The Wrong Boy

by Willy Russell

  My Gran never took Mark and Sonia to none of her special places after that. She only ever took me to those places. And she said to me once, my Gran, she said that I’d been more of a son to her than her own son had ever been. And so that’s why he always hated me, my Uncle Bastard Jason; because he knew I was my Gran’s favourite.

  And that’s why he’s getting his own back all these years later; that’s why he’s worked it so that I’ve got to go to Grimsby.

  He said I’d probably have a fantastic time in Grimsby! He said they do the best cod and chips in the world.

  I said, ‘Oh well that makes all the difference then, doesn’t it? There was me thinking I might be somewhat bored and disenchanted, living in a downtrodden trawler town on the furthest frozen edges of the North Sea. But I’d forgotten about the cod and chips, hadn’t I? I’d forgotten that if I ever became bored or frustrated or felt exiled, isolated, banished, forgotten and trapped in that tawdry trawler town, I could just get myself some cod and chips!’

  I don’t know why I wasted my breath. Impervious to such sarcasm, my Uncle Jason looked at me and said, ‘That’s right. Do y’ a world of good, Grimsby cod.’

  I just sighed and wished that he’d disappear back to the living room and leave me alone. I was fed up as it was. It was Friday night. I’d already put off packing for as long as I could because I was still hoping that with the east coast being so notoriously fragile and prone to coastal erosion, Grimsby might have just suddenly slid off into the sea and so I wouldn’t have to go. I was still hopeful even after I’d watched the news on the telly. They never mentioned Grimsby but I thought perhaps it might have slid into the sea anyway and they just considered that it wasn’t very newsworthy. Then Michael Fish came on with the weather and his map. And there it was, Grimsby, implacable Grimsby, still stuck there beneath a band of low pressure and stubbornly clinging onto the rest of Britain.

  I started to pack.

  And every time I looked around my bedroom I was reminded of how I only had two more nights and then I’d be leaving Failsworth and I wouldn’t be able to be in my bedroom no more. So I was doing my best to savour every last moment I spent in there. And then my bleeding Uncle Jason had arrived and he’d just walked into my bedroom unannounced and uninvited. He hadn’t even knocked! And now, here he was, telling me about the life-enhancing qualities in a bit of battered cod!

  I just sighed and carried on packing my bag as I said to him, ‘I know that it’s probably escaped your attention, Uncle Jason, but for almost two years now I’ve been a vegetarian. And vegetarians don’t eat such things as cod even when it’s the best cod in the whole wide world.’

  I thought that might be an end to it then and he might go back into the front room with my Mam and my Aunty Paula. But he just snorted a derisive snort of disgust and said, ‘For Christ’s sake! You’re bloody nineteen years of age, son! Don’t y’ think it’s time you were growing out of that kind of bloody vegetarian malarkey by now!’

  I just stared at him. ‘Malarkey?’ I said. ‘Vegetarianism isn’t malarkey. It isn’t like Lego or Play School or the Rubik’s cube, y’ know. It’s not a fad or an affliction that you grow out of. I doubt that you ever heard of him,’ I said, ‘but there was a man called George Bernard Shaw and he was a vegetarian all his life and he lived until he was ninety-something!’

  He gave me a look then, my Uncle Bastard Jason. And I could tell that I’d got under his skin. But I was glad. He didn’t belong in my bedroom and I didn’t want him there, especially not him, dishing out his advice and his platitudes and going on about the glories of Grimsby. If Grimsby was so bleeding glorious why didn’t he sod off there himself and take my Aunty Paula and his appalling progeny and leave me where I was; happy and doing exactly what I wanted to do, being miserable in Failsworth!

  He eventually started moving back towards the bedroom door and I thought I’d finally got rid of him. But he stopped and suddenly turned round, taking a few paces back towards me. And he narrowed up his eyes as he said, ‘You think you’re such a clever little bastard, don’t y’?’

  He lifted up his finger and pointed at me then as he said, ‘Don’t you fuckin’ try and tell me about George Bernard Shaw. I don’t need you to tell me who George Bernard Shaw was. I had my own mother prattlin’ on about stupid bastards like George Bernard fuckin’ Shaw from one year’s end to the next.’

