The Wrong Boy

by Willy Russell

  And then she did start crying. And tried to tell me that I’d be all right and I would get better and once they’d found out the right medication and got me stabilised, I wouldn’t be like this any more and I’d be able to go home.

  Then she said, ‘Ted says you’ll be fine, once they’ve sorted out your medication and got you stabilised.’

  That’s when I snatched my hand away from hers; when I knew that this person wasn’t my Mam; when I knew she was just another Lert, a Lert who’d smuggled herself onto the ward by disguising herself as my Mam. It wasn’t safe! It wasn’t safe in there. The Lerts were coming! The Lerts were taking over and coming from everywhere and I couldn’t just lie there in my bed, waiting for them, waiting for them to come and get me. She was shouting, shouting at me and still pretending she was my Mam, shouting, ‘Raymond, where are you going? Get back into bed!’

  But she wasn’t fooling me. I wasn’t getting back into any bed. I wasn’t staying there where a Lert could just walk in at any time and get me. If the nurses couldn’t keep the Lerts away then I wasn’t staying there. They were just watching me, the nurses, as I got to the door and went to pull it open. And the baldy one, the baldy one with the earring was laughing as he said, ‘Raymond! Where the hell do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Out!’ I said, pulling at the door. ‘Out, where the Lerts can’t get me. I’m not stopping here! It’s the Lerts, there’s Lerts in here, Lerts everywhere, I’m going I’m going, getting out!’

  I couldn’t open the door though! The door wouldn’t open. And the nurse with the shaved head was laughing and waving keys at me, saying, ‘Raymond! Look!’

  The doors were locked, they were locked, locked doors. And now the Lert disguised as my Mam was heading for me and I was trapped, trapped against the doors. I started running, dodging past the Lert woman, running for the doors at the opposite end of the ward. And there were people laughing, people laughing everywhere as I ran for the doors, ran for the doors, ran for the doors! But they were locked! They were locked. And I was screaming then, screaming and telling them to open the doors and let me out. But they didn’t let me out. They wouldn’t let me out and I just slid down and ended up curled into a ball at the foot of the door, whimpering and telling them to make all the Lerts go away. Nurse Brendan picked me up; he just picked me up off the floor. And carried me back to the bed.

  And he sat with me then. He told me it was all right, told me to try and calm down. But I couldn’t calm down because she was still there, the Lert woman, there by the doors and looking back at me as she stood there, crying and still pretending she was my Mam. But I knew! I knew who she really was. And I didn’t start to calm down till she finally gave up and the other nurse unlocked the door to let her out. I just watched her, keeping my eye on her, making sure she really was going and not just tricking the nurses again. She turned and waved to me, still trying to pretend and trick everybody into thinking she was my Mam. But I didn’t wave back to her. I just watched, watched her closely as she disappeared through the doors. And it was only then, when the nurse locked the door after her, when I knew I was safe again, it was only then that I started to calm down.

  Then Nurse Brendan asked me why I’d been so afraid of my own mother. So I explained to him. I said, ‘That wasn’t my mother.’

  He raised an eyebrow as he looked at me. ‘Is that right?’ he said.

  I nodded. And I explained to him that it was one of the Lerts who’d disguised herself up as my Mam. I nodded. ‘And you shouldn’t let any of them in here,’ I said. ‘They’re dangerous, the Lerts.’

  Brendan looked surprised.

  ‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Is that so? And there was me thinking what a nice woman she was, your mother.’

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘because that’s what they’re like, the Lerts; they always seem nice! But that’s how they get in, you see; that’s how they get in everywhere, because they do seem nice and so everybody thinks they’re harmless. But they’re very very dangerous, the Lerts. See, that’s why I’m in here,’ I said, ‘because of the Lerts; the chief of the Lerts; it was him who made me fall through the ice. Everybody thinks he was being nice, because he pulled me back up from under the ice. But he wasn’t being nice, because it was him who’d made me fall through the ice in the first place.’

  Brendan was nodding as he stared at me. ‘Oh, right,’ he said, ‘I get it now. So it was these, what do you call them, Raymond, these … Lerts, is it? These Lerts who chased you down to the water and made you fall in?’

  I nodded. ‘They’re trying to kill me,’ I said, ‘the Lerts.’

