The Banker's Niece 7: House-hunting

‘You have reached your destination,’ says the annoying voice of the annoying sat-nav lady.

    She’s definitely a lady, not a woman. That’s probably what makes her so annoying – that and her bossiness and her stupidity.

    Sat-navs are new to Jane, but she’s bought one specially for this trip. She hoped the woman would be a friend, someone to hold her hand in the ‘wilds’ of Devon, but the partnership is taking its time to gel.

    Jane slams her foot on the brake and surveys the turning. ‘Stockland Farm’ says a faded wooden sign on its back in the hedge. The entrance surface is a mixture of cowpat and stones, and the rest of the track doesn’t appear to be much better. Jane’s damned if she’s taking her beloved, new, bright-yellow, Renault Clio up that. On the other hand, does she want to leave Clio on her own by the side of the road in this god-forsaken corner of this god-forsaken part of the country?

    Let alone sat-navs, she’s not had a car for the last twenty years, what with the London traffic, the congestion charge, the impossibility of parking anywhere away from her flat and the Kafkaesque methods of the Residents’ Permit authorities. Buying Clio was a gesture, another step towards her 'new life in the country' as her friends call the move.  Much as she loves Clio, however, she’s finding her something of a responsibility – rather like a new dog, she supposes, not that she’s ever had one herself but she remembers the kerfuffle when her lovely brother Ollie and his lovely wife Lucy acquired their first puppy.

Last night she couldn’t decide whether to leave early, before the morning traffic, or late, after it. But then she woke with the light at 4am and decided she might as well make a move there and then. It was too early for coffee, even for her, so she stopped at a roadside café two hours into the journey and had one of the most disgusting beverages she’s ever tasted. How can you turn a fragrant bean into something that resembles week-old dishwater?

    The roads became smaller and smaller, more and more empty, steeper, twistier and narrower, and now here she is at ten in the morning, worn out, coffee-less and cross. She wishes she’d stayed in London.

She’s been in a mood ever since her mother’s phone call five days ago. She can’t bear being organised, especially by her mother and her mother’s ghastly friends. They have however provided her with an incentive to brave another trip to Devon, explore Moreton Courtney (without Henry), check out the neighbouring towns and villages and drop into a few estate agents for advice. It’s something she has to do and she’s been putting it off for far too long.

    So she’s booked herself into a B & B for three nights, Thursday to Sunday, and emailed the estate agent handling the cottage of William Davenport Junior.

    ‘We’ll leave the door unlocked and let you look around on your own,’ they said, obviously not keen to trek out themselves. ‘Just get in touch if there’s anything you want to know. The owner will probably be around anyway and I’m sure he’ll be only too pleased to help. You can put your questions directly to him if you prefer.’

    Not blooming likely, thinks Jane. Even though she has both the man’s mobile and his landline number – Jane’s mother was most insistent about that, making sure Jane wrote them down and then read them back to her – Jane is darn sure she will do everything in her power to steer clear of him. He’s probably some appalling tweedy brute who shoots everything that moves or – even worse – rampages through the countryside on horseback encouraging packs of rabid dogs to gang up on poor defenceless foxes while he laughs at the law. She’s met plenty of those in Kent, usually in her parents’ drawing-room.

   

She manoeuvres Clio on to a patch of flat grass next to the turning and climbs out.

    ‘Look after yourself,’ she says, patting her vehicle on the roof, ‘and don’t talk to any strange men.’

    With a sense that she’s leaving behind her last connection with civilisation, she starts to pick her way up the track, around the cowpats. They look dry on top but goodness knows what they’re like underneath. She shudders at the thought of green slime oozing over her toes and ruining her new silver sandals. The stones dig into her feet through her thin soles.

    She’s forgotten what the countryside is like. She was an idiot not to come with better footwear. Not that she has any. She has walking boots, which she uses occasionally when ‘hiking’ with friends, and a pair of pretty wellies (blue with pink spots) that she bought for wet days in the city or visiting her parents in Kent but as far as she can remember they leaked from day two. Neither would be appropriate.

