The Wrong Boy

by Willy Russell

  Geoffrey Weatherby had been my best friend since we were in the infants. We always did everything together, like we collected Marvel and DC comics together. And when we were eight, we’d got some invisible ink from the Comic Exchange and we’d made a secret document saying that no matter what happened and even when we grew up and perhaps even got married we’d still always be each other’s best friend. We sealed the secret document in clingfilm then wrapped it up in a plastic sandwich-bag so it was waterproof. Then we buried it in a secret place by the foot of the railway bridge and swore that if we ever dug it up again we could only dig it up together. I think we loved each other really, me and Geoffrey Weatherby. But after the ‘incident’ at the canal Geoffrey Weatherby wouldn’t come near me. And in the end my Mam went round to see Mrs Weatherby to try and effect a reconciliation. Because, like my Mam said, Mrs Weatherby was a very humane and compassionate person and perhaps if she had a word with her son, then me and him could become friends again. But Mrs Weatherby just shook her head at my Mam. And said that when she’d first heard about the goings-on at the canal she’d treated the whole thing as a rather innocent and welcome return to the Bacchanalian tradition of fertility rites and phallus worship. But, she told my Mam, then … then she’d found out that it was not innocent at all. Tears welling up in her eyes now, Mrs Weatherby said it had been the slaughter of the innocent!

  ‘The slaughter of innocent flies!’ she said. ‘Flies! Yes, flies! Don’t flies have rights?’

  My Mam just stood there looking at Mrs Weatherby, whose face was all contorted now in grief for the plight of the common fly.

  ‘Don’t flies deserve respect?’ Mrs Weatherby demanded. ‘Or were those poor, persecuted creatures put on this earth just so that the likes of your son could amuse himself at their expense, infecting others with his brutish disregard for their suffering and torment?’

  My Mam sighed and she said, ‘Mrs Weatherby, I’ve been upset about it myself! I wish it had never happened, none of it. But I’ve tried my best to be rational. And, after all, what we’re talking about is just … common flies!’

  But my Mam had said completely the wrong thing and Mrs Weatherby went loopy then and shrieked at my Mam, telling her that was exactly the sort of attitude that had led to the near extinction of the giant panda and the humpety-backed whale and no wonder her son behaved like he did when he’d been brought up knowing no respect for the sanctity of those with whom he had to share the finite resources of this threatened earth!

  When my Mam got back to our house it was obvious that she hadn’t been able to do any good. She just stood there shaking her head and said, ‘I think that woman’s ill!’

  And I was sorry if Mrs Weatherby was ill. But I still wanted to be friends with Geoffrey. So I waited for him one night where I knew he had to go past on his paper round. And as soon as I spotted his bike coming round the corner I started walking along the other side of the street as if I just happened to be there. Then I pretended I’d suddenly seen him and I shouted out, ‘Hiya Geoffrey!’

  But he just looked embarrassed and busied himself with his magazines and newspapers, pulling out a Failsworth Fanfare and putting it through the letter box of number forty-seven. And all the time he wouldn’t look at me. He was coming back down the path of forty-seven and I shouted, ‘Geoffrey! You’ll never guess what, Geoffrey: I went to ComicSwap and I found a first issue copy of Plastic Man and the Purple Planet. And my Mam says you can come to ours for tea tomorrow if y’ want. And then we can look at it together, Plastic Man and the Purple Planet.’

  Me and Geoffrey Weatherby, we both used to have dreams about finding a copy of Plastic Man and the Purple Planet. And we’d always said that if one of us ever did find a copy then we’d share it and own it between us. That’s why I knew that Geoffrey Weatherby wouldn’t be able to resist and he’d have to start talking to me again and being my friend. And I didn’t care that it was like trying to buy his friendship. I didn’t care that I hadn’t even got a copy of Plastic Man and the Purple Planet. I just knew that if I could get Geoffrey Weatherby to come round to ours then we’d soon be friends again.

  Only it never worked! Even Plastic Man and the Purple Planet didn’t seem to be enough to make Geoffrey Weatherby want to be my friend again. Because he just climbed onto his bike and never said a word. So I just stood there and watched as he pedalled past, his head down over his handlebars. And it was only when he got to the end of the road that he stopped and turned around. And I thought then that he was going to come back. Only he never. He just shouted something at me. I probably heard it wrong because he was so far away by then. It sounded something like ‘Fatso!’ but I knew it couldn’t have been that because I wasn’t fat. I’d never been fat!

