The Way We Were

by Marie Joseph

  ‘It’s ten o’clock,’ Mum said, briskly. ‘Roger’s still in bed, and Jamus must still be asleep downstairs. How you youngsters can sleep late, I just don’t know. What time will you be going, Jan? There are trains to town every half-hour, so it doesn’t matter really.’

  I noticed her looking at Jan’s rumpled bed, and I knew that already, in her methodical mind’s eye, the sheets were washed and blowing on the line outside.

  It was all so awful.

  And yet I knew I wasn’t going to do a thing about it, but still my stomach tensed-up in a tight knot of despair.

  As Jan thanked my mother prettily for having her to stay with us for so long, my mother was saying it had been a pleasure, and I thought what hypocrites we all were.

  ‘I’ll go down and put the coffee on,’ my mother said, ‘and tell Roger. He’ll want to see you before you go.’

  ‘No,’ Jan said, too loudly and too quickly.

  My mother glanced at her, but she was used to us behaving in a way she couldn’t understand, and so glad that Jan was actually going, that she didn’t say another word. She just went out of the room, and there was the sound of her light footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘Now you can see what I meant last night,’ Jan said, rolling a sweater into a tight ball and cramming it down in a corner of the suitcase. ‘God, you’re all so damn respectable it makes me sick.’

  ‘You can’t go without seeing Roger,’ I said insistently, and climbed out of bed, reaching for my jeans. ‘He’ll think it’s funny.’

  Jan snapped the locks of the case with two ferocious little clicks.

  ‘“He’ll think it’s funny,”’ she mimicked. ‘He’d think it a whole lot funnier if I told him the truth. Can’t you just imagine his reaction? He’d go all noble, take my hand, and tomorrow when your father comes back we’d have a little “conference”. Then they’d ring my mother, and discuss the right thing to do. And your mother would cry, and Roger would refuse flatly to go to university, and there’d be a big scene, and Jamus would smile.’

  ‘Jamus wouldn’t smile,’ I said hotly.

  ‘Jamus always smiles,’ insisted Jan, and I followed her downstairs. I noticed the way she glanced at the closed door of Roger’s room, and I felt as if I was drowning, as if I were sinking to the bottom of a deep well.

  In the kitchen my mother was fussing with scrambled eggs, toast and marmalade, but Jan protested that all she wanted was coffee. During all this talk I took the opportunity to creep into the sitting room and shake Jamus awake.

  He rubbed his eyes and groaned when I opened the curtains. Quickly I told him of Jan’s decision, and he said that if Jan was going, then he might as well leave too.

  ‘She’s in a terrible mood,’ I warned.

  He stopped rolling up the tatty old sleeping bag, and stared at me. I winced at the angry expression in his dark eyes.

  ‘My God, Ginny. How do you expect her to feel? Even in this day and age having a baby isn’t something an unmarried girl can just laugh off. What’s she’s doing is pretty wonderful, and if I didn’t know old Roger, and what standing by her would do to his future career, I’d go right upstairs this minute and tell him.’

  ‘Aren’t you even going to say goodbye to him?’ I whispered.

  Jamus said he’d better not, otherwise he might be tempted to say something he’d regret later. Then he fished deep in the pocket of his jeans and produced a fifty-pence piece. He stared at it in surprise as if he really hadn’t expected it to be there, and passed it over to me.

  ‘Get some flowers for your mother after we’ve gone. She deserves them after putting up with us for so long.’

  ‘I’m coming to the station with you,’ I insisted, and he muttered something that sounded like, ‘You’re damn well not.’ I knew there was no point in arguing with him, so a few minutes later I found myself standing at the door with my mother, waving them both off.

  Jamus was carrying Jan’s suitcase in one hand, his sleeping bag tucked underneath his other arm.

  ‘It didn’t take Jamus long to pack,’ Mother said in surprise. And I told her that Jamus didn’t believe in possessions.

  I watched Jan and Jamus go down the long avenue – a tousled, unkempt-looking pair, even I had to admit that. At the corner they turned and waved, and to my amazement, I felt tears running down my cheeks.

