A Little Learning

by Anne Bennett

  ‘It might have started in a bad way,’ she said to Janet, ‘but he’ll have a wedding day to be proud of at any rate.’

  Janet just nodded. She had cried so long in her aunt’s arms that evening that she was feeling quite light-headed and faint. ‘I think I’ll go straight up if you don’t mind,’ she said. She was grateful that her parents were too interested in Duncan’s problems to notice any that she might have.

  She’d barely reached her bedroom when cramp-like pains doubled her over, and she lay on the bed grasping her stomach and groaning. But then, when she realised what was happening, she fell on her knees beside the bed and said fervently:

  ‘Thank You, Jesus, oh, thank You!’

  Later, Betty remarked to Breda, ‘I was worried because she was late, you know, and you can’t help it, with her and Ben all over one another. Not that she’s not a good girl, but you can’t help thinking … Still, it’s all right now. It must have been that she was upset over Ben going, because she cried for days, you know. Things like that can affect the cycle, they say, don’t they?’

  Breda smiled, and agreed that people did say that, and made them both a cup of tea.

  Janet surveyed her brother critically. He looked smart in his uniform and she could see he’d filled out since being in the army, but his face was white, with both exhaustion from all the travelling and shock. Tension lines pulled his mouth down and made deep furrows in his forehead, and his blue eyes seemed very large and darker than usual in his ashen face. He was quite a handsome lad, though Janet had always known that, even though his blond curls had been shorn by the army barber.

  ‘You look done in,’ she said sympathetically.

  ‘I am,’ agreed Duncan, ‘but more than that, I’m reeling with the news.’

  Janet cast her eyes over to the door where her mother was making tea, to check she couldn’t hear, then said:

  ‘You did go with her, I suppose?’

  ‘Course I did,’ Duncan admitted, and added, ‘But so did every other male on the estate over the age of twelve.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Janet said. But she knew her brother had a point.

  ‘Well, okay, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘How in God’s name did you get mixed up with her in the first place?’ Janet asked.

  Duncan shrugged and said, ‘It was one night when I’d had one of those terrific rows I used to have with Dad. I’d gone out in a mood and I found Gloria, stumbled over her nearly. She was in an alleyway near the caff, hiding from her old man.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’d beaten her black and blue for something or other,’ Duncan said. ‘He’s a sadistic sod and she’s scared to death of him. She told me he’s nasty enough when he’s drunk, but even nastier when he hasn’t got the money to get drunk, and he takes it out on the kids. The two lads are away now, so Gloria gets it most, as the next eldest. She says the only one he doesn’t touch is their mom, because he tried it once and she gave him a punch back that nearly broke his jaw.’

  Janet nodded. She could believe it. ‘But she lets him hit the others?’ she asked in disbelief.

  ‘Apparently,’ Duncan said. ‘She’s not always in, mind you. Gloria says she’s at bingo a lot of the time. Anyway, this one night he’d lashed out at her and she had a right shiner, but she tried to protect her face so after that she got bruises everywhere else, all over her stomach, back, breasts, everywhere.’

  ‘Did she show you then?’ Janet asked incredulously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Duncan, adding defiantly, ‘No need to look like that, Janet, it wasn’t what you think. She was crying and calling her dad for all sorts, and I was a bit sorry for myself and felt sorry for her, and I put my arm around her to sort of make her feel better, but every time I touched her she winced, so I took her to my mate’s house on my bike and she showed us what her dad had done to her. The man’s a maniac, Janet, he should be bloody well locked up.’

  ‘So you took her out from then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Duncan said. ‘Thought it would cheer her up a bit so I took her to a few places. Then one night she said no one had been kind to her like I had, and if I wanted to … well, you know … so I did. I mean it wasn’t serious, well not for me anyway, it was just a bit of fun.’

