ALL THESE ARE MEMORIES OF MY VOYAGE

1

As we grow older we begin to be invaded by our childhood.

*

Serena Ryan

was  seven years old when her cousin Jennifer came to the house in Talavera Street. She saw wide greenish eyes, and bony legs below a short cotton frock; and this was in February. The girl had a shawl round her shoulders and was clasping a brown paper bag  tightly in both hands.

~  Hello, said Serena; and the girl said nothing.

~  This is Jenny, her mother was saying. ~  She’s to stay with us now. We’re tekin’

    her  in. She’s  your cousin  and you’re to look  after her.

    As simple as that she said it and no questions asked for. That was  Mam.

    Both girls sat at the deal table, drank milk and ate ginger biscuits.

~  Isn’t it funny to be cousins and not to know, Serena said; and got no reply.

    ~ You’ll have to sleep in my bed.

And....

~  Will you come to school with me? I go to school in Cumberland Road. I can

     walk to  my school.

     Little Jennifer looked at Serena directly for the first time and, opening her paper bag, took out a number of small possessions; a comb, a bakelite hairbrush, a pencil, some safety pins. Objects like that.

~  It’s time a comb went through that hair, said Mrs Ryan.

    Serena took up the comb and brush to straighten Jenny’s tangled plaits. The hair was very fine and light and gingery. While Serena brushed, Jennifer sat very still, looking down. Serena, delighted by her new companion, sang softly

    ~ Goldilocks, Goldilocks, wilt thou be mine

        thou shalt not wash dishes nor yet feed the swine

        but sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam

        and feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream

~  What are straw-strawberries?  asked the little one.

     After that she allowed them to put her into one of Serena’s old nighties.

     When both were tucked into the one bed and the light turned out, Serena whispered to her bed-mate.

~  Is your mam dead?

And she felt Jenny’s nod upon her shoulder.

Then Serena put her arms right round the little one and made encouraging mews until Jenny returned the embrace and fell asleep with her face pressed hard upon Serena’s chest.

*

    In another version of this story, Jennifer arrived on a train from Hull with a label tied to her as if she were a parcel. The two first saw each other through a cloud of deafening steam, in a smell of hot oil and coal-smoke. The truth of it is, that Little Jen was the daughter of Bridget’s elder sister Mary, the one who died of pneumonia in the winter of forty-seven. She was moved from one place to another because nobody knew where she ought to be sent. At length it was a Lady from the Council who brought her round to the house in Talavera Street.

*

Talavera Street

was one of a group of terraces named upon foreign wars. There was a Badajoz, a Salamanca, a Ramilles, Inkermann and Balaclava. These streets were known, collectively, as The Battles.  They consisted of two bedroom houses with, at that date, outside lavatories across a little yard at the back. The front doors opened directly onto the street by way of a high stone sill. You could tell the character of the people within by the state of this sill; if it had been holly-stoned a creamy white, then they were respectable folk. The Ryan sill was always well stoned. The houses, though small, had once been quite smart in character, but the delays and shortages of wartime had brought about a slow attrition of both property and population. Mention Talavera and you’d hear....

~  What? Theer? Bloody Poles and Irish!  Which is worse, you tell  me?

    Further off was an Oudenarde Grove and a Blenheim Crescent, composed of a better sort of residence. Further off still was Ypres, Passchendaele and Somme.

     Later in life, Serena, in spite of her surname, decided she was a Polish; but Jennifer was never sure if she wasn’t somehow or other an Irish. As she grew up she had an Irishy look to her, with a pale thin skin and a reddish cast to her fair hair. Yet none of them ever went to a Mass nor never saw so much as the doorpost of a church. Bridget Ryan didn’t hold with no churches, nor no chapels neither. Her assurance was founded on a view of life limited to what had to be done by the end of the week. The blows of life had given her a face like a fist.

    It was remembered that before the war she had a husband. A foreign looking sort of man named Birks or may be Birkowicz. But he took off straight after and Ryan they all were from then on. Bridget would sometimes look at her daughter and think - did that come out of me? She judged that one day Serena, too, would walk out the door and not come back.

