The Banker's Niece 36: Chris's story

SPOILER ALERT

Do not read this chapter if you haven't read earlier ones and are intending to do so

As she makes herself that long-promised espresso, Jane realises that her hands are shaking.

    She drinks the coffee standing by the French windows looking out at her garden, currently a mixture of mud and slush. The sun is struggling over the horizon in a haze of washed-out orange. She knows how it feels.

    At last, slightly nauseous and with a migraine headache forming in her right temple, she sits at the table and picks up the papers, the only proof she has that the small person who appeared and then disappeared in the space of a few seconds was real and not the fleeting hallucination of a fevered brain.

Dear Jane, she reads.

I know – or think – that this letter is probably going to be as hard for you to read as it is for me to write, and I’m not saying that to excuse myself. It’s my way of saying sorry (in the first instance – there are so many more, but I’ll come to those) for approaching you like this. By which I mean - for approaching you full stop, and for doing it by letter. It was the only way I could think of to get and keep your attention.

I do have a specific purpose in contacting you but I don’t think I can explain that without going right back to the beginning, and the beginning was autumn 1978. So bear with me – please.

As you may – or may not - know (perhaps I’m flattering myself in thinking that Rick ever told you anything about me other than my existence), autumn 1978 was when I started my postgraduate degree at the University of Devon. Much of my research involved humping heavy kit around the coast in order to test samples of seawater and almost immediately I realised that I couldn’t manage on my own.
    'You could try Rick,’ said one of my colleagues, rolling his eyes. ‘If you can find him and if he deigns to speak to you.’

    I saw what he meant. For a start, Rick’s electronic workshop was in the basement of the science building and there were two ways to get to it.

    One was through a yard to an outside back door but I took one look at the dark dirty space crammed with skips and decided to try the other. This took me through the mechanical workshop, a maze of lethal and noisy machines, not to mention the workshop’s denizen - who only stopped sawing long enough to scowl at me.

    At last I reached Rick’s door and knocked. After getting no answer, I tried to push the door open but something was in the way. Eventually I managed to make enough of a gap to squeeze through whereupon I was met by a forest of electronic technology – on the floor, on a workbench, on shelves, some winking, some with its guts spilling out – as well as a vipers’ nest of tangled wires underfoot. Radio 1 was playing out from somewhere but of Rick there was no sign. Nevertheless, I trod my way in, hoping none of the wires was live and planning to leave a note on his desk – if I could find it.

    ‘Whadda ya want?’ said a gruff voice, and this creature emerged from behind the open door of a tall cupboard.

     He was tall and thin with a tangle of long wavy hair. Instead of a technician’s white coat, he wore a green t-shirt and black jeans, and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved for days. He was like a rogue weed in a carefully tended garden and I was amazed that he’d managed to persuade the university to employ him – or indeed why he’d wanted to be employed by the university in the first place.

    ‘I,er, I, er, I’m Chris,’ I said, debating whether to back out now, while I was still alive.

    ‘Hello Chris,’ he said.

    Well, it was a start.

I realise now that it was because I was a woman – the only woman academic in the science department at the time, to be precise – but it wasn’t that difficult after all to enlist him. I explained my mission and he offered me a cup of tea and soon we were perched on lab stools, chatting away like old friends. And that’s all we ever were, to start with. Friends.

    We saw each other intermittently over the winter but in the spring, with a spell of fine weather, we started going out every day. Rick couldn’t have been more helpful, driving the van, carrying equipment, and then sitting for hours staring out over the waves while I fiddled with samples. I could see he had something on his mind, so one day when I was feeling brave I offered him a pub lunch and, as we sat in the garden over our fish and chips and pints, he began to talk about you.

    He told me how the two of you were once engaged but your parents forced you to pull out. He told me that you were now living together but that something had changed – for both of you – and that all you did was argue.

    ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you,’ he said. ‘I feel disloyal. But I have no one else. Who can men talk to after all except women? Certainly not other men.’

    And, of course, one thing led to another and I could sense myself falling in love with him, even though all I wanted to do was help. I knew however that Rick wasn’t in love with me and that you would always come first. In fact he told me so, right at the beginning.

    Then, when he confessed to you about me, and you left, we fizzled out. Our raison d’être had gone. The band took off, he gave up his job at the uni and I never heard from him again.

    Until the beginning of this year.

I did marry and we had a daughter but, as soon as she finished at university and started making her own life, my husband and I realised that there was nothing left between us. We divorced and he moved to France. I stayed in the family house and carried on teaching at Norwich University where I’d been since receiving my PhD.

    About eighteen months ago I was approached by the marine-environment charity Making Waves who were setting up a research centre at the University of Devon. Would I like to run it?

