A Family Affair

by Janet Tanner

  ‘All right – who can describe a chair for me? Jimmy Tudgay.’

  Jimmy, a well-built boy with a reputation for fighting, brushed a lick of hair out of his eyes and made an effort to look as if he had been listening, rather than flicking rolled-up scraps of paper at the other pupils whenever Mr Heal’s back was turned.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘A chair, Jimmy. How would you describe a chair to me if I’d never seen one?’

  ‘Uh – what d’you mean, sir?’

  Ron Heal repeated his question with a little more asperity and Jimmy rocked his chair on to its back legs, considering.

  ‘Don’t do that, Jimmy. You’ll break the legs.’

  ‘Four legs,’ Jimmy said, inspired.

  ‘And?’

  ‘A seat. And a back. Sir.’

  ‘A good start. Anything else?’ Silence. ‘Anyone?’

  ‘Struts. To join the legs together.’ That was Christopher Jenkins, the class cleverclogs.

  ‘Very good. Anything else?’

  A longer silence. Thirty-odd faces contorted in concentration. Only Tessa Smith, known for being a little simple, stared vacantly into space. This was the first year that Tessa’s knickers had not regularly festooned the guard around the evil-smelling coke-stove almost every day, a constant reminder of her continuing incontinence. Tessa was ridiculed and reviled and generally ignored, but she hardly seemed to notice.

  ‘Come along – come along.’ Ron Heal jabbed his glasses encouragingly into the air again. ‘Let me give you a clue. How does a chair differ from, say, a settee?’

  Jenny’s hand shot into the air.

  ‘Yes, Jenny?’

  ‘A chair is for a single person, Mr Heal.’

  Ron Heal smiled indulgently.

  ‘A single person, Jennifer? You mean married people can’t use them?’

  The titters began. First from Valerie Scott, the most popular, self-assured girl in Junior Four, then spreading into a ripple. Jenny felt the hot colour flood into her cheeks. She so desperately wanted to do well. How was it she always seemed to manage to end up as the butt of the others’laughter?

  ‘I meant …’

  ‘Mr Heal! Sir!’

  ‘Yes, Christopher?’

  ‘A chair is for just one person to sit on.’

  ‘Very good, Christopher. You see how important it is to choose exactly the right word for what you want to say? In your exam this will be very important.’

  The Exam. The dreaded eleven-plus which they would all be taking after Christmas; the eleven-plus that would either allow them the glory of going to the Grammar School at South Compton or consign them to the Secondary Modern – thirty-odd children who had spent every term-time day together since they were five years old divided suddenly into those who succeeded and those who failed. Most of them pretended they didn’t care, but they did, and their parents cared even more. It was more than an educational divide. It was seen as a social one too. Only the no-hopers, like Tessa Smith, were indifferent, knowing that nothing short of a miracle would ever transport them out of the realms of ‘the duds’.

  Of all the children in Junior Four, no-one wanted to pass The Exam more desperately than Jenny. She was capable of it, she knew. Mr Heal had told her often enough. So had Heather, her older sister. Heather had failed her own eleven-plus. ‘By the skin of her teeth,’ Granny Simmons said. And her schooling had been disrupted by the war. When they had moved to Hillsbridge, Heather had gone to ‘The Board School’ on Conygre Hill for a year before leaving to start a job at the glove factory, but she was forever urging Jenny on with her studies.

  ‘You don’t want to end up working on a machine all day like me,’ Heather would say. ‘You can do better than that.’

  ‘You’re all right,’ Jenny would say loyally. She worshipped the sister who had already been a teenager when she was born and she hated to hear her put herself down.

  ‘I wasted my chances.’ Heather’s blue eyes, so like Jenny’s own, would cloud with regret. ‘Don’t you do the same.’

  ‘I’ll try, honestly I will. But I’m really scared I’ll mess up.’ The thought of sitting The Exam – the all important paper that would determine her future face down on the desk in front of her; Mr Heal’s voice: ‘You can turn your papers over’; the clock on the wall, its black hands moving relentlessly but imperceptibly whilst the pendulum beneath it ticked away the minutes – all started a feeling of panic in Jenny’s stomach.