    Bridget was in her thirties when Jennifer came. At that time she was employed as cashier in Moorcock’s Greengrocers at the end  of Inkermann Street. It was this occupation that kept her and the girls in their very modest way of life for many years; she was still employed there at her death, by which time the shop had become one of Singh’s Supastores. The new manager Mr.Kaushal had kept her on because she was so honest and diligent, and to keep in well with his older customers.

    The girls were raised on good green vegetables bought at cost price, milk from the same source, porridge oats, Parrish’s Tonic and Ministry orange juice. Spoonsful of cod liver oil were thrust down their little necks and, when Mam could get it, great sticky globs of malt extract. They always had to leave clean plates and chew up their crusts. What with that and the weekly scrubbing, they grew into very healthy creatures, with bright eyes and clear skins and all their own white teeth. They ran everywhere.

      Serena’s skin was unusually smooth, and her eyes, above high cheekbones, slanted. Her hair was cut into a dark helmet. Behind her back she was called Chinky, but no-one in the school yard dared say that to her face, for Serena was big for her age and fought like a boy, with fists. She had many admirers. None of the children took much notice of young Jennifer who had little to say for herself, until it was discovered she was very good at tricks. She would tuck her skirt into her waistband and fling herself over not just once but twice, like a rimless wheel. She could walk on her hands. She could also slide her feet in opposite directions so far that she could sit on the linoleum with one leg going one way and the other in the opposite way: but she would only do this for the girls because it was thought to be a rude thing to do `the splits’ in front of the boys. But she was also persecuted by those children who resented Serena’s dominance and beauty. They mimicked her funny accent, her dainty ways, teased her for her red hair and her stammer. She bore with it well enough and only cried occasionally. But when they began to make jokes about her parentage or lack of it, Serena tracked down her tormenters and punished them so  hugely that no-one thereafter said a word. Serena was Queen of the Yard.

     Serena and Jennifer went to the Primary in Cumberland Road and then to the Elementary next door, where they were always treated as if they were sisters. And although the little one was more than a year younger, they were kept in the same form because, although she was peaky and a bit odd, Jennifer learnt rapidly once she was settled and before long could reckon and spell and read without any difficulty. She was one of those children who would read sauce labels and soap packets for want of anything better. The teachers soon discovered that unruly Serena behaved much better with her younger sister around. Later, the two of them went on to the High.

     It was a rare thing for any child from The Battles, to go on to the High.

*

Serena and Jennifer,

looked down on most girlish activities. Not having a male in the house, they were very interested in boys and were always trying to get their hands on one. Outside school they went around the neighbourhood with young Will Anderson.

    He was not a well regarded child. Sometimes his teachers thought he might be m.d. because nothing said to him seemed to have any effect. A lesson went in one ear and out of the other. But Will, or Andy as he was always called, was not stupid or deficient. He had other interests and because he believed they were important, he did his best to avoid school, which interfered with his thoughts.

     His father worked the markets and did nothing to encourage the boy’s schooling. Every Saturday and for as many other days that he could get away, young Andy would accompany his father from town to town in their black Bedford van. His task was to lay out the stall: the bright and fragrant sheathes of cotton, swathes of velour and swags of brocade. All were given meticulous treatment and the colours had to be in order, reds by reds in order of brightness and each green and yellow and blue. Especially mysterious were the blacks and greys. It would have surprised his teachers had they caught Will Anderson at his truant occupation, for he had quickly acquired the market skills of instant reckoning, of chat, and of good-humoured insolence.

     On Saturdays he would be found at The Calls and that was where Serena discovered him. The affinity that came into being between them was based on materials and threads and colours, and upon the smell of glazed cotton. And when they were in Nab Woods or down by the goyt, it was based upon bright ochre clay, unusual moulds, obscurely shaped and deeply rusted fragments of iron. Most of all upon the fragrant golden runs of resin that flowed from the fir trees and which stuck to their fingers so firm you could hardly prise them apart.