  So I walked off. And I thought that perhaps it’d been a bit stupid picking a comic like Plastic Man and the Purple Planet because everybody knew it was so rare and precious that you’d never ever find a copy of Plastic Man and the Purple Planet even if you lived in New York City. And Geoffrey Weatherby would certainly have known that, so that’s why he’d just pedalled off. But it’d be all right because I could wait for him tomorrow night and I could just laugh and tell him it was only a joke, about Plastic Man and the Purple Planet. I just knew that it’d be all right. And I still thought that it’d be all right as I walked past the railway bridge. But then I saw it out the corner of my eye, the fresh soil dug up at the foot of the embankment. And I didn’t want to look any further but I couldn’t help myself. And I stood there, staring down at the dark, disturbed soil and the torn-up paper pieces of the secret, sacred document.

  I didn’t cry. Not then. I just walked home with this strange feeling that I’d never had before, this feeling that all the insides of me had been emptied out. I didn’t even want to cry, not then. I didn’t want to cry or talk or do nowt. I just wanted to disappear. But when I got to our house I couldn’t disappear. Because when I got to our house, my Mam was in the kitchen making tea for my Uncle Jason and my Aunty Paula who’d just turned up with their appalling progeny. And I could tell that my Mam was cheesed off that they’d come round. My Mam had been cheesed off for weeks about my Uncle Jason because she knew that he’d borrowed money off my Gran. And he’d said the money was so that their pedigree Labrador could have a life-saving operation on its gall bladder; which would have been all right, my Mam said, even though you could tell just from looking at it that the dog was merely a mongrel with nothing more than Labrador pretensions. But still, my Mam said, pedigree or mongrel, a dog was still a dog and regardless of its ancestry she wouldn’t like to see it denied a new gall bladder.

  But then my Uncle Jason and my Aunty Paula and their kids had just disappeared. And my Mam had found out that they’d all gone on holiday to the Canary Islands. And now they were all back again, stood in our front room, all of them with suntans and, in the case of my Uncle Jason, a nose that was starting to peel and flake. My Mam told me to go through and talk to them while she made the tea.

  When I walked into the front room they were all laughing at something. But then they saw me and the laughing stopped and they all stood there, my skin-fried Uncle with his barbecued brats and my chargrilled Aunty, the hideous quartet, all of them stood there looking at me like they were looking at something in the zoo.

  I just ignored them. I went and switched on the telly and started watching the Open University programme about the intelligent traffic-light system in Pontin Le Frith.

  I heard them whispering behind me. And then Moronic Mark whispering to his dad, asking him, ‘Dad, why has our Raymond gone fat?’

  My Aunty Paula laughed her appalling laugh and said, ‘Mark! Don’t be so rude.’

  Then my Sickening cousin Sonia clutched hold of her mother’s skirt and smiled a sly delighted smile as she whispered, ‘Our Mark’s right, Mummy. Look at Raymond.’

  So they did. They all stood there looking at me as I just sat there looking at the telly and wishing they’d all go home.

  But my Mam ca
lled through from the kitchen then and said, ‘So Jason, how’s that dog of yours doing with its new gall bladder?’

  But if my Mam was hoping to shame my Uncle Bastard Jason she was wasting her breath because he just shook his head somewhat ruefully and pretended he was suddenly too choked to even talk. And it was left to my Aunty Paula who called out, ‘Didn’t you know, Shelagh? I thought you would have heard.’ And then adopting a suitably sombre tone my Appalling Aunty Paula said, ‘We lost him, love. We lost our beloved Benny.’

  ‘Lost him?’ my Mam called through, sounding all surprised. ‘But I thought you were having him surgically seen to by a top veterinary surgeon.’

  ‘That’s right, we were,’ my Aunty Paula explained, ‘but you see, Shelagh, our Benny, he had such a rare pedigree that it was always going to be difficult, y’ see. The vet said, if he hadn’t been a dog of such exceptionally high breeding then he could have tolerated any number of gall bladders. But he was blue-blooded, y’ see, our Benny. The vet said he had aristocratic organs, Shelagh. And that’s why they couldn’t find a suitable gall bladder. In the end we just had to have him painlessly put down.’

  Simpering Sonia cuddled closer to her mother then and said, ‘He’s in Doggy Heaven now, isn’t he, Mummy, our Benny.’

