The Wrong Boy

by Willy Russell

  Apparently that’s when the carpet fitters got involved and stopped him just as he was about to tread all over my head. When I came round, one of the carpet fitters was helping me towards the door and the other one was carrying my gear. As we approached the beautiful girl’s table, the carpet fitter who was carrying my gear said to the carpet fitter who was carrying me, ‘Hey, I could give that one a good seeing to,’ and they both started laughing that horrible, nauseous laugh that only men can make. And as I passed her I saw the Girl with the Chestnut Eyes look up and give me a fleeting glance of bitter disappointment. That was when I stopped, stopped alongside her table. And I said to her, ‘I don’t share their thoughts or their deeds; you’ve got me all wrong. As a matter of fact,’ I said to her, ‘I happen to have taken a vow of celibacy!’

  Well, that’s how the carpet fitters got it into their heads that I’m a novice priest. As he was helping me into the back of the van the one who was carrying my gear apologised for all his coarseness and lasciviousness. So I’m sitting here now, on six rolls of floral-patterned shag pile, headed somewhere up the Pennine Chain. And the carpet fitters are on their best behaviour and calling me ‘Father’ all the time.

  I feel a bit guilty now about saying I’d taken a vow of celibacy. Not on account of the carpet fitters but on account of the girl. You see, Morrissey, on top of everything else, I’d lied to her. It’s not that I’ve taken a vow of celibacy, it’s just that I am. Celibate! It’s one of those facts. Like water’s wet, like grass is green. Like Raymond is celibate. And as it’s an incontrovertible fact I thought I might as well try and turn it into a sort of a virtue. I was in town one Saturday and I saw this graffiti written on the side of the Kentucky Fried Chicken. It said, ‘Raymond Marks has never had it.’ I went back that night with a spray can and I wrote, ‘Raymond Marks doesn’t want it actually!’

  It was just after I’d read that article about you, Morrissey, and you’d told the interviewer that you were a ‘lapsed celibate’. I thought it was brilliant, that. I wish I could say the same, but so far I’ve found that the ‘celibate’ bit is easier to achieve than the ‘lapsing’. I don’t think about it too much though. I’ve got my Morrissey records and my Smiths records and my book of Oscar Wilde quotes. And I’ve got my lyric writing and that’s dead important to me. And something I’ve noticed, Morrissey, when I’ve been reading about other writers or listening to them being interviewed is that a lot of them say the same thing – that when it comes down to it, writing is better than sex. Well, if that’s true, I’m having a great time.

  Yours sincerely,

  Raymond Marks

  From the Lyric Book of Raymond James Marks

  Down by the back of the shopping arcade

  A big horse chestnut grows

  Like a thing left over from another age

  But refusing to decompose.

  I threw a big stick at that chestnut tree

  And waited for a conker to fall;

  But the stick fell back and landed on me

  And I ended up with sod all.

  So I picked up my stick and I walked away

  Mocked by the growling skies

  Until I heard a voice calling, ‘Ray!’

  It was the Girl with the Chestnut Eyes.

  She gently said, ‘Give over,

  You’re seeking far too soon.

  You get conkers in late October

  And it’s only the middle of June.’

  I went to reach out for her

  But my hands just grasped thin air

  Although I know in my bones that I saw her.

  I know that she was there.

  So I waited till the swallows

  Started nesting in the eaves

  And the potholes, dips and hollows

  Were stuffed with fallen leaves.

  Then in bright anticipation

  I went back to that chestnut tree;

  But found nowt! Only desolation

  Waiting there for me.

  My heart just turned to parchment

  I was sadder than a circus clown;

  The men from the Parks Department

  Had been and chopped the tree down.

  I turned like the fighter who’s won the fight

  Then been denied the prize

  And shouts out that it isn’t right

  As tears start to prick his eyes.

  As narked as a bus conductor,

  As pissed off as ice in the sun,

  As Deirdre (when Ken Barlow chucked her),

  I turned and I started to run.

