by Anne Bennett
Joseph Hayman was as Janet had imagined all Jews to be, before she met Ruth. He had dark skin and a large beard and moustache which did not quite hide his welcoming smile. His eyes were as gentle and kind as Ruth’s and his nose was large and a little hooked, but his handshake was firm. ‘Ruth will be with us shortly,’ he said. ‘These are my two sons, Aaron and Ben.’
They were both handsome boys, though Ben, the younger, was more so. He wore his curly hair longer than his brother’s so that it fell across his brow and curled at the nape of his neck. They were tall like their father and had his dark skin, but their noses were not so prominent and their eyes were merrier. Ben reminded Janet of a happier, less languid Byron. She knew he wanted to study medicine when he was older, because Ruth had told her, and now he smiled at her, gave a mock bow and said, ‘Janet Travers, the oracle herself. If you knew how often Ruth quotes you.’
‘Ben …’ Joseph chided, but Janet cut in.
‘Well, all I can say is, if that’s true she must be hard up.’
Ben burst out laughing, and the rest were all smiling at her too when the door opened and Leah Hayman came in on the arm of her granddaughter, Ruth. The smiles slid from everyone’s faces and Janet could feel tension in the air.
The older Mrs Hayman was dressed from head to toe in satiny black, with her grey hair dragged back from her face and secured in a bun. She was very wrinkled. Lines creased her sallow cheeks and her eyes, furrowed her brow and pulled at her mouth, which drooped in a disgruntled pout. Her dark eyes, as they raked Janet up and down, were as cold and penetrating as ice, and Janet sensed her disapproval and bristled.
Leah Hayman had not liked the sound of Ruth’s friend and had made her feelings clear, but they’d been disregarded. Ruth had told her that Janet lived on a council estate with a clutch of brothers and sisters, and now she’d met the girl she liked her even less. She was common, but no one else seemed to see it. She knew it was up to her to show she was not welcome in her house. ‘So,’ she said, ‘this is the friend?’
Janet was furious. She might as well have said ‘the dog’ or ‘the cat’, she thought, yet no one seemed surprised and Janet realised that she must talk like that all the time.
Bad-mannered old bitch, she thought, and she took a step forward and said firmly, ‘My name is Janet Travers and I’m a friend of Ruth’s. How do you do?’
The old lady’s thin lips pinched together – the girl’s accent grated on her nerves – and she did not answer her greeting. ‘Ruth tells me you won a scholarship to Whytecliff High School,’ she said instead.
‘That’s right,’ Janet replied, and to show the sour old lady she wasn’t ashamed of her family she added, ‘My parents couldn’t have sent me there any other way.’
‘Alas, this is also the case with us,’ Leah Hayman said. ‘Once in Russia we had much money, a large house and servants. We came to England and …’ She gave a despairing little shrug.
Joseph moved across the room, put his hand on the old woman’s shoulder and led her to a chair. ‘Now, Mother,’ he said, ‘this is many years ago.’
‘Many years, but the pain is as bitter,’ the older Mrs Hayman said. ‘Even here, we had once a factory and a future. Both were stolen and the wrongdoers go unpunished to this day.’
‘Come, Mother-in-law,’ Naomi said impatiently. ‘We have a guest. I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear this.’
Janet knew that all this was probably a continuing theme. The older Mrs Hayman almost enjoyed raking up things that had happened years ago, over and over, in case they might be forgotten. She’d soured her own life with bitterness, and Janet guessed that she regularly reminded those she lived with of her misfortunes.
‘I don’t think it’s very wise to dwell in the past all the time,’ Janet said. ‘It’s best to look forward.’
Clearly no one had ever spoken to Leah Hayman in that manner before. Her eyes glittered with dislike at the child who refused to sympathise with her. ‘You are not aware of the extent of my suffering,’ she said.
‘Maybe not,’ Janet agreed, ‘but with the war over and everything, the future has got to look brighter.’
‘The war is never over if you are a Jew,’ the old lady said.
‘Come, Mother, that is enough.’