  ‘That’s that, then,’ Mum said, with a deep sigh of relief. ‘I have to go to the shops. Like to come with me, Ginny?’

  Then she saw that I was wearing the inevitable jeans, and that my feet were bare.

  ‘Well, never mind,’ she added hastily, ‘but tidy your room a bit, dear, and strip Jan’s bed. Oh, if Roger decides to wake up, make him eat an egg or something. I haven’t time to make a proper lunch today.’

  She looked neat and pretty, and so happy at the thought of Dad’s return, that I felt a pang of envy.

  When she backed the car out of the drive, I ran upstairs into Roger’s room without knocking.

  He was fast asleep, with his head underneath the sheets, and his feet sticking out at the end of the bed. I pulled the bedclothes off him, and he groaned, trying to snatch them back.

  ‘They’re gone,’ I said, and he blinked at me, then stretched out an arm for his horn-rimmed spectacles and put them on.

  ‘Jamus and Jan. They’ve gone,’ I said, ‘and Father’s coming home tomorrow. He telephoned.’

  ‘Gone?’ he said, still fuddled with sleep, and I knew that left alone, he could have slept until noon.

  ‘Jamus and Jan. Jan and Jamus. Gone,’ I said impatiently.

  He was out of bed in one swift movement, staring at me as if I’d suddenly gone crazy.

  ‘Did Mother blow her top, or something?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope. Jan suddenly decided to go, and Jamus said he’d go with her. He said not to wake you.’

  Roger scratched the top of his head. ‘Well, of all the . . . Someone might have wakened me.’

  ‘Resurrected you,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Who will get you up next week? Tell me that.’

  He grinned at me, tore off his pyjama jacket without undoing a single button, and threw it at me.

  ‘Know something, Ginny? I’m glad they’ve gone. Old Jamus was beginning to get on my nerves. He thinks he knows everything, and won’t listen to anyone else’s point of view.’

  ‘And Jan?’ I asked, unable to stop myself. ‘Are you glad she’s gone too?’

  He looked at me in utter bewilderment.

  ‘Why should I be? You know Jan. A law to herself, but good fun.’

  Roger slid his feet into a pair of filthy rope-soled shoes that might once have been white. It was hard to tell.

  ‘I’m going to find something to eat,’ he said. ‘Like to cook me bacon and egg, Sis?’

  And whistling, he went downstairs. I pulled the covers back on his bed, and picked the book he’d been reading the night before up from the floor. Roger always read himself to sleep, sometimes dropping off with the light still on – it drove my mother mad.

  I trailed my finger along the rows of books on his shelves, looked up at the school photograph hanging on the wall, with Roger in the front row.

  I opened his wardrobe door, and his blazer was still there, with the red and gold badge on the top pocket. I pulled down the roll-top of his desk, over the clutter of textbooks, the ballpoint pens, the untidy, ink-stained squalor.

  And all the time I was seeing Jan and Jamus walking down the avenue, Jamus with his sleeping bag underneath his arm – all his worldly goods – and Jan walking beside him, her long, dark hair bouncing on her shoulders as she tried to keep up with his strides.

  They had gone, I told myself. They had gone, and everything was going to be all right. Jan would cope, and Jamus would be with her, and there was nothing for us to worry about.

  Roger had been foolish, but that was all, and no one could be expected to pay for one mistake.

  Life would go on, exactly as it had done before . . .

&n
bsp; But as I closed the door behind me, I knew that it wouldn’t. In the past few hours I’d taken a good look at us – Roger and me, our snug, tight little lives, and I didn’t like what I saw one little bit.

  ‘Funny thing, though, them going like that,’ Roger said as he wolfed down his breakfast.

  I wondered if he was thinking about Jan, but he didn’t look all that concerned. Already I knew his mind was leaping ahead to the new term at university, to the new friends he’d make, and I could see him fitting easily into university life.

  Mother had another go at him to have his hair cut before Father came home, and to my surprise he agreed. He went slouching off to the village, a book underneath his arm. Mother watched him go fondly, then got on with her job of cleaning the house, singing softly under her breath.

  I went up to my room, promising to tidy it up. Once inside, I shut the door, and lay on my bed, trying to imagine what Jamus and Jan were doing.