  He took another step towards me then and he said, ‘Listen, clever arse! I came in here to try an’ give you a bit of advice. George Bernard Shaw might have lived on fuckin’ lettuce and lentils and lasted till he was ninety-summat. But George Bernard Shaw wasn’t workin’ on a fuckin’ buildin’ site in Grimsby. The only people he ever mixed with were ponces and fairies and fuckin’ soft-handed bastards wavin’ cigarette holders. Which was probably just as well because I doubt that a bearded bastard fuckin’ vegetarian playwright would have cut much mustard with a hod on each shoulder and a half-hundredweight of brick in each one! He would have been laughed off the soddin’ site, George fuckin’ Bernard Shaw!’

  I just shrugged then and said, ‘And I can’t think of too many bricklayers who could have written Pygmalion!’

  He just carried on glaring at me. And then he started looking around my bedroom, looking at the walls and all my Morrissey posters.

  ‘Look!’ he said. ‘Just bloody look!’ He nodded towards the wall, indicating that poster of you, Morrissey, where you’ve got all the flowers sticking out your back pocket.

  ‘Is that how you want to turn out,’ he said, ‘like that morbid bastard? Look at him! Look at him, fuckin’ stood there like a big ponce with a bunch of daffodils up his arse!’

  (From which it was perfectly apparent that amongst my Uncle Bastard Jason’s many other failings was a gross inability to appreciate the finer points of our native flora.)

  ‘They’re not daffodils,’ I said, ‘they’re gladioli actually.’

  He rolled his eyes then and he said, ‘Does it matter? Does it fuckin’ matter at all what kind of flowers they are?’

  Of course it mattered! But on balance I thought I might just be wasting my breath, trying to explain the iconography of various flora to someone who thought he could assess the qualities of George Bernard Shaw on the principle of how good he was with a hod full of bricks.

  He was looking at me, my Uncle Bastard Jason. He slowly started shaking his head. And then he said, ‘All right! Listen! For your own good just try and listen for once. All right, perhaps we’ve never seen eye to eye, me and you. But I’m your uncle. And what I’m tryin’ to make you understand, son, is that you’re about to start work, working on a building site. And the lads you’ll be working alongside, they’re hard, rough and hard. Don’t get me wrong; they’re good lads too! Bloody smashers once y’ get to know them. And if you’d just soddin’ well shape yourself and make a bit of effort for once you’d find that they’d treat you like one of their own. This is an opportunity for you, this is. You could have a bloody crackin’ time in Grimsby, you could, with all the lads. Grafters they are, good grafters, the Grimsby lads. They work hard. But they play hard an’ all. Clubbin’ it and pubbin’ it every night they are. They have a bloody marvellous time over there. Laugh? They’re out havin’ a bloody laugh till all hours, them lads. And all it’d take from you is the right sort of attitude and you could be included, you could be part of all that.’

  I just looked at him. And wondered if he had even the first glimmer of the fact that he’d just described hell on earth! Clubbin’ it and pubbin’ it with gnarled-knuckled, laughter-loving lager lads in the celebrated and sophisticated nightspots of Gulag Grimsby (all of it no doubt rounded off with a trip to the late night state-of-the-art chippy and a steaming bag of the best cod and chips in the world).

  ‘But I’m telling you now, son,’ he was saying, ‘start going on about bloody vegetarian twaddle and boring everybody to fuckin’ death talkin’ all kinds of soft shite like my mother taught y’ and playing that morbid bastard Morrison m
usic and you’ll never get to be part of nowt! Get it into your head, lad; they don’t want that sort of thing in Grimsby!’

  That’s when I’d had enough. That’s when I folded my arms and told him, ‘Well, in that case I don’t think I’ll fuckin’ bother going to fuckin’ fuckin’ Grimsby after fuckin’ all!’

  He looked at me for a second as if he was taken aback. But then there was a sliver of a smile appeared on his lips and a triumphant glint in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, you’re going all right,’ he said. ‘You’re going to Grimsby, no matter what. I’ve made sure of that!’

