The Wrong Boy

by Willy Russell

  Mr Wilson put up his hand in a placatory sort of way and told my Mam, ‘Shelagh, don’t worry. Believe me, I know exactly how plausible a person can be in such, erm … circumstances. I don’t doubt for a second that you were completely taken in, Shelagh. I know from the case histories I’ve studied. You see, if I’m right, Shelagh, then Raymond probably thought he was telling the truth. Isn’t that correct, Raymond?’ he said. ‘When you were telling your mum all about this … Malcolm, you weren’t telling lies to her, were you?’

  I just looked at him. Was he soft or what? Of course I’d been telling bleeding lies! Great big massive monster lies! He was stupid. I didn’t like him. I certainly didn’t like him calling my Mam ‘Shelagh’.

  I just turned back and stared at the telly again. And he said, ‘As far as you were concerned, he was real, wasn’t he, Raymond, this Malcolm figure … he was real, wasn’t he?’

  I stared at the credits coming up on Blue Peter.

  ‘Am I right about that, Raymond?’ he said. ‘Didn’t you believe that he was a real person, this American lad?’

  I just nodded. Because in a way he had been real, Malcolm. ‘He was real,’ I said.

  But that started my Mam crying again and she said, ‘You! You. How can you say that? It’s wicked what you did, it was wicked!’

  Wilson calmed my Mam down then. And told her it was pointless, using words like ‘wicked’. My Mam said she was sorry and she was doing her best to be understanding but when you’ve been tricked and cheated and made a fool of, it’s not always easy to be so understanding. Mr Wilson said he knew perfectly well how my Mam must be feeling.

  ‘But still, that shouldn’t deflect us from pursuing this matter in as non-emotive a manner as possible,’ he told my Mam. And turning back to me then he said, ‘In what way, Raymond? In what way was this Malcolm a real boy?’

  ‘He was,’ I said, as I watched the beginning of John Craven’s Newsround. ‘Malcolm was real. Because he was me.’

  I could see Mr Wilson’s reflection in the television screen and I saw him glance at my Mam and slowly nod at her as if he’d just had something confirmed.

  ‘How do you mean, Raymond,’ he asked, ‘that Malcolm was you?’

  I just shrugged. ‘Because he was,’ I said. ‘Malcolm was the boy I used to be.’

  He nodded again, Mr Wilson. And he said, ‘Oh, I see. So you used to be an American boy, did you, Raymond?’

  I just shook my head. And watched John Craven being nice in Africa or somewhere.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I made that bit up, about him being American. And about his dad.’

  I heard my Mam start crying again. ‘And being born-again Muslims,’ she said. ‘They could have come round for tea after all.’ And then she thought of something else and said, ‘The jumper! I bought Malcolm a jumper and I don’t even know what happened to it. And you,’ she said, ‘you stand there and have the gall to tell me that you were Malcolm!’ She was shouting now, shouting and crying at the same time. ‘I bloody well know now that it was just you, that it was only you! It’s a bit late now though, isn’t it? A bit late in the day, telling me that it was just you all along, just you pretending!’

  Mr Wilson got up off the settee and went across to my Mam, telling her it’d be better for all concerned if she could just try and remain calm and rational. My Mam nodded and told Mr Wilson she was sorry again.

  And then he said, ‘It’s all right, Shelagh, it’s all right.’

  And I didn’t want him talking to my Mam. That’s when I turned round to her then and I said, ‘You don’t have to say you’re sorry. Because you’ve got nothing to be sorry about. It’s me,’ I said, ‘I’m the one who’s sorry. But I wasn’t just pretending,’ I said, ‘I made up Malcolm because I knew that you’d love him. Like you used to love me. And if I could have sent me back to America and left Malcolm here with you, I would have done that.’

  I saw the look on my Mam’s face when I told her that. And then her face began to crumple up into a different sort of crying. And I know it would have been all right then, if it had just been me and my Mam and she’d been able to talk to me and tell me that whatever problems we had she’d never swap me, not even for a boy as marvellous as Malcolm.