  My Appalling Aunty nodded and adopting a suitably sombre tone, told her diabolical daughter, ‘That’s right, love. That’s right. Benny’s barking with the angels now.’

  My Mam appeared from the kitchen then, carrying the tea. She stood in the doorway for a second and glared at the cruelly bereaved quartet.

  ‘And so, with the money,’ my Mam said, ‘the money that was supposed to be for a gall-bladder transplant, the money you borrowed off my mother, you just upped and buggered off to the Grand Canary Islands instead.’

  My Mam just stood there, staring accusingly at my Aunty Paula and my swindling Uncle Jason who was looking narked and uncomfortable.

  ‘What d’ y’ mean,’ he said, ‘just upped and buggered off? We never upped and buggered off at all.’

  ‘Shelagh!’ my Aunty Paula chipped in. ‘It was a very distressing time after we lost our Benny, a very distressing time indeed. After what we went through with that poor dog, I don’t think there’s anybody, at least anybody who understands compassion, would begrudge us a few recuperative days in the sun, Shelagh.’

  My Mam nodded, her eyes all wide and angry. ‘That’s right, Paula!’ she said. ‘Nobody would begrudge y’ a few days away. But my understanding is you spent three weeks in the Canary Isles!’

  My Aunty Paula looked peeved then and my Bastard Uncle Jason started shrugging and looking all huffy and picking at his peeling nose. My Mam had them trapped and wriggling though and she probably would have told them what she thought of them. But Mark the Moron, oblivious to the arctic atmosphere, started laughing and suddenly piped up, ‘And guess what, Aunty Shelagh?’

  Giggling and unable to contain the hilarity he was about to inflict upon us all, Moronic Mark said, ‘Three weeks in the Canary Islands and all the time we was there we never saw one single canary! Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. D’ y’ get it, Aunty Shelagh, d’ y’ get it?’

  He tried to keep on laughing but then he saw that everybody was just staring at him. And it started to dawn upon Moronic Mark that the ‘joke’ which had been such a winner in fun-filled, sun-filled Tenerife had just fallen fatally flat in Failsworth.

  ‘Hey! Enough!’ his father commanded and Moronic Mark just started to scowl while his septic sister allowed herself a sly smile of sadistic delight at her sibling’s slapping down. And then pouting and thrusting out her head from behind her mother’s skirts she triumphantly told her brother, ‘See! I said it wasn’t funny.’

  ‘Just leave our Mark alone,’ my Aunty Paula appealed. ‘He’s only telling his little jokes.’

  ‘Jokes!’ my Uncle Jason exclaimed. And that gave him exactly the cue he needed because he turned and looked directly at me then. And he said, ‘From what I’ve been hearing there’s been enough bloody jokes while we’ve been away!’

  My Mam put the teacups down on the table and said, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  My Uncle Bastard Jason just snorted a sort of laugh and he said, ‘Hey, Shelagh, don’t try and pretend with me. I’ve heard!’ And pointing at me then he said, ‘I bloody know! I know what’s been going on!’

  ‘Jason!’ my Aunty Paula hissed. And with a tight little shake of her head she silently enunciated, ‘Not in front of the children!’

  My Mam sighed then and shook her head as she stirred the tea.

  And Simpering Sonia announced, ‘He’s been expelled from school, hasn’t he, Mummy?’

  That’s when my Mam told me to switch off the television and take Mark and Sonia up to my bedroom and let them play with my Star Wars figures. And before I could even start to protest, Moronic Mark and Simpering Sonia were halfway to the door and headed for the stairs. But then my Aunty Paula suddenly realised that the precious fruit of her womb was about to be left alone in an upstairs bedroom with an infamous corrupter of the innocent. My Aunty Paula managed to intercept her precious progeny and slammed shut the door, telling them, ‘No no no! Not the bedroom! You’re not playing in the bedroom. I don’t want you playing inside when the weather’s so nice. Go on, play out the back where I can keep an eye on y’.’

  My Mam was staring at her but my Aunty Paula beamed a big false smile and said, ‘They’ll be better playing out the back, Shelagh. It’s much healthier for them. I think it’s rubbish, all this ozone layer!’

  My Mam shrugged and looked baffled. But she handed out the tea and said, ‘Go on then, Raymond. Bring your Star Wars stuff down here and you can all play together out the back.’