  Brendan stared at me and then nodded his head and patted my arm as he said, ‘Ah Jesus, Raymond. Don’t you be worrying now. A few Lerts? We’ll soon have them on the run.’

  I shook my head. ‘It isn’t that easy though,’ I told him. ‘You can’t just get rid of the Lerts like that. It’s not that simple.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Raymond, come on,’ he said, ‘a few Lerts? In here, Raymond, we’ve seen off far worse things than a few feckin’ Lerts. See your man over the way,’ Brendan nodded over at the bed opposite me, ‘Tony, there; when he first came in here, I’m telling you, Raymond, he was demented. Pursued day and night he was; and not just by a few feckin’ Lerts. The fish it was, with Tony, the piranhas, y’ know, coming from everywhere; he couldn’t bathe, couldn’t go the lavvy, couldn’t even take a drink of water for the fear of the piranhas. But look at him now.’

  I looked. At the boy opposite me. He was sat there in the chair at the side of his bed; sat there, staring out.

  Nurse Brendan called across to him, ‘Tony, how are y’?’

  And Tony slowly turned his head, like he was trying to locate where the voice had come from.

  ‘Tony!’ Brendan said again. And the boy focused then, focused on the nurse.

  ‘Y’ OK, Tony?’ Brendan asked. And Tony smiled then, as he slowly nodded his head.

  ‘I was just telling Raymond here,’ the nurse said, ‘about the fish, the piranhas.’

  Tony nodded again. Then Brendan said, ‘Where are they, Tony? Where are all the piranhas now?’

  Tony smiled then. And in a voice that sounded thick and slow he said, ‘Gone!’ He nodded his head, still smiling as he said it again, ‘Got fucked off. Fucked off now, the fish.’

  ‘See!’ Brendan declared with a note of triumph as he turned back to me. ‘We’ve had them all in here, Raymond, the CIA, the MI5, aliens, assassins, Napoleon Bonaparte, all of them queuin’ up to get in here and disturb the patients. But we find a way, Raymond; we find a way to keep them all at bay. And if we can stop the piranhas coming up the lavvy, Raymond, we can soon be doin’ away with a few Lerts.’

  Brendan was wrong about that though. Because even when they weren’t there at the foot of my bed, the Lerts kept coming into my head, thousands and thousands of them, all with the same face and the same voice as Wilson. And it was like I was looking at all those Lerts from somewhere up above as more and more and more of them arrived in this big wide field. And in the middle of it was a white tent, a marquee, and all the Lerts were queuing up to get into this tent. And even though it looked as though it wouldn’t fit more than fifty or sixty people, there were thousands and thousands of Lerts pouring through the entrance and going into it. I didn’t want to follow them; I didn’t want to go inside that marquee. I was trying to resist it, trying to hold back and keep myself out of that tent. But then I was looking down and the tent had no roof to it and I could see all the thousands and thousands of Lerts. And I knew then what they were there for. I knew it was the wedding! And there, at the front, I could see her, my Mam with her arm linked in his. And she was turning and smiling and looking up at him. And he was lifting a veil from off my Mam’s face and the thousands and thousands of Lerts were starting to clap as he lifted off his top hat and turned his big, red, bulbous lips towards my Mam! And I knew I had to get there, before it was too late. Knew that I had to get out of that bed an
d get to that field and rescue my Mam. I knew I could do it, I knew I could get there, knew I could run fast enough and hard enough, through the pain barrier, running like liquid like liquid like liquid. Easy easy easy, running like Norman, like Norman taught me, running with the head and the breath and the muscles and even doing a pirouette, pirouette like Twinky, running, pirouetting, gliding, gliding, to rescue my Mam, rescue my Mam. Take this, take this, take this Raymond. It’s only a tablet. That’s all right, that’s all right, take it as I’m running, pirouetting, gliding, take it take take the tablet, doesn’t matter take it, take it take it . . . . . . . take it . . . . . . . . . take it . . . . . . . . . takeit. . . . . . . . . ta . . . . . . . ke . . . . . tay . . . . kit . . . tay . . . . . . kit . . . . . kit ache . . . . . . tayk . . . . . hit . . . . . hit . . . . . . hake . . . . tayk . . . . . . slow . . . . . . slow . . . . . . slow . . . . . down . . . . . . slowed . . . . . . down . . . . . . tay . . . . . kitslow . . . . . . tay . . . . kits. . . . . . slow. . . . . down. . . . . . . . sloooooo. . . . . . doooooown . . . . . . . . . time for . . . . . . time four . . . . . for time four your . . . . . medi. . . . . . . . kay. . . . . medi . . . . . . kay . . . . . shun . . . . medi . . . kay . . . shun.