  And I ran till I came to the waters

  That are known as the Rochdale Canal;

  There was nothing now that could sort us.

  I looked up and I said, ‘Thanks, pal.’

  There’d be no more tomorrows see

  I’d soon be ‘was’ and no longer ‘am’.

  I said my farewells to Morrissey,

  To Oscar Wilde and to my Mam.

  But as I slipped into that iced,

  Bike-frame-infested pool,

  I heard a voice that said, ‘Oh Christ.

  What’s he doing now, the fool?’

  Then it all went as quiet as tea in a cup.

  I was sinking, the water grew darker

  When some soft bastard started pulling me up

  By grabbing the hood of my parka.

  They put me to bed in a bright white place

  Where the light was always on

  And wrote on a card it was one more case

  Of a lad with his marbles gone.

  So I shouted out and tried to explain

  And tell them I hadn’t gone bonkers,

  That it wasn’t my marbles that had gone down the drain

  And that all that I’d lost was my conkers.

  But the more I said it the more they laughed

  So the more I lost my patience

  So the more they said I must be daft

  And gave me more medications.

  To calm me down, to help, they said

  But they turned my brain to jelly

  Till I just sat quietly by the bed

  And watched game shows on the telly.

  Or, with assistance, walked the grounds,

  Adolescence prematurely departed,

  Like a wino shuffling on his rounds

  On the march of the broken-hearted.

  Winter, spring and summer passed by

  But I didn’t hardly notice

  With my brain baked as hard as a chip-shop pie

  Then smothered in a kaolin poultice.

  But then the leaves started falling

  And as I shuffled along that day

  I thought I heard them calling

  ‘Look! This way, this way.’

  My head felt as heavy as a sack of old pennies

  As I lifted my eyes from the floor

  But there, through the mist of the downers and bennies,

  Standing before me I saw

  The great golden bough of a galleon

  In the form of a chestnut tree;

  I thought, shit, is this just the Valium

  Or can I believe what I see?

  But then I knew I wasn’t drugged or drunk

  That it wasn’t tricks or lies

  Because stepping out from behind the trunk

  Was the Girl with the Chestnut Eyes.

  She wrapped her arms about me

  And whispered, ‘Do not be afraid.

  Promise never to doubt me

  And I promise you will be saved.’

  I swore that oath, and immediately

  The earth seemed to crack in two,

  The sewers of hell rushed up at me;

  It was like an acid house do.

  The girl in my arms became a whip

  That lashed and sliced my skin

  But I could not, would not release my grip.

  She became a jagged tin

  That ripped and tore my flesh away

  And gouged o
ut both my eyes

  But still I wouldn’t, couldn’t give way;

  I had to hold on to the prize.

  Then she became a scorpion

  And stung the arms about her

  But still I just kept holding on,

  Still I refused to doubt her.

  She became disease personified,

  She became the atom bomb,

  Became every soul that had ever died

  But still I kept holding on.

  Then finally she became the core

  That burns white hot at the centre of the sun;

  And just when I thought I could hold on no more

  My ordeal was finally done.

  We were walking along a street in town,

  She was laughing at things I said,

  I was smiling, not depressed, not down,

  Not like one who’d come back from the dead,

  Pill popped planted and plonkered.

  I’d come through, I’d gained the prize.

  And that was how I got conquered

  By the Girl with the Chestnut Eyes.

  RJM

  A lay-by,

  The A58,

  On the Outskirts

  Of Halifax

  Dear Morrissey,

  The crackpot carpet fitters dropped me here. As I got out of the van they indicated the town and said, ‘Here we are then, Father, this is as far as we go.’

  I looked down the hill towards the plethora of pizza parlours, privately owned pebble-dashed prefabs and all the variously vulgarised Victoriana.

  ‘This is Halifax,’ the driver proudly announced.

  ‘Thanks for telling us,’ I said. ‘I might just have mistaken it for Paris!’

