The Wrong Boy

by Willy Russell

  He said, ‘Al dente, not hard!’

  ‘And what about the carrots?’ I said.

  ‘Al dente,’ he said.

  I just looked at him. ‘And the pastry!’ I said. ‘It’s like concrete. Or is that just al dente an’ all?’

  He said, ‘It’s organic stoneground flour, what d’ y’ expect?’

  I said, ‘Well, I expect to be able to eat it without losing all my fillings in the process.’

  He affected a nonchalant shrug but it lacked conviction and tailed off in the middle as if even mere nonchalance was too taxing on his available energy. Then he just reached out for the concrete crusted pie, swapped it for another and said I should count myself lucky I wasn’t in the Third World where a family of ten could live for a month on nothing but a few lentils and two cups of flour.

  I said, ‘What’s their name?’

  He frowned and he said, ‘Who?’

  I said, ‘The family. Who live on nowt but the lentils and the two cups of flour.’

  But he didn’t know! And they never do know, the food fascists like him and all the designer Buddhists and the recreationally compassionate, always talking about People from the Third World as if they didn’t have names. And I just hoped for their sake that some of those nameless Third World persons never had the misfortune of turning up in Huddersfield and asking for a homity pie. They’d probably end up rushing back to the Third World and organising relief supplies of flour and lentils to alleviate the suffering in West Yorkshire!

  I just left it sitting on the table, the homity pie. And if it did nothing else it gave me the excuse to sit here out of the rain and write this to you, Morrissey. Because, you see, the thing is, Morrissey, I wanted to tell you about Dr Janice. Dr Janice knew I wasn’t mad or bad and she was just dead nice to me. Not like the no-nonsense nurse who woke me up. I didn’t like her at all. She told me I was a brat!

  She said I’d been trying to drown myself. But that was just ridiculous! I hadn’t been trying to drown myself at all and the only thing I had been doing was trying to bring the nice boy back again. She just ignored me though. And as she stuck the thermometer in my mouth she said, ‘I’ve got a good mind to stick it somewhere else!’

  She stood there, the not-nice nurse, giving me a sour look as she waited for the thermometer. And then she told me I should be ashamed of myself.

  She said, ‘I shouldn’t have to be doing this! Wasting my time on a selfish little boy like you when there’s proper sick children, genuinely sick children who’d be grateful for this bed. Children who need looking after through no fault of their own! Children needing transplants, children with leaking valves in their hearts, poor little mites with brittle bones and all sorts of things wrong with them. That’s who I should be seeing to. Properly poorly children, not horrible healthy little brats like you who throw themselves into the canal just to get a bit of attention for themselves! And end up wasting my time, everybody else’s time, denying a bed to a poor little soul who really needs it!’

  She snatched the thermometer out of my mouth and I tried to explain to her again, about the Wrong Boy.

  But she just looked at me like I was soft. Then she said she had no more time to waste on me and she had to see to the boy from Blackburn who had a new kidney and septic tonsillitis.

  ‘That’s what I call sick,’ she said, the no-nonsense nurse. ‘That’s what I call properly poorly!’

  She disappeared then. And I just had to lie there, waiting for my Mam and feeling really awful because everybody thought I’d been trying to kill myself when all I had been doing was trying to bring the nice boy back. But they didn’t believe me and my Mam probably wouldn’t believe me now. And it’d all be even worse than it was before. I didn’t know what to do any more.

  And then this nurse was sitting there, on my bed. I think I must have been asleep. She was smiling at me and even though her eyes looked really tired, they were sparkling and looked lovely with her blond hair. She wasn’t like the other nurse, the no-nonsense nurse. And she didn’t wear a uniform like the other nurses; she had a white coat and a badge with her name on; Janice, she was called. She was asking me about my favourite things and what I liked to play with and all that. And I started telling her about Star Wars and my comic collections and the books I liked to read.

