‘But you don’t even know them,’ I said, ‘not properly, so how can you be sick of them?’
She came back into the doorway then, her eyes flashing at me as she said, ‘I’ll tell y’ why! Because every other word you come out with these days is Twinky and Norman. Twinky says this, Norman does that, Twinky and Norman think this! I’m sick of it,’ she said. ‘The world according to Twinky and Norman, I’m sick of it!’
‘But they’re my friends,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d be happy because I’d made friends.’
‘Normal friends, Raymond!’ she said. ‘Normal friends, lads your own age and I would be happy. But you couldn’t do that, could y’, find a couple of nice normal friends. Oh no, not you, you have to start going round with a pair of maladjusted misfits.’
‘They’re not misfits!’ I told her. ‘And they’re not maladjusted.’
‘Not misfits! Not …’ my Mam said. ‘Do you think I’m daft? I remember them when we lived in Failsworth. That Gorman lad, he’s an animal!’
‘He’s not,’ I said.
‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ my Mam insisted. ‘Before Sunny Pines he was in an approved school!’
‘But Norman’s not like that now,’ I said, ‘he’s not. Because Norman’s got his strategies now and he works on his anger. He’s my friend and he’s a very nice person and if you’d let him and Twinky come to our house, you’d realise that.’
‘I’ve told y’,’ my Mam said, ‘I don’t want them comin’ to the house! I don’t need to see them; I know from what Ted’s told me, they’re a right pair.’
And that got me really riled then. It was bad enough that she called him Ted nowadays, Wilson, the Lert. But now he was telling her things about my friends when he didn’t even know anything about them.
‘What does he know?’ I said to my Mam. ‘He doesn’t even teach at Sunny Pines so how the hell does he know what Twinky and Norman are like?’
‘Because!’ she said. ‘Because Ted makes it his business to find out! Because he promised me he’d take an interest in your welfare, that’s why.’
I just looked at her. I said, ‘He’s not interested in me at all.’
She looked at me like she was disgusted. ‘How have you got the gall to come out with something like that?’ she said. ‘How can you say that about Ted when he’s always dropping in to see that you’re doing all right, phoning up to check how you’re going on. Can you deny that?’
I just shook my head. And my Mam said, ‘So how the hell can you say he’s not interested in you?’
I shrugged. I was fed up with her. Fed up with her having a go at my friends. And having a go at me. So I said, ‘Because it’s not me he’s interested in, it’s you!’
Her eyes went all narrowed up and she cocked her head to one side as she took a step towards me. ‘What are you trying to say?’ she said. ‘What are you trying to say?’
I shrugged again. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just the truth, that’s all. He fancies you!’
She just looked. Stood there looking at me. And then she said, ‘Don’t be so stupid! Fancies me!’ she said. ‘Fancies me? Look at me! Wrecked and hairless, trying to cope with my mother, cope with you. Fancies me? Chance’d be a fine thing,’ she said. ‘He’s an educated man. And he’s just trying to do his best for you. Don’t talk so stupid! Fancies …! Christ almighty!’
She just stared at me for a bit longer. And then she said, ‘The only thing Ted’s interested in is making sure that you’re all right. You should be grateful. He’s taken a personal interest in you. And if Ted says he thinks you’d be better off with more normal friends then I agree with him; and I think you should do something about it instead of spending all your time hanging round with a young thug and that McDevitt lad who can’t make up his mind whether he’s supposed to be a girl or a boy.’
I hated it when she said things like that. I hated it when she was being stupid, because my Mam wasn’t a stupid person at all. I knew she was at the end of her tether and nearly worn out with looking after my Gran, going over there every day and seeing that she was all right and making sure my Gran wouldn’t have to go into a nursing home. I knew my Mam had a lot to put up with. But that wasn’t what was making my Mam stupid; it was him, Wilson the Lert. My Mam always said stupid things after she’d been talking to him; like she said about Twinky not knowing if he was a girl or a boy.
And I said to her, I said, ‘Of course Twinky’s a boy! And he’s perfectly well aware that he’s a boy. But he just happens to be a homosexual boy, that’s all.’
