The Way We Were

by Marie Joseph

  I suddenly remembered her as she’d been the night before – how she’d run along the damp sands, shouting defiance to the wind, and pretending all the time she didn’t care.

  I tried again to convince Jan I was right. An abortion was something she’d take in her stride. It would be awful, of course, but she’d get over it, and no one would ever need to know. Roger could go up to university, and my parents could go on being proud of him . . .

  ‘If you are pregnant, you’ll have to have an abortion,’ I said insistently.

  ‘I am, and I won’t,’ Jan said obstinately. ‘I’ve thought and thought about it, but I couldn’t . . . It would be wrong!’

  ‘You’re just being silly,’ I hissed, as my mother closed the bathroom door and went into her own room.

  ‘I won’t do it,’ she said flatly. ‘Now go to sleep, Ginny, and leave me to work it out in my own way. I wish I hadn’t told you now, but I had to tell someone, and now you must swear that you won’t tell. If you do, I’ll –’

  ‘I know,’ I said wearily, ‘but you don’t know what you’re saying. Where could you go? And what would you do with the baby? And what would you tell Roger? You can’t just disappear.’

  ‘I can and I will,’ said Jan.

  I heard her turn over in bed, and I could see that she’d pulled the sheet over her head. ‘Good night, Ginny, there’s no point in talking about it any more . . .’

  And, incredibly, it wasn’t long before I heard the soft sound of her regular breathing. She was fast asleep.

  But I lay there, wide awake, thinking about the girls at school who’d got into trouble, and I remembered how Jan and I had called them silly fools. We’d always said that we weren’t prudes, and how, if we fell in love, we’d be sure not to take any silly risks.

  We’d discussed it at great length, but my mother had been so right. It was just talk, talk, talk – and nothing to do with reality at all . . .

  My head throbbed, and I was very, very hot. I could feel my nightdress clinging to me, and I knew I couldn’t lie there, trying to sleep – waiting for oblivion that wouldn’t come.

  So I eased myself quietly out of bed and, grabbing my dressing gown from the chair, crept quietly downstairs, remembering to miss the third stair, which squeaked.

  The door of the sitting room was open slightly, and I prayed that Jamus, lying on the floor in his sleeping bag, wouldn’t hear me. However, I’d been in the kitchen only a minute or so before he came in rubbing his bristly chin, still wearing his crumpled jeans and black shirt, and blinking in the light.

  ‘Why the nocturnal prowling?’ He grinned.

  I started to say that it wasn’t all that late, then I looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was almost two o’clock. I must have lain in bed worrying, thinking and coming to no conclusion for over two hours.

  He sat down at the kitchen table, and I thought how terrible he looked. I wondered how I’d ever enjoyed his kisses. Suddenly, I thought about Roger, asleep in his bed upstairs, with his op-art pictures on the walls, and his desk cluttered with books.

  ‘Something eating you, Ginny?’ Jamus yawned. ‘How about a mug of coffee? Come on, put the kettle on,’ he urged.

  As I lit the gas under the kettle, I had a longing to talk to him, to tell him about Jan and Roger. Instinctively, I knew he’d understand.

  But there are some secrets you tell – and some you can’t. I had the stupid, idiotic feeling that this was one of the kind that, if ignored, might go away on its own. And anyway, as I got two mugs out of the cupboard, Jamus made a statement that made it absolutely impossible for me to confide in him.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been lying there thinking how much I envy your brother Roger . . .’

  One thing about Jamus was that he never waited for a comment, not when he was talking on his pet subject – himself.

  ‘There he is, all his plans cut and dried,’ he went on. ‘Three years at university. A First, naturally, then a job working up to ten thousand a year.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ I giggled, putting his mug of coffee down in front of him. ‘University graduates don’t earn that much. What was it we read in that article in one of the Sunday newspapers? They come from university, with top-flight degrees, knowing nothing about life, but expecting to land plum jobs.’

  ‘Load of old codswallop,’ said Jamus, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘Charming,’ I retorted, but I was thinking that already Jamus knew more about life than Roger. For all Jamus’s talk and big ideas, I didn’t think he’d ever get himself into the mess that Roger was in now.

