How Not To Be a Boy - Robert Webb

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wanted a little girl, and I was the next best thing. Quiet, polite, with wide blue eyes and a mass of curly, white-blond hair, I was Little Lord Fauntleroy in a tank top. Mum asked if I wanted to start calling him ‘Daddy’ and I said ‘no, thank you’. She asked if I wanted to change my name from Webb to Limb and I said ‘no, thank you’. My name was Webb and that was that. Also, the offer of adoption was not extended to Mark and Andrew and I didn’t want a different name to my brothers. I remember it being said quite often, by Mum’s friends, and later by Mark and Andrew themselves: ‘There’s not many blokes who would have taken on three boys.’ That may be true, but that’s not quite what Derek did. He took on two boys, a wife that bowled him over and a placid little cherub that he doted on. He was loving and gentle and we all liked him. I didn’t mind his cuddles, but I did wish he’d give it a rest with the constant snogging.

      At the other end of the spectrum, granddad John had just called time on any snogging at all. I was about seven when one night at the little house at the Golf Club, I went to give him a kiss goodnight. He was watching The Two Ronnies with a cold meat supper on his lap. I leaned awkwardly across one of his massive legs and, overbalancing, ended up putting a hand in his stuffed chine (relax – it’s a food) while head-butting him in the belly.

      ‘Yeh, now you’re a grown man and all, Rob, we probably don’t need to bother with the goodnight kiss.’ It had all been getting a bit embarrassing for a while, so this came as a relief.

      ‘Righto.’

      ‘G’night, my boy.’

      ‘N’night, Dada.’

      As for my father, well . . . the vexed issue of physical affection was avoided altogether because I hardly ever saw him. By the time I was a student he would say hello and goodbye with a firm handshake. I was well into my thirties before I’d had enough of this handshake bullshit and gave him a hug.

      ‘Oh, come here, y’prat.’

      ‘Oh, righto, boy. We’re hugging now, are we?’

      ‘Yes, we are.’

      ‘Heh! Righto, mate.’ He was surprised and pleased.

      Oh. So it was that easy, was it? And it only took thirty-five years. Well done, everyone.

      Mark and Andrew also got a bit more huggy (with me, if not each other) as we got older and the Sovereign Importance of Early Homophobia had started to recede. But as boys, it didn’t happen, except once . . .

      I’m seven again and we’re at home in Coningsby. It’s one of those rare nights that Mum has persuaded Derek to take her out and early enough that they leave before my bedtime. This makes Mark – nearly fourteen – the man of the house, or rather, the teen of the bungalow, and Mum has asked him to tuck me in. I get my pyjamas on and get into bed.

      ‘Right then, Bobs, what’s the drill?’

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘What does Mummy normally do now?’

      Mark has that parental knack of taking the first-person perspective of the child – he doesn’t usually call Mum ‘Mummy’, but he knows that I do. I appreciate this. I tell him the routine: ‘She tucks the sheets and blankets in, but not the top thing, and then reads to me for a bit and then she says, “Goodnight, God-bless, sweet dreams and see you in the morning”, and then I say “I ’ope so!”, and then she gives me a kiss and leaves the door a bit open so I can see the light from the hall.’

      For some reason, a flicker of doubt crossed my brother’s face about halfway through this speech. I wonder if he’s got a headache or something.

      ‘Mummy reads to you?’

      ‘Yep.’

      He clicks his fingers and claps his hands together cheerfully. I must have been imagining things. It is, after all, impossible to hurt Mark because Mark is both The King and The Fonz.

      ‘Right then, I’ve not quite got time for a story, Bobs, but I’ll do the rest.’

      He does the tucking in and then, born actor that he is, leans in and softens his voice. ‘Night night, Robbie, God-bless, sweet dreams and see you in the morning.’

      ‘I ’ope so!’

      To my amazement and delight, he gives me a light kiss on the lips. Then he goes, leaving the door ajar as requested.

      *

      I adore both of my brothers. But it’s fair to say that, growing up, Mark was to me not only The King and The Fonz, but also Tucker Jenkins and Han Solo. Not forgetting the lead singer of Showaddywaddy, who I thought was cool. Dark, with brown eyes like Mum, rather than pale and fair like me and Andrew (and Dad, before the outdoor work and indoor booze turned his own complexion to mahogany), Mark seemed to me to be everything a boy was supposed to be.

      For a start, he had brown, straight hair. How was I supposed to compete with that? He played the lead in school plays and seemed to be in the first XI of everything. He was captain of real teams, not imaginary ones. He was in the Cadet Corps, he could play the guitar, he could draw and paint, he seemed – like The Fonz – to have a girlfriend for each day of the week.

      He and Andrew had been sent to Gartree Secondary Modern School (Lincolnshire – then and now – is one of those places that still does selection at eleven). And there, sadly, was where they both had to acquire a new skill: that of being ‘hard’. Andrew was pretty ‘hard’, but Mark was the ‘hardest’. Years later, there was a day at school – another school – where I was in serious danger of being bullied, by which I mean beaten up, by a couple of much older kids. A third intervened: ‘I wouldn’t – that’s Mark Webb’s little brother.’

      And that, I can tell you, did the trick. It was as if an attack on Little Lord Fauntleroy was an attack on The King himself. Mark’s writ reached down through school years and across towns and villages. My tormentors backed away as casually as they could manage. One of them, over his shoulder, offered an apology for the misunderstanding.

      No one with any sense enjoys being written about. I include myself and I’m doing the writing. But getting me wrong is my problem – with everyone else . . .

      A memoir is a story, and to turn a person into a character is an act of simplification, even if the author is your brother and the character is drawn with love. So I’ll be more than averagely careful here because, these days, Mark is one of the most respectable blokes you’re ever likely to meet. A proud father himself, he coaches the local kids’ football team and he’s the managing director of a large agricultural supplier. He’s always been funny but, in terms of straightness and probity, he makes most policemen look like Super Hans. He drives an Audi.

      But at the time, well . . . obviously you don’t get a reputation like that – the sort that scares the hell out of people when you’re not even in the room – without having demonstrated on well-timed occasions a capacity for sudden and overwhelming violence. A willingness to be more like ‘those others’ than ‘those others’.

      It’s incredible, the way we stereotype girls and boys. Do it with race or religion and people would rightly look at you as if you were out of your mind.

      Try this. Let me condense some of the stuff I’ve heard said about boys by parents, friends, grandparents and even the odd teacher. Wherever you see the word ‘boy’ or ‘boys’, substitute the word ‘black’ or ‘blacks’.

      ‘Leo, of course, is a typical boy. He can’t sit still. Yes, I know boys can enjoy reading but it doesn’t come naturally. You know where you

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