by Bond, Nancy
She made her own bed, then Becky’s, then slowly straightened their room. It was a relief to see Becky trudging up the walk at 12:30 for lunch.
“It’s so quiet with everyone gone,” Jen exclaimed, as they made sandwiches.
“Do you mean you really missed us?” asked Becky with a grin.
“Well, we’ve been together so much for the past two weeks, the silence is unnatural!” Jen answered lightly.
Becky’s grin vanished. “You won’t be here much longer, though. Are you glad you’re leaving Friday?”
“It’ll be nice to get home and see Aunt Beth and Uncle Ted and everyone at school. Yes, I suppose I am glad.”
“Home,” echoed Becky. “Not sorry to leave us? I wish you weren’t going.”
“Of course, I’m sorry to be leaving you,” said Jen hastily, annoyed with herself for having blundered. “I’ll miss you very much.”
“Then stay! Oh, please, Jen!”
“But—” The fierce intensity in Becky’s voice and face caught Jen unprepared. She groped for the right words, startled. “But it’s all arranged. My ticket and the Sullivans to meet me in London.”
“I know. It’s just—I thought once you were here you’d want to stay. I thought you’d understand.”
“Understand what?” asked Jen more gently.
“That we need to be together.”
“Becky—”
“We do. I can’t explain it, but it’s important. Don’t you feel it at all?” Becky’s eyes searched her face.
“But it’s just not possible!” Jen protested, uncomfortable. “Even if I did want to stay, you know Dad wouldn’t hear of it. I’ve got to go back to school next week.”
“Talk to him,” urged Becky. “I don’t think he wants you to go either, but he won’t say it unless you do.”
“How do you know?” Jen demanded. Becky’s words upset her, and she was angry with herself for allowing them to. What business was it of theirs to question their father’s arrangements? He was responsible for making the decisions and for taking care of them all. They could protest, but they shouldn’t try to take responsibility on themselves. “I’d miss half a year of school—he’d never agree to that. And Aunt Beth would raise the roof.”
“But she couldn’t do anything, if Dad told her he wanted you here.”
“I don’t see why you think he does. It isn’t as if I could keep house for you. What difference does my being here really make?”
“A lot to me,” said Becky in a low voice.
Oh, damn, thought Jen. She really did care about Becky. Jen knew there must be times when her sister was lonely and unhappy and needed a family. At the moment, there wasn’t much of one for her.
“Anyway.” Becky looked up defiantly. “Why couldn’t you keep house? You could learn and I’d help. I’m sure Mrs. Davies could teach you, and it wouldn’t be that hard.”
“Scrubbing floors and doing laundry and cleaning up after you? Instead of going back to school?” Jen sounded incredulous. “And what about cooking? I don’t know how to cook!”
“You’ll have to learn sometime. Couldn’t you just talk to Dad? I don’t think it would be so awful and we could all be together.”
After Becky had gone back to school, Jen pulled on her jacket and walked down into Borth, ignoring the spits of rain. What was Becky doing to her, she asked herself furiously. What made Becky think she, Jen, had the power to change what was already decided? Why would she want to anyway? She would climb on the train Friday on schedule, and fly home from London the next day. She’d go back to being an ordinary high school student, with nothing more important to worry about than what to wear tomorrow and an exam on Thursday. It wasn’t her job to worry about the family, it was their father’s. Becky wasn’t fair to push her into a corner and ask her to do things she couldn’t.
But when Jen thought of her father she rememberd Christmas Eve. He had said, “I’m just not used to being responsible for the whole show.” For the first time, she won dered uncomfortably if that weren’t too much responsibility for one person alone to have to take. She saw them all locked into their private miseries: Peter, Becky, herself—and their father, too. They needed someone to pull them back into shape, make them part of each other again.
“I can’t do it!” she said aloud, desperately, and was startled at the sound of her own voice. The gulls drifting along the beach paid no attention. Jen sighed. How could she blame Becky? It was she herself who wanted to escape, to go back to Amherst and pretend life hadn’t changed, when she knew perfectly well it had.
