Superman, Batman, Iron Man: can a little boy be rescued from their vice-like grip?
I shouldn’t be surprised, really, because I gave him a hero’s name. Names are a kind of parental prayer, and I wanted him to be kind and strong. So I gave him a king’s name (which I am keeping to myself) – not George, something better and more optimistic (none of the Georges was happy), and not Henry, which preens too much – and hoped for the best.
I hoped for other things, too, based on my ideal (it can only be an ideal: I was brought up with a sister) of what a happy boy should be. It is vaguely prewar, this ideal – an urchin with a conker in his pocket – and inspired by what made me happy as a child, which was being dirty and outdoors, or reading books and daydreaming about access to unlimited amounts of animal fat. It’s all a bit Enid Blyton, but I can’t do anything about that now; bucolic myths die hard in urban Jews.
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