The Banker's Niece 25: The interim

Summer 1978

‘Look after each other,’ said Reverend Watson, the vicar of Black Dog, as he said goodbye to Jane and Rick on his doorstep.

    Of course, thought Jane. That’s what marriage is all about. How simple.

    She and Rick had spent the last half hour with the vicar in his book-lined study, talking about marriage and making arrangements with him for their own.

    After her parents’ reaction and that of her housemates to the relationship between her and Rick, she’d been astonished to find that the vicar supported them in their plans. She and Rick had touched on the fact that neither of them wanted children, as well as the disapproval, not to say hostility, of Jane’s parents, but he had been unphased. And though he was obviously well educated, probably at private school and Oxbridge to judge by his accent, and a good thirty years older than her and Rick, so of her parents’ class and generation, he took them seriously and didn’t appear even to notice the disparity in their backgrounds.

    Jane left his house glowing. Was this how you told good people from bad ones, she wondered: people who made you feel better were good, and people who made you feel worse were bad.
    In that case, what were her parents?

    Although neither Jane nor Rick was particularly religious, certainly not the organised kind anyway, they both wanted to marry in church rather than a register office as it would give their promises more depth. And their meeting with the reverend more than confirmed that decision.

    They’d discovered their attitudes to children by accident.

    ‘Did you mean what you said to your father about not wanting children?’ asked Rick in a neutral tone the evening of the day her father’s letter arrived.

    ‘I did mean it, yes,’ said Jane warily.

    However vague her visions for the future, they had never included children, and just the thought of having children made her weary. Charlie her housemate was the only other man to whom she’d confided this and he had accused her of being unnatural.

    ‘That’s lucky,’ said Rick, ‘because I don’t want children either.’

    They’d laughed and kissed. It was another sign that they were meant to be together. While on the outside they were different in every possible way, deep down they were the same.

    As they walked hand in hand back through the village to Rick’s parents’ house where they were invited to lunch, it was a perfect June morning. Flowers of every colour spilled from the front gardens of thatched cottages. At the end of the street vibrant green hills touched a deep blue sky. Jane’s toes were warm for the first time in months. She’d almost stopped feeling afraid.

In April she and her mother had gone back to exchanging letters full of news that didn’t matter, neither of them mentioning Rick again. With any luck her parents thought that the subject was now closed.

    She'd read in newspapers about ‘poor bereaved’ parents who paid to have their children snatched from ‘cults’ in which they’d been caught up, and then had them ‘reverse brainwashed’. She wondered how she’d cope if her parents did the same to her, and wasn’t her father’s suggestion that she and Rick should separate in order to ‘commend’ to him ‘as to the seriousness’ of their intentions the same sort of thing in disguise?
    Thank goodness she was over twenty-one and hadn’t been born a hundred years earlier and that the law was now on her side rather than that of her parents, or at least she thought it was, and even more so she hoped when she was married.
    She still kept looking over her shoulder though whenever she was out and about on her own.

    At the end of term the lease on her Exeter house would expire and next week she and Rick were moving. It occurred to her that she didn’t have to give her parents her new address. She could instead arrange for the Post Office to forward their letters (or not).

By some miracle, she’d survived her finals.

    Normally she enjoyed exams. She liked drawing up revision timetables with their neat boxes and the subjects evenly distributed around the days and the hours. She liked working through old exam papers and listing the answering points on index cards and then committing the shapes of the lists to her photographic memory. She liked the sense of control the preparations gave her and the sense of achievement when all that work came together in the exams themselves.

    This year however, with all the interruptions and the way her mind kept slewing back to her parents’ letters, she’d had to make do with scraps of paper and scribbled notes, subjects revised as and when – usually the night before their exams. Nightmares and tears.

    She would never have abandoned her degree as that would have wasted the last two and a half years and she knew too well from her time in London what the alternative was. But the last few weeks had felt harmful, as if she were squeezing herself into something that didn’t fit any more.

    She didn’t think she’d actually fail since she’d usually found something to say, but she certainly wouldn’t have done as well as she was expected to. After all, at the beginning of her course one of her tutors on reading an essay of hers had told her to expect a first.

    So what. She didn’t care any more what grade she got so long as she passed. She was simply relieved that it was all over and that she could now concentrate on what really mattered – her life with Rick.

