Читать книгу A Little Learning - Anne Bennett - Страница 9

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 Janet’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.

As she approached the school she saw tennis courts positioned on either side of it, and a thrill ran through her as she realised that one day she might be there, playing tennis with other girls like herself. She looked up and saw the ornamental bushes decorating the front of the school and the wide stone steps that led up between them from the path. There were two newel posts at the bottom, decorated with stone balls, and a rail ran up either side and a balustrade along the top.

As Janet joined the girls going in, she almost ran back down the steps and told her mother she wanted to go home. But Betty knew her daughter and pressed her forward. ‘Go on,’ she hissed. ‘You have as much right to be here as anyone else,’ and Janet held her head high and mounted the last few steps to the front entrance hall.

Betty, however, was overawed by the whole place and only waited until Janet was taken into the hall before she wandered outside. She scarcely saw the tree-lined avenues she walked along, for her thoughts and prayers were for her daughter bent over the vital examination papers.

In actual fact, despite Janet’s unease at being inside Whytecliff School, she felt quietly confident that she had done well as she laid down her pen at the end of the third paper, although she recognised that the second part of the exam was much harder than the first had been.

She talked it over with Miss Wentworth that same evening. ‘I finished,’ she said, ‘but only just.’

‘Even the English paper?’

‘Even that since I’ve done so much work on timed essays.’

‘And you feel confident?’

‘In the exam room I did, but now I’m not so sure.’

‘Oh, Janet, believe in yourself!’ Claire cried in exasperation. ‘You have a good brain. Don’t use it to demean yourself.’

‘I don’t,’ Janet protested. ‘It’s just that I don’t know. I suppose I’m worried I’ll let them all down.’

‘You need to be taken out of yourself more,’ Claire said. ‘Come over tomorrow and we’ll go out for the day.’

‘If I can I will,’ Janet promised, ‘but it might be difficult.’

Claire’s eyes met Janet’s, but though they were puzzled, she didn’t ask questions, and Janet didn’t offer an explanation.

The following afternoon, Janet fought her way through the cold and blustery winter’s day with sleeting rain stinging her cheeks. Claire opened the door. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You must be freezing.’

Janet hung her sopping coat in the hall and followed Claire down the passage to the back room she tended to live in, rubbing her raw, freezing hands together.

‘It’s bitterly cold out there,’ she was saying, and then she stopped. There was a strange woman sitting in the chair by the fire that Miss Wentworth usually occupied. One of her legs was encased in plaster and raised on a cushion.

She turned and smiled, and Janet saw she was an older version of Miss Wentworth. ‘Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘You must be Janet. My daughter has told me so much about you. I slipped on the ice, I’m afraid, and have broken my leg. Such a nuisance, I know, but there it is. Claire has said I must stay here until I’m fully recovered.’

Janet felt a momentary flash of jealousy. She didn’t want to share their special times together. It was different at school, where Miss Wentworth was so scrupulously fair and was just as hard on Janet as on the others – harder if anything, never picking Janet for any particular job or privilege – but that was school; this was their special time. Here Miss Wentworth was totally hers.

She stared at the older woman, quite prepared to dislike her heartily. Then Mrs Wentworth disarmed her totally with a charming smile. ‘I’m sorry that you’ll have to put up with an old duffer like me, Janet. I hope I won’t spoil things too much.’

Janet was prevented from answering by the arrival of Claire with a tray of tea and sponge cake. ‘Good job we’d made no plans,’ Claire said, ‘and anyway, it’s a filthy day. As it turned out, after you left yesterday, Janet, Mom’s neighbour, who fortunately has a car, came to fetch me and take me to the casualty department of the General Hospital. They’d called an ambulance for Mom after they found her in the garden, unable to move, with her leg broken.’ She turned to her mother and said, ‘Honestly, Mom, what were you doing out in the pitch black?’

