Читать книгу A Little Learning - Anne Bennett - Страница 7

‘Do you really want to sit the exams for grammar school?’ Duncan asked his sister, hardly able to believe she did.

Janet spun round in excitement. ‘More than anything,’ she said.

Duncan stared at his sister in astonishment. He couldn’t understand her, and that bothered him, because he and Janet had always been very close, at least till this business. He couldn’t deny she was excited, it shone out of her. He’d never thought of Janet as pretty. He was the good-looking one, with his blond curls and brilliant blue eyes. When he was younger, people were always saying he was too pretty to be a boy and what a shame his sister was so plain. He’d never looked at Janet much, she was just his sister, but he looked at her now. He noted that the mousy hair, that Mom made her keep short because of the risk of nits, seemed to have more body and was somehow fluffed out around her face. Even her eyes, usually a nondescript sort of deep grey, sparkled with excitement and transformed her whole face. Her skin had lost its sallowness and her mouth didn’t seem so large, caught up as it was in a beam of happiness.

Duncan couldn’t help grinning back at his sister. Janet’s delight was infectious. He shook his head as he said, ‘Well, I can see you’re pleased, Jan, but I don’t see what you’ve got to be pleased about.’

‘Oh, Duncan, it’s what I’ve always dreamed of.’

‘Well,’ Duncan said, ‘if it means that much to you I hope you pass, but I still think you need your head testing.’

Janet watched Duncan kicking a ball up the garden for his young twin brothers to run after, but didn’t run after them. They’d all been sent to the garden because their parents wanted to talk, and Janet knew what about. Though her father had come round a bit about the exams, in the beginning he was all for not letting Janet take them at all. She knew he was worried about the expense of it all, like keeping her at school all those extra years and buying her uniform. Her mother said she’d just fix it and Janet would like to believe her, but how would she find money they hadn’t got? She chewed at her thumb nail and wished she could hear what was being said inside.

‘Well, say our Janet passes this bloody exam you talked me into letting her sit,’ Bert said glumly, ‘how the hell are we going to afford the uniform? This bloke at work told me it costs a bleeding fortune.’

Betty knew only too well that it did – she’d checked it herself – but if Janet passed, then somehow the money for the uniform had to be found.

‘We’ll afford it, don’t you worry,’ she said fiercely.

‘Look, old girl,’ Bert said, ‘I don’t want to put a damper on the whole thing, but exactly how are we to pay for it all?’

‘I’ll get a Co-op cheque out,’ Betty promised. ‘That will do for the uniform at least, and paid in weekly, it won’t be so bad.’

‘And how will you pay for that?’ Bert persisted. ‘A five-pound cheque won’t cover this.’

‘I know,’ Betty said impatiently. ‘I suppose I could go back on the twilight shift at the sauce factory. Our Breda could put a word in, and they always said I could go back.’

‘I know that’s what they said, but I don’t think it’s right, you working nights like that just to send our girl to grammar school,’ Bert said.

‘Don’t you see!’ Betty cried. ‘I’m going to work so she won’t have to work like me. I’m going, to give her a chance.’

‘You said all this before,’ grumbled Bert, ‘when you and that Miss Wentworth talked me round for her to put in for the bloody exam in the first place.’

‘Yes,’ Betty said, ‘and that’s because you said at first that education was wasted on girls.’

‘And so it is.’

Betty stood up in front of Bert and banged her fist on the kitchen table. ‘Listen, you blooming numbskull,’ she said angrily. ‘All my life I’ve worked. From the age of fourteen I was serving in the tobacconist’s shop at the corner of Corporation Street, often for twelve hours a day. Then we wed, and when Duncan was small and Janet a wee baby, I was office cleaning from five in the morning till eight, and then again at night in the chip shop to make ends meet. Then after the war our Breda got me set in the HP Sauce factory at Aston Cross. So don’t you tell me about education being a waste.’

‘I know you’ve worked, love,’ Bert said soothingly. ‘You’re one of the best, none better.’

