A Little Learning

by Anne Bennett

  Only Janet heard Patsy say quietly, ‘I don’t really care, boy or girl, as long as it’s healthy.’

  The comment jogged Janet’s memory, and two days later she went to see Claire. Perfect strangers opened the door. They were leasing the house, they told Janet. They knew nothing of the previous occupants as all transactions had been done through a letting agent, and any correspondence which had arrived at the house had been sent to them too.

  The agent couldn’t help Janet either. Mr and Mrs Carter had gone abroad, he’d said. He understood Mrs Carter had been ill. He was sure they would contact her in due course, and in the meantime she could write and he would forward any correspondence to Mrs Carter.

  Janet had to be satisfied with this and went home dejected. Claire’s disappearance had left a great void in her life. She hadn’t realised how much she had depended on her. She tried not to let her loneliness show and was annoyed with herself for being dissatisfied with her lot. Everyone had been pleased to see her home, even Duncan. Now finally demobbed, he was older, wiser, much nicer to know and working long hours in the garage with his partner Larry Sumners. With her family all around her, she was sure it was wrong to miss Claire, but miss her she did, though she tried to hide it.

  It was nearly time to return to university when she remembered Mary Wentworth. She had her address, and though she’d never visited her before, there was no reason why she shouldn’t.

  But Mary’s house was empty and a ‘Sold’ sign flapped in the wind. Neighbours either side couldn’t help. ‘She went so quick, you see,’ one said.

  ‘Went quick?’ Claire repeated, shocked. ‘You mean she’s dead?’

  ‘No, I mean went off – to see her daughter, so I heard. Not that she doesn’t look ill herself, never been right since the little girl died.’

  Janet remembered her the day after Chloe’s death and the day of the funeral, and knew what the man meant. No one knew anything really, but the neighbours were only too willing to speculate. ‘I heard she had bad nerves, the daughter,’ said one man.

  ‘She went mad, tried to do her hubby in,’ said another.

  ‘No, it was herself she tried to do away with,’ corrected his wife.

  ‘She had a breakdown after losing the kiddie,’ said the woman at the end of the row, and added, ‘Not that it wasn’t for the best, her dying like that. After all, she was only a halfwit. But when all’s said and done, she was the child’s mother.’

  Janet had thanked them and gone home and told no one where she’d been. She’d felt as if she’d been cast adrift with no one to talk to or confide in, and wondered how she’d manage without Claire. At first, after she returned to university for the spring term, things would happen and Janet would find herself wondering what Claire would think or say about them, and then she’d remember that she wasn’t part of her life any more. She wrote at first via the agent, but it was hard to write and receive no answers, so in the end she stopped. She often discussed with her flatmates why Claire had just left like that without telling anyone, and could only conclude that she’d been too upset to contact people. Perhaps she and Richard wanted time on their own. Lou and Shirley said that Janet shouldn’t try so hard to find her; they both said it was up to Claire to contact Janet when she felt able to do it, and they were unwilling to let Janet brood.

  Janet was very glad of her deep friendship with the other two girls, and the whole social scene at the college, that ensured no one had to be by themselves unless they chose to be. Not that the dates she had or the parties she attended could be called unqualified successes. Afterwards they would often sit, drink coffee and discuss the night. Lou and Shirley thought Janet’s attitude to men a scream. ‘What was wrong with Jim?’ Lou wanted to know after one party. ‘I saw you talking to him for hours.’

  ‘Hardly hours,’ Janet objected. ‘Ten minutes I’d say, if that. That’s just about my boredom level.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not fair, Janet. He’s very sought after. He’s in the first eleven, you know.’

  ‘Of course I know,’ Janet snapped. ‘He told me at least twenty times.’

  ‘Well, what about Clive, the studious one with the horn-rimmed glasses?’ Shirley asked.

  ‘And the groping hands,’ Janet added. ‘He held me so close, I could feel every bit of him against me, and his hands were everywhere. He even tried to undo my zip till I threatened I’d undo his manhood if he didn’t keep his hands to himself.’