‘I told you,’ Mrs Wentworth said, ‘feeding the birds.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘Don’t exaggerate, dear, it was just after seven. I’d intended to fill the feeder earlier in the day when I saw it empty, but I’d forgotten. Birds feed at first light, you see, and they need so much food in this intense cold. And it is just outside the kitchen door.’

‘Well, it’s as well the Pritchards heard you, that’s all I can say,’ Claire said, ‘because if you’d lain outside all night …’

‘I wouldn’t be here now, I know,’ said Mrs Wentworth with a hint of impatience. ‘But I didn’t and I am here, and surely you’re not going to go on and on about it until my dying day.’ She turned to Janet, gave a wink and said, ‘Bossy, isn’t she?’

Janet thought that she could probably get to like Miss Wentworth’s mother very much, and she grinned back and said, ‘Yes, she is.’

‘Don’t encourage insurrection in my pupils, please,’ Claire said with mock severity. ‘I have quite enough trouble with this one already.’

‘I don’t believe it, my dear,’ Mrs Wentworth said, taking a large bite of sponge cake. ‘Come and sit here beside me, Janet, and we’ll have a chat. Either bring up a chair or sit on the rug nearer to the fire.’

Janet plonked down beside the older woman and said, ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

‘Before we go any further,’ Mrs Wentworth said, ‘I know you have to call Claire Miss Wentworth. It’s to do with rules and discipline. Apparently school would fall into a crumbling ruin if children knew their teachers’ names.’

‘Mother!’ Claire burst out in exasperation.

Mrs Wentworth waved a dismissive hand in her daughter’s direction. ‘I’m not talking to you, Claire dear, but about you. I’m addressing your pupil at the moment. Now, Janet, I’m sure you don’t want to call me Mrs Wentworth, do you?’

‘Um, I don’t know really.’

‘Well, I don’t want you to,’ said Mrs Wentworth decisively, ‘but I suppose you would feel awkward calling me Mary. Could you manage Auntie Mary?’

‘Er, I suppose, I mean … that is, if you want,’ Janet said, feeling that never in her life had she met anyone quite like Claire’s mother.

For all that, she sat at her feet all afternoon and talked as she’d never talked before. She told her of the tales she’d learnt from her gran, and how she and Grandad had both been born in Ireland but had had to leave to find work in England, where they met and married.

She told her about Duncan, and how they’d had to spend a lot of time with their grandparents while their mother was an ARP warden and their dad was fighting. She told of the two uncles killed and the twin boys born just before the end of the war. She didn’t say that her father hadn’t seen the point of her sitting the exams, but what she did say was:

‘My mom’s sick at the moment. I mean, she’s having a baby, but she’s sick with it.’

‘Is she, Janet?’ Claire said. ‘You never mentioned it.’

‘She didn’t tell anyone she was even pregnant until I’d sat the first part of the eleven-plus,’ Janet said. ‘I knew something was wrong, because I’d heard her being sick a few times and she kept saying she’d eaten something that disagreed with her. But she still keeps being sick and eats hardly anything. That’s why I couldn’t come till this afternoon. I have to help out a bit.’

Mary Wentworth met her daughter’s eyes over Janet’s head. They both realised that the young girl was worried.

‘I’m sure your mother will be fine, you know,’ Mary said. ‘Pregnancy takes it out of a woman, and of course, if she has to look after a family too, it can be hard. I only had Claire. Her father was badly injured in the First World War and died before Claire was out of babyhood.’ She added, as if to herself, ‘I was glad he died before the outbreak of the Second World War. I think it would have finished him to think of all that carnage starting again.’ She saw Janet’s grave eyes on her and gave a start.

‘Forgive me, dear, I was remembering for a while how it was. It affects one like that as one grows old.’

‘Stop fishing for compliments, Mother,’ Claire said briskly. ‘You know you don’t look anywhere near your age, and you’re not half as ga-ga as you make out. Now, if you will excuse me, government guidelines or no, I must get more coal for that dying fire or we’ll all freeze to death.’