  ‘This is serious.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t think of her having a bleeding baby, did I?’ Duncan snapped. ‘I mean, most of my mates had gone with her and nothing happened. I didn’t know that straight away though. They told me after we’d been on a few dates, and then they kept jeering at me and I felt a right bloody fool. So I chucked her. She kept coming down the caff and making up to these blokes in front of me. Some of the girls said it was to make me jealous, but in my opinion it just made me look stupid. And I don’t know if she did anything with them or not. This kid she’s carrying could be anybody’s, but I’ve got to carry the bleeding can.’

  ‘So you will marry her?’ Janet asked.

  Duncan sighed and said, ‘I’ve got to, haven’t I? After all, it could be mine, and if I don’t marry her her father will lead her a merry dance, and the kid when it’s born. But I’ll tell you this, Janet, I’ll join the regular army once I get married to Gloria. It isn’t a bad life, and better than the factory all the bleeding days of my life and sitting across from Gloria in a council house on an estate like this. I had plans for my life and now they’ve come to sod all.’

  Janet felt sorry for him, sorry for them all. It had been her first time and Ben her only lover, but it hadn’t been his. What if this situation had happened to Ben?

  Duncan had two days’ leave to sort things out and then he was to return to his unit while the banns were called. The Marsdens were all for a quick registry office do, but Betty held firm on a church wedding for her eldest son.

  ‘Registry office,’ she said indignantly, ‘as if we’re ashamed of him or something. No, the job will be done properly. These registry office do’s are for heathens. You’re not married in the Church’s eyes, living in sin you’d be.’

  Sally and Gloria’s younger sister Tricia were to be bridesmaids, but Noel and Conner flatly refused to be page boys.

  Janet was grateful that the turmoil in the house, together with the work piling up for the A levels, kept her too busy to miss Ben. He was making arrangements to come down the weekend of the wedding, and Janet was sure that they’d be able to slip away together during some part of it if they put their minds to it.

  Preparations were in full swing. Sally and Tricia had been measured up for their dresses, the cake was made and waiting to be iced, the catering organised, invitations written and Gloria’s dress almost completed when the accident happened. It was early November, damp and foggy. Gloria had been shopping in Birmingham with her mother for headdresses for the bridesmaids, and hurrying from one shop to another, she stepped into the road without looking properly through the swirling mist and was knocked down by a car.

  She broke a leg and an arm, had extensive bruising, damaged many internal organs and lost the baby. People said it was a mercy she wasn’t killed, and if the driver had been going any faster, she would have been. Janet went to see her in Dudley Road Hospital, but she turned her face to the wall and cried. Betty tried, and her mother, and her army of brothers and sisters, to no avail. Gloria continued to cry and refused to speak to them. She left the magazines they bought unread, and the fruit and chocolates uneaten.

  Duncan had compassionate leave, but Gloria refused to see him and the wedding was postponed indefinitely. Duncan stayed at home for three days without once seeing his prospective bride, and then went back to the army. The hospital said they must have patience. Gloria was suffering from shock but she would eventually recover completely.

  She’d been in hospital a month and everything was healing nicely, but Betty said she still refused to discuss the wedding with anyone, and it was put on hold indefinitely. Gloria’s dress hung in its state of near completion in her wardrobe, according to her mother. The catering was cancelled an
d the invitations stayed in the Marsden house. Janet wrote to Ben to tell him the wedding was off, at least for the time being, and that she was looking forward to seeing him at Christmas, as there was no point in him coming home earlier. He might as well save the fare to have a better time at Christmas.

  Janet and her parents wondered if there was ever going to be a wedding. There was now no reason for Duncan to marry Gloria. He must have had that thought himself – he wasn’t stupid – but it was hardly the sort of thing they could write and ask him. Janet also knew that Duncan cared a little for Gloria. ‘It’s a bloody shame,’ he said to her one day. ‘She’s had one hell of a life and when she goes back to that bully of a father, it will start all over again.’