‘Well, I want better, better for my daughter,’ Betty cried. ‘I don’t want her working like I had to, like most women have to.’

‘Yes, but when a woman’s married …’ Bert began, but Betty leapt at him again.

‘Her life stops, is that it?’

‘Not at all,’ Bert declared stoutly. ‘Some say it begins.’

‘Oh yes it does,’ Betty said. ‘You’ve a house, a husband, children, less money than you’ve ever had in your life and more to do with it.’

Bert had his set face on, so Betty tried again. ‘Look, Bert, I’m not blaming you. It’s just the way it is. But the world’s changing now. When you and all the other men were charging around Europe killing Germans, the women were holding the fort over here. They were doing jobs women had never done before!’

‘I know that.’

‘But you must see that that sort of experience would change a woman’s outlook on things.’

‘Till the men came back.’

‘No,’ Betty cried. ‘Six years is a long time. Women won’t just give up and go back to the kitchen sink. Things will have to change. Miss Wentworth was even telling me that married women will soon be officially allowed to teach. I mean, they did in the war, because they had to, and then they expected them to go back to their husbands. Only some didn’t want to, and some of the poor souls didn’t have husbands any more, but they still had a family to bring up.’

‘It’s this Miss Wentworth who’s filled your head with such nonsense,’ Bert said stubbornly.

Betty knew he had a point, for she had listened to the teacher and to her vision of the new, emerging Britain, where women could take their rightful place alongside men.

‘Women like your Janet, Mrs Travers,’ she said. ‘Intelligent women. The time will come when men and women will work side by side, and that will include married women. Even when they have children, they will be going back to work. It will eventually change the face of the world.’

Betty had kept quiet. She didn’t say that women had been working for years and working bloody hard and yet it had changed nothing. Sarah McClusky, her own mother, had worked from dawn till dusk and for a pittance. They’d lived in Summer Lane then, the bottom end of Edgbaston. The houses were back to back with dilapidated roofs and walls, crowded around a central courtyard which housed the shared lavatory and brew’us, where the washing was done, and where the tap was that served the whole yard. Betty remembered the stench from the small industries and workshops that abounded in the area that made the atmosphere smoky and gloomy and dirty as it discharged its gases into the air to mix with the smoke from thousands of back to back house chimneys.

Betty looked at Claire Wentworth and realised she didn’t know the half of it, not her Janet either; she hoped her children would never know poverty like there was then. It was the threat of that that made her mother trudge across to the other side of Edgbaston to clean the homes of the gentry. Winter or summer, and often the only thing to protect her from the elements was a shawl, and the well cobbled boots on her feet might have cardboard inside them to try to keep the wet out of the soles worn through.

All day she would clean and return home weary and bone tired to a meal Betty would have to have made after her day at school. It was her job, as the elder girl, to clean and cook as best she could and, with her elder brother Conner, give an eye to the little’uns Brendan, Breda and Noel. Twice a week Sarah would bring home a large laundry basket covered with a sheet, and Betty would know her mother would be in the brew’us all the rest of the next day washing for her employers.

It was no mean feat to wash clothes then, even for a family, and yet Sarah wasn’t the only woman to take on extra. She would creep from her bed at five the next morning and poke Betty awake as she slept in the attic in the bed with her younger sister. Bleary eyed, Betty would stumble after her mother in clothes hastily fastened around her and her feet in the boots given free to the poor children by the Daily Mail. In her hand she would carry a bucket of slack to light the copper, and inside the brew’us her mother would be filling it up bucket by bucket from a tap in the yard. Betty would begin to maid, or pound, the clothes in a dolly tub and then scrub at the offending stains. At some point her mother would take over and Betty would return to the house to wake and feed her brothers and sisters and her father too.

In the brew’us, Sarah would boil all the washing in the copper and then swill the whites in a bucket tinged with Reckett’s Blue before starching. When the children returned at dinnertime, to bread and dripping they made themselves, Sarah would be mangling the clothes, and if the day had been fine and dry, by hometime she was ironing the lot with a flat iron heated in the fire, for the clothes would have dried on the lines that criss-crossed the yard. If however it was wet, the clothes would be strung above the fire and around the hearth, and the house would be cold and smell of damp washing.