  Jamus was frowning, and I knew that I was in for a spate of Jamus analysing Jamus. Though I’d heard it all before, I sat down at the kitchen table opposite him, prepared to listen, because anything was preferable to lying there upstairs with my thoughts whirling round and round.

  ‘After four years at college, what am I?’ he demanded, banging the table with a clenched fist. ‘What sort of job could I get? Tell me that?’

  I didn’t bother, because I knew the last thing he wanted to do was to listen to my ideas.

  ‘A nine-to-five stint as a commercial artist. Prostituting my art, as they say. Or a more lucrative job – say in advertising then working freelance in my spare time. Magazine illustrating, picking the essential points out of some damn silly story, then sweating my guts out over a drawing that’s looked at one day, then used to light the fire with the day after. That’s why I envy old Roger – and you, my sweet Virginia.’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’ I snapped.

  He grinned. ‘I give you three years working as a secretary, maybe four, then you’ll marry some tough executive and settle down to wedded bliss, with a life of intimate little dinner parties and raising kids.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said sarcastically, stung by his sneering tone.

  ‘And what about Jan?’ I asked before I culd stop myself. ‘What cosy niche have you slotted her into?’

  ‘Ah, Jan,’ he sighed. ‘Now she’s different. She’s like me. What my dear, old, well-remembered Grandma would have called unstable.’

  ‘You lived with your grandmother after your parents died, didn’t you?’ I asked softly, and he raised one black eyebrow at me.

  ‘Don’t spare me, kind little Ginny. You know that my mother never married. I’m illegitimate. With a father living somewhere from whom I’ve inherited such artistic talent as I have, no doubt. All I could get out of Grandmama was that he was the “arty” type, and therefore quite beyond her comprehension.’

  ‘I don’t see why Jan’s parents getting a divorce should have made Jan what you just said she is,’ I said, and he gave a deep chuckle.

  ‘It’s what comes before the divorce that counts, love. Not the court case, not the final separation, but the years that go before. The years when a child has to live with a marriage cracking up around her – the tension, the rows, the unhappiness. Divorces don’t happen overnight, Ginny, they’re worked up to.’

  ‘Leaving their mark on the children,’ I added quietly.

  ‘Exactly, love. Jan has never felt secure, therefore she doesn’t expect security. That’s why she likes coming here. That’s way I like coming here, and being part of a real family with love abounding. Why do you think your mother’s put up with us all these weeks? It’s because she loves you and Roger. And because, in her infinite wisdom, she knows that the only way to keep you and Roger safe in the bosom of the family is to welcome your friends – however unsavoury those friends may be.’

  ‘She’s never said . . .’ I began, bewildered. But Jamus was no fool.

  ‘I can almost hear the long talks she’d have had if your father had been home . . . That dreadful boy with his long hair, and that girl . . . She’s a bad influence on Ginny, but what can we do? We must make them welcome, and hope that continually seeing them against their own home background will show up just how unsuitable they are.’

  I couldn’t deny i
t. It was almost word for word the kind of conversation I knew my parents sometimes had about us.

  ‘Mother quite likes you,’ I said, not altogether truthfully, trying hard to think of one complimentary remark she’d made about him.

  ‘He’ll grow up one day, no doubt,’ was what she’d said, but how could I tell Jamus that; Jamus who knew almost everything, and even had theories about the things he didn’t know?

  ‘Are you really going to chuck up your training and go to Italy?’ I asked, changing the subject, and Jamus tilted his head back to drain his coffee mug, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Yes,’ he said decisively.

  ‘For how long?’ I asked, and suddenly, for the first time, I knew how much I was going to miss him. I’d grown used to seeing his tall, gangling figure following Roger around; I’d grown used to his teasing, and in a strange way, I’d become dependent on him. Mother had said that it was Roger who kept Jamus’s feet as firmly on the ground as they’d ever be, but now, sitting there, with the house quiet all around us, as alone as if we’d been in the middle of the Sahara Desert, I wasn’t so sure.

