The Banker's Niece 39: The revelation

January 1978

Jane sat at an empty table in the Dart House coffee bar, nursing a cappuccino in its Pyrex glass cup and saucer.

    She didn’t normally frequent Dart House any more than she could help as it was infested with wellies. She could hear them now, behaving as usual as if they were the only people who mattered, talking about Christmas in loud voices and urging their friends to jump the queue for food and drink.

    She kept her eyes fixed on her coffee as she knew that if she looked up she might catch the eye of one of them and they might come over. She’d made the mistake when she first arrived at university and attended the rash of fresher parties of allowing wellies to latch on to her because they thought she was one of them. Now she spent her time on campus dodging those first acquaintances, which was difficult as they tended to study arts subjects like she did. (She was as bad as Heather in her own way, she sometimes thought.)

    Dart House was near the arts buildings, which was one of the reasons she was there now risking wellie contact, instead of good old Exe House with its mixed clientele, her usual haunt.

    The other reason was that she didn’t want to go back to the house.

She’d returned to Kent for Christmas and discovered that her mother had arranged for Jane a selection of parties where she could mix with the offspring of Jane’s mother’s friends, as she’d been doing since Jane was about fourteen. Jane wasn’t sure whether her mother was still doing this because she hadn’t realised that Jane was grown up and could organise her own social life or because she thought that Jane at twenty-two was on the shelf. Probably the latter.

    After all, her mother had ‘come out’ at seventeen, joining all the other ‘debutantes’ in being ‘presented’ to the monarch before plunging into a series of cocktail parties, balls and weekends at grand country houses. You were supposed to find a husband pretty smartly because you only got one shot at a ‘season’. This was partly because they were expensive to fund, what with the clothes you needed, living in London, the travel and hosting your share of the various events, and partly because you were used goods afterwards.

    Jane’s mother had avoided this shame by going on to study at Oxford University, which was hard to remember sometimes, but perhaps it was because of this that she hadn’t tried to put Jane through something similar. Or at least not so structured and overt.

    Jane could have refused to attend the Christmas parties, she supposed, but she lived in hope. Somewhere, some day, she might find a kindred spirit. She simply had to keep looking.

    But in the event, she’d spent several dire evenings hiding in bathrooms or shrinking against walls wanting to be invisible. She did try to play the game, at least at the start of the holidays, but she discovered that she couldn’t any more. She would utter something she thought perfectly normal and interesting, and there would be an awkward silence and people would start to edge away.

    For the first time she began to wonder if she was indeed past it.

   

It was strange therefore that yesterday, her first day back at university after the holidays, she’d known as soon as she walked through the front door of the house that she had to finish whatever it was between her and Gordon.

    It wasn’t that she minded the meaningless sex. The opposite in fact. The more meaningless the better as far as she was concerned as she was done with those sorts of feelings. It was simply that she feared Gordon was taking their relationship too seriously. She was leading him on. She wasn’t being honest with him. And, given that he was her second-best friend at university, that wasn’t fair.

    Of course she couldn’t explain much of that to him, particularly the sex bit, and so he hadn’t understood her sudden change of heart. He’d gone very quiet and she’d hadn’t seen him since. She missed him but she felt bad about what she'd done and so all in all not seeing him was the best option. 

    Thus her exile in the Dart coffee bar.

   

The swing doors behind her swished open and banged shut. A figure zoomed past, twirled one hundred and eighty degrees and dropped into a squat in front of her.

    ‘Neep,’ it said.

    She hardly recognised him.

    The cloak had gone. The beard had gone.

    He wore black boots, black jeans, a black polo-necked jumper and a brown corduroy jacket. Where the beard had been was stubble, a generous mouth and a dimpled chin. He looked almost . . . almost handsome.   

    ‘You, er, you look different,’ she stammered, trying not to blush.

    His eyes twinkled. They were the only part of him she recognised. But the expression in them had changed.

    ‘I went to see my parents at Christmas,’ he said. ‘My mother re-equipped my wardrobe.’

    ‘Oh, I see,’ said Jane, swallowing.

    She didn’t know what else to say. They seemed to have gone beyond small talk – if they ever had in fact been at that stage. Her ears buzzed, blocking all the other sounds around. They were in a bubble of their own.

    Hey,’ said Rick, as if taking pity on her. ‘The Albion Band are playing at the Great Hall on Saturday. D’you want to come?’

    ‘Oh no,’ said Jane. ‘I couldn’t possibly. I’ve got far too much work to do.’

    Well she had. Her finals were only a few months away, and it was vital she passed them. Her only purpose in coming to university was to acquire a degree, and hence rewarding work. For that she had to be disciplined and calm, so social life always came second. She never wanted to go back to the amoral work she’d done in London, or the frantic social life, or to be stirred up like she had been there.

    And something told her that Rick could stir her up.

    A lot.

Jane and Heather sat at their usual table in the Exe bar, not too near the wall so that they couldn’t see people coming and going, and not too near the front so that they were conspicuous themselves and had to mingle with all the show-offs lounging on the steps down to the Heffalump Trap. It was Thursday, a week and a half into term and as both had been studying hard they’d decided they deserved a night out.

    ‘Look,’ said Heather, pointing to the other side of the room. ‘Isn’t that Rick?’

    She’d softened towards him slightly after their party in November when she’d seen him cloak-less.

    He had his trousers tucked into his boots like a Cossack. He was speeding towards some woman. Small and round, dark curly hair, big smile. Pretty.

    Jane leapt to her feet, scrambled over the bodies in the middle of the room, and placed herself in Rick’s way.

    ‘Would you like to come to supper?’ she panted. ‘Saturday. At the house.’

  

‘You what?’ exclaimed Heather in horror, when Jane returned.

    ‘I’ve invited him to supper,’ repeated Jane. ‘And I’m hoping you’ll come too and give me some moral support.’

    She also invited one of her Spanish tutors to whom she owed a meal as he’d had the tutorial group over to his house the term before. Then Mike from the house, with whom she’d hardly exchanged a word as she only saw him when he was in the kitchen eating and he did that with headphones on while reading a newspaper, happened to be hanging around looking hungry when she and Heather were cooking for the party so they took pity on him and invited him too.

    Gordon, thank goodness, was still not in evidence.

    Heather cooked the usual something with mince and tinned tomatoes and Jane made a banana and lemon cake from a recipe of her mother’s. She put too much lemon juice in the icing and it slid off the cake to rest in untidy folds on the plate, but she hoped no one would mind. She decided to wear her usual jeans and jumper so as not to appear to be trying too hard.

    Rick on the other hand arrived in his magenta trousers and a sage-green shirt that looked new. Jane wondered if it was another item that had come to him courtesy of his mother. At supper he had two helpings of Jane’s cake and afterwards he sat on the sitting-room floor against a wall while Mike played his collection of Electric Light Orchestra albums. Jane perched on the arm of the sofa next to him.
    Rick didn’t say anything – in fact he’d hardly said anything all evening – but Jane could tell he wasn’t impressed with the choice of music. Even cloak-less he fitted in even less than she did, but to her he was cooler than anyone else in the room. He was different. He was exotic. He was real. He had something inside that was distinctive, particular to him, and that echoed something inside herself.

    Her mind went clear, as if clouds had rolled back, and a voice spoke in her head.

    ‘This man will interest me for the rest of my life. We are going to marry.’

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