The Banker's Niece 33: Home alone

Tom turns out to be a Hagrid of a man – large and hairy with a booming voice. Good-looking, but luckily not her type. The last thing she wants is a crush on someone else’s husband, especially someone as lovely as Maisie. Not that crushes are quite the problem they used to be, but even so. You never know when the beast will rear its head again.

    Tom doesn’t fancy her either, she can tell.

    ‘So you’re the idiot who drove into that snowdrift,’ he says with a raucous laugh.

    Jane winces. ‘Er, yes. I’m afraid so.’

    ‘Well, you won’t get your car out tonight,’ he says, peeling off layers: a brown waxed jacket, a bottle-green checked shirt with a quilted lining, an olive fleece. ‘The roads around here are icing over something shocking and no one’s going to want to come out and help you. What are you going to do?’

    ‘She could stay here,’ says Maisie, giving her husband a look.

    He’s silent for a few seconds but he’s turned to his wife and has his back to Jane so she can’t see his expression. The dogs watch intently. Jane wants to vanish through a crack in the flagstones.

    ‘I could probably get her out in the four-'b’-four,’ he says eventually.

    He turns back to Jane. ‘Where d’you live?’

    ‘Near Muddicombe. I don’t think it’s too far. It would be terribly kind of you. Maisie’s had me here all day and I really don’t want to impose on her any longer. And my neighbour will be wondering where I am . . . ’

    She hears herself babbling and pulls up short.

    Anyway, the last sentence is an invention. She’s long suspected that William does watch her comings and goings – how else does he always manage to turn up for drinks and nibbles fifteen minutes after she arrives home? – but she doubts he goes as far as worrying about her.

    But she’s desperate. The last thing she wants is to spend the evening feeling like a lemon, getting in the way of a happy couple. Even dragging Tom out again in such weather is preferable to that.

    ‘Muddicombe,’ he exclaims. ‘That’s miles away. What the hell were you doing up here in a blizzard?’

    ‘I, er, I –’ She can’t think of a single excuse.

    ‘We could try taking her home,’ says Maisie, rescuing the conversation. ‘I’ll come too.’

The journey takes hours as Tom drives very slowly and carefully – not at all the way she would have expected him to drive but perhaps it’s a sign of how bad the conditions are. Jane sits in the back, gnawing her glove. No one tries to talk.

    At last they reach the end of her track. Jane opens her door and leans forward between Tom and Maisie. ‘I can walk from here. Really. Just drop me here. It’s not far.’

    ‘If you’re sure,’ protests Tom unconvincingly.

    ‘Give me a ring,’ says Maisie, turning round. ‘We can have a walk together on the moor.’

    ‘I’d love that,’ says Jane. ‘I will.’

    It feels like it’s the first time she’s told the truth since Tom appeared.

    ‘If you arrange for someone to drag your car out, they can leave it at ours for you to pick up when the snow’s gone,’ says Tom.

    ‘That’s so kind. Thank you so much. I’m so grateful. That would be perfect. I’m so sorry to have been such a nuisance,’ says Jane, wanting to gag herself.

    Clutching a piece of paper with their address and telephone number, she jumps down from the vehicle and scurries off.

The snowy fields light up the night. The track is a mixture of slush and puddles. She jogs through them, not caring about splashes. She can’t wait to get home and shed her embarrassment. She forgets to be frightened of being out alone in the countryside after dark, and thinks instead of the red wine she’s going to pour herself.

But as soon as she pushes open the back door and enters her kitchen she’s hit by a wave of darkness, so strong she can hardly stand. She grabs the nearest chair and collapses on to it.

    She tries to take deep breaths as as she’s learnt in the odd yoga class she’s attended and as Sharon advised when Jane told her about these attacks. ‘They won't kill you,’ Sharon said, but sometimes that’s hard to believe.

    Soon however she does feel slightly better, less out of control, but the darkness is splintering into horrible visions.

    She sees all the inconvenience, not to say danger, she’s caused Maisie and Tom, two delightful, admirable, sensible people. Without them she could well be dead by now. What was she thinking, driving off like that?

     She sees her outburst at work and her toes curl. She’s sixty for goodness sake, not an adolescent. Henry’s probably wondering what sort of a nutter he employed. She'll probably never work again in the publishing industry.

