The Banker's Niece: EPILOGUE

SPOILER ALERT

Below is the ending of a novel of mine that I've been posting on one of my other blogs, 'Mad Englishwoman and Dog'.

Don't scroll down to the Epilogue if you're interested in reading the rest of the novel. Instead, click here.

Rick rocks his fans

The rock-singer, Mr Rick Rockford, 61, who four months ago astonished his fans by announcing his engagement, has left them floundering again with a spur-of-the-moment marriage – to a different woman.

    Notorious for his turbulent romantic history and high-profile girlfriends, Rockford’s latest choice is retired book editor, Ms Jane Anstiss, 60, with whom he claims to have had a relationship in his twenties.

    ‘For a variety of reasons Jane and I parted thirty-five years ago, but then in April she came back into my life and we realised that our feelings for each other hadn't changed,’ said Rockford yesterday.

    And what of the other woman?

   ‘It wasn’t working out between Chris and me,’ he explained. ‘She gave us her full blessing and will, I hope, always be a friend to Jane and me.’

The wedding, which took place at the weekend in the isolated part of Devon where Mr Rockford now lives, was a private affair, attended only by friends of the bride Mr William Davenport (former husband of celebrity barrister Arabella Sotheby, and son of one-time ‘it-girl’ Lady Lavinia Davenport née Balfour and General Sir William Davenport GCB CBE ADC) and his fiancée Ms Samantha Fletcher.

    The best ‘man’ was none other than Dr Christine Beckford, the woman to whom Rockford was previously engaged.

These upsets are the latest in a string of surprises that the singer has sprung on his loyal public.

    In February he announced that he had secretly retired from his band Minotaur half a year earlier in order to concentrate on writing music. Only a week after this announcement came the news that he had been involved in a serious car accident. This led to his spending six weeks in hospital, a period which came to an end just a couple of months before his wedding.

The couple are however full of plans.

    Says Rockford: ‘My wife is a writer so I’m building a study for her, a room with a view. We may travel as Jane has always had a yen to visit Australia. And at some time in the future, we plan to adopt a dog - a rescue animal, something older that needs a home, like Jane and me.'

One can only hope that the marriage endures.

Jane’s first instinct is to crush the cutting into a ball and chuck it into the recycling bin. She can’t bear the thought of people picking over her life. But then she realises that she needs to take it back with her and show it to Rick because it came from William and Sam and they might ask him about it. So she folds it and slips it into her bag.  At least it’ll give him a laugh. And it’ll make a change for him to star in a traditional broadsheet like the Daily Messenger instead the usual tabloid rags. Fame indeed!

    She takes a look round her cottage. She’s managed she thinks to remove everything personal while leaving essential furniture and kitchen equipment for whatever tenants William and Sam decide to fill it with – whether farmhands, holidaymakers or people attending the painting and photography courses they have planned. Or indeed anyone else. The couple’s plans change by the week – icecream making, going organic, farm holidays for city children, glamping.
    She's pleased to leave her house in such good hands and to help the two of them in their new ventures. She has no doubt they will buy the cottage from her as their plans develop but they don't have the money at the moment so she's letting them rent it from her instead. It suits her too as she doesn't want to have to think right now about reinvesting the proceeds of a sale. She has far too many other things going on, such as helping Rick with the conversion of the farmhouse and outbuildings, as well as trying to write. Not to mention being married!

    What a profound effect Sam has had on William and it’s great to see him so enthused. She wonders though how Henry will cope when Sam makes the inevitable move away from Courtney Press to full- time involvement in Stockland Farm Inc. According to Sam and from Jane's own observations when meeting Lauren for lunch, Lauren is now ruling the editorial department with an iron fist (and no velvet glove) so perhaps Henry could promote her yet again.

    Anyway, it's not her worry and she has one job still to do.

    She picks a dusty brown folder off the kitchen table and takes it out with her on to the terrace where she’s placed ready some matches and an old kettle barbecue she found in the shed.

    Midsummer, midday. It’s strange to think it’s only a year almost to the hour since she first saw this place and fell in love with it, and strange to have a fire at such a time. Needs must however. It’s something both Theresa and Sharon have urged Jane to do – in Sharon’s case during the recent telephone calls Jane has made to her psychic friend in order to let her know that all her predictions have come true (grr).

    She found the folder in the bottom of her desk when she was clearing the house. She’d forgotten it was there. She’d forgotten that in that desperate confused time nearly forty years ago she’d bundled the four letters into the folder and slid the folder into a drawer underneath all the other items she didn’t know what to do with.

    Why did she keep them? Did she know even then that the case was not closed, that one day she would have to reopen it and deal with it?

    Quickly, without thinking too much about it, she empties the papers into the barbecue and sets light to them.

    The brittle yellow pages catch immediately. Orange flames shoot up and Jane has a moment of panic, wondering if the fire is safe with all the dry countryside around. Thankfully the flames are gone as quickly as they arrived and soon the sheets are nothing but a pile of black flakes with orange rippling around their edges.

    Jane bashes the flakes with a handy stick and when they’re well and truly dead lifts the barbecue. She staggers out of the garden and across the track with her awkward load, and tips the ashes into the hedge. Some float off into the sparkling blue. Some land in the undergrowth and vanish.

    They’re gone. Her parents’ letters are gone. She doesn’t have to read them ever again. It's over.
    She feels as if she’s been let out of an iron lung.

  

One last check of the place and she’s ready to go.

    ‘Goodbye little house,’ she says as she pulls the front door shut behind her. ‘Goodbye and thank you for everything.’

Back to Mad

The mad Englishwoman and her dog are out and about again so that’s where you’ll find me at the moment (‘Mad Englishwoman and Dog’).