    The track is lined with trees but they’re small and the sun is already high. There’s no shade and it’s getting hot. She has of course come without hat and suncream too. Weather forecasters always say that in June the sun is at its most powerful – and dangerous –  even if it doesn't feel like it and she can well believe it. Her head is already aching and the skin on her bare arms is turning red.

    She wonders not for the first time if she’s mad to consider exchanging her London life for something so different. Does she still have it in her to make such a radical transition? Has she thought it through properly? Has she considered the implications – for her career, her family, her friends?

    And why Devon? Except for one small connection nearly four decades ago there’s no logical reason for her to move to the other side of the country. What does she know about the place? Is she allowing Sharon to have too much of an influence on her? Should she step back for a few months and take stock?

    It’s all happening too fast.

  

This walk on the other hand is taking too long. After what feels to Jane like half an hour, but is probably only a few minutes judging by the directions and map that came with the property's details, a building appears on her left, a small white house with a tiled roof which she recognises from the pictures.

    As far as she understands from her mother – who’s heard it from Lavinia – who’s heard it from William Junior - it’s two farm cottages knocked into one and modernised about ten years ago. Until now it’s been let and the most recent tenant, a widow in her eighties, has left for a council flat in the village two miles away.

    Jane pushes open the front door, wondering what detritus of an old woman’s life she’s going to find inside the house. (By old woman she means a woman even older than herself.)
    She doesn't know if she could bear to buy a house found for her by her mother, and why would she want to live out here where she would have to drive both to the nearest village and to Courtney Press when she could find somewhere in Moreton Courtney and walk to work?
    She'll take a quick look round to satisfy her curiosity and to please her mother and her mother's friend (get them off her back), and then she'll head off for some proper exploration.

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The Banker's Niece 6: The telephone conversation

‘Jane,’ says Jane’s mother like a sergeant-major, demanding attention as she always does. She never says ‘Is this a good time?’ or ‘Have you got a moment?’ as other callers do.

    ‘Yes,’ says Jane warily.

    It’s 9am on Saturday morning, not her mother’s normal time. She usually rings on Sunday evening about six, if Jane hasn’t got there first – which she tries to do so as not to spend the entire weekend dreading their conversation. Whatever her mother wants, it must be urgent, and urgent isn’t good news as it tends to mean her mother’s coming up from Kent to London and wants to meet.

    'Jane,’ says her mother again, taking a slurp of something.

    At this time of day it’s probably coffee. She’s always slurping something when she rings. Jane wonders if it’s because she hates their conversations as much as Jane does and needs fortifying. If only Jane had something to hand as well, but she’s this minute tumbled out of bed and is standing in the kitchen in bare feet and her pink fleecy dressing-gown, vulnerable and unfortified.

    ‘I’ve got some wonderful news for you,’ continues Jane’s mother.

    Oh my god, thinks Jane. She’s getting married again.

    Since Jane’s father’s death her mother has blossomed. She’s always rushing off somewhere – holidays, parties, bridge, pilates, cultural coach trips. The last few years of Jane’s father’s life were pretty grim as he became more and more incapacitated and her mother had to look after him, and now she’s obviously making up for lost time. In some ways, Jane is pleased. Both for her mother and because it’s heartening to think that she herself could still be enjoying life like that when she reaches her eighties.

    ‘Ooh,’ says Jane, trying to sound excited but her voice comes out more like a hiccup.

    ‘You remember my friend Lavinia Balfour? We were debs together. Her mother was the Honourable Caroline Griffiths. Her father was a judge, became a Lord. She married William Davenport, now Sir William. They live in a lovely house in the Cotswolds – very near Jilly Cooper.’

    ‘Er, no,’ says Jane.

    Her mother has a vast network of friends and acquaintances, all of the same type. It’s like a mafia. She never describes them by their personal qualities but always by their family trees which Jane finds baffling for so many reasons.

    She herself has not the slightest interest in family trees. They’re mostly concerned with the male line which to Jane is retrograde and disgusting, and families in her experience are a handicap and not at all something to hang on to or be proud of. She goes to the minimum of family parties and then only out of duty and because she doesn’t want relatives complaining about her behind her back – which they probably do anyway, but at least her conscience is clear. Ish.

