A Little Learning

by Anne Bennett

  ‘When are you going to tell Bert then?’ she asked Betty.

  ‘I’m trying to keep it till the exams are over,’ Betty said.

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘The first is in November, the second in early February.’

  ‘You’ll never keep it till then,’ Breda said. ‘Not February you won’t. Christ, Betty, you swelled up like a bleeding elephant last time.’

  ‘I was having twins then,’ Betty reminded her sister. ‘You’d hardly remember how I was with the other two.’

  ‘Maybe it’s twins again,’ Breda said cheerfully.

  ‘Don’t. I’d go mad if I had two more like Conner and Noel,’ Betty said. ‘I love them, don’t get me wrong, but they have me run off my feet.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, it’s bad enough with one.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Betty said, ‘if I can get Bert to change his mind about the first exam, before he knows about the baby and the additional expense that’ll mean, it’ll be something. If she passes, she automatically goes through, and if she fails, well, that’s that, isn’t it?’

  ‘She won’t fail,’ Breda said. ‘I know she won’t. I’ve got faith in that girl.’

  Betty kept that in mind as she faced Bert. She was unaware of her daughter trembling on the stairs; unaware that her words sent a shiver of icy fear down Janet’s spine.

  ‘I went to see our Janet’s teacher today,’ Betty said. ‘That Miss Wentworth.’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ Fuddled by beer, Bert wasn’t even on his guard.

  ‘Thinks our Janet has a good chance of getting this eleven-plus.’

  Bert pulled himself up in the chair. ‘You told her, though,’ he said, ‘you told her we don’t want her taking no exams?’

  ‘No,’ Betty said, ‘I didn’t say that, because it wouldn’t have been true. I said you weren’t keen but that I was agreeable if that’s what Janet wanted.’

  Bert was astounded. His wife had never gone against him before. ‘You said that,’ he said indignantly, ‘after I made myself clear the other evening?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I did.’

  ‘Am I not master in my own house now?’

  ‘This is about Janet and her life, not yours.’

  ‘I’m her father,’ Bert thundered. ‘I say what goes in this family.’

  His mellowness and good humour, restored at the pub, had left him. His wife and daughter ganging up on him. He wouldn’t stand for it.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ he demanded.

  ‘How long has what been going on?’

  ‘This conniving between you.’

  ‘Oh, Bert, don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Oh, it’s stupid I am now?’

  ‘Look, Bert, I’m sick of this,’ Betty said. On the stairs Janet sat hugging her knees, rocking slightly as sobs shook her body. Her parents didn’t hear her; they were too busy shouting at one another.

  ‘We’re talking about giving our daughter a choice in her life,’ Betty cried. ‘Why are you going on as if it’s a bloody crime?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You bloody well are. Duncan had the choice, why not Janet?’

  ‘Duncan was different.’

  ‘Why, because he made a choice you approved of?’ Betty asked. ‘Or is it more than that?’

  ‘And what do you mean by that remark?’

  ‘Are you cross because your daughter has the chance Duncan didn’t have the ability to take up, even if he’d wanted to? Do you think daughters are of no account and anything will do to occupy them until they marry and become a slave to some man?’

  There was some truth in Betty’s accusations, and Bert was quite ashamed of his feelings put into words like that, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

  ‘That isn’t what I think,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t it, Bert Travers?’ Betty said quietly, and it was Bert who looked away first.

  ‘Let her try, Bert,’ Betty pleaded. ‘The first exam is in November. Miss Wentworth says that even with her being bright she’ll need extra coaching. If she doesn’t get in, that will be the end of it. We’ll know by Christmas.’

  Bert still didn’t speak, but Betty knew him well enough to know he was wavering. She went on while he was in this muddle of indecision. ‘The factory is probably the right place for our Duncan, he’ll likely be happier there than at school at any rate, but our Janet is not Duncan. You’ll have to give her this opportunity to do something better, or … or she might hold it against us for the rest of her life.’

  Bert looked at his wife, but he wasn’t seeing her. He was seeing his daughter before he’d left that evening, resenting his intrusion into her life. Was that because she imagined him to be the stumbling block in her wish to go to the grammar school? And if he stood alongside his principles and refused to let her take the exam, would she get over it eventually, or would she always hate him?

  He wouldn’t, couldn’t take that chance. He sighed. ‘All right,’ he said slowly, as if the words were being pulled out of him. ‘Let her take the bloody exam and we’ll see how clever she is.’

  Janet allowed a long, shuddering sigh to escape from her body. She felt as if she’d been holding her breath for hours. No one heard her creep back to bed, although her limbs were so stiff with cold she stumbled a few times before she reached her bedroom.

  No one heard because Betty and Bert were entwined with one another. ‘You won’t be sorry, Bert,’ Betty said. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘You could reward me for being the understanding sort tonight if you’d have a mind,’ Bert said with an ogling leer.

  And Betty smiled as she said, ‘Maybe.’

  After all, she said to herself later that night, it’s a bit bloody late to make a stand now.