But no one complained, for the washing Sarah took in to supplement her cleaning paid the rent and put food in hungry children’s bellies. Even Sean who was often unable to provide for his family said little, and in actual fact, Sarah’s job didn’t disturb him much at all and as long as his own laundry was always done, his dinner always on the table, the fire kept up and the children seen to, he didn’t moan much. The house might have got a lick and a promise rather than a good going-over, the stove might not have been blackleaded every week, nor the brass polished, nor the step scrubbed, but those were things the men didn’t notice.

Until the slump, Sean McClusky had been employed at Henry Wiggins and Co in Wiggin Street which produced nickel and steel plate, but as the depression bit deeper, he was just put on short time and then out of work altogether; it was her mother who then put food on the table, Betty remembered. Yet her father would never do a hand’s turn in the house and it hadn’t seemed strange. Without work, he would loll on street corners with mates in the same situation, or sit listlessly in front of the fire for which his wife’s money had bought the coal.

Miss Wentworth painted a view of life Betty didn’t understand, or quite believe in. Her own jobs, like her mother’s, had been chosen to fit in with Bert and the children.

In time life had become easier for the McClusky family. Betty married Bert which was no surprise to anyone, and the family moved from Summer Lane to the new sprawling council estate of Pype Hayes, north of the city, where Betty in time was also given a house. Money was easier as the younger McCluskys were all at work, and Sean got a job making tyres at Fort Dunlop in 1937. Then war was declared. Bert Travers was called up, along with his brothers-in-law Conner and Brendan, while Noel volunteered and Breda went to work in the munitions.

‘Come on, our Bet, the money is desperate, so it is,’ she’d urged her sister, but Betty had shaken her head.

The years had been hard on her parents and she thought she couldn’t leave them in charge of Duncan and Janet all day, whatever the lure of the money. Breda soon sported the uniform turban like all the rest of the factory girls, wore scarlet lipstick and smoked strong-smelling cigarettes. Her language, Betty noticed, was pretty strong too. She’d have had her lugs scalped if she’d tried such talk, she told her sister.

‘Da says that and worse,’ Breda had protested.

‘That’s different, he’s a man.’

Then Breda had laughed. ‘I think you can give yourself a pat on the back for noticing that, Bet, for I’d never have worked it out on my own.’

But Betty’s attitude changed when her youngest brother, Noel, was killed in the first year of the war. He was just eighteen years old. Betty thought she’d never get over it, and yet she had to cope because her parents were bowed down with grief. Eventually, anger at the waste of Noel’s life replaced the sadness, and this anger was further fuelled by the blitz of Birmingham that began on 25 August 1940.

When Tyburn Road was targeted the following evening, it was dangerously close to her Pype Hayes home, threatening her family. She decided that knitting balaclavas and cowering at home was no longer good enough for her. ‘I need to do something, Mammy,’ she appealed to her mother, ‘or I’ll feel Noel has died in vain. But I can’t do it without your help.’

Sarah McClusky had no wish to see another of her children exposed to danger, but she knew it was Betty’s way of dealing with her brother’s death. She took a deep breath to steady her own fear and said firmly, ‘The weans will be as right as rain with us. Dad has the shelter that cosy, with bunks fixed to the sides and the oil heater to take the chill off, and they’ll be as safe as houses.’

Betty was grateful, for she knew what it had cost her mother to react the way she did. The following day she joined up as an ARP warden.

It soon became apparent that Birmingham was ill equipped to deal with the casualties of the bombing raids, which were intensifying throughout the city. The job of the wardens included trying to arrange temporary accommodation of some sort for the homeless, plus clothes, bedding and food.

People taking shelter where they could often did not get any aid for hours, and there were some disorderly scenes among the desperate and often destitute people. In an effort to help the situation, mobile canteens were set up, and Betty elected to serve in one of these, together with her fellow ARP warden and friend Cynthia, who was the driver.