  So Janet knew Duncan felt sorry for Gloria, but she thought angrily, you couldn’t marry everyone you felt sorry for. She decided to let them sort it out between them. She had enough worries of her own. Her mock exams were in January, just after the Christmas holidays, and after talking it over with her parents, she had decided not to work at the store over the Christmas period, to leave her free to revise. She also knew it would leave her time to see more of Ben, and in a fever of excitement she wrote to tell him how much she was longing to see him.

  She was staggered by his reply, so staggered she didn’t take it in at first. Ben had made his own plans for the holidays. ‘I thought you’d be working in the shop,’ he wrote in an attempt to explain, ‘and I hardly see anything of you then anyway, so I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  Janet screwed up his letter and threw it at the wall. She complained to Ruth on the way to school.

  ‘America,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him in months and he chooses to go to America!’

  Ruth looked at her friend in sympathy. She knew how crazy Janet was about her brother, for she’d talked of little else since she’d come back to school. She also knew that when Ben had first phoned his parents about the proposed trip, he had been keen to go but wasn’t sure he could afford it.

  ‘It’s not a holiday, though, is it?’ Ruth pointed out. ‘Apparently this professor, whatever his name is, did some lectures at the medical school, and only the few who said they wanted to specialise in mental health patients and their care were offered a place on the course.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Janet said. ‘I’m being mean, I suppose, because it is what he really wants to do. It’s just that I miss him dreadfully.’

  Janet had looked forward to Christmas so much after their wonderful summer together, getting more and more excited as the holidays came nearer, and now Ben would be across the Atlantic, even further from her than ever. She wondered if she was being selfish and letting her disappointment cloud her judgement. Either way, she would have a few days before Christmas with Ben, and just a couple of days after. He was flying out on 28 December and not returning till his term restarted in January.

  Ruth thought that if Janet had known her grandmother was financing Ben’s expenses, she would be more angry. Ben had been surprised but pleased at his grandmother’s promised support. Only Ruth had seen the gleam of satisfaction in her grandmother’s eyes when she put the phone down. She knew she’d offered to furnish Ben with the money he needed in order to separate him from Janet, and the course he wanted to go on was an ideal opportunity. She knew Ben wouldn’t see it that way, and her parents would say she was being unjust, but Ruth knew just how spiteful her grandmother could be. Janet knew too, but to tell her the truth would hardly be helpful. Ruth feared that her grandmother would try anything to extricate her grandson from ‘that insolent Travers girl’ and she felt sorry for them both.

  In the event, Janet had very little time with Ben at all before Christmas. He had to buy all manner of items for his trip to the States as well as arranging a passport and suchlike. Janet was also needed at home to decorate the house and tree with the children, buy and wrap presents for everyone and help her mother cook all the goodies.

  Janet had explained to her mother what Ben was going to do, and though Betty could hear the disappointment in her voice and felt sorry for her, she was secretly pleased to have some time with her daughter. All too soon, she knew, Janet would be gone from the house altogether, and that would make a large hole in her life, because she’d come to rely on her elder daughter. That year, making paper chains with her younger brothers and sister and hanging the cards on strings, it had seemed as if the old Janet was back with them. And you could forget how clever she was, thought Betty, when she was working side by side with her mother, cooking and baking in the kitchen. Betty knew she was losing her daughter. In a way she had lost her years before, when the grammar school had begun to pull her away from her roots, but these few days before Christmas 1953 had brought a closeness with Janet that she’d thought she’d never experience again.

  Janet knew what her mother was thinking. She’d seen it in her proud eyes, and she thought guiltily that it didn’t take much to make her mother happy. But then she seldom thought of her mom without feeling guilty. She knew how much she owed her, for if Betty had not fought for her, she’d not have been given a chance. But although she recognised and was grateful for her mother’s part in her grammar school education, she’d moved away from her because of it.

  She had little time alone with Ben and he fretted about it. ‘You’re doing what you must,’ she tried to explain to him one day, ‘and I’m doing what I must.’