She longed for her mother to talk to. She walked along the sea wall, her eyes fixed on the distant mountains, trying to imagine what she would say. It was Becky she heard, her mother’s voice speaking Becky’s words: “We should all be together.” Whether in Wales or Amherst, being together was the most important thing.
***
“What do you mean, you don’t think you want to go home Saturday?” David looked blankly at his daughter across the untidy desk. “I don’t understand.”
Jen cleared her throat nervously. “I just think it would be better for all of us if I stayed here with you.”
David frowned. “It’s all set for Friday—the Sullivans expect you, Beth and Ted are waiting in Amherst, your plane ticket’s been confirmed. Why on earth would you want to stay longer anyway? There isn’t anything for you to do, with Peter and Becky in school all day.”
“Well, actually,” Jen began, “I’ve been thinking. There’s a lot I could do. I could look after the house for you and I could learn to cook. I could even do some independent studying.”
“Mrs. Davies does the housekeeping,” said David impatiently. Then the full import of Jen’s words hit him. “Wait a minute, do I understand you, Jennifer? Are you proposing to stay on, not for just another week or two, but the rest of the year? Is that right?” He stared at his eldest daughter in genuine astonishment.
“Umm, I guess I am. Yes.”
“Good God in heaven! Why? What’s possessed you? You don’t honestly expect me to—what’s to become of your schooling, may I ask? And all of Beth’s careful plans?”
“May I sit down?”
“You might as well.” David sighed. “It sounds like a long evening.” He pushed aside his papers and leaned his elbows on the desk. “You’ve got my undivided attention.”
Jen took a deep breath. “I think it’s more important for me to be here with the rest of you than to go back to school. I think we need to be together. It sounded all right last year when you said I could stay in school at home and live with Aunt Beth and Uncle Ted. I thought it would work. But it didn’t. Last semester wasn’t very good. I did pretty badly.”
“Maybe you weren’t trying hard enough, Jen.” David sounded tired. “It isn’t easy adjusting, believe me I know. But we have to adjust, we haven’t been given a choice. If it’s bleak sometimes, we just have to stick with it and be willing to accept new responsibilities. The three of you have got to grow up a little faster than your mother and I would have liked.”
“But that’s just it. I want to stay so I can help, so I can take responsibility, Dad. Let me prove it. I can learn a lot, just from being here, that I wouldn’t get at all in school.”
“What? Housekeeping?” David was unbelieving. “Do you know what that amounts to, Jen? Your mother used to say it would drive her wild if she hadn’t had other things to do as well. It’s dull and repetitive and it has to be done. You can’t stop because it bores you. You may think it would be fun now, but in a couple of weeks, when you’d had enough—what happens then?”
“I’m not offering because I think housework sounds like fun!” Jen protested hotly. “I’m offering because I want to help.”
David pushed his hand back through his hair. “I’m sorry, Jen. I didn’t say it very well. What I mean is that it’s serious, hard work, and I have too much else to worry about right now. I appreciate your offer, I do, believe me, but it’s not practical.”<
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“You don’t think I can do it, do you?” Jen said, looking her father in the eye. “Well, I can and I’ll show you. Becky’ll help and I asked Mrs. Davies if she’d teach me about shopping and show me what has to be done in the house.”
There was a long, brittle silence. “And what,” said David at last, “will Mrs. Davies say when she finds out you’re after her job?”
Jen’s heart began to slam against her ribs. “Her daughter Susan is having a baby next month,” she said cautiously. “Mrs. Davies will be busy helping her. She’d be glad of the time off.”
David’s eyes rested on Jen’s face, troubled and thoughtful. “I only wish I knew,” he said softly. “Do you really want to stay? Or do you feel you ought to. If your mother—”
“Mother would have wanted us all in one place.” Jen interrupted with all the conviction she could muster.
“Would she? Your school bothers me most. I don’t know anything about schools for you here, and I don’t know that it makes sense for you to start one now anyway. You’d have to repeat a year.”