    The  Nab Woods was an area of overgrown quarries, deep pools and undergrowth, interspersed with stunted pine-trees. They had a den in the Nab that could only be reached by crawling under brambles. There they had made themselves a bower, with a floor of smooth grass. There, when it was warm, the girls would undress for his inspections. Then they; and then he.

    Andy had a natural sympathy with the older girl, but he thought little Jenny was special. He liked the way her collar bones stood out, and the neatness of her ears. There were things about her he thought very rare. Sometimes he would sit for hours and think about them both and about the differences between them.

*

A conversation. At the war memorial.

Andy says,

~  You know what my dad says about your street? He  says bloody Poles and Irish.

~   Well? S-So? queries Jennifer

~   What I want to know is, are you two Polishers or Irishers?

Serena answers for both of them. She is a Polish but Jenny is an Irish.

~   How come? he says. I thought you was sisters.

~   Me Dad. He was a Polish!

Serena is very proud of being sort of foreign.

~   Well, who’s her dad, then? 

Jenny looks up at him; she is several inches shorter.

~  They found me. They found me under an apple tree!   She offers him her arm.

   ~ Do  you want a bite?

The arm is very cool against his hot cheek. It would be good to bite and to feel that coolness in his mouth.

~   You’re daft, he says. Refusing.

~   I know, she replies, that’s both on us daft.

~   My Dad buggered off, Serena explains. ~ He went out for a packet of fags an’

     nivver  came back. Me mam says he took one look at me and ran all the way back

     to  Poland.

~   Hah!  L aughs Andy   ~ Not surprised!

    The girls both pinch him and poke him and then insist on kissing him. They have him fast and are kissing his cheeks, one on either side. Scared that some of the boys might see, he shakes them off.

    Another conversation; later. The girls are both sitting on the wooden rail of the footbridge over the goyt. Serena sits square and safe but Jenny has hooked her toes under the lower rail and is leaning backward above the swift black water as it moves with silent force. This mill-race flowed, at increasing speed, toward the distant flume and the great Foundry wharves and at length into the locks where iron barges pass.

Serena begins;

~   Mam says I’ve got to tell you something.

~   What about?

Jenny has this idea of hanging upside down over the water. She leans further backwards over its swift black surface.

~  You know. Bosoms. Babies. Bleeding. All that stuff.

~  But we know all that! says her sister, contemptuously.

~  Still and all, we don’t know everything.

    Jennifer looks down at the water below her face, which is full of dark weeds, and  at the inverted vista of stone banks and wooden rails. Her frock falls over her head, displaying a lean  stomach and  worn grey drawers.

~   Sit up, someone might come!

Jennifer slowly and evenly raises herself and smooths her clothes. She says, definitely;

~  I don’t want to have b..bay..babies. You have the babies.

~  We’ll share, declares Serena, just as definite. - I’ll have them....but we’ll share.

~  You can’t share a bay...baby, declares a scornful  Jennifer.

~  Why not? This one can have two mams.

They think about this for a while, without speaking. Then Serena announces she don’t want to get married, no, not never.

~  If you want a baby, you’ve got to have a fel..feller, explains Jenny.

~  We’ll share

~   You can’t share a husband.

~  Why not? Mrs. Stepanowska does, with that woman over on  Salamanca  Street.

    Her chap’s in  and out both houses. I seen  him.

~  Well okay then, says Jenny. This is what we’ll do. You have him M..Mun..Monday

    Tuesday Wednesday. I’ll have him Thursday  Friday  Sat’day. And then (she

    pauses). On Sundays  we’ll forget  about  him. On Sundays we’ll put the baby in a

    pram and go for  a long walk. With sandwiches and have a picnic.

~  Now who’s daft?

~  Both. That’s both of us daft.