  All gone.

  That’s what it was like, Morrissey, once they’d got me stabilised and on the right medication. After the first few weeks, the Lerts stopped coming for me. Once they’d got me properly stabilised and on the right medication everything slowed right down in my head and stayed like that. And there were no more Lerts after that; or, if there were, they just didn’t seem to matter any more; they didn’t bother me. My Mam was just my Mam again after that and Mr Wilson was just Mr Wilson. They came in together to visit me; and it didn’t bother me, apart from the fact that I wanted to stay in the recreation room and carry on watching Lucky Ladders or Going for Gold. Or anything. Brendan said I had to come back to the ward though and be with my visitors. My Mam hugged me, like she always hugged me. But I wanted to go back and sit there in front of the telly. Only they wouldn’t let me. So I just had to sit there by my bed, while my Mam gave me whatever present she’d brought me; and Mr Wilson patted me on the knee and said how much better I was doing. And I just nodded my head, or stared at them. Or looked at the floor. And wished I could go back to the telly room. Mr Wilson said I was doing very well, very well indeed, he said. My Mam said why didn’t I open my presents. Mr Wilson said it was amazing, the change in me and how much better I was doing. And my Mam said did I want her to help me unwrap my present. Mr Wilson said he’d had a long talk with the consultant, who’d told him he was very pleased with me. My Mam held up the book she’d just unwrapped for me and said she thought I’d like it. Mr Wilson said I was making excellent progress. And if I carried on like this, I’d soon be able to go out for a couple of hours one afternoon. And he’d take us somewhere nice, me and my Mam, somewhere nice in his car. My Mam said it was supposed to be a very good book indeed, the autobiography of Bob Geldof. And then she read out, from the back of the book jacket, some of the things the newspapers had said about it. Mr Wilson told my Mam it must be a real tonic for her, seeing how well I was responding to treatment. My Mam didn’t answer him though.

  Because now my Mam had her head bent down, like she was trying to read the Bob Geldof book. But what she was really doing was crying. And it should have upset me, really, seeing my Mam sitting there trying to hide the fact that she was crying. It didn’t upset me though. It didn’t upset me at all. I knew it should have done; I knew I should have been feeling sad in my heart and worried because my Mam was silently crying. But I wasn’t sad; I wasn’t anything. It was as if a place inside of me had been closed down and shuttered up, the place that normally registered things like upset and sadness and worry.

  Mr Wilson said it was miraculous these days though, what they could do with the right treatment. With every single day that passed, he said, they were learning more and more about my sort of condition. Then he said the same thing again in about ten slightly different ways. But it didn’t matter though because it was just like the game shows on the telly that keep on doing the same thing over and over and over again; that’s why I liked watching them, because they just stayed the same. He didn’t notice though, Mr Wilson, when he kept telling me about the miracles of modern medicine, he didn’t notice that my Mam was crying as she sat there, bent over the Bob Geldof book.

  It was only when she was wiping her eyes with the hankie that he said, ‘Are you all right, Shelagh?’

  And my Mam said she’d just got something in her eye, that was all. And he frowned a disapproving frown as he said it was probably mascara. My Mam nodded. And he looked a bit huffy and brassed off then as he said he couldn’t understand it, why my Mam used such stuff as that, painting her eyes like a common person when her eyes looked perfectly all right in their natural and unadorned state.

  My Mam didn’t even look at him. She just nodded as she tried to smile at me while Wilson switched his attention from make-up to footwear and said my Mam’s high heels were far too high and quite unnecessary. He said it was now widely acknowledged that shoes such as my Mam’s could lead to a person suffering from severe lower back problems in later life. My Mam just nodded again and kept staring at me. Then he said my Mam’s bad habits in footwear were the result of unfortunate patterns established in her youth. But when they were married, he said, he’d be able to convert his membership of the Ramblers’ Association into a joint membership and once my Mam got out there in the bracing air, rambling and roaming the rugged moors, she’d soon start to appreciate the indispensable value of sturdy footwear.

