My Mam just looked at the bombastic bastard. ‘I don’t care what you say, Jason,’ my Mam said, ‘I don’t agree with y’. I don’t think there’s that much wrong with her at all.’
‘Not much wrong with her?’ my Uncle bellowed. ‘A seventy-bloody-odd-year-old woman goes wanderin’ off in the dead of night, trying to buy a bucket of chicken wings and barbecued beans and you say there’s nothing wrong with her!’
‘She could have been hungry!’ my Mam snapped.
‘Yes, and she could have been bloody well mugged an’ all,’ my Uncle said. ‘Wanderin’ the streets at that hour when y’ don’t know who the bloody hell’s about – intravenous drug users and young persons who’ve turned their backs on society. She’s bloody lucky not to have been gang-raped and left for dead.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ my Mam snapped, ‘will you shut up! Don’t y’ think I’m worried enough without you bloody well sounding off like a sodding Sunday newspaper?’
And even he could see then, my stupid Uncle, he could see that my Mam was almost at the end of her tether. So he affected his tone of reasonableness and worldly wisdom then and he said, ‘Now look, Shelagh. We’re upset. We’re all upset. I’m gutted I am, Shelagh, I’m bloody gutted to think that my mother’s started going Alka-Seltzer! But she has, Shelagh. And we’ve got to accept it, love. She’s gonna need looking after. We can’t do it, not with two young kids and a sick budgerigar, we can’t. And you can’t, can y’? You’ve got your own cross to bear, haven’t y’?’
I knew he meant me when he said that. But I didn’t even look at him. I just carried on trying to watch the telly where the woman with the ormolu clock was trying to appear interested as Hugh Scully kept lerting on about the delicate detail and the marvellous movement when all she wanted was Hugh Scully to get to the good bit and tell her how much the clock was worth. But I heard my Mam start crying then and saying that everything was getting on top of her and she didn’t know how she could cope any more. My Aunty Paula went and put her arms around my Mam then and said, ‘Agh … poor love, poor love. We know how hard it must be for y’, Shelagh; don’t we, Jason? Don’t we always say, she’s a martyr, our Shelagh, she really is, a martyr that girl.’
She sickened me, my Appalling Aunty Paula. So I just turned back and looked at the telly. And Hugh Scully was asking the woman with the ormolu clock if she had it insured; so I knew then that it probably was worth a fortune. Only I never got to find out because that’s when I heard my Aunty Paula asking my Mam if she’d like to go round to theirs next Saturday, share a fondue supper and watch Sky Movie of the Week.
I shot round in my chair and looked at her. And my Mam was looking at her as well.
‘I didn’t know you could get Sky,’ my Mam said, wiping her nose and putting her handkerchief away.
My Aunty Paula and my Uncle Jason looked at each other.
‘Oh yes. Yes,’ my Aunty Paula said, ‘didn’t I mention that we’d gone satellite?’
‘No,’ my Mam said, ‘you didn’t actually.’
‘Oh it’s bloody marvellous,’ my Uncle Jason said. ‘We’ve got choice now, y’ see, Shelagh. We’ve got choice coming out of our ears, haven’t we, Paula?’
‘Oh we can watch anything we like, whenever we like, can’t we?’ my Aunty Paula said. ‘Do you know, Shelagh, there’s one night, Tuesday I think it is, when we can choose, just listen to this, Shelagh, we can choose from twenty-nine different game shows. Twenty-nine; think about that!’
My Mam just stared at the two of them until my Uncle Jason said, ‘Is there summat the matter, Shelagh?’
‘Where did y’ get it from?’ my Mam asked.
‘What?’ my Aunty Paula said.
‘Your satellite system,’ my Mam said, ‘where did it come from?’
‘Well, where do you bloody think it came from?’ my Uncle Jason said.
‘That’s what I’m asking you,’ my Mam declared.
My Uncle Jason looked at her but my Mam didn’t flinch from his gaze. My Mam got to her feet then and she said, ‘Have you taken my mother’s satellite dish?’
That brought my Aunty Paula to her feet too as she said, ‘Shelagh!’
‘Well?’ my Mam insisted. ‘Your twenty-nine different game shows, are they courtesy of my mother’s satellite dish?’
‘I’ve told you!’ my Uncle Jason barked, ‘Dixons! We got our system from Dixons in the bloody high street!’
