The Boy Who Preferred To Be Somebody Else
Malcolm Moyes
Copyright © 2016 Malcolm Moyes.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events
and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination
or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 1
The Game of the Name
If you have a younger brother or sister, plus a good memory, you will know that parents spend a lot of time choosing a perfect name for their baby. They will spend hours, amounting to days, amounting to weeks, amounting to…well, you get the picture, don’t you? Sometimes they will also spend money on rubbish books about names. I mean seriously good money, which might have been better spent on you. l bet you’ll have seen these books in Waterstones or W.H. Smith’s, or even in your own house, with absolutely cracking titles like: “How to name your baby” (Yawn) or “One hundred stunning facts you did not know about names” (Did I need to know them?) or “The history and meaning of names.” (Get a life).
These books are meant to help parents choose a name, but always seem to do just the opposite. This was certainly true of Mr Carl and Mrs Tracey Trumper, residents of Southport, who for nearly nine months, give or take a few days as they had Christmas, Easter and Bank Holidays off, seemed to bicker non-stop about what to call their child.
Round about February time, after weeks of snarling, sniping and scoffing, Mrs Trumper, at least, was pretty clear about the best sort of name. She wanted a good traditional name, a family name, and came up with Archibald if the baby was a boy or Petunia if the baby was a girl.
“They’ve both got what I call a good old-fashioned feel to them, and besides, that’s what my grandad and nan were called,” said Mrs Trumper: as usual, she had made a no questions asked, take-it-or-leave it, final decision.
Or so she thought.
Mr Trumper was not impressed and plucked up courage to express his opinion on the matter.
“Petunia? Archibald? Are you serious? One’s a soppy flower and the other’s a Scotsman with no hair. And what about my grandad and nan? What about them? Don’t they come into the reckoning?”
“They’re dead.”
“I know they’re dead and that’s precisely why we should name the baby after one of them, or both, if we have a twin boy and girl. To honour their memory, let’s say.”
“And they were called?”
One-nil to Mrs Trumper. Mr Trumper had scored an own goal, a careless, casual slice off the outside of the boot into the top corner: goalkeeper no chance.
“I’ve no idea, I can’t remember, I was young at the time…” Mr Trumper’s voice trailed off, as he realised the score. And Mrs Trumper was never more dangerous than when she had just taken the lead. Sensing that Mr Trumper’s defence was still unsettled and the possibility of taking a decisive two goal advantage, she started laughing her biggest, most vicious, of loud laughs: a laugh which rocked the building and made the neighbours shudder.
“Well that’s a great name for a child, isn’t it? I’ve No Idea Trumper. What a bonza name that would be!” – Mrs Trumper had been watching quite a lot of Australian soaps at the time.
But it was not quite the final killer move that Mrs Trumper thought it was going to be: more of a dangerous free kick, swerving awkwardly towards goal. Mr Trumper had been on his guard, parried the attempt and cleared his lines quickly, responding decisively with a devastating counter-attack: route one: big punt, cool control, back of the net.
“I’ve read in one of them books that choosing a relative’s name is not such a good thing as it leads to family arguments; unless, that is, all your relatives and mine are called Archibald and Petunia. And my grandad was definitely not a Petunia. I remember that much. “
It was a soft goal to concede, but Mrs Trumper’s advantage was cancelled out. And worse was to come, as Mr Trumper, impressed by the effectiveness of quoting from one of the books which they had bought on the subject of naming babies, then hit an unstoppable pile driver past an unsighted goalkeeper.
“Another thing I read is that the name Petunia is Latin for horse manure and that the first recorded use of the name Archibald was in France in 1506 by (pause as if thinking) King Francis I, who named his pet chimpanzee Archibald. Let me tell you plain and simple, no daughter of mine is going to be named after horse poo and no son of mine is going to be named after a French chimp!”
Both of these stunning facts had been completely invented by Mr Trumper and he had also had the foresight to hide the useful book under a cushion, so that what he had said could not be easily checked. Mrs Trumper was now on the back foot and needed to clear her head.
It was a tactical triumph for Mr Trumper: he had broken the rules, conned the opposition and had got away with it.
“We’ll continue this conversation later. I need to sort out the tumble-dryer.”
Mrs Trumper stood up hurriedly and left the room. Mr Trumper sat back, pleased, wearing the smile of a man who has just come back from being one-nil down to take a shock, two-one lead at the break.