  Jan had said she wouldn’t stay with her mother, and I knew she’d stand by her decision.

  I’d met Jan’s mother, and disliked her on sight. Older by a few years than my mother, she fought a losing battle with age, wearing lacy trouser suits, her hair too long, and thinking that every man she met fancied her. As Jan had said, a pregnant, unmarried daughter would be the last thing she’d want to be burdened with. She just didn’t want any ties or responsibilities.

  Not like my parents. They were involved with their children, emotionally, and every other way. Mother liked to have what she called ‘little chats’ with me, and I knew that before I went away to secretarial college, she’d come into my room and warn me of the temptations in the wicked world. Then end up by saying that whatever happened, she’d be there, ready to listen and stand by. Real old-fashioned stuff, and Father would have a manly talk to Roger.

  We’d be expected to write once a week, or phone, transferring the calls, of course, and Mother would want to know whether we were getting enough to eat, sleeping enough, and she’d tell all her friends at the Women’s Institute about her daughter who was a secretary, and her son, the clever one of the family, who was at university.

  Other people’s children took drugs, slept around, shouted at their parents, but not Roger and me. We were a ‘happy family’, united in affection and loyalty.

  I thought about Roger and Jan, and I felt sick and wished that I could pray and ask for some sort of guidance.

  Just then Roger came charging in with his hair cut, and he looked so funny I laughed out loud.

  I laughed until tears came to my eyes, and it wasn’t really all that funny, but laughter at that moment was preferable to sorrow.

  He glanced at himself in my dressing-table mirror and, picking up my comb, tried to smooth the front bit down into a kind of fringe. Then he tried a centre parting, and I thought I was going to have hysterics.

  ‘Give that bloke in the village a pair of scissors, and he goes berserk,’ he moaned. ‘Short back and sides is all he knows . . .’

  We were giggling so much we didn’t hear Mother coming upstairs and seeing us so happy she wanted to know the joke, and Roger held out his arms to her, and they waltzed round my bed.

  For the rest of the day the house was filled with laughter, the smell of baking, and the scent of the flowers Mother brought in from the garden.

  Like the coward I am, I tried to pretend that everything was just the same. Jan and Jamus had gone, hadn’t they? And we were left, safe in our own snug little world again.

  The telephone rang the next afternoon. Father had caught an earlier flight than he’d expected, and we were soon in the car and turning out into the avenue for the drive to Heathrow.

  We didn’t need to park. Father was there, surrounded by his luggage, waiting right outside the big terminal.

  He looked grey with fatigue, and Mother fussed round him like a clucking hen. He winked at us, and called Roger ‘boyo’ the way he always does, and all the way home he talked about the things he’d done, the places he’d visited.

  It should have been one of those times when life was a tight cocoon of family happiness, but I felt as if I was in some awful nightmare.

  I sat in the back of the car with Roger and stared at my father’s head, at the little round bald patch, and I turned sideways, and studied Roger’s profile.

  He was leaning forward in his seat, laughing, and his spectacles were slipping down the bridge of his nose. He was pushing them back with his first finger the way he always does. I still couldn’t accept the fact that he’d made love to Jan.

  ‘Read any good books lately, boyo?’ Father was saying.

  It was one of those silly family jokes, because Roger has been reading books nonstop since around the age of six.

  Once, as a punishment for something or other when he was about twelve, I remember him being sent out into the garden to weed the border. We could see him through the French windows, crouched diligently on his knees, apparently working away, but when I went outside I saw that he had a book concealed in the long grass, and was reading it with his usual avid concentration.

  So it was me who did the weeding whilst he lay flat on his back and went on reading.

  ‘Good old Sis,’ he’d said, calmly turning another page. Now, once again, I was covering up for him so that he could go up to university and read. Read his life away, as Mother was always saying in exasperation.

  Then I realised that it was Jamus who was doing the covering up this time. I leaned my head back, closed my eyes and heard their voices going on and on, laughing, excited, making plans, and I thought how with one short sentence I could spoil it all.