    So when her mother starts to talk about her friends and their pedigree, Jane switches off. In any case, most of her mother’s friends are dreadful. Unfortunately her mother doesn't notice Jane’s distaste and simply redoubles her efforts to explain.

    ‘Well anyway,’ says her mother, obviously in a hurry this time to get to the point, ‘we met again at a drinks party at the Ponsonby-Smythes. D’you remember them? Their daughter is about the same age as you. Went to Benenden. Married that Conservative MP. Whathisname? The youngest son of the Duke of Essex. Their son is that famous photographer.

    Jane has lost the thread. All she knows is that she’s failed. She didn’t board at a girls’ public school. She didn’t marry some scion of the aristocracy. She doesn’t have illustrious children.

    She hears her mother take another slurp. Perhaps she’s lost the thread too.

    ‘Lavinia Davenport,’ says Jane, thinking back to when her mother’s conversation last made sense, not because she cares about the wretched Lavinia but because she could be here all day if she doesn’t prompt occasionally.

    ‘Ah yes,’ says her mother, coming to life again. ‘Quite a coincidence. The Davenports were staying with the Pollocks. Very old family. Related to the Viscounts Hanworth. Lived near us at the old house.'

    Jane’s mother has recently moved from the seven-bedroomed Victorian farmhouse where Jane and her younger brother Ollie were brought up to a small modern place in a nearby village.

    ‘And?’ says Jane. She wants her coffee. What on earth did her mother ring for?

    ‘So I told Lavinia about you moving to Devon seeing as you’d be quite near –’

    Well not really, thinks Jane. Devon - Gloucestershire. Several hundred miles from each other. Several hours’ drive. Thank goodness.

    She’s accepted the job at Courtney Press, given in her notice at work and put her flat on the market. And told her mother. All she has to do now is find somewhere near Moreton Courtney to live. It’s June and she has until the beginning of September when the new job starts. She’s done some half-hearted property searches on the internet and bought a car to help with the move, but hasn’t yet been down to Devon to look at anything. It’s all a bit daunting. She doesn’t know what sort of place she wants or where she wants it to be – in a village, a town, a city or the middle of nowhere.

    ‘- and she said - actually it’s all rather exciting – that her son – William – a little bit younger than you but not that much – and probably tall if his father’s anything to go by – used to be in the army - was married to that glamorous barrister Arabella Sotheby, the one who represents all those celebrities – but divorced now, and a bit of a worry to the family I would say, reading between the lines.’ She pauses for breath. ‘Anyway William looks after a family farm and guess where it is.’

    ‘Um, Devon,’ says Jane.

    ‘Yes, but thassnot all,’ says her mother, tripping over her tongue in her excitement. ‘It’s near Muddicombe.’

    ‘Muddy-cm,’ says Jane, copying her mother’s pronunciation. Whether that's how the locals pronounce the word is anyone’s guess. The name means nothing to her.

    ‘Yes, Muddicombe,’ says her mother impatiently. ‘Only a few miles from Moreton Courtney.’

    Her mother’s obviously been doing her research. She even claims to have met Henry and his wife at a dinner party twenty years ago. Her memory for some things is phenomenal. For others, not quite so good.

    ‘Right,’ says Jane.

    Is her mother really lining up young William as a husband for Jane? Does she really think Jane’s that desperate? Is that all she’s called to say? She’s been thrusting suitable men at Jane for almost fifty years and it hasn’t worked yet. You’d think she might have got the message.

    ‘No, no, you don’t understand,’ says her mother as if it’s Jane’s fault she hasn’t grasped the whole picture. ‘William has a cottage for sale on the farm. Lavinia’s given him a ring and he’s expecting you.’ 

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The Banker's Niece 5: I wish we could run away

Spring 1978

‘I wish we could run away and get married on our own,’ burst out Jane, taking her eyes off the book of literary criticism on the desk in front of her. She’d been reading the same paragraph for the last half an hour without taking anything in.

    ‘I know what you mean,’ said Rick, putting a finger on his place in the electronics magazine he was reading and looking up from the mattress on the floor where he sprawled. ‘It’s nothing to do with anyone else. And we don’t want a big wedding.’