   But at school they share a special friend to whom they will lend anything. They will lend him pencils and erasers and their new plastic ruler. They do swaps with him and let him get the best bargains, and they always save tram tickets for him in case one is a special number. Martin, they know, thinks that some numbers are special. He dreams of numbers whilst they sit dreaming in class, watching him puzzle out geometry. There is sweat on the bridge of his nose and his forehead is creased with concentration. One or the other will extend her leg under the desk and rub it against his.

~   Get off, he says. I’m all bothered.

   Nothing he can say rebuffs them. They think he is a very handsome boy. They like especially the way his hair curls, his well-shaped hands and his strength. They like him because he is serious and never says silly things, unlike the other boys. When they are with him they behave very well and never say rude words; they do not mooch about but do purposeful things.

*

In their last year

at Cumberland Road, the school went to Filey for an outing. The two girls and their friends scrunched up and down the beach together. Serena and Andy were looking for good pebbles to take home. Martin and little Jenny stood by a wooden groyne.

~  I know you like Serena more than me, she said, ~  But I don’t  mind.  I really don’t

     mind.

Jenny and Martin were looking at Serena’s distant figure.

~  She’s much prettier than I am, Jennifer continued. -  But I’m  more  s-s-sensible.

Martin had to agree.

~  And then Serena does very wild things that you don’t like, and  hangs about with

     Andy, who you don’t like either. So I’m better suited to you. That’s what I think,

     anyroad.

She was full of an obscure and unexpected anger against her sister. A heavy wave slapped against the timbers.

~  All he wants to do is feel inside her dress. You can put your hand in my dress. If

    you want to. If you really want to.

    Martin had never seen her like this before. Nor seen her flush. He would have spoken but she turned her back and suddenly squatted down on the shingle with her face turned away. Another wave.

    Serena came running up; her hair was irridescent with spray and her white skin glistened. She held out an open palm.

~   Look what Andy has found for me, she cried.

A thumb’s length of pale golden amber, clear as glass. When Martin held it up to the light, it glowed.

~  It’s a dazzler! he said. It’s amber, that’s what it is. Amber’s rare. It’s  a sort of resin,  like you get in the Woods.   A sort of fossil.

He and Serena held it in turns; it was warm in the hand.

     Jennifer sprang up and seized the jewel. She was screaming wordlessly at Serena, like one of the birds that swooped about them. Andy came running and tried to wrestle the amber out of Jennifer’s hand; but she swept off like a gull and ran hard down the beach.

      She ran for a hundred yards before turning round to face him.

~   Come near me and I’ll throw it back in  t’ sea. None of you’ll  have it then!

Andy moved half a pace on the grating stones; a wave ran over his feet, filling his pumps with grit. Her arm swung and both of them watched the trajectory, and saw but could not hear its fall.

~  That was  for both of yous, he said, quietly. ~  You didn’t   need to do that. Best

     thing  I ever  found.

Andy felt that a piece of himself was thrown away. He heard Serena approaching behind him, across the shingle.

~  It was really mean of you, he said. ~  Mean and jealous. That’s  you, Jenny Ryan.

    Mean  and jealous

He put his right hand on her chest and pushed rather than struck. She stumbled backwards and sat down heavily in the shallows.

   Then Serena started slapping Andy around the head, and Jennifer would not let Martin help her up but sat there with the water washing around her. The other children stood at a distance, watching.

    After a while Martin and Jennifer were back at the breakwater. She wasn’t saying a word and would not even look at him, but made him stand guard whilst she did her best to wring out her dress and her  pants. The sun had gone in and a cold mist surrounded them; by the time the children were back in the coach she was chilled through. Mrs Douthwaite put a rug around her shoulders, but when the coach got back to town Jenny seemed to be running a temperature. After that she spent two days in bed and Serena had to accept a sound beating for allowing the little one to come home in such a state.

*****

2

In this story that I tell myself

I know only the parts.

It is like watching the windows of a lighted house

and you are in the darkness without

bodies pass and repass

the passing spells a story, a story of fragments

and between the fragments

is a space of darkness

When Serena

was thirteen and Jennifer just twelve, they went to the High School.

