Twinky cheered up and said, well, that was all right then, because the King who brought the gold to Baby Jesus was the special King, the most important one and the other two Kings were just there to make up the numbers.
Twinky got their Cindy to make his costume and design his make-up for him. But he refused to let anybody get even a glimpse of it until the day of the first show.
Samantha Hardcastle didn’t stand a chance.
Dressed from head to foot in velvet robes, wearing long false eyelashes, a golden crown and their Cindy’s feather boa, Twinky McDevitt swept onto the stage looking like a cross between Shirley Bassey and the Pope. Even the mums and dads who normally only ever watched their own kids in the nativity said that you couldn’t keep your eyes off Twinky McDevitt. They were all clicking their cameras – apart from Samantha Hardcastle’s mother who was sat there quietly seething at seeing her daughter being totally eclipsed as Twinky McDevitt, flagrantly upstaging everything in sight, paraded around the stage as if it was his own private catwalk.
Not content with the moves that had been rehearsed Twinky started adding some of his own, and after he’d presented his gift of gold to the Baby Jesus, Twinky held out a regal hand to the Virgin Mary who was patently expected to kneel down and kiss it. But pulling a face and sticking out her bottom lip, Samantha Hardcastle sat there on her bale of straw, resolutely refusing to do any such thing.
So Twinky just patted the Virgin Mary on the head and told her the baby was looking a bit peaky and perhaps it wasn’t getting enough milk.
That’s when Samantha Hardcastle’s mam had had enough, more than enough! She got up and stormed out of the hall in a huff, demanding to see the headmaster. She kicked up a big stink. She told Mr Kerney it wasn’t right and it wasn’t proper and everybody knew, everybody, that the proper nativity was where Baby Jesus got visited by the Three Kings, not by two Kings and an effing little Queen in a pair of cut-down curtains.
Mr Kerney quietly explained that perhaps Mrs Hardcastle had failed to appreciate the progressive nature of the production which, personally, Mr Kerney had found rather bold and refreshing, reflecting as it did the question of gender ambiguity which was such an important issue in contemporary society. But the Virgin Mary’s mother just told Mr Kerney to fuck off and said she’d never have sent their Samantha to this school in the first place if she’d known how bleeding crap it was and the kids never did nowt but weird nativity plays and learned more about sodding Chinese chip shops than they did about maths and geography and the Battle of Waterloo. And then she said she’d had enough of it and this nativity business was the last straw and she was taking their Samantha from the school forthwith and enrolling her in a private academy regardless of the financial sacrifices that would have to be made.
And that was how Twinky got to realise his dream and take over in the role of the Virgin Mary.
Some of the teachers were doubtful at first. And when Mr Kerney walked onto the stage the next day and announced that in today’s performance the part of the Virgin Mary will be played by Twinky McDevitt there was murmuring and frowning and the raising of eyebrows amongst the mums and dads and the Governors and their guests. Mrs Bradwick got up out of her reserved seat in the front row, intending to go and have a word with the headmaster. But the hall lights were already dimming, the play was about to start and Mrs Bradwick had to sit down again as the spotlights came on. The infants held their silver-foil stars aloft, me and all the rest of us in the lower juniors began to softly croon ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’, and there on a donkey sat a Virgin Mary so beautifully serene that there were gasps from the audience, spellbound now, as Twinky McDevitt in nothing more elaborate than a simple frock and knitted shawl exuded a palpable aura of spiritual calm and enigmatic femininity. Even Norman Gorman who was playing the part of Joseph the Carpenter seemed to be captivated by the fragile beauty of his leading lady and when he had to lift her down from the donkey and carry her across to the cattle shed he did it with a grace and an elegance that had never been seen in Norman Gorman before, scooping up Twinky in his big protective arms just like he was Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Twinky McDevitt’s Virgin Mary seemed to have that same inspirational effect upon everybody who was in the play, even all the sheep who Miss Thompson said she’d given up on because they were more like a herd of Friesian heifers than