“You could tutor me,” Jen suggested tentatively.
“In all my spare time!” David shook his head. “It’s not the same as proper school.”
“No, but I’d have the experience of learning about another country by living in it. You told Becky and Peter that last summer, before you came.”
“Did I?” David allowed himself the merest hint of a smile. “And who’s going to explain to your aunt, Jennifer? She will not be pleased, I can tell you. I was irresponsible enough to have brought Becky and Peter here. I can just hear her, if I write to say you’re staying, too.”
“I could write and say it was my idea to stay.”
“You’d have to! I’m not going to take the blame!” He rubbed his chin. “And I’m not going to decide this now, either. We’ll talk about it in the morning when I’ve had a chance to think. If you want to change your mind you’re free to say so then.”
Jen could hardly believe he meant he was actually going to consider the idea. She had expected him to dismiss it altogether as nonsense.
“Have you got any other bombshells, or is that it for the evening?” David asked.
There was a tentative knock on the study door.
“Yes?”
“Me.” Becky stuck her head around it. She was in pajamas and bathrobe. “I just came to say good-night.”
David looked from Becky to Jen and back. “Did you?”
“What have you been talking about?”
“As if you didn’t know,” said Jen tartly.
“Were you really? And?”
“This sounds like a conspiracy,” declared David. “I should have known. And nothing. Nothing’s been decided and nothing will be tonight. It’s long past your bedtime, Becky.”
“Are you cross?”
David suddenly grinned. “No. Not yet, anyway. But if you don’t go to bed and let me think, I will be! Go on.” He pulled the papers across in front of him again. “Good night.”
“Good night!”
“What did I tell you?” whispered Becky, once the study door was closed. “He wants you to stay!”
“Shhh,” warned Jen sternly. “He didn’t say yes. Not yet. I can’t believe he’ll really let me do it, Becky. Don’t count on it.”
“No,” said Becky, “but you asked. I’m glad. Let’s go tell Peter.”
“There isn’t anything to tell,” objected Jen.
“No, but . . .”
Peter was in the kitchen, chin on hands, absorbed in a little brown book propped open on the table in front of him. He only dragged himself out of it reluctantly when Becky insisted and listened with annoying indifference to the news that Jen might be staying in Borth the rest of the year.
“I don’t see why you’d want to,” he said bluntly. “If you don’t even go to school, what is there? But it’s your funeral.”
“Thanks.” Jen glared at him. Peter didn’t rise; he went back to his reading.
Jen spent a restless night going over and over the day’s events, wondering how she could be so sure of herself one minute and so scared the next. She ought to have waited and given the matter more thought before going to David. She shouldn’t have let Becky push her so fast.
***
By morning Jen was convinced that her father would have decided to send her home. The whole idea was impossible. She could afford to feel regret now: too bad she wasn’t going to be allowed to help. After all she was fifteen and quite sensible, and her father ought to treat her as an adult. She was especially nice to Becky, especially confident with the stove, especially efficient with breakfast.
When they’d all finished, with nothing more said than, “Looks like rain, Peter, take your mac,” and, “Don’t be late after school, Becky,” Jen and David were left alone. Becky reluctantly followed Peter out the front door, hoping in vain for some sort of sign from her father.
“Well,” said David at last. “I don’t have to guess your Aunt Beth’s reaction to all this—we ought to be able to hear it in Borth with no trouble.”
Jen’s stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. He couldn’t. . .
David went on. “I spent most of last night thinking over what you said. I can’t agree with all of it, Jen, but you were quite right about one thing: your mother would have made us stay together. She would have thought that was more important than all the rest of it. I’m not certain that’s right, but if you’ve honestly made up your mind to stay, we’ll make the arrangements.”
Jen had no words. She couldn’t turn around and tell him she’d thought about it too and come to just the opposite conclusion. She felt panic.
