A Little Learning. Anne Bennett
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her sitting the exams, but what she did say was:
‘My mom’s sick at the moment. I mean, she’s having a baby, but she’s sick with it.’
‘Is she, Janet?’ Claire said. ‘You never mentioned it.’
‘She didn’t tell anyone she was even pregnant until I’d sat the first part of the eleven-plus,’ Janet said. ‘I knew something was wrong, because I’d heard her being sick a few times and she kept saying she’d eaten something that disagreed with her. But she still keeps being sick and eats hardly anything. That’s why I couldn’t come till this afternoon. I have to help out a bit.’
Mary Wentworth met her daughter’s eyes over Janet’s head. They both realised that the young girl was worried.
‘I’m sure your mother will be fine, you know,’ Mary said. ‘Pregnancy takes it out of a woman, and of course, if she has to look after a family too, it can be hard. I only had Claire. Her father was badly injured in the First World War and died before Claire was out of babyhood.’ She added, as if to herself, ‘I was glad he died before the outbreak of the Second World War. I think it would have finished him to think of all that carnage starting again.’ She saw Janet’s grave eyes on her and gave a start.
‘Forgive me, dear, I was remembering for a while how it was. It affects one like that as one grows old.’
‘Stop fishing for compliments, Mother,’ Claire said briskly. ‘You know you don’t look anywhere near your age, and you’re not half as ga-ga as you make out. Now, if you will excuse me, government guidelines or no, I must get more coal for that dying fire or we’ll all freeze to death.’
Because of the national shortage of coal, people had been asked to put off lighting fires till late afternoon, and then not to pile them up with coal but to use as little as possible. It was not easy, for the winter was a particularly severe one and everyone was feeling the pinch.
Janet jumped to her feet. ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘Mom went for a lie-down as the twins were having a nap. That’s why I was able to come. They’ll be up now, I expect, and plaguing the life out of her.’
‘Where’s your brother?’ Mary said gently. ‘The older one, Duncan, is it?’
‘Yes, Duncan,’ Janet said. ‘He’ll be playing football or something. He’s no good, he’s a boy. And my dad went down to the club after dinner and he’ll probably be snoring his head off.’
‘Ah, that’s men for you,’ Mary said.
‘That’s men all right,’ Janet said fiercely. ‘I don’t think I’m going to bother getting married.’
‘That’s what Claire always said too.’
‘Well, she didn’t, did she?’ Janet said. ‘I mean, you didn’t, did you, Miss Wentworth?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Claire didn’t say that there had been somebody once who she had been willing to throw everything up for, but he hadn’t loved her enough and they’d gone their separate ways. That wasn’t the sort of confidence you shared with a pupil of not quite eleven years. Her mother knew. She was the one who’d picked up the pieces of Claire’s shattered heart and given her back her self-respect, but she didn’t want to tell the tale either.
As Janet trudged home, she determined that that was how she would be: single, independent and alone. People mocked single women, she knew that. They called them old maids and spinsters, but if you got married, you were little more than a slave.
This was further reinforced when she got home. It was just as she’d said it would be: Duncan kicking a football in the road with a crowd of mates, her father snoring in the chair. Her twin brothers had woken up from their nap, climbed out of their cots and systematically set about destroying the bedroom.
Janet popped in to see her mother, who was sleeping the sleep of the totally exhausted. Sighing, she ushered her young brothers downstairs and began to prepare tea for them all.
As Betty’s pregnancy advanced, she became more and more tired. Often, Janet would arrive home to find her mother asleep and the twins with Auntie Breda or Gran. Even with Janet home, Betty seemed loath to move.
‘Get me a cup of tea, pet,’ she’d say, ‘and I’ll be as right as rain.’
So Janet would make a cup of tea and fetch the twins and make up the fire and cook a meal for all of them. Duncan would come flying in and demand: ‘What’s for tea? I’m starving,’ and Janet wanted to hit him. Betty continued to work in the evenings, though Bert and the doctor urged her to stop.
‘A few more weeks,’ she’d said. ‘The money’s useful.’
As often as she could, Janet escaped to Claire’s. It was the only place she could let down her guard. At home she had to be the one to cope and encourage her mother to rest. At Claire’s she could be a child again.
‘It will be worth it all when you have a new brother or sister, won’t it?’ Mary said one day.
Janet was a long time answering. She didn’t know how to be truthful and yet not shock this woman whose good opinion she craved.
‘Babies are lovely,’ she said at last. ‘They’re sweet and innocent, but really it’s better if they’re someone else’s and you can hold them and play with them and then give them back, like I used to be able to do with Auntie Breda’s Linda.’
‘Oh, surely …’
‘Mom doesn’t want this baby,’ Janet said.
‘Oh, I’m sure that’s nonsense, my dear,’ Mary said. ‘Sometimes grown-ups say things they don’t mean.’
Janet said nothing, but she knew she was right. She’d heard her mother and Auntie Breda talking about it.
‘You should have done something about it earlier,’ Auntie Breda had said. ‘I know people … qualified … you know.’
‘Ah, not that!’ her mother had cried, aghast. ‘God in heaven, Breda, what are you suggesting? You haven’t …?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Breda said. ‘I had a good time in the war, but I wasn’t a bleeding fool like some of them. I tell you, some of them in the munitions were wetting themselves to find they were expecting and their husbands overseas and been there a couple of years. Many were glad, I’ll tell you, to be able to get rid of it.’
‘Well, that’s hardly my position.’
‘No, it isn’t. But you can’t look me in the eye and say you want it.’
‘No, God forgive me, I don’t want it, but I couldn’t get rid of it. I dare say I’ll think enough of it when it comes.’
Poor little baby, Janet thought, no one wants it. Duncan when told just raised his eyes to the ceiling. Privately he said to Janet, ‘More bloody yelling and nappies all over the house.’ He leaned closer and added, ‘I didn’t think they did that sort of thing any more, did you?’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Oh God!’ he’d said. ‘You do know all about it, don’t you, sex and that?’
‘Course I do,’ Janet said, but she didn’t. She was totally ignorant of most sexual matters and was very vague about how babies materialised, but she wasn’t letting on to Duncan.
He sneered, ‘You don’t know anything, do you? And you so blooming clever.’
‘I do,’ Janet had cried. She was aware of the hot blush that had spread all over her face and down her neck, and she’d run from her brother.
Bert had called the baby another bloody millstone round his neck.
‘It’s as if he had nothing to do with it,’ Breda said angrily. ‘He should have thought, taken a few precautions.’
‘He’s