     Bridget kitted them out in navy skirts and serge knickers, white blouses, striped ties and gym clothes. Woodlawn High had pretensions. This was all very well for those parents that could afford it, but hard for a single woman with two children going at the same time. But she managed, what with jumble sales and bargains. That’s what you could always say about Bridget, that she was a good manager. On the day they set out together she stood them side by side, brushed Serena’s dark hair out of her dark eyes and made sure that Jenny’s plaits were of equal length; then she inspected their finger nails and gave them each one of her rare kisses to send them on their way. She was as nearly proud of them as she could be.

     The two girls walked together seriously, hand in hand, to the bus stop. Little Jenny was shivering. It cheered them immensely to find young Andy there, going in the same direction.

~   Uniforms? Who wants to wear uniforms? Funny daft I call it!

     But he was pleased to be riding with them in the top of the bus, even if he wasn’t going to the same place. Children such as he went to the Secondary Modern.

*

At the High

they began very well. The staff found Jennifer studious and marked her down at once for college entrance, provided she could get over her background and Talavera speech; and Serena had energy and lots of natural intelligence. They always sat side by side in class and it was a pleasure to watch the red head and the dark bent over their books, and the black eyes and the green shining with attention. They didn’t seem to care about the fact that their skirts were shiny at the back when other girls had new clothes, or to be embarrassed when they handed in their dinner tickets, nor by the looks and remarks from some of the other children who came from semi-detached houses. They were a self-sufficient pair. It was also remarked that Serena Ryan would be a beauty when she lost her puppy-fat, with fine features and flawless skin. She was a well-developed girl, for her age.

     The children in the first forms, however, were divided, and there were some that had it in for the Ryan sisters from the start. It was offensive to see such a pair of scruffs so full of themselves. What right had that Serena Ryan to give herself airs when everyone knew her satchel had belonged to Louise Walsh’s elder sister Maggie who had given it to a jumble sale to make money  for the Church Hall.? And as for that sneaky Jenny-Penny who scarcely said a word but was always greasing up to teachers, who gave her leave to show no interest at all in the things that girls should care about. And they weren’t sisters. That little one was a foundling, a bastard probably. Poles and Irish! What more could anyone expect from Talavera Street.

~  Shall I smack’em now. Or later?    asked Serena, overhearing such remarks.

~  Later,   advised her little sister.

     Serena did not want to fight; she had enough fighting in Cumberland Road.  At the High she wanted to be a different person; dignified. But that was just the distance between her and these girls; she knew how to fight whereas they were just hair pullers and scratchers. So she picked out their leader, Louise, who fancied she owned the place, picked a fight one lunchtime in the girl’s cloakroom, and thrashed her so comprehensively that thereafter nobody messed with the Ryan sisters and especially not with Serena who only had to look at some kid in a certain way and they’d shut up and clear out. A lot of the smaller girls were very glad of this. She became their protectress.

     Mrs Dawson, however, who was the first form mistress, made sure that Serena always sat where she could be seen. Such outbursts were not to be tolerated in a well-run year.

*

Martin Pollard

was already doing very well for himself. The teachers had put him straight into the second form when he enrolled which meant that although he was only a little older than Serena, he was a whole year ahead. They put him up fast, it was said, because he had done so well at exams that a special inspector had come to the school, to discuss with teachers what ought to be done.

     And when the chance came to help Serena with her homework, he was always there. The three of them would walk back together to Blenheim Crescent and take over the sitting room, or, later, Martin’s own room. He and Serena would sit together at the table, heads together over their books. Jennifer preferred to sit cross-legged on the hearth rug with her books spread out in front of her.

~  It’s these x’s and y’s, complains Serena. I just don’t get the  point of them. Why

    can’t they be numbers?

~  They stand for numbers. Any numbers. It’s about the shape of  the calculation,

     not the result.

Martin was very patient.

~  You could do it if you tried, mutters Jennifer, without looking up.

~  Of course, Miss Clever-Clogs knows it all.

~  Sometimes, Serena, I wonder where you keep y’r brains.  In your knicks?  They

    are not between  your ears, that’s  for certain.