  By this time Lou and Shirley were convulsed with laughter, and Janet went on, ‘And before you ask, the creep on the stairs, whose name I didn’t catch, thought fetching me a warm martini from the kitchen entitled him to put his hand up my skirt.’ She paused a moment and then added pensively, ‘I wonder if martini washes out of a white shirt.’

  ‘Oh, Janet, you didn’t throw it over him?’ squealed Shirley.

  ‘No, course not, I tried to bloody well drown him. What do you think? Honestly,’ Janet said, looking at her two friends, ‘some of these boys who think they are men aren’t much better than the Academy fodder our school used to draft in to dance with the senior girls.’

  Lou and Shirley were always falling hopelessly in love with one man or another, whereas Janet, while accepting dates from many people, refused to get emotionally involved with any. She held herself aloof, frightened to let anyone capture her heart again and smash it into a million pieces.

  There were endless late-night discussions in their room about sex and men, and the issue of how far to let chaps go was under constant deliberation and discussion. ‘You never get lessons in this sort of useful information at school, do you?’ Lou complained. ‘You learn a whole heap of crap you won’t use if you live to be a thousand, but everyone goes through this.’

  ‘Bit difficult to teach, though,’ Janet put in.

  ‘And men don’t go through it, do they?’ said Shirley. ‘I mean, they don’t worry about it like girls do. Classes for them would be easy, wouldn’t they? “Go for it, lads, and see if she’ll let you.” That’s all they’d need!’

  ‘Too right,’ Janet and Lou agreed, and though they were all amused, Lou noticed that Janet’s laugh was a little forced. Janet saw Lou’s eyes on her and forcing herself to speak lightly she suggested, ‘We could set up a pointer system and pin it up on the wall, and you could look at it going out and check it coming back in and see if you stuck to it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lou, ‘how about: “First date – kiss on lips, no tongue. Second date – kiss with tongue. Third date – fondling outside clothes.”’

  ‘Hang on,’ Shirley protested. ‘I’d be ninety-five at that rate before I let Stuart go the whole hog. I can hardly spend my youth and middle age fending him off because of a bloody chart on our wall.’

  ‘Well, what do you use now to fend him off?’ Lou asked.

  ‘Every bloody excuse I can think up,’ Shirley said, and the girls burst out laughing again.

  ‘You see the problems,’ Janet said.

  ‘Well, on Lou’s chart you’d have no fun at all, Janet,’ Shirley said. ‘Your dates never last that long.’

  ‘Maybe she has a secret lover back home,’ Lou suggested.

  ‘Some hopes,’ Janet said.

  ‘Have you ever had?’ Lou persisted. ‘Or is it a secret from your dark and murky past?’

  ‘You are a fool,’ Janet said, but Lou noticed she didn’t answer so she asked again: ‘Have you ever had a steady boyfriend, Janet?’

  ‘Of course,’ snapped Janet and tried to curb her irritability at Lou’s questioning. ‘I wasn’t a bloody nun.’

  ‘No?’ queried Lou sarcastically, with a wink at Shirley.

  The pillow caught her on the side of the head and she collapsed on the bed, writhing in mock agony as she cried, ‘I’m mortally wounded! Poor Michael will never have his wicked way with me now.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be the worst thing?’ Shirley said. ‘To die without doing it and never know what all the fuss was about.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a
ll about nothing anyway,’ Janet said, too quickly.

  ‘Maybe,’ Shirley agreed, ‘but it would be nice to decide for ourselves.’

  Lou was watching Janet’s face again and suddenly said, ‘You know something you’re not telling, Janet.’

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘Yes you do, you bloody dark horse.’

  Janet felt her hands growing clammy and knew she was overreacting. ‘Sod off, Lou,’ she said, but Lou wasn’t giving in so easily.

  ‘You’ve done it, haven’t you?’ she said.

  Shirley joined in. ‘God, Janet, have you actually gone all the way?’

  Janet should have parried the questions – she’d done it before – and the outburst was her own doing. ‘Piss off, the pair of you,’ she shrieked suddenly, furious with them both. ‘Get out of my bleeding life, can’t you, and get one of your own.’