‘Right!’ my Mam said. ‘So when I go round to my mother’s tomorrow, I’ll still see it up there on the roof, will I, her satellite dish?’
My Uncle Jason just stared for a second like he’d had the wind taken out of him. But then he rallied again and he said, ‘Of course you bloody won’t! Because she flogged it, didn’t she? Her satellite system. Flogged it through the classifieds. Let it go for peanuts and all! Sold for next to nowt to a Pakistani paediatrician from Prestwick pleading poverty. She said she wanted him to have the satellite dish so he could keep up with his Gujarati. Isn’t that right, Paula?’
My Aunty Paula nodded quickly.
‘I see!’ my Mam said. ‘And when I see my mother tomorrow, she’ll confirm this, will she, Jason?’
My Uncle Jason and my Aunty Paula looked at each other again. Then my Aunty Paula said, ‘Shelagh, we’ve been trying to tell y’, love, your mother’s not well. And, you see, once the mind starts to go, Shelagh, they start imagining all sorts of things. Like when your mother was at ours today, it didn’t matter how many times we tried to tell her that ours was a brand new satellite system, fresh from Dixons; but your mother couldn’t take it in, Shelagh. All afternoon she sat there staring at our decoder box, saying, “That’s mine, that’s mine.” And it didn’t matter how many times we explained it to her, Shelagh, she’s got it into that puddled head of hers that we’ve taken her satellite dish! Now as if, Shelagh, as if we’d do something like that to a poor old lady who’s all enfeebled and suddenly presenting all the signs of Alka-Seltzers.’
‘And that’s why,’ my Uncle Jason said, jumping in dead quick, ‘we’ve got to sort something out, Shelagh. She needs professional care and you’ve got to start facing up to it.’
And I could tell then that he’d got my Mam where it hurt and she was about to give up on the satellite dish. So I jumped in quick too and I said, ‘What was his name?’
They all turned and looked at me.
‘His name, Uncle Jason,’ I said, ‘what was his name?’
He screwed up his face. ‘Whose bloody name?’ he said.
‘The paediatrician from Prestwick,’ I told him.
He looked at me like I’d just crawled out from under a rancid rasher.
‘How would I know his bloody name?’ he said.
I just shrugged. ‘Well, you seem to know everything else about him,’ I said, ‘including his profession, his native language, his ethnic origin and his current place of residence. I thought perhaps you might be writing his biography.’
My Uncle Bastard Jason and my Acidic Aunty Paula both looked at me with the sort of slit-eyed look that you could cut fresh bread with. But I just stared back at them.
Then my Aunty Paula turned to my Mam like I wasn’t there and she said, ‘I believe he’s starting at the special school, isn’t he, Shelagh?’
‘It’s not a special school!’ my Mam declared. ‘It’s a progress school, Paula. A progress school.’
My Aunty Paula started nodding. ‘Oh, of course,’ she said, ‘progress school, that’s right.’
Then she turned and looked at me with the sort of smile the Queen puts on when she’s in Africa. And she said, ‘And do they think he will make some progress there, Shelagh?’
‘There’s no stigma,’ my Mam said. ‘There’s no stigma these days, Mr Wilson told me; in fact, he said, some of those children who go to Sunny Pines, they’re some of the most highly intelligent children in the whole of the county.’
My Acrid Aunty raised an eyebrow and slowly nodded her head. ‘Is that right, Shelagh?’ s
he said.
And my Mam tried to tell her how I’d probably do much better in Sunny Pines because, like Mr Wilson said, it was a more pertinent educational environment. But I could tell from her voice that my Mam had no more fight left in her. Because once it got onto schools and education, my Mam knew she couldn’t even begin to compete and she’d just have to stand there and get battered with reports of how my Aunty Paula had recently put down the names of her appalling progeny at Manchester Grammar. So my Mam just said, ‘Look, I’m a bit jiggered at the minute and I’ve still got a lot of …’
But my Aunty Paula and my Uncle were already headed for the door, telling my Mam they had no intention of outstaying their welcome. Then as they got to the door, my Aunty Paula paused and said, ‘So we’ll see y’ next, Shelagh, for a fondue supper and Movie of the Week.’
‘I’ll see,’ my Mam told them.
And as he was leaving, my Repulsive Uncle said, ‘And y’ better put your mind to it, Shelagh: we’re gonna have to do something about my mother.’