‘Enough,’ the old lady snapped. ‘I lose two brothers to one war and a son to the next, maybe that is enough!’
Janet’s eyes met Ruth’s resigned ones. I told you what she’s like, they said, and suddenly Janet was impatient with the embittered old woman and the family who just allowed her to go on and on all the time. ‘You weren’t the only one to suffer,’ she put in. ‘My dad’s family was wiped out with TB, and I lost two uncles in the last war. Noel was the baby of the family. He lied about his age to enlist. It nearly broke Mom’s heart when he died, but we can’t mourn for ever and they wouldn’t want us to.’
There was a stunned silence, and then Leah Hayman snapped, ‘You are not a Jew, what do you know?’
‘Well, anyone can understand grief, even if they’re not Jewish,’ Janet said, ‘and I suppose if I’m any religion at all I’m Catholic. At least, that’s what I was christened and where I go sometimes.’
‘Catholic,’ spat the old lady contemptuously. ‘Idolisers, statue worshippers.’
Janet had heard this criticism levelled before. ‘My gran says they don’t worship statues,’ she said. ‘It just helps them focus their mind on who they’re praying to.’
‘You focus only on Almighty God.’
‘Well, maybe not everyone can do that,’ Janet said. ‘People should be able to choose.’
‘Choose! This isn’t an item we pick from the grocery shelves.’
‘I know that,’ Janet said, ‘but I really don’t see the problem. After all, it’s the same God, isn’t it?’
The old lady was outraged. She drew herself up in her chair, lifted her chin and said haughtily, ‘The Jewish religion is a way of life. One does not choose how to worship, but does it in the time-honoured way it’s always been done.’
‘But not everyone could agree with you,’ Janet said, ‘or everyone would be Jewish.’
The older woman looked as if that wouldn’t be a bad thing. She fastened her eyes on Janet and said, ‘The Jewish religion is the oldest in the world and was founded by Abraham …’
Janet was unimpressed. ‘It doesn’t mean it’s right, though, just because it’s always been done that way. After all, we used to send children up chimneys and down mines, but now we know that was wrong.’
‘Girl, you are impertinent.’
‘I’m not,’ Janet contradicted, and added angrily, ‘and my name is Janet. All I was trying to say was, just because a thing has been done for years in a particular way doesn’t necessarily mean it is right.’
‘If you were a Jewish child, you’d be taught good manners and respect for your elders,’ the old lady snapped.
What happened to you then? It was on the tip of Janet’s tongue, but she held it back. She knew that to say that would be stepping beyond what was acceptable behaviour, but really, the old lady was impossible.
‘I mean,’ Leah Hayman went on patronisingly and with a sneer in her voice, ‘what are you really but a common little guttersnipe?’
‘Mother, that is enough,’ Joseph snapped angrily. ‘I cannot allow you to insult guests in this manner.’
It was just as if he hadn’t spoken. The old lady looked across at her eldest grandson and said, ‘Aaron, your arm. I’m rather tired. I think I’ll go to my room.’
Janet caught her eye before the door closed and was rather startled by the loathing she saw there, and despite herself a shudder passed through her body.
‘Phew,’ exclaimed Ben in relief, and Joseph would have rebuked him but for the nervous laugh that escaped from Janet. She was grateful to him for lightening the tone. Ruth, Joseph and Naomi all smiled. Ben gave Janet a wink and said, ‘Can I book seats for round two?’ and Naomi said gently, ‘Ben, really!’
NINE
Janet’s accent had almost gone, except when she was with the family. Then she slipped into the local idiom without being aware of it. Other members of the family had changed too. As the years passed, Bert had found great pleasure in gardening. The garden had become a weed-filled wilderness while he’d been away in the war, and now he put all his spare time and energy into reclaiming it. He split it in half and left the lower part, nearest the house, just as lawns with a path up the middle. He laid flowerbeds at the sides and planted rambling roses to climb up the trellis fencing, and it was a pleasant place to sit in the summer.
