A Family Affair (24 page)

Jenny was feeling bad-tempered and miserable.

As Helen had predicted, the course of antibiotics had made her depressed, and though the enforced break had given her plenty of time for reading the books of her choice she had found it difficult to sustain interest in them. As if to compound her mood, the weather had turned bad, rain beating incessantly against the windows and heavy cloud making everything look grey and bleak.

On the Saturday morning, when Carrie had gone to market, Jenny decided to ease the boredom by doing a jigsaw, but before long she lost patience with that too, throwing the box across the room in a fit of impotent frustration and bursting into tears.

Joe, who was treating himself to a half-hour with the
Daily Mirror
, since the weather was too bad for him to do any work in the garden, looked up from the paper.

‘What's the matter, my love?'

‘Oh, I don't know!' There was no way she could explain the edginess that was making her skin crawl. ‘I'm just fed up with everything.'

‘That's no good, you know!' She didn't answer, and after a moment, he went on: ‘You want something to cheer you up, that's what.'

‘There isn't anything, though, is there? I can't go out, the weather's foul, and I feel horrible!'

Joe was silent, his faded blue eyes thoughtful. Then a little smile tweaked the corner of his mouth. ‘You never know. I expect something will turn up.'

Jenny looked up, as a sudden crack appeared in the storm clouds of her mood. She knew that tone! It meant her father was planning something.

‘What?'

But Joe just smiled again. ‘Oh, you'll have to wait and see, won't you?'

And nothing she could say would persuade him to say more.

When Carrie came home from the market, Joe waylaid her in the utility room. They were talking for some time, but though she pricked her ears, Jenny was unable to hear what they were saying. But she did hear the back door open and close again and when Carrie came through to begin putting her shopping away there was a funny little smile on her face too.

‘Where's Dad?' Jenny asked.

‘Oh – out in the outhouse, I think. Doing a bit of sorting out, seeing as he can't get out on the garden.'

‘Oh.' Jenny felt inordinately disappointed without really knowing why.

About half an hour later she heard the kitchen door again and Carrie popped her head around the living-room door. The funny little smile was still there, a little broader if anything.

‘Jenny – come out here a minute.'

‘Why?'

‘Never mind why. Just come out here.'

Jenny got up and went into the kitchen. Joe was there. He was wearing his gaberdine mac and there was a bulge underneath it, at chest level.

Jenny stared. ‘What … ?'

He pulled back the lapel of his mac and to her amazement Jenny saw a small silky brown head with pricked ears and moist brown eyes.

‘Oh!' she gasped, almost unable to believe her eyes. ‘It's a puppy! Oh, what a darling little thing!'

Carrie was beaming broadly now. ‘Your dad thought it would cheer you up. It's one of those that Mrs Carter's dog had – you know, Mrs Carter down in the units. We talked about it before.'

‘Oh, it's so lovely! Lovely! But poor little thing – she's shaking.' She was – trembling all over.

‘Do you want to hold her?' Joe asked.

‘Can I?'

‘Course you can. She's ours.'

‘Ours!' Jenny couldn't believe it. ‘I thought you'd just brought her up to show me.'

‘No, we've decided to have her.'

‘Oh thank you! Thank you!'

‘Don't thank me,' Carrie said shortly. ‘Thank your dad. I talked about it, yes, but it was his idea to go on and do something about it.'

‘Oh, Dad!' Jenny took the puppy from Joe, burying her face in its silky head, feeling the small body trembling against her.

‘You see, Jenny?' Joe said, smiling his slow smile. ‘There's always something to look forward to, isn't there, even if you don't know it. And now I'm going to have to go down to Hillsbridge to get a dog licence.'

‘And some food. What does she eat? And what are we going to call her?'

‘I think you'd better choose her name, Jenny,' Carrie said. ‘But if it was up to me, I'd call her Sally.'

Naturally, Sally it was. Jenny adored her. She helped Carrie spread newspapers all over the kitchen floor because the puppy wasn't house-trained yet, and she helped clean up the messes Sally made. And when the puppy whimpered, missing her brothers and sisters, Jenny stroked her and cuddled her and spoke to her soothingly. At night she even sang her to sleep in the bed made of old blankets in the utility room. And the penicillin-induced depression began to lift. Who could be sad for long with Sally scampering around the place? Jenny felt that life had taken on a whole new meaning!