  ‘Of course you can do it!’ Heather said fiercely. ‘You’ve got a brain, Jenny. You’re a lot more clever than I ever was!’

  Jenny didn’t believe that. She was pretty certain Heather had a brain too. She could have done it if she’d tried. Only for some reason she hadn’t tried.

  ‘Boys were always our Heather’s downfall,’ she had heard her mother say once, and she thought it might be true. As well as her lovely blue eyes, Heather had thick brown curly hair, a pretty tip-tilted nose and a wide, smiling mouth. She also had a lovely figure that had developed early, a small waist and curvy hips, shown off to perfection by the shirt-waist blouses and pencil-slim skirts she wore, and long slender legs. Boys flocked round her like wasps around a jam jar, and though none of her boyfriends seemed to last more than a few months at most, there was always a new one to bring her home from the Palais de Danse on his motorbike, the pencil-slim skirt stretched round her shapely bottom and rucked up over her slender thighs.

  I don’t know about the brains, but I certainly wish I looked more like she does! Jenny often thought.

  In some ways, there was a likeness. ‘You can see they’re sisters,’ people would say, but Jenny thought they were just being kind. She and Heather had the same blue eyes, but until a year ago Jenny’s had been hidden behind National Health spectacles because measles had damaged them in some inexplicable way. ‘The pupils are egg-shaped instead of round,’ the specialist had said. ‘They’ll sort themselves out in time.’ And so they had. But not before Jenny had endured agonies of embarrassment over the horrid glasses.

  Then there was her hair, not curly but almost straight, with an annoying wave across the front that often looked as if her mother had put a metal curling clip in it. She hadn’t, of course, but she did insist on parting it on one side, which Jenny felt sure made her round face look even rounder and plainer than it already was, and tying a bow of ribbon in it. White ribbon. If it had been red or green or yellow or even sky-blue-pink, whatever that was, Jenny thought she could have borne it – but white! It made her feel babyish, just as the hand-knitted jumpers and pleated kilts and white knee socks made her feel babyish. Most of the others wore grey or fawn socks and red or even navy-blue hair ribbons. No wonder they laughed at her!

  As for the shape of her – well, she was fat, there was no other word for it. As the youngest of the family she had always been indulged, the others saving their sweet rations and their butter rations and their sugar rations for her, and she still drank milk with her meals instead of tea like the others.

  ‘You’ve got all the rest of your life to drink tea,’ her mother would say. ‘Milk will do you a lot more good while you’re still growing.’

  The indulgences showed. Jenny’s legs might have been a similar shape to Heather’s, but they were also plump, so plump that in cold weather she got chaps between her thighs where they rubbed together. Being plump meant she couldn’t run as fast as the others or play games or do physical training as well, and being good at games and physical training was one of the things that really counted in the popularity stakes. But Jenny had come to accept that was the shape she was and there was nothing she could do about it.

  ‘We’re all made different,’ her mother would say. ‘You’re all right as you are.’

  And of course, if the truth were told, her mother was plump too.

  It was only when it came to school work that Jenny felt truly confident. She was good at English – sometimes the lessons came to her so easily it was almost boring and she couldn’t underst
and the difficulty the others had in grasping it; she was disappointed if she failed to get less than ten out of ten for spelling tests, and she had read voraciously since she was six. Her grasp of English stood her in good stead for all the other lessons except arithmetic, which she struggled with, but still managed to do better than many of the others. The teachers would pick her out to answer questions when the inspector came, though she never felt they liked her as much as some of the less able, even naughtier children – perhaps because she tried so hard to be good! But the rector seemed to like her. He always beamed at her when he came in to take the weekly RE class – something which she suspected did not endear her to her classmates.

  No – she could pass The Exam. She was expected to. And it was that which terrified her most of all. If she failed she would be letting them all down – Mr Heal, the rector, her mother, Heather. But most of all she would be letting herself down. It was her chance to shine, to really do well, to make a better future for herself than a job at the glove factory. If she failed she didn’t think she could bear it.