At the top of the garden, he eventually dug up the Anderson shelter he described as a death trap, especially for the twins, and planted vegetables, and it had given him such satisfaction that he had taken on an allotment. An added advantage of this was the way Noel and Conner also grew to love gardening. Bert often took them with him now at weekends or in the long summer evenings, and he’d given them their own piece of ground to plant things they wanted to grow.
He was proud of his small sons, who toiled seemingly tirelessly beside him. Many of the allotment holders were amused by the two little boys who looked so alike. ‘They’re comical laddies right enough,’ the man in the neighbouring allotment said to Bert one day. ‘Damned if I can see how you tell them apart. They’re as alike as the peas in them there pods you’ve planted.’ The family couldn’t help but be impressed by their earnest pride when Bert pushed the two home in the wheelbarrow clutching sacks of potatoes and peas that they’d grown themselves. On Mothering Sunday Betty was moved to tears when they presented her with a bunch of daffodils that they had been tending with special care.
Life was a little easier now for everyone. Bert had been made up to foreman, with the resultant rise in his pay packet, and with Duncan working as well, money went further. However, Betty liked the independence of her own money and the company of the other women and she kept her job on, though she did toy with the idea of looking for a part-time day shift in the factory when Sally began school. The main reason for this decision was Duncan. She felt she should keep tabs on what he was doing at night, and with whom.
She couldn’t really pinpoint the moment when she realised there was something wrong with Duncan. He’d always run wild around the streets with lads on the estate, but at some point, when she was too fussed by one or another of his sisters or brothers, Duncan’s attitude changed. He was downright nasty and aggressive and he’d answered both her and Bert back in such an insolent manner that Bert had caught hold of his collar a number of times.
‘Don’t talk to me like that, my lad. You’re not too big for a bleeding good hiding.’
‘Oh,’ Duncan would answer cockily. ‘I suppose you’ll give it to me, will you?’
‘I just might,’ Bert would cry, but Betty knew he wouldn’t. He’d never been one to hit the children, leaving that job to her. Even when she felt the twins would benefit from a stroke of the strap or a stinging slap from him, he’d never wanted to administer punishment. He’d excused their wildness as high spirits.
For the younger ones it would seem this philosophy was right, for the twins adored their father and Sally was always ready to cuddle on to his knee. Even Janet, though he couldn’t really understand her passion for studying, he could talk to. Duncan, however, despite working in the factory almost alongside his father, was cheeky and insolent to him. Bert had thought they’d become mates, but now Duncan didn’t even want to go to Villa Park with him any more.
Janet had seen the change in the brother she’d once looked up to and been so close to. She knew that the estrangement between them had begun when she had stated she wanted to sit the eleven-plus, and she often felt guilty about it, wondering if it were her fault in some way. She often saw Duncan, and the gang of hooligans he hung around the cafés with, as she walked Ruth to the bus stop on the nights she came to have tea with the Travers family. She knew that the gang culture hinged on the motorbikes most of them had. Duncan yearned for one, but he knew that his parents, particularly Betty, would be dead set against it.
‘Blooming great death traps,’ they’d all heard her say often. ‘I’d not sleep nights if I had one of my own on those things.’
Later, when one of the women at work had a son killed on a motorbike and Patsy’s sister was injured riding pillion with her boyfriend, her dislike became unreasonable hatred. And Patsy herself, shocked and upset by her sister’s injuries, swore neither Liam nor the new toddler Patrick would be allowed anywhere near a motorbike.
Breda held the same view. ‘I wouldn’t allow our Linda to go out with one of those motorbike louts,’ she said. ‘Bringing up kids to have them chuck their bleeding lives away like they do, no thank you.’
‘Easy to say when they’re small,’ Betty said.
‘Have you asked your Duncan straight out if he wants a bike?’ she asked.
‘No, I haven’t. I’m not bringing the subject up,’ Betty retorted.
‘So you don’t really know anything,’ Breda said. ‘All this fretting might be for nothing.’
But it wasn’t. Janet had seen Duncan racing up and down the street on borrowed machines and had wondered. Then the evening after yet another blistering row with his father, she heard her brother’s feet pound up the stairs. They went past her door and into the room he shared with the twins, and the door slammed. A little later, she heard the resounding crash of the front door as her father left.