    ‘God no,’ said Jane.

    The thought of all those relatives eyeing up the two of them and all the arrangements involved in a big wedding, filled her with horror. Her mother would no doubt organise everything and it wouldn’t be Jane’s wedding any more.

    Even supposing she and Rick got that far. Her parents hadn’t met him yet.

    It was Monday evening. They were in Jane’s room at her student house in Exeter. It was a small room with only two pieces of furniture – a wardrobe and a desk. Rick’s clothes spilled from a built-in cupboard next to the fireplace and his bits and pieces (belt-purse, keys, unpaid bills, electronic components) shared the mantelpiece with Jane’s hairbrush and moisturisers. Their new double mattress filled most of the unused floor space.

    Actually it wasn’t new - Rick found it in a skip - but it was new to Jane’s room. He’d appeared with it balanced on the roof of the Mini (Clubman) one evening the week before.

   ‘I’m not squashing in your single bed any longer,’ he said.

   Luckily he didn’t tell her where he’d got the mattress until she’d been sleeping on it for a few nights and by then she was past worrying. She was still alive, wasn't she? And Rick was right about it being more comfortable. Both of them were big people, Rick being three inches taller than her, and she hadn’t slept much in the single bed once Rick arrived to share it.

    Back in January when they first got together they’d spent the nights at the country cottage Rick rented where there was plenty of space, but one Saturday in February it snowed and snowed and Rick was marooned at Jane’s house in Exeter for a whole week. Somehow, after that, he never left.

    Anyway, the mattress was the least of her worries. As well as the prospect of telling her parents about Rick, there was the problem of her housemates.

    Her best friend Heather, the only other girl in the house, wasn't talking to her any more because Jane wouldn't tell her about Rick. It wasn't that Jane didn't want to to ell her. She couldn't. She couldn't explain to herself what was happening, so how could she explain to anyone else? Heather obviously didn't understand that and had taken Jane's reticence personally.

    Then there was Gordon, who still behaved oddly around Rick even though she finished with Gordon on her very first day back at university after Christmas which was nearly a week before she and Rick became serious.

    He’d unfortunately appeared at the top of the stairs as Jane and Rick were dragging the mattress up. He’d given a sickly grin and squashed himself against the wall pretending to get out of their way.

    Her whole stomach tightened. She’d never meant to hurt him and once upon a time he’d been a friend too.

    She was now waiting for her other housemates, Mike and Pete, to complain about Rick’s hi-fi and records (thankfully only a selection of both) which had landed in the sitting-room.

    ‘Can’t I put them in the bedroom?’ Rick had said.

    ‘Whereabouts in the bedroom?’ Jane had asked.

    Rick didn’t have an answer to that.

She tried to study again but, after ten minutes of getting nowhere, gave up.

    ‘But we do want to get married,’ she said.

    ‘We have to,’ said Rick, keeping his eyes on the magazine. ‘We’ll never survive otherwise.’

    ‘Survive as people, and survive as a couple,’ said Jane.

    ‘Indeed,’ said Rick.

    It was a conversation they’d had several times before but each time it gave her a wave of relief.

    It was extraordinary. On the surface they were different in every possible way but deep down they were the same. They spoke the same language.

    Marriage was something else that came between them and their friends. None of them was married themselves or even contemplating it. 'Marriage is a way of enslaving women,' they said. 'It's an institution and who wants to live in an institution?'

    She and Rick didn’t see it that way.

    ‘But do we have to tell our parents?’ she asked, coming back to where she started.

    It was dark outside, time to close the curtains, but she didn’t want to stand up and interrupt the conversation.

    ‘I’d like to tell Ma,’ said Rick, still reading.

    Rick’s parents lived in Devon. Jane hadn’t met them yet but she and Rick were having lunch with them at the weekend. Jane was looking forward to it. They sounded normal.

    Unlike her own.

    ‘So I suppose it’s only fair I tell mine then,’ she said. ‘I suppose I owe it to them.’

    ‘You must do exactly what you want,’ said Rick.

    ‘If only it were that easy,’ she cried.

    ‘It is,’ he said.

