Mrs. Morton glanced at her husband and a sigh escaped her. For the glance plainly asked where and how they had gone wrong.
Not that Janis ever gave them any trouble—on the contrary she was charmingly naive, well-mannered and loving. No, it was Dora who from the early age of three had been petulant and selfish, bad-tempered and obstinate. Now at almost nineteen she was even worse, causing her parents anxiety and heartache by her flighty, mercurial tendencies, which had now led her into an affair which both parents feared would end in disaster. They had never met Dennis Gregory but the very fact that he was willing to have Dora spend week-ends at his flat convinced Mr. and Mrs. Morton that he was no good for their daughter.
Janis, watching them, noticing the lines which seemed to have deepened on their faces, felt a pang of guilt run through her. For she was indirectly responsible for the affair which was going on between her sister and Dennis Gregory, who, Janis knew, was a womaniser and opportunist of the very worst kind. Devastatingly handsome, adept at the art of flattery, he had certainly appealed to Janis when, at only fifteen, she had met him at a party.
'Can we have the dessert, Mother. I have to be out by eight o'clock.' Dora's low, sexy voice brought Janis back to the present and she rose to take away the dinner plates.
'Where are you going?' from Mr. Morton, who was trying to look stern.
'To a party.' Dora leaned back in her chair and quietly examined her bright red fingernails.
'What time will you be back?' There was a quiver in her mother's voice and her face was pale. She had been in her forties when, within a year of one another, her two daughters had been born. This meant that she and her husband were a lot older than their children; they were of another age, when chastity was expected of a girl. It was, therefore, difficult for these 'old-fashioned' parents to understand—much less accept—the life young people lived these days.
'For the lord's sake, Mother, get with it!' Dora would say exasperatedly in response to complaints. 'It doesn't say that because your generation had no fun that we should follow suit! I'm sure you'd be delighted if I were to shut myself away in a convent!'
Janis's face was troubled as she put the dish of fruit salad in front of her sister. Dora looked up from the contemplation of her nails and answered her mother's question.
'I shall be out all night. The party doesn't get going till midnight as some people arrive late, after a show or a dance. It is Saturday,' she emphasised on noting her mother's frown. 'So I haven't to be up tomorrow morning for work.' With a gesture of annoyance she pushed a hand through her dark brown hair, then she picked up her spoon and tackled the fruit salad while Mrs. Morton poured the coffee, which Janis had just brought in.
'You'll be staying at this man's flat?'
'Yes, Mother, I shall be staying at Dennis's flat. Don't I always stay when there's a late-night party?' Mrs. Morton said nothing but she pushed her fruit away as if even to have it in front of her gave her a choking feeling. How old she looked, thought Janis and as always wished her parents had been married younger. 'Dennis does have two bedrooms in his flat,' added Dora with a hint of amusement in her low, husky voice. 'Well, haven't you anything to say?' There was a distinct challenge in Dora's voice and Janis flinched. This was by no means the first time Dora had made a subtle threat to leave home. And if she did it would be to move in with Dennis, whom she had known a mere three months. It was owing to this threat hanging over them that caused her parents to be guarded, limiting their protests to mild and rather pained enquiries and comments. They were being blackmailed and they knew it.
It was when Janis and her mother were washing the dinner dishes that the older woman asked her husband, who had come into the kitchen carrying the empty wine bottle and the corkscrew,
'What can we do, Stan?'
'Nothing, my dear, absolutely nothing.' He glanced at his younger daughter and added with a sigh, 'So alike in looks that they've often been taken for twins, and yet so different from one another in character.'
Janis bit her lip till it hurt. It was owing to the almost uncanny likeness that Dennis had come to know Dora, since he had believed he was approaching the girl he had met three years previously. How well Janis recalled that fleeting interlude in her life. Not quite fifteen and at her first real party. Her mother had bought her a lovely dress and she had had her hair styled at the hairdresser's. Dennis, twenty-eight and devastatingly handsome, had danced with her, then suggested they go out to the dark and lonely garden. She had agreed, but after only a couple of minutes she was running from him, her heart pounding against her ribs. He had kissed her and immediately his experienced hands had begun to roam. She managed by some miracle to take him by surprise and before he had recovered his balance she was away with the speed of terror in her feet. She was so upset that she immediately told her friend she was unable to stay at the party as she felt ill.
'Home so early?' her mother had said in surprise. Janis had made the same excuse, that she wasn't feeling too well.
Dennis had been sent to Newcastle by his firm, the friend who held the party later told Janis in casual conversation, for she was ignorant of what had happened.