Because of the national shortage of coal, people had been asked to put off lighting fires till late afternoon, and then not to pile them up with coal but to use as little as possible. It was not easy, for the winter was a particularly severe one and everyone was feeling the pinch.

Janet jumped to her feet. ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘Mom went for a lie-down as the twins were having a nap. That’s why I was able to come. They’ll be up now, I expect, and plaguing the life out of her.’

‘Where’s your brother?’ Mary said gently. ‘The older one, Duncan, is it?’

‘Yes, Duncan,’ Janet said. ‘He’ll be playing football or something. He’s no good, he’s a boy. And my dad went down to the club after dinner and he’ll probably be snoring his head off.’

‘Ah, that’s men for you,’ Mary said.

‘That’s men all right,’ Janet said fiercely. ‘I don’t think I’m going to bother getting married.’

‘That’s what Claire always said too.’

‘Well, she didn’t, did she?’ Janet said. ‘I mean, you didn’t, did you, Miss Wentworth?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Claire didn’t say that there had been somebody once who she had been willing to throw everything up for, but he hadn’t loved her enough and they’d gone their separate ways. That wasn’t the sort of confidence you shared with a pupil of not quite eleven years. Her mother knew. She was the one who’d picked up the pieces of Claire’s shattered heart and given her back her self-respect, but she didn’t want to tell the tale either.

As Janet trudged home, she determined that that was how she would be: single, independent and alone. People mocked single women, she knew that. They called them old maids and spinsters, but if you got married, you were little more than a slave.

This was further reinforced when she got home. It was just as she’d said it would be: Duncan kicking a football in the road with a crowd of mates, her father snoring in the chair. Her twin brothers had woken up from their nap, climbed out of their cots and systematically set about destroying the bedroom.

Janet popped in to see her mother, who was sleeping the sleep of the totally exhausted. Sighing, she ushered her young brothers downstairs and began to prepare tea for them all.

As Betty’s pregnancy advanced, she became more and more tired. Often, Janet would arrive home to find her mother asleep and the twins with Auntie Breda or Gran. Even with Janet home, Betty seemed loath to move.

‘Get me a cup of tea, pet,’ she’d say, ‘and I’ll be as right as rain.’

So Janet would make a cup of tea and fetch the twins and make up the fire and cook a meal for all of them. Duncan would come flying in and demand: ‘What’s for tea? I’m starving,’ and Janet wanted to hit him. Betty continued to work in the evenings, though Bert and the doctor urged her to stop.

‘A few more weeks,’ she’d said. ‘The money’s useful.’

As often as she could, Janet escaped to Claire’s. It was the only place she could let down her guard. At home she had to be the one to cope and encourage her mother to rest. At Claire’s she could be a child again.

‘It will be worth it all when you have a new brother or sister, won’t it?’ Mary said one day.

Janet was a long time answering. She didn’t know how to be truthful and yet not shock this woman whose good opinion she craved.

‘Babies are lovely,’ she said at last. ‘They’re sweet and innocent, but really it’s better if they’re someone else’s and you can hold them and play with them and then give them back, like I used to be able to do with Auntie Breda’s Linda.’

‘Oh, surely …’

‘Mom doesn’t want this baby,’ Janet said.

‘Oh, I’m sure that’s nonsense, my dear,’ Mary said. ‘Sometimes grown-ups say things they don’t mean.’

Janet said nothing, but she knew she was right. She’d heard her mother and Auntie Breda talking about it.

‘You should have done something about it earlier,’ Auntie Breda had said. ‘I know people … qualified … you know.’

‘Ah, not that!’ her mother had cried, aghast. ‘God in heaven, Breda, what are you suggesting? You haven’t …?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Breda said. ‘I had a good time in the war, but I wasn’t a bleeding fool like some of them. I tell you, some of them in the munitions were wetting themselves to find they were expecting and their husbands overseas and been there a couple of years. Many were glad, I’ll tell you, to be able to get rid of it.’