    She tried once again to return to her book. She had a third worry, her finals in May, and worry was turning to panic. Normally this close to exams she’d be following a revision timetable drawn up months earlier. She’d be working through old exam papers, preparing answers and storing them in note form on index cards. This year she’d done nothing. Rick had overturned everything.

    It had been a struggle getting to university at twenty without the backing of school but she’d done it to get away from London, because she thought a degree might help her to satisfying work and because she enjoyed academic study. Or always had done.

    Recently however her brain had refused to cooperate. She couldn’t get into the right frame of mind. Studying felt harmful somehow, as if she were going in the wrong direction.

    She looked down at Rick. She suspected he was reading the ‘small ads’ as he called them, lists of parts with minute differences between them and names she’d never heard before like ‘capacitor’ and ‘resistor’. He read everything and anything, even dictionaries and circuit diagrams.

    No one could be less academic than Rick and yet what he was doing now was a form of studying. But it was on his terms and certainly not any form that her parents would appreciate.

    ‘They can’t be that bad,’ said Rick, nose still in the magazine.

    She laughed. He’d read her mind.

    They were and she’d tried to explain them to Rick but she didn’t think he understood, not because he was unsympathetic but because he’d never met people like them before.

She shook herself. Why should she be the one to bring such trouble into his life? She wanted to make him happy not unhappy. She wasn’t going to harp on about her parents any more. The question of what she told them was one she would have to answer for herself.

    He started to sing.

            We grew up together living separate lives.

            Now we need each other.

            What a big surprise.

She wanted to cry. She loved this song.* It had been reverberating around the house last weekend while Rick installed his hi-fi.

    She abandoned her books and crept on to the mattress to join him.

*'I was made to love you’ from Dreamweaver by Gary Wright

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The Banker's Niece 4: The interview

To Jane's surprise the train journey from London Paddington to Exeter St David’s is an exhilarating three hours, zooming through lush countryside, listening to announcements made in a broad West Country accent. It's so quaint, she feels as if she's travelling back in time.

    She exits St David’s Station in a mixture of sun and showers. Behind the station is a range of green hills. Seagulls screech. There’s a smell of wet grass.

    Cathedral Green has a holiday atmosphere. It’s thronged with people, strolling, sitting on a low wall eating sandwiches, perched at café tables around the edge. A group of homeless men and women and their dogs have set up camp with blankets and bottles under a spreading beech tree. No one seems to mind them.

    Jane's pleased about that. She buys at least one Big Issue every week and always stops to talk to the vendor. She's had her addictions and her psychological problems. It's a miracle she's not in the same position.

    A wave of darkness sweeps through her and she has to stop walking and close her eyes for a few moments. These waves have started to become more frequent. They take her breath away. She doesn't know what they mean.

    When she opens her eyes again she sees the cathedral, honey coloured and low: a gentle giant protecting the city.

    As instructed, the other side of the Green she crosses a cobbled street to a row of uneven red-stone cottages with wattle and daub gables. They look medieval. She’s done her research and learnt that Exeter was flattened by bombs in World War II, with only the cathedral and its immediate surroundings spared. Once the city had a beauty to rival Bath. She can well believe it.

‘It’s probably best if we meet at my club in Exeter,’ said Henry Courtney. ‘I don’t expect you to find your way to the wilds of Exmoor straight away. Haw, haw, haw.’

    For several reasons Henry’s utterance made Jane cringe. Firstly there was the speed with which he rang her after she emailed her application. Then there was his accent, the staccato consonants and strange vowels that only Jane’s parents (sorry, mother) and their (her) friends and the most hidebound of Jane’s generation used. Thirdly there was his manner. So far he had dominated the conversation, speaking fast and without breaks as if he wasn’t interested in what Jane had to say at all. A lot of men did that, especially those with power. Fourthly she didn’t like the sound of meeting this unknown man in a club, or the wilds of Exmoor, or the laugh that accompanied their mention. Finally, he spoke as if she already had the job, which didn’t bode well.

    ‘Then, later – if you get the job of course, haw, haw, haw – I can show you round Moreton Courtney, our village, and Courtney Manor, our hice, and the stables where Courtney Press chews the bit. Haw, haw, haw.’

