Читать книгу How Not To Be a Boy - Robert Webb - Страница 10

3

Boys Love Sport

‘The thing about football – the important thing about football – is that it is not just about football.’

Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

I pick my nose, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. There’s no point trying to deny it: these are girls’ socks. It’s Auntie Tru’s fault, I think, as I bitterly compress a bogey between upper and lower incisors . . . I mean, how could she do this to me?

Roger Baxter sits on the low school wall next to me. ‘Cheer up, Robert. I mean, y’right, they do look a bit like girls’ socks but . . .’ Roger is being kind but also smiling broadly as he looks down at the offending socks, ‘I must say, it’s not as bad as all that.’

I shake my head and mutter, ‘It’s the story of my life.’ I don’t really know what this phrase means but I’ve heard Mum say it quite often and it seems to convey the depth of my world-weary sophistication.

‘Bloody ’ell, Robert, you don’t ’alf come out with some grown-up things, you.’ I like the sound of this and make a mental note to come out with as many grown-up things as possible in future.

It’s Sports Day. I’ve been at the junior school for two years and I’m nine. I don’t play with the Guy-Buys any more, but I’ve tried to write stories about them. One of them is entitled ‘Fallen Hero’, in which the Captain of the Guy-Buys is isolated from his gang and being hunted through a forest by the baddies. Wounded and exhausted, our hero somehow makes it back to his base, whereupon the Guy-Buys see that he needs help. They charge out and slaughter the baddies without mercy. It’s a massacre. The End.

Why didn’t I say something in the clothes shop? Suddenly, the new rule about Sports Day PE kit is that everyone has to wear white socks. It fell to Trudy to take me to the shop in Coningsby. It’s the kind of place where you ask for something and then the shop assistant turns to one of the ten thousand little drawers behind her and hands over the right thing.

Except this is not the right thing. I look up sceptically as the socks are passed across the counter. They’re certainly white but . . . something is wrong. I’ve seen white socks before. They tended to rise no higher than the beginning of your shin and feature a couple of stripes at the top, like the ones John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors might wear. These are different: they are long and they are patterned. And not just a pattern that is somehow drawn on – no, they are made of pattern. If you hold one up to the light, there is as much hole as sock. These are . . . these are girls’ socks. The shop assistant tells Trudy the price and there’s a moment I’ve witnessed before when Trudy registers this as roughly three times the money she was expecting to pay. She rummages in her huge red purse with a polite smile and panicking fingers.

So it seems rude to moan to Tru about this. Instead, I wait until Mum and Tru have had the usual battle – the one where Mum tries to give Tru money for what she’s spent on me and Tru refuses to accept – and then with Trudy safely in Derek’s car, being taken back to the Golf Club, I whine at Mum for about half an hour. She tries several tacks but eventually says, ‘Oh for crying out loud, Robert, it doesn’t matter whether they’re girls’ socks or boys’ socks! Socks are socks!’

I’ve never heard such an outrageous lie in all my born days. I can see from her irritation that she regrets not getting the socks herself. Yes, she knows perfectly well that Auntie Trudy has fucked up. Fucked up big-time. Who on earth is she trying to kid? She might as well send me onto that playing field in a bloody tutu.

My plan is to run so fast that no one will notice the socks because my legs will be a blur of light. But this is not much of a plan. The whole school is already changed for Sports Day and I do some experimental running around the playground, trying to casually glance down at my legs in the hope that they have basically disappeared. But no, the socks remain, bulging like Day-Glo bagels now that I’ve rolled them down to my ankles. And anyway, it’s already too late. It’s not the parents lining the track on the playing field that will be the problem; it’s the other kids in the playground right now.

Especially the boys. The ones who love football. There they are, every Games lesson, lining up with their hands on their hips, listening to the Games teacher while frowning very seriously at the ground and spitting. They’re practising for the future when they’ll adopt the same pose when surveying the meat counter in a supermarket. Spitting is no longer required, but hands remain on hips and the new action is to walk backwards into a passing woman.

Matthew Tellis in particular is being a dick. I don’t like Tellis anyway – he cheats at marbles. ‘Look at Robert! Good socks, Robert! Ha-ha Haha-ha! My name’s Robert and I’m a girl!’ Some other boys are starting to circle. This is bad.