innocent little lambs. But with Twinky McDevitt leading the cast, the little lambs were delicate and dainty and when Baby Jesus was born they all bleated and baaed in perfect unison the way that Miss Thompson had always wanted them to. And in Twinky’s hands even the Baby Jesus, who was just a wrapped-up plastic doll that Miss Thompson had got from a car boot sale, now seemed to wriggle and stretch and kick its little legs beneath its swaddling clothes. And maybe that’s what did it. Perhaps, like everybody in the audience, even Twinky himself had started to believe that instead of just a plastic doll from a car boot sale, there was a real live baby wrapped up in that bundle. Or perhaps it was Twinky just doing what he always did and never knowing when to stop. And if he had stopped there, if the curtain had come down and the hall lights had come on when everybody in that hall was still sat there, captivated, enraptured and in absolute thrall to the most magnificent Virgin Mary that Failsworth had ever seen, if Twinky had stopped there then Mr Kerney would have been a hero and probably got the MBE and still been the headmaster at our school. But Twinky didn’t stop. Twinky stood up in the cattle shed and slowly stepped forward towards the front of the stage, all the time gazing lovingly down at Baby Jesus, tenderly cradling the infant and bestowing upon him a smile that seemed to embody the very essence of motherly love. And perhaps Twinky was just carried away by the moment. But as he stood there, gazing adoringly at the baby, Twinky slowly started to unfasten the top buttons of his dress. And two hundred jaws dropped into two hundred laps and two hundred pairs of eyes watched in stunned silence as Twinky put the baby’s mouth onto his left nipple and said, ‘You have a good suck on that, Baby Jesus. And when that one’s empty there’s another full one on the other side.’
Mr Kerney did his best.
He tried to pass it off as a sincere and dramatically effective attempt to promote the virtues of breast-feeding amongst the young mothers of Failsworth. But Mrs Bradwick said that was precisely the kind of so-called enlightened liberalism and progressive poppycock that had so seriously tarnished the reputation of the school, bringing it perilously close to the precipice of decadence and anarchy.
And interviewed for the pages of the Failsworth Fanfare under the headline ‘Transvestite Virgin Mary in Nativity Shocker’, Mrs Bradwick sought to reassure all the parents and the community at large by announcing Mr Kerney’s immediate departure from the school. She said that on behalf of the Governors she wished Mr Kerney well and hoped that he’d be happy in his new post as proprietor of the One World Vegetarian and Organic Foodstuffs Shop in Glossop.
And when we got back after the Christmas holidays there was a new headmaster in charge of our school. And he stood there, the New Headmaster, waiting at the door and staring at us all as we walked in. And as we went down the corridor he suddenly barked like a big dog and said, ‘You! You, lad!’
And I didn’t know that he was talking to me, because my name was Raymond and I’d never been called ‘You, lad’ before. So I carried on walking down the corridor and then he barked even louder and said, ‘YOU!’
And that’s when Geoffrey Weatherby nudged me and urgently whispered, ‘Raymond, he means you.’
And I turned round then and he was pointing at me with a spiky finger, the New Headmaster. ‘You!’ he said. ‘Yes, you! Come here!’
And I had to walk all the way back down the corridor and everyone was looking at me. When I got to where he was stood he just glared at me, the New Headmaster. And he said, ‘What’s your name, little boy?’
I told him it was Raymond James Marks and he just stood there slowly nodding his head.
Then he suddenly clicked hi
s fingers dead loud and pointed at the comic I was carrying and said, ‘What have you got in your hand, Raymond James Marks?’
I said, ‘It’s just a Spiderman comic, sir.’
He clicked his fingers again and said, ‘Give!’
And he took hold of my Spiderman comic and stared at the front cover as if he was looking at something that made him sick. Then he flicked open the pages and said, ‘Do you think this is suitable material to bring into school, Raymond Marks? In fact do you think this is suitable material at all for the eyes of a boy who’s no more than, what …’ He closed the comic and looked at me. ‘… eight years of age?’
I told him that I was nearly nine and he said, ‘Oh! Nearly nine. And that makes it all right, does it, nearly-nine-year-old Raymond James Marks? That makes it all right, does it, to be looking at filth like this, bringing pictures such as this into school?’