‘Well, that’s hardly my position.’

‘No, it isn’t. But you can’t look me in the eye and say you want it.’

‘No, God forgive me, I don’t want it, but I couldn’t get rid of it. I dare say I’ll think enough of it when it comes.’

Poor little baby, Janet thought, no one wants it. Duncan when told just raised his eyes to the ceiling. Privately he said to Janet, ‘More bloody yelling and nappies all over the house.’ He leaned closer and added, ‘I didn’t think they did that sort of thing any more, did you?’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Oh God!’ he’d said. ‘You do know all about it, don’t you, sex and that?’

‘Course I do,’ Janet said, but she didn’t. She was totally ignorant of most sexual matters and was very vague about how babies materialised, but she wasn’t letting on to Duncan.

He sneered, ‘You don’t know anything, do you? And you so blooming clever.’

‘I do,’ Janet had cried. She was aware of the hot blush that had spread all over her face and down her neck, and she’d run from her brother.

Bert had called the baby another bloody millstone round his neck.

‘It’s as if he had nothing to do with it,’ Breda said angrily. ‘He should have thought, taken a few precautions.’

‘He’s only worried.’

‘And you’re not? And that’s another thing. He should do more. He can see the way you are.’

‘Our Janet’s very good.’

‘Janet’s a child. She has her own life and her future to think of.’

Too right, Janet thought. She was glad that Breda at least thought of her. It came to her with absolute clarity one night in bed that whatever sex the new baby was, it would have to share her small room. There was no more space to be found in the boys’ room, nor would there be much in hers. Bang went her plans for working at night in her bedroom. Even if she could have persuaded her parents to buy her a desk, there would now be nowhere to put it.

She would work in the kitchen, where her books would be at the mercy of her messy family. She would devise an essay, or work out algebraic equations, while stale cooking smells mingled with the aroma of the damp nappies strung across the kitchen on a line. She wanted to weep, and yet she knew she was being selfish. Duncan had never complained about sharing with the twins. He’d just accepted it and asked Bert to buy him a padlock so he could lock treasures away. Janet felt ashamed of herself, but she didn’t want this baby either.

She wasn’t losing sight of her goal, though. Underlying all the worry of the family she was aware that one day an insignificant brown envelope would drop through the letterbox and its contents would decide where she would spend the next few years of her life. Because whether she passed or not, she’d have to leave Paget Primary in July.

Claire had decided to put off the visits to Birmingham until the spring, when the weather would be better and her mother might be fully recovered and returned to her own home. Until then, they explored Claire’s extensive library. They’d read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Silas Marner and The Mayor of Casterbridge and two of Shakespeare’s plays. Janet never took the books home; she read them only at Claire’s. Sometimes Claire would read out loud, and occasionally Mary would.

After a chapter or two, Claire and Janet would discuss what they’d read. In the beginning, it was Claire asking the questions and Janet answering. But gradually, so gradually she had not been aware of it happening, Janet was starting to analyse what she read. She was able to talk about characterisation, the structure of the plots, how the tension was built up and the dialogue between the characters.

Sometimes, if Claire had marking to do or something to attend to, Janet would play chess or backgammon with the woman she called Auntie Mary. But what she really liked to do was talk to her about Claire, her Miss Wentworth.

She attempted to model herself on the woman who’d taken her so far. Mary realised what she was doing and told her of the fun Claire had had at school, and the gaggle of girlfriends always at the house. ‘They had boyfriends,’ she said, ‘but nothing serious.’ She hoped Claire would forgive that small lie.

‘They tended to go round in groups anyway,’ Mary said. ‘None of them wanted to be tied down, certainly not while they were at school.’

‘But after school?’ Janet persisted.

