The Banker's Niece 18: Lethal weapon

New Year’s Day 1980

Jane stirred the mince that was browning in the frying-pan. The smell turned her stomach and she wondered not for the first time whether she should look into becoming vegetarian. Perhaps that would help her mysterious ‘heads’.

    She could hear bangings and crashings in the barn underneath the flat where Rick kept the Mini and his motorbike. He’d bought this in the summer so that he and Jane had independent transport. With all his comings and goings it had become impossible for her to rely on him to give her lifts to and from work and he became resentful when she tried to pin him down. She was surprised he allowed her to drive the Mini, but needs must she supposed.

    She hated to think what he was doing to the vehicles. He’d been down there all day, not even reappearing to grab his usual lunchtime cheese sandwich or make himself one of the many cups of tea that punctuated his days. She kept tensing, thinking she heard his feet thudding on the outdoor steps, and then relaxing when the noise turned out to be nothing more than the wood creaking in the breeze.

    Only one more evening to get through and then she would be back at her job and Rick would vanish into his packed programme of work, rehearsals and gigs.

   

Except for the Saturday before Christmas when Minotaur had a concert in Bristol and they all stayed overnight with a friend of Dougie’s, and Christmas itself which she and Rick had spent with their respective parents, the two of them had passed the entire holiday period together. Jane could hardly remember when they’d last had such a long time alone with each other. Christmas the year before probably and that hadn’t been great either, now she thought about it.

    It wasn’t a deliberate choice but both the university where Rick worked and the publisher where Jane worked had shut down for the festive period and they didn’t realise what this would mean until it was too late.

    Rick’s working life had of course been transformed by this new postgraduate, Chris. Unlike the other – male – academics, he said, she treated him as a human being. Instead of barking out orders from the door and then complaining, she had apparently come right into his workshop, stepping over all the pieces of equipment-in-transit (of which there were many), introduced herself, explained about her work and then with great deference asked if he might have time to help her. He’d spent most of the summer, it seemed, driving her around the coast and helping her take samples of seawater.

    Jane had met her once when she descended to Rick’s workshop herself, something she’d done often when she was working odd hours as a waitress but couldn’t do once she’d started her proper job in January, except on the occasional day off. Rick and Chris had been drinking tea together, sitting on high stools. Both had jumped up when she appeared and fallen over each other to make her a cup of tea too. The atmosphere was slightly strange but she put it down to Rick’s natural guilty conscience as Chris wasn’t pretty at all. She was tiny and very thin with short spiky hair. She looked more like a boy than a girl.

Jane lifted the frying-pan off the heat and tipped the mince into a large heavy saucepan. Then she took some onions, carrots and celery from the fridge and a knife from the drawer.

    It was getting dark. The sun was disappearing behind the folds of the hills in an orange glow. The sheep in the field below the window were still bleating lustily however, still nibbling at the grass. Did they ever stop? How on earth did they keep warm in the long cold winter nights?

    The banging down below had stopped and she noticed for the first time the faint strains of music from the transistor radio that Rick took with him everywhere. So he must still be there, but what was he doing?

    Was he holding his breath like her, trying to work out what she was doing?

She’d fallen into her job almost by accident. She’d written to all sorts of companies fifteen months earlier when looking for a proper job, and attended several interviews, but Peninsula Books was the only place that offered her a position.

    ‘It’s your secretarial experience that sets you apart,’ said Graham, the Editorial Manager, leaning back in his chair and patting his large stomach. ‘Lots of our girls can’t type and of course, when you’re dealing with manuscripts and authors, typing looks so much more professional.’

    Jane didn’t see any typewriter on Graham’s desk, nor any sign of manuscripts or letters to authors. In fact, there wasn’t much on his desk at all. She wondered what he did.

    The mention of typing upset her. She’d had enough of that in London. Had she really spent three years at university, only to be relegated to typing again?

    ‘Do you do fiction?’ she asked to cheer herself up.

    She’d discovered the company in the Yellow Pages under ‘Publishers’ but didn’t know anything about them until she picked up their catalogue in reception as she waited for Graham (who was half an hour late). All she could find in the catalogue was dull non-fiction books – political biographies, manuals about car repair and carpentry, cricket facts, guides to buying wine.

    Graham flushed. ‘No.’

    ‘Never mind,’ said Jane, hastily backtracking. What had she said wrong?

    ‘All you girls want to work in fiction,’ he snapped.

    In spite of Graham and the subject matter of the books, the job turned out all right. It suited her skills, both her photographic memory for spellings and her degree in French and Spanish which meant she knew about grammar and the precise meanings of words. People began to praise her, which made a pleasant change.

    But the best part of the job was Alison with whom she shared an office. Alison was three years older than Jane (being twenty-seven) and much wiser and such a good listener.

   

Jane chopped the vegetables and put them into the frying-pan to brown.

At least her latest ‘head’ had gone, the one that had come on after the visit to her parents - alone as always, but what else could she do? Well, she called the attacks ‘heads’, but the piercing pain in her right temple was the least of the problems. What she hated even more was the vomiting.

    If only humans could be like dogs. They just opened their mouths and out it came. But perhaps they didn’t like the sensation either. She remembered Bunty, her parents’ gardener’s dog. She used to walk around with her back arched like a hyena for several minutes before settling down to a good retch. And then, so as to avoid all that tedious clearing up, she consumed the results. So clever.

    At first, about twelve months ago when the attacks started, she’d thought they were hangovers and expected each one to be the last, so long as she was careful. But now she didn’t, and they were making her depressed. Alison thought they might be migraines.

   

Jane tipped the browned vegetables out of the frying-pan and into the saucepan with the mince, adding two tins of tomatoes and two beef stock cubes and leaving the mixture to simmer.

    That was suppers for the week sorted. Vats of mixtures were what she did these days, now that she and Rick didn’t eat together. Each could heat up as much as they wanted when they wanted, adding potatoes, pasta or bread depending on how much time they had.

The music stopped and a footstep thudded on the outdoor steps. He was definitely coming up.

    Quickly, she slid the knife under a tea-towel – or ‘drying-up towel’ as her mother would call it. It would never do to leave a lethal weapon on show. The imprints of Rick’s fist on the wall above their bed and the shards of glass on the floor where Jane threw her water-tumblers were warning enough of that.

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