On the night of 19 November 1940, the sirens had not even died away when the first thuds were heard. Sarah McClusky felt her stomach tighten in fear as she watched her daughter struggle into her coat. She knew Betty had to go, and hoped the raid would be over soon, but she had to look after Duncan and Janet, so she began hurriedly to pack a bag to take down to the shelter. ‘Take care, lass,’ she said to Betty as she was about to leave.

‘I will, Mammy,’ Betty said. There was a sudden explosion very close and she went on quickly, ‘Don’t worry about me, Mammy, I’ll be fine, but get the children and yourselves down to the shelter quick.’ She gave her mother and children a kiss. ‘See you in the morning.’

It was a long raid and a bad one. The ack-ack guns were at work as she made her way to the ARP post in Erdington, and the searchlights were raking the skies. She sent up a prayer that her family would be safe when she returned – the children, her parents and Breda on her night shift.

Hours later, as the mobile canteen drove towards Birmingham city centre, which seemed to be ablaze, Cynthia was cut badly about the face by shards of glass from the windscreen, which had been shattered by a bomb blast. One of the ambulancemen who took the unconscious and bleeding Cynthia to hospital turned to Betty and said, ‘Have to leave the van where it is, love, and hope it isn’t blown to kingdom come.’

Until then, Betty had given no thought to the van, but she knew they were needed – indeed, they were a lifeline for many families, and for the rescue workers digging people out, often near dead on their feet with exhaustion themselves.

‘No bloody Hitler’s getting my van,’ she said, climbing into Cynthia’s seat. She didn’t know how to drive, but she’d seen Cynthia do it often enough. She turned the key and the throbbing engine came to life. Slowly and carefully she put it into gear and touched her foot on the accelerator. She was slow and a bit jerky, but she was driving, and a thrill of exhilaration ran through her. She negotiated potholes and piles of debris blown into the road by the falling bombs. The wind buffeted her through the gaping hole in the windscreen, and all around her was constant noise.

Black arrows of death were tumbling from the droning planes above, the never-ending rattle of the guns seeming to make no impression on them. She heard cries and terrified screams, and saw walls crumple with shuddering thuds before her eyes, exploding in clouds of dust. The sirens of fire engines and ambulances screamed through the night. She saw the city skyline lit up with a strange orange glow, and the acrid smell of smoke was in her mouth and nose.

And she drove through it all, like a scythe cutting a swath through corn, too excited to be scared. A little while later, she was dishing out tea and sandwiches to people in an emergency rescue centre, and being described as ‘an angel’.

She told no one about her driving. She told her mother as little as possible anyway. Sarah McClusky understood Betty’s need to be doing something and looked after Duncan and Janet with no complaint. However, if she’d had her way, she’d have had her Betty tucked up in the shelter with the children.

Sarah was confused by the way of the world. By working her fingers to the bone, she’d been able to put shoes on her children’s feet and food in their stomachs when times were bad. She’d kept them safe and healthy, she’d nursed them through childish ailments, they were well nourished enough to fight. She was proud of her fine family. But she’d already lost one son to the war, with the other two risking their lives daily, and a daughter to the munitions, for she knew that Breda – never as easy or compliant as her sister – would go her own way after this.

Then there was Betty. With her husband away fighting, she doled out nourishment, hope and sympathy to the homeless and rescuers alike in the city centre where the raids were heaviest. Betty told her mother that they took shelter when the raids were bad, but Sarah wasn’t sure she’d been telling the truth. She had the idea she wasn’t told about a lot of things.

‘You dark horse,’ Cynthia said when Betty visited her in the General Hospital later. She was swathed in bandages and looked a little pale, but she smiled bravely as she asked: ‘Why did you never say you could drive before?’

‘Oh, you know,’ Betty said, busying herself with an imaginary stain on her skirt so that Cynthia wouldn’t see the telltale flush flooding her face. ‘It’s a long time ago. I wasn’t sure I still had the knack.’

