The Banker's Niece 28: Puddleglum

Summer 1978

‘I blame myself,’ cried Jane, massaging her forehead.

    ‘Why?’ said three voices at once.

    Jane was sitting at the kitchen table in Wendy's cottage with Rick, Wendy and Van. The back door was open and the sounds of an August evening floated in – chatter from the pub garden, lawnmowers, a dog barking in the distance.

    Van had arrived earlier with two bottles of cheap white wine and somehow the four of them had ended up drinking it together and chatting and Jane had brought down the letters from her parents and Wendy and Van had read them.

    Jane took a deep breath. ‘Well, when I first wrote and told my parents about Rick, I said, “he’s asked me to marry him and I told him he was unsuitable”.’

    ‘Why on earth did you say that?’ asked Van.

    Van was long and droopy and Jane kept wanting to call him Puddleglum*.

    ‘Because it was what happened,’ she said.

    ‘Sort of,’ said Rick.

    ‘It was a lament,’ she continued. ‘What I meant was, “Of course we have to marry, but I wish you weren’t so unsuitable – by my family’s standards”.’

    ‘You foresaw trouble,’ said Van/Puddleglum.

    ‘Oh yes,’ said Jane.

    ‘But why did you tell your parents that?’ asked Wendy.

    Jane sighed. ‘I wanted to warn them and I thought I’d make the problem into a bit of a joke.’

    ‘How so?’ asked Van.

    ‘I put an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence in my letter.’

    The other three laughed and Jane ran her fingers through her hair. ‘And I suppose also I was unsure myself and I wanted their reassurance.’

    ‘Fatal mistake,’ said Van. ‘You admitted weakness.’

    ‘I see that now,’ she said.

    ‘You got everybody off on the wrong foot, Rick included,’ said Wendy severely.

    She had long hair hennaed orange. It glowed like fire in the evening light.

    ‘Yeah,’ said Jane, wanting to cry.

    ‘No she didn’t,’ said Rick. ‘I would have hated them anyway.’

    Wendy gave a snort of laughter.

    ‘And your father would still have been a pompous prick and your mother a snob,’ said Van.

    Just like Puddleglum. Underneath that lugubrious exterior, a heart of gold.

    ‘But what do we do now?’ wailed Jane.

    ‘Do?’ exclaimed Puddleglum. ‘You carry on of course.’

‘D’you think your father’s read your mother’s letters?’ asked Rick later in the evening as they lay on their mattress sweating in the heat.

    The boxroom had one tiny casement window which they’d pushed open as far as it would go but there was no through-draught as they had to keep the door shut for privacy. Their clothes were piled on the landing outside but they dressed in the morning dancing around on the mattress. It was like living on a small boat.

    ‘I shouldn’t think so. I can’t see him approving of them,’ said Jane. ‘Why d’you ask?’

    ‘I just thought that, if he had, he might understand a bit better why I haven’t made more of an effort to get to know them.’

    ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.

    ‘No, I s’pose not,’ he said. ‘The whole basis of the visit was wrong.’

    ‘Anyway,’ said Jane, ‘his letters are just as horrible as hers but in a different way.’

    ‘Yeah,’ he yawned. ‘Shall we go somewhere nice tomorrow, seeing as we’ve both got the day off?’ he said.

    ‘That would be lovely,’ she said, nestling against him.

    If she pretended to be OK, maybe she’d be OK.

  

‘Two more billets-doux have arrived,’ said Rick next morning, dropping the envelopes on to the sheet and climbing over Jane with two mugs of tea. ‘Shall we burn them?’

    ‘What if they say they’re coming to the wedding?’ said Jane.

    ‘Good point,’ said Rick. ‘We might want to write back and tell them they’re not welcome.’

    Jane gave a half-hearted laugh.

    ‘Who’s going to read them first?’ asked Rick.

    ‘One each?’ said Jane.

    ‘OK,’ said Rick

    She grabbed the blue one. Her mother’s letters hurt most at the time but they were easier to ignore than her father’s.

My dear Jane

I shan’t come to the wedding. It does not mean that I shan’t be thinking of you – just that I would not be able to bear to be there. There is no point being a skeleton at the feast.

    What worries me most about your marriage is the general lowering of all your standards. I don’t mean material things – they don’t matter so much when you are young. It’s the mental attitude, the way of thinking and talking and behaving. Rick has such a naïve, prejudiced, cliché-ridden approach to life, so uneducated in every sense. I can’t believe that this will satisfy you for long. At the least, when he is your husband, perhaps you can teach him some manners. They may not seem very important, but they do make for a more pleasant existence. And the way you behave is how other people see you.

    I’m writing to you now, but I shall hide my feelings in the future and all will be sweetness and light! You need not be afraid to come to see us. It would be very sad if we lost touch – families are important. As you get older you will realise this.

    I’m not sending you conventional phrases of good wishes. They would stick in my throat.

    Love Mummy

She was almost immune by now. Almost, but not quite.

    ‘Hmm,’ said Rick, perusing her father’s letter. ‘Tricky.’

    They swapped sheets of paper.

    Jane hardly recognised her father’s handwriting. Instead of sloping forwards as it usually did it sloped backwards. It was much bigger than usual. It was written in heavy pen.

My dear daughter

You have told me your decision and I am, of course, very sad. It is so far from the happy family occasion it should be but the abruptness of your actions have obviously made that inevitable.

    What is a major worry is the thought that you may be turning your back or opting out of many of the standards to which we did our best to bring you up. I don’t think we are old-fashioned. That is an accusation that the younger generation always make to the older when they want to do something without approval.

    If friendships wither it is not always the friend’s fault. It is even odds that it is caused by oneself. It is not clever nor tolerant not to respect and consider other people’s point of view. It is even odds that they are more right than you.

    Nor is it hypocrisy to observe the usual courtesies and respect the social graces and behaviour of the company you are in at any time. It is kindness and thoughtfulness. Many of the most courteous and well-mannered people are some of the poorest and their company some of the most delightful.

    Bigotry is the belief that you are always right. Honesty is to say what you think even if you accept that you may be wrong.

    Selfishness and intolerance are the bane of the world. Kindness and good manners the blessings.

    Sorry to be a pompous bore.

    With love Daddy

‘Cliché-ridden,’ exclaimed Rick, putting down her mother’s letter.

    ‘I don’t understand,’ said Jane, staring at her father’s letter. ‘Is he talking about us?’

    Her head whirled. She felt sick. Her father sounded broken. She’d never heard him speak like that before. Every word was a knife to her breast.

    How did she manage to be such a disappointment to her parents? She’d always tried so hard to please them. What had she done wrong?

    Every letter from them tore her apart. Each time it was harder to put herself back together. This time she didn’t know if she could manage it.

    She didn’t know what the truth was any more. She didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know who was right, her or her parents.

    She didn’t even know if she still loved Rick. If she really loved him, why did she keep freezing? Why did she keep seeing him through her parents’ eyes?

    What was love anyway but a bottomless black hole?

    She had to end this pain now. She couldn’t bear it any longer.

    ‘I can’t go on,’ she said.

* A character in The Silver Chair by C S Lewis

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