    She sees herself at the party two days ago, vomiting into a bin and then flaked out on the floor. A disgrace. A disaster. An insult to her new best friend Lauren, who’s shown her nothing but kindness over the last five months. She remembers her rudeness to Lauren’s fiancé Gavin. She remembers lovely Joe the Taxi who’s now seen her wrecked twice out of their last three encounters, if you count him picking her up after the walk. It makes her feel sick again just thinking about it all.

    She remembers taking nearly a whole week off work because of a migraine.

    She remembers the walk and what she saw at the end of it, in the village shop.

    She thinks of Maisie's rich life and compares it to her own – jobless, husbandless, future-less.

A car stops and footsteps crunch up to the door.

    Jane’s heart starts beating so erratically that she feels faint. All she wants to do is creep out of the kitchen and hide but she doesn’t know if she can manage to stand.

    ‘Janey,’ calls William’s voice. ‘Janey? Are you there? I thought I saw you come home but your car’s not here and there are no lights on in the house and . . . ’

    The door starts to edge open. Jane pulls her coat tightly around her. Perhaps he won’t see her in the dark.

    ‘Janey,’ exclaims William.

    The door is completely open now and he’s standing in the doorway framed against the security light, bringing with him cold air and a scent of sandalwood soap. He’s wearing an old tweed jacket with a white shirt that makes his teeth and eyes shine. He’s looking straight at her.

    To her horror, a sob escapes before she has time to squash it.

    He hurries towards her. ‘Janey! Whatever’s the matter?’

    Tears gush like oil from some newly tapped well.

    He puts his arm round her and, with a sense of relief even greater than the one she feels when she has a migraine and can finally get to bed and draw the duvet over her head, she leans against him.

‘Please,’ she whimpers. ‘Just do it.’

    ‘Janey, I can’t,’ says William, falling on to his back away from her with a noise somewhere between a groan and a laugh.

    ‘Whyever not?’ she screeches. ‘I thought that was all men cared about.’

    ‘Because you’re in too much of a state, and I’m not a pig, whatever you might think about men in general,’ retorts William.

    ‘I’m not in a state. What sort of a state d’you think I’m in? Why d’you think I’m in a state?’

    No man has ever refused her before.

    ‘Because you keep crying, you daft female.’

    ‘I don’t,’ she sobs.

    No man has ever called her a daft female either.

    ‘Look,’ says William. ‘Why don’t we get up and have some supper together. I’m sure that would do you a whole lot more good than us lying here having an argument.’

    ‘We’re not arguing,’ she hiccups.

    William sighs. ‘We could even go down to the Merry Harriers and make a night of it. They do a mean cheesy potato pie and sausages.’

    He swings his legs over his side of Jane’s bed and starts rummaging on the floor for his clothes.

    ‘I don’t eat meat,’ says Jane, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

    ‘Just pie then,’ says William, buttoning up his shirt. ‘It’s my birthday today, you know. I was going to ask you out anyway.’

    ‘OK,’ she says ungraciously. ‘I s’pose I could manage.’

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The Banker's Niece 32: The artist

Jane can hear scrunching. The noise reminds her of something, something from long ago, but she can’t remember what. Then there’s a clunk and a rush of cold air and a woman’s voice says, ‘I saw your roof on my way back and I knew it hadn’t been there when I went out, so I raced home and fetched a shovel and . . . and . . .’ The woman pauses and pants for a while. ‘. . . and are you all right?’

    Jane opens her eyes. She feels as if she’s been woken from one of those dreams when you forget to put your clothes on and have to walk around naked. Or as if she’s still asleep and dreaming.

    Slowly, she takes stock of her surroundings.

    She’s in her car. The driver’s door is open. By the door, framed in whiteness, stands a woman. She has damp grey curls hanging to her shoulders. She’s wearing a pale blue anorak, none too clean. She has a doughy face, blotched red, and is staring at Jane with eyes that see too much.

    Around the woman’s feet, amongst piles of snow, sits an assortment of steaming dogs, also staring at Jane.

    ‘I . . . I . . . ’ Jane stammers.

    She what?

    What is she doing here? Where is she?