‘I think it’s like riding a bike,’ Cynthia said. ‘You know, you never really forget.’

‘Yes,’ said Betty, anxious to get off the subject. She looked out of the window at the steel-grey skies and the people hurrying below huddled in thick coats, scarves and hats. ‘It’s bitter out there, Cynth, you’re in the best place for the moment.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Cynthia said. ‘D’you know what they do when there’s a raid? They stick us underneath the beds. Some chance if the hospital gets a direct hit, eh? I’d descend to the ground floor mighty quick, if you ask me, under tons of masonry, crushed flat by my own iron bed. No, I’d rather take my chance out on the street, where you can see the buggers coming.’

‘Oh, Cynthia,’ Betty said with a chuckle, ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘Well, you’ll have to go on missing me,’ Cynthia said, ‘because even when I’m out of here, you’ll probably get a different crew now. I don’t think they’ve got enough drivers to put two together.’

‘Oh, no … I mean, yes … of course, you’re right.’ That hadn’t occurred to Betty, but she enjoyed driving so much, she didn’t want to give it up. She kept the truth from her mother and her husband who might have spilled the beans that she’d never had a driving lesson in the whole of her life. No one asked, and as drivers were in short supply, she was in great demand.

The war went on relentlessly. The raids eased a little, but the battle for the housewife was coping with shortages and rationing. Making do and mending was all very well, Betty thought wryly, if you had something to make do with in the first place.

Then, just before the spring of 1944, Bert came home for pre-embarkation leave.

‘I think this is it, my old duck,’ he told Betty, ‘the big push, the beginning of the end, old girl.’

And what if, when the end finally comes, I have no husband? thought Betty, and she cried into Bert’s shoulder and wouldn’t tell him why. The ARP post had to do without her for two nights while she lay in Bert’s arms, and their lovemaking was frantic as they realised that their time together was short. By the time Bert was treading the beaches of Normandy, Betty was getting used to the idea of another little Travers to join Duncan and Janet. She cut down on her war work as her pregnancy advanced, and gave it up entirely just before Christmas of that year.

The second telegram arrived the day the Christmas cards were due to come down. Sarah opened it with trembling fingers, and when she read that Conner, her eldest son, was to lie beside his brother in foreign soil, she fell down in a faint. Sean McClusky envied his wife her unconsciousness, and wished he didn’t have to deal with the knowledge that two of his children were dead and gone. He put his head in his hands and wept.

Betty’s grief was deep and profound for the big brother she’d always looked up to. Noel’s death had acted as a catalyst, urging her to take a more active part in the war that had stolen her brother. This time there was nothing she could do to lessen the hurt, for hostilities were nearly at an end and the tide of war was turning.

However, she wasn’t allowed to grieve for long, for just days after they received the news about Conner, her pains began. Her labour was long and difficult and the midwife sent for the doctor. He was mystified as to why Betty should be having such a difficult time, until it was established that there were two babies, not one as originally thought. Betty couldn’t believe her ears and redoubled her efforts, and on a raw January day gave birth to twin boys, both healthy, lusty and a good size.

When Sarah McClusky was told the news she dropped to her knees. ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ she said. Betty agreed with her mother’s sentiments, and the two boys were christened Conner and Noel. Sarah often looked for signs of her dead sons in the twins.

‘I think Conner has his uncle’s nose,’ she’d say, or ‘Noel is the image of his namesake. Even their eyes are the same shape.’

Betty didn’t agree because in her opinion both boys looked like Bert. In their identical faces she could see Bert’s hazel eyes, and his large nose. Even the shape of their faces was the same – round, with ruddy cheeks – and eventually, Betty guessed, their chins would turn craggy like Bert’s. Only their wide mouths and the colour of their hair was the same as hers and Janet’s. It was Duncan who resembled his dead uncles, in both colouring and build.

‘Ma can’t see it,’ Betty said to Breda. ‘Duncan is the spit of our Noel at the same age. I remember him well. I can’t remember Conner as a child, because he was older than me, but I’ve seen photographs.’

