A Little Learning

by Anne Bennett

  Janet sighed impatiently. ‘I’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know,’ she snapped, ‘and the way you’re going on, half of Pype Hayes estate will know by now.’

  ‘Don’t you take that line with me!’ Bert bellowed. ‘Just because you’re at grammar school don’t give you the right to speak to your father like that.’

  ‘Dad, please,’ Janet pleaded, ‘you’ll have the twins and our Sally down in a minute.’

  ‘But he’s bought a motorbike, our Janet,’ Betty sobbed, and Janet knew how much her mother was affected when she added, ‘a great big bleeding motorbike.’

  ‘Yeah, a motorbike!’ Duncan shouted, too angry to care what he said. ‘I ain’t committed bleeding murder, you silly cow!’

  Bert cuffed Duncan on the head, sending him sprawling over the chair. ‘Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that, I’m telling you, or I’ll take my belt off to you!’

  Duncan stood rubbing his head. ‘Try it and I’ll knock your bleeding block off!’

  ‘You cheeky sod,’ Bert said, and made a grab for Duncan, but before he could reach him, Janet jumped between them. Bert knocked her flying instead and as she lay there stunned, Betty began crying afresh and trying to help Janet to her feet at the same time. Bert was saying he was sorry, he didn’t mean it, and it was that bugger Duncan’s fault. Duncan was threatening that if his father touched him again he’d bleeding well kill him. Janet, her head swimming, stood swaying in front of them both, nearly deafened by all the shouting.

  ‘Please shut up!’ she begged. ‘Please?’

  Betty was still emitting great hiccuping sobs and Bert, looking sheepish, stood silent, his breath rasping in his throat. Duncan, red-faced and angry, stared stonily at her.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said.

  ‘Shut up,’ Janet retorted. She turned to her parents and said, ‘Duncan’s bought a motorbike that you didn’t want him to have, but he used his own money to buy it and all the bloody shouting in the world is not going to change the fact that the bike is here.’

  ‘He’ll take it back,’ Bert declared, ‘tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll not!’

  ‘You will!’

  ‘I won’t!’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘You can’t make me do any bloody thing,’ Duncan said. ‘That’s what’s really eating you, isn’t it? I’m not a bleeding kid any more, to be pushed around. No one ever listens to me anyway. I’m just here to be shoved about to please others, like being sent out to work so old bleeding clever clogs could go to grammar school, and being yelled at for any damn thing. Conner and Noel are bloody awful, but not a damn word is ever said to them, and no one shouts at Sally. And as for Janet, she needs peace and quiet to study, but Duncan, he’s of no bleeding use at all, you can all take your temper out on him.’

  Bert and Betty were staring at Duncan in astonishment. Bert said uncertainly, almost incredulously, ‘Is that … is that really how you feel, son?’

  ‘Yes!’ Duncan snarled. ‘Because that’s how it is.’

  Janet left them talking and made everyone tea in the kitchen. When she took it through later, Bert – a quieter Bert – was saying, ‘I didn’t know you felt like this, lad. You should have said. I’m not a bleeding mind-reader.’

  ‘There wasn’t any point …’ Duncan began, but Bert’s attention was already elsewhere.

  ‘I can’t understand how you saved all the money for a bleeding big bike like that in the first place.’

  ‘I didn’t have to,’ Duncan explained. ‘I just had to save the deposit and I pay the rest weekly on the hire purchase scheme.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t like that way of doing things,’ Bert said, ‘tying yourself down like that. And anyway, don’t you have to have a guarantor if you’re under twenty-one?’

  Duncan went red and looked at the floor and mumbled that Mr Morland, his gaffer at work, had agreed to sponsor him.

  Bert went off a bit at that, but Janet had had enough. She was tired out and her head was aching where she’d banged it on the floor trying to get between her dad and her brother. She took her tea to bed.

  The next day, at work, Bert threatened to do over Mr Morland for putting a lad against his father. Morland came back at Bert and said he ought to be ashamed, there was him a trade unionist and fighting for men’s rights but putting his own son in some dead-end job when anyone with half a brain could see Duncan had the intelligence and aptitude for the apprenticeship scheme.

