Chapter 87

The journey home from Bristol went without any problems at all; for once everything was on time. It probably helped that we were travelling after the Monday morning rush hour was over, although the carriages were quite full of people like us who hadn’t needed to get to their destination first thing. The twins hummed and hawed about whether to buy return tickets or not, and in the end decided that they probably ought to go back to their parents before the start of the next term, and it wasn’t worth paying the extra bit on the off-chance that they’d want to go to Bristol in the next couple of months.

(A British Rail return ticket normally cost something like 130% of the single one-way fare, so there was a substantial saving to be made over two single tickets if you knew that you were coming back. In order to try and prevent railcard-induced overcrowding on popular services and routes, some railcards had restrictions on when and where you could use them to buy a cut-price ticket; if I remember correctly the senior citizen card of the time wasn’t valid for peak hours, and some of the cross country-route tickets bought with a Student Railcard actually specified that they were not valid for travel via London, which was one reason why Jen tended to travel home from Reading via Didcot and Birmingham at weekends – the others being when she was meeting me at Didcot, and the sheer impossibility of crossing London on a Friday night with dignity and temper intact.)

As the incoming train from the south had slowed to a stop, Adrian had spotted a compartment with only one person in it, an older woman who was sitting by the window reading a book; so we headed for that one, hoisted our rucksacks onto the luggage rack, and sat down at the door end. Sheila and Adrian had their backs to the engine; Julie and I faced them. Julie took her shoes off and curled up on the striped fabric bench seat with her head on my lap; Sheila giggled and did the same with Adrian – after all, who was to know that he was her twin brother – and both girls dozed all the way to Birmingham. Adrian and I leant back in the corners and rested our eyes – after all, it had been an energetic night for both of us as well.

We changed trains at New Street, lunching on some British Rail sandwiches while we waited. They were freshly made and actually quite tasty – in the past we’d had some pretty gruesomely curling ones which had died of old age, normally when coming back from Reading on a Sunday evening, but these were actually worth the money – of course, we still chuntered about the inflated price for a captive audience, but didn’t mean it as much as we usually did.

There was a phone box on the platform, so before we caught our connection, I was able to confirm to Mum on which train to expect us.

Mum was already in the car park as we alighted two minutes early, driving Dad’s car; he had gone to work in her Mini. She gave us all a hug of welcome, and somehow we packed four of us plus four rucksacks and two suit bags into the car and boot. Jen and Hamish were waiting for us at home, having been collected by Dad the previous day, and it was really good to see them after so long; we chatted away twenty to the dozen, and Mum just smiled as we talked over each other in our excitement. The first pot of tea and plate of broken biscuits vanished very quickly and Jen rapidly replaced them, though still constantly subjecting Julie to a barrage of questions about what we had been up to in the last two months, and what the graduation ceremony had been like. We’d only partly calmed down by the time Dad got home at six, and his arrival started a new round of noise!

Naturally, as it was our first evening home, Dad quickly got changed into a sports jacket and trousers and we all headed off to the steakhouse at half past six; Mum laughingly stated that the sight of her daughter getting outside an extra-large Knickerbocker Glory at the start of the holidays was now just as much a sign that summer was here as Wimbledon, which was just starting its second week. Actually, I think both our parents were still enjoying the relative novelty of the fact that we were old enough to be taken out for a nice meal and a couple of glasses of wine, and the presence of our friends made it even more of an occasion. There was certainly a great deal of laughter around the table as we waited for our food, so much so that there were smiling faces all round the room as other diners picked up on our holiday mood.

The steak was as good as ever and the chips plentiful; the chef was experimenting with a new mushroom, cream and Madeira wine sauce which was very rich but absolutely delicious. Jen was cheeky when it came to ordering desserts, and asked for a couple of extra glace cherries on her Knickerbocker Glory, which of course she got. They knew her well by now!

Mum shook her head in obvious disbelief as all three girls tucked in to their icecream sundaes with great enthusiasm and appetite – she herself had refused a pud on the grounds that the steak and chips had been more than she usually ate. I’m not entirely sure myself exactly where the girls stuffed their treat away – I’d had quite enough with my banana split, which was nothing like as rich or sticky.

Dad sneakily paid the bill when he went to the loo, so I didn’t get a chance to offer to pay a share – I asked him what I owed him as we strolled home, but he insisted that it was his treat, and that he was more than happy to pay for the twins as well.

“It’s really good to see you all, your mother and I have had a very enjoyable evening out, and we haven’t yet given you anything for getting your degree, so if you are that worried about me paying for all of you, take it as part of that!”

I hadn’t ever expected to be given anything as a reward for getting my degree, and I told him that. He chuckled and patted me on the shoulder.

“You’ve done really well and made us proud of you. There will be something big that you WILL need some help with before long, like a car to get around, and we’ll be most upset if you don’t come and ask us.”

I thanked him, blinking back something that had suddenly got in my eye. Our parents had always been kind and loving, but had never spoiled us or lavished gifts on us; they’d had to work for everything they had, and felt that self-reliance was one of the best things they could teach us – hence why they’d encouraged us to get that holiday job at the vegetable factory, so that we could work to earn some money for ourselves, not just be given a handout. That first summer had been a real learning experience for Jen and I; we hadn’t wanted to embarrass our parents by disappointing Mr Johnston, and the discipline of hard work and long hours had made us both grow up very quickly, even though we had a lot of fun as well. Okay, we couldn’t have done it without the loan of Mum’s Mini to get us there and back, and she’d also helped by always having something ready for our supper when we got home, but we’d learned the important life lesson that we could earn a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

There was more chit-chat over a pot of tea before Dad went into the sitting room and switched on the Nine O’clock News; nothing much was happening in the world and the weather man wasn’t predicting anything unseasonal. The twins washed up the mugs and I put them away, while Jen and Julie talked to Mum about our stay in the caravan – we weren’t going to be entirely self-sufficient, and Mum had very kindly offered to help out with the laundry and some shopping.

Bedtime was back to the dormitory system, Hamish and Adrian were in with me, and Mum warned the three girls not to chatter all night, as it was going to be an early start in the morning. It was; Dad woke us when he finished in the bathroom at half past six, telling us that there was a cup of tea waiting in the kitchen.

Mr Johnston had promised to have the Luton Van round to collect us at nine, and sure enough it was outside dead on time. With one of Mum’s cooked breakfasts inside us, we were ready for the day, and we grabbed our bags and climbed in the back.

Not much had changed at the factory after all the improvements of the previous year; the concrete yard for big delivery lorries didn’t look near as white and pristine as it had, but everything else was the same. The caravan looked a little shabbier after a winter on site; the interior had been kept frost-free and dry with an electric heater, and Mr Johnston said that he’d had all the mattresses stored in a heated office, so it was actually fine inside, even if there was some green mould on the outside. Somebody had taken the trouble to air it whenever there had been a warm dry day; there was no smell of mould or of having been ‘shut up’ for months.

Once we had looked round, Jen suggested that she and Sheila take the two bedrooms at the end, next to the small shower room and toilet, leaving the ones nearer the kitchen for Julie and I, and for Sian and Malcolm when they arrived.