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