“You understand that this has got to be a working agreement, Jen. It’s not going to be easy. I have a hunch there’s more to housekeeping than you think, but we all have to learn. And I don’t expect you to take over the whole business, of course. We’ll work out a plan with Mrs. Davies. And if you’re going to miss half a year of school, you can at least keep up with your reading. I’ll give you a list.” He hesitated. “Jen, I never did like leaving you in Amherst last fall, but Beth persuaded me it was right, and this may be all wrong. I’d like to have you here, but are you quite sure you want to stay?”
He was giving her a last chance. He was being honest with her, she knew he was, he did want her to stay. And she heard herself saying, “It’s only six months. Lots of kids miss school because they move or get sick or travel.”
David nodded. He seemed to be thinking hard. “We’ve had problems this year I’d never expected, all of us. I’m afraid I’ve gotten pretty wound up in my own, and I don’t know as much as I should about yours and Becky’s and Peter’s, that’s obvious.” He searched carefully for the right words. “I’ve hedged myself in with work, and I think I seem to you too busy to listen when you need me. But I’m not—I don’t want to be. If you’ve got something to say, just come and shout at me until I hear you. I don’t have lots of answers, Jen, but I’ll do my best for you. Please don’t count me out.”
“No,” said Jen in a strange, tight voice.
“I suppose the thing to remember is that if we’re together then none of us has to be alone. Pretty heavy stuff!” He smiled at her. “Cheer up—I almost think the worst part’ll be telling Beth and Ted. Beth’s opinion of me can’t get much lower! I’ll cable them and phone the Sullivans in London, and your first chore can be writing that letter.”
Jen was still at it when Becky burst in at noon. Rejected beginnings littered the kitchen table.
“I knew he’d agree! I knew he would! I told you he wants you to stay.” Becky beamed at her in delight.
“He’s going to expect a lot,” said Jen.
“That’s all right. I’ll help, I promised. I’m so glad!”
Jen had to smile at Becky’s enthusiasm.
After lunch they went down the hill together, Becky back to school, Jen to post the letter she’d finally finished to Aunt Beth. She hoped it sounded prop
erly grateful, apologetic, and reasonable, but she was afraid it mainly sounded awkward. She stuck it quickly through the slot in the post office, and it was gone. There was no way to get it back again.
Mrs. Davies’s reaction was down to earth and practical. “It’ll make a difference to me schedule, of course,” she said. “I shall have me hands full between you and Susan, shouldn’t wonder. Good thing it isn’t summer, too.”
Jen had enough sense to realize that she must stay on the better side of Mrs. Davies; she needed her help if she was going to succeed. More than once she only just saved herself from making an unfortunate remark, when Mrs. Davies criticized or pointed out jobs that had to be done.
It was agreed that Mrs. Davies would continue to supervise Bryn Celyn until Jen and David both decided it wasn’t necessary. Jen would learn shopping and the fundamentals of cooking, and Jen vowed to herself she’d learn as fast as she possibly could.
Mrs. Davies wanted no nonsense. Housekeeping was her vocation and she was a tyrant about square corners on beds and dust on mantels and sand on the kitchen floor. She made a tidy income from bed and breakfast at Ty Gwyn, and this was her business. It didn’t take Jen long to learn that the depressing part of housework was that it never stayed done. You never finished a job and then forgot it. You washed breakfast dishes, made beds, straightened the bathroom, swept the floors. Then the sink was full of lunch dishes, and someone had tracked mud in from the back garden or had taken a bath and left puddles of water on the floor. Work came undone almost as fast as you did it, and people only noticed what wasn’t done, not what was.
Jen’s nervousness wore off quickly. She suffered a morning of real homesickness the first Monday, when she suddenly realized she ought to be in Amherst, starting school again that very day, instead of changing beds and sorting laundry. Becky was as good as her promises, though. She could be counted on for help with anything, and her delight in having Jen still in Borth was flattering.
But Becky’s enthusiasm couldn’t quite make up for Peter’s aloofness. Jen was cross with herself because she let it bother her, but she couldn’t help it. Peter made it clear he didn’t care what she did, so long, he stated flatly, as she didn’t try to give him orders. She didn’t have the right to do that. She must leave him alone.