‘Shurrup, Tellis, y’wassock,’ says Roger, ‘it’s not his fault, it’s his auntie!’ Some of the others mutter ‘auntie’ and quietly scoff. But as ever, I’m emboldened by the intervention of a male with a leading part. Tellis doesn’t enjoy being chastised by Roger, and while he’s still recovering I go in for the kill. ‘Maybe they’d look better if my legs were covered in shit, Matthew.’

Roger explodes with laughter, as do the other boys. I’ve just referred to an incident which Matthew Tellis will never live down. A couple of weeks ago, he put his hand up and asked to go the toilet. Our teacher, Mrs Benson, must have been having a bad morning because her impatient response was, ‘If you’re not back by the time I’ve counted to twenty, you’re in big trouble.’

This turned out to be an unwise threat. Because Matthew, being an obedient boy, started his own countdown. He ran to the loo, pulled his pants down, pushed out half a turd, and then, knowing that he was running out of time, pulled his pants back up and returned to the classroom. The stink was enough to make James Ryan, who was sitting next to Matthew, throw up in a cloakroom. Mrs Benson, however, was not one to admit a mistake on this scale. It was time for PE.

Have you ever seen a nine-year-old boy who’s just shat himself doing star jumps in a white PE kit?

I have.

Poor, blameless Matthew had been getting away with it until now. It’s fragile, and you wouldn’t want to found a major religion on it, but there is a level of honour among schoolboys. There are some places we know we just shouldn’t go.

Unless, that is, one of us is cornered and has just been called a girl. Then all bets are off.

Tellis is doing his best to laugh off the shit comment, but he’s still looking at my socks and trying to think of something to come back with. Oh no you don’t.

‘I’ll not take clothes advice from Mr Shittylegs!’ I almost shout. I’m annoyed with myself because I think ‘fashion advice’ would have been better than ‘clothes advice’, but it won’t matter. The business end of the insult is obviously ‘Mr Shittylegs’ and that will do nicely. Tellis begins to stalk towards me and the look in his eyes isn’t so much one of anger as of fear. He knows that, as humiliating nicknames go, ‘Mr Shittylegs’ has the potential to – well, stick. I mean, it has legs. I mean, it could run and run. Oh dear. Sorry, everyone. And especially sorry, Matthew Tellis.

Roger is still laughing as he steps in front of me and blocks Matthew’s advance. The others are hooting and falling around, yelling ‘Mr Shittylegs’. Michael Key starts jogging on the spot, lifting his knees as high as he can and blowing a short, loud raspberry every time his feet hit the ground. ‘Pwpbpbpb . . . Pwpbpbpb . . .’ This is getting out of control – someone else thinks it’s time for a song: ‘Oh, they call me Mr Shittylegs. They call me Mr Shittylegs. Yes, they call me Mr Shittylegs. Coz my legs are covered in shiiiiiiiiit!’

Rather magnificently, Tellis just says ‘Yeah, yeah . . .’ and drifts away with a kind of resigned ennui, as if Magnum has just tolerated a group of kids taking the piss out of his moustache. He’ll be back.

I’m exhilarated. But now there’s a new problem. Lisa Proctor has been watching. Lisa used to sit next to me in class in our first year at this school, and although I made an outward show of discomfort, theatrically pushing her pencil case back to her if it strayed a millimetre onto my half of the desk, for example (you can’t be too careful about ‘girl fleas’), the truth was that I liked Lisa. In fact, when I thought no one was looking, Lisa and I got on really well.

She approaches and speaks to me in worryingly measured tones. ‘That wasn’t very nice, Robert. That wasn’t very nice at all. I didn’t think you were like the others, but you are, aren’t you?’

I don’t have anything to say.

‘You’re just like the others.’ The boys standing around do some obligatory snorting and eye-rolling. Lisa walks off with her friend Cathy.

I want to tell her that this was self-defence, that Tellis started it. And that, no, I’m not ‘just like the others’. Because the one thing I hate hearing more than ‘You’re not like the others’ is ‘You’re just like the others’. Confusingly, the others don’t seem to think that they’re the others either.

Guys, hands up who are ‘the others’? None of us are the others. Except for when we are. But that – please understand – that’s only because of the others. We’re the nice ones, you see. The problem is those others.

Anyway, I think to myself, it’s all very well for Lisa. What would happen if she had to wear boys’ socks? Nothing. At worst, she might get called a ‘tom-boy’. Big deal. Compared to being a girl that’s a promotion.