  THREE

  After that, it was fairly easy. Bert had given permission for Janet to take the exam, and he accepted the fact that twice a week, Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon, Janet would go to Miss Wentworth’s home for special tuition. The rest of the week, she would work at home.

  On the day of the first exam, a hollow-eyed Janet, who had slept very little, was surprised to find her father in the kitchen when she came downstairs. It was Saturday, and Bert hadn’t to work. There was little enough overtime these days, and he usually enjoyed a lie-in at the weekend, but there he was, large as life.

  He made no mention of the exam, no comment at all that it was a special day, but Janet was glad he was there to wish her all the best.

  ‘Now, what would you like for breakfast this fine morning, Miss Janet?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ Janet said. ‘I … I couldn’t eat anything, Dad.’

  ‘Couldn’t eat anything when I’ve got up specially to cook it?’

  Betty had followed Janet downstairs. The two stared at him in astonishment. ‘You!’ they both said together.

  ‘You had to do your bit in the forces, you know,’ Bert said. ‘I’m a dab hand with bacon and eggs.’

  ‘You never said,’ Betty said accusingly.

  ‘You never asked,’ Bert replied. Betty and Janet laughed, and Janet wondered why it couldn’t always be like this. Suddenly, the sick feeling in her stomach eased and the lump in her throat disappeared, and she smiled at her father, who was making such an effort.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’d love bacon and eggs.’

  It was a great breakfast. Every subject was discussed except the first part of the eleven-plus that Janet would sit that morning. Duncan had been primed by his mother, and the twins, of course, knew nothing anyway.

  At last it was time to go, and Janet went up for her coat. ‘Keep an eye on her, Bet,’ Bert said. ‘She looks as if she hasn’t slept a wink.’

  ‘She probably hasn’t. I’ve tossed and turned all night myself.’

  ‘Well, at least she has something inside her. I thought if she didn’t eat this morning she’d pass out on you.’

  ‘It was a nice thought, Bert, thank you.’

  ‘Pity I couldn’t get you to eat
, though,’ Bert said. ‘Going out with just a cup of tea is no good to anyone.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Betty said. ‘Truth is, my stomach is churning on account of young Janet. I thought it was better to keep off the fried stuff this morning.’

  Janet asked the same question of her mother on the bus. ‘Why didn’t you have any breakfast, Mom?’

  ‘I didn’t fancy a fry-up this morning, pet. I didn’t fancy anything much.’

  ‘You used to eat bacon and egg.’

  ‘Can’t take it now, though. Must be getting old.’

  ‘You’re not old, Mom,’ Janet said, and then qualified it to: ‘Not that old, anyway.’

  ‘Watch it, miss,’ Betty said with a smile.

  ‘I heard you being sick the other morning as well,’ Janet said.

  ‘It was something I ate, must’ve disagreed with me,’ Betty said. The bus ride wasn’t helping her queasiness, and she felt her stomach give a heave as they turned a sharp corner.

  ‘Let’s leave the subject of my stomach and concentrate on getting off at the right stop, shall we?’ Betty said.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mom, we have to go right into Birmingham,’ Janet said with a laugh. ‘We can hardly miss the terminus.’

  ‘You’re too smart by half, young Janet,’ Betty said, but she smiled back at her daughter and hoped the journey wouldn’t be too jerky, for she was feeling incredibly nauseous.

  She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep her pregnancy a secret much longer. Only the previous evening she’d seen Bert looking at her quizzically as she undressed. She’d tell them this weekend, she decided. After all, Janet would be over the first hurdle, and it would give them something else to think about besides her results.

  ‘We’re here, Mom,’ Janet said suddenly. ‘This is it.’

  The exam room was meant to be intimidating, with its rows and rows of single desks, and Janet was glad Miss Wentworth had warned her that it would be like that. She had to walk nearly up to the end row, because her name came late in the alphabet. She stared at the other children and they stared back, and Janet knew they were as frightened as she was.

  Just before she went into the room, Betty had pressed a package into her hand.

  ‘A lucky shamrock,’ she said. ‘Gran had it specially sent from Ireland to bring you luck today.’

  Janet wondered if she’d be allowed to have her lucky shamrock on the table with her, and then she saw that most of the children had something: a teddy, a small horseshoe, a rabbit’s foot. Her shamrock sat at the side of the desk in its little box, and reminded Janet that her grandparents were rooting for her too.

  She didn’t find the papers that hard. Miss Wentworth had done her work well. She’d obtained old English, maths and intelligence papers and they’d worked through them at her house. Now Janet finished those in front of her with ease. Then she looked at all the other children and was assailed by doubts. She’d made a complete mess of the tests! She must have or she wouldn’t have finished in the time allotted. English was the only paper she needed more time for, and that was only because she overran on the essay.

  As Janet suffered inside the examination room, Betty suffered outside it. At one point she felt she had to get out of the soulless corridor in which all the parents were waiting and had gone to look around the city shops. She seldom had a chance to visit Birmingham centre now with the demands of her family. She soon realised she wasn’t taking anything in and was constantly looking at her watch, willing it to be time to collect her daughter. Eventually, she forced herself to drink a cup of coffee, but it was a struggle, for her stomach was churning more than ever.