  ‘Is that what this is all about then?’ Ben said moodily. ‘Punishing me?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ Janet rapped out impatiently. ‘I just have responsibilities here too.’ Then she put her arms around him and said, ‘I do love you, but this is my last Christmas at home before university, which will inevitably change me. I want to make it special.’

  Ben was far from satisfied. He could put up with the Travers family if he didn’t have to spend much time with them, but he resented the hold they seemed to have on Janet. Even at the party Janet’s grandparents gave on Christmas Day, there was no opportunity for them to be alone for more than a few minutes at a time. This time he’d come prepared for sex, and yet Janet seemed strangely reluctant. The weather was colder anyway and they’d not managed to find anywhere that was private enough.

  That evening as she kissed him good night, Janet felt suddenly weak with love for this man who would soon be thousands of miles from her. ‘Oh, Ben,’ she said, her voice shaky with emotion, ‘I know I’m being selfish, but I love you so much and I wish you didn’t have to go.’

  ‘I didn’t know it would be so hard,’ Ben said. ‘Making the decision after the college lectures seemed easy, but I don’t want to go either now.’

  There was silence for a moment as they kissed, and Janet felt her body responding to Ben’s and pulled away reluctantly. They were in the doorway and it wasn’t very private. ‘I’d love you to come with me,’ Ben said, his arms still around Janet.

  ‘I’d love it too,’ Janet said, ‘but I don’t have that sort of money and I know my parents haven’t.’

  ‘My parents didn’t pay,’ Ben said. ‘My grandmother did. She was all for it when I phoned to discuss it with Dad. I was quite surprised really, because she doesn’t take that much notice of what I do usually, but she encouraged me to go.’

  I bet she did, the malicious old bitch, Janet thought. Aloud she said, ‘So she paid for everything, did she?’

  ‘Yes, I doubt Dad would have been able to afford it,’ Ben said. ‘Not without getting strapped himself anyway, and he’s saving every penny now for Ruth, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Janet, calmly enough, despite the wild anger flowing through her against Ben’s grandmother. She couldn’t see his face properly in the dim light and she was glad Ben couldn’t see her, because she was so angry she knew it must show. Ben, she thought, seemed unaware of the true reason for his grandmother dipping into her purse, and this wasn’t the moment to tell him. She didn’t want them to spend their last days quarrelling and tense with each other, but Janet promised hersel
f she would be on her guard after this.

  Janet had gone to the airport to see Ben off, glad that he’d refused to let any of his family come too. It had been just the two of them. She was still feeling lost and a little tearful when she got home, and was glad that everyone had gone to the pantomime. The knock on the door surprised her, for she’d only been in a minute or two.

  She was even more surprised when she opened the door to find Gloria standing outside. She was still very pale, Janet noticed, and was walking with the aid of two walking sticks, though her plaster casts had been removed.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, ‘I’m all on my own today.’

  ‘I know,’ said Gloria. ‘I waited for you.’

  ‘Waited for me?’ Janet asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘I … I wanted to see you on your own,’ Gloria said, and Janet realised the girl was frozen, shivering with cold, so that her teeth were chattering together. And this room is like an ice box, she thought, with the fire banked down for safety.

  ‘Come up near the fire,’ she said. ‘I’ll get it going in a minute,’ and she busied herself with the poker to stir up the dying embers. As she dropped the little nuggets of coal on top of the glow she’d regenerated with the poker, she looked at Gloria sitting beside the still half-dead fire, her sticks beside her. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘That will warm us up.’

  Gloria didn’t answer. She didn’t even seem to hear, and Janet hoped she was all right. When she returned to the room, the embers were brighter although little heat was coming from them as yet, and Gloria was huddled over the hearth.

  ‘Leave your coat on till the room’s heated a bit,’ Janet advised, as she handed her a cup of tea. Then she asked, ‘How did you know I’d be on my own?’

  ‘I got our Tricia to ask Sally what you were doing today, and Sally said you were going to see your young man off at the airport, but they were going to a pantomime. I didn’t know what time you’d be back, so I came and waited.’