She found a job waitressing at a café in the city. It was a relief to do something practical for a change, to connect with people rather than books, and to be able to leave work at the end of the day and forget about it.

Late in June she treated herself to a train trip to London and visited Laura Ashley.

    It was hard to pick a wedding outfit from the packed rows of gorgeous romantic clothes but eventually she settled on a pink-and-white striped dress with a high frilled collar and long gathered sleeves. Fitted over the bust and then floating out like maypole ribbons, it would she hoped accommodate her whatever her size at the time. Her eating habits had calmed down a lot since Rick had started living with her but she still didn’t trust them.

    As she came home on the train later in the day nursing the bag on her lap, she hoped that Rick would approve of her choice.

    Peggy went into Dingles department store in Exeter and bought herself a pale-green suit. She modelled it for Jane one Sunday when she and Rick went over for tea.

    ‘You look beautiful,’ said Jane, hugging her. ‘It matches your eyes perfectly.’

    The next Saturday Peggy dragged Rick into Austin Reed and bought him a navy-blue suit.

    ‘It’s a waste of money,’ he protested. ‘I’ll never wear it again.’

    Jane wasn’t at all sure herself about seeing Rick in a suit but what else would he wear to the wedding – the hooded black cloak with the red-silk lining which had been his garment of choice when she first met him back in November the year before?

    Rick’s brother Martin had promised to come down from London for the occasion and Rick’s parents had written to the last-known address of Rick’s sister Sheila. Where her tepee was pitched, or even if she still lived in Wales, no one knew, but they hoped the letter would reach her somehow.

    What must it be like to disappear like that, Jane wondered. She envied her.

    Rick was in discussion with a silversmith they’d met at a craft market on Exeter’s Cathedral Green, planning a ring for each of them.

    Dougie, an old schoolfriend of Rick's whom Jane hadn't yet met as he was away working in Bristol, was coming back to act as best man. Whether it was essential for Jane to be ‘given away’ by some man, she had yet to find out, but anyone would do if it was.

    After the wedding, which was at eleven, they were all going to Black Dog’s Agricultural Inn for lunch.

At the beginning of July, Jane celebrated her twenty-third birthday, and at the end Rick his twenty-fourth. They were getting on.

   

Also in July, she received her exam results. Not only had she passed but she’d been awarded an ‘upper second’, not a bad mark at all. She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t feel she deserved it. She decided the examiners must have been kind to her because of her work earlier in the course. She decided to write to her parents to tell them the good news.

    ‘I could tell them about the wedding at the same time,’ she said to Rick.

    ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said.

    She thought about it. She so wanted to give them one last chance. Surely they could understand. They were the same flesh and blood as her. They had been young once. They had married in their mid-twenties, like her and Rick, and as far as she knew having met less than a year earlier, again like her and Rick, and she, Jane, had been born barely nine months later. So they too obviously didn’t want to wait.

    If she didn’t tell them she might have to lie to them for the rest of her life, or cut herself off from them completely and she didn’t think she could bear that. It would be like deliberately hacking off one of her own legs.

    ‘I’ve passed my finals,’ she wrote, ‘and Rick and I are getting married in Devon on Saturday the 19th of August.’

    She didn’t invite them to the wedding, but she didn’t say they couldn’t attend either, as she couldn’t work out which scenario was least bad.

    As she dropped the envelope into the letterbox the sky gave a rumble of thunder.

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The Banker's Niece 24: The second letter

Spring 1978

‘I’ll take it,’ Rick said the next morning, picking the letter off Jane’s desk where they’d thrown it before getting into bed, and stuffing it into the inside pocket of his brown corduroy jacket, ‘and then you won’t be tempted to read it again. And, if any more letters arrive, don’t open them.’

    ‘But what if there’s something important in them?’ asked Jane.

    ‘Like what?’ said Rick.

    ‘Like – I don’t know – news about the family.’

    ‘I’ll check them when I get home,’ said Rick.

Jane didn’t answer her mother’s letter – she didn’t know how to - and she tried not to think about it. She tried to concentrate on revision for her exams instead, but the letter was like a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding. The memory of it was always there, tensing her stomach, knotting her throat, screaming inside her head.

Two days letter a long brown envelope with the address written in her father’s hand dropped through the letterbox. It looked official and her father only ever wrote to her about business matters so she opened it. Inside the envelope she found three large sheets of paper covered with her father’s small neat sloping handwriting. He’d never written her a letter of that length before. Nor spoken to her at that length either, come to think of it.