  They frowned at me. ‘Is that where y’ headed for?’ one of them asked.

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m headed for Grimsby.’

  They looked at each other then, the carpet fitters. And then they looked at me with a considerable degree of pity and sympathy. Then one of them patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Never mind, Father, never mind!’

  Before they drove off they told me I’d easily get a lift from here. I hope their carpet fitting is more accurate than their powers of prediction! I’ve been stuck at this shagging lay-by for more than two hours now and the nearest I’ve come to getting a lift was when a customised Ford Sierra slowed down and two hilarious bastards leaned out the windows, yockered all over me and told me to fuck off. A minibus carrying a clutch of nuns did begin to slow down for me but when I grabbed my gear and ran up to it, it started pulling away and the Hebden Bridge Sisters of Charity all started laughing out the windows and giving me the finger. I just gave up then and sat down at the foot of the road sign. I’m beginning to think I should have got the coach to Grimsby like I’d told my Mam I was doing. But hitch-hiking seemed more romantic somehow; a fitting tribute to my last few days of freedom. I’m beginning to suspect though that it might have been a mistake to abandon my customary cautiousness and flirt with the capricious nymph of adventure. I hate my Uncle Bastard Jason! I got out one of my felt-tip pens before and I wrote, right across the road sign, I wrote: ‘My Uncle Jason is a bastard and a thief; he stole my Gran’s satellite dish! And now he enjoys Sky TV while my Gran wallows in a lead-lined box, inside an ill-fitting and contentious grave!’

  I hate my Uncle Bastard Jason. I wouldn’t be going to a pox hole like Grimsby if it wasn’t for him.

  I know I said I was going to Grimsby because of you, Morrissey, but I wasn’t blaming you when I said that. Your part in all this was merely incidental and I absolve you totally of any blame whatsoever in my enforced flight from Failsworth. That part of it was my fault, I know that. I just never should have played your records to my Mam. But my Mam was happy, you see. On that Saturday night my Mam was dead happy. I knew she was because she was making an apple pie from a Delia Smith recipe she’d copied down off Ceefax. It had cinnamon and cloves and the zest of lemons and things that my Mam normally wouldn’t bother with in an ordinary apple pie. But my Mam was happy that night. When my Mam isn’t happy she doesn’t do any cooking at all. She just fetches something frozen from the freezer and microwaves it in an expedient but joyless ritual of perfunctory preparation. When she bothers with baking though, I know that my Mam’s all right, I know that she’s happy.

  On that Saturday night she was even singing to herself as she pounded out the pastry on the kitchen table. ‘I’m Not In Love’ it was, that old song by 10 CC. My Mam adores that song. And I was happy that she was happy. When I went through to the kitchen to get a drink of water my Mam even picked up the rolling pin, pretending it was a microphone! It was the sort of stomach-clenching moment of acute embarrassment that mothers are prone to produce every once in an unfortunate while. But at least it was only in our kitchenette so there was nobody else around to witness my Mam’s excruciating lapse. And I was happy that my Mam was happy and so I summoned up something of a smile.

  She stopped singing then and looked at me all curious. ‘Bloody hell, Raymond,’ she said, ‘is that you smiling? Or have you just got wind?’

  I said, ‘You know that song you’re singing? It was recorded at Strawberry Studios, that was. The Smiths recorded there as well.’

  ‘I love that song,’ my Mam said and she got a sort of dreamy look in her eyes as she sighed and started singing again. Then she began laying the pastry over the dish and she said, ‘It’s not your sort of music though, is it, Raymond?’

  I just shrugged. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I quite like it really.’

  My Mam looked at me all surprised. ‘Do you?’ she said. ‘Do you honestly?’ And I could tell it was dead important to her to get my approval of a song that she loved.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s all right. It’s not brilliant but yeah, it’s all right. It’s sort of clever the way it says things backwards.’