  The smile spread wider across his lips then and he said, ‘Your Mam’s sat there now, in the front room, talkin’ to your Aunty Paula. An’ she was just sayin’, your Mam just saying that she’s happier now than she’s been in years.’ He paused for a second and stood there looking at me. ‘And why’s that?’ he said. ‘Why’s your Mam so happy?’ He nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘because at long, long last she thinks that you have started gettin’ yourself sorted out. That’s why our Shelagh’s happy, because her daft son is doing something fuckin’ normal for once, starting a job.’

  He looked at me with that horrible smile hanging on his lips.

  ‘So what y’ gonna do?’ he said. ‘Go in there now and tell y’ Mam that you’re not going to Grimsby after all?’

  He stared at me for a second and then he slowly shook his head. ‘No! I didn’t think so!’

  The bastard! He was right, the bastard. He knew that I wouldn’t disappoint my Mam like that.

  ‘That’s right, son,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to upset your Mam, do we? You’ve already caused her enough upset, you have, enough to last a fuckin’ lifetime. And that’s why you’re going to Grimsby, lad, for y’ mother’s sake. Y’ think I did this for you? You think I called in a favour and got you fixed up with a job just to make you happy? No way, lad! You? You’re a fuckin’ waste of space, you, and y’ always have been. But I’m not doin’ this for you, I’m doin’ it for y’ Mam. Because I love that little sister of mine.’

  I just closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear it! I couldn’t bear him and his cant, contaminating the room and creeping all over my skin and making me cringe.

  ‘She’s had her heart broken enough as it is,’ he said. ‘And left to your own devices I haven’t got the slightest doubt that you’d carry on breaking her heart for ever!’

  And that’s when I hated him the most of all, when he pretended. When he pretended that he cared for my Mam. And he didn’t and he never had and he never would and all he’d ever done was rob and cheat and thieve. And that’s when I started to shake and clench my teeth and turn my hands into balls of fists as I shook with rage at his cant and putrid pretence and the sentimental slime that oozed from the bastard pores of him and I started quietly chanting, ‘Thief thief thief, felon, cheat, swindler, thief thief thief, crook, robber, thief, thief thief thief.’

  He started moving to the door but I kept on chanting and didn’t stop, not till he’d got to the door itself and then I just stood there, still clenched and shaking and glaring out all the hatred I had for him. And I knew from the way he looked that he was frightened of me now. But he pretended that he wasn’t and he just nodded his head at me and said, ‘You want to get a grip on y’self, you do. Or I don’t know about going to Grimsby; you might end up back in Swintonfield!’

  ‘Thief!’ I said. ‘Thief, thief!’

  And then he was gone. He was gone, he was gone! I rushed over to my window and opened it as wide as I could and stood there breathing in the air, letting it all into my room and letting out the sickening atmosphere of my rancid, repulsive Uncle Bastard Jason.

  And that’s when I heard my Mam calling me, telling me to come into the front room and say tarar because my Uncle and my Aunty were going now. I walked in there and my Uncle Bastard Jason was wearing his other face now, all smiling and chummy and unbearably uncle-ish. I just stood there in the doorway and watched the appalling pair of them as they said tarar to my Mam. And I thought to myself, it might be grim in Grimsby but at least I wouldn’t have to suffer my Uncle Bastard Jason and my Appalling Aunty Paula no more.

  But then he turned and looked at me as he was going out the door, that double-faced bastard uncle of mine. And he said, ‘Hey, Raymond! Next week! I’ve got some dealings over there in Grimsby. I’ll be at the site myself on Wednesday.’

  My Aunty Paula clapped her hands together and said wasn’t that nice and perhaps if I was feeling a bit homesick it’d cheer me up, seeing my favourite uncle.

  ‘I’ll call in at the site,’ he said. ‘See how y’ gettin’ on. You can even take me out for a pint and a codfish supper if you like.’

  I just stared and said nowt and listened as my Mam said wasn’t that lovely and it was the least I could do, buy my Uncle a pint and a codfish supper when he’d put himself out so much and gone to all that trouble to get me fixed up with a job.