  But it wasn’t my Mam who talked to me. It was Wilson. And he said, ‘Raymond … Raymond, it’s all right. You see, your mum understands. She’s upset, of course. Any mother would be. But as I’ve already pointed out, your mother is an intelligent woman. And while she might have been shouting a bit, she knows, underneath it all, that we have to approach this problem in as mature a way as possible.’

  I wanted him to just shut up! I wanted him to go and leave me and my Mam alone. But it looked like he was never going because he went back and perched himself on the arm of our settee and said, ‘Raymond, I want you to listen to me. Will you do that for me?’

  I don’t know why he bothered asking because you couldn’t help listening to him. He never stopped!

  ‘Will you do that for me?’ he said.

  I just nodded.

  ‘You see, the thing is, Raymond,’ he said, ‘I don’t know how much of this you’ll understand but I want to try and explain something to you. Now I’ve been telling your mum,’ he said, ‘I can’t claim to be an expert in such matters. But as well as having many years of teaching experience, I’m also something of a student, Raymond. Now you’re probably surprised about that, aren’t you?’

  I wasn’t surprised at all. The only thing I was surprised at was how they let people like him loose in society!

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Open University, Raymond.’

  He sort of paused as if he was waiting for me to say something. But I wasn’t going to say anything, not to him. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like people who perched themselves on the arm of our settee and called my Mam ‘Shelagh’ when they didn’t hardly know her. And I didn’t like him making out that I’d never heard of the Open University. Everybody knew about the Open University. I was always watching it with my Gran and learning about things like Prometheus who got tied to a rock and the intelligent traffic-light system in Pontin Le Frith.

  ‘Psychology,’ he said. ‘As well as being a teacher I’m also a student of psychology, Raymond. Now that’s a big word,’ he said, ‘and you don’t have to bother yourself with trying to understand what it means. But my studies, Raymond, along with my years of teaching experience, have given me an insight. You could say, Raymond, that I’m alert.’

  And he was dead right about that! Because that’s exactly what he was, a Lert! A big boring Lert who was lounging all over our maisonette. I stopped listening to him. He was just going on about me being the wrong boy and being Malcolm and what all that might indicate. But I wasn’t listening because I was thinking about how there could be this film called The Lerts Have Landed or The Onslaught of the Lerts and it’d be all about these mutant Lerts who invade the Earth and suddenly start turning up in small-town America. But all the Lerts go undetected at first because they’ve disguised themselves as Open University teachers so everybody thinks it’s normal that they seem a bit odd. But then the inhabitants of the town start dying inexplicably, the barber and the mailman and the soda jerk, and nobody can work out what they’ve died from. And soon there’s so many bodies that there isn’t room in the cemetery for them and the people who aren’t yet dead have to keep the cadavers of their deceased neighbours and relatives in their freezer cabinets. But the strange thing is that none of the Lerts ever die. The Lerts just carry on as normal, walking round in their kipper ties and funny haircuts and talking about town planning in Preston and the Peloponnesian Wars. And the only person who starts to get suspicious about the Lerts is the Shoeshine Boy who’s got a stammer and a limp but everybody loves him because he’s so cute and he can shine a shoe so the shoe can shine like the sunshine shining on the loco line. But one morning the Shoeshine Boy overhears one of the Lerts talking to another Lert while he’s having his shoes
shined. And just because he’s got a stammer and a limp, the Lerts think the Shoeshine Boy’s stupid and deaf as well and so they just talk as if he’s not there. But the Shoeshine Boy can hear everything and he knows then, knows it’s the Lerts who’ve been doing all the killing and it isn’t just town planning in Preston and advanced hydroponics that they’ve got in mind, but total world domination! The Shoeshine Boy tries to just keep on polishing the shoes and not show how nervous he is. But one of the Lerts notices that his hands have started to tremble as he tries to polish the shoes. The Lert looks at the other Lert. And they both know then that the Shoeshine Boy’s heard everything and so they’ll have to kill him. They drag him round to the back of the saloon and while one of the Lerts pins back his arms, the other Lert begins a lecture about soil erosion in Snowdonia. And the Shoeshine Boy feels his eyes starting to glaze over and rapidly starts to lose the will to go on living. And he knows, the Shoeshine Boy, he knows now the secret weapon that the Lerts have been using to kill off all the townsfolk. It’s boredom. The Lerts have been boring everybody to death. And now they’re about to bore the Shoeshine Boy to death. He’s already weak and wounded from the soil erosion in Snowdonia and now the Lerts are about to finish him off with a short module on Neo Vernacular Tendencies in Contemporary Supermarket Design. The Shoeshine Boy’s just on the point of losing consciousness and it looks like the Lerts have claimed their latest victim. But then! The Sheriff suddenly appears from around the side of the saloon. The Lerts turn and try to bore him into oblivion with a devastating account of Victorian sewage systems. But the Sheriff just stands there and grins as he slowly lifts his gun from his holster and tells the Lerts, ‘Save it for the judge, fellers!’ And then the Sheriff points to his ears. And the Lerts can see then that it’s useless and they can’t even begin to bore the Sheriff to death, because the Sheriff is wearing earmuffs!