First she ran to the landing window to see her father striding down Paget Road towards the allotment, the twins scampering either side of him. They looked like a couple of playful puppies and she suppressed a smile. She’d have to fetch them back in an hour or two or they’d never get up for school, and then they’d turn into whining banshees, she knew from experience.
Janet stood on the landing, undecided. She should return to her books, and yet she knew she couldn’t settle with Duncan’s brooding presence in the next room. She doubted anything she said would make any difference, but she felt she had to try, so she knocked tentatively on the door. There was no reply, and when Janet gently opened it she was startled to see her brother lying face down on the bed.
‘What d’you want?’ he demanded angrily as he swung round to face her. ‘Come to spy and all, have you?’
Janet was stung by the injustice of Duncan’s accusation, but she could see the marks of tears on his cheeks and didn’t retaliate. Now his eyes were bright with fury and his face brick red, and she spoke quietly, hoping to diffuse the situation.
‘I’m not spying.’
‘Aren’t you? Well, it’s what you do when you go out with your prissy friend.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘You know what I mean,’ Duncan sneered. ‘When you walk dear Ruth to the bus stop, I know you’ve seen me down the caff. What I don’t know is why you haven’t run home to tell Mommy and Daddy about it.’
Janet had wondered if Duncan had ever spotted her and Ruth. He’d given no sign and neither of them had mentioned the encounters at home, but however upset he was, he wasn’t getting away with either mocking her friends or implying that she was a sneak.
‘For your information, Duncan Big-head Travers,’ she said, ‘Ruth’s bus stop happens to be just beyond the café. It isn’t my fault, nor hers, we didn’t position it. And what’s all this “dear Ruth” business? She’s done nothing to you. You nearly fell over yourself impressing her that first day, and you show off every time I bring her home.’
‘I do not.’
‘Y
ou do so,’ Janet retorted angrily, and added in a supercilious tone that she knew annoyed Duncan, ‘And as for your grubby little dealings with the hooligan element at the café, well, I’m not a bit interested in them. Mom and Dad, now that’s different, they’d be worried if they knew, though why they should be concerned about a drop-out like you beats me.’
‘Beats me too,’ Duncan said moodily, ‘because they’ve never done it before.’
‘What a thing to say, Duncan!’
‘Is it?’ Duncan snapped bitterly. ‘Everyone in this house is thought better of than me. Look how cute the twins are, and such a great help to their dad down at the allotment. I don’t remember him having that much time for me when I was that age.’
‘He was fighting a war, remember.’
‘I mean before that, he never bothered with me. You won’t remember, but I do.’
‘Oh, rubbish!’ Janet cried. ‘You’re making it up. Anyway, that was years ago. What’s it matter now?’
‘Oh, it won’t matter to you,’ Duncan said, ‘because you’re the brainbox of the family. No one ignores you, you even got special treatment from the teacher. And then there’s Mom and Dad, not a word about all the money spent on your poxy uniform that Mom had to go back to work to pay for. “Our Janet’s at the grammar school,”’ he mimicked. ‘What’s it mean anyway? Dad tells everyone in the bleeding factory.’
Janet was silent, knowing that Duncan had a point. Everything had been done for her, and her parents were over the top. Every time they went to the school, dressed to kill, as they put it, so as ‘not to let our Janet down’, they came back puffed up with importance. Janet looked at Duncan helplessly, wondering what she could say to make it better. Before she had time to think up a response, Duncan was off again.
‘And then there’s the bedroom,’ he snarled. ‘I’m the eldest, yet I have to share with the sodding twins. Not you, though, oh no. “Our Janet needs to study,”’ he continued, mimicking their parents again. ‘“Our Janet needs her space. Our Janet needs her own bedroom to take her friends to.” Doesn’t any bugger in this house have any idea I might have friends I want to come into my room? I hear you giggling with yours enough, but I have to meet mine on streets, and our Sally is pushed into a corner so that you have all the space you want.’