  Suddenly, I knew I had to tell him the secret Jan had entrusted me with.

  ‘Jan will kill me for telling you this,’ I blurted out, ‘but she’s going to have a baby.’

  I don’t know just what I’d expected his reaction to be, but his next words took my breath away.

  ‘Roger’s,’ he said, and it wasn’t a question, more a statement of fact. ‘Oh, the poor mutt. The poor blind, silly mutt.’

  ‘How did you . . . how could you . . . ?’ I asked, and I knew that my mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish gasping for air.

  ‘Remember the night we separated and he and Jan didn’t come in till after two, and we only just kept your mother from doing her nut?’

  ‘Right at the beginning of the holidays?’ I asked.

  ‘That was it,’ he said, nodding his head.

  ‘You mean to say that Roger told you?’ I asked, amazed. ‘I didn’t think boys talked to each other about . . . about that kind of thing. I mean, not like girls.’

  Jamus nodded. ‘Well now you know they do. And besides, Roger had to talk to someone. It was for him what we call a traumatic experience, the first time and all that. He was full of remorse and self-loathing. And so I talked to him.’

  ‘Telling him what?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Telling him that was what life was all about. To put it down to experience – to forget it.’ Jamus said grimly.

  ‘And since then?’ I asked feeling like a welfare officer.

  ‘Nothing. They’re not in love, you know,’ said Jamus, offhandedly.

  ‘She isn’t going to tell him,’ I said quickly.

  ‘If she tells him, he’ll insist on marrying her and giving up university. You know Roger. And it will break your parents’ hearts,’ he added, and I glanced at him quickly to see if he was sneering, but he seemed quite serious.

  ‘Now, if it had been me . . .’ he began, slowly, and thoughtfully.

  ‘They’d have shown no surprise at all,’ I said, and now it was me who was being unkind.

  But Jamus accepted that. He reached across the table and took my hand in a rare, un-Jamus-like gesture of affection.

  ‘Roger mustn’t be told,’ he said firmly. ‘If you’d seen his face when he told me about it . . . He mustn’t be allowed to ruin his life because of one moment of what your good parents would call madness. No, he mustn’t be told.’

  ‘But he’s never been one to shirk responsibility. Not Roger. Look how he’s worked for his university place, swotting away in his room – and then to do a stupid damn fool thing like that . . .’

  ‘They called you the right name when they called you Virginia,’ Jamus grinned. ‘You’re a prude, love. An early Victorian, narrow-minded prude.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ I said, and we were back for a moment on our old footing. Insulting each other, accepting the mutual insults with amiable indifference, and I thought again how much I was going to miss him.

  ‘Calling me names isn’t going to help!’ I snapped. ‘The thing is, what’s to be done? We can’t just let Jan disappear and cope alone. She says she wasn’t going to live with her mother anyway, but what will she do? Get a room somewhere and work as long as she can? We can’t let her do that, Jamus. Well, I can’t anyway . . .’

  Then Jamus did a surprising thing. He got up and came round the table, then knelt down beside me on the cold kitchen floor.

  ‘I’ll look after Jan,’ he said quietly.

  His eyes were on a level with my face. His dark eyes were sleepy, and I remembered how he had held me close and kissed me down on the beach the night before. They’d been kisses without passion, more the kind of kisses one exchanges out of habit, but somehow the memory of them had lingered. Jamus was kind, a quality my mother had always instilled in me as the one most important to look for in a man, but at the moment kindness was the one thing I couldn’t take.

  I felt an ache start somewhere in my chest, an ache that travelled up into my throat, and then I was crying. Suddenly his arms were round me, and he was rocking me backwards and forwards as one would rock and comfort a child.

  ‘How can you look after Jan when you’re going to Italy?’ I sobbed, and he reached for the nearest thing – a tea towel – and tenderly wiped my tears away.

  ‘You don’t mean to say you’ll marry her?’ I whispered, and he laughed.