  After he’s locked up the Lerts, the Sheriff goes to see the Shoeshine Boy in the hospital. And although he was nearly killed and bored to death by the Lerts, he’s made a miraculous recovery, he doesn’t stutter any more and he’s even lost his limp. And as he comes out of the hospital, all the people from the town start to cheer and clap and tell him he’s a hero and then …

  But I never quite got to the final credits of the film and what happened to the rest of the Lerts because I suddenly became aware of him again, the real Lert, Mr Wilson in our front room.

  And I realised he’d started talking about me going back to school in the morning. So I just kept on staring at the telly and John Craven who was still being nice somewhere in Africa. And I said, ‘I’m not going back! I’m not going back to that school. I don’t care what you say, I’m never going back to that school!’

  And that started my Mam screaming and shouting at me again but I didn’t care. Because I wasn’t going back and nobody was going to make me go back there. Wilson calmed my Mam down and suggested that she pour out the tea. And while she was doing it, he said to me, ‘Raymond, could you explain to me, just to me, why you don’t want to go back to school?’

  And I nodded and kept staring at the telly and told him, ‘Because they hate me.’

  He asked me who it was who hated me.

  I said, ‘All of them.’

  And Wilson repeated it, ‘All of them?’

  I just nodded, and he looked at me then and kept saying, ‘Mmm, mmm,’ and nodding his head. Then he said, ‘Is it just the people at school who hate you, Raymond?’

  I said, ‘No, everyone! Everybody hates me.’

  He sighed a big breathy sigh then and nodded his head in deep concern. And then he smiled his benignest smile again and he said, ‘What about me, Raymond? You don’t think that I hate you?’

  I knew he didn’t. Wilson was the sort who’d refuse to hate you even if your life depended on it. But I hated him! I didn’t want him in our house, sitting on our settee and calling my Mam Shelagh.

  So I said, ‘I know that you hate me, just like everybody else hates me!’ I just glared at him as he sat there staring back at me. And I didn’t know, not then; I didn’t know that that was when it first entered his head; as he sat there on the arm of our settee, staring at me; and the word ‘paranoid’ came into his caring, calm, considerate mind.

  I didn’t know that when he sat there looking at me and slowly nodding his head, that he was looking at something he considered to be ‘a fascinating case’, a boy who sometimes thought he was the Wrong Boy; a boy who readily testified to paranoid tendencies and already had what appeared to be one suicide attempt behind him; a boy who sometimes heard voices; a boy who may very well have been involved with the abduction of another, younger child; a boy who had so completely and convincingly created a fantasy world and a phantom friend that his mother was almost in a state of grief for the American boy that never was!

  But I didn’t know that the Lert was thinking anything like that. I just thought he was sitting there working out how he was going to get me back to school. So I told him, I said, ‘I don’t care what you do to me! I’m not going back to that school.’

  My Mam started shouting again. But Wilson held up his hands and appealed for calm.

  Then, smiling at me, he said, ‘Raymond, Raymond! Have I mentioned anything about you having to go back to school?’

  I just stared at him, wondering what he meant as I felt this small flicker of hope.

  But my Mam said, ‘Of course he’s going back to school! He’s got to go back to school.’

