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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