‘She doesn’t want to see it,’ Breda said. ‘Not in Duncan. She wants the twins to look like their dead uncles because in her mind they’ve replaced them.’ She struggled and went on, ‘It helps her cope.’ Betty said she supposed it did, she had neither the time nor the inclination to argue further; she was too busy dealing with the family to do any further war work, and she was just glad that things were winding down at last.

The VE celebrations and street parties were tinged with sadness for many who had loved ones not returning after the war. Betty and her parents felt sad that Conner and Noel had not lived to celebrate the day, but the twins’ birth helped them all to cope. Betty knew she had much to be thankful for. Her husband and one brother were safe, and her sister, and she had her fine family, Duncan, Janet and the twins.

She was immersed in domesticity now, but busy as she was, she often found the days tedious. Driving around the ravaged city dealing with the destitute and the desperate had seemed important work. She had dealt with the bereaved and the sick and those in shock, and had felt useful and needed. It wasn’t that she didn’t consider her family important; it was the boredom of doing the same thing day after day she found hard to take. She also seemed to lack any identity now – just wife and mother, where once she’d been someone in her own right.

She knew that when Bert returned she would tell him little of the work she’d done in the war. He’d never have recognised the organised person driving the mobile canteen through the streets of Birmingham as his Betty anyway. Betty herself found it hard to remember what she’d been like then, and now the family claimed all her attention.

Duncan could have taken the eleven-plus that year, but he didn’t want to and the teachers told Betty there was little point.

‘An apprenticeship would be ideal, Mrs Travers,’ the headmaster said. ‘Or something in that line. He’s not a stupid boy and he’s good with his hands, but not grammar school potential. Now if it were Janet …’

The words were left hanging in the air. Betty pondered on them, but said nothing to anyone.

Duncan didn’t care. ‘I don’t want to go to no soppy grammar school, Ma. I want to go to Paget Road Secondary with my mates.’

Janet had wished she’d had the opportunity to sit the exam, and wondered if she’d ever be allowed to. She knew Duncan didn’t want to go to grammar school, he’d told her often enough. He disliked school and thought it a waste of time, but realised he had to be there for a while and went without too much fuss. He was determined to leave at the first opportunity.

‘But what will you do?’ Janet asked.

‘I reckon our dad can get me set on at Fishers with him.’

‘Is that what you want?’ Janet persisted. ‘Make car bodies all day?’

Duncan stared at her. He’d never considered what he actually wanted to do. You went to school, left, got a job and had money in your pocket to spend. That was life.

‘Course it’s what I want,’ he snapped. ‘It’s what everyone wants, ain’t it?’

Janet didn’t answer. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it wouldn’t help to say so.

Bert was delighted with Duncan’s decision. ‘Chip off the old block, eh, son?’ he said, clapping him on the shoulder. He had a vision of him and his son in a few years’ time, walking side by side through the factory gates.

Betty was glad that Bert was pleased, because she knew the war had robbed him of his youth. The man who returned to her had grey streaks in his dark hair, and Betty noticed that he was going thin on top. She said nothing, just being glad he’d returned safely. She didn’t comment either on the haunted look that was often in Bert’s eyes as he seemed to stare vacantly into space, or the times he cried out in his sleep. She could only imagine the horrors he’d witnessed in the war and doubted that many of the returning heroes were untouched by their experiences.

Bert had also begun to get interested in politics again, as he had before he’d joined up. The first election of peacetime was held on 5 July 1945, but as most of the armed forces had not demobbed by then, the result could not be calculated until 26 July when all the postal votes were in and counted.

Bert was home in time to hear that Labour had been elected to government by a resounding majority, and he was cock-a-hoop with excitement. ‘This will make a difference, you’ll see,’ he said to Betty. ‘Transport and some industries will be nationalised, so the State will own them and everyone will benefit.’

‘You mean like with communism?’

‘Communism be damned, woman, this is socialism I’m talking about,’ Bert said furiously. ‘And that’s not all. They’ve committed to taking on the Beveridge Report; that means family allowances and setting up a health service at the very least.’