    ‘Can you stand?’ says the woman, grabbing Jane by the right arm and hauling.

    Jane falls out of the car and the woman holds her up. She hangs on to the woman as sensation to return to her legs. She realises that she’s shaking with cold - or something.

    ‘I’m Maisie, by the way,’ says the woman.

    ‘Jane,’ she croaks.

    At least she can remember her name.

    ‘Look,’ says Maisie, ‘I only live down the road. If you can walk, why don’t you come back with me for a bit and warm up?’

    The dogs are sniffing round her legs and groin. She puts her hand on the back of the tallest, a distant relation of the greyhound, and it gives her a look of deepest sympathy.

    ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That would be lovely.’

   

The woman leads Jane up a tussocky bank, using her shovel upside down as a walking stick.

    Even though only a few tufts of grass show above the snow, Jane knows the bank is tussocky because her feet keep descending into nothingness. Soon she’s panting too and breaking out in sweat, the shivers gone. The dogs leap in and out of holes and tunnel under the snow with their noses as if the whole thing were a game.

    ‘My car - ?’ she gulps.

   ‘Oh don’t worry about that,’ says Maisie. ‘It’ll be perfectly safe. No one ever comes this way.’

    ‘Oh,’ says Jane.

    Except her.

    They reach the top of the bank and step at last on to something flat and firm. A road she guesses. The snow still reaches the top of her boots.

    Her boots (knee high, fleece lined) and her quilted coat are the only sensible things about her today, she thinks, as she returns to herself, and the events of the morning begin to replay themselves. What on earth is she going to say to this kind woman? How is she going to explain?

    She tries to suppress her memories. She doesn’t want to return. She wants to remain as uncritical as the dogs, as pure as the whiteness all around.

    They kick along the road through loose snow and crest a small rise.

    Jane gasps.

    Spread out before her is the white sea she remembers from her headlong arrival – in that other life – but now it sparkles with a zillion points of light. The sky is a deep clear blue. A sweet breeze sways back and forth like the breath of the planet. She wants to fly.

    Perhaps she is still dreaming.

    Yup,’ laughs Maisie. ‘It catches me too. Every time. With or without snow.’

    The woman heads down the other side of the rise and Jane follows, head fizzing.

        

At the bottom of the slope, huddled in a dip, a cottage appears. Its walls are white, streaked with green. They bulge over the road as if in the last stages of collapse. Its thatch hangs in a heavy fringe over tiny upstairs windows like something out of a fairy tale.

    They make their way round the side, past piles snow with bits of machinery poking out and a crooked open shed filled to the roof with logs. A row of dark firs stands guard behind the shed. They stop in front of a low door, once yellow.

    ‘There’s a knack to getting this open,’ says Maisie, putting her shoulder to the top of door while lifting it by its handle and giving the bottom of it a good kick. ‘That’s why I never bother to lock it.’

    The dogs cluster round as if trying to help.

    ‘Out of the way you stupid animals,’ she says affectionately, still pushing.

    Jane keeps trying to count the dogs but every time she reaches a different total, perhaps because each is different from the others and none bears close resemblance to any known breed so it’s hard to tick them off.

    ‘You do have a lot of dogs,’ she says.

    ‘I know,’ says Maisie ruefully. ‘Tom won’t let me near the Rescue Centre any more.’

    ‘Tom?’ says Jane.

    ‘Husband,’ says Maisie, finally managing to open the door and tumbling through the opening in a tangle of dog legs.

‘Soup?’ asks Maisie, sticking her head into a rickety fridge.

    Unlike William’s kitchen which is an echo of the faded grandeur outside, Maisie’s kitchen is a complete contrast to the scruffy and comfortless exterior.

    It’s warmed by a cream Rayburn, above which hangs an airer filled with drying clothes whose scent almost but not quite masks the scent of the drying dogs, who have arrayed themselves on blankets and cushions around the edges of the room.

    Jane is sitting at a circular table covered in a red and white checked cloth, the red echoed in the roses on the curtains framing the window. The slate floor is covered with rugs which appear to have been made from patches of thick woollen material sewn together like crazy paving.

    Baskets of logs sit by the back door, next to the Rayburn and at the bottom of a step which leads to a white door.