  She asked me if I preferred Marvel comics or DC comics. I couldn’t believe that! I don’t think I’d ever met an adult person who knew about such things. She saw the look of surprise on my face and she laughed. She told me she’d been a collector herself when she was a girl. She even told me she’d still got her comic collection.

  ‘Somewhere,’ she said, ‘in some attic or other. I’ll have to get them all out again one day and have a look at them.’ And she suddenly looked weary for a second then and said, ‘If I ever manage to get a day off.’

  But then she sort of shook her head and smiled at me again as she said, ‘And football? A lad like you,’ she said, ‘I’ll bet you love your football, don’t y’.’

  I told Janice that I did like football. ‘But I don’t play it any more,’ I said.

  Janice looked surprised, ‘And why not?’ she asked.

  And I explained to her then, I said, ‘I used to like playing football, when I was the nice boy. I liked playing football and being in the Cubs and swapping comics with my best friend, Geoffrey Weatherby. But he won’t be my friend any more and they won’t play football with me, my friends.’

  I nodded and Janice was looking at me, all concerned. ‘Well, why’s that, Raymond?’ she said. ‘Why won’t they play with you?’

  I just shrugged and I said, ‘Because they all know, my friends, they all know that I’m not the nice boy any more. I’m the Wrong Boy now and they all know that. And that’s why they won’t play with me.’

  She frowned then, Janice, and she said, ‘Horrible little buggers.’

  It made me laugh that, hearing a nurse swear. Janice laughed too. ‘Well, they are!’ she said. ‘Not letting you play with them.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said, ‘but it’s not really their fault, you see. It’s my fault. Because if I was the nice boy and I wasn’t fat they would still play with me. But they know, you see, they know that I’m not really Raymond.’

  Janice raised her eyebrows then.

  ‘Well, I am Raymond,’ I said, ‘but I’m the bad Raymond. And the good Raymond’s still in the canal.’

  Janice looked at me for a minute then and she was smiling at me.

  ‘And is that why you jumped in there last night?’ she said. ‘Is that the reason you jumped into the canal?’

  I nodded and I said, ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  She looked at me all sort of thoughtfully then, Janice. And she said, ‘Well … you do know, don’t you … that a number of people, including your mum … they think that what you were really trying to do last night was … commit suicide.’

  I shook my head at Janice then. And I told her, ‘I wasn’t! I wasn’t doing that at all. All I was trying to do was make it so that the nice boy could come back. I promise, nurse,’ I said.

  That’s when Janice said to me, ‘I’m a doctor, Raymond. Not a nurse.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Janice said, ‘you don’t have to be sorry.’

  I just shrugged. And then Janice said, ‘You don’t like to upset people, do you, Raymond?’

  I didn’t know what she meant.

  ‘Like your mum,’ she said. ‘You don’t like upsetting your mum, do you?’

  I shook my head, because Janice was right. I said, ‘No, I don’t like upsetting my Mam. My Uncle Jason, he upsets her all the time,’ I said, ‘but I don’t like upsetting her. And when I was the nice boy I never ever used to upset her.’

  ‘Did you upset her yesterday?’ Janice asked.

  I nodded. ‘I keep upsetting her all the time now,’ I said, ‘now that I’m the Wrong Boy. I just can’t seem to stop upsetting her and she
doesn’t know what to do with me any more.’

  ‘And is that the reason?’ Janice said. ‘Is that the reason you tried to do away with yourself last night?’

  I shook my head again. ‘I didn’t!’ I said. ‘I told y’ that. I wasn’t trying to do away with myself at all.’

  Janice just sat there for a minute, looking at me very closely. And then she said, ‘No. I don’t think you were, Raymond.’

  And I was dead glad when Janice said that because I didn’t want her thinking I was telling lies.

  ‘Because if you’d been trying to do away with yourself,’ she said, ‘you could have picked any part of the canal, couldn’t you? You could have picked the stretch of canal nearest your house, couldn’t you?’

  She looked at me. I didn’t really know what she meant but I just nodded. And then Janice said, ‘But the spot where you jumped in last night was a very particular spot, wasn’t it?’