  Bert came home that evening quietly thoughtful, no longer angry, and he and Betty had a long talk. Duncan kept his bike, and for Christmas Bert and Betty and the grandparents put together to buy him a leather jacket. Brendan and Patsy gave him a crash helmet, Brendan saying he’d better protect his head, for his brain must be a bit on the small side anyway or he’d not have bought himself such a death trap. Janet bought him leather gauntlets that she got on staff discount from Littlewoods, and life settled down again, till the next time.

  TEN

  Duncan surprised everyone in the New Year by telling his parents he wanted to learn car mechanics. ‘I was talking to this bloke at work, name of John Summers,’ he said. ‘His son Larry has started his national service and he’s learning car mechanics in the army. I’ve really got interested in engines and stuff since I’ve had the bike.’

  ‘But what about the prospects, son?’ Bert said.

  ‘I should say they look good, Dad,’ Duncan said. ‘Everyone will have a car one day, and they’ll all need fixing now and again.’

  Janet was astounded to hear of Duncan’s ambition, and told Ruth next day on the way to school. ‘I honestly didn’t think he even looked ahead,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t usually think about the future, leaving tomorrow to look after itself. He said that cars will be for everyone one day.’

  ‘Ben says that too,’ Ruth said, ‘and Dad’s thinking of buying one.’

  ‘A car! Wow!’

  ‘Not much good in us getting a car even if we could afford one,’ Bert remarked when Janet told him what Ruth had said. ‘I couldn’t drive the bloody thing.’

  ‘You could learn,’ Janet told him.

  ‘Yes,’ Duncan agreed, ‘I learned to ride the bike easy enough.’

  ‘I could teach you,’ Betty put in. ‘I learnt in the war.’

  There was a short embarrassed silence and then Bert gave a forced, nervous laugh and said, ‘Don’t be daft, Bet, you was an ARP warden.’

  Betty’s face unnerved him. He’d assumed when she spoke she’d been joking, but there was no trace of humour in her face, or her voice. ‘And I drove a mobile canteen,’ Betty snapped. ‘I wrote and told you I was working on a mobile canteen. How d’you think the vans got where they were going? Think they were lowered from a barrage balloon, do you?’

  ‘No but …’

  ‘No but nothing,’ Betty said. ‘I didn’t drive it, well not at first I didn’t and then one day the driver Cynthia was injured and it was drive the bloody thing myself, or leave it there and have Hitler blow it to kingdom come, and I wasn’t having that.’

  ‘Mom,’ Janet said breathlessly, ‘I never knew.’

  ‘Course you didn’t,’ Betty said. ‘You were only nippers, and I had to watch what I told Ma, she worried so much, see. And,’ she added with a nod at Duncan, ‘when the vans went wrong, there were no army trained mechanics around for us then. We had to set to and fix our own, because if we didn’t they stayed broken, and that meant letting people down, people who relied on us being there.’

  Bert sat and regarded his wife with a wry smile. He hadn’t been pleased at first to hear that his wife knew how to drive, but he began to see the funny side of it. ‘You never said a dicky bird,’ he said. ‘I went on and on about my war and you said nothing.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Betty said, ‘and I don’t want to now. I was no saint and when you came back safe and sound, I just thanked my lucky stars, but if we ever are able to afford a car, I’ll teach you to drive it, that’s all I’m sayin
g.’

  ‘Well,’ Bert said proudly, ‘all these years married and you still surprise me at times.’ He suddenly put his arm around Betty and gave her a hug. It was not a thing he usually did, and never in front of the children, and Betty went red and wriggled in embarrassment, but Bert held her tight. ‘Here, kids,’ he said, ‘I just want to say, your mom’s a bleeding marvel – that’s what she is.’

  Janet’s eyes were misted as she went up the stairs. She told herself not to be so bloody soft, but she was glad there was harmony in the family, for her end of year exams were just weeks away and that was enough for her to worry about. Despite that, most of the talk in the school and among many families was the ‘Festival of Britain’ based in London and planned for May of that year.

  ‘Pity it’s not later on,’ Janet commented to Ruth.

