How Not To Be a Boy - Robert Webb

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love flowers, don’t they? I know it’s unfashionable to say so, but if you can’t get a girl interested in cookery then you’re doing something wrong. It’s just that girls know, in their heart of hearts, that all they really need to do is sit around looking pretty. Ha! I’m joking, of course: some girls want to have a career and quite right too.’

      I didn’t have to witness any of it, my brothers being the tough guys. I got the other guys: the ones who taught me to whistle (Mark), taught me to ride my bike without stabilisers (Andrew), taught me to tie my shoelaces (Mark), took me to the pictures to see The Empire Strikes Back (Andrew), encouraged me to sing without embarrassment (Mark), showed me how to get a high score on Space Invaders (Andrew), taught me how to fire an air rifle safely (Mark), played with me at bailing out a sandcastle when the tide was coming in (Andrew), taught me how to dial a number on an analogue phone by tapping it out on the receiver (Mark), taught me to drive (Andrew), taught me how to laugh at myself (Andrew), taught me how to laugh at Mark (Andrew), gave me a kiss goodnight (Mark).

      Yes Marky, yes Andy – ‘spoilt’ is about right. Mum, Trudy and Nan spoiled me rotten.

      But those women had help, my dearest lads, my bruised old fruits. They had your help.

      *

      It’s bedtime. I’m eleven and she doesn’t read to me any more because I want to read on my own, at my own speed – reading backwards and forwards, skipping and rewinding, burrowing wormholes in time – putting present people next to distant people. It’s becoming a habit.

      And I’m just old enough to object to being ‘tucked in’. But Mum still comes into the bedroom to wish me goodnight and do some absent-minded clearing up. I think she likes it in here. She’s looking thoughtful and I wonder if I’m in trouble.

      ‘I talked to Mr Morgan today,’ Mum says.

      Oh blimey, this could be bad. But there was no Parents’ Evening tonight, was there? Sometimes she comes home from them inexplicably pleased with me; sometimes quite stern and telling me I need to ‘pull my socks up’.

      Socks. She’s got a nerve.

      She knows Mr Morgan quite well: when he was headmaster of a different school, Mum was his secretary. This gives me access to the priceless but scarcely credible knowledge of his first name: Jim. I’ve tried to share that around but no one believes me. Jim Morgan. I mean ‘Jimmy Hill! Chinny reck-ON!!’

      ‘He phoned me about your eleven-plus results.’

      Oh OK, so they spoke on the telephone. Hang on, my eleven-plus what?

      Everyone has been talking about the eleven-plus exam for a long time. I know that this result will make the difference between whether I go to Gartree or Grammar. The only thing is, I have no idea that I’ve already taken it.

      Every now and then Mrs Benson would hand out sheets of paper containing ‘tests’. They were weird but sometimes quite fun and mainly seemed to involve puzzles where you had to work out which shape wasn’t like the other shapes. All very peculiar, but better than doing maths or football. I suppose the tests had been past papers. And then one day, without mentioning it, she just handed out the present paper. Not necessarily a bad approach but a bit of a surprise all the same. So, I’ve taken my eleven-plus. Interesting news.

      ‘Mr Morgan says that you’re borderline.’

      ‘Borderline,’ I repeat, cluelessly.

      ‘He says that you’ll either do well at Gartree or struggle at the Grammar School.’

      This seems about right. Relative to the rest of the class, I’ve settled at the disappointing end of clever or the hopeful side of dim. Mrs Benson has devised four groups for spelling and maths. The sets are: ‘Felicity Bryan’, ‘Group A’, ‘Group B’ and ‘Brains of Britain’. Felicity is in a genius league of her own and gets bespoke questions. I quickly realise they’re never going to put me in Felicity Bryan, which is probably just as well. I very nearly cope in Group A, and Group B get slightly easier questions and then . . . oh dear. There are three boys who all live on the local caravan site. They’re quite often in trouble and they don’t smell too good. Mrs Benson is willing to encourage them where possible, but I’m not sure that, these days, giving them their own set and calling it ‘Brains of Britain’ would be considered best practice.

      She has her favourites, Mrs Benson, and I’ve lately become one of them. She’s been impressed with my stories in ‘Creative Writing’. Sometimes she gets me to read them out to the class, which is nerve-racking until I get to the funny bits. It’s not so bad when my classmates laugh. The more they laugh, the less frightened I am.

      ‘So . . . where am I going to go?’ I ask. Mum has finished her desultory tidying and sits on the side of the bed. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looks at me.

      ‘I thought I’d let you decide.’

      I see. Righto. Grammar or Gartree, Grammar or Gartree . . . tough one. Well, the Grammar boys wear burgundy blazers as opposed to Gartree’s black ones. Burgundy is surely closer to pink, so that’s a negative. And you hear about Grammar school people being called ‘snobs’. I’m not completely sure what this word means but it seems to have something to do with posh people being unpleasant. And although we live in a bungalow, not a caravan, we’re certainly not posh in our family, so maybe I don’t belong at the Grammar school. I scan my mother’s face, but for some reason she’s now looking down at her knees and breathing very calmly.

      There again, Mark and Andrew didn’t make Gartree seem like the kind of place I would much like. I’ve looked up the word ‘borstal’ in Derek’s one-volume encyclopaedia – the one he uses for the crossword – and I didn’t like what I found. Of course, girls go to both schools but . . . there’s something about Gartree that seems more ‘boy-like’. But I ought to want that, really, oughtn’t I? I ought to want to be with the tough boys.

      And wouldn’t it be better to do well there than to ‘struggle’? It feels like I do plenty of struggling as it is. And the Grammar school is a bus ride away, whereas I could just walk to Gartree. Bit of a conundrum all round really, isn’t it? I look at Mum again. What does she want me to do? What’s the right answer?

      ‘I think I’d rather struggle at the Grammar school,’ I say.

      Her dark hair has fallen in front of most of her face, but I can see her lips as they compress into a faint smile. They relax again and her neutral expression is back when she looks up and meets my gaze. Her head is incredibly still when she asks: ‘Sure?’

      I nod vigorously. ‘Yep. Sure.’

      ‘Good idea,’ she says and then breaks into a big smile. ‘Anyway, it might not be as difficult as all that if you work hard! Which I know you will.’

      Crikey, what have I got myself into?

      ‘Night night, God-bless, sweet dreams, see you in the morning.’

      ‘I ’ope so!’

      I think I said the right thing. I’ll know for sure if she puts a record on in the kitchen. Early Beatles or Cliff for nostalgia or general cheerfulness. Elkie Brooks for everything from vague whimsy to outright misery. Something up-tempo by the Bee Gees if she’s more excited or hopeful. For a moment there’s a heaviness to her movements as she pauses at the door. Then she glances back and gives me a playful wink.

      Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, then. The posh one. From down the hall, I hear the familiar disco introduction to ‘Stayin’ Alive’. I check the curtains for shadows and wonder what Dad will say about this. I’ll find out when I see him at Christmas.

      Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk

      I’m a woman’s man: no time to talk.

      ________________

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