  ‘No trouble at all, Shelagh!’ he said, beaming a big smile at my Mam.

  ‘No, it’s no trouble,’ my Aunty Paula concurred, ‘sorting out a little thing like that. It’s nowt, not when you’ve got the kind of connections that Jason’s got.’

  They beamed at each other then, my patronising Aunty and my giblet-faced Uncle. And they might have stood there beaming at each other all night but my appalling Aunty suddenly remembered and said they’d better hurry up because it was time for their budgerigar to have its anti-depressants.

  I just stood and watched as my Mam saw them out. And then my Mam came back into the front room, smiled a lovely warm smile at me and said, ‘I’m so happy for y’, son. So happy.’

  And that’s why I’m here, Morrissey, awaiting a coach that’s bound for the cowing cod capital of the world; here because it’s made my Mam happy, me doing this. But listen, Morrissey, what my Bastard Uncle said, about me breaking my Mam’s heart, it’s not true, that. I never broke my Mam’s heart at all. I know that I caused her all sorts of upset but my Mam says herself now, she says it wasn’t my fault. Sometimes things just happen and no matter how much you try and change things and make them better it just doesn’t work. Like when I lost all my friends. I did my best to get them back. But my best just wasn’t good enough.

  It was the summer of the canal; the long summer holidays. And the weather was particularly balmy that summer when I was still only eleven and should have been out playing with all the others, swimming and footballing, hide-and-seeking, camping on the recreation ground and pretending to be all the Superheroes. But that was the summer holidays when I stayed at home every day instead and just read all my books and my comics and ate a lot and got depressed. I didn’t want to be staying in or staying at my Gran’s and eating sweets and pot noodles and pizzas and pies and all sorts. But all the mothers on our estate had told their kids that they couldn’t play with me no more.

  Even Geoffrey Weatherby wasn’t allowed to play with me. And his mum and dad were very low-tech, high-fibre, recycled, stripped-pine sort of people who cared about global warming and Nelson Mandela. Geoffrey Weatherby’s mam had even been on Richard and Judy as the spokesperson for all the newts and the toads and the frogs who couldn’t safely cross Failsworth Boulevard since it had been turned into an urban expressway. And Mrs Weatherby said it was absolutely imperative that the newts and the frogs and the toads should be able to cross the road in safety so they could hatch their eggs and have their babies on the far side of the boulevard which was their traditional spawning ground. Mrs Weatherby told Richard and Judy it was a scandalous hypocrisy, the way the human beings had looked after their own safety and well-being by borrowing from the animal kingdom so that they could come up with things like Catseyes to help them see the road at night, panda cars to help keep them safe and protected from burglars, pelican lights to help them cross the road and zebra crossings to do the same. But what about the poor animals themselves, Mrs Weatherby demanded. What about the pelicans, the zebras and the pandas and the cats? Whe
re was there for those poor creatures to safely cross the road so they could have their babies in peace?

  Richard and Judy looked at each other. And Richard tried to inject a misjudged moment of levity by declaring that in his experience you didn’t get many pandas or zebras or pelicans in the vicinity of Failsworth Boulevard.

  But when it came to flattened frogs Mrs Weatherby was immune to humour. Ignoring Richard and Judy’s chuckles, she said that everybody who drove a car, including Richard and Judy themselves, was a guilty party in the Failsworth frog genocide. Mrs Weatherby told them that they all had frog blood on their hands. Judy looked a bit disgusted at that and you could tell that Richard and her were getting a bit fed up with Mrs Weatherby because they tried to introduce the next item about the growing trend for cosmetic surgery amongst garage mechanics. But Mrs Weatherby interrupted and stuck her head in front of Judy’s camera and began appealing directly to the conscience of the nation before studio security moved in and forcibly removed her from the set, where Richard and Judy looked visibly shaken but nevertheless agreed that Mrs Weatherby was obviously a deeply caring and highly committed person.

  And she was caring, Mrs Weatherby. That’s why my Mam said she found it so hard to understand why even Geoffrey Weatherby behaved like all the others and wouldn’t come round to ours any more.