    That was an awful lot of strange horsey noises and an awful lot of Courtneys. Was he nervous or did he always speak like that? Was this a foretaste of rural life? How did such a buffoon run a successful publishing company?

    If she had managed to get a word in she might have declined his invitation to an interview but as it was she found herself organised to meet him at 2pm in three days’ time. He told her what train to catch, what route to walk from the station and what to do when she found the building, a private library on Cathedral Green.

    Is this what it feels like when the universe is on your side, or rather when you're on the side of the universe? It's more like being run over by a bin lorry.

Inside the library it’s shadowy, the walls covered with rows of books old and new. On the lower rows are leather-bound tomes the size of broadsheets. A balustraded gallery leads to more rows of books, which fade into the darkness above. It’s like being in My Fair Lady but without Rex Harrison. Jane tingles. Books are magical. You never know what you’ll find in them.

    Around a fireplace in sagging armchairs sit grey people reading newspapers. They look up when Jane enters and frown. She's flattered. They obviously don’t see her as a kindred spirit even though her own hair is on the side of grey – albeit with blonde highlights and sleek, she hopes, rather than Ancient Mariner bushy.

    A tall blond man in a pink cashmere jumper leaps from a side door and waves to Jane, before pointing back at the door from which he’s appeared and putting his finger to his lips.

    Trying not to giggle, Jane follows him.

   

‘Sorry about the cloak and dagger stuff,’ says the blond man, closing the door behind them. ‘It’s such a convenient place. So central. So useful for research, or used to be, before the days of the internet. Haw, haw, haw. Jane I presume. I’m Henry.’

    He holds out his hand and as Jane meets his eye she realises that he’s a lot more intelligent than she imagined. The waffle is a disguise, designed to fool you into underestimating him. She finds herself backing away and knocking into a chair. Suddenly, she really wants this job.

    ‘Sit down,’ says Henry. ‘Good journey? Find the place all right? Now tell me why you’ve applied. Fill in the gaps in your application. Why Devon? Why Courtney Press? Why publishing? What sort of books do you like to read? Any questions you’d like to ask me?’

    She feels as if a parliament of crows is pecking at her brain. She needs to stand up to this man but she’s not sure how to do it. She should have come better prepared. She should have a sheaf of her own questions.

    ‘I, er, wondered why it’s a new post,’ she stammers, sliding on to the chair she knocked.

    They are in a small room furnished only with a square table and the upright wooden chairs that she remembers from her schooldays with seats shaped to accommodate bottoms. There’s no sign of any tea or coffee but perhaps that’s too complicated – involving a single gas ring in a cupboard or something.

    ‘Ah, good question,’ says Henry, slowing down slightly. ‘Used to do all the commissioning myself but have decided to step back a little – for the sake of the family. Plus volume of work of course. So I’m taking on two of you. You would be doing the non-fiction, and I’ve taken on Sam to do the fiction. You’ll like her.’

    Jane already hates her. It's jealousy, she knows. She's always wanted to do fiction herself.

    She remembers her first publishing interview back in the late 1970s. ‘All you girls want to work in fiction,’ said the fat man in the striped shirt. ‘Why not start in non-fiction and then transfer?’ But of course you couldn’t. It was a con just like the secretarial con: you started as a secretary and ‘worked your way up’. Except you didn’t – unless you were sleeping with the boss.

    ‘I see,’ she says. ‘So I would have free rein to bring in new authors?’

    It's the sort of question you're supposed to ask. It shows how dynamic and self-motivating you are and suggests you have a list of interesting people to bring into the business. She doesn't really and the question just popped into her mind. Why is she being such an amateur at this?

    ‘Indeed,' says Henry. 'Subject of course to my approval.'

    Jane doesn’t like the sound of that, especially as Henry looks a little uncomfortable. Something has shifted in the atmosphere however and she realises that for some reason Henry needs her. Is she the only applicant? Perhaps the ‘wilds of Exmoor’ aren’t to everyone’s taste.