  My Mam’s face lit up with a lovely smile and she closed her eyes and dead intensely she said, ‘Oh I love that. I just love it so much that he’s trying to say to her, he’s trying to say that he’s not in love with her but he’s so … he’s so deep in love he’s almost drowning in it.’

  When she said that, I saw that my Mam’s eyes had gone all bright and glistening with the great happiness of such sadness. I thought for a minute that the tears she held just behind her eyes were about to spill down her cheek but she just sighed, a big deep sigh of sadness and satisfaction as she started brushing beaten egg all over the top of the apple pie.

  ‘You know, Raymond,’ she said, ‘you know what it means when you start being able to appreciate the sort of music your parents listened to?’

  I was beginning to regret that I’d said owt about the sodding 10 CC song; I might have said that that one was all right but I hoped she wasn’t about to start asking me to listen to the bleeding Bee Gees or Leo sodding Sayer or any other such frivolity as my Mam was susceptible to.

  ‘What it means, Raymond,’ my Mam said, ‘is that you … are beginning to grow up.’

  She stood there looking at me all proud and smiling and gratified.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I didn’t want to grow up. But I didn’t want to blight her happiness by saying something like that. So I just said, ‘Mam, I’m going back to my bedroom now.’

  But I didn’t make it to my bedroom because my Mam suddenly said, ‘Hey! Why don’t you bring some of your records out and play them for me. You only ever play them in your bedroom.’

  I shrugged. I said, ‘I just didn’t think it was the sort of stuff you liked.’

  ‘Well, how do I know whether I like it?’ she said. ‘You never let me hear any of it, not properly. All I ever hear is what drifts through the bedroom door. I might like your records if I heard them properly,’ she said. ‘I mean, you’ve started liking my music, why shouldn’t I like yours? I’ll tell you what, Raymond,’ she said, ‘let me get this pie in the oven and I’ll sit down with you and listen to them … what are the
y called again?’

  ‘The Smiths,’ I said.

  ‘The Smiths,’ she said. ‘We’ll sit down together and we’ll both listen to The Smiths.’

  I was dubious; I was extremely dubious. But I could see that my Mam was dead delighted with this mother and son communion and wanted to make the effort to develop it further. And I didn’t want to make her unhappy. So I disregarded my dubiousness and went through to my bedroom and got the cassettes.

  My Mam sat on the edge of the sofa, smoothing her skirt and doing her best to be like the mothers on the TV advertisements, all alert and attentive in a perfect pose of enthusiastic expectation.

  ‘Come on, Raymond,’ she said, all beaming and bright, ‘let’s sample some sounds!’

  I didn’t say nowt. I just blushed all over inside for her. Then I pressed the play button and tried to look elsewhere as my Mam sat on the sofa, smiling and bobbing her head and tapping her fingers to ‘This Charming Man’.

  She said, ‘Hey, it’s nice, Raymond! It’s nice guitar playing, isn’t it?’

  ‘You have to listen to the lyrics,’ I told her.

  ‘I am doing,’ she said, ‘I am doing.’ She listened again for a minute. ‘He’s got a nice voice, hasn’t he?’ she said. ‘The lead singer, it’s different like, but it’s quite a nice voice really.’

  ‘That’s Morrissey,’ I said. ‘He writes the lyrics. He’s brilliant.’

  ‘What’s that he’s saying?’ my Mam said, cocking her ear to the cassette, ‘ “I would go out tonight but”… What’s he saying?’

  “‘I would go out tonight but I haven’t got a stitch to wear,” ’I told her.

  ‘I feel like that sometimes,’ my Mam said. ‘It’s brilliant, isn’t it? The way someone you’ve never met can write a song and it just … just like sums up the way you feel.’

  ‘But that’s Morrissey, Mam!’ I said, feeling an uncharacteristic surge of excitement. ‘That’s what he does. Because he’s a poet he can articulate things for all of us. Do you really like it,’ I said, ‘or are you just saying that?’

  ‘I do like it, Raymond,’ she said, getting up from the sofa as the track finished, ‘I like it very much indeed.’