    I didn’t hesitate for a second. It was my dream job. It was what I’d been working towards all my life. It meant I could do what I enjoyed most and make a difference to the world. I sold the house, bought an apartment in a complex run as a community in case it was difficult making new friends in my fifties, and moved there last summer, not thinking what a return to Devon might bring.

Three weeks into January I was walking along a corridor in the department when someone called my name. I turned and it was Rick.

    ‘Rick!’ I squeaked. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

    I was so pleased to see him. I recognised him instantly. Except for the hair – short and grey – he’d hardly changed. He still looked as if he’d crawled through a hedge in a hurry. He still didn’t answer questions.

    ‘Fancy a coffee?’ he said.

    We went to the Dart coffee bar. D’you remember it? It’s the one where all the posh students went – the ‘wellies’. Luckily they seem to have gone.

    We sat on some blue plastic armchairs in a corner and since the term hadn’t yet started we were almost alone. I told Rick what I’d been doing in the thirty-five years since last I’d seen him and he told me about his thirty-five years on the road with the band – which had gone by in a flash, he said – and how he’d recently bought a farm in Devon near his mother (now a widow). It was therefore a good hour before Rick said, ‘I bet you can’t guess who else is back in Devon.’

    I couldn’t. I thought we’d talked about all our mutual acquaintances.

    ‘Jane,’ he said.

    I reeled. It was the last thing I expected. It raised so many questions, not least how Rick had found out about you, but I didn’t bother asking them as I knew he wouldn’t answer.

    It occurred to me that Rick passing me in the corridor might not have been quite so accidental after all, and that Rick might have had more than one motive in moving back to Devon himself.

    ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it,’ he said, as if picking up on my thoughts and trying to divert them.

    ‘Think what?’ I asked, my sceptical scientist’s brain on alert.

    ‘Oh, you know, about higher powers and things like that.’

    I snorted, but I couldn’t say anything because the convergence of the three of us did seem fortuitous and I was finding all sorts of unexpected emotions welling up in me. So much so that I began to doubt whether the door to the part of my life that involved you was quite as firmly closed as I’d thought.

    Which is not my way of excusing what happened next. At least I don’t think it is, since all that the coincidence, happy accident, synchronicity – whatever you want to call it – said to me was that here at last was my chance to make amends.

    ‘I’d like to get in touch with her,’ said Rick thoughtfully.

    ‘How do you know she’s not married and crawling with children and grandchildren?’ I asked.

    ‘She’s not,’ he said. ‘I checked.’

    Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser.

    ‘Well why don’t you get in touch with her?’ I said.

    ‘She might be angry. I might rush her. I might scare her off.’

    Was he being diplomatic or was he afraid? How much did he still care about you?  I felt concerned for him, just as I did all those years ago, especially because I could see (reading between the lines) that he wasn't finding his new life easy.

    ‘What I need,’ he continued, ‘is some of way of gaining her attention, of letting her know I’m here, without putting her under pressure.’

    And that’s how it started. Whether Rick had the plan in mind all along, or whether it was a spur of the moment thing, I don’t know. I never asked. It’s not my business. And I went along with it because I wanted to help.

    Same old, same old.

    ‘Why don’t we pretend to be engaged?’ he said excitedly, as if the idea had just come to him. ‘That way, she’ll have time to think. The news will take her back and reawaken all those old emotions which she’s probably been squashing all these years – I know I have – and give her a chance to work out what she really feels.’

    ‘But how will she find out about the engagement?’ I asked - which was probably the least important thing I should have said.

    ‘I don’t think you need worry about that,’ Rick laughed ruefully. ‘Just leave it to me and my publicist.’

So that’s what’s happened and, as soon as it did, I knew I’d done the wrong thing. How painful it would be for you if you did still care about Rick. How dishonest it was.

    So that’s why I’m writing this letter – novel – for you. I'm sorry it's so long and so detailed. These are murky moral waters and I need to be sure I'm telling you everything (without being sure what that everything is).

    Please forgive me. Please let me know if there’s any way I can help, anything you’d like me to do.

    And please believe that there’s nothing between me and Rick except an old friendship. We’ve only met once since that encounter in January and that was in order to work out the details of the plan. I haven’t told him that I’m contacting you, and I won’t – unless you want me to. I’ve never told anyone else any of the things that Rick told me about you – not even my husband.

    Nor am I blaming Rick, or putting pressure on you to get in touch with him. The opposite in fact. What we all need at the moment – especially you –  is the truth.

    I’m sorry for the ruse. I’m sorry for what happened thirty-five years ago.

   

Wishing you all the best

Chris

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