by Anne Bennett
‘Oh Duncan, I’m sorry,’ Janet said helplessly, not knowing what else to say.
‘Oh, you’re sorry,’ Duncan said sarcastically. ‘That’s all right then.’
‘Of course it isn’t all right,’ Janet burst out, ‘but what can I do? Why didn’t you say something before?’
‘And what would have been the point?’ Duncan asked witheringly. ‘Would you have shared with your little brothers and let me have your room?’
And Janet knew she wouldn’t, couldn’t have done that. She was silent, and Duncan cried triumphantly:
‘See, I’m right. You’d be pig sick if you’d been expected to share with anyone, but you’re all right. You’re the brainbox, Sally is the baby. The twins are as naughty as hell and Mom would have scalped me if I’d done half what they get up to, but they’re cute and little and Dad lets them do what they like. And when it comes to the brains in this family, there wasn’t much given to me.’
‘No, that is nonsense, you’re not stupid,’ Janet protested.
‘No?’ Duncan said. ‘Well, everyone’s worrying about you going to college and Noel and Conner getting into technical school and our Sally winning Brain of Britain, but Duncan’s all right in the factory.’
‘You wanted to work in the factory.’
‘Yeah, well … it isn’t as if I was ever told any different.’
‘You didn’t want any different,’ Janet cried. ‘Look how you went on when you thought you’d have to wait until you were fifteen.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Duncan cried. ‘But Christ, I was only a kid, nothing was explained.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Any damn thing,’ Duncan said. ‘D’you know what the gaffer said to me the other day?’ He didn’t wait for Janet’s reply, but continued angrily, ‘He said he didn’t understand why Dad didn’t put me in for an apprenticeship. He said our dad is always so keen on workers’ rights and stuff, him being a shop steward, and he wondered why he hadn’t done more for me. My job is dead end and boring and all I’ve got to look forward to is doing the same bloody thing till I’m sixty-five. The only rises will be small ones, unless someone dies and I get to be a foreman or something, probably when I’m too old to care, like Dad. Well, I got to thinking about what my gaffer said and I wondered why no one had thought of apprenticing me to learn to be an electrician, or a carpenter, or a plumber – any damn thing would be better than what I’m doing now – and I found out the reason.’
‘What?’
‘You!’ Duncan almost spat the word. ‘You again. Apprentices don’t get paid much and sometimes you have to pay the tradesman to take your kid on, and there was no spare money for me, was there? It was all going on brainy Janet. Then there was the cost of keeping me at school for another year, and when I started I wouldn’t earn enough to give Mom much for my keep. I reckon they talked about it and how much it would cost and decided any spare money had to go on you. You were the best bet to throw the money at. You were almost certain to make something of yourself. Me, well, I’m just miserable, dumb old Duncan and I’ll never amount to much. I can be thrown on the scrapheap.’
‘Oh, Duncan. It’s not true, really it isn’t,’ Janet cried, in great distress at the tone in her brother’s voice. ‘Mom and Dad wouldn’t do that. Tell them how you feel.’
‘And what good would it do?’ Duncan asked. ‘The die is cast now and the future set, but I’ll tell you what I mean to do and that is buy myself a motorbike. Mom and Dad can say what they like, but it’s my money and I’ll spend it how I like and on what I want. I’ll be seventeen in a few weeks and I’ll have the money saved by then.’
Janet stared at her brother. She realised that nothing she could say would change his mind, and really, she had no right to criticise him for how he wanted to spend his money. Later she confided in Ruth, who asked in genuine bewilderment, ‘Why do you worry so much about your family?’
‘Well, Duncan’s got a point,’ Janet said, and she related the whole of the exchange with her brother. Ruth was silent a minute and then said, ‘So, now you’re going to creep around on your stomach for the rest of your life, are you? You have to keep apologising for being born at all, and beating your breast in agony because you’ve had the misfortune of arriving in the world with a brain in your head?’