One of the more alarming novelties of junior school was the presence of male teachers. This included the Headmaster, Mr Morgan, a bald, strong-looking man with stern glasses. In the first assembly, he welcomed us new arrivals with an avuncular smile but then quickly stiffened up when it came to the School Rules.

‘Rules,’ he says in a projected baritone that could bounce off the back of a hall twice the size, ‘to be obeyed!’ Oh God, another hard case. Corporal punishment is still with us here in 1980, and it is rumoured that Mr Morgan uses a slipper. Another teacher, Mr Duke, on the other hand, keeps a yellow wooden stick on his desk which he has nicknamed ‘The Yellow Peril’. He seems amiable enough, Mr Duke, telling the class his ‘bad jokes’, although I’m nervous of his Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman jokes because the punchline always seems to be about Irish people being stupid. I think these jokes should be avoided since I consider them the main reason why the IRA on the news are so cross and keep blowing things up. I have no evidence that ‘The Yellow Peril’ is there for deterrent purposes only. For all I know, this guy could at any moment stop telling jokes and just come at me with a fucking stick.

If that happened, the Guy-Buys couldn’t protect me and neither could Roger. Mark, maybe. If my biggest brother Mark saw someone coming at me with a stick . . . yes, Mark would have an opinion about that.

*

Mark pulls up a bar stool and clears his throat. It’s 2009 again, the ‘Let’s Jump Up and Down in a Leotard for Comic Relief’ year, and I’m making a documentary about T. S. Eliot. The BBC have commissioned four vaguely familiar TV faces to make an hour-long programme each about their favourite poems, and how poetry in general has affected their lives. For my episode of My Life in Verse, I’ve chosen ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. I have a brilliant director/producer in Ian McMillan and we’re in the Angel pub in Horncastle, Lincolnshire.

This was the pub where you could reliably get a pint of ‘snakebite and black’ from about the age of sixteen onwards. This beverage, in case you’ve managed to avoid it, consists of half a pint of cider in the same glass as half a pint of lager, topped off with a squirt of blackcurrant cordial. The cordial is there for people who prefer their vomit purple. Needless to say, I didn’t like snakebite and black. I liked Bacardi and Coke – the alcoholic drink that most approximates to a bag of sweeties.

The programme has a biographical element and Mark has turned up to be interviewed about my childhood. Ian thanks him for helping me with the film and Mark says lightly, ‘No problem, I’d do anything for him.’ If anyone bats an eyelid at this, I’m not one of them. It’s obviously true. It’s Mark.

Ian opens with the question, ‘What was Rob like when he was growing up? I mean, if you had to think of one word, then . . .’

‘Spoilt.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Spoilt, I’d say.’ Mark glances at me. I’m looking at a beer mat and have raised two eyebrows in mock innocence. But this rings a loud bell. Ah yes, I think: that was the other one. Not just ‘Robert is shy’ but ‘Robert is spoilt’.

Nan and Trudy didn’t just cut the crusts off my sandwiches. They also skinned my sausages and took the pips out of grapes. From more distant relations, Mark and Andrew sometimes got joint Christmas cards, while I never had to share so much as an Easter egg, never mind a bedroom. It’s inexplicable to me now that as teenagers my brothers were still sleeping in the same room, while I had one to myself, but that’s the way it was.

And it feels like I got more treats. The Golf Club days I looked forward to the most were in the holidays when Nan, John and Tru all had a day off. That might mean a trip to the second-best place in the world (after Skegness) – Lincoln! This glittering metropolis was a forty-minute drive away in John’s white Granada and on warm days he would even wind the sun roof open. I would go around the Cash & Carry with him, trying to push the industrial-sized trolley through the transparent plastic curtains into the massive fridge room (the whole room was a fridge) and help (watch) John load up with breeze-block cuboids of cheddar and Red Leicester. Then we’d catch up with ‘the girls’ in Marks and Spencer and Trudy would take me to a bookshop and treat me to a Doctor Who paperback or two. Finally, saving the best till last, we would proceed like kings towards the unsurpassed glamour of lunch at the Berni Inn. A rump steak (fillet was for birthdays) for Little Lord Fauntleroy, followed by another attempt to sip Nan’s extraordinary coffee-with-the-cream-on-top without seriously scorching my whole mouth.

How did Mum feel about all this ‘spoiling’? She kept an eye on it, but an indulgent one. She would occasionally pick me up on a decline in my manners after a weekend at the Golf Club; or for helping myself to biscuits without asking. But that’s about it.

