While Eddie's parents are away in Scotland he stays and helps out at his auntie Vi's boarding house in New Brighton. Here he pals up with his cousin Ray, a charming and feckless teddy boy whose romantic antics and recourse to his mother's purse are an education to Eddie-but it's not all fun and games, and soon Ray is in trouble with the police. Eddie's sentimental education develops through his attraction to the troubled beauty Julia, who twists him round her little finger. As both become embroiled with the sinister joke shop, The Box of Tricks-and its under-the-counter packages-Eddie learns more about the needs of others than he bargained for.