    She sat on the stairs and started to read.

Wednesday

My dear Jane

No doubt you were well aware of our feelings during your time at home. I did not want to say more at the time partly because words said in the heat of the moment are never the best ones and partly not to upset someone who was after all a guest in our house. However, it is obviously right that you should be fully aware of my views.

    Firstly, you should allow nothing to distract you from completing your course at university and obtaining as good a degree as you are capable. It was obviously a mistake for you not to have gone to university as soon as you left school and for this I must partly blame myself as an indulgent father doing his best to please you. London, although a delightful interlude, has obviously not helped you to realise that life is not an irresponsible drifting from whim to whim.

    Please also appreciate that university is a cosmopolitan picture of all sorts of people from different environments, classes, needs, outlooks etc and to quite an extent a carefree period before people start their careers. A university always has its extremes of politics, prejudices, moral behaviour and so on and while we hope you will absorb all the good things it has to offer, we also hope that you will retain the standards to which your mother and I have tried to encourage you.

    The next essential is for you to try to find the best possible job that offers you interesting work and a potential career. Where this job is geographically should not be influenced in the slightest by amorous inclinations. In fact a resolution on your part to deliberately separate for a considerable while to test your real feelings is to be advised and would certainly commend itself to me as to the seriousness of your intentions.

    You say you wish to marry but that you do not intend to have children. If this is so, then there can be no urgency to get married. It also seems to be an acknowledgement that marriage would not be financially possible without the backing of your own earning power. And if you do change your mind – which is more than likely – and decide to have children, who is going to support the family while they grow up?   

    Neither your mother nor I wish for riches for our children but we do hope they may avoid financial worries which can be a most dreadful and disruptive matter. It is also a fact that life is so much more enjoyable with the ability to live at a reasonable standard rather than in squalor, to be able to educate one’s children, cover medical and dental expenses, have an occasional holiday, a nice home with modern machines to take the drudgery out of housework, the ability to have some outside interests and to entertain one’s friends and one’s children’s friends etc etc.

    You have a little money of your own. This was intended to be your personal security but it will hardly buy half a modest house, let alone furnish it. I should certainly be upset if it were frittered away. It represents hard-earned sweat on my part to do what I have been able for you.

    You will appreciate that education outgoings have been extremely high for some years. So despite a high income, taxation has forced me to live off capital. Although I have some years’ work to go, my first duty is to your mother and her security for the future. Therefore it would be foolish to anticipate much significant help from me and even less so for a cause in which I did not believe.

    So much for the money side which one does not particularly enjoy talking about but which needs to be said and it has to be considered. It is high time you became sensible and more mature.

     As far as this young man is concerned it is probably invidious to say too much as he didn’t volunteer much information or conversation in the few hours with us. Even if one realises he was nervous, it was far from an encouraging occasion. From what little one gathered he is not settled into a reasonable career and has little indication that he could be a responsible provider which in the normal course of events he is more likely to have to be.
    You wrote to us with the words that he was unsuitable and so you must bear considerable responsibility for the encouragement given. However, in my bachelor days, I know that I had one or two unsuitable girlfriends but I can so truly be thankful that my own family and circle of friends and their reactions, help and advice played a real part and quite surely helped my behaviour and actions.

    So please very seriously consider what we say. I know your mother has also written to you. But take help and advice from others in your family and from your tried and true friends.

    I do realise that this is a severe letter but I think that on rare occasions it is one’s duty as a father even if it is distressing to us both. However, please be quite sure that your mother and I are absolutely concerned for your long-term happiness which we would be devastated to see thrown away on an impulse. We are always here to support and encourage you in times of stress.

    With very great love

   Daddy

‘It’s outrageous,’ said Rick, looking up from the letter.

    ‘Is it?’ said Jane. ‘So I’m not all those awful things he says I am?’

    ‘Of course you’re not,’ replied Rick. ‘He knows nothing about you and your life.’

    ‘So we don’t have to separate “for a considerable while”,’ she said.

    ‘Christ almighty, no,’ said Rick. ‘It’s like something out a Victorian novel. It’s insulting to both of us.’

    ‘And we didn’t go asking for money, did we?’