Three years later he was brought back and, seeing Dora at a dance, he had gone to her and said in some amusement,
'So we meet again, my little scared rabbit. But by now you'll have had some experience. I can see it in those lovely big brown eyes of yours.'
Dora had told Janis about the meeting, and that Dennis had called her Janis.
'You're a dark horse,' Dora had added with a laugh. 'Never said a word about it to any of us.'
'It wasn't anything I wanted to talk about.' Janis had warned Dora but her sister only laughed, calling her a little stupid who ought by now, at nearly eighteen, to be enjoying herself.
'You told Dennis you weren't me—I mean, that you were my sister?' Janis had queried and was amazed when Dora answered,
'No, I wasn't risking losing him. I wanted him; he's fabulous! I just took what Lady Luck had handed out and let him believe I was you.'
'You're crazy! You mean, he calls you Janis?' She shook her head, conscious of a weight of foreboding, of tinglings inexplicable darting along her spine. 'Even now he still calls you Janis?'
'So what? I like Janis a lot better than Dora.'
'But—but people must know.'
'No one knows. Dennis doesn't belong to that crowd who were at the party where you met him. He told me he was there only because an invitation had been popped through his letter box and he'd nowhere else to go. The crowd we are in with now are a great lot! We have marvellous fun!'
Janis's musings were interrupted by her mother, who, with the tea towel idle in her hand, was saying to her husband,
'I'm heartbroken, Stan. To think that a child of ours could become a—a—' She could not voice the word and Janis could sense the lump that was blocking her mother's voice. Guilt washed over her even though she had to acknowledge the sense of her friend Lindsay's logic. If it hadn't been Dennis it would have been someone else, Lindsay had asserted, someone interested only in Dora's physical attractions and certainly not interested in marrying her.
'The way she is at present she's not the type they take for keeps,' Lindsay had gone on to say. 'One day, though, she might wake up, might learn and consequently change her ways.'
Which meant, mused Janis as she scoured around the stainless steel sink after draining off the washing-up water, that as far as Lindsay was concerned there might still be hope for Dora, an opinion which Janis wished her parents could share. They had despaired of Dora's ever achieving a happy marriage.
'Are you going out this evening?' inquired Mr. Morton of Janis and at first she was inclined to say no, because she felt her parents would be far happier if she stayed in with them. But she had half-promised Lindsay that she would go over and spend a couple of hours with her at the new flat she had taken after her widowed mother had remarried. Lindsay found nothing wrong with her stepfather at all—in fact, she liked him enormously. But with common sense far above her nineteen years, she had seen that the newly-marrieds would be better on their own. And as she had a fairly well-paying job in the same office as Janis, she was able to rent the neat little two-bedroom flat just outside Maidstone, the County Town of Kent, where she worked.
'Lindsay asked me to go over for a chat, Father, but if you'd prefer me to stay—'
'No, dear,' broke in Mrs. Morton, using the tea towel again, 'we don't want you to feel you have to stay in with us. You're seventeen—almost eighteen—and must begin making a life of your own.'
A very young seventeen, it had been said by her boss in the office. Well, Janis loved her childhood and was never in a hurry to leave it behind. Loving parents had given her wonderful memories, in spite of the scenes often caused by Dora's tantrums, and so she supposed that was why she had never been too eager to grow up.
***
Lindsay greeted her with a smile, took her coat and asked if she had come on the bus or if she had borrowed her father's car.
'I came on the bus,' answered Janis, adding that she did not feel too confident on her own in the car even though she had passed her test. 'It's only a month ago,' she went on, taking the chair opposite to the low bucket chair which she knew her friend always used for herself. 'And so I still prefer to have Dad with me. I daresay I shall soon have the confidence to go out on my own.'
'It's a lovely car, and fast.'
Janis nodded her head. A Mercedes which had been her father's present 'to the lot of us' last Christmas. He was a Company Director with a very excellent salary but he always said that there was no possibility of saving from it. He believed in comfort and a few luxuries and the two girls had always known that when their father retired the charming Victorian house would have to go and a much smaller one bought in its stead.
'Tea or coffee?' Lindsay asked after staring down at her friend for a moment, taking in the charm of clear alabaster skin and rosy lips, of a wide intelligent forehead below a glory of smooth and glowing dark brown hair. 'Perhaps you would like something stronger? I've treated myself to a few unnecessary extravagances,' she said with a grimace. 'A bottle of sherry and one of martini! Started my collecting when the supermarket had a cut-price week.'
Janis laughed and said she would try the sherry.
'Good! Let's both be devils!' said Lindsay, catching the laughter.