  ‘Yes, it would be nice to get the exams out of the way,’ Ruth agreed. ‘Still, we can give ourselves a couple of days off.’

  ‘Mm, I suppose.’

  Miss Phelps urged all the girls to go. ‘Take pride in your country,’ she preached in assembly one day. ‘Find out what put the Great in Great Britain. Discover for yourselves that Britain is a world leader and has pioneered the way forward in things as diverse as the turbo-jet engine and penicillin. Don’t languish at home while history is being made in our capital city.’

  Bert Travers took the opposite viewpoint. ‘Eleven thousand pounds has been earmarked for a bloody festival that won’t benefit the average man in the street at all,’ he said angrily. ‘Thousands of people still live in sub-standard houses, hundreds in those prefab things that are little more than rabbit hutches, and yet the housing programme has slowed down. Unemployment continues to rise and prices in the shops go up daily. Boys are still fighting in Korea and the government says never mind all that, we’ll have a bleeding party.’ He gave a wry laugh and said, ‘I read somewhere that Nero, the Emperor of Rome, played his fiddle while the city burned down, and that’s what this looks like to me, a giant conga through the city of London while we pat ourselves on the back and say how bleeding marvellous we are. I know thousands who’ve lost everything and are struggling to survive, who’d ask what we’ve got to be so proud of.’

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ Janet said, exasperated, ‘don’t be such a grouch. People are tired of being reminded of the war all the time. Waste not, want not isn’t popular any more. People want a bit of fun, light-heartedness, even more now the Korean war is threatening to accelerate. I mean,’ she continued, ‘if anything this will create jobs, won’t it?’

  Bert had to concede that, but he was upset that the Labour government, that he had voted for, should waste money in such a way when so many people were still in need. ‘They won’t be permanent ones,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Who knows?’ Janet said. ‘Anyway, if we didn’t have this festival, we would still have people out of work, living in bad conditions, and the Korean war would still be with us. Just for a little while, people want to forget.’

  Bert had to agree with Janet in the end and was even prevailed upon to take the family on a day trip, if only, ‘to see what all the bloody fuss is about!’ Janet and Ruth caught the train to London from New Street like many others. People seemed to want to see and experience for themselves what Britain had to offer the world. Both girls couldn’t fail to be impressed and filled with patriotic pride as they looked at the new inventions and designs. The plans and models of buildings of the future astounded them, and the colours and striking patterns in furnishings and fabrics were dazzling after years and years of bare utility and functional drabness everywhere.

  The streets were thronged with people. Many were visitors, and from their accents plenty of those had come from America. A carnival atmosphere existed on the streets, and Janet smiled, remembering how her father had said it would be like a giant conga through the streets of London. He wasn’t far wrong, she thought.

  ‘Let’s make for Battersea Park,’ Ruth said. ‘There’s supposed to be lots going on there.’

  As they pushed their way forward, a man lurched into them. ‘Hey, I sure am sorry, ladies,’ he said in a lazy Texan drawl. ‘Are you okay?’

  Giggling, Janet and Ruth assured him they were fine. ‘D’you think it was like this in the war?’ Janet asked. ‘When the place was overrun with GIs?’

  ‘Ssh,’ Ruth cautioned. ‘Don’t let them hear you saying that, or we’ll be surrounded by boastful Yanks explaining how they won the war for us, and I’m busy being patriotic at the moment.’

  ‘Miss Phelps would be proud of you, my girl,’ Janet said in the plummy voice of their headmistress, and both girls collapsed in giggles.

  They had a wonderful time in the Pleasure Gardens at Battersea Park and went home tired and happy. They decided it had been a day well spent away from their studies.

  ‘After this it’s heads down until almost the end of June,’ Janet said, and Ruth groaned.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be worse next year.’

  ‘Times like this, I’m not sure I want to go to university.’

  ‘Yes, it’s going to be one hard slog,’ Janet said. Her dream of being another Miss Wentworth had never really faded, although it had taken a bashing when she was eleven. She’d been entered for eight ‘O’ levels which would be taken the following year and she knew it would be work, work and more work to get the grades she needed for a coveted university place.