  I nodded again and Janice said, ‘Not too far from the school.’ She just sat there looking at me. Then she said, ‘And it had to be that particular place, didn’t it? Where you jumped in?’

  I nodded once more and Janice said, ‘Because something had happened to you before, in that same place, hadn’t it?’

  I looked at her. And I was frowning and I said, ‘You’ve been talking to my Mam, haven’t y’?’

  But Janice shook her head. ‘No. I am going to have a talk with your mum later on,’ she said. ‘But up to now I haven’t spoken so much as a word to your mum, Raymond.’

  And I knew that she was telling the truth, Janice. But I couldn’t work out how she knew about it, the ‘something that happened to me before’.

  She reached across and patted me on the arm and said, ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me about it.’

  But I wanted to tell Janice because she was nice and I liked her. And I said, ‘It had to be that particular part of the canal because that was the place where he got lost. That was where he disappeared.’

  Janice sat there looking at me for a moment. Then she said, ‘The nice boy?’

  I nodded. And Janice said, ‘That’s where he fell in the canal, the nice boy?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, he didn’t fall in,’ I said. ‘He dived in. Because Albert Goldberg was drowning and Albert would have died if the nice boy hadn’t dived in and rescued him.’

  Janice nodded then. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘And what were they doing at the time, the nice boy and Albert … what’s-his-name?’

  I just looked at Janice. And then I looked down at the bedclothes. And Janice sort of laughed and said, ‘My God, that’s such a big sigh for such a small lad!’

  I kept on looking down at the bedclothes and I said, ‘It wasn’t just them two who were down there, Albert and the nice boy. They were all there, everybody; Darren Duckworth and Kevin Cowley and even Geoffrey Weatherby and he pretends now that it was nothing to do with him and he calls me “Fatso” and he won’t play with me no more. But he was doing it as well! They were all doing it, not just me. And I never made anybody do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ Janice asked.

  ‘The flytrapping!’ I said. ‘Everybody was in on it. I know that I invented it but that was just by accident and everybody wanted to do it after that. I never made anybody join in with the flytrapping!’

  Janice was looking at me with a puzzled sort of look on her face. ‘Flytrapping?’ she said. ‘What the hell’s flytrapping?’

  I just shook my head then and kept my lips together and didn’t say anything else.

  Janice leaned her head down and she whispered to me, ‘Is it something really, really, really bad, flytrapping?’

  I nodded my head. ‘It wasn’t,’ I said, ‘but it is now.’

  Janice sat back up again.

  ‘And you’re not going to tell me about it?’ she said. She looked all upset. ‘I thought you and me were mates,’ she said. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  I didn’t want her to be upset. And I even wanted to tell her about it all. Because she was nice, Janice, and she was kind and I thought she might even understand. But I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t tell her about that. So in the end I shook my head and said, ‘I can’t!’

  She patted my arm again then and just kept on stroking it. ‘Hey! It’s all right,’ she said. ‘We’re still friends, even if you can’t tell me about it. I understand,’ she said, ‘because I’m an adult, a grown-up person and a nice boy couldn’t possibly talk about a thing like that to a grown-up, could he?’

  I just shrugged. And then Janice said, ‘But you’re not the nice boy any more, are you, Raymond?’

  I shook my head and she said, ‘You’re the Wrong Boy now. And so it wouldn’t matter, would it? Because the Nice Boy wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would he? It wouldn’t matter how bad it was. Because it would be the Wrong Boy who was saying it.’

  And that’s when I knew that I was going to tell Janice all about it. And I didn’t care about it being bad because I just wanted to tell somebody about it, just once. And I stared down at the bedclothes and started twisting the sheet in my fingers as I began telling her about the flies and having our dicks out and me catching a fly on the end of it and then the fly dropping off dead and then everybody doing it then and it all becoming a big competition. But as I told it to Janice I couldn’t look up at her because the more I told her, the more I started to see that it did sound like something really, really bad. And I wished I hadn’t even started telling Janice because she probably wouldn’t even come and talk to me again now that she knew.