    ‘Of course we bloody didn’t,’ exclaimed Rick. ‘Nor approval, nor his bloody opinion.’

    Jane let her breath out in a big sigh. She realised that she’d been holding it in ever since reading the letter. Goodness knows how she managed to make it across the city on her bicycle.

    They were in Rick’s workshop at the university. She was sitting on a low chair at Rick’s desk and he was perched on his stool next to the workbench.

    Situated in the basement of the science building, the workshop looked out on to a yard protected by a tall redbrick wall. Pieces of electrical and electronic equipment with their guts spilling out covered every available surface, including the floor. University concert posters plastered the walls, even though the powers-that-be (the academics) objected to them for some reason, and every so often made Rick take them down. Luckily he had a good stash of spares neatly rolled on a top shelf.
    In spite of the debris - or perhaps because of it - it was a homely place and she was glad she made it here, even though it had meant abandoning her studies - again.

    ‘There’s only one thing for it,’ said Rick.

    ‘What’s that?’

    ‘We’ll get married here. We’ll do it ourselves. Like we always wanted.’

    ‘Soon?’ she asked.

    ‘As soon as we can.’

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The Banker's Niece: List of people and places

On the whole, I haven’t included people mentioned only once.
Jane, being the heroine, isn't included either.

Some of the places are real, some imaginary, and some a mixture.

Agricultural Inn Pub in Black Dog

Alan A research analyst at the bank where Jane works during her first stint in London

Black Dog North Devon village where Rick was born and brought up, where his parents and grandparents live/d, and where he buys a derelict farm

Bristol A large city in south-west England

Bunty  Dog of Jane’s parents’ gardener

Chris (Beckford) Academic at the University of Devon

City (with capital ‘C’), the The financial district of London

Clerkenwell A trendy district of central London where Jane lives during her second stint in the capital

Clio Jane’s Renault Clio car

Colin Fletcher A writer of science fiction and controversial non-fiction books, published by Courtney Press

Courtney Manor The family seat of Henry Courtney and home to the book publishers, Courtney Press

Dart, River A major river in Devon, running from Dartmoor to the south coast of the county

Dartmoor A wild upland and protected National Park in south and west Devon

Devon A rural county (region) in south-west England

Dougie Drummer in Minotaur, schoolfriend of Rick

Dulverton A town on the southern edge of Exmoor

Exe, River A major river, mostly in Devon, running from Exmoor to the coast near Exeter

Exeter The county city of Devon situated on the River Exe

Exmoor A wild upland and protected National Park, partly situated in north Devon

Fiona (Fee) Housemate of Jane during her first stint in London

Flo Grandmother of Lauren and friend of Peggy

Fulham A rough (at the time) district of south-west London where Jane lives during her first stint in the capital

Gavin Fiancé of Lauren

Gordon Housemate of Jane in her third year at the University of Devon

Greenaway, Mrs Cleaner for Jane’s parents (married to the gardener)

Heather Friend of Jane at the University of Devon and housemate in her third year

Helen Rick's girlfriend when he was aged 19-23

Henry Courtney Owner of Courtney Press

Ivan (Van) Boyfriend of Wendy

Jasper Labrador dog of William

Johno Keyboards and harmony vocals in Minotaur

Joe (the Taxi) Taxi driver from Muddicombe

Kelvin A research analyst at the bank where Jane works during her first stint in London

Kent A semi-rural county (region) in south-east England near London where Jane was brought up and where her parents still live

Lauren Receptionist at Courtney Press

London Britain’s capital city and its financial, administrative and artistic centre

Lucy Girlfriend and wife of Ollie

Maisie An artist living on Exmoor

Martin Brother of Rick. A policeman in London

Merry Harriers Pub in Muddicombe

Mike A housemate of Jane's in her last year at university

Moreton Courtney A village on the southern edge of Exmoor, near Courtney Manor

Mr Turner A semi-retired member of staff at the bank where Jane works during her first stint in London

Mrs Henry Wife of Henry Courtney. Hosts bed and breakfast and weddings at their house, Courtney Manor. Later known to Jane as Rose

Muddicombe A village in mid-Devon to which Jane moves and where Lauren and William already live

Ollie Jane’s younger brother

Peggy Mother of Rick

Pete A housemate of Jane's in her last year at university

Philip Father of Rick

Puddleglum Jane's nickname for Van

Rick Technician, musician

Ridge Farm A farm near Exeter. Jane and Rick rent a flat here in a converted barn