‘Well you seem pleased, at any rate,’ Betty said. ‘And if I get family allowances to help feed and clothe the children and don’t have to pay every time I go to the doctor’s I’ll be thankful enough.’

Bert went one step further and without further delay he joined the Labour Party, and went on to run for shop steward in Fisher and Ludlow’s factory where he made car bodies. All in all, Bert was well satisfied with his life and relieved that none of his family had been hurt in the war. And though he was sorry about his brothers-in-law Noel and Conner, he couldn’t help feeling pleased that his wife and children were safe, and a credit to Betty who’d had most of the rearing of them while he’d been away.

Bert found little to say to his quiet, studious daughter, but he was bowled over by the twins, who looked so like him, and whose early months he’d missed. They were turned six months now, and they chuckled as Bert tossed them in the air and put them astride his bouncing foot to play ‘horsy’.

He was less pleased with the job Betty had got, doing the evening shift at the sauce factory with her sister. Breda had had a good war. Despite rationing and restrictions, she had a wardrobe bursting with clothes, money in the bank and many memories, some happy, some sad. For a time it had seemed she might marry a GI and go to live in the States after the war. Mr and Mrs McClusky, in an agony of worry, had appealed to Betty, who tackled her sister.

‘I’m having a good time, that’s all,’ Breda had snapped. ‘I’m not looking for a husband. Rick’s never mentioned marriage, and even if he did it’s not a foregone conclusion I’d take him on.’

It was hardly satisfactory, but it had to do. Betty told her parents that Breda and her Yank were just good friends. Then there were the two dashing airmen who were both killed in action. Breda had arrived at Betty’s home in tears after she’d heard about the second one.

‘You see,’ she’d wept, ‘how can we talk about the future with this godawful war? Who’s going to be left alive at the end of it all?’

Betty had hugged her, rocking her almost without being aware of it. She knew what Breda meant. Each evening when she reported for duty, she viewed the desolation around her and was amazed that anyone could still be alive, or that people struggled to gain some sort of normality in it.

‘I know, love,’ she told Breda. ‘All we can do is keep going.’

There were no attachments for Breda after that. Though she went out with many men, she never kept them for long, and never allowed herself to get involved. Betty was concerned that she might make a name for herself, but said nothing and kept her worries to herself.

Then, at the end of the war, Breda had taken up with Peter Bradshaw, a lad she’d gone out with a few times before war broke out and who now returned, one of the conquering heroes.

‘Do you love him, Breda?’ Betty asked.

‘I’m marrying him,’ Breda said, and added, ‘What’s love anyway, Bet? I’ve loved and lost enough in the last few years to last a lifetime, and I suppose me and Pete will rub along well enough.’

The munitions factory was closed and the staff dispersed, and Breda lost no time in getting herself a job in the HP Sauce factory, which was taking on a twilight shift.

‘Come on, Bet, it’s four nights a week, half five to half nine,’ she said.

‘I don’t know …’

‘Course you know. You can cope with your brood all day, give them their tea, and I’m sure our mam will do the honours till you come home.’

All of a sudden it seemed an attractive prospect to go out in the evening and talk to adults about adult things. She was restless at home and missed the camaraderie of the war years. ‘If Mammy agrees to see to them, I will,’ she said.

She enjoyed her job, repetitive though it was. She loved the bald, raw humour of the married women, most like herself with children and waiting for their husbands’ demob. She wondered, though, how Bert would view the idea of her working when he came home. The other women also worried about their husbands’ reactions, though none wanted to give up their jobs.

Betty banked her money and had a little nest egg to show Bert when he expressed doubts about her ability to cope.

‘After all,’ he said, ‘the factory has kept my job open.’

‘I know,’ Betty said, ‘but the children are always needing things, and with Conner and Noel it’s two of everything and that’s extra expense. And then of course there’s the house.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’ After years of army barracks, his home looked very comfortable to him.

‘It’s shabby,’ Betty declared. ‘There was nothing to buy during the war, but soon there will be things in the shops and new colours in paint and wallpaper, and we can do the place up a bit.’