I didn’t know what he was talking about! It was only Spiderman versus the Vulcan Vixens. And the Vulcan Vixens did have dead long legs and big pointy bosoms and me and Geoffrey Weatherby used to say that they were dead sexy, weren’t they. But we didn’t even really know what we were talking about. We were only eight and barely beginning to understand what ‘sexy’ meant. Sometimes, when I was in bed reading, I’d stare at the pictures of the Vulcan Vixens and they’d make me feel all nice and funny. And other times I’d look at them and I’d think how stupid they were, the Vulcan Vixens, always running round wearing nothing but knickers and brassieres. They certainly didn’t have much chance of defeating Spiderman and taking over planet Earth, dressed like that! They definitely wouldn’t be able to survive an Arctic winter!
‘Well, Raymond Marks,’ the New Headmaster said, ‘are you going to explain yourself?’
And I thought then that the New Headmaster was doing what Mr Kerney used to do. Even when he didn’t like what we’d been doing, Mr Kerney always used to give us the chance to offer an explanation. And sometimes Mr Kerney even changed his mind and said that we were right and he was wrong and he’d learned something from us.
So I explained to the New Headmaster and I said to him, ‘Sir, I don’t think that I am too young to be reading it, actually. Because if I was too young to be reading Spiderman versus the Vulcan Vixens, my Gran wouldn’t have bought it for me.’
He took a step back and looked me up and down from head to toe, the New Headmaster. And then he leaned down very slowly until his face was facing mine and his eyes were all bulging as he said, ‘I don’t like precocious little boys, Raymond Marks. Is that what you are, a precocious little boy, or just a very rude little boy?’
I didn’t even know what precocious meant. And I certainly didn’t think that I’d been rude. So I just shrugged and said nothing. And the New Headmaster said, ‘Let me tell you something, nearly-nine-year-old Raymond James Marks. There’s been far too much precociousness in this school, far too much for far too long. But there’s going to be a lot less from now on, a lot less old heads on young shoulders, a lot less nine and ten and eleven-year-olds behaving as though they know better than their teachers, better than their headmaster.’
He held up my copy of Spiderman versus the Vulcan Vixens then and he said, ‘In my school, Raymond Marks, little boys will behave like little boys. And I don’t care a twopenny sausage what your grandmother says about what you can and cannot read. In my school, there will be no room for filth of any sort, Raymond Marks.’
And then he held out Spiderman and the Vulcan Vixens and he ripped it right down the middle! Then he told me to get to my classroom. And as I walked away, he said, ‘Raymond James Marks! I don’t doubt for a single second that Raymond James Marks is a name I will be hearing more of!’
It wasn’t nice in our school, after the New Headmaster took over.
We never had special assemblies any more and the New Headmaster never ever talked about things like Chinese chippies or lovely runny curry sauce or the niceness of things being different. Twinky McDevitt got sent to see a psychotherapist and he didn’t do his pirouettes or concert parties in the playground any more. And nativity plays were just nativity plays after that. And with the New Headmaster, our school became just a normal, ordinary, everyday sort of school. And gradually everybody forgot about the niceness of things being different.
But Mrs Bradwick was happy and the School Governors were happy. And the New Headmaster was happy. Because the Governors said they’d expected it would take years to put everything right in our school. But after only eighteen months in the job, the New Headmaster had performed miracles.
Such was Mrs Bradwick’s delight at the spectacularly successful transformation of our school that she’d started to speculate openly about the possibility of the New Headmaster’s efforts being recognised at a national level and rewarded with a summons to the Palace and a CBE. The New Headmaster was very happy.
And on a beautifully balmy summer’s day, Twinky McDevitt long gone now and moved on to the comprehensive and the latest in a long line of psychotherapists, the New Headmaster stood in his office, a sense of profound satisfaction in his stomach as he gazed from his window and surveyed the playground, empty now after dinner, empty and childless and tidy, not a bit of litter in sight, not a ball or a bag left lying where a ball or a bag shouldn’t be, not one single syllable of gratuitous graffiti nor illicit patch of discarded hardened chewing gum to taint and mar the flat, grey perfectly pristine playground.