In any case, she saved my most outrageous spoiling for herself: from when I was about five up until seven years old, she would read me bedtime stories. With her other boys, she never had the time or freedom. Now she did. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Jungle Book and, my favourite because she did an accent from the American South for the characters, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I don’t know if I grew to love reading because it reminded me of time with Mum, or if I grew closer to Mum because she was the one who read me these great stories.

It doesn’t matter. We talk a lot about privilege these days and I’m always eager to try to acknowledge my own: an able-bodied white male who has never had any serious brush with physical or mental illness and who is (now) educated, middle class and paid well to do a succession of jobs that I really like. Part of the reluctance to type that last sentence (and I could have gone on) is a reasonable fear of seeming boastful. But the thing is, I’m not boasting because I’m not responsible for virtually any of it. Most of it was luck.

Privilege is just a posh word for luck. Maybe you remember Martin. Obviously, I do. As we saw, it’s more than likely that, for me to be born in the first place, someone else had to die. So I think I know a thing or two about luck. I could dedicate this book to Martin but that would be the point at which a quiet gratitude turns into posturing sentimentality. There were nights in my late teens, wandering home from the pub when I lived with Dad, when I would look up at the stupefying beauty of a cloudless Lincolnshire night sky and thank the stars . . . thank my luckiest star – Martin.

But then, I was pissed. Sentimentality is a real emotion, plus something unhealthy: in this case, five pints of Carling Black Label. The truth is I didn’t know the poor kid, and he had no intention of dying. I thank him anyway.

So – the thing or two I know about luck. Thing number one: you should do your best to notice luck so that you don’t accidentally take credit for it. Thing number two: luck is not your fault.

And when it comes to colossal strokes of good fortune (and there’s a whopper coming up at the end of this chapter), it starts here – it starts with having a family who loves you and someone who inspires you to read. Not because reading makes you smart, although it helps, but because to involve yourself in a story is to imagine what it’s like to be someone else. Generally, boys aren’t much encouraged to do that.

Susan and Lucy in grief for their dead king, the great lion; Charlie, eking out his year-long ration of Wonka Bar; Emil, alone on a train (before he meets his detectives), pricking his finger on the safety pin; the Doctor, losing his mind on Castrovalva; his companion Tegan, longing for home; Luke Skywalker, looking for adventure in a twin sunset – together with Mum or alone in my bedroom, stories were a way to reach distant places. But also, and without my noticing, a way to reach distant people. That’s where I really caught a break. I don’t mean I suddenly had miraculous powers of empathy; I just mean that empathy had a chance.

Martin and stories – my lucky stars, my twin suns.

*

I walk to junior school on my own. It’s only about ten minutes and Derek shows me a back way which avoids crossing most of the roads. This suits me because I now get to avoid Derek giving me one of his sloppy kisses when he drops me off. One day, one such car-based farewell was witnessed by a friend (Tellis again, in his pre-Shittylegs pomp). As Derek’s Pacer X departed, Matthew said, ‘I know who your girlfriend is, Robert – y’dad!!!’ This was annoying not just because I knew it was unusual (and shameful) for any dad to be physically affectionate, but also because Derek was not my dad. It never occurred to me to call him anything other than ‘Derek’, or sometimes ‘Des’.

That’s not exactly what he wanted. I said earlier that Mum had only two cards to play: her charm and beauty. That’s not quite right. When it came to our Derek, I think it’s safe to say that she had a third card: me.

Why? Because I was bloody gorgeous, that’s why.

Derek had always 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’.

‘Troubled’ is the word I’ve heard Mark use to describe himself as a teen and a young man. And ‘borstal’ is a term I’ve heard to describe Gartree School in the 1970s and 80s. Mark and Andrew became tough as a survival requirement of a lousy and uncaring system. They worked hard and did well, despite how little Gartree expected of them. They were only supposed to be boys.¹

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 are with a boy – they’re so straightforward, aren’t they? Emotionally uncomplicated. After all, boys will be boys.’

Are we having fun yet? Try this for girls. Substitute Muslim or Muslims.

‘Girls 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.

________________

¹ See Rebecca Asher on the low expectations placed upon schoolboys in Chapter 2 of her excellent Man Up (Harvill Secker, 2016). Generally, this is also a class problem, a race problem and a special educational needs problem. Not much of that is relevant to Gartree, however, since they were all white, all working class and special educational needs hadn’t been invented. They still thought dyslexia was caused by witches.