    And why is he so keen to divest himself of some of the work? Is it really family pressure and/or success as he says? Or is the business expanding too fast and getting out of hand? Is he thinking of selling it?

    What a lot of questions, but does she really care?

    She’s done her research about Courtney Press too. She has all the facts she needs.

    The Press exists. It was started by Henry twenty years ago, It employs about twelve people. It has a reputation for quality commercial fiction and non-fiction with an edge (‘Controversial Knowledge’ as they categorise it at her current employers). It’s based, as Henry said, in the converted stables of his family seat, which looks gorgeous in the pictures. His wife runs the house as a posh B & B and wedding venue.

    They chat some more about the job and why Jane wants to move out of London - she invents some guff about wanting to retrace her student days - but it’s only a formality. Both of them, she thinks, have already made their decision.

    The one thing she did expect to be asked about - her age - Henry doesn't mention but then he would have to be in his fifties himself even if he doesn't look it.

   

Jane scuttles back to the station. She hates interviews almost as much as she hates 'cosy chats', and Henry didn’t make her at all comfortable. She doesn’t trust him a jot.

    He offered her the job as she left and she said she would ring him first thing in the morning. She has no doubt as to what she will say.

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The Banker's Niece 3: New flat, new band

Autumn 1978

Ridge Farm was five miles from Exeter, which seemed a terrifyingly long way to Jane, who’d spent all three of her years at the University of Devon living in the city, but nothing to Rick who when they first got together in January had been renting a farm cottage ten miles from Exeter and two miles from the nearest village.

    In any case they didn’t have a choice. Mrs Bell was the only landlady who didn’t put the phone down on Jane when discovering that she and Rick weren’t married. She hadn’t even asked.

     

They drove out on Saturday in Rick’s blue wood-trimmed Mini - the Mini Clubman he called it with his technician's precision - to take a look at the place. They found the turning – eventually - but as they lurched up the rutted dirt track Jane could see Rick frowning.

    ‘This’ll play hell with the suspension,’ he said.

   She didn’t know what would happen to them if Rick didn’t like the place.

    They’d moved Rick out of his cottage at the beginning of March as his housemates had all gone for one reason or another and he was paying four people’s rent. He’d then camped at Jane’s student house which wasn’t ideal for lots of reasons, the main one being that she’d had a sort of thing with Gordon, one of the other residents.

    The tenancy of that house finished in June at the end of the university term and after that, for the last three months, they’d squatted in the box-room of a house rented by Wendy with whom Rick had had a short romance. So that wasn’t ideal either.

    Most of their belongings and Rick’s cat, Cat, were distributed around the houses of friends.

    This was the point at which she could have asked her father for help. There was probably enough money floating around – whether in her name or not (he never told her) - for her and Rick to put down at least the deposit on a house and get a mortgage. Not that her father held with mortgages (they were for the poor, like hire purchase) and not that she’d ever asked him for money or ever would now, least of all for a project that involved Rick.   

    Rick brightened however as they reached the top of the track and turned into a cobbled farmyard with stone barns in varying states of disrepair. Jane could see him already eyeing up a semi-enclosed space in the lower half of one of them. She knew what he was thinking. Garage. Workshop. Somewhere to store Stuff. He’d missed that since moving out of his cottage, which like this place had been surrounded by near-derelict farm buildings.

    Mrs Bell came out of the farmhouse to greet them and Jane warmed to her at once. Youngish with untidy blonde hair and a harassed expression, she was wearing muddy wellies and a navy woollen jumper full of holes.

    ‘This way,’ she said, leading them up some wooden steps on the outside of the barn Rick had noticed. Jane glanced at him hoping they could exchange a thumbs-up or something but he seemed to be deliberately looking away. 

    The flat was on one floor with windows in two directions. Jane could see the farmyard on one side and a field of sheep the other. Painted white, and open plan except for the bathroom and two curtained-off bedrooms, it was furnished in a mixture of modern pine and antique mahogany. It was more space than either of them had ever rented.

    ‘I think we like it,’ said Jane, looking at Rick for reassurance.

    He gave a shrug.

    Was that all he could say?

    

As usual Jane was on her own, because Rick as usual had retired to the smaller of the curtained-off bedrooms – the Music Room as it was now called. She could hear him singing and playing the guitar.