Jenny went back to school the week before they were due to break up for the holidays. Everyone, including Miss Vokes, was very nice to her, which was just as well since she still felt rather sorry for herself.

Rowena was full of the enormous fun had by all at the school camp, and the latest boy she had fallen in love with – a sixth former who was regarded as a heart-throb by his peers and the younger girls alike. Rowena was justifiably proud of having attracted his interest, but her smugness grated horribly on Jenny, who was torn between envy and resentment. As if it wasn't enough that she should have been asked to the pictures by this young Adonis, her mother was quite happy to let her go. It just wasn't fair, Jenny decided – and then was struck by yet another probable result of this new romance. If Rowena was going out with someone, she wouldn't have so much time for Jenny.

‘Do you think Barry will ever go out with me again?' she asked Rowena wistfully.

‘I don't know!' Rowena sounded impatient – she was as fed up with Jenny mooning over Barry as Jenny was fed up with the details of her conquest.

‘Do you think he might?' Jenny persisted, unabashed. ‘I mean, it's not as if we had a row or anything. It was just that dressed-up doll June Farthing getting her claws into him.'

‘If he liked you, why did he let her?' Rowena asked, maddeningly reasonable.

‘I don't know,' Jenny said. ‘Oh, if he won't go out with me again, I just wish I could die. I bet if I'd died when I had that ear thing he'd be sorry.'

‘He stood you up,' Rowena said patiently. ‘How can you even want to go out with him again when he treats you like that?'

‘I don't know. But I do!'

‘It wouldn't do any good anyway,' Rowena said reasonably. ‘I thought your mother wouldn't let you go.'

Jenny said nothing. She thought she would be prepared to go to any lengths of deception if only it meant she could go out with Barry again.

‘I tell you who
is
sweet on you,' Rowena said. ‘Jimmy Tudgay. He was watching you all through Maths. I saw him. If you want someone to go out with, I bet you could get him to ask you.'

Jenny felt a flush warming her cheeks. She'd been aware of him looking at her too, and though he hadn't gone so far as to ask her how she was, she had found herself remembering how kind he had been the day she'd first been ill. But Jimmy Tudgay! He wasn't in the same league as Barry or Rowena's new boyfriend.

‘I'm not that desperate,' she said. Then her face flamed even more hotly as she realised Jimmy and another boy were passing, almost within earshot.

Oh, don't let him have heard! she prayed. She didn't want to hurt his feelings.

Partly because she was worried about this and partly because she kept thinking of what Rowena had said, Jenny found herself watching Jimmy surreptitiously – and beginning to like what she saw. There was something powerfully attractive about someone who actually
liked
you – and that was not all. Jimmy had changed quite a lot, she realised. He might not have the film-star good looks of Rowena's boyfriend, but he wasn't at all bad-looking, with his strong-featured square face and a well set-up body that seemed to have grown an inch or so taller every time she saw him without thickening any more. Being the same age as her was a disadvantage, of course, But still, he really was rather nice.

With only a few days left to the end of term, serious lessons had been more or less abandoned. Curriculums for the year were completed, exams had been sat, and a sort of holiday air overtook everyone, even the teachers who were usually the hardest task-masters. The PE lesson was turned over to a game of Pirates, when all the equipment was set out at the same time and pupils played an elaborate version of tag, which immediately ended for any contestant caught by a pirate, or who fell into the sea – that is, touched the floor. Jenny was ridiculously pleased that she managed to be among the last half-dozen to be caught – she had at last managed to master the knack of climbing a rope, and by shinning to the top and moving from one to the other along the row that hung in the centre of the gym she evaded capture for quite a long time. In English they played Hangman, taking turns at the blackboard and setting a crossword-type clue for the rest of the form; in Maths there were number games, in Chemistry fun experiments, and in the period devoted to Art they were allowed to take their drawing blocks into the field that sloped away from the school and sit on the grass to sketch whatever they liked.