~  Hark to Madam Smarty-Pants!

~  Shut up the pair of you, says Martin. He takes up Serena’s  exercise book.

~  See, he demonstrates. ~  That means three times x; and if you  put y there it’s

     all clear.

~  Clear as mud, says Serena.

    This arrangement lasted for years. Serena was not lazy and anything but stupid, but she had her own ideas as to how she should spend her time. Algebra was not included in them.

*

Meanwhile,

the Anderson boy was making his sorry progress through the Secondary Modern.

    First they tried Remedial Teaching, which was a failure. And Discipline, which merely caused Truancy. It was only old Mr. Earnshaw, who took the lads for Metalwork and Technical Drawing, that could make anything of the boy. For him, William Anderson would do the most elegant isometric projections, axonometric layouts, and single-point perspectives. Only there did he make some progress and, since his technical drawing was so good, he was allowed to do free-hand work as well provided he kept up his arithmetic. There would always be a place for him while the foundry took on apprentices, and the Foundry would always be there. As Miss Leighton said, everyone has their place to fill, both in the school and in the world. If William was not proving good at most subjects, he was certainly proving good at some.

     It was a rough school on a windy hill. Most of the pupils came from the new council estates, but a good number from The Battles, and they were worst of all. There were gangs that broke up the new bus shelters and ran screaming through the closes, that made the buses run late by ragging the conductress and abusing the elderly passengers. Shops were always on their guard. When Modern boys met High School boys there was always a fight. The girls were just as bad. And any High girl who went out with a Modern boy was utterly despised. So Serena and Jenny kept their friendship with Andy a complete secret, and confined it to the weekends.

    It was, in fact, Serena that got him started, who was so expert with scissors and needles and cloth and pins, always making clothes for herself or Jenny. Whilst she crawled about on the floor cutting up cloth, he would sit at the table and cut out colours. From Serena he got pages of advertisements naming the hues of dyes, of lipsticks, and of silken threads. High Chestnut, Strawberry Fair, Blushing Fire, Ipanema Sunset.

    He made a Serena out of coloured papers and very funny and rude it was; after he had been well slapped she told him to make a Jennifer. He got two shards of broken bottle glass for eyes and a piece of faded brocade for the hair, and he got the shape right but not the expression; or the expression and not the shape. Jennifers were much harder. Why was this? He thought more about this than he ever thought about school work.

    The girls set him all sorts of tasks; to make portraits, comics and patterns. If they didn’t like what he made, they would poke him and pinch him; but when they did, they would tickle and kiss. Sometimes they would finish by fighting and rolling about on the hearthrug. He greatly enjoyed these brawls that usually ended in caresses. Soft little breasts. Small hot groins clenched tight.

   After all was over the girls would smooth themselves down and go into the kitchen to make tea, whispering and giggling to one another.

*

The teachers

observed that Jennifer was never without a book in her hand. She would be found reading quietly in a corner when all the other pupils were fooling around. She would read anything, but preferred large heavy volumes.

    And for poetry she liked Anonymous most of all; she would memorise whole ballads for her secret delight but mostly for certain talismanic lines. Martin shared this passion for fragments, which they sought out and passed to one another, like pebbles from the beach.

Clerk Saunders and May Margret

were walking on the grene

and deep and heavy was the love

that fell thir twa betwene.

     She was a serious one, that girl, who related her reading to her life.....

     Serena, for example, was a Heathcliff. No doubt about that. You didn’t have to be a man to be a Heathcliff. Whereas she, Jenny, was a much more Cathy-character even if it was she who didn’t have a father nor a real mother. She could recognise exactly how it might be to do one thing and still be loyal to the death to someone else. It worried her sometimes that Martin might turn out to be a kind of Linton and so not worthy of serious attention. For going back to the book, she had a good idea of what Heathcliff and Cathy were doing in all that heather. It was what the Anderson boy had been showing her in Nab Woods, and more recently in the back row of the Alhambra cinema. This, she decided, explained the whole story, which was otherwise unlikely. You could get so mixed up with another person that you wouldn’t know where you ended and the other began. Then dreadful things would follow....