After a few more weeks of inconclusive stand-up skirmishes, further sit-down discussions resumed in March: this time, the difficulties of making a decision had been halved, as the Trumpers found out that in a few month’s time they would be having a lovely baby boy. This would save a good deal of time and at least the Petunia issue was now dead and buried, alongside both grandmothers. An agreement would be reached and an honourable score draw would be the probable outcome.
Well, that was the theory anyway, but in fact it proved to be not quite the case. Knowing that he would soon be the proud father of a boy, Mr Trumper saw an opportunity to celebrate his life-long support for Manchester United by nam
ing his son after one of the greats from the past. He was spoilt for choice really: Nobby Stiles, George Best, Eric Cantona (okay a bit of a risk as he was French and a bit temperamental), Bobby Charlton, Bryan Robson, David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand, the choice seemed endless. The only problem, as far as Mr Trumper could see, which admittedly wasn’t very far, was one of whether to go for a first name or a second name: just using first names could be tricky as people might not recognise the United connection – after all, there were many boys in the world named George who were not named after the Belfast Wizard. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, for example, were not United fans as far as Mr Trumper knew, or at least, it had never been mentioned on “Match of the Day”. But then again, some of the names on his list, such as Robson and Ferdinand, had already been used as first names, which was a bit annoying. Perhaps he should go down the managerial route, he thought, in which case, the list of possible names would be cut down to two definites: either Matt Busby or Alex Ferguson: legends.
“Busby Trumper! Are you serious? How do you think that is going to sound if I’m stopped in the street and somebody looks into the buggy, says that he is lovely, just like his mother, and then asks me what we’ve called him? Busby! You can imagine the reaction can’t you? ‘Oh that’s nice,’ or even worse, making jokes behind my back about it sounding like an insect…Buzzzzzzzzzzzby.”
Evidently, Mrs Trumper was not keen. This was nothing to do with her not being a United fan, as Mr Trumper had suggested, but more to do with her now having set her heart on the kind of unusual name frequently used in Australian soaps. Two of the girls in “Home and Away” had recently given birth to a bouncing baby boy and both had named their child Earth; presumably, they would have gone for either Sky or Moon if they had given birth to a girl.
So Earth it was.
“Over my dead body,” said Mr Trumper, without even the smallest hint of having made a joke.
April arrived without any kind of agreement and April departed with the only decision being to consign both Busby Trumper and Earth Trumper to the dustbin.
“What about…what about…writing a few random names on bits of paper over the next few months, putting them in a sealed box and then looking at them together in July?” suggested Mrs Trumper in an unusual spirit of fair-play and friendliness.
Mr Trumper thought this a good idea: it was a bit of a novelty, it meant he no longer had to read books about names and would give him chance to work on a few plans of his own.
Early July arrived on time and the Name Box, as it was labelled, made out of a large size Corn Flakes package, was bulging with bits of paper which had been stuffed through the narrow cut-out section on the stuck down lid. Mrs Trumper was looking forward to opening the box as she felt confident that one of her suggestions would be the winner, having studied several books and having kept a log of new babies arriving on “Home and Away” and “Neighbours”. Mr Trumper was equally confident that he would get his way, quite simply because he had spent the last two months secretly removing, as best he could, his wife’s pieces of paper or re-writing them with minor alterations in order to make them sound totally ludicrous. Mr Trumper had always fancied himself as a bit of a secret agent and, okay tampering with bits of paper in a Corn Flakes box when his wife wasn’t looking was hardly the same as killing dangerous criminal masterminds or jumping out of helicopters, but hey, even James Bond had to start somewhere: after all, it was probably him who named M’s secretary Mish Moneypenny.
At first, the secret removal of, or tampering with, vital documents from the Name Box had felt exciting. He would get up at around four-thirty in the morning, pretending to go to the toilet and then go downstairs for a drink. The plan was well thought out as he went through the routine of going to the toilet, flushing it, washing his hands and then slowly taking his time to get downstairs, listening for sounds of loud snoring and snorting – tell-tale signs that Mrs Trumper was fast sleep. He would pour himself a glass of Coca-Cola, leave it on the kitchen work top and then make his way carefully into the living room where the Name Box was kept. This top secret, covert operation was done entirely in the dark, just in case Mrs Trumper had got spies out in the garden, on the lookout for any unusual activity around the living room area in the early hours of the morning. This heightened the tension, as did his dramatic diving to the floor and crawling along the carpet when he heard an unexpected noise, usually a floorboard creaking or cats scrapping in the street. It also unintentionally created dangerous situations when he clumsily knocked into a lamp or banged into the table, forcing him to freeze and listen nervously in the dark. He would stand there for several minutes, hardly daring to breath, immobilised by the fear of being caught in the act, listening to his own panicked heartbeats and waiting for the dreaded sound: Mrs Trumper bounding down the stairs, three at a time, in her fluffy, pink nightie and waving a big stick with which to beat any intruder unfortunate enough to be found on the premises.