She just looked at me. ‘Listen to you!’ she said. ‘Listen to you, coming out with things like that, a lad of your age!’
I asked her what age had to do with it. But she said she wasn’t arguing and she had to get her coat and get to the bus stop or she’d be late getting to my Gran’s. Then she went. And we didn’t even say tarar to each other or anything like that. And it was awful really, arguing with my Mam all the time. I didn’t want to be arguing with her. But it was like my Mam didn’t want to think for herself any more. It was like she’d sort of left me and gone over to Wilson instead, just spouting things that he said. And if that’s what she was doing then that was up to her. She was on one side of the road, with the Lert. And I was on the other side, with Norman and Twinky. And I loved it, being with my friends. Even if my Mam wasn’t interested and didn’t even seem to care about me going on a diet and getting back to being the person I really was, Twinky and Norman cared. And with my friends helping me, that’s how I did it, Morrissey, started getting back to being the person I really was, with Norman as my own personal fitness trainer taking me running every day and Twinky giving me all his encouragement and making me stick to the Petula Clark Petite Person Plan. It wasn’t easy, Morrissey, not at first. But as the weeks and the months went by it all got easier and I got leaner, shunning the pasties, shedding the pounds. And one dinner hour, when Twinky didn’t have a class and he came with us as well, me, Twink and Norman went running through all the fields that surround Sunny Pines, all running together, breathing together, laughing together, across the field and over the brook, along the path beneath the trees where the sun shone through and speckled us all and made me think that my Gran was right, and there was a kind of heaven.
And if time could be stopped just by wishing, that’s exactly where I would have stopped it, Morrissey; when I was lean and thirteen, in a kind of heaven with Norman and Twink; believing that happiness, once it’s been found, is a thing that lasts for ever.
Yours sincerely,
Raymond Marks
The Grassy Bit,
By the Shell Shop
And Filling Station,
Ferrybridge Services,
M62
Dear Morrissey,
They abandoned me! The people on the coach. They could have said! They could have just told me they didn’t want me on their cowing coach! They said it was a toilet stop. Only when I came out of the toilet, the bleeding coach had gone. And there was just my gear and my guitar, left there in the middle of the car park; abandoned, like me. I didn’t care anyway. I didn’t want to be on a coach where everybody hated me.
I know it means I’ve still got to get another lift. But I don’t care. Sometimes it feels as though I’m bleeding well beyond caring. Scott of the Sodding Antarctic had less trouble getting to the South pigging Pole than I’m having just getting to Grimsby! I can’t even try and start hitchhiking, not yet. Because when I walked over here to start hitching there were already about six other people queued up before me; student-looking persons, all of them bearing pieces of cardboard with the names of their destinations, universally unfortunate places like Hull and Doncaster and Goole.
When I walked up and stuck my thumb out though, they all turned and looked at me like I’d just farted or something.
I said, ‘What’s up?’
And this girl with a shaved head and a major amount of body metal said, ‘Do you mind! There is a stacking system in operation here.�
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I said, ‘What do you mean?’
But she just gave me a sour look and sucked on her tongue-stud as the lad in front of her said, ‘Get to the back of the queue and wait your fucking turn! That’s what she means!’
I just shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t realise hitchhiking had become subject to the same principles as air traffic control.’
But they all just glared at me. And concluding that student anarchy was in no danger of making any kind of a comeback, I moved down here and took my proper place at the back of the queue. I think I might be stuck here for hours though. The person in front of me is clutching a piece of cardboard with a very strange destination written on it. I’d never begrudge a person his religious beliefs, Morrissey, but if I’ve got to wait for him to get a lift before I can finally get to the top of the queue, I think I might be stuck here for ever; because instead of Goole or Hull or Nottingham or somewhere like that, he’s just got the word ‘SALVATION’ written on his destination card. He started talking to me before and asked me where I was headed. I told him Grimsby. But he shook his head and said, ‘Then I’m sorry, my friend, but you are on the wrong road!’
