The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness by Graham Caveney

Author:Graham Caveney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

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‘I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became.’

Franz Kafka, Diaries

My mum tells me to preface – though she never says ‘preface’ – my remarks to teachers with a ‘please, sir’. I tell her, that’s a throwback to her own schooldays when teachers were omnipotent, although I never say ‘omnipotent’.

We sit and watch Billy Liar, me and my dad. It’s that terrifying moment towards the end, when Billy’s dad confronts him about the missing bloody calendars and the missing petty cash and that missing bloody monkey wrench. He tells him that he should be bloody grateful, that it’s a chance he never bloody well had. ‘And don’t we bloody know it,’ says Billy. Wilfred Pickles’ face is a masterclass, every one of its lines a lesson in the proximity between hope and frustration. He is desperate to reach out to his son but hasn’t the bloody language to bloody do it. He wears a cardigan over his shirt and tie, his one concession to this thing called ‘leisure’.

We watch it in silence but I can hear Jack’s conflicted loyalties. They come out every time he clears his throat, every time he flicks his ash into one of our green glass ashtrays. He’s on Billy’s side, obviously. But. Doesn’t the dad have a point? Isn’t that what this parenting lark is all about, hoping your kid will have a better life than you? And trying not to hate them if they don’t? Or not hate them if they do? Too bloody right it was.

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