  Lou and Shirley exchanged glances. Janet had never reacted that way before about anything. They knew they’d touched her on the raw, and that could only mean she had indeed gone all the way with a boy. Janet was ashamed of the outburst she’d unleashed against her friends and knew that her face and neck would be crimson with embarrassment. She took herself off to bed knowing she’d made a fatal error by blowing her top and aware that the subject had only been postponed, not cancelled altogether.

  However, it didn’t happen straight away, for the university was breaking up for the Easter holidays and Janet was glad to get away from her inquisitive flatmates for a few weeks.

  SEVENTEEN

  Unfortunately, that Easter holiday of 1955 was not the peaceful idyll Janet had promised herself. Despite her regular phone calls home, she had been sheltered a little from what was happening in the world, and especially from her father’s passionate interest in the Labour Party, for whom he’d worked tirelessly in their years of opposition while they waited to be elected to government.

  But many were happy being ruled by the Conservatives. There was almost full employment and the welfare state was being maintained, and both Janet and Bert knew that the government would probably go to the country fairly soon from this position of great strength.

  Churchill was eighty years old and knew he couldn’t lead his party through an election, for his health was failing. He stepped down, to be succeeded by Anthony Eden, which was no surprise to anyone. Eden, though upper-class, appealed to the middle-of-the-range voter, who had risen in prosperity since the war.

  ‘Damned poppycock,’ Bert said, ‘spouting all about what he’ll do for the ordinary man. What does a bleeding toff like him know anyway?’

  Janet felt sorry for Bert, for she knew the Labour Party was in disarray. The austere post-war years under Labour had been succeeded by four years of prosperity under the Conservatives.

  ‘It had to be that way, girl,’ Bert answered angrily when Janet expressed her opinion. ‘For God’s sake, the country was in a state. We’d just fought and won a bleeding war. There were all the returning forces men to find jobs for, and we were committed to starting up the health service.’

  ‘I know, Dad.’

  ‘We’d have been in a fine mess if we’d not had the family allowance when you were all growing up, and how in God’s name could we have afforded the doctor’s bills all these years?’

  ‘I was just saying …’ Janet began, but Bert was in full spate.

  ‘People have short memories. My own mother had to sell every damn thing so we could eat in the years of the bleeding slump when my father couldn’t find work. And when they became sick and my two brothers and sister as well there was no money for doctors, medicines or even any bleeding decent food, and TB took them all. Only my sister Maggie and me survived when we were sent to our grandparents at the start of the sickness.’

  Janet knew this and still thought it sad that her father had no one to call his own but a sister who had married young and moved to Scotland and who they only heard from at Christmas, when cards were exchanged. But it was all past and done with, as she tried to explain to her father.

  ‘The point is, Dad, life was hard for everyone then, not just one or two, and hard times were followed by six years of war, but people want to forget the bad days now and look forward. It’s no good reminding people what Labour did for them in the past; they want to know what Labour will do for them in the future.’

  However much Bert might bluster and grumble, the fact was that Janet was right. Most middle-income families wanted a car, a home of their own and the possibility of a grammar school place, leading to a white-collar job, for their children. These were Conservative ideals, while Labour, many thought, was in thrall to the unions. Labour played into Conservative hands by having a very public and damaging disagreement among themselves about nuclear disarmament in the run-up to the election.

  The Travers’ house was used again on election day, though Betty and Janet were at work in the sauce factory during the morning and early afternoon. Bert and his Labour friends had to fend for themselves for the day, and Bert had to also give an eye to the twins and Sally and Linda. Usually, on holidays from school, Sarah McClusky looked after the children, but Betty said her mother had her hands full tending her father and it wouldn’t hurt Bert to do a stint for once.

  The feverish excitement had died down by the time the women came home. The banner still fluttered across the front of the house, and loud-hailers continued to tour the streets, but much of the early impetus had gone from the day.

  The smell of fish and chips lingering in the kitchen and the stack of newspaper in the bin betrayed what they’d had for dinner, and there was a host of strange men in the living room. They huddled in groups and talked earnestly together, while Janet and her mother dispensed tea and biscuits.