  The school bell pealed suddenly, bringing the morning’s lessons to a close. The children began scraping their chairs, chattering, until Mr Heal called them to order, making them line up neatly before he opened the door to release them. They thronged out through the classroom beyond – the Infants’Room – and down the stone steps to the cloakroom, the walls of which ran with water at this time of year when the weather was wet.

  Mr Heal stood on the top step, supervising, as they took their coats from the pegstands and put them on, rosy faces peeping from the hoods of gaberdine mackintoshes or eager beneath bonnets and caps. Then he marshalled them into a crocodile, two by two, for the walk across the playground and through the churchyard to the dining hall.

  As usual, Jenny found herself at the back. It always took her longer than the others to get herself organised, though she could never work out why this should be. Only Tessa Smith was inevitably slower. Jenny managed to work her way further up the line to avoid having to walk with her. The move put her immediately behind Valerie Scott. Jenny smiled at her hopefully but Valerie turned away with a toss of her shoulder-length bunches, not smiling back but linking her arm through that of Margaret Hodges, her best friend of the moment, and whispering. Margaret giggled and Jenny flushed, unexpected tears pricking her eyes. Valerie had said something about her, she was sure, and they were laughing at her. If only I could be like them! Jenny thought. If only I could be like Heather! If only I could be like anybody except me!

  Through the churchyard they went, under the dripping trees, down the little flight of steps and into the lane.

  ‘Watch out for the puddles!’ Mr Heal called, but Jenny had already squelched into one, and now there were mud splashes on her clean white knee socks.

  The warmth and the smell of food greeted them as they went through the door of the prefabricated hut and hung their coats on yet another set of pegstands.

  As Jenny joined the queue she caught sight of Carrie, standing behind the row of containers, and her heart lifted. Her mum always made her feel safe and wanted. Her mum was always there for her, putting things right when they went wrong, giving her little treats Jenny knew she could ill afford.

  At almost the same moment Carrie saw Jenny and smiled, a wide smile that lit up her square, rather worn-looking face. Jenny smiled back, waving before she could stop herself.

  ‘Jenny’s Mum, the Dinner Bum,’ Valerie said to Margaret in a whisper loud enough for Jenny to hear. And then again, in a sing-song chant, with which Margaret joined in: ‘Jenny’s Mum, the Dinner Bum!’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Jenny protested. The flush was beginning again.

  They turned to stare at her, eyes wide and innocent, barely concealing laughter.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Bum’s a rude word,’ Jenny said.

  Valerie tossed her bunches again, challenging, taunting.

  ‘Jenny’s Mum, the Dinner Bum!’ she repeated, emphasising each word. Then she and Margaret turned their backs on her, helpless with giggles.

  The tears pricked behind Jenny’s eyes again. She couldn’t understand why they were so horrible to her. Even the pleasure of seeing her mother had been spoiled.

  ‘I’ll show them,’ Jenny thought, fighting back the tears. ‘One day I really will show them!’

  The two sittings of dinner were over, the children gone back to their afternoon classes. Carrie was elbow-deep in greasy water at one of the sinks. The feeling of trapped helplessness remained but she had stopped being angry with Glad now, and even felt a little guilty for having been so sharp with her. Perhaps she’d make a detour to the Co-op bakery on her way home and buy some jam tarts for tea by way of a peace offering.

  ‘Your Jennifer didn’t look very happy,’ Ivy Burden said, taking a pile of washed plates and stacking them in one of the overhead cupboards. ‘She’s a funny little soul, isn’t she? So serious.’

  ‘She’s a good girl,’ Carrie said, sensing an unspoken criticism and springing to Jenny’s defence. ‘She’s never any trouble.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ Ivy said. ‘I mean – most of them are full of it at that age. I know our Brenda was.’

  ‘And our Billy,’ Joyce Edgell chimed in. ‘Still is, come to that.’

  Carrie’s lips tightened. Everyone knew Billy Edgell had been up before the Juvenile Court for stealing sweets and even a handful of cash from the till in Morris’s shop when Ev Morris’s back was turned. And Joyce was ‘no better than she should be’.

  ‘Takes after his mother, if you ask me,’ Mary Packer joked, and Carrie smiled to herself, though she said nothing. Her sentiments exactly!