‘You are a fool,’ Janet said, flinging a cushion at Ruth’s head, but Ruth was right, she was feeling dead guilty. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ Ruth told her. ‘Let them sort it out.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Janet burst out in exasperation, ‘you’re the youngest in your family and have two brothers to take the heat off you.’
‘But you’re not the eldest,’ Ruth pointed out.
‘No, but I’m the …’ Janet stopped, appalled, aware that she’d nearly said ‘the cleverest’. Instead she said, ‘the one they expect to know everything.’
Janet was right in that. Her mother, in particular, expected her to have all the answers. ‘Have a word with your brother,’ she’d urge, or ‘Talk to the twins, can’t you?’
Why me? Janet often wanted to cry, and yet in another way she did feel responsible for her family. She knew she owed them a lot and looking out for them was her way of paying part of her debt. Despite Ruth’s words, she couldn’t help worrying about Duncan and what effect his behaviour and future actions would have on the family.
On the school front, the workload increased steadily for Ruth and Janet, whose friendship remained as strong as ever. Miss Phelps encouraged the older girls to take an interest in the world they would inherit, and Janet began listening to news and current affairs issues on the wireless. Ruth was particularly interested in hostilities in Korea, since Aaron, coming to the end of his university career, would soon be doing his national service.
‘I said something about it the other day to Dad,’ Janet told Claire one weekend. ‘We’d been listening together to the news broadcast and I asked Dad if he thought the Chinese would get involved, and … well, he was flabbergasted.’
‘That you knew anything about it?’
‘Yes, and that I’d want to know anything,’ Janet said. ‘I felt like an oddity, and Mom wasn’t pleased. I think she sees it as just another way that I’m sort of moving away from her.’ Claire said nothing, knowing that Janet hadn’t finished, and eventually the girl went on earnestly, ‘There’s a big wedge between myself and my family, Claire and the nearer I get to achieving my goal, the bigger it becomes. Sometimes,’ she mused, almost to herself, ‘I’m unhappy about it, especially about my mom, you know?’
Claire felt sorry for Janet. She’d guessed that she would feel a conflict of loyalties as her education progressed. ‘How are things with your father?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I can talk to Dad about the world situation,’ Janet told her, ‘and of course he’s passionate about the trade union movement and the Labour Party, but even with Dad there’s vast uncharted areas where I couldn’t talk to him without making him feel inferior.’
‘You’re not sorry you went for the examination, though, are you?’ Claire said. ‘I mean, it’s not a crime to want to better yourself. And even while your mother might regret the loss of her daughter in one sense, in another she wouldn’t have it any other way.’
‘No,’ Janet said, ‘no, I don’t think she would. And honestly, I think if you could have looked into the future and seen all this and told me when I was eleven, it would have made little difference to me at the time. I was tremendously single-minded, as I remember. I thought I could go charging through life without it affecting anyone else, really. It was rather an infantile way of looking at things, especially now that I see the effect Duncan has on the family, or even how Mom and Dad worry about Conner and Noel if they misbehave.’
‘Well,’ said Claire, ‘to quote a well-used phrase, no man is an island, and that’s more particularly so with families, I suppose because they care more for one another.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Life changes all the time as well,’ Claire said, ‘and though what you do might affect your parents and so on, not everything that has happened to them and will happen to them in the future can be laid at your door.’ She stopped and went on, ‘As for me, I’d hate to be one of those mothers who hover in their children’s shadow. Richard Carter told me it’s a particular problem with the parents of mentally handicapped children. They often almost resent their children’s independence, I suppose because they’ve made their children their life.’
‘And you?’
‘Well, I decided it was time for me to do something for myself,’ Claire said. ‘I’ve become fascinated with the Montessori teaching methods and apparatus that are used at Oakhurst. Some time ago I applied for the year-long course to become a directress, which is what they call the teachers at the Montessori Training Organisation. I wrote to them in London to ask if they had a branch in Birmingham. Fortunately they have, and with Chloe at the unit I’ll have all the time I need.’