When they’d gone I just looked at my Mam and I could see that she was all preoccupied and nearly at the end of her tether. And that’s why I didn’t kick up any fuss any more, about going to Sunny Pines; because my Uncle Bastard Jason had robbed the satellite dish; because my Gran was coming down with the Alka-Seltzers; and because my Mam had all the worries of the world on her shoulders and was nearly at the end of her tether.
I hated it! I hated having to get the stupid minibus and having to drive for ages, picking up kids from here, there and everywhere. It should have been better, because the classes were dead small at Sunny Pines. But you’d be sitting there in the classroom doing your work and it’d all be fairly quiet; then the next thing there’d suddenly be this high-pitched scream or something being smashed and you’d shit yourself before you realised it was just someone like Elvis Fitzsimmons going into one of his fits or Deborah Johnstone smashing her chair into the radiator because it wasn’t the right chair, it wasn’t her chair, it was the wrong fucking chair and all the bastards had hidden her chair, her special chair. By the time the teacher had dealt with Deborah, calmed her down and convinced her that there wasn’t really a chair conspiracy, the bleeding lesson would be over. And nobody really seemed to give a toss about learning anything. I felt sorry for them really, people like Deborah and Elvis Fitzsimmons and Ambrose McFadden. But even though I did really feel sorry for them, they got on my nerves, them and Chantelle Smith and all the others who had things wrong with them and were always kicking off and messing up all the lessons, so you couldn’t really get on with anything. It was like being in some sort of a prison, being at Sunny Pines. And the Wednesday of that first week, when I found out about us having to do gardening, that’s when I decided enough was enough; and tomorrow the Sunny Pines minibus would be leaving Wythenshawe without me.
Gardening! I couldn’t believe it! I thought it was just a stupid joke at first. But me and all the other boys in my year were trotted out to these patches of soil where there was this man who looked like a fat scarecrow. But he was the teacher! He had big wellies and a beard which looked as though it had birds nesting in it.
He kicked off when he saw me. ‘They didn’t tell me!’ he said. ‘Nobody told me there was a new lad starting! What am I supposed to do? There’s no spare plots. I haven’t got any spare plots for new lads who just turn up without me being informed about any new lad. What am I meant to do when there’s no spare plots?’
I just looked at him and shrugged. I didn’t have the first bleeding idea of what he was meant to do. He was supposed to be the teacher, not me! I didn’t care a toss about any sodding spare plots anyway. I didn’t want to do any stupid bleeding gardening in the first place. So I just stood there while he handed out the spades and things to the other boys and they all went off to their various bits of garden. I thought I was going to get out of having to do anything at all. But then he suddenly handed me this gardening thing and said, ‘Here, take this hoe. You can work on one of the third years’ plots for now.’
And then he pointed to a patch of soil and said, ‘You get on with weeding that.’
But he didn’t even tell me how to do weeding because all the other lads from my class had started fighting and throwing soil at each other so he had to rush over and give them a bollocking. Then, while he was doing that, Ambrose McFadden, who had an unfortunate twitch and an even more unfortunate haircut, started crying and saying the handle on his spade was blue and he was supposed to have a green-handled spade, not a blue one. All the others started laughing at him which made him even worse until he flung the offending spade as far as he could and sat down in the middle of his plot, crying his eyes out and telling everyone to fuck off.
It was just like being at the bleeding infants’ school again! All you could hear was Ambrose screaming and all the others laughing. I was glad to be on my own. I just carried on doing what the teacher had told me, chopping off all these long green weeds and being dead pissed off because if my Gran hadn’t been ill she would have been able to save me from all this. I knew it wasn’t really my Gran’s fault and I shouldn’t have been mad at her. But I was mad at everything, at my Gran and my Mam and Wilson and my Uncle Bastard Jason; and mad at being there, in a special school and in a class with a load of stupid lads who thought it was the height of hilarity to tease Ambrose McFadden and then, when they got bored with that, spend the rest of the lesson doing nowt but throw soil at each other. So the more I had to hoe those weeds, the more mad I got about being in a place like this. In the end I was just chopping and hacking at them all and sending bits of them flying all over the place till there were barely any more weeds left to chop down.
I didn’t know! Not till he came running over, the fat scarecrow of a teacher, and he was shouting, saying, ‘Jesus Christ, lad, Jesus Christ … what the bloody hell are y’ up to at all?’