  The tenderness was gone, and he was the old Jamus, the one I knew, laughing at conventions, making a mockery of all the things I’d been brought up to accept as second nature.

  ‘Who said anything about marrying her?’ he said. ‘And who said Jan would have me if I were mad enough to offer her the honour? No, I’ll give up the Italy lark; it was only a half formed idea anyway. I’ll go back to college, like a good boy, and keep a fatherly eye on her. I might even move in with her. It’s been said that two can live as cheaply as one.’

  ‘But Roger?’ I whispered. ‘What will Roger think? He’s no fool, and when the baby comes . . .’

  Jamus reached up a hand and smoothed my hair away from my hot forehead.

  ‘I know we swore to meet again. I know I said we would, but as far as Roger’s concerned, Jan and I will be just two ships that have passed in the night. A couple of bums he knew for a summer . . . give him a month or so at university and he’ll have forgotten we ever existed. It’s the only way, Ginny, the only way there is.’

  But still I wasn’t convinced.

  ‘What makes you think that Jan will agree? You know how stubborn she is. I don’t honestly think she cares about anything really.’

  ‘Perhaps not now,’ Jamus said. ‘Not now, when she’s full of dramatic self-sacrifice . . . But wait a few months until she finds she’s all alone. She’ll be glad to have someone to turn to. Even me.’

  He looked so funny kneeling there with his shoulder-length hair and his droopy moustache, solemnly planning to alter his whole way of life to protect his friend, and I thought about my mother, asleep upstairs in bed, and how horrified she would be if she even knew that I was alone with Jamus in the middle of the night – and to my horror, the tears welled up in my eyes again.

  ‘Back to bed,’ Jamus said firmly. ‘And no more tears. You’ll have to be a lot tougher than this if you’re going to be a success in the business world. C’mon.’

  And he yanked me forcibly to my feet, and pushed me towards the door. As I went upstairs I saw him going back into the sitting room and the doubtful comfort of his sleeping bag and the sofa cushions.

  I should have felt relief, or at least the stirring of relief, because things were going to turn out better than I could ever have hoped they would. Roger would go to university, and my parents would continue to be proud of him, and everything would be the same.

  But as I crept into bed I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. Not ever . . .

  When I awoke the next morning
I felt terrible, and I opened my eyes to see Jan sitting on the edge of her bed, watching me.

  Her hair was long and lank, but her face was pink and healthy-looking. She was smiling, and for a moment I willed myself to think that I’d dreamt our conversation the night before. But deep down I knew it had all happened.

  ‘I told Jamus,’ I said flatly. ‘I went downstairs, and I told him. He agrees that we mustn’t tell Roger.’

  For a moment I really thought she was going to get up and hit me, then she shrugged her shoulders and said:

  ‘That’s it, then.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded.

  ‘I’m off. Today. Before you get the urge to tell anyone else. I bet you enjoyed telling him, didn’t you?’ She smirked. ‘It’s a nice feeling talking about someone else’s problems, isn’t it? I can just imagine you both talking earnestly about it. What to do, and what not to do . . . Well, I’ll make it easy for you. I’m going, and that’s that!’

  ‘To your mother’s place?’ I asked quickly, and she laughed grimly.

  ‘Maybe, at least for the time being, but it won’t exactly be the return of the prodigal daughter. She’ll be getting her divorce through soon, then she’ll marry her fancy man, and an unmarried, pregnant daughter around would complicate things, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Will you tell her?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Jan said firmly. ‘She’s the last person I’d tell.’

  I tried not to show how glad I was that she was going, but she knew. There wasn’t anything anyone could keep from Jan. I hated myself, and I hated her, and the way I felt right at that moment, I loathed the whole world.

  Jan was taking her case down from the top of the wardrobe and cramming things into it. Just then there was a knock at the door, and my mother came in. Her face was aglow with excitement, and she said that my father had just phoned, and he was coming home a whole two weeks earlier than he’d thought. She was panicking about how to get everything ready in just one day.

  When Jan said that she was going, my mother was glad, and I could see that she thought our household could, at last, return to normal – and for a moment I hated her too.