‘They were split up then. Most of Claire’s friends went on to university, but of course they went to different ones, or were on different courses. Universities, though, are the place to make new friends. She went to Reading University near London. I had an aunt living in London then, and Claire used to visit from time to time.’

‘Where did she live, Auntie Mary?’

‘In the university halls,’ Mary told her. ‘I was rather worried about her, but I needn’t have been. She said it was a marvellous experience, and it’s led to a job she enjoys and independence.’

‘Yes,’ breathed Janet.

‘And that’s probably the path your own life will take,’ Mary said.

‘Yes,’ said Janet again. ‘Yes, yes, yes, that’s what I want.’

Later that same day, when Claire and Janet were discussing the merits of Keats’ poetry, Janet suddenly said, ‘Have you ever had anyone else pass the eleven-plus before me?’

‘I haven’t,’ Claire admitted. ‘That’s not to say other colleagues haven’t, but remember the disarray the country was in for six years. Many children had part-time or sporadic schooling, or none at all. You’ll find now that most of the schools like Paget Road will have a steady increase in the numbers of children going through the scholarship scheme.’

‘I hope so,’ Janet said. She felt odd and different being the only one, and wished there was another girl to go with.

Claire didn’t say that she found coaching Janet more exhausting and time-consuming than she’d thought, and it put severe restrictions on her private life. She’d already decided that any further children would be taught in extra lessons at school – she’d not open her home again, nor would she get so involved – but all these thoughts she kept from Janet.

She didn’t explain either that she didn’t intend to live like a nun for the rest of her life. She didn’t tell Janet about David Sunderland, who she’d met at a teachers’ conference after work one day, or about how he’d complained bitterly when she’d explained how her weekends were tied up. She didn’t tell Janet that they’d been out together a few times and she liked him very much.

She didn’t understand the pedestal Janet had put her on, and didn’t know Janet assumed she would work her way through life independently and free of any man, because Janet could tell her none of this.

The Easter holidays were looming and Claire believed that the day of reckoning would come before they returned to school. Betty Travers eventually gave up work. The baby was expected at the end of May and she thought it was time. Mary had had her plaster cast removed and had returned home where the obliging neighbours, the Pritchards, would be able to take her to the hospital in their car for physiotherapy.

Claire would have missed her mother more if David Sunderland hadn’t been around. Janet’s presence at the house was intermittent now and she could never stay long, as her mother’s confinement was getting closer.

David didn’t like Claire constantly talking about the girl. ‘You’ve done more for her than for any other child in your class,’ he said. ‘You have forty-nine others to concern yourself with, often from far worse homes and tragic beginnings.’

Claire couldn’t disagree with David. He was right. ‘You’ve given her a start few others have had, and certainly no one else at your school,’ he went on. ‘Now she’s either got fed up or is needed at home, but whatever the reasons for her absence, you must let her go, Claire.’

It was true, Claire knew that. Janet was strangely elusive, even at school. She arrived often just as the bell was ringing, flew out of the door at lunchtime and left on the dot of four in the afternoon.

It was hard to find out how things were when Claire wasn’t even able to snatch a quiet word with her. By tacit consent neither of them spoke about Janet’s visits to Claire’s house. They were well aware that the other children would make Janet’s life a misery, and even the school authority might view it unfavourably. They knew, of course, that the Travers’ girl was in line for a grammar school place and were pleased with that. However, Claire knew they would frown on what would be termed ‘overfamiliarity’ between a teacher and a pupil.

A general enquiry such as ‘How is your mother, Janet?’ was met with: ‘She’s all right, thank you, Miss Wentworth.’

A request from Claire to stay behind met with an agitated entreaty: ‘Oh please, Miss Wentworth, I can’t, my mother relies on me. I really must go straight home.’ How could Claire argue with that? She hoped that the birth of this fifth child into the Travers house might go smoothly and that afterwards life would settle down a little for Janet, but she didn’t say any of this to David.