Chilli jam - extra ingredient

Please note that I forgot to include the following ingredient in the Chilli jam recipe in the previous post:

400g tinned/cartoned tomatoes, chopped.

You can tell I'm an amateur at this cooking lark . . .

See also the new note in the previous post about using fresh instead of tinned tomatoes.

Chilli jam

The final draft of the novel is not going too badly. Even though a lot of it appears not at all good to me at the moment I know now (thanks to Agatha Christie and my own experience) that it may not seem so bad when I come back to it later. In any case, it doesn’t matter. There’s a limit to what I can do with this piece of work. I’ll finish it and move to something else which will I hope be better due to the experience I’ve gained. (Well, that’s today’s wisdom anyway.)

I’ve taken the day off from the novel today in order to prepare for visitors tomorrow. However, as soon as I take the pressure off one creative project, others arrive to fill the void. I have an idea for both a blog post and some sewing (alterations to a top I no longer wear). Much more fun than making beds, washing-up and food shopping. I’m also inspired by some comments on my blogs (it’s amazing what encouragement will do) and by the mouth-watering What’s cooking? blog.

I like eating and I believe firmly in the importance of good food (by which I mean food that’s delicious and healthy) but I’m not a keen cook. I’d rather be outside in my spare time or doing anything connected with clothes (washing, ironing, mending, altering, buying, making). So I always adapt recipes to make them simpler and to use ingredients I already have in the cupboard.

Here is my recipe for chilli jam – as it stands at the moment. I’ve been making a lot recently because with the hot weather we’ve been having a lot of barbecues (and it really perks up vegetarian burgers) and because I have chillies to use up. Last year I had a glut of them in my new greenhouse and the year before some friends gave me lots from their greenhouse (thank you Cathy and Alan). I store them in the freezer and chop them from almost frozen – it’s much much easier than drying them. (Another friend gave me that tip. Thank you Jo.)

I found the original on the BBC Good Food website but have doubled the chillies, left out a couple of inessentials and nearly halved the sugar. I think it could use more chillies still, but it’s difficult to lay down the law as their strength varies. (Mine are a mixture of black, red, orange, yellow and green.) I may even reduce the sugar further in future. I sterilise the jars and lids (and jam funnel and ladle/spoon) by putting them through the dishwasher (even if they’ve come out of the cupboard clean) and then drying and warming them in a low oven.

I’m sure you could use fresh tomatoes instead of tinned ones. I haven’t tried it myself with this recipe but in my experience with other recipes you need more fresh than tinned tomatoes as they are less concentrated. You then need to boil them down to reduce the liquid.

 

Chilli jam

50g chillies

8 red peppers (or a mixture of red and orange)

250ml red (or white) wine vinegar

400g golden (unrefined) caster sugar

400g tinned/cartoned tomatoes

Roughly chop tomatoes if necessary. Chop peppers and chillies (with seeds) very small by hand or whizz them in a food processor. Put in a large saucepan with the sugar and the vinegar and the tomatoes. Bring the mixture to the boil, skim off any scum, then leave it to simmer with lid off for about 50 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Turn up the heat and boil for 10 minutes stirring frequently. Cool slightly and transfer to jars. (It doesn’t make much – 3 or 4 small/340g jars.)

Keep opened jars in the fridge

(The ingredient and instructions in bold type have been added since the recipe was first published here. Sorry!)

Should you die first

I’ve mentioned before my poetic aunt, Annabelle Despard, but I’m going to mention her again because one of her poems has been chosen by the Southbank Centre in London as one of the 50 best love poems of the last 50 years. It’s called ‘Should you die first’ and is to be found in her poetry collection Dressed in Water (Dionysia Press 2011) and in the anthology Being Human (Bloodaxe 2011).

The poems will be read out at the Southbank Centre on 20 July. You can read Annabelle’s poem on the Dionysia website, and about the selection in the Guardian of 2 July.

The list includes poems from 30 different countries. Annabelle, like my mother, is half Norwegian. She lives in Norway and writes her poems in both English and Norwegian.

I’m very proud of her.

My struggle

As you may have gathered from my other blog, Frog and I have been on holiday. Frog devours books while we’re away – at least one a day – but I like to give my brain a rest. I spend a lot of time staring into space, relishing the peace.

One book I did read however is the above (A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard). It’s the first in a series of six (called 'My Struggle'), which has caused a sensation all over the world. Even before I’d heard about the series, I’d picked up number 3 in the bookshop almost by accident (being part-Norwegian myself, I'm interested in anything Norwegian which this is) and been riveted by the opening paragraph.

The book is an extraordinary mixture of novel, memoir and philosophical treatise, at times boring and at times brilliant. I kept finding myself folding down corners of pages, because the author had said something so perfect that I didn’t want to forget it. (Frog would be horrified. He treats books with the greatest respect. I, on the other hand, like books to look lived in. Funnily enough, we’re the other way round when it comes to houses and clothes.)

One paragraph in particular expressed exactly what I feel all the time but have never had the courage to articulate to anyone but Frog. Here it is.

I have always had a great need for solitude. I require huge swathes of loneliness, and when I do not have it, which has been the case for the last five years, my frustration can sometimes become almost panicked, or aggressive. And when what has kept me going for the whole of my adult life, the ambition to write something exceptional one day, is threatened in this way my one thought, which gnaws at me like a rat, is that I have to escape. Time is slipping away from me, running through my fingers like sand while I . . .  do what? Clean floors, wash clothes, make dinner, wash up, go shopping . . .

Next week, when we have sorted ourselves out after the holiday, I intend to get back to The Novel. Wish me luck.