The New Headmaster was extremely happy.
And then! Out of the blue: Albert Goldberg and his swollen protuberance! Summoned by the school doctor, the New Headmaster stood in the changing room, stared, shook his head and wondered aloud as to the cause of Albert’s current deformity. And when Albert explained that a wasp flew up the leg of his trousers and stung him in his private parts, the New Headmaster was tempted to leave it at that. The Headmaster was happy, it was a balmy, beautiful summer’s day, the playground was immaculate and there were only two weeks left until the end of term. But try as he might, the New Headmaster could not avoid the keen whiff of bullshit that his headmasterly nose had detected in Albert Goldberg’s account of the cause of his current condition.
And the New Headmaster did not like it when his intelligence was being insulted, when little children used their little minds to try to deceive a man of his wisdom and experience. So the Headmaster informed Albert Goldberg that he wasn’t having any of that! And that being something of an international authority on insect behaviour, especially the common wasp, he quite failed to see how one of those poor maligned little creatures could have wormed its way up the inside of Albert’s trouser leg and then managed to prise its way beneath the band of a tight pair of jockey shorts!
Albert, struggling now but valiant, still tried to tough it out, insisting that it was true about the wasp climbing up the inside of his trouser leg and probably what had happened was that the wasp had chewed its way through his jockey shorts!
The New Headmaster nodded and appeared to consider the matter as he bent down and retrieved a pair of discarded training shoes that had been left under one of the benches. ‘Or perhaps,’ he helpfully told Albert, ‘perhaps it was a Scissor Wasp! One of that rare breed of wasps that is born with little sets of scissors on the end of its front legs.’
Albert nodded, saying, ‘Yes, sir, you’re right, sir. That was definitely it, sir, because I’ve seen them wasps on David Attenborough, sir, and now that I come to think about it, it was, it was one of them.’
The loud crack which whipped through the air as the Headmaster smacked one of the training shoes hard against the bench made even the school doctor jump with momentary fright.
And that’s when the Headmaster, his eyes wide and glaring, told Albert Goldberg that unless the doctor gave him appropriate medication within the next three minutes, Albert Goldberg would have to go to the hospital! Albert Goldberg would probably have to have his swollen manhood amputated! Albert Goldberg would never get to do his bar mitzvah, never get married, never have a famil
y when he grew up!
Looking at his watch, counting down the seconds, the New Headmaster let Albert believe that the crucial medication would most definitely not be forthcoming unless Albert cut out the bullshit and told the truth. The whole truth!
Albert finally crumbled and started to spill the beans.
Terrified that any omission, hidden detail or glossing of the facts would result in permanent disfigurement, Albert spilt every single bean in the can.
And the New Headmaster, who’d previously been so happy, listened with a mounting sense of horror as Albert Goldberg tearfully narrated his account of the regular goings-on at the canal, of dicks and flies and fifteen boys and dirty doings that defied belief. Albert kept trying to tell the horrified Headmaster that the fly-trapping was just a game, just something like Lego or stamp collecting or Chinese burns. But the Headmaster was no longer paying much attention to Albert Goldberg. The New Headmaster was staring away into the distance, watching his CBE disappear and absently pulling at his left earlobe, which is what he always did when he believed that something bad had happened in our school. And from what he’d just heard, the New Headmaster was all too aware that something far worse than bad had been happening in our school, happening in his school, happening, and apparently happening repeatedly, under his headship and his very nose. The New Headmaster suddenly shivered as if someone had just walked over his grave. And in his mind’s eye he saw a headline in the Failsworth Fanfare, a headline which proclaimed ‘Second Head Rolls in Latest Failsworth Filth Fury.’
The doctor was asking if he could administer the antihistamine now.
But the New Headmaster couldn’t speak. Fifteen of them! Fifteen, the Goldberg boy had said; a network, a chain of filth, an epidemic that had festered and flourished and gone unnoticed for God knows how long in his school. The New Headmaster was happy no more. The New Headmaster was frantically trying to assess his own chances of surviving a scandal that centred around mass alfresco masturbation sessions.
The Wrong Boy Page 6