‘What will you do then?’ Janet said. ‘Do you intend to go back to teaching?’
‘Well, yes, and I’ve always got my teaching certificate. Of course, a Montessori diploma is just another string to my bow. With it I can either work in a Montessori nursery school – which are beginning to gain in popularity – or if there is enough funding to provide money for the other unit, Ferndale, which is up but not yet running at the moment as funds are low, I may find work there. But,’ she said, and shrugged, ‘we have a number of events planned. Perhaps Ruth would like to lend a hand, if she’s at a loose end this summer?’
‘I’ll ask her for you,’ Janet promised. ‘She was really mad with her grandmother for not letting her take the holiday job in Littlewoods in Erdington with me. I was thrilled to get it. It will help me to get clothes for myself and buy books and things for school without keep asking Mom and Dad, and they say if it works out all right they’ll offer me a Saturday job afterwards. Then they asked me if I had a friend who might be looking for something, and I thought of Ruth straight away and went hightailing off to her house to tell her.’
‘But the news didn’t please them?’
‘No, well, at least not her grandmother, and she seems to be the one who matters in that house,’ said Janet.
‘She’ll find the summer long without you being around,’ Claire said.
Janet shrugged. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘she’ll have to stand up to that old tyrant, or have the whole of her life decided for her.’
‘It’s not always so simple,’ Claire said. ‘Ruth has been brought up all her life to respect and defer to her grandmother.’ She saw the impatient movement Janet made and said, ‘It’s easier for you, you’re far more independent altogether. Look at the way you stood up to me after you saw that distressing scene between David and myself, and you were only eleven.’
It was the first time Claire had referred to the intimate embrace since the day Janet had handed back the locket, and Janet flushed now with embarrassment.
‘I should never have seen it,’ she said, ‘and I wouldn’t have done if I’d allowed you any privacy at all. I was so puffed up with my own importance then. I thought I was the only person in your life.’ She looked at Claire and went on, ‘I didn’t think you even had another friend besides me, never mind a lover. How conceited I was to think I was all things to you and you had no need of anyone or anything else.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Claire said. ‘You were only a young girl and we had a unique and very special relationship. Still have, I hope?’
‘I should say so,’ Janet said fervently. She wondered if Claire still loved David Sunderland, and whether the Richard Carter she spoke of so often was important to her. She decided to ask no questions. This time, she decided, it really is none of my business.
The summer sped by and then it was September and a new term for everyone. Janet was soon slogging at her books again, and now that she was working all day Saturday as well, she was busier than ever.
November, the month of Duncan’s seventeenth birthday, was damp and dismal. Had Janet not been so tied up, she might have noticed the secret smile of satisfaction her brother had carried round for days. As it was, she was just pleased he’d been easier to deal with and that there’d been fewer rows than previously, and she hoped that he was settling down at last.
It was the evening of his birthday and he’d expressed thanks for the new shirts and jumpers from his parents and grandparents and the string tie from Breda. Sally shyly presented him with a bottle of aftershave and the twins gave him a tie pin, while Janet’s present was a shiny leather wallet. Betty had cooked a special meal and baked a cake. She’d changed to the day shift with Breda and was glad to be at home, to enjoy a meal with the family for once. Duncan had also seemed to enjoy it and appeared to like the gifts the family had given him. Janet was pleased it had gone off so well and Duncan had been so pleasant for once.
Bert, aware of the difference in Duncan’s demeanour over the last few days, and wishing to heal the rift between himself and his son, had suggested earlier that they might go for a pint to seal his birthday. Duncan said he’d rather go out with his mates. Tight-lipped but civil enough, for it was after all the lad’s birthday, Bert said that that was fine, some other time maybe, and Duncan muttered something that Janet hoped was agreement before he went out of the door.