    She put down her fountain pen and pulled the wheeled calor-gas heater closer to her legs. As they’d discovered soon after they moved in and the weather turned, the flat was freezing. The one heater was all they had but luckily Rick didn’t seem to notice the cold so Jane could trawl it around with her like a dog.

    She was sitting at their mahogany dining-table writing to all the publishers listed in the local Yellow Pages. She hadn’t known where to start looking for a job but she liked reading and she now - by some fluke - had an arts degree (French and Spanish), and she had all that secretarial experience from those two years she worked in London (a time best forgotten, in her opinion) so maybe she and publishing would be mutually compatible. She didn’t have a vocation. She never had. That was the trouble.

    She would much rather be spending the evening curled up on the sofa with Rick but time was short as the waitressing job that had kept her going over the summer was coming to an end and anyway Rick didn’t seem to want to curl up on the sofa with her any more.

    Apart from the snatches of music, all she could hear was the rumble of the fire and the baaing of the sheep outside. Even though she’d been brought up in the country, in Kent, she didn’t remember it ever being as quiet and lonely as this.

    She could have gone to see Rick in the Music Room but she didn’t because, firstly, there was no space. Rick had filled it with his equipment and Jane would know all about that because she’d helped him hump it up the stairs.

    One radio (‘an AM/FM tuner’ in Rick-speak). Six wooden boxes of assorted sizes (‘speakers’). An ordinary guitar (a 'twelve-string acoustic’). An electric guitar (made by Rick in his teens from an article in Practical Electronics magazine). One small black box (an 'amp’, also made by Rick). Two record players (‘decks’). One tape recorder (a 'tape deck’). One cassette player. Two hundred records.

    The second reason she didn’t go into the Music Room was because whenever she did Rick would stop what he was doing and look guilty, which made her feel even worse. When did they start having secrets from each other? Why couldn’t he tell her what was going on?

    The first thing he’d shared with her was his music. He used to put on record after record and ask her what she thought of it. Luckily their tastes were pretty similar. Both liked rock, blues and some classical. Neither liked jazz, Elvis or the Rolling Stones. Rick liked folk whereas Jane preferred country but that didn’t matter – they were happy to learn from each other. The only real sticking point was Rick’s three absolute favourites, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, all three of which Jane thought were way over the top. ‘It’s the only thing wrong with you,’ he used to joke. Or perhaps it wasn’t a joke.

The curtains drew back with a rattle that made Jane jump and Rick appeared. In spite of the cold, he was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt, black with a red dragon on the front. His wavy brown hair was getting longer, she noticed. It was shoulder-length when she met him. Now it had reached his chest and hung in curtains around his face, and for a moment she didn’t recognise him.

    He stood facing her, legs apart.

    ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said.

    Jane nodded. She couldn’t speak. Her throat had locked. Whatever he wanted she would go along with it. Of course she would. Why did he have to look so defiant?

    ‘I bumped into Dougie in Exeter a few days ago,’ he said cautiously, as if softening whatever blow was about to fall.

    Jane nodded again.

    She knew about Dougie even though she’d never met him as he now worked in Bristol. He and Rick had been best friends at South Molton grammar school. They’d formed a duo and called themselves the Devonians and played folk-rock all over the county, with Rick as singer and guitarist and Dougie on drums.

    ‘He’s back from Bristol and working as a car salesman,’ Rick continued. ‘Hates it.’

    Rick wasn’t too keen on his job either. He was an electronics technician in a science department at the university. It wasn’t the work itself that got him down; it was the hierarchy and the stupid rules and the stuffy academics who (like Jane’s parents) thought that people who worked with their hands were inferior to people who worked with their heads. As if technicians didn’t use their heads as well as their hands. Which, if anything as far as Jane could work out, made them superior.

    ‘And we were thinking,’ said Rick, ‘why didn’t we start a band again? Get some others to join us, take it seriously. Really try and make a go of it this time.’

    So that was it. It wasn’t so bad after all.

    Was it?

    Maybe now things could go back to the way they’d been before the summer.

For Chapter 4, click here