The Banker's Niece 9: Black Dog 2

Spring 1978

‘Where’s Pa?’ said Rick.

    ‘Oh you know,’ said Peggy. ‘Watching television or something.’

    Rick had explained the system to Jane. Rick’s father lived in the sitting-room, doing God knows what, while his mother lived in the kitchen, reading, doing crosswords and sneaking outside for cigarettes as Philip wouldn’t let her smoke in the house. She was a great reader apparently, especially of any books connected with country life, and Lord of the Rings, which she ploughed through once a year. Jane’s mother was a great reader too but she tended to like the autobiographies of people brought up in stately homes.

    ‘Sit down,’ suggested Rick to Jane, as she hovered next to the sink.

    He pointed to a round table next to the window, covered with a flowered cloth and already laid for lunch. Grateful for the suggestion, she squeezed round the table to the far side, hoping she wasn’t taking anyone’s special place.

    ‘There’s wine in the fridge,’ said Peggy.

    ‘Wine!’ said Rick. ‘Since when did you and Pa drink wine?’

    ‘Since your father got promoted,’ said Peggy.

    ‘Huh,’ said Rick.

    Nevertheless he extracted the wine from the fridge and filled four glasses, before pulling out a chair next to Jane and sitting down.

    Peggy started delving into the oven and placing pans on the peninsula that separated the table from the rest of the kitchen.

    A face and then a body appeared in the kitchen doorway. It was yet another version of Rick, only one with a large stomach, glasses and no hair.

    ‘Where’ve you been?’ demanded Rick. ‘Jane’s here waiting to meet you and Ma’s dishing up.’

    ‘I, er, I was having trouble.’

    ‘Trouble!’ scoffed Rick. ‘What sort of trouble?’

    ‘I was, er, flatulating.’

    ‘Flatulating!’ said Rick. ‘What sort of a word is that? Why can’t you call a spade a spade?’

    ‘Or a fart a fart,’ said Peggy from behind the peninsula where she was doling roast beef, roast potatoes and cabbage on to four plates.

    ‘Ex-actly,’ said Rick. ‘Nothing wrong with “fart”. Good Anglo-Saxon word, “fart”.’

    ‘Well you know,’ said Philip, nodding in Jane’s direction.

    ‘Jane doesn’t care, do you?’ said Rick, turning to look at her.

    Jane shook her head. She was incapable of speech.

In the afternoon Rick drove her round the lanes pointing out landmarks.

    ‘That was where I came off my bicycle and landed in a clump of brambles,’ he said pointing to a muddy ditch.

    ‘That was where I lost the road on the Cub and drove up the bank,’ he said pointing to a sharp corner and a precipitous slope.

    He’d talked about the Cub before. It was a Triumph Tiger Cub motorbike which he’d sold when he left home and still mourned. Jane didn’t know anything about motorbikes except that they were dangerous. Thank goodness the Cub was gone.

    ‘This was where I had my first car crash,’ he said at a T-junction. ‘I pulled out and this pillock came round the corner and smashed into the side of the Mini-van. It was never the same again.’

    Jane didn’t like to ask whose fault it was or whether anyone was hurt.

    Even though he had to sit hunched over because the roofs were too low, he'd had Minis of one sort or another ever since he started work six years earlier. She knew that because he'd described each one in detail to her, down to the registration number. The Clubman was Mini number three.

At teatime Rick went into the sitting-room for what was apparently the traditional argument with his father. Jane and Peggy sat in the kitchen together.

    Peggy patted Jane’s hand. ‘Dear girl. I’m so pleased he’s got you to look after him. We’ve been worried about him.’

    Jane had been worried about him too when they first met. He’d changed a lot though in five months but she didn’t think she could take all the credit for that. How kind Peggy was.

    Nothing about her first visit to Rick’s parents had been what she expected. There’d been no catechism, no polite formality, no sizing her up as a potential daughter-in-law. Instead, it was as if she’d been absorbed into the family exactly as she was.

    Fresh air, albeit of an occasional foetid nature, blew through this house. People said what they thought, did what they wanted. She was happy here.

That evening back in Exeter, as she sat in the bath and as usual surveyed with despair her rolls of stomach fat, she had a revelation. The solution was nothing to do with your size, with eating or not eating. The solution was to love yourself as you were. That was the only starting point.

    Later, as she and Rick lay on their mattress together, his every touch brought a waterfall of colour. And this is just the beginning, she thought.

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