'I've had wine with my dinner so please don't give me much.'
'I won't. Your mum and dad would be round here in a crack if you went home tipsy!'
Janis watched her pour the drinks, remembering how they had met. Lindsay was already an 'old-hand' in the firm of Warrender and Green, manufacturers of small electrical appliances, when Janis, straight from grammar school, had been handed over to her. That was a year ago and the two had been close friends ever since and felt they always would be no matter what the future held for them separately. Lindsay was faintly perturbed about the exploits of Dora, mainly because of her friendship with Janis but also because she knew how deep was the anxiety of her parents, who, maintained Lindsay, ought not to have this kind of problem when they were in their sixties and ought to be looking forward to a happy and uncomplicated retirement.
'Has Dora gone off to some party or other again?' she was asking once they were both settled with their drinks.
'Yes; she's not coming home until tomorrow evening.' Janis sighed; she disliked discussing her sister but she felt she had to talk to someone. 'Mum and Dad are so worried about her since she began going about with Dennis. They haven't ever met him, of course, but they know that he can't be any good, keeping Dora out till all hours of the morning, and also—' She paused, then realised she would have to continue. 'This isn't by any means the first time she'd stayed the night at his flat.'
'Well, it's the fashion these days,' returned Lindsay.
'My parents don't approve.'
'Dora ought not to flaunt her promiscuity. If that's the life she wants she could at least consider her parents and keep it quiet.'
Janis nodded absently. It might be the fashion, she thought, but for her—well, she wasn't intending to have a 'past' to trouble her when she eventually fell in love.
'If Dora and I hadn't been so alike in appearance this would never have happened.'
'Stop blaming yourself,' chided her friend. 'As I've already said, if it hadn't been Dennis it would have been someone else. Why, she's had a dozen blokes from what people say about her!'
Janis flinched.
'People are talking about her?'
'I've not heard much gossip,' answered Lindsay, annoyed with herself for the slip she hadn't meant to make. 'Just a little. Dora and Dennis don't seem to be around much. They both work in Maidstone but they seem to spend their evenings elsewhere—in Tunbridge Wells, I expect, since that's where Dennis lives.'
Janis nodded, thinking of the flat and wondering how her sister could keep on sleeping there when she knew how deeply she was hurting her parents.
'Dora makes threats about leaving home,' said Janis thoughtfully. 'I know my parents are dreading her going to live with Dennis.'
'If you ask me it would be a good thing if she did. Your Mum and Dad could then begin getting over their disappointment in her.'
Janis thought about this and reluctantly had to agree that perhaps it would be better if Dora did go and live with Dennis.
***
It was less than a week later when Dora, having come into her sister's bedroom, stood for a long moment, staring vacantly before she said,
'Janis… I'm having a baby.'
'You're—!' Janis spun around and clutched at the back of the chair which stood by the elegant white and gold dressing-table. 'No! Oh, Dora—not that!' Why had such a possibility never entered her head? But she supposed she had subconsciously given Dora credit for being as clever as any other girl these days. 'Dennis…' She paused, almost afraid to ask the question for she dreaded the answer. 'He's going to—to marry you?'
'You know darned well he isn't!' Dora burst into tears but Janis was stiff and mute where she stood, the palm of her hand damp against the soft mauve velvet of the chair. 'He's even denied it's his.'
'Denied—!' Janis stared in disbelief. 'But he can't deny it!' she said emphatically.
'I've known him three months and I'm three months' pregnant.'
'So he's trying to say—?' Furious colour highlighted the delicate bones of Janis's cheeks. 'Oh, he's just about as rotten as they come! Why didn't you take my warning?'
'I loved him—I still love him.' Dora was searching for a handkerchief. Janis took one from a drawer and handed it to her. 'That's why I didn't have an abortion when he told me to. I thought he'd marry me but I'm a fool! I don't want an abortion even now because I am still hoping he'll soften and marry me. He loves children, strange as it might seem to you.'
'It certainly does seem strange.' Janis's voice was tight. 'You obviously didn't take precautions?' she said slowly and with difficulty.
'Of course I did, but it doesn't always work. It's not a hundred percent, you know.'
Janis turned away, to stare out of the window at the lovely cherry orchard to the south of the gardens proper. The trees were in full bloom in many parts of Kent, the county which was also noted for its hops.
'What are you going to do?' she asked over her shoulder. 'Mother and Father will be devastated.'
'I'm worrying about myself, not them.'
'They'll have to know.' She turned to face her sister again.