  Wilson shook his head though. And he explained to my Mam that that was not necessarily the case.

  I just stood there, barely able to believe my ears, feeling this real sense of relief now as he told my Mam, ‘It’s in everybody’s interests, Shelagh, if we can spend a little time and effort trying to get beyond this … truanting. And perhaps identify exactly what’s at the back of it.’

  That’s when he said to me we could make a deal. He said that for the next fortnight the question of school could be left in abeyance.

  ‘But a deal is a deal, Raymond,’ he said, ‘and so you’d have to play your part in it. Now do you think you could do that?’

  I nodded quickly. I would have done almost anything to get out of going back to that school.

  ‘All right then, Raymond,’ he said. ‘Now your part in this deal is that you would have to agree to a period of assessment and that would include attending the assessment centre for two or three afternoons each week.’

  ‘Why?’ I said, suddenly suspicious. ‘Why would I have to do that?’

  He looked at me. And then he suddenly laughed. ‘Raymond, Raymond!’ he said. ‘You’re not very trusting of adults, are you?’

  I just shrugged.

  ‘But you can trust me, Raymond,’ he said. ‘You’ve got my guarantee on that. You see, I can understand how you must have come across teachers, Raymond, people in authority who’ve let you down; perhaps even blamed you for things that weren’t your fault. Well, I want you to know, Raymond, that you won’t get that from me. I don’t believe in blame, Raymond. I know there are all sorts of people, when they see a child with problems they’re only too happy to blame the child. But that’s not me, Raymond; that’s not my way. In most cases, when a pupil is having problems at a particular school, people will blame that pupil, say it’s all his fault. But I don’t take that approach, Raymond.’ He nodded at me. ‘Do you know why?’

  I shook my head. And he said, ‘Because the problem, Raymond, might be the school and not the pupil at all!’

  He stood there looking a bit pleased with himself at that. I’ve got to admit though, I was even pleased myself. Because he was right. If it was a decent school and I liked going there then I never would have stayed off.

  ‘And that’s the only reason’, he said, ‘that I want you to be assessed; because I think that what we might just find is that your academic needs might be better fulfilled in a different, more pertinent educational environment.’

  ‘A different school?’ my Mam said.
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  Wilson nodded. ‘Possibly, Shelagh,’ he said, ‘possibly.’

  My Mam looked at me then. ‘What do you think about that then?’ she asked me.

  I nodded. ‘I think it’d be good,’ I said.

  ‘So will you do it?’ she said. ‘Will you do what Mr Wilson says and go to that assessment centre?’

  I nodded again. And then my Mam asked me to promise her and promise Mr Wilson I’d turn up like I was supposed to and not go truanting from there.

  So I did, I promised them both.

  Then my Mam said, ‘And I think you should thank Mr Wilson, don’t you?’

  And when I did thank him, I really meant it and I even felt a bit guilty about calling him a Lert; because even though he was boring and patronising and went lerting on too much, I was dead grateful that I wouldn’t be going back to that school. My Mam thanked him too and said she didn’t know what she would have done without his help and his kindness.

  He smiled at my Mam then and as he walked across towards the door, he said, ‘Shelagh, if I’m able to provide a little help to a woman like you then really it’s my privilege.’

  I didn’t understand what he meant, ‘a woman like you’. And it was funny, but my Mam blurted out this dismissive sort of laugh as she shrugged and lowered her eyes. I didn’t know what was wrong with her. It was like she’d suddenly gone girlish.

  But then he was talking to me again, Wilson. And he said, ‘Raymond, I wonder if …’ But then he just tailed off and shook his head, saying, ‘No! No, maybe not.’

  And he was about to leave then but my Mam said, ‘What, Mr Wilson? Go on, what were you going to say?’

  He started scratching his head and he said, ‘Well … I was just … I suddenly thought, well, you know I mentioned the course I’m doing, psychology? Well, as part of the course I’ve got to mentor a young person. It’s sort of a case study. And I was just wondering if Raymond would like to participate. It wouldn’t involve a great deal. I’d just have to meet with Raymond now and then, ask a few questions, sort of build up a profile really.’