ticket or don’t y’?’

  I asked him if he’d got any cheaper tickets to Grimsby. I said I’d willingly travel in the guard’s van if that’d be any cheaper.

  But he just said, ‘Hey, mate! How many times? I don’t care if you’re riding in the guard’s van, the toilets or even on the fucking roof, the cost is fifteen pounds ninety. Did you hear me? Fifteen pounds ninety!’

  I just looked at him. And said, ‘I thought crime wasn’t supposed to pay.’

  He said, ‘What are you? A fuckin’ comedian or what?’

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘Fifteen pounds ninety just to get to Grimsby! You’re the one who’s telling the jokes.’

  He lowered his voice then and said, ‘Hey! Do you want this fuckin’ ticket or don’t y’?’

  I said, ‘It’s not a question of what I want!’ I said, ‘It’s bad enough that a person has to go to Grimsby in the first place, let alone having to pay through the nose for the privilege of it!’

  He got all huffy then and dismissively threw the ticket up in the air. ‘So y’ don’t want it then?’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got to have it!’

  He blew out a big sigh and picked up the ticket again and I bent down to get my wallet out of my bag. And that’s when I discovered that it wasn’t there. My wallet! It had gone! My wallet was missing! I checked my bag again then checked all my pockets then checked my bag once more. And then I remembered the Greasy-Gobbed Get of a truck driver in the service station. He’d been reading my lyric book, so he must have been in my bag.

  ‘The bastard!’ I said. ‘The bastard, he’s pinched all my money!’

  The ticket clerk just looked at me, his eyebrows raised in a somewhat sceptical manner. ‘For the last time,’ he said, ‘do you want this ticket?’

  ‘The truck driver,’ I said, ‘the Incredible Bulk who gave me a lift, he’s robbed all my money!’

  ‘Right! You don’t want it,’ the ticket clerk said, and looking beyond me at the queue that was starting to build up he said, ‘OK, who’s next?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘look, I do want the ticket. It’s just that all my money’s gone!’

  He nodded then, the ticket clerk. And adopting a disingenuous smile, he said, ‘So what would you like me to do, son; present you the ticket with my compliments? Perhaps you’d like me to throw in a fiver as well? I mean, I’m already paying taxes as it is. Working my bollocks off and handing over half my fucking wages just so that loungers and scroungers and bone-idle scum like you can roam around the fuckin’ country to your heart’s content, never doing a tap from the cradle to the grave while poor bastards like me are working from morning till night just to end up with nowt but negative equity, three fuckin’ whingein’ teenagers who want seventy-pound training shoes every other fuckin’ week, a wife who’d turned into a dog before the ink on the marriage certificate had dried and a clapped-out fuckin’ Ford Escort that’s just failed it’s MO fuckin’ T!’

  I just looked at him.

  ‘What about me?’ he said. ‘Don’t you think I’d like to go to fuckin’ Grimsby? Don’t y’ think I’d like to be an idle bastard student with a guitar, a hideous haircut and a stupid fuckin’ tee shirt on his chest?’

  I thought that was particularly unpleasant, that. So I told him, I said, ‘Actually, I’m not a student!’

  But he just looked at me and shook his head and then a person behind me in the queue announced that if I didn’t get a move on he’d rip the strings off my guitar and gladly garrotte me with them. He had a number-one haircut and a violent glint in his eye and I could tell that he was one of those persons who ate beer bottles for breakfast. So I just picked up all my gear and went and stood over by the Tie Rack and pondered my predicament. All I had left was a couple of pound coins and a 20p piece and that wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I thought about having a go at busking to see if I could raise the extra fare but the only songs I can play are my own and a few of yours, Morrissey. And looking at the station concourse I saw a panoply of shell suits, straights and Sunday morning refugees from the Saturday night before; all of which led me to conclude that this was not an audience that would be inclined to show its fiscal appreciation for ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’. And anyroad, the only place I’ve ever played my guitar up to now is strictly within the confines of my bedroom.

  So I just started hustling around an
d asking if anyone could spare us a few bob. But it wasn’t a spectacular success; a feller in a suit said, ‘By all means, my young friend. Let’s discuss it further in the gents.’

  I moved off quick, stood by the Sock Shop and asked a posh woman if she could spare us a couple of quid. She said I was a Welfare State parasite and whacked me over the head with a quality newspaper. I moved off again and stood under the clock. But my luck didn’t change. When I asked if they could spare me some money to help me get to Grimsby, people just ignored me; apart from a clever bastard who asked me if I accepted American Express! Then after a bit a girl with short hair and pimples came over and started screaming at me to get off her patch or she’d kick me in the balls. She had very thick Air Ware boots on so I called it a day and decided to spend my last few bob on getting something to eat. I went looking round the station concourse but the ambience was considerably carnivorous and I doubted that I’d find food of a vegetarian variety in the various shrines to nutritionally neutered fast-food culture. But then, as I was walking past a place called the Burger Banquet, I saw a picture of something described as a Spicy Bean Burger.

  I said, ‘Is it vegetarian, the Spicy Bean Burger?’

  She said, ‘Of course it’s vegetarian – that’s why it’s called the Spicy Bean Burger.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said. And I looked up at the pictorial display above the counter. But despite its allegedly vegetarian status, the Spicy Bean Burger looked about as appetising as pressed polystyrene. Concluding, though, that a beggar cannot be a chooser, I said, ‘All right, I’ll have the Spicy Bean Burger then.’

  She said, ‘You can’t.’

  I said, ‘Why not?’

  She said, ‘Because it’s Sunday. And we don’t offer the Spicy Bean Burger on a Sunday. Or a Saturday for that matter. We only offer the Spicy Bean Burger on weekdays. It’s not available at weekends.’

  I frowned at her. I said, ‘But that’s cracked, that is! You don’t just stop being a vegetarian at the weekend, y’ know.’