'If I could get away until it's born. I'd have it adopted of course—' She stopped and the tears came again. 'I suppose I'm still optimistic that Dennis will marry me.'
'I don't think he will, Dora. He's a no-good, a womaniser of the very worst kind.'
'I knew what I was doing,' admitted her sister, drying her eyes again on the handkerchief, which was now soaking wet. 'I suppose I felt he was so attracted to me that he'd turn over a new leaf.'
Something suddenly struck Janis which made her say sharply,
'Dennis knows you're Dora by this time, I suppose?'
'No, he still calls me Janis—but what does a name matter when I'm in this mess—'
'It's my name!'
'There's no copyright for names.'
'I don't like it….' Tingles along her spine found reaction in a chill of apprehension sweeping through her and yet she could not see how her sister's condition could ever affect her. 'You have no right to continue with this deceit.' Janis glanced automatically into the mirror, broodingly accepting the incredible resemblance. It was really no wonder that Dennis, having been with her, Janis, so briefly, and three years ago too, had made the mistake.
But Dora ought to have corrected him. Janis said on a little hollow note,
'If he had agreed to marry you, then you'd have had to admit to being my sister.'
'I'd have thought of something,' was Dora's impatient rejoinder. 'I've other things to think about so for heaven's sake let's keep to what's important. If I can get some money from Dennis, can you let me have some as well? I could then take a room, have the baby, get it adopted and come back home. I would tell Mum and Dad that I'd found a better job and so must leave home. They'd be relieved at the idea of my getting away from Dennis.'
Janis thought about this idea and it found favour with her in spite of the difficulties which her sister had smoothed over. First, there was the dicey business of getting money from a man who had questioned the paternity of the child, and secondly, there was the question of how much money Janis could afford to let Dora have. She gave her mother half of her salary and from the other half there were her fares to work, her clothes and other necessities.
'I could let you have something from my salary,' she said at last, 'but it wouldn't be very much.'
'Have you any savings?'
'I do have a little money in the bank, yes.'
'If you could lend it to me I'd be grateful.'
Janis nodded her head.
'If you didn't have to go a long way off you could have held on to your job for a while.'
'I'll be showing before very long so that's out. I might just be able to get something in the new place where I'll be living but I doubt it.'
'Do you suppose there's any hope of Dennis giving you money?'
'I can only try.' Another bout of weeping and this time Janis moved towards her sister's drooping figure and put her arm around her shoulders.
'Don't, please,' she begged in tones of deep distress. 'We'll think of some way out of this.'
***
But there was no way out except the obvious one, which was to enlighten Mr. and Mrs. Morton about what had happened. For Dennis refused to help, and in any case, his firm was sending him abroad, to Holland first, and then he'd be moved again but he said he had no idea where or when that would be. It was goodbye, he told Dora and ushered her from his flat in such a hurry that it was obvious to her that he was expecting another visitor.
It fell to Janis to inform her parents and she felt that if she lived to be a hundred she would never know a worse moment than that in which those two elderly people sat there, faces ashen, trying to take in what they had been told.
'A baby,' said Mrs. Morton at last. 'She's bringing us this trouble, at our age.' She looked ten years older, thought Janis, and it was Dennis she cursed and not her sister. Dora had changed; she was sorry for what had occurred and although there was still something selfish about her manner she did seem able to appreciate just how much she had hurt her parents.
After a few days life seemed to settle though, with Mr. and Mrs. Morton having accepted the situation and bearing up as best they could. As Janis had gently explained, this was not a unique situation; it was happening all the time.
'Yes, dear, but I never thought it would happen to us,' said Mrs. Morton and even Janis had to own that her parents were living in the past, that they really believed they were martyrs.
Dora stayed on at her job for another month, then left. She applied for State help so that she would not feel the indignity of being a burden on her parents. She went into hospital to have the baby and when it was born Mrs. Morton couldn't agree to its being adopted.
'We can take care of it,' she said and to the two girls it was a revelation to see her crooning over it. 'Such a beautiful boy—and we'd have liked a boy, wouldn't we?' she asked her husband. He nodded but it was plain that he had no heart for what his wife was proposing.
And so in the end it was agreed that the child be adopted.
But the child became ill. Dora was out and it was Janis who phoned the doctor. He ordered the baby to be taken to hospital and although Janis offered to take it, going with her father in the car, Mrs. Morton would not hear of it. She took it in her arms after Janis had wrapped it up in the soft white shawl which she herself had knitted, and Janis stood at the front door watching the Mercedes drive away.
She was troubled about the baby… but little did she know that she would never see any of the occupants of the car alive again.