  Janet thought you could almost smell defeat, and disappointed as she knew her father was, she couldn’t sympathise totally with his despondency. She knew that her grandfather was nearing the end of his life, and when the Conservative Party romped home victorious, it suddenly didn’t seem so important. She prepared to go back to university miserably aware that she might never see her grandad again.

  ‘Phone me Mom,’ she’d urged, and Betty didn’t insult her intelligence by pretending she didn’t understand her.

  ‘It won’t be long,’ she said, ‘and I really don’t know how Mom will cope without him.’

  ‘Maybe I could move in with Gran holiday times,’ suggested Janet. ‘After all, Sally’s cubicle is getting a little cramped now. She could do with her own room, and I’ll only be round the corner from you all.’

  ‘It would be a load off my mind, Janet,’ Betty admitted. ‘And it would buck her up to have you in the house, if you’re sure.’

  ‘Course I’m sure,’ Janet said, giving Betty a peck on the cheek and boarding the train. ‘See you in the summer, unless something happens sooner.’

  Lou and Shirley recognised that Janet was subdued over something and sympathised when she explained what it was. They’d learnt enough of the Travers family over their two terms together to understand what a close-knit unit they were.

  Not long after term began again, Lou and Shirley both had dates for the evening, and though both urged Janet to go with them, she refused.

  ‘Neither Michael nor Stuart would like me tagging along,’ she said.

  ‘Stuart will find a friend,’ Shirley promised airily.

  ‘I’m really not in the mood,’ said Janet. ‘Honestly, I’d be company for no one tonight.’

  She was still bent over the books she’d neglected over the Easter holidays when Shirley returned, earlier than Janet had expected and rather dishevelled.

  ‘All right?’ Janet asked her.

  Shirley nodded, but her eyes were very bright. ‘Fine,’ she answered shortly.

  ‘Good,’ Janet said, knowing she was anything but fine, but she didn’t contradict her. Instead she said, ‘Good job you didn’t meet Mrs McPhearson on the way up. Your blouse is fastened up wrong.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Shirley said, an
d blushed as she began attending to it, looking suddenly very young and vulnerable.

  She gave a shudder, and a convulsive sob escaped her, and Janet said, ‘What is it, Shirl?’

  ‘Oh,’ Shirley burst out, ‘I’m so miserable. Stuart is furious with me. He says I’m a tease, but truly I didn’t mean to be.’

  ‘What happened exactly?’

  ‘We were …’ Shirley began, ‘we were … you know, Janet.’

  ‘Necking?’

  ‘Well, yes, and I was letting him … well, we got a bit carried away. I mean,’ she said defensively, ‘I have been going out with him for ages.’

  Janet hid her wry smile. Shirley didn’t go out with anyone for ages. But she had to admit she’d been keen on Stuart the previous term and had gone out with him, and only him since coming back to college.

  ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me,’ Janet said. ‘Did you …’

  ‘No,’ Shirley broke in, ‘that’s the point. I wouldn’t and Stuart said it was bad for a man to be frustrated. He said he could damage himself.’

  Janet burst out laughing. ‘As my aunt would say, that’s bullshit,’ she said.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Course it is. It’s what men say to get you to do the things you’d rather not do.’

  ‘How do you know these things, Janet?’ Shirley asked. ‘I mean, how do people get to know? It’s not something you can ask your mother.’

  ‘God, no,’ Janet replied with feeling, ‘but I had an aunt who was quite good at telling me things.’

  ‘I’ve been told damn all,’ Shirley said, ‘and you’re the only one who I could ask. I mean, you’re the only one I know who’s done it, gone … like, all the way … you know. You have, haven’t you? You haven’t just touched it or anything?’

  And Janet, knowing denial was useless, nodded her head. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve done more than touch it, I have done it with someone.’

  ‘Did you like it?’ Shirley said, and went on before Janet had a chance to reply. ‘See, me and Lou talked about it, and decided that’s why you only go out on one or two dates with people and never get involved.’