    ‘Everything in this house runs on wood,’ explains Maisie, seeing Jane looking at the baskets. ‘Tom’s a woodsman for the National Park.’

    Jane isn’t sure what a woodsman does, but she thinks again of fairy tales, and woodcutters heading into the forest.

    ‘This soup is amazing,’ she says.

    She can’t pin down the soup’s taste – it’s so different from anything she’s had before – but she has the sense that it’s feeding more than her body. With every mouthful she feels stronger.

    ‘Own leeks, own potatoes,’ says Maisie.

    Jane finds it hard to imagine how anything could grow in this landscape, but she supposes that even the moor must experience summer at some time.

    ‘You’ll have to come back when the weather’s better,’ says Maisie, ‘and I can show you the garden.’

    Jane looks up. ‘Oh, I couldn’t. You’ve done more than enough for me already.’

    She’s let this woman dig her out of a snowdrift, take her to her house and give her home-grown home-made soup. At the time she was too weak to say no. But that must be an end to it. She hates being beholden to anyone.

    ‘I’d better go,’ she says, pushing back her chair and standing up.

    ‘Of course you can’t go,’ Maisie remonstrates. ‘How are you going to get your car out? Anyway you haven’t seen my studio yet.’

    ‘Your studio!’ exclaims Jane. ‘You’re an artist?’

    How romantic to be an artist – of any kind – and how lucky she is to be consorting with a real live one.

    ‘You could call me that,’ laughs Maisie.

They go up the step and through the white door into an arctically cold passage, at the end of which Maisie opens another door, stands back and says, ‘Voilà.’

    Jane steps into a conservatory with windows on three sides above low white walls. Pieces of felted material in every colour imaginable hang from a line along the back wall, spill from baskets on the floor and cover every available piece of furniture – a sagging armchair, a table against the front window, an upright chair. A milk-churn log-burner glows in a corner, scenting the room with wood-smoke.

    Through the windows the land falls to a stream and then rises again through trees, with the curves of the high moor behind. Everything is snowy, tinted apricot by the setting sun.

    ‘Oh,’ breathes Jane. ‘It’s beautiful.’

    ‘Yes,’ says Maisie. ‘I’m very lucky.’

    She takes a couple of logs from yet another basket and throws them into the burner, which flares into life.

    ‘Sit down,’ she says, clearing the armchair by dumping the piles of material on to the floor.

    Jane sinks into the chair. It has faded-blue loose covers and a shape that speaks of generations of slumped humans.

    Maisie sits on the upright chair.

    ‘What, er, what sort of art do you do?’ asks Jane.

    Art – painting – is something about which she knows next to nothing. Her ignorance embarrasses her.

    ‘I shrink old woollen jumpers in the washing machine and then make them into tapestries,’ says Maisie.

    ‘Oh my goodness,’ says Jane. ‘That sounds like so much fun.’   

    ‘It is,’ smiles Maisie.

    ‘And have you always done that?’

    ‘Oh no,’ says Maisie. ‘I used to be an art teacher. I took early retirement.’

    ‘And what does Tom think about your art?’

    Jane found it hard to imagine a woodsman and an artist having anything in common, except perhaps solitude.

    ‘Well, I was already an artist when we met so he must be OK with it.’

    ‘Oh,’ says Jane, confused.

    ‘Yes,’ continues Maisie. ‘I was in my late-fifties when we married. He’s younger than me.’

    ‘I see,’ says Jane, impressed.

     They carry on talking as the sun sinks behind the hills and the sky turns cobalt.

    Maisie tells Jane about her son and her previous life as a single mother.

    She explains how the tapestries started as a hobby, a way to use up old clothes and an excuse for exploring charity shops. How they began to be snapped up by rich people in large old houses which needed heavy hangings to block draughts. And how eventually the tapestries paid for the room they were sitting in.

    Perhaps it’s something about the strangeness of the day, but Jane’s happy talking to this woman. All her usual reservations about tête-à-têtes have vanished.

    Just as they did with Sharon, she remembers.

    And remembering Sharon makes Jane remember everything Sharon said about destiny and life-plans.

    And remembering that makes her less ashamed of her behaviour over the last few days and weeks.

    And more optimistic.