She helped her mother clear away and get the little ones to bed before returning to her books. Her room was very chilly. The oil stove on loan from her grandparents took the intense cold away and stank to high heaven, but did little for the icy draughts beneath the door that chilled the air. Her desk, under the rattling window, was the coldest spot in the room in the winter, and Janet pulled a blanket off the bed to wrap around her and shivered beneath it.
The night was blustery and wet and the rain hammered on the windows in the dark night. Janet heard music on the wireless but no sounds of her dad preparing to go out. Obviously when Duncan had turned down his invitation he’d decided to stay in, she thought.
For some reason, she found it hard to concentrate. The drone of traffic from the main road seemed unaccountably loud that night. In the middle of a maths calculation, two cats suddenly screeched at each other in the garden underneath her window and sent the figures out of her head. Somewhere a baby began to cry, loud and plaintive; she heard voices raised in argument; a dog barked and was answered by another. She heard the man next door coughing and his wife telling him to give over as the wind began to gust around the house and splattered the rain on to the window.
Janet wondered what was the matter with her. These were the usual noises of the night that she’d heard many times before while hardly being aware of them. Why should they disturb her now?
This is ridiculous, she told herself sternly. Get a grip or you’ll flop your exams, and then what will you do? She bent over her maths books again.
The traffic noise had surely become louder. It wasn’t a drone any more either, but a single blast of noise, as if something had detached itself from the main body of traffic.
Janet felt icy threads of apprehension trickle through her as she ran to the landing window. She saw a powerful motorbike roaring up their road, its headlights slicing through the gloom of the night. In the brilliant shafts of light, Janet saw the raindrops dancing crazily. But it was the rider who held Janet’s attention, for astride the machine sat Duncan, and seeing her at the window, he lifted an arm to her in a defiant salute. Janet didn’t go back to her books. She stayed shivering on the freezing-cold landing and waited for the Third World War to begin.
She hadn’t long to wait, for just a moment or two after she’d spied Duncan, she heard her father bellowing and a howl of protest from her mother. She didn’t know whether her presence would help or hinder, she just knew she wouldn’t be able to cower upstairs and try and pretend she couldn’t hear Duncan and her parents ripping each other to pieces below.
She entered the roo
m to hear her father bawling that Duncan wasn’t too old for a bloody good hiding. Duncan was shouting back that he’d like to see him try it, while Betty, tears pouring unchecked down her cheeks, implored Janet to do something.
What? Janet thought to herself. Perform a bloody miracle?
‘Stop yelling at each other,’ she said as loudly as she could. It had no effect.
‘Behind my bloody back, that’s what I can’t get over. I forbade you to get one of those death traps and …’
‘Well, I got one anyway, so what?’
‘You cheeky sod,’ Bert said, aiming a swipe at the side of Duncan’s head and missing. ‘You could do as you’re damn well told for once in your life.’
‘Why should I?’
‘You’ve upset your mother, upset the whole bleeding lot of us,’ Bert snarled. ‘But then you’re good at that, aren’t you?’
Duncan sneered. ‘Not as good as you yet, but I’m learning.’
Fearing that Bert, purple in the face, would have a fit in a moment or two, Janet tried again, while her mother’s wails rose.
‘Do you mind?’
This time her cool voice cut through Bert’s blustering and Duncan’s sullenness, though her mother continued her gulping sobs. Duncan grabbed the advantage of his father being thrown off balance first.
‘I don’t have to do what you bleeding well tell me. I work all bloody day and tip my keep up and I can do what I like with the rest.’
‘While you’re under my roof …’ Bert thundered, but Duncan cut in before he’d finished.
‘Well, that can soon be remedied.’
‘Shut up!’ shouted Janet. ‘For God’s sake, you’ll have the kids awake.’
‘Oh, Janet …’ Betty began, wringing her hands together while tears dripped from her chin. Bert surveyed his recalcitrant son and then turned to Janet. His face was very red now, she noticed, and his breath was coming in short gasps as he said wearily, ‘D’you know what the sly bugger’s done?’