A Little Learning. Anne Bennett
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He had just called in to tell them so they could talk about it.
‘Wonder he didn’t come up,’ Betty said, ‘and as for the twins, I don’t really know. None of the others have been to nursery.’
Looking at Betty’s white, strained face, Bert felt ashamed of his behaviour. It was obvious that Betty was far from well. Her lank hair, scraped back from her face, had silver streaks in, he noticed with surprise, and she heaved herself up in the bed awkwardly. His mother-in-law, sister-in-law and daughter had been the ones running up and downstairs with cups of tea and meals for Betty while he’d just slipped into bed at night and out again in the morning and hadn’t really looked at his wife at all. Now, though, he understood the doctor’s concern. Something will have to be done, he thought, because I don’t want to put her through this again, and another child would cripple us financially anyway. We’ll have to have a talk about it when Betty is feeling stronger.
There was a get together at the McCluskys’ on Easter Sunday afternoon. Janet thought it strange going without her mother, although she liked her relations. Bert promised to bring Betty some tasty goodies from the table which, Janet knew, would be groaning with food. Satisfied, Janet was glad to visit her grandparents’ house, which was almost as familiar as her own. She knew Breda would be there with Peter and Linda, as well as Brendan and Patsy. They’d seen little of Brendan since his marriage. According to Mrs McClusky, part of the reason for this was that Patsy lived too near to her own mother.
‘She’s there so often she might as well not have left,’ she’d confided to Janet.
‘Now, now, Sarah,’ Sean McClusky had said. ‘The lassie’s only young, and sure, it’s only natural. You’d have something to say if our girls didn’t visit often.’
A sniff was Gran’s only reply. Grandad had winked at Janet, and she’d been hard pressed to prevent a giggle escaping from her.
‘Anyway,’ Grandad had continued, ‘isn’t Brendan up to his eyes in work this minute and has been run off his feet these last months?’
Janet knew that was true, because Brendan was a carpenter and in great demand after the devastation of the war.
‘Likely to be that way for years,’ Bert had put in, ‘with the government promising new housing for the hundreds made homeless.’
‘Humph,’ Gran had said. ‘Governments’ promises are like pie crusts – made to be broken.’
Janet liked her Uncle Brendan, and she was glad that he had plenty of work. Not everyone was as fortunate. She liked his wife too, though she’d never had the opportunity to speak much to her until that Easter Sunday.
She realised almost immediately that Patsy was pregnant, just like her mother, and must be near her time too. She was, she told Janet, a shorthand typist, and though the work was fairly interesting, she had been glad to give it up and was excited about looking after her baby when it came.
‘It’s a shame your mother is so poorly,’ she commiserated with Janet. ‘Mind you, it must be a strain having a family to cope with too.’ She cast an eye over the boisterous twins, who were threatening to bring the table of goodies down on top of themselves, and remarked, ‘I mean, Conner and Noel seem full of beans, enough to wear anyone out, I’d say.’
‘They are,’ Janet agreed wholeheartedly, watching as her grandad hauled her brothers away from the table and gave them both a little shake to remind them of their manners.
‘I’ll bet you’re hoping for a wee sister?’ Patsy continued.
Janet realised with a sudden jolt that she’d not really thought about the sex of the baby her mother was soon to have. She would be eleven years old, for it was her birthday a few days after Easter, so it hardly mattered, and yet she already had three brothers, so she turned to Patsy and said:
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Have your parents chosen any names yet?’
‘No,’ said Janet, ‘at least they haven’t said anything.’ It was odd, really. As far as she knew, names had not even been discussed. It was as if the new addition to the Travers household was not a real person at all.
‘You can’t expect our Janet to be interested in mundane things like names for her baby brother or sister,’ said Brendan teasingly. ‘Professor Brainbox she is, be above the likes of you and me before she’s much older.’
Breda saw the pink flush on Janet’s face and said sharply, ‘Leave the girl alone, Brendan, you’re embarrassing her.’
‘Don’t mind him,’ Patsy advised. ‘He’s so proud of you really and tells everyone he meets about his clever niece who’s off to grammar school.’
Janet was mortified. What if she should fail now? she thought. She wouldn’t just disappoint herself; she’d let her whole family down. Everyone was depending on her. Breda, watching Janet, was aware of what was going through her mind.
Janet crossed over to her aunt. ‘What if I fail?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t think you will,’ Breda told her confidently, ‘but if you do, the earth won’t stop spinning on its axis and civilisation as we know it won’t come to a standstill.’
‘I know, but …’
‘Stop it, Janet,’ Breda said. ‘You can’t carry the hopes and expectations of the whole family on your shoulders. Patsy and Brendan have their own dreams to build on. Do you think they’ll really care whether you’ve passed or failed when they hold their own child in their arms in a few weeks’ time?’
Janet looked across to where they stood, arms linked. ‘Suppose not,’ she said.
‘Everyone has to follow their own star,’ Breda went on, ‘and have their own aims and desires to reach for. They can’t hitch on the back of other people. I’ll be pleased if you pass for grammar school, because you want to go. All the family will be disappointed if you don’t get in, for your sake, but our lives and yours will go on as before, either way.’
Auntie Breda had a way of explaining things, Janet thought, and she felt the burden of responsibility shift a little from between her shoulder blades.
‘Now then,’ Breda said, ‘stop thinking about your old exams and go and help your grandad choose some records to put on the gramophone.’
Sean’s gramophone and record collection were his pride and joy. Betty had often told her daughter how things had been in the slump and how every article a person had that was termed ‘luxury’ by those who determined the means test for poor relief had to be sold before a family qualified for help.
‘Ma sold everything we had except Da’s gramophone,’ she said. ‘Lots of items were pawned to pay the rent or buy food, but my ma hung on to the gramophone through all that. She said Da had lost more than a job, he’d lost his self-respect, and the gramophone was the only thing he had in his life that he cared about.’
Janet was always glad they’d been able to keep it. One of her earliest memories was of her grandfather turning the handle and the sound of the Irish music of his youth spilling out of the golden microphone that rested on the top of the spinning record and helping to drown out the sound of falling bombs.
Now she walked over to where Sean sat sorting through the record collection he kept in an old wooden box, and smiled at him. ‘Hello, my lass,’ he said. ‘You can help me choose the airs to play.’
‘Something lively,’ Janet said. ‘A reel or something.’
‘You’re on,’ Grandad said. ‘Something that would wear those two rips out would be welcome.’ He indicated Conner and Noel, who were careering around the room.
‘I think,’ Janet said, ‘we’d be worn out before they would.’
‘You could be right, Janet, aye, you could indeed,’ Sean McClusky said with a chuckle. He selected a few records.