Rose Courtney Trainee counsellor, married to Henry

Sam(antha) (Fletcher) Commissioning editor, fiction, at Courtney Press

Sharon Psychic, living in London

Sheila Sister of Rick. Lives in a teepee in Wales

South Molton North Devon town where Rick and Dougie went to grammar school

Steve Bass guitarist in Minotaur

Stockland Farm Farm near Muddicombe belonging to William

Sylvia Wife of Kelvin

Theresa Jane's counsellor, recommended by Rose

Tom A woodsman on Exmoor, married to Maisie

Van (Ivan) Boyfriend of Wendy

Wales A wild country in west Britain

Wendy Friend and brief lover of Rick. Leaseholder of house where Jane and Rick spend summer 1978

William Davenport Owner of Stockland Farm near Muddicombe and Jane’s nearest neighbour

The Banker's Niece 23: The first letter

Spring 1978

Monday
My dear Jane

It is difficult to say that it was lovely to see you at the weekend. I think it was almost the saddest time of my life.

    I wonder if you quite realise what you are doing. At the moment you are living in a somewhat unreal atmosphere at university. Everybody is equal and simply accepted for what they are there. When you get away things are not quite the same.

    If you marry Rick you are cutting yourself off from all the things you have been brought up to accept and expect. Firstly on the purely practical side:

  no trips abroad

  no extras of nice clothes etc.

  no private medicine

  above all, none of the advantages for your children that you have had.

    Secondly and far more important you will be committed to such a narrow limited world and circle of friends, with really not much hope of improvement. It may not matter to you now, but I think you will get very bored. It does still matter what your background is and the mere fact that you worry about this yourself proves it. You can ignore the background and upbringing if someone has great brains, or charm, or talent, but they must have some compensation.

    I rang up my friend Patricia after you left. I wanted to hear her reaction and see if I was being prejudiced, snobbish etc. She was terribly distressed to hear about you. I think she feels as upset and worried as we do. She said she could not bear to think of you wasting your very good brain – not to mention ability and looks. I think she feels for you as for a daughter and being a little further away she can think less emotionally. I would not call her cynical, but she put even more emphasis than I do on the importance of background, how you have been brought up and what you expect from life. It is this that gives you confidence and the ability to mix with anybody.

    Anyway, don’t do anything in a hurry. If you are not dying to have babies what is the hurry? Get your degree and get away from your narrow world of Exeter. You have so many talents. Don’t bury them all and turn into a bored and boring housewife too soon.

    Enough of preaching. You know what I think and I shan’t mention it again. My next letters will be the usual mundane gossip.

    Love Mummy

‘What - a - load - of - bollocks,’ said Rick, throwing down the letter.

    They were in Jane’s room, sitting on the mattress. The letter had arrived that morning shortly after she stood in the street and waved goodbye to Rick. He was heading to work in the Mini, she was staying at the house to try and make a start on revision for her finals in six weeks’ time. Instead of revising however, she’d spent the day in tears, longing for Rick to return. Now here he was, but if anything she felt worse. How could she discuss with him something that was about him? But if not Rick, who else could she talk to?

    ‘It’s all very well for you to say that,’ cried Jane, her face in her hands. ‘But I can’t bear the thought of making my mother so unhappy.’

    ‘What about her making you unhappy?’ said Rick.

    Jane couldn’t answer that. If she was unhappy it was obviously her fault, wasn't it? That was what everyone always said.

    ‘But what if she’s right?’ she said.

    ‘Right about what?’ said Rick.

    ‘About not having books and holidays and things.’

    ‘Well what do you think?’ demanded Rick.

    ‘I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘It doesn’t seem important now but what if I’m being naïve or spoilt?’

    ‘Well what if you are?’ said Rick. ‘It’s your life.’

    Was it? She felt as if she belonged to a network of parents, uncles, aunts and cousins, all wanting something from her, something that she never seemed able to give them.

    ‘And what about what she says about you?’ she carried on. ‘I can’t understand how she can have one view and I can have another completely different. How does that happen? How can we both be right? What is the truth?’

    Rick pulled her hands away from her face and made her look at him. ‘You’, he said, ‘are right for you.’

    'But what do I know? What experience do I have? I’m only twenty-two. I’m twenty-five years younger than her.’