    She’s on the way to somewhere, even if she doesn’t know what that somewhere is yet and even if she’s going about it in a mad way.

    And if Maisie can start a new life in her fifties, then so can she.

A cacophony of ecstatic barking breaks out in the kitchen.

    ‘That’ll be Tom,’ says Maisie. ‘Come and meet him.’

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The Banker's Niece 31: The chat show

1990

‘What a tosser,’ said Hugh. ‘Look at him. Hair down to his collar, velvet jacket, lace on his shirt. Who does he think he is? Mr Darcy?’

    Jane paused in her chopping and glanced from her kitchen to the sofa where Hugh currently sprawled in front of the television. To her surprise, Terry Wogan’s twinkly face and large gut filled the screen. She wouldn’t have thought chat-shows were Hugh’s thing at all. He usually watched sport.

    ‘So tell me how it all started,’ said Wogan. ‘What set you on the road to fame and fortune?’

    The interviewee laughed and the blood rushed to Jane’s head. Oh no. Not again.

    ‘I think you know the answer to that,’ said the interviewee.

    He had his arm along the back of Wogan’s sofa, behind some blonde in a leather skirt and six-inch heels.

    ‘Tell us once more,’ said Wogan, ‘for the sake of those of us who mightn’t have heard about you.’

    The audience laughed this time.

    ‘I was on the rebound,’ recited the young man. ‘I had to throw myself into something and I’d always loved music so –’

    ‘You mean to say some woman gave you the push? I can’t believe it,’ interrupted the blonde.

    Jane wasn’t sure whether she was being sarcastic or not.

    ‘Afraid so.’ A shadow passed over the musician’s face. ‘Well sort of.’

    ‘Loser,’ said Hugh.

    Jane tightened her grip on the handle of her knife.

    ‘But you’ve not done too badly since then,’ said the jovial Wogan, ‘with the auld cheek-to-cheek, with the auld ladies . . . ’

    ‘Old and not so old,’ said a voice from the other end of the sofa.

    It was one of those new-style comedians. Jane couldn’t remember his name but she remembered seeing him on ‘Saturday Live’.

    ‘I s’pose not,’ said the musician.

    He sounded tired.

    ‘No wedding bells though,’ persisted Wogan in his teasing way. ‘None of them has ever got you down the aisle.’

    ‘No,’ said the interviewee shortly.

    ‘Oooh,’ said the comedian. ‘There’s a story there.’

    ‘But enough of all that,’ said Wogan, obviously realising he wasn’t achieving anything with that line of questioning. ‘Tell me what the band’s up to these days. Tell me about the new album, Too close to the sun . . .’

    Hugh muted the television and swivelled to look at Jane.

    ‘There you have a classic example of style over substance,’ he said waving the remote control to emphasise his point. ‘That man has no talent whatsoever. All he does is flash his hips and his hair.’

     She’d tried so hard to get it right this time - right background, right education, right amount of money, right height, right age, reasonably good-looking – so why, in that particular minute, did she find Hugh so utterly loathsome? Why did she want to seize his head and batter it against the wall?

    ‘And – what - talent - do - you - have?’ she asked slowly and deliberately, engine racing, foot hard on the brake.

    ‘Me?’ said Hugh, sounding surprised. ‘I have qualifications. I work at something real. I have a good job.’

    ‘As a lawyer in a multinational corporation,’ she exclaimed. ‘What good did that ever do the world?’

    ‘But I earn good money - ’ His face changed. She wondered how she’d ever thought him even reasonably good-looking.  ‘- money which you’re only too happy to let me spend on you.’

    That was it. She released the brake.

    ‘I have my own job,’ she hissed. ‘I pay my way. I’ve never asked you for anything. And whose flat are you in at the moment? Whose sofa are you sitting on? Whose television are you watching? Whose lager are you drinking? Whose food are you about to eat?’

    Hugh stood up, shaking his legs in order to straighten his trousers. ‘Well if that’s how you feel, perhaps I’d better go.’

    ‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘Perhaps you’d better.’

    Bother, she thought, as he slammed the door behind him. There goes another one.