Oh first came out the thick bluid

And then came out the thin

And then came out the red hairt’s bluid

Till there was nae mair within.

At fourteen she started wearing glasses for close work.

*

Edna Pollard,

who was well into her thirties when her only child was born, was a friendly, anxious woman who sometimes brought them tea and rock-cakes while they did their homework all together. Martin’s father, who the girls always identified as an old man, was an Official of the Council.

     During term time they were in and out the Pollard house at all hours, clumping up and down the stairs and giggling in the living room. Their school-girl smell, their biscuit crumbs, their scarves. When they were little she thought them too common, and when they got older, too pert. Edna would have liked to think of young Jennifer as an ally, because she was a level-headed child. Serena, on the other hand, was the sort of girl that Martin’s mother would have warned him about if she had ever been able to catch them at  something, but she never could and so she was always feeling ashamed of herself. Serena was what she called `toward’.

~  What are you getting up to? she asked one day when the three of them had been making more noise than usual.

~  Nothing we shouldn’t. Replied Jennifer who was rinsing and drying some tall

    glasses. ~  We don’t do anything wrong.

~   Did I suggest you might?

~   I thought you were about to. Because everyone always thinks  Serena’s up to no

     good and because I’m always with her they  think  the same of me. But she’s not

     and I’m not.

The girl had a low, deliberate voice from which the accent was being carefully excised.

~  Jenny, I think you are a pleasant sensible girl and I’m always  pleased to see you,

    but...

She did not have the courage to say more.

~  You are worried about my sister. Quite a few mothers are.

    This girl was a deal too self-possessed, thought Edna Pollard. She gave what she thought was a motherly sigh.

~  Not about her, dear; not about her.

Jennifer gave a little shrug and an answering sigh.

~  That’s exactly how I feel about it too. I keep wanting to tell  him, but   he wouldn’t

     listen to me. I’m still a baby to Martin.

~  You a baby, Jennifer. I don’t think so. You don’t seem like a baby  to me!

     She had the idea that this girl, with her neat ways, might be laughing at her. The thought of it made her suddenly clumsy.

~   What’s it to you, what he feels, any   road?

   She knew at once she had taken the wrong tone, but that was what she was like, when nervous. Jennifer had put the glass down carefully.

~   I love Martin. That’s what it is to me.

    There it was, out loud. Like a baby suddenly dropped on a stone floor.

    Edna looked, puzzled and shocked, into the green eyes. The girl’s hair and brows were becoming darker, almost auburn. There was an assymmetric slant to her thin nose.

~   Oh Jenny, she said  ~ don’t say that. You are, well...

~   You think I’m too young to know what I feel, don’t you.  But I  know very well....

She was returning the same gaze, unwavering. Round the flecked green iris was a rim of black; her face was pale and rigid.

~   You asked me. Jennifer insisted, and I told you. If you didn’t  want  to know you

      shouldn’t  ask.

     What Jennifer felt for Martin was meant to stay secret, but she wasn’t going to be flustered by anyone, least of all his mother.

     The older woman turning away, bumped heavily against the corner of the table. She spoke to the tablecloth.

~   I’m sorry, Jenny. I’m not a clever woman. I shouldn’t have  asked  you; I should

     have guessed. You are old for your age.

~   Don’t think about it, Mrs. Pollard, said Jennifer who was now very close to her.

     ~  But we won’t talk about it. And you mustn’t  tell  Martin. Not never!

    Edna had the sense that Jennifer was standing over her, had grown ceiling tall. She was not sure if she had not taken a violent slap in the face.

~   I’m going through now, she heard the girl say. We are doing Serena’s homework

     for her. That’s what all the laughing was about.

   When Jennifer had left the room Edna Pollard went to the sink and drank a glass of cold water. She splashed her face and made as if to tidy her hair. She felt that a walk in the garden would do her good.

*****