  It’s not the end of the world if she doesn’t pass, she told herself. It’s only an examination, and she’s only a child. They shouldn’t be under such pressure. But she knew that for Janet it would be the end of the world, and she sent a silent prayer up to the God she still believed in and asked His help for her daughter.

  On the way home on the bus, because she felt peculiarly drained and was a bag of nerves because of the strain of it all, Janet didn’t speak much and answered questions as briefly as possible. What Betty wanted to say was ‘How did it go?’ but she looked at Janet’s white, drawn face as she came out of the examination room and didn’t dare. She told Bert she thought it had gone badly, and everyone kept off the subject so that Janet would not be upset.

  Janet thought it odd that no one mentioned the exam. It was just as if she’d not sat it at all. They don’t think I’ve passed, she thought, and her own confidence began to ebb away. She went to Miss Wentworth’s on Sunday afternoons now, as well as on Saturday afternoons and Wednesday evenings. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered, or why Miss Wentworth still wanted to coach her.

  When the Christmas cards began arriving, Janet was in a fever of anxiety. When at last the long, thin brown envelope dropped on to the mat, she picked it up with trembling fingers and handed it to Betty.

  ‘I can’t open it,’ she said.

  Betty took the envelope and tore it open. ‘Oh my God!’ she cried, her eyes bright with unshed tears of disbelief. ‘You’ve passed, lass, you’ve bloody well passed.’

  Bert took his family out for a meal to celebrate, and after that began to talk at work about his clever lass who’d soon be going to grammar school. In vain did Janet tell him that this was just the first step, and that she had another exam to pass. In Bert’s opinion, the result of the second exam was a foregone conclusion.

  Many of the men at the factory expressed doubts as to the value of educating a girl. ‘Boy or girl,’ Bert told them, ‘makes no difference. If they have the brains, they should have the opportunity, I say.’

  ‘It’s as if he was never against it in the first place,’ Janet told Miss Wentworth, ‘and he’s so proud of me, it’s embarrassing.’

  Miss Wentworth smiled. ‘Your mother won him over then. She was determined she would.’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  It was a Wednesday evening towards the end of January, and Janet’s last lesson before the final exam the following Saturday. It was bitterly cold and the roads were thick with ice. They’d finished work and were having a cup of cocoa and buttered crumpets before Janet set off home. Janet, who was sitting on the rug before the fire, stretched out her legs contentedly and said suddenly:

  ‘I shall miss coming here.’

  ‘I should miss it too,’ said Claire Wentworth, ‘if you stopped. But why would you?’

  ‘What would be the point?’ Janet said. ‘I mean, the exam’s on Saturday.’

  ‘That just proves you have the intelligence to get into grammar school,’ said Claire. ‘My next job is to make you able to cope with it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, my dear girl, that we will then embark on a course of improvement,’ Claire said. ‘We will visit the art gallery in Birmingham and learn a little of the lives of the artists; the natural history and science museums, where we will learn many interesting facts. We will take some of the classics from the library and read and discuss them. I will explain a couple of Shakespeare’s plays to you so that you will understand more when you go to grammar school, and we will examine the rudiments of Latin.’

  ‘Why Latin?’

  ‘Because you may need it,’ Miss Wentworth said. ‘It is the basis of language, for one thing, and you need it to get into many universities.’

  ‘You think I’ll go to university?’ Janet asked incredulously.

  ‘Janet, you’re not eleven years old yet. Who knows what you’ll achieve, or where you’ll end up? We must cover all the options. And when you go to grammar school, I want you to go on equal terms, not as a scholarship girl to be pitied.’

  Years later, Janet would realise how wise Claire Wentworth had been. Now, she was just thankful that her visits to her teacher’s small terraced house in Erdington weren’t coming to an abrupt halt.

  The second part of the eleven-plus had to be taken at Whytecliff School, because that was Jane
t’s first choice. As the school was in Sutton Coldfield, outside Birmingham’s boundaries, Janet and Betty had to go on the Midland Red bus, not on one of Birmingham’s yellow and blue ones. Janet had never been on one before, nor had she ever been into the small town of Sutton Coldfield itself. The bus took them along Eachelhurst Road and down the side of Pype Hayes Park, lined with prefabs, a legacy from the war. It was just past the park’s perimeter and over the Birmingham border. This was the furthest Janet had ever been from her home. She looked out at the large detached houses, set well back from the road, with long front gardens and drives that disappeared behind privet hedges. ‘Think of the cost of all the coal you’d need to heat one of those places,’ Betty whispered, seeing Janet’s concentrated gaze.

  ‘I think if you were that rich you wouldn’t have to worry about the price of coal,’ Janet whispered back. She wondered if any girls from the houses they were passing would be sitting the second part of the exam with her that day, but there were no girls of Janet’s age at the bus stops; in fact, more often than not, nobody was at the bus stops and the bus just sailed past.

  Janet began to feel nervous as they went further and further into unfamiliar territory. ‘How will we know our stop, Mam?’ she asked as the bus trundled along.

  ‘The conductor will tell us,’ Betty assured 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.