  And then I heard it. The laughter!

  And I looked up and Janice was leaning back on the bed with her hand up to her mouth and tears streaming down her eyes as she tried to stop herself laughing. And I thought she was being awful laughing so I just sat there frowning which seemed to make her laugh even more! Janice kept trying to say she was sorry but every time she did, she just started laughing again and then she was bent over and screaming so much with laughter that I couldn’t help it and even though there was nothing funny I felt myself starting to grin. And we looked at each other, me and Janice, and I started laughing then. And I couldn’t stop and the both of us were howling and screaming with laughter and the not-nice nurse who was passing asked what we were laughing at and that made it even worse and we couldn’t stop and when we looked at each other it would just start the other one off again. And what made it all the more funny for me was that I didn’t even know why I was laughing. Because it was terrible, laughing about something so serious that it had got me suspended from school and slung out of the Cubs and made all my friends ignore me now. But every time I tried to stop laughing it made me laugh even more. And Janice ended up lying across the foot of the bed and clutching onto her sides as she tried to get her breath back. And I said, ‘I don’t know why you’re laughing, because it’s not even funny at all!’

  But Janice just lay there, groaning now and panting for breath as she said, ‘Oh God! Oh God … I know … I know it’s not … Ogh …!’ And she was panting for breath and wiping at her eyes as she said things like, ‘Dear God. Flytrapping! Oh my God. Flytrapping!’

  And when Janice sat up again on the bed she just looked at me with a big smile on her face as she said, ‘Raymond, how in the name of sweet Jesus did something so good get turned into something so bad?’

  And then Janice shook her head and sighed and said, ‘I don’t know!’

  And I didn’t know, not then, not when it was all happening to me. So I just sat there. And I shrugged. Then Janice reached out and took hold of my hand and sort of whispered, ‘Do you know something? Just between you and me … I don’t think you’re the Wrong Boy at all.’

  She sighed then, Janice, and she said, ‘I think that what you are, though, Raymond, is a very very fed-up little boy.’

  Janice nodded at me. And I looked at her. And even though I was trying dead hard not to, I felt my face starting to crumple up and I was crying and telling Janice about how I’d
got suspended from school and my Mam had been summoned from work and had to go to the headmaster’s office. And I told Janice about Sonia and upsetting my Mam again and making her put up with all sorts of things so that she didn’t love me any more and took me to see Psycho The Rapist. And in the end Janice just put her arms around me and told me it was all right and everything would be all right. That’s what she kept saying to me, ‘It’s all right, Raymond. Don’t worry, everything will be all right.’

  And I started nodding and managed to stop crying because it was funny but when Janice said that, about it being all right, I believed her. Janice made me believe that somehow, in the end, it would all be all right.

  She handed me a tissue. And she smiled at me and said, ‘Would you like to go home?’

  I nodded and Janice said, ‘Well, I think we can arrange that. I’ve just got to talk to your mum for a while. All right?’

  ‘Is my Mam still upset with me,’ I said, ‘because of what I did last night?’

  ‘Well, she’s bound to be upset, isn’t she?’ Janice said.

  ‘Will you tell her?’ I asked. ‘Because I know that my Mam would believe you. Will you tell her that I wasn’t trying to …’

  Janice smiled at me as she got up off the bed. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell your mum.’

  She winked at me then, Janice. And I watched her as she walked down the ward.

  And when she got to the end, she turned, and she waved to me.

  Later on, my Mam told me how it was Dr Janice who’d made her start to see some sense. My Mam said she’d been out of her wits with all the worry. But it was Dr Janice who made her see that it was all the worrying that was doing her no good and doing me no good neither. And Dr Janice told my Mam that what she had to do was stop sticking together things that didn’t fit together; things like the dread about my Dad being a bit mad. Dr Janice said that what my Mam was doing was sticking something like that onto something like what I’d done down at the canal.