  However, the new term wasn’t very old when one night Bert Travers came home in a foul temper and all because, ‘That bleeding stupid bugger Attlee has called a general election.’

  The Travers’ children were pressed into service delivering leaflets, there were endless talks and discussions on the radio and as the day grew nearer, posters appeared in windows, a large banner fluttered across the Travers’ house and loud-hailers toured the streets.

  Election day dawned miserable and cold, with rain falling. ‘Would be like this,’ Bert said gloomily. ‘Just the sort of day people want to stay at home in front of the fire.’

  Labour Party members were already arriving as Janet was leaving for school, crowding into the small house. Outside, children released from school for the day kicked tin cans on the road, or whooped up and down in some game or other. Three cars were parked outside the Travers’ door. They were needed later to transport the infirm and elderly to the polling station and chivvy the ‘can’t be bothered’s. Already, Janet noticed, inquisitive children had smeared the windows and dirtied the paintwork peeping inside the vehicles, for cars were still a rarity on the estate.

  The yell from one of the people inside the house made her jump and scattered the children from the cars, as it was intended to do. Janet smiled grimly and slung her bulging satchel higher up her shoulder. She was glad she was getting out of the way for the day. The rest of the family were in for a cold and draughty time, for the door was open to the elements all day. The kettle was constantly on the boil for tea to be made, and Betty was going mad collecting and washing cups, only to have them filled again almost immediately. People were dragging wet mud in and out of the living room, the lino was a mess and the kitchen floor was worse. The children were complaining that they were bored and hungry, and Bert was asking if Betty could knock up a few sandwiches for the workers, or perhaps something on toast, while the loud-hailers, urging people to vote for this party or that, were giving her a headache.

  And it was all for nothing. The Conservatives gained power and Winston Churchill became prime minister once more.

  ‘Bleeding stupid fools!’ Bert railed. ‘We’ll be back to the means test, see if we aren’t. And what good can that fool Churchill do? A doddering old bugger of seventy-six, and he’s already had one stroke.’

  ‘He was good in the war, Bert,’ Betty reminded her husband. ‘He went to a lot of the bombed out areas and spoke to the people and that. He went to the East End of London. It was in all the papers.’

  ‘Well, people have got short memories, Betty,’ Bert said, ‘bec
ause before the war he turned the troops on the miners. Fighting his own people then, as there was no Germans about to have a go at. All that bloody man is any good for is writing and delivering speeches. I mean, he never got his hands dirty, did he? Spewing on about “fighting on the beaches”, well, that cheered up all the blokes who’d left their dead mates behind in Dunkirk no end. Led to a massacre, we were, by people like Churchill.’

  Bert was like a bear with a sore head and the house was like one in mourning. The children kept their heads down.

  And then in February of the following year just as Janet and Ruth were digesting the results of their mock ‘O’ levels, the nation was shocked by the death of George VI. Betty was in tears at the loss of the gentle man, never meant to be king, who’d conquered a stammer to lead his country.

  ‘He could have moved out of London during the war if he’d wanted to,’ Betty said, and raised a tear-stained face to her daughter. ‘I mean, Buckingham Palace was hit, you know.’

  ‘Not badly, though, Mom.’

  ‘It could have been,’ Betty snapped. ‘Could have been bloody flattened with bombs flying around it all the time.’ She shook her head. ‘He was a great man all right, and a great king. Everybody loved him.’

  It seemed Betty was right. The whole country seemed to be depressed by the death of the gentle king who’d captured everyone’s hearts. Janet became irritated eventually.

  ‘Life’s got to go on, after all,’ she said to Ruth. ‘Thousands, even millions lost their lives just a few years ago and we go on and on about a king. I know it’s sad, but he’d hardly want us to mourn for ever and we have got a coronation to look forward to.’

  But long before the coronation Janet had her ‘O’ levels. While her mother still went on about the king whom everyone loved, Janet shut it all out and put her head down.

  Bert and Betty worried about the hours she put in, her grandparents urged her to take it a bit easier and Breda reminded her that ‘All work and no play makes Janet a dull girl.’ Janet ignored all the well meaning advice. It was done with the best intentions, but no one knew the pressure that she was under, because they hadn’t been there.