    ‘Exactly,’ said Rick. ‘You’re different from her. Of course you’re going to see things differently.’

    ‘But how do I know what I’ll feel in the future?’

    ‘What do you feel now?’ he demanded.

    ‘I don’t know,’ she cried, flinging herself face forward on to the mattress.

They thought they’d got away with it, even though both she and Rick had hated every minute of the visit to Jane’s parents and left as soon as they could after breakfast on Sunday, as no one had said anything untoward. No one, in fact, had said anything much at all.

    Jane stopped singing along to the cassettes when Surrey turned into Kent, but it wasn’t until they turned into her parents’ drive and went past the woods and the fields and the tennis court that Rick stopped.

    When the drive fanned out into a circle in front of the house, they parked behind the central rosebed and scrunched across the gravel hand in hand. The three-storey Georgian façade with its wide stone steps and portico loomed ahead, blocking out the sun. A bird screeched in the shrubbery. Jane’s head was full of white noise.

    Rick disappeared into the bedroom he’d been allocated and Jane sat in the drawing-room nursing a glass of chilled white wine and making polite conversation with her parents. How was the journey? How was Exeter? When were her finals?

    She had written to them saying that she’d met someone and he’d asked her to marry him, but no one mentioned the letter.

     At 7.30 Jane’s mother sent her up to retrieve Rick.

    ‘I don’t know where he’s got to,’ she said snappily.

    Jane hadn’t bothered to explain to Rick that pre-dinner drinks were an essential part of the ritual. At the end of their visit to Rick’s parents, Peggy had found a copy of a 1950s’ book on etiquette and told Rick he ought to read it. Back in Exeter, Rick had spent the evening lying on their mattress reading bits out to Jane and roaring with laughter.

    ‘What sort of a world do these people live in?’ he exclaimed.

     

Supper was always at 7.30. Any later and her father would have a third glass of whisky and then he wouldn’t want any food and then he’d fall asleep in his armchair, sometimes till morning.

    They ate in the dining-room, the four of them ranged around the 12-seater mahogany table. The starter was avocado and Jane saw Rick watch her as she picked up her teaspoon and dug in. She wondered if he’d eaten avocado before.

    ‘Where do you come from?’ asked Jane’s mother of Rick.

    ‘Devon,’ said Rick.

    ‘Oh how lovely,’ said Jane’s mother. ‘Do you know …?’

    She rattled off a list of names, none of which Jane had heard before. She didn’t think her mother was actually making the names up. They were probably people she’d met once at some party, or friends of friends.

    ‘No,’ said Rick.

    Of course he didn't. Why would he want to?

    Her father emerged from his smokescreen. (He smoked about sixty cigarettes a day.) ‘What job do you do?’

    ‘I repair things,’ said Rick.

    Jane winced. Why did he have to make his job sound so dull? Why couldn’t he explain that he was a genius with inanimate objects? That there was no object he couldn’t deal with? That he healed them by instinct? That as well as repairing things he built prototypes and helped postgraduates with their research?

    ‘Any prospects?’ asked her father.

    ‘Nope,’ said Rick.

    Jane hastened to explain. Someone had to. ‘He’d need a degree to get any further.’

    ‘And he hasn’t got one,’ said Jane’s mother.

    ‘No,’ said Jane.

    What could she say? His brain didn’t work that way. He wasn’t interested in the subjects you studied at university. He didn’t take exams seriously. In any case he was dyslexic so all his letters came out the wrong way round, and his handwriting was atrocious as he’d been off sick when they learned joined-up writing at school so any piece of work he handed in was automatically marked down.

    But, even if she had been able to explain all that, would it make any difference? Her parents were like the academics at the university who thought they were superior because they worked with their heads rather than their hands. To her parents, people who repaired things were tradesmen and Jane had heard her mother talking to them.

    Jane’s mother spent the rest of the meal talking about Ollie. How well he was doing at Cambridge. What a good doctor he would make. How nice his girlfriend Lucy was. What a lovely time they’d had when Ollie and Lucy visited.

    As she always did when she was at home, Jane helped her mother clear the table and wash up. Neither of them spoke.

    As soon as she could she went into the hall where she found Rick pacing like a caged lion. He’d been left alone in the drawing-room with her father.

