A Little Learning. Anne Bennett
and had only spoken to him to be polite. All the time he’d been in the kitchen she’d remained bent over her books, with her pen poised, waiting to continue.
Bert banged the kitchen door behind him angrily. Janet had got under his skin, but there was nothing in her manner of speaking to him that he could tell her off for. It was just a feeling he had.
Mrs McClusky looked across at him and said, ‘You go slamming doors like that, I’ll have the two rapscallions awake again.’
Bert glared at her. He longed to tell her to shut her mouth, but didn’t dare. Instead he made his way out of the front door, deliberately banging it loudly behind him. He called out to Duncan to get himself indoors, in a voice that brooked no argument, then hurried through the cold, dark streets to the club, where he always found congenial company.
Janet heard her mother come in, and the murmur of voices between Mrs McClusky and her daughter. She heard her grandmother leave. In fact, so alive were her senses, she imagined she heard her mother filling the kettle, and the pop of the gas.
She lay and gazed at the ceiling in the smallest bedroom, which she had all to herself. She wondered if she would be able to work up here – that was, of course, if she was ever to get to the grammar school. She had a wardrobe and a chest of drawers in the room, and Mom had said she’d get her a mirror to sit on top of the chest so it would be like a dressing table. But really she needed a desk. She wondered if she could use it for homework if she cleared the top off. But it was rather high – at least it was for the plain wooden chair which was the only other thing in the room. Then there was no place to put her legs, they’d have to dangle to the sides. And then it could be very cold up there in the winter. She’d have to wear her overcoat to work up here. But she was seriously worried about working in the kitchen if she got into the grammar school and had the masses of homework Miss Wentworth had told her about.
Duncan came in every evening filthy dirty and starving hungry. Gran or Mom would make him wash at the sink and he’d splash water everywhere. Then he’d make great wads of bread and jam, smearing the table and leaving the sticky knife lying there. Or he’d make cocoa, stirring the sugar in so vigorously that the brown liquid slopped all over. Janet’s books had already had more than one lucky escape from Duncan’s attempts at preventing himself from starving to death.
Then there were the twins … Janet wasn’t aware how they did it, but their hands were nearly always sticky, and ranged from merely grubby to filthy. She shuddered at the thought of them handling her things. They were messier than Duncan and twice as clumsy, and what if they were to get hold of a crayon and scribble over her work? No, somehow, she decided as she closed her eyes, she had to work in her bedroom.
She was jerked suddenly awake and lay for a moment wondering what had roused her. The louder buzz of voices from the living room told her that her father was home; it was him coming in that had probably woken her. It had happened countless times before, and Janet had always turned over and gone to sleep again. She prepared to do this now. Her bed was warm and she was cosy, but she couldn’t rest.
She wondered if her mom would broach the subject of the eleven-plus to her father that night. Miss Wentworth had told her that the first exam was soon, and that she needed extra tuition. She knew her mother couldn’t wait indefinitely, and she also knew that Mom tended to tackle things straight away, head on.
She’d loved to have heard what they were saying, but although she could hear the drone of voices they weren’t distinct enough to make out the actual words. She wondered if she should get out of bed. She’d never listened at doors before, but this was her future they were discussing.
The cold made her gasp as she stood on the freezing linoleum in her bedroom, and her bed looked very welcoming. She turned her back on it, slipped a jumper over her head and old shoes on her feet and tiptoed out to huddle on the stairs.
Bert and Betty were having a cup of cocoa before bed. Bert had had enough to drink to make him view the world with a rosy glow, and his earlier bad mood was forgotten.
Betty was glad that her husband had reached that mellow point, because she had to get this business of Janet and the exam cleared up. Her daughter and the teacher were keen enough, and she wanted what was best for Janet. She knew that speed was essential. It was also essential for another reason, but no one knew about that but Breda.
‘Not again!’ she’d exclaimed as Betty whispered her suspicions to her sister that evening.
‘Ssh,’ Betty cautioned. They’d been in the canteen, and Breda’s voice carried.
‘Well, I mean, Bet, really,’ Breda said, though she lowered her voice considerably. ‘What you trying to do? Populate the whole of the bleeding British Isles by yourself?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Betty said. ‘It just happened.’
‘Don’t you be daft,’ Breda retorted. ‘It doesn’t just happen. You know what causes it, for God’s sake. Didn’t he take any precautions?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on, girl, you weren’t born yesterday. Don’t he wear a johnny? You know what they are.’
Betty couldn’t believe that such words were coming out of her younger sister’s mouth.
‘I … I’ve never … I couldn’t … Bert wouldn’t.’
Breda looked at her sister with pity. ‘You couldn’t even bring it up with him, could you?’
Miserably, Betty shook her head. ‘Then you have to get yourself seen to,’ Breda said. ‘As soon as this is over, I’m taking you up the clinic.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I thought you knew all about it, our Bet,’ Breda said in amazement. She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘It’s like you were born yesterday. Look,’ she went on, ‘there’s this little rubber thing that you shove up inside you and it protects you, you see.’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t,’ Betty said.
‘Course you could,’ Breda retorted. ‘I do. Anyway, Bet, the choice as I see it is, either you use this cap that your old man don’t have to know anything about, or you tell him to keep his bloody hands to himself when he reaches out in the dark.’
‘He was away six years,’ Betty said, somewhat stiffly.
‘I know that. So were countless others, like my Peter. Doesn’t give him the right to try and populate the universe single-handed,’ Breda said. ‘Anyway, our Linda’s one body’s work, and I certainly don’t want no more.’
Betty stared at her sister. Breda knew as well as Betty did that it was wrong to plan one’s family. The priests were telling you that all the time.
Neither of the sisters went to church very often now, but they’d been brought up as staunch Catholics and the Church’s teaching went deep. Betty had been a regular attender when she was younger, and even when she was first married, and Duncan had been down to go to the Abbey Roman Catholic school, just outside Erdington village, and a short bus ride away. When war broke out, however, and Betty joined up as an ARP warden, Duncan was enrolled in Paget Road, just round the corner from where they lived, and Janet followed him there.
The priest had called to see Betty after her prolonged absence from church had been noted, but by that time, Mrs McClusky was beginning to curse the God who had taken her son from her, and was short with the priest. He came back later, when Betty was at home. ‘I have to send the children to school somewhere,’ she cried when the priest appeared to judge her by his very silence, ‘and it’s too much for Mom fetching them from the Abbey.’
‘I understand it’s difficult for you at the moment,’ the priest said soothingly.
‘Do you?’ Betty burst out angrily, suddenly enraged that the priest was seemingly untouched by a war that had ripped their family apart. ‘Do you really? My husband’s overseas, one brother’s dead, the other two are still fighting. My parents