I got worried for a minute and thought perhaps I’d wound up on the wrong side of the motorway. But then he said, ‘No, my friend, there is only one destination. And those who want to reach it are those who journey with the Lord.’
So I’m just hoping, Morrissey, that the Lord’s out driving tonight. And preferably on this side of the M62, because if he isn’t then I’m just going to be stuck here, behind this salvation-seeker, with all his certainty. I wouldn’t mind, but seeing as he was supposed to be such a Christian sort of person I thought he might be a good Samaritan and let me take his place in the queue. I explained that I still had to get all the way to Grimsby and would he mind swapping places and letting me go ahead of him in the queue.
But he shook his head and said, ‘My friend, it wouldn’t matter how much further up the queue you got. Because your true destination, my friend, you will never reach. Not while you continue to worship a false idol.’
I told him I didn’t worship any kind of idol actually.
But he nodded at my tee shirt and stood there smiling like he’d caught me out and was really pleased with himself. ‘So!’ he said. ‘So? Will Morrissey get you to Grimsby?’
I said I didn’t expect Morrissey to get me to Grimsby.
But he said, ‘Oh yes you do!’ And then he just stood there staring at me with this big certain smile on his face.
I decided to shut up and say nowt then; because, like my Gran always said, one of the few certainties in life is that persons of certainty should certainly be avoided. I couldn’t avoid him though because he was just stood there saying, ‘You see, my friend, I too have been where you are now.’ He nodded and smirked and said, ‘I too once put my faith in an empty vessel. I too had the tee shirts, the records, the posters, the LPs, the twelve-inch singles.’
I shot him a look of surprise. ‘You were into Morrissey?’ I said.
But he shook his head and said, ‘No. Not Morrissey. The pot into which I mistakenly poured my faith was a vessel known as Billy Bragg.’
That’s when I started to feel somewhat sorry for him. If I’d been into Billy Bragg I think I might have ended up going over to the church! At least the music’s better!
‘They’re everywhere,’ he said, ‘those cheap and leaking vessels: the Billy Braggs, the Morrisseys, the Michael Jacksons, all of them with their beguiling but empty promises. Where will they lead you, my friend? Will Mr Morrissey lead you to salvation?’
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘it’s hard enough just trying to get to Grimsby; so I’m not that bothered about salvation right at the minute.’
He stared at me. Then he nodded all smug and knowingly as he said, ‘I see, my friend, that you are not yet ready for the word of the Lord.’
‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I am actually.’
I thought he might give up then and go back to the queue of hitchhikers. But he just stood there, his finger pointed at me, as he said, ‘But that day will come, my friend; that day will surely dawn for you as once it dawned for me; and on that day you will know that you are on the wrong road, with the wrong guide. Mr Morrissey is leading you into a cul-de-sac. Salvation lies elsewhere!’
He was really starting to make me feel pissed off. ‘Well, listen,’ I said, ‘seeing as you obviously do know where salvation is why don’t you just sod off there and leave me alone?’
And he did sod off then, back to the queue. And I wished he’d never left the bleeding queue in the first place. He was spooky. And I didn’t like him talking about you, Morrissey. Because he didn’t know what he was talking about. And he’d never understand anyway, a person like that. That’s why I hadn’t even tried to tell him; that you were my salvation, Morrissey. And if it hadn’t been for you, I might never have got better. Even my Mam says; my Mam says that the day I really started improving was the day I started playing the guitar. But I’d never have played that guitar, Morrissey, if it hadn’t been for you. That’s what brought me back to life, hearing you, Morrissey; when I’d got out of Swintonfield, and I was still only half a person.