    ‘He wanted me to ask for your hand in marriage,’ he exploded. ‘I know he did.’

    ‘What did you do?’ asked Jane.

    ‘I walked out,’ said Rick.

    That night, Jane crept into Rick’s room and they clung together without speaking.

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The Banker's Niece 22: The party

‘Hello,’ says Jane groggily.

    She’s been listening to the phone ringing for a while but has only just realised what the noise meant and picked up the receiver.

    ‘Jane?’ says a female voice.

    ‘Yes,’ she croaks.

    ‘Are you all right?’ says the voice.

    It’s Lauren. What a relief. For a moment she feared it was her mother.

    ‘I, er, I think so,’ she answers.

    ‘Only, what with you being off work the last two days, and you being a bit upset at lunchtime on Wednesday –’

    Jane remembers her embarrassing flood of tears and her brain leaps into action.

    ‘Oh that,’ she says, trying to inject a chuckle into her voice. ‘Sorry about that. It was probably the migraine. I shouldn’t have come back to work so soon.’

    Lauren presses on, ignoring Jane’s explanation. ‘And then I was talking to my gran about that news item. You know, the one about Rick the Rock, and she said . . . ’

    Jane grits her teeth. And she’d hoped women would be different down here in Devon.

    She keeps quiet and Lauren falters. ‘. . . well anyway, so long as you’re all right.’

    ‘Getting better,’ says Jane. ‘Just having a rest.’

    In fact, now she looks at her clock, she realises that she’s been asleep for three hours. She did get dressed that morning however, for the first time since Wednesday, and even managed a few chores – like stacking the dishwasher, throwing clothes into the washing machine and rinsing out her sick bucket. But then after lunch she’d collapsed back to bed.

    ‘That’s good,’ says Lauren, ‘cos what I was really ringing about is the party tonight.’

    ‘Party?’ says Jane, head starting to pound again and stomach recoiling from lunchtime’s baked beans on toast. (She was hungry and it was all she had.)

    ‘You know,’ says Lauren. ‘The one for your “friend” Colin Fletcher.’

    Jane groans. ‘Oh God. I suppose I’ll have to come.’

    Henry gives a party for the staff every time Courtney Press has a book in the bestseller lists. Attendance isn’t compulsory but, since Henry provides free food and drink and since partners are invited as well, most of the company’s twelve staff, as well as a smattering of estate workers such as gardeners and cleaners, manage to put in an appearance. Jane will certainly be expected as Colin is one of ‘her’ authors.

    Colin writes fiction (sci-fi) as well as non-fiction but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Courtney Press categorises his factual work as ‘Controversial knowledge’, while Jane describes it to herself as ‘flights of fancy in disguise’. He’s had a runaway success with his latest oeuvre Spiders from Mars after it featured on television’s Mystery channel. Here he put up a surprisingly good case for his claim that the Earth is run by a race of super-intelligent arachnids from the Red Planet. Surprising, not because of his lack of word skills - unlike many of Jane’s authors, who are experts rather than wordsmiths, he can express himself in a grammatical and interesting way - but because of his lack of interpersonal ones. And Jane knows all about that.

    Authors aren’t usually invited to the parties unless they live locally, and Colin doesn’t. Thank goodness.

    ‘Oh I do hope you will come,’ says Lauren. ‘I’m bringing Gavin and I wanted you to meet him.’

Why is the world full of people she wants to avoid, wonders Jane as she sits at her dressing-table in her pink fleecy dressing-gown and grey knitted Ugg boots. She’s seen photos of Lauren’s fiancé on Lauren’s phone and they don’t inspire confidence. Is it his scowl or his paunch that puts her off, or is it the knowledge that he works in a building society in Exeter and can do no wrong in the eyes of Lauren’s mother? Not that she's met Lauren's mother but she sounds terrifying - a pillar of the community (or pillock of the community as someone she once knew used to say).

    Then again, what will Gavin think of her? She’s hardly your average woman and he looks like the sort of man with fixed ideas on what women should be like. And what about all the other guests? This is the third party Henry has thrown in the six months since she started at Courtneys and she remembers the other two as a whirl of polite conversation with strangers, something she feels less capable of by the day.

    She’s had a shower and washed her hair in honour of the event but, really, she’d much rather stay in her night attire and watch rubbish television, or even return to her beloved down-filled duvet and unbleached organic brushed-cotton bed-linen.