They congregated in that same field at lunchtime, sprawling contentedly under the huge spreading chestnut tree to find some shade from the relentless midday sun, boys and girls together now, because the days when they segregated naturally into single-sex groups were almost at an end.

On the day before the last day of term, Jenny was lying on her stomach, head resting on her arms, and almost asleep – the effect of the antibiotics still brought on drowsy spells – when she felt something tickling her neck. She released one hand and flicked at the tickling spot, thinking it was a fly or even a wasp, but there was nothing there and a few seconds the tickling came again. This time, as she slapped at it more vigorously, one of the others laughed and she rolled over to see Jimmy with a long blade of dry grass in his hand.

‘Jimmy!' she said. ‘What are you doing? I thought it was a creepy crawlie!'

Jimmy said nothing, just grinned at her, but unexpectedly she felt her tummy tip.

‘Stop it! I'm trying to go to sleep,' she said, but there was a coquettish note in her voice. Jenny, who would have said she hadn't the first idea of how to flirt, was doing it naturally and quite unconsciously. There was even invitation in the way she plonked her head back on her arms – and of course, inevitably, he did it again.

‘Jimmy!' She sat up, pretending outrage. ‘I said leave me alone.'

‘He'll stop on one condition,' Ginger Jacobs said. ‘He'll stop tormenting you if you'll go out with him.'

Jenny blushed furiously; glancing at Jimmy she saw that he had gone red too – a flush that ran right down his neck under the collar of his grey school shirt.

‘Ginger – you bastard!' he muttered.

‘Well, it's true!' Ginger said, unabashed. ‘He wants to go out with you. How about it? Put the poor bloke out of his misery.'

‘I can't …' Jenny started to say, then broke off as she caught sight of the tortured expression on Jimmy's face. She couldn't humiliate him in front of his friends by turning him down without a reason – and she couldn't explain either that she was not allowed, because that would humiliate her. And in any case …

I'd quite like to go out with him, Jenny thought. It would be nice to be with someone who liked her – and why should Carrie know? Jenny certainly wasn't going to make the mistake of confessing again.

‘Why can't he ask me himself?' she said now, and the coquettishness, so new to her, was there again. ‘I'm not going out with someone who has to get his friends to do his asking for him.'

She still didn't really think he'd do it. She thought he'd be too afraid of being made to look a fool if she said no. But to her surprise, a mulish look came over his red face.

‘That's right, Ginger,' he said to his friend. ‘I don't need you to talk for me.' And to Jenny: ‘Can I have a date, Jen?'

Well, good for you, Jimmy! she thought, and smiled demurely.

‘All right,' she said.

It really was very easy lying to Carrie, much easier than it had been to lie about Barry, because she still felt aggrieved about the way Carrie had behaved when she'd found out about it. It was also easier in practice, because she had a good excuse – all the school crowd had arranged to meet up almost daily at the open-air swimming pool at South Compton.

It was a wonderful pool – unheated, of course, and not really very big, but big enough, with a springboard and a high board that they could ‘bomb'from, curling their knees up to their chins and leaping the ten feet into the shimmering ice-blue water beneath. Some of the boys even climbed on to the surrounding railing, or even the breeze-block wall beyond, and jumped from there, though if Mr Catley the pool attendant saw them, he shouted at them and they had to stop it or risk being turned out. In winter, Mr Catley was one of the council road sweepers, in charge of nothing more exciting than a broom and bin on wheels, and he relished the power that was his in the summer months.

The swimming pool was set in the long valley that ran between Hillsbridge and South Compton, and surrounded by fields. It was simplicity itself to have a quick dip, the girls screaming with laughter as the boys ducked them or pushed them in, then get dressed, meet Jimmy outside the turnstile gate, cross the wooden bridge and follow the stream through the cool green fields. As soon as they were out of sight of the others, Jimmy would take her hand or put his arm around her, and if they could find a hollow to sit down in he would kiss her. He wasn't as good a kisser as Barry had been, but then she supposed he was less experienced and it was very pleasant all the same.