Anne Bennett - A Little Learning

‘Kicking a ball in the street somewhere, but the nights are drawing in now.’

‘He’ll be all right.’

‘Betty doesn’t like him out in the dark,’ Mrs McClusky said. ‘They get up to all sorts of mischief, she says.’

Bert thought of Duncan and his mates and knew that Betty had a point. ‘I’ll tell him,’ he said, and added, ‘Our Janet’s not out there too, is she?’

Sarah McClusky chuckled. ‘Not her, she’s too sensible for that gang of hooligans. She’s in the kitchen, doing homework.’

Bert frowned. He had no desire for his daughter to be running wild around the estate, especially with Duncan and his pals, but she was a little too sensible for his liking. It wasn’t normal.

‘She’s an odd kid all right,’ he said.

Sarah had a soft spot for her granddaughter, much as she loved her grandsons, especially the two rips named for her dead sons. She also loved Breda’s little girl Linda, cheeky monkey though she was, but between her and Janet there was a special bond.

It had grown with the resemblance she’d had to her mother as a small child, when Sarah had looked after the children so that Betty could do her ARP work during the war. Sarah was aware very early of Janet’s ability to listen and absorb. She’d sit for hours and listen intently to her gran recounting an incident from her own childhood, or Betty’s. Sometimes she’d interrupt with a question, but most times she’d stay still and quiet.

She’d been able to read before she went to school, because Sarah had read to her often and she’d picked up the words. They’d chosen books together from the public library in Erdington village, but though Sarah had told Betty about the trips there, she never let on that Janet could read. She told Janet to keep it to herself too, for she had an idea the teachers wouldn’t like it. She hadn’t been as surprised as her daughter when the teachers had commented on Janet’s intelligence, but she’d said nothing. She wasn’t certain now that the grammar school was the solution for Janet, and was of the opinion that men didn’t like girls who were too clever. But she wouldn’t let anyone put her granddaughter down either.

She looked at her son-in-law now over the top of the glasses she held on the tip of her nose in order to see the stitches on the needles, and said:

‘She’s all right, your Janet, a good lassie. Just because she finds no pleasure in running wild doesn’t mean she’s odd.’

‘I didn’t mean odd exactly,’ Bert said, uncomfortable under Sarah McClusky’s unfriendly scrutiny. ‘Just different.’

And she was different, he thought, as he opened the door to say good night. She was bent over her books so intently she hadn’t heard the click of the latch. Brought up as she was in a house with a brash elder brother and two younger ones prone to yelling and screaming their way through the day, she’d learnt to cut herself off from everyday noises that could distract.

So Bert had to speak before Janet jerked up from the exercise book she’d been writing in. Her eyes held a note of impatience, he noticed, and it annoyed him. But he made an attempt to try and understand this young daughter of his, who somehow held herself away from him.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘English,’ Janet answered shortly, and then, because she knew that had sounded rude, she went on, ‘We have to write an essay and then I have an exercise in maths.’

‘Why didn’t Duncan have homework like this when he was at Paget Road Primary?’ Bert asked, genuinely puzzled.

Janet shrugged. ‘Maybe he didn’t want homework,’ she said.

‘Want it! Do you mean you don’t have to do it?’

You do if you want to get into grammar school, Janet could have said. She could imagine the explosion that would cause. Anyway, her mother had told her she’d handle it, so she just said:

‘You can have it if you like.’

‘And you like, do you?’ Bert shook his head. He couldn’t understand an attitude like that.

‘Yes, yes, I do.’

What could he say to that? He patted his daughter’s head self-consciously. ‘Don’t work too hard then,’ he said, ‘and bed by nine.’

‘I know,’ Janet said impatiently. She didn’t understand why her dad was suddenly so interested. Her gran would tell her it was time for bed if she were to get immersed in something and forget the time. Her father was seldom at home at bedtime, but she knew if she wasn’t in bed when her mother came in, she’d catch it.

‘Well, good night then,’ Bert said uncomfortably. He was aware that his daughter was just waiting for him to go. She was regarding him as an intrusion, he thought suddenly, and had only spoken to him to be polite. All the time he’d been in the kitchen she’d remained bent over her books, with her pen poised, waiting to continue.

Bert banged the kitchen door behind him angrily. Janet had got under his skin, but there was nothing in her manner of speaking to him that he could tell her off for. It was just a feeling he had.

Mrs McClusky looked across at him and said, ‘You go slamming doors like that, I’ll have the two rapscallions awake again.’

Bert glared at her. He longed to tell her to shut her mouth, but didn’t dare. Instead he made his way out of the front door, deliberately banging it loudly behind him. He called out to Duncan to get himself indoors, in a voice that brooked no argument, then hurried through the cold, dark streets to the club, where he always found congenial company.

Janet heard her mother come in, and the murmur of voices between Mrs McClusky and her daughter. She heard her grandmother leave. In fact, so alive were her senses, she imagined she heard her mother filling the kettle, and the pop of the gas.

She lay and gazed at the ceiling in the smallest bedroom, which she had all to herself. She wondered if she would be able to work up here – that was, of course, if she was ever to get to the grammar school. She had a wardrobe and a chest of drawers in the room, and Mom had said she’d get her a mirror to sit on top of the chest so it would be like a dressing table. But really she needed a desk. She wondered if she could use it for homework if she cleared the top off. But it was rather high – at least it was for the plain wooden chair which was the only other thing in the room. Then there was no place to put her legs, they’d have to dangle to the sides. And then it could be very cold up there in the winter. She’d have to wear her overcoat to work up here. But she was seriously worried about working in the kitchen if she got into the grammar school and had the masses of homework Miss Wentworth had told her about.

Duncan came in every evening filthy dirty and starving hungry. Gran or Mom would make him wash at the sink and he’d splash water everywhere. Then he’d make great wads of bread and jam, smearing the table and leaving the sticky knife lying there. Or he’d make cocoa, stirring the sugar in so vigorously that the brown liquid slopped all over. Janet’s books had already had more than one lucky escape from Duncan’s attempts at preventing himself from starving to death.

Then there were the twins … Janet wasn’t aware how they did it, but their hands were nearly always sticky, and ranged from merely grubby to filthy. She shuddered at the thought of them handling her things. They were messier than Duncan and twice as clumsy, and what if they were to get hold of a crayon and scribble over her work? No, somehow, she decided as she closed her eyes, she had to work in her bedroom.

She was jerked suddenly awake and lay for a moment wondering what had roused her. The louder buzz of voices from the living room told her that her father was home; it was him coming in that had probably woken her. It had happened countless times before, and Janet had always turned over and gone to sleep again. She prepared to do this now. Her bed was warm and she was cosy, but she couldn’t rest.