A Little Learning. Anne Bennett
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her. ‘Don’t worry.’
They passed farmland, with fields stretching out on either side, and then a few big houses scattered here and there, even larger than the first ones they’d seen. Then suddenly the conductor alerted them, and they alighted from the bus and stood looking about them. ‘Whytecliff High School for Girls’ was written in gold lettering above two wrought-iron gates which stood wide open. The school was in a road with other houses of similar size dotted along it, but in the distance Janet could see farmland. Suddenly she was unaccountably nervous. She moved forward cautiously and saw a sweeping gravel path which led to a large, imposing building set well back.
Now Janet saw the other girls. It appeared that no one else had come by bus. Most were getting out of private cars or taxis, and some drove past Janet and Betty as they crunched their way forward. Janet felt conspicuous and ill at ease.
As she approached the school she saw tennis courts positioned on either side of it, and a thrill ran through her as she realised that one day she might be there, playing tennis with other girls like herself. She looked up and saw the ornamental bushes decorating the front of the school and the wide stone steps that led up between them from the path. There were two newel posts at the bottom, decorated with stone balls, and a rail ran up either side and a balustrade along the top.
As Janet joined the girls going in, she almost ran back down the steps and told her mother she wanted to go home. But Betty knew her daughter and pressed her forward. ‘Go on,’ she hissed. ‘You have as much right to be here as anyone else,’ and Janet held her head high and mounted the last few steps to the front entrance hall.
Betty, however, was overawed by the whole place and only waited until Janet was taken into the hall before she wandered outside. She scarcely saw the tree-lined avenues she walked along, for her thoughts and prayers were for her daughter bent over the vital examination papers.
In actual fact, despite Janet’s unease at being inside Whytecliff School, she felt quietly confident that she had done well as she laid down her pen at the end of the third paper, although she recognised that the second part of the exam was much harder than the first had been.
She talked it over with Miss Wentworth that same evening. ‘I finished,’ she said, ‘but only just.’
‘Even the English paper?’
‘Even that since I’ve done so much work on timed essays.’
‘And you feel confident?’
‘In the exam room I did, but now I’m not so sure.’
‘Oh, Janet, believe in yourself!’ Claire cried in exasperation. ‘You have a good brain. Don’t use it to demean yourself.’
‘I don’t,’ Janet protested. ‘It’s just that I don’t know. I suppose I’m worried I’ll let them all down.’
‘You need to be taken out of yourself more,’ Claire said. ‘Come over tomorrow and we’ll go out for the day.’
‘If I can I will,’ Janet promised, ‘but it might be difficult.’
Claire’s eyes met Janet’s, but though they were puzzled, she didn’t ask questions, and Janet didn’t offer an explanation.
The following afternoon, Janet fought her way through the cold and blustery winter’s day with sleeting rain stinging her cheeks. Claire opened the door. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You must be freezing.’
Janet hung her sopping coat in the hall and followed Claire down the passage to the back room she tended to live in, rubbing her raw, freezing hands together.
‘It’s bitterly cold out there,’ she was saying, and then she stopped. There was a strange woman sitting in the chair by the fire that Miss Wentworth usually occupied. One of her legs was encased in plaster and raised on a cushion.
She turned and smiled, and Janet saw she was an older version of Miss Wentworth. ‘Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘You must be Janet. My daughter has told me so much about you. I slipped on the ice, I’m afraid, and have broken my leg. Such a nuisance, I know, but there it is. Claire has said I must stay here until I’m fully recovered.’
Janet felt a momentary flash of jealousy. She didn’t want to share their special times together. It was different at school, where Miss Wentworth was so scrupulously fair and was just as hard on Janet as on the others – harder if anything, never picking Janet for any particular job or privilege – but that was school; this was their special time. Here Miss Wentworth was totally hers.
She stared at the older woman, quite prepared to dislike her heartily. Then Mrs Wentworth disarmed her totally with a charming smile. ‘I’m sorry that you’ll have to put up with an old duffer like me, Janet. I hope I won’t spoil things too much.’
Janet was prevented from answering by the arrival of Claire with a tray of tea and sponge cake. ‘Good job we’d made no plans,’ Claire said, ‘and anyway, it’s a filthy day. As it turned out, after you left yesterday, Janet, Mom’s neighbour, who fortunately has a car, came to fetch me and take me to the casualty department of the General Hospital. They’d called an ambulance for Mom after they found her in the garden, unable to move, with her leg broken.’ She turned to her mother and said, ‘Honestly, Mom, what were you doing out in the pitch black?’
‘I told you,’ Mrs Wentworth said, ‘feeding the birds.’
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘Don’t exaggerate, dear, it was just after seven. I’d intended to fill the feeder earlier in the day when I saw it empty, but I’d forgotten. Birds feed at first light, you see, and they need so much food in this intense cold. And it is just outside the kitchen door.’
‘Well, it’s as well the Pritchards heard you, that’s all I can say,’ Claire said, ‘because if you’d lain outside all night …’
‘I wouldn’t be here now, I know,’ said Mrs Wentworth with a hint of impatience. ‘But I didn’t and I am here, and surely you’re not going to go on and on about it until my dying day.’ She turned to Janet, gave a wink and said, ‘Bossy, isn’t she?’
Janet thought that she could probably get to like Miss Wentworth’s mother very much, and she grinned back and said, ‘Yes, she is.’
‘Don’t encourage insurrection in my pupils, please,’ Claire said with mock severity. ‘I have quite enough trouble with this one already.’
‘I don’t believe it, my dear,’ Mrs Wentworth said, taking a large bite of sponge cake. ‘Come and sit here beside me, Janet, and we’ll have a chat. Either bring up a chair or sit on the rug nearer to the fire.’
Janet plonked down beside the older woman and said, ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’
‘Before we go any further,’ Mrs Wentworth said, ‘I know you have to call Claire Miss Wentworth. It’s to do with rules and discipline. Apparently school would fall into a crumbling ruin if children knew their teachers’ names.’
‘Mother!’ Claire burst out in exasperation.
Mrs Wentworth waved a dismissive hand in her daughter’s direction. ‘I’m not talking to you, Claire dear, but about you. I’m addressing your pupil at the moment. Now, Janet, I’m sure you don’t want to call me Mrs Wentworth, do you?’
‘Um, I don’t know really.’
‘Well, I don’t want you to,’ said Mrs Wentworth decisively, ‘but I suppose you would feel awkward calling me Mary. Could you manage Auntie Mary?’
‘Er, I suppose, I mean … that is, if you want,’ Janet said, feeling that never in her life had she met anyone quite like Claire’s mother.
For all that, she sat at her feet all afternoon and talked as she’d never talked before. She told her of the tales she’d learnt from her gran, and how she and Grandad had both been born in Ireland but had had to leave to find work