‘I’m chopping down the weeds,’ I said, ‘that’s all; just doin’ what you told me!’
But he looked like he was going to pass out. His face was all red and he said, ‘Weeds! They’re not weeds, y’ senseless little bugger!’
Then he snatched the hoe out of my hand and all the other lads started crowding round and laughing as he said, ‘They’re bloody turnips, lad! You’ve chopped off an entire bloody crop of turnip tops!’
Everybody was staring down at the decimated plot and chopped-off turnip tops. And then the boy with the twitch and the unfortunate haircut said, ‘That’s Gonzo’s plot!’
And Elvis Fitzsimmons had this excited, bloodthirsty look in his eye as he said, ‘Ogh! Just wait! Wait till Gonzo finds out about this!’
And I heard somebody else saying, ‘It’s that new lad, the fat one. He’s killed all Gonzo’s turnips!’
Then Elvis Fitzsimmons started running towards the school building, saying, ‘I’m gonna tell. I’m gonna get Gonzo now an’ tell him!’
I looked up at the teacher and I said, ‘It’s not my fault! How am I supposed to know about gardening? I live in a maisonette! You didn’t tell me,’ I said, ‘you didn’t tell me which were the weeds!’
But he just ignored me and started collecting up all the hoes and spades from the others, mumbling something about early retirement and kids who get thicker and thicker with every passing year. Then he just walked off towards the school as the bell for dinnertime started ringing.
And the word about the turnip tragedy must have spread around the school faster than dog-shit on a shoe because as all the kids streamed out into the playground, loads of them came running across to the gardening plots until it seemed like there were hundreds of them around me and all of them were staring at the turnip tops and exclaiming, saying things like ‘Fuckin’ hell!’ and ‘Shiiiiiiittttt!’ and ‘Someone’s gonna well fuckin’ get it off Gonzo!’
That’s when I started to try and get away. I just tried to walk away at first. But none of them would let me through and they stood there, all around me, staring at me and blocking my way. So t
hen I tried to push my way through but some of the big lads pushed me back and sent me stumbling onto one of the other plots. And one of them said, ‘Stay where y’ are, you! Blubber Boy.’ Some of them started laughing at that, laughing like hyenas. And some of them started chanting, saying, ‘Blubber Boy, Blubber Boy, Blubber Boy.’
I just stood there, trying not to cry, doing my best not to cry; knowing that I was done for for ever at Sunny Shitty Pines if I began crying in front of everybody. And instead of crying it was just like something snapped, really. Suddenly, all the madness started coming out of me and I didn’t care and it didn’t matter if I got bashed up or flattened and beaten up; I didn’t … fucking well care. And I didn’t want to be in the stupid fucking school with the stupid fucking kids doing stupid fucking gardening. And I snarled at them all and I said, ‘So where the fuck is he then, this gormless fuckin’ Gonzo?’
And that’s when I heard it, the voice from the back of the crowd, the voice that said, ‘Right fuckin’ here!’
And suddenly all my madness and anger just evaporated and I stood there, silently shitting myself as the crowd parted. And walking towards me was this big, ugly, curly-haired lad, with flared nostrils and his eyes fixed on me as he walked up and then stopped in front of me. He just looked at me. And then slowly he turned his head and quietly said, ‘Move!’ Some of the kids scattered quick, and stood back, revealing the chopped-off turnip tops in all their wilting glory. Then he turned and looked at me again and all I could do was stand there, staring back, waiting for it to happen, waiting for him to hit me. And that’s when I started to realise, when we were stood there facing each other on the vegetable plots, surrounded by half the school; that’s when I started to see someone who wasn’t quite so tall or as big as this Gonzo, somebody with the same curly hair but without the beginning of bristles on his cheeks; someone who once had a pit-bull terrier and used to say the Chinese people were all slant-eyed twats; someone who’d always looked nowty and churlish and dead angry all the time; apart from one day, one day a long time ago, when I’d been a little kid, holding a silver-foil star aloft crooning the words to ‘Little Town of Bethlehem’. And I’d watched him then, this Gonzo person, as he’d preciously picked up Twinky McDevitt from a donkey and tenderly cradled the makeshift Madonna in his big thick boyish arms.
The Wrong Boy Page 28