    She picks her hairdryer off the floor and points it at her head. Three weeks ago she gave up the unequal struggle with the Devon weather and had her smooth conventional shoulder-length bob turned into something short back and sides. She doesn’t care that the cut, combined with her new slenderness (all right, skinniness), makes her look like a boy. It puts her face back centre stage. It makes her look like her. It's even - dare she say it - a little edgy. And in a couple of seconds her hair is dry and she gives it a quick comb with her fingers. That’s all it needs. So different from all that straightening she used to have to do.

    She’s also made changes to her wardrobe, in that she bought in the sales after Christmas a fuchsia-pink velvet t-shirt. Somehow, all the dark colours she wore in London seemed inappropriate in Devon. She’s never worn the t-shirt before, but maybe today is the day.

    She slips the t-shirt on over a pair of charcoal wool trousers. It’s more fitted than the tops she usually wears but she likes the way the colour brings out the green in her eyes. She’s always wanted green eyes and was keen in her teens to point out that her eyes were not light brown but hazel - which implied greeny-brown, she thought. The trousers of course match her hair – once brown-black and now a mixture of greys. She doesn’t care about that either. The grey hairs are her battle scars. She’s suffered for them.

Jane stands at the door of the Courtney Press staff rest-room. It’s already full of people, and the scent of soaped bodies wafts towards her.

    She can see Mrs Henry, dressed in flowery pastels, taking clingfilm off plates of nibbles on a table against one of the long walls. Pete the production manager is presiding over turntables in the corner to her right, no doubt playing his collection of 60s and 70s vinyl as he did at the last two parties. She can hear some Motown struggling against the din of voices.

    In the centre of the room Henry and Sam are dancing. Henry, in a striped red-and-white shirt, jeans and shiny brown tasselled moccasins is making inappropriate moves with hips while Sam, in an electric-blue ballet-dancer dress, ripped black leggings and biker boots, is stomping around like some stroppy bird of paradise.

    Jane wants to turn tail and flee.

    She rang Joe the Taxi, who brought her and Jasper home from the village after their walk the previous Saturday (Was it only a week ago? It feels like a lifetime) and arranged for him to take her to and from the party. She didn’t fancy negotiating the back roads on her own in the dark, especially in her current fragile state of health.

    Now she wants nothing more than to ring Joe again and say ‘Fetch me now!’ His dark silent presence was so comforting. He reminded her of Gabriel Oak, Bathsheba’s eventual choice of husband in Far from the Madding Crowd*, as played by Alan Bates in the 1960s film. According to Lauren (as Jane is always saying to herself), he's in his fifties with a daughter and two young grandsons. His wife died of breast cancer five years ago and he’s only now beginning to get out and about again. Perhaps she should have brought him along to the party as her partner!

    The clusters of people clear for a second and she sees Lauren at the far end of the room behind a table of bottles and glasses. Taking a deep breath, she makes her way over. Lauren is wearing a purple-and-cream jersey wraparound dress that shows her every curve and roll of fat. Jane’s mother would be horrified but Jane thinks Lauren looks magnificent. Standing next to her is a tall dark scowling man with knife-sharp creases down the arms of his white shirt.

    ‘Jane,’ calls Lauren, waving a bottle. ‘You look gorgeous.’

    Touched to the point of tears, Jane sidles up.

    ‘And this,’ says Lauren proudly, ‘is Gavin.’

    Gavin nods his head unsmilingly in Jane’s direction and she finds herself unable to think of a single thing to say.

    ‘Glass of something?’ says Lauren, breaking an uncomfortable silence.

    Jane nods. ‘Red, please.’

    ‘Should you be drinking?’ says Gavin. ‘I hear you get migraines.’

    Jane takes the glass proffered by Lauren and downs it in one.

    Almost at once the world softens and she holds out her glass for a refill. A few more of those and she could almost be back in her down and brushed-cotton nest.

Jane lies on the floor behind a rest-room armchair, the party going on around her. Three glasses of wine taken at speed on an empty stomach so soon after a migraine were probably not a good idea. She’s staying absolutely still because she knows from experience it's the only way to have a chance of keeping her stomach in check. She's been sick once, in a handy metal wastepaper basket, and she doesn’t want to repeat the experience. 
    Not long now till Joe arrives to take her home.

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* By Thomas Hardy