  ‘Know something?’ Father said, as we drew in at our front drive, and he gave a mock groan as Mother missed the garage doors by her usual inch or so. ‘Ginny’s growing up at last. This is the first time I’ve come back from a trip and she hasn’t asked if I’ve got something for her in my case.’

  I just smiled and muttered something about waiting to be surprised.

  As we all trooped into the house, the telephone rang, and as I was nearest I picked up the receiver.

  ‘Jamus here,’ the soft voice said into my ear. ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘We’ve just got back from the airport. Father’s home,’ I answered. Jamus said it would have to be a one-sided conversation, and did I understand. I said I did, and when they turned and looked at me, I pointed to my chest to indicate the call was for me. They went on into the living room, and I sat down on the straight-backed chair by the telephone, telling Jamus to go ahead.

  ‘Jan’s gone missing,’ he said, bleakly. ‘I told her I was taking her back to my place, and that we’d work something out. Whilst I was buying some fruit from a barrow – we had to eat for goodness’ sake – she gave me the slip.’

  ‘She’ll be with her mother,’ I whispered. ‘They all do that in the end, go back to their mothers.’

  ‘Stop talking like an idiot,’ said Jamus rudely. ‘She hasn’t. I phoned and asked to speak to Jan, but her mother said she wasn’t there, that she was staying with friends in the country. You, she meant, and I couldn’t say I knew differently, not under the circumstances, so I rang off.’

  There was a long pause, and I heard laughter coming from the living room. ‘So now what, Ginny?’

  ‘She can take care of herself,’ I said wearily. ‘She always has. I remember her once playing truant from school, and she came back in the end. You’ll see, she will turn up at your place tonight. She’s got to.’

  ‘This is a damn sight more serious than running away from school,’ Jamus was saying loudly when my mother came out of the living room en route for the kitchen.

  She smiled at me, her eyebrows asking a question, and before I turned my back on her and hunched myself over the phone, I saw the look of hurt bewilderment in her eyes again.

  Then she closed the kitchen door deliberately, with her ‘I have no intentions of trying to hear your secrets’ air.

  I asked Jamus what he was going to do.
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  ‘I don’t know,’ he yelled, ‘and it’s obvious you don’t care . . .’ Then the phone went dead.

  ‘Jamus!’ I shouted, and my mother came through with the tray of cups, heard me, and sighing, went on her way.

  ‘It was Jamus,’ I told Roger, when I went into the living room, but he was busy unwrapping a book on American history. Then Father passed a flat package over to me, so I had to smile and say thank you, and express amazed delight at the sweater that would have been fabulous, but for all the rows of glittering beads down the front.

  ‘Hope it fits,’ Dad said, ‘but then if it is a bit big, I expect you’ll like it all the more.’

  ‘Shapeless sweaters went out two years ago!’ I snapped. And even Roger gave me a disgusted look, and I felt hysteria rising in my throat.

  I wanted to yell and scream at them, and tell Roger what he’d done – but I managed to control myself.

  I rushed out of the room, saying I was going to try on the sweater.

  Roger followed me up, still carrying the book, and stood in my room, just staring at me.

  ‘I must say you’ve been in a terrible mood all day,’ he said. ‘So you do think the sweater’s hideous, but did you have to make it all that obvious? What’s up, Sis? Is it because Jamus has gone away? Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for that know-all. Girls always fall for that type, don’t ask me why . . . Oh, he’s good fun, and I suppose to a girl quite attractive, but he’s so selfish . . .’

  I don’t know how I managed to act so normally. I was shaking with rage, but I got up, went over to my bedroom door, closed it, then came back and stood facing Roger.

  ‘Jan is going to have a baby, and Jamus was taking her away to look after her and keep the truth from you. And our parents. Especially them,’ I said.

  Roger’s face crumpled. The heavy book slipped from his grasp, and he sat down on my bed, beating his forehead with his fist and moaning softly.

  ‘He rang just now to say she’s disappeared, and he rang off because he was disgusted with us!’ I snapped.

  And just as I’d known he would, Roger came over all noble and said he’d go to London that night, that very minute, and find Jan. But first of all he’d go straight downstairs and tell Mum and Dad.