Bert surveyed his living room. Its familiarity had given him comfort when he arrived home: the sofa with the broken springs, and the faded lino on the floor. Now he saw it through Betty’s eyes and realised how dingy and patchy the wallpaper was and how dull the brown paintwork.

It could certainly do with brightening up, he thought, and perhaps they could even get a new wireless and a carpet square eventually. ‘All right, love,’ he said. ‘You keep your job. As long as you can manage, I’ll say nothing about it.’

Things rubbed along nicely for over a year. Brendan got married to Patsy Brennan, a local girl from an Irish family, and Breda had a baby girl, Linda, but continued working afterwards. Duncan started at Paget Road Secondary Modern, and Janet began her last year at Paget Road Primary.

The autumn term was into its fourth week. Betty had been delighted when school started again. She’d been tired out coping with the demands of four children all day and working in the evening, but she’d never complained to Bert.

Bert was recounting some tale from the factory around the tea table, and Duncan was listening avidly. He was fascinated by anything to do with the world he would soon be joining. Betty was keeping a watchful eye on the twins, who were making a mess of feeding themselves but screamed if she tried to help them. She was just thankful it was Friday and she didn’t have to go to work. Janet had kept her head down all through tea, and catching sight of her now, Betty realised that she’d been quiet all evening. She hoped Janet wasn’t sickening for something.

There was a small silence after Bert had finished, broken only by the twins banging their spoons on their high-chair tables. Suddenly Janet said: ‘Mom, Miss Wentworth would like a word with you.’

There was a hoot of laughter from Duncan. ‘Why, what you done?’ he said, and added in disbelief, ‘Goody-goody Janet’s in trouble.’

‘I’m not, I’m not,’ Janet declared hotly.

‘That will do, Duncan,’ Betty said. She turned her gaze to her daughter and said: ‘D’you know what it’s about?’

All eyes were on Janet now, and she stammered: ‘I … I think it’s … it’s about the exam.’

‘The exam?’ Bert said. ‘What’s this?’

‘The eleven-plus, she means,’ Duncan said.

‘Oh,’ said Bert airily. ‘No need to worry your head about that, pet, you don’t need to do no eleven-plus.’

Janet’s face flushed crimson. Betty took pity on her and said, ‘Do you want to do it, love?’

‘Oh, yes.’

There was a shocked silence. Even the twins were staring at her. Bert put down his knife and fork and asked in genuine puzzlement, ‘Why do you want to take the eleven-plus?’

‘Miss Wentworth says I have a good chance of passing,’ Janet burst out. ‘She says I have a good brain and …’

‘This Miss Wentworth has been talking a lot of nonsense,’ Bert said, ‘and filling your head with rubbish. You’ve no need for a grammar school education and you can tell her that from me.’

Betty looked at her daughter’s stricken face and said, ‘It will do no harm to listen to what the woman has to say.’

‘Do no bloody good either.’

‘Bert,’ Betty admonished, with a nod towards the twins, who were reaching the age when they liked to latch on to unusual words and repeat them.

‘They’ll hear worse before they’re much older,’ Bert said, ruffling the heads of his small sons fondly. ‘Proper little buggers they’re growing up to be.’

Betty gave up. He’d never be any different. He stood up, scraping his chair back. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m away for a wash.’

‘You going to the club?’

‘I always go to the club on Friday.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Betty began collecting the plates, then said, almost casually, though she knew her daughter would be holding her breath for Bert’s reply, ‘I think I’ll pop along to the school and have a chat with our Janet’s teacher anyway, all right?’

‘Yes, if you want,’ Bert said. ‘Do as you like but it won’t make any bloody difference.’ He chucked Janet under the chin as he went out. ‘Cheer up, ducky,’ he said. ‘Why the long face? You’re much too pretty to worry yourself over any silly exams.’

Janet didn’t answer. She watched him lift the kettle from the gas and take it to the bathroom that opened off the kitchen, and a little later she heard him whistling as he had a shave.