often as she could, Janet escaped to Claire’s. It was the only place she could let down her guard. At home she had to be the one to cope and encourage her mother to rest. At Claire’s she could be a child again.
‘It will be worth it all when you have a new brother or sister, won’t it?’ Mary said one day.
Janet was a long time answering. She didn’t know how to be truthful and yet not shock this woman whose good opinion she craved.
‘Babies are lovely,’ she said at last. ‘They’re sweet and innocent, but really it’s better if they’re someone else’s and you can hold them and play with them and then give them back, like I used to be able to do with Auntie Breda’s Linda.’
‘Oh, surely …’
‘Mom doesn’t want this baby,’ Janet said.
‘Oh, I’m sure that’s nonsense, my dear,’ Mary said. ‘Sometimes grown-ups say things they don’t mean.’
Janet said nothing, but she knew she was right. She’d heard her mother and Auntie Breda talking about it.
‘You should have done something about it earlier,’ Auntie Breda had said. ‘I know people … qualified … you know.’
‘Ah, not that!’ her mother had cried, aghast. ‘God in heaven, Breda, what are you suggesting? You haven’t …?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Breda said. ‘I had a good time in the war, but I wasn’t a bleeding fool like some of them. I tell you, some of them in the munitions were wetting themselves to find they were expecting and their husbands overseas and been there a couple of years. Many were glad, I’ll tell you, to be able to get rid of it.’
‘Well, that’s hardly my position.’
‘No, it isn’t. But you can’t look me in the eye and say you want it.’
‘No, God forgive me, I don’t want it, but I couldn’t get rid of it. I dare say I’ll think enough of it when it comes.’
Poor little baby, Janet thought, no one wants it. Duncan when told just raised his eyes to the ceiling. Privately he said to Janet, ‘More bloody yelling and nappies all over the house.’ He leaned closer and added, ‘I didn’t think they did that sort of thing any more, did you?’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Oh God!’ he’d said. ‘You do know all about it, don’t you, sex and that?’
‘Course I do,’ Janet said, but she didn’t. She was totally ignorant of most sexual matters and was very vague about how babies materialised, but she wasn’t letting on to Duncan.
He sneered, ‘You don’t know anything, do you? And you so blooming clever.’
‘I do,’ Janet had cried. She was aware of the hot blush that had spread all over her face and down her neck, and she’d run from her brother.
Bert had called the baby another bloody millstone round his neck.
‘It’s as if he had nothing to do with it,’ Breda said angrily. ‘He should have thought, taken a few precautions.’
‘He’s only worried.’
‘And you’re not? And that’s another thing. He should do more. He can see the way you are.’
‘Our Janet’s very good.’
‘Janet’s a child. She has her own life and her future to think of.’
Too right, Janet thought. She was glad that Breda at least thought of her. It came to her with absolute clarity one night in bed that whatever sex the new baby was, it would have to share her small room. There was no more space to be found in the boys’ room, nor would there be much in hers. Bang went her plans for working at night in her bedroom. Even if she could have persuaded her parents to buy her a desk, there would now be nowhere to put it.
She would work in the kitchen, where her books would be at the mercy of her messy family. She would devise an essay, or work out algebraic equations, while stale cooking smells mingled with the aroma of the damp nappies strung across the kitchen on a line. She wanted to weep, and yet she knew she was being selfish. Duncan had never complained about sharing with the twins. He’d just accepted it and asked Bert to buy him a padlock so he could lock treasures away. Janet felt ashamed of herself, but she didn’t want this baby either.
She wasn’t losing sight of her goal, though. Underlying all the worry of the family she was aware that one day an insignificant brown envelope would drop through the letterbox and its contents would decide where she would spend the next few years of her life. Because whether she passed or not, she’d have to leave Paget Primary in July.
Claire had decided to put off the visits to Birmingham until the spring, when the weather would be better and her mother might be fully recovered and returned to her own home. Until then, they explored Claire’s extensive library. They’d read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Silas Marner and The Mayor of Casterbridge and two of Shakespeare’s plays. Janet never took the books home; she read them only at Claire’s. Sometimes Claire would read out loud, and occasionally Mary would.
After a chapter or two, Claire and Janet would discuss what they’d read. In the beginning, it was Claire asking the questions and Janet answering. But gradually, so gradually she had not been aware of it happening, Janet was starting to analyse what she read. She was able to talk about characterisation, the structure of the plots, how the tension was built up and the dialogue between the characters.
Sometimes, if Claire had marking to do or something to attend to, Janet would play chess or backgammon with the woman she called Auntie Mary. But what she really liked to do was talk to her about Claire, her Miss Wentworth.
She attempted to model herself on the woman who’d taken her so far. Mary realised what she was doing and told her of the fun Claire had had at school, and the gaggle of girlfriends always at the house. ‘They had boyfriends,’ she said, ‘but nothing serious.’ She hoped Claire would forgive that small lie.
‘They tended to go round in groups anyway,’ Mary said. ‘None of them wanted to be tied down, certainly not while they were at school.’
‘But after school?’ Janet persisted.
‘They were split up then. Most of Claire’s friends went on to university, but of course they went to different ones, or were on different courses. Universities, though, are the place to make new friends. She went to Reading University near London. I had an aunt living in London then, and Claire used to visit from time to time.’
‘Where did she live, Auntie Mary?’
‘In the university halls,’ Mary told her. ‘I was rather worried about her, but I needn’t have been. She said it was a marvellous experience, and it’s led to a job she enjoys and independence.’
‘Yes,’ breathed Janet.
‘And that’s probably the path your own life will take,’ Mary said.
‘Yes,’ said Janet again. ‘Yes, yes, yes, that’s what I want.’
Later