  I just looked a horrified look at my Mam. She knew that I preferred not to be in the same universe as my cretinous cousins, let alone in the same backyard. But my Mam gave me one of those looks that said, don’t argue!

  So I did what I was told and went upstairs to my bedroom. I was fed up. I was fed up at my Mam because she’d had my Bastard Uncle Jason and my Acrid Aunty Paula on the ropes. But then she’d let them get away. And now I had to go and play Star Wars with the sickening twosome.

  I pulled the box out from under my bed where I kept all my Star Wars figures. I grabbed some of the Stormtroopers and the Ewoks and the Wookies and picked up Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker. And I was just reaching out to pick up Princess Leia when I stopped and I changed my mind and left her lying there in the box. And I had a perfectly good reason for doing that; because it was a dead certainty that if I took Princess Leia back downstairs with me, Simpering Sonia would just get hold of her and try and treat her like a doll, carrying her around and stroking her hair, looking all dopey at her and singing stupid songs to try to get her to sleep. But Princess Leia didn’t need to go to sleep because Princess Leia wasn’t a dopey doll! Princess Leia was a Rebel Freedom Fighter in the war against the evil imperial forces! So nobody could have blamed me for not taking Princess Leia downstairs with me. I had very good reasons. But I knew. Even as I left Princess Leia lying there in the box I knew that the real reason I was doing it was just to spite my cousin. And I knew that just because I felt horrible it didn’t mean that I had to behave horrible and snidey. I could easily have taken Princess Leia with me and put up with her being pampered and smothered in saccharine by Sickening Sonia. But I didn’t want to! And I didn’t even care that I was being mean and horrible. I didn’t care! And there was even a bit of me, a horrible nasty little bit of me, that felt delicious and glad! Because I was being so horrible and bad!

  So I just left Princess Leia lying there in the box under the bed and I went downstairs. But halfway down the stairs I heard the voices of my Mam and my Aunty and my Uncle Jason. So I walked very, very slowly and listened as my Uncle Bastard Jason blew out a big sigh and said, ‘I don’t know! I just don’t bloody know at all.’

  Then I heard my Mam telling him, ‘I’ve told y’, Jason, it’s d
one with, it’s dealt with, it’s all over now and he’s promised me that he’ll never ever do nowt like that again; so let’s just bloody forget it, shall we? I mean if you really want to talk about funny goings-on, why don’t we talk about your holidays in the Grand Canaries? Mm?’

  But my brass-necked Uncle Jason just ignored the bait and he said, ‘Holidays! I don’t bloody know that I can even think about my holidays now. Sitting there in the sun thinking I’m having a well-deserved rest, while back here the family name’s being bloody dragged into the mud. I get back home to learn that there’s a piggin’ pervert in the family, a pervert! And he’s barely out of short trousers!’

  Everything went quiet for a second. But then my Mam’s voice was all low and full of warning as she said, ‘Pervert? Don’t you dare! Don’t you even dare use a word like that about my son!’

  It all went quiet again then until my Aunty Paula piped up and laughed a frivolous laugh as she said, ‘Now come on, Shelagh, I’m sure he didn’t intend any offence, did you, Jason?’

  But my Bastard Uncle Jason said nowt and my Mam said, ‘So just what did he intend?’

  That made my Uncle Jason back off a bit then and he told my Mam, ‘Now look, Shelagh. I know that you’ve never had it easy. And you’ve enough of a burden to bear as it is. But I’m your brother, Shelagh. And I bloody care about you, I do! And that’s why I’m tellin’ y’, for your own good, Shelagh. You’ve got to face up to facts! You can’t just push something like this under the carpet. I mean, we’re not talking about a few lads getting up to normal mischief like robbing a few apples or doing a bit of bloody shoplifting or something like that. This is serious, this is, Shelagh. There’s implications for the future in all this!’

  And I knew then that my Mam had started to have all the stuffing knocked out of her because her voice was all worried as she said, ‘Implications? What do y’ mean?’

  ‘Shelagh!’ my Uncle Jason said. And he was talking like he was all concerned now. He wasn’t shouting like he always did. And he said, ‘Surely to God, Shelagh, you’re not trying to tell me that it’s just normal behaviour we’re talking about. Flies? Doing that to flies! What sort of a mind, Shelagh, what sort of a mind is it that can dream up something like that?’