I never should have ended up in Swintonfield in the first place. I know it all started off because of Norman and Twinky but it wasn’t their fault. I don’t care what anyone says, I know that Twinky and Norman had nothing to do with it. They had to do what they did, I know that. So I don’t blame them at all. Who I blame is Wilson, the Lert! Him; and Paulette Patterson’s father. That’s who I blame: them. And my Uncle Bastard Jason; my Uncle Bastard Jason and my Poisonous Aunty Paula. Because if it hadn’t been for them, my Gran might not have ended up with a red nose and she might even have been able to help me on the night that it all happened. Only my Gran couldn’t help me at all. Because my Uncle and my Aunty, the appalling pair of them, had just turned up at my Gran’s house one Sunday morning when they knew my Mam wouldn’t be there. And the two of them told my Gran it was such a nice sunny summer’s day, they’d decided to take her out for a drive in the country. If my Gran had been herself she never would have gone with them, not in the summer. My Gran never liked the summer. She said everything was too full of frivolity in the summer, especially the countryside because it was all too green and gaudy and the birds made too much fuss. And the proper time for visiting the countryside, my Gran said, was in winter when the trees were dark and melancholy and the birds knew how to behave themselves. But my Gran had forgotten; forgotten that buttercups, dandelions and daisies are all such frivolous flowers, forgotten that she couldn’t stick my Aunty Paula, forgotten that she hated being taken out for ‘nice Sunday drives’; forgotten who she was any more. That’s why she went with the traitorous two of them.
When the car pulled into the driveway of the big country house, my Gran looked a bit puzzled and said, ‘What’s this? I thought we were going out to the country.’
‘We are,’ my Aunty Paula said. ‘But we thought we’d just drop in here for an hour, Vera. We thought you’d like it, visiting a stately home.’
‘Will I?’ my Gran asked.
‘Of course you will!’ my Uncle Jason insisted as they pulled into the car park. ‘Look at them lovely grounds, those nice lawns. Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s get out and take a stroll.’
And if my Gran hadn’t forgotten who she was, she would have realised, the minute they got out the car and went walking across the lawns, where there were many persons of considerable antiquity, their hands welded onto Zimmer frames and some of them in wheelchairs being pushed and paraded by nurses. But my Gran didn’t realise. So she dutifully strolled the grounds of the ‘stately home’. And it was only when she looked up and saw my Uncle and my Aunty were no longer with her that my Gran started to get a bit puzzled. And then she saw the two of them, in the distance, hurrying back towards the car park. And that’s when she began to panic a bit then, my Gran. Because even though she could
n’t quite remember who they were, my Gran knew that she was supposed to be with those two persons who were diving into the car and speeding off without her. That’s why she began to panic and cry and shout out a bit. And she was grateful when the two nice nurses came and comforted her and took her inside and gave her a cup of tea. And the nice nurses even seemed to know my Gran’s name. Then one of them asked if she’d like to see her room now. My Gran said that that would be very nice. And it was only in those bits of moments, in the tiny flashes of memory when my Gran still knew who she was, that she realised that this ‘stately home’ was the Stalybridge Sanctuary for Seasoned Citizens.
My Mam kicked up a big stink at first. She said she was going straight over to Stalybridge and bringing my Gran out of there. But my Aunty Paula and my Uncle Jason got to work and the lying, conniving, treacherous two of them made it sound as if the Stalybridge Sanctuary for Seasoned Citizens was a sort of pensioners’ paradise where my Gran would be happy in the evening of her years, being tended and cared for by angelic nurses, amused and entertained by the lively programme of daily events including watercolour painting, flower arranging, line-dancing classes and stimulating visits from local performing artists such as magicians, storytellers and folk-singing groups. And my Mam should have known that that would be hell on earth as far as my Gran was concerned.
But my Mam was weary and worn out with all her own efforts at looking after my Gran. So she reluctantly agreed that perhaps it might, after all, be better for my Gran if she had the care and attention of proper professionals. My Uncle Jason and my Aunty Paula could barely hide their satisfied smirks. And I know, Morrissey, I know I should have been paying more attention when all that was going on.
I know that if I’d been less concerned with myself, I might have seen exactly what my rancid relatives were up to and how they’d had my Gran put in a nursing home just so that they could get their hands on my Gran’s house; so they could sell it and keep the money and go on a Thomson’s Four Plus winter holiday to the silver sands of the Seychelles. If I’d been paying more attention I would have seen what the traitorous two of them were up to and I would have been able to warn my Mam.
The Wrong Boy Page 31