  

31 December 1999

Jane sat on her sofa in her new pink fleece dressing-gown and fluffy pink bedsocks, reporter’s notebook and pencil beside her. Her radio-controlled wall-clock (accurate to the millisecond, an ironic present from a friend who knew about Jane's love-hate relationship with time-keeping) showed two minutes to midnight. Periodic firework bangs as well as loud roars from the streets below reminded her how glad she was that she had elected to spend the occasion at home alone.

    She could have joined in, of course she could. She could have gone out with a group of friends and mingled with the revellers outside. She could have travelled to Sussex and stayed with Lucy and Ollie and their three lovely children (and dog) and celebrated en famille. She could even have gone to Kent and attended one of her parents’ ghastly parties.

    But she hadn’t done any of that.

    It wasn’t that she didn’t like New Year festivities. Usually she welcomed them as a way to stave off the depression that came with the thought that while the year was about to be new she was the same old disaster and another year nearer to death. And it wasn’t that New Year was ‘just a number’ as the Scrooges said. It was far from that, as she well knew from things that had happened to her. And especially so this time round.

    Perhaps she was being masochistic, as was her wont according to some of her friends, but just for once, instead of avoiding the problem, she wanted to have a good hard look at her life, past, present and yet-to-come. This calendrical event was too important to waste.

    Hence the notebook, in which she planned to write down her resolutions for 2000 - a new year, a new century and a new millennium.

Anyway, she loved her flat. She treasured every moment she got to spend in it. Why should she go out?

    When she first returned to London twenty years ago (Oh God, was it really that long?), she stayed with Fee who’d returned from New Zealand resolved not to break up her lover’s family and had hooked up with another businessman – a single one this time. They were in the process of moving to the country ready for the appearance in four months of their first child, so Jane didn’t stay with them for long. As soon as she’d acquired a job, she found somewhere to rent.

    It was horrible. A damp dark basement in a seedy area where gangs of drunken men rampaged past her windows at night.

    Eight years later, her father – obviously resigned at last to the fact that some rich young man was not going to take her off his hands – offered her some money with which to buy a place of her own.   

    By then she’d risen from lowly editorial assistant to lofty commissioning editor with a good salary so she used her father’s money for a deposit and – much to his disapproval – took out a mortgage.

    She only hesitated for a moment before taking the money from her father. She hadn’t asked for it; it had been freely offered. Why shouldn’t she make the most of her advantages? To refuse would have been churlish, and made her relationship with her parents worse than it already was.

    And as soon as she stepped into her new flat, it was nothing to do with her father any more. It was hers.

    On the third floor and created from a former industrial building in the up-and-coming area of Clerkenwell, it was light, spacious, safe and centrally located. The kitchen, compact but well fitted out, opened to a sweeping sitting and dining area with balcony - perfect for entertaining (if she wanted to do any) or for spreading herself of an evening, reading and contemplating the view of London's skyline. She almost felt settled.

    And now here she was eleven years later.

A violent explosion shook the building and Jane looked at the clock again. Midnight. The witching hour. She picked up her pencil.

Resolution number one. She would not get angry with her parents – and then bottle up her feelings because she suspected that in any argument she would come off worst. She would at least try to express her point of view, even if she sounded like a two-year-old in a tantrum.

Resolution number two. (She suspected that this was connected to resolution number one, but had yet to find out.) She would do something about her migraines, even if that something involved the dreaded ‘complementary’ therapies. She had no choice about this as the drugs weren’t working any more and the migraines were starting to intrude.

Resolution number three. She would stop having meaningless relationships with men. Now she was in her mid-forties it was unseemly, and in any case she might finally have realised that she preferred her own company. She was swayed by pressure from friends and family who saw coupledom as normal. She liked the initial stages of relationships, the ‘being in love’ (whatever that meant), when deep down she knew she had no intention of making any of them permanent and that wasn’t kind. Men were an addiction, a habit she had to break.

Resolution number four. This was the one she’d been dreading.  

    She would not search for him in the media. She would not hunt out scraps of news, or the sound of his voice, or the sight of his face. What had started some ten years ago as a way to protect herself from random encounters had become an obsession.

    More than that. She would deliberately avoid all radio and television programmes or print publications in which he was likely to appear, even if that cut her off from a large portion of modern popular culture.

    She had to excise him from her life.

    It was her only hope of a fulfilling future.

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