At other times, during the day, when Mrs Trumper had gone off into town to do some shopping, he got out the Name Box and did further undercover work, always being careful to make a note of what angle the box was at when he picked it up and equally careful in returning it to the very same position. So professional was Mr Trumper in his work that he even took account of the dust lines: even James Bond wouldn’t have thought of that!
There came a time, however, towards the middle of July, when his undercover activities had to stop. He one day discovered that the Name Box had been removed to a secret location by Mrs Trumper: had she noticed what he had been up to or had she merely moved it whilst doing the dusting? Was she doing some counter-espionage work whilst he was out of the house? All these vital questions, and more, racked his brain: what would James Bond have done in this situation? In the end, he did nothing because he did want not raise suspicions by asking where the box had been taken. Besides, it was nearly time to open the box and his work had been done. He would say nothing and play a clever waiting game.
“Right let’s get down to business,” said Mrs Trumper. “We’ll pull the names out of the box, one at a time, until we find a name we both like. If after three names we cannot agree, then we just randomly pull out one more and that will have to do, whether we agree with it or not.”
Mr Trumper had mixed feelings about this command dressed up as a proposal: it left too much to chance. What if they got down to the fourth name and it was a late addition to the Name Box by Mrs Trumper, or even worse, an early suggestion made by Mrs Trumper which he had altered to make it sound ridiculous? He was trapped: he wished that James Bond could have helped him with a smart plan. On reflection, James would probably have had his gun at the ready to eliminate the opposition or have had the foresight to have fixed a tiny explosive device to the Name Box, in the form of a barcode, to destroy the evidence, should things go wrong. Too late, as Mrs Trumper was already dipping her fingers into the box to pull out the first name; Mr Trumper just had to trust that his plans would work. He sat back in his chair trying not to look concerned, holding a glass of Martini to steady his nerves, but his hand shook.
“The first one is…”
She looks and sounds far too confident, thought Mr Trumper, who found himself reaching inside his jacket pocket for a revolver that wasn’t there to take that sickening smirk off her face.
“Is…”
She was playing games with him.
Mrs Trumper slowly took the piece of paper out of the box, held it in the air like a trophy and recognised the first two visible letters as her own handwriting. She waved the precious piece of paper in front of Mr Trumper’s worried eyes and announced the first name for discussion:
“Toad.”
There was a ghastly silence as Mrs Trumper’s face changed rapidly from joyful triumph to bewilderment.
She looked at the piece of paper again, checking the handwriting and the letters: yes, it was her handwriting all right
; the first two and the fourth letters of the name were correct, but where had the new third one come from? She even turned the piece of paper upside down and put on her most powerful reading glasses, but the word refused to change.
Mr Trumper did not say anything: he wanted to squeeze the last sweet drops of discomfort he could out of his wife, with minimal effort.
“But I wrote Todd! I found it in a book of famous film stars! Todd Lumbum it said!”
Mr Trumper put on his most pleasant, his most calm and his most soothing voice, the one reserved for those few, special moments of triumph over his wife.
“It seems not, my sweet, it definitely says Toad. Are you sure that the film star wasn’t called Toad Lumbum and that you just misread it? Shall we double-check in the book or the Internet? You are usually so good at spelling difficult words, so it would seem unlikely that you are wrong.”
Mrs Trumper, for once, was lost for words. She was tempted to rifle through the Name Box in search of the lost Todd, but thought better of it.
“So, let’s discuss Toad then,” suggested Mr Trumper in his most amiable Sunday-best voice. ”It’s unusual, I admit, even for a film star, but if that’s the one you want, I am very willing to listen, my sweet.”
Two “my sweets” in the space of two minutes should have alerted Mrs Trumper to the fact that something fishy was going on, but she was so annoyed, so frustrated, that Todd was about to meet the same fate as Petunia, Archibald and Earth, that she could not think clearly. Instead, she feebly retreated, claiming that she had put the name Toad in the box as a joke.
Mr Trumper went along with the story and laughed his loudest laugh in acknowledgement of the apparent joke: revenge.
“Would you like me to pick out the next name in the box?” asked Mr Trumper, keen to be of assistance to his wife.
“No, I can manage!” said Mrs Trumper, perhaps a little too sharply, perhaps a little too quickly, to disguise her annoyance.
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