  He carried on for ages. But my Mam wasn’t even listening to him. Because my Mam was just looking at me all the time. And then, right in the middle of him lerting on about how a waterproof cagoule was an absolutely indispensable accessory for anyone venturing out onto the moors, even in July, my Mam just clutched my hand, and squeezing it, told me, ‘You will be all right, you know, son. You will, I know you will because—’

  But he interrupted her, sounding a bit peeved as he said of course I’d be all right and anybody could see I was making marvellous progress.

  I didn’t want to listen to him! I wanted to listen to my Mam and what my Mam had to say to me. But it was like he wouldn’t let my Mam do any kind of talking. Whenever my Mam tried to say anything he kept interrupting and saying things for her, as if he knew better than my Mam what it was she wanted to say. And in the end my Mam just gave up, left all the talking to him and just sat there like she was a bit of a spare part. And somewhere far off in my mind, behind the cotton-wool fog of all the medication, I understood that my Mam was a woman who’d been taken hostage. But I couldn’t rescue her though, I knew that. I didn’t have the energy to rescue anyone or anything. All I could do was sit there, not even listening as Wilson talked and talked until it was time to go; and my Mam kissed me and hugged me, hugged me and hugged me, till Wilson said, ‘Come on now, Shelagh, come on; you don’t want to smother the boy.’

  My Mam kept hold of me though, just for a few seconds longer. And she whispered in my ear, saying, ‘Son, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.’

  It sounded like my Mam was about to start crying again. And when she let go of me, when she stood back and looked at me, I could see that she was struggling to hold back the tears.

  I was glad; glad that I was on the right medication, glad that I was stabilised and somewhere far off inside my own head. Because it meant it didn’t upset me, watching my Mam fighting back the tears, watching her as she kept turning her head and waving back to me as Wilson led her down the ward. Then they were both gone. And I was glad because that meant I could go back to the telly room. Going for Gold had finished. But The Sullivans was on. So I watched that. I liked it; sitting there in the recreation room, watching the game shows and the quiz shows, all the talk shows and cookery shows, puppet shows and soap shows; all the shows where nothing ever ever happened. And everybody laughed or applauded wildly at all-the-not
hing that kept on happening.

  And then she was suddenly stood there, on her own, my Mam. And I didn’t know if it was the same day or another day. I don’t even know if she was really there at all; or if it was me, just dreaming in front of the telly.

  She said, ‘Tell me! Tell me where they live in Failsworth and I’ll go and see them. When he’s not around, I’ll bring them in to see y’.’

  I looked at her. I didn’t know what she was talking about. But she bent down then, clasping hold of my hands, her eyes staring fiercely into mine as she said, ‘I’ll bring them, your friends! Just tell me where they live.’

  And then I realised it was Twinky and Norman she was talking about. I shook my head though and my Mam’s face started to crumple up as she said, ‘Raymond, come on! Just tell me where they live. I thought you’d want to see them.’

  That’s when I frowned at my Mam. Because I didn’t, not any more. I didn’t want my friends to see me, not now; now that I was fat again. I wasn’t properly fat again, not fat on the outside. But inside of me, that’s where I was fat; where I was fat and all slugged and slow and daft, where my brain wouldn’t work any more and I didn’t want to think about anything. So I told my Mam, ‘They’ve gone. My friends have gone.’

  ‘What do y’ mean?’ she said, frowning as she crouched there in front of me. ‘What do y’ mean, Raymond?’

  I just shrugged and I sighed and said, ‘They don’t even live in Failsworth any more, Twinky and Norman. They went to London.’

  I tried to watch the telly then. But my Mam was still clutching hold of my hands and she shook them as she said, ‘All right! So just tell me where in London, I’ll get in touch with them there. It doesn’t matter.’

  But I shook my head. And I don’t even know if I just dreamed it anyway. Because the next time I looked up, my Mam wasn’t even there. And I don’t even think it was the same day. Because it was the afternoon now and Emmerdale was on.