  Joyce laughed, taking no offence.

  ‘His father, more like! I’ve told him he’ll have to pull his socks up when we move to Alder Road. I don’t want him upsetting the neighbours there and getting us off on the wrong foot.’

  Carrie froze.

  ‘You’re moving into the new estate?’ Mary asked, a tone of awe in her voice.

  ‘We shall be, yes. We had the letter this morning. Number 14, Alder Road.’

  ‘You’re a dark horse!’ Ivy said. ‘I should’ve thought you’d have told us as soon as you came in.’

  ‘We were busy, weren’t we? Three of us doing the work of four.’

  Carrie was so staggered at hearing that Joyce Edgell had one of the new houses that she failed to rise to the taunt. The letters had started going out then, and just as she had feared, she hadn’t had one. Unless of course it had come by second post.

  ‘You won’t know yourself up there, Joyce,’ Ivy said. ‘They say those houses are going to be lovely. You’ve been lucky there.’

  ‘Luck doesn’t come into it!’ Mary snorted. ‘We’ve all got a pretty good idea how Joyce managed to get to the top of the list, haven’t we? It isn’t what you know, it’s who you know that counts.’

  ‘Mary! Watch what you’re saying!’ Ivy admonished her, and suddenly Carrie was burning with outrage as it all came clear. George Parsons, Clerk to the Council – of course! Joyce and George Parsons!

  Some days Joyce was in a hurry to leave. She was off along the lane before them, not stopping to chat, and one afternoon when Carrie had left early herself, before any of them, for an appointment at the dentist’s, she had seen George Parsons’car parked under the trees on the corner where the lane joined the main road. She’d put two and two together and made four and she guessed now that the others had seen something to make them suspicious too.

  For all her dubious background, Joyce was an attractive woman, tall and boldly handsome, with thick lustrous black hair, dark skin and eyes that had something of a Mediterranean look about them, though her mother and father were both Hillsbridge people, as solidly Somerset as they came. No, it didn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to guess what was going on, but nothing had ever been said. Until now.

  Mary had hit the nail on the head without a doubt. The atmosphere in the s
teamy kitchen had become charged suddenly, the comradely banter had become a minefield.

  ‘You’ve got a cheek, Mary Packer!’ If Joyce’s dark skin had been capable of flushing, she would have flushed now. As it was her eyes blazed out of a face that had the unmistakable look of guilt surprised.

  ‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’ Mary said, but a little defensively, as if she knew she’d overstepped an invisible boundary.

  ‘I’ll thank you to mind your own business!’ Joyce blazed.

  ‘Sorry, I’m sure.’

  ‘And so you should be, making accusations like that!’

  ‘All right, all right, keep your hair on.’

  ‘Yes. Well. If ever I hear you say that again, I’ll have you up for libel!’ She reached for her overall. ‘I’m going. I was here early, unlike some.’

  She grabbed her coat and hurried out buttoning it as she went, more hot and bothered than Carrie had ever seen her.

  ‘I bet he’s up there waiting for her now,’ Mary said, chastened but still defiant.

  ‘Mary!’

  ‘I bet he is. That’s why she’s in such a hurry, to make sure they’re well out of the way before we get along there. You know as well as I do what’s going on there, and has been for years.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I’ve got more sense than to say so.’

  ‘There was no need for her to fly off the handle like that.’

  ‘Well, I can’t say I blame her. Goodness only knows what would happen if something like that got out.’

  ‘I can’t see as it would make a lot of difference,’ Mary said defensively. ‘George Parsons isn’t the first she’s been with and I don’t suppose he’ll be the last. And that husband of hers is no better. Funny sort of marriage, if you ask me.’

  ‘Like she said, that’s her business,’ Ivy retorted. ‘In any case, it wasn’t her I was thinking of. It’s George Parsons. He’d lose his job if it got out.’

  ‘And so he should if he’s trading favours with Joyce Edgell or anybody else for that matter.’

  ‘We’ve got to work with her, Mary,’ Ivy said sternly. ‘When you work with somebody every day you get to know things, but you’ve got to keep quiet about it. What sort of atmosphere would it be if you go causing trouble?’