Near And Dear

by Pamela Evans

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘There have been so many changes lately.’

  Marie nodded.

  ‘You’ve proved us all wrong about this place anyway,’ she said. ‘When you moved in here in the depths of winter, I never dreamed that by the summer we’d all be sitting in a civilised garden with a lawn and flower beds.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ Jane admitted. ‘Though I always knew the cottage was right for us.’

  ‘It’s almost like having a detached house, isn’t it?’ remarked Marie, looking towards the adjoining cottage. ‘With next-door being empty.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve been incredibly lucky,’ said Jane. ‘Davey and Pip wouldn’t have nearly so much freedom if someone were living next-door. I’d spend all my time keeping them quiet.’

  ‘Let’s hope no one moves in then.’

  ‘I notice that the “To Let” board has changed to “For Sale”,’ remarked Jane. ‘The owner has obviously given up hope of ever letting it and thinks he’ll stand more chance of finding a buyer. Some people see these old places as an investment . . . they do them up and sell them at a large profit.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s only so much you can do when you’re renting,’ Jane continued. ‘I can make my place more comfortable with carpets and furniture but as the tenant I can’t do anything much beyond painting and decorating. Whereas if you owned a cottage like this, you could make it into a little palace. Not that I could ever afford to buy this place and do anything like that, but still . . .’

  ‘Who knows what the future holds?’ said Marie. ‘The way your business is going, anything is possible.’

  ‘I’m flattered by your faith in me, but I’m a very long way from being a property owner. My biggest aim for the moment is to have a telly installed by Christmas.’ She put her finger to her lips. ‘Not a word, though. I want to surprise them.’

  ‘I’m sworn to secrecy.’

  It was very satisfying for Jane to be able to buy home comforts for the cottage and to clothe and feed the children decently. No one had been more surprised than she was by the demand for her products. She had quite literally baked her way into a full-time business and no longer went out cleaning or to do the evening shift at the factory. She now had a regular pitch at the Monday Kingston market as well as Southall on Saturdays, and was selling a wide range of cakes, though her most popular line was still the spicy apple cake. She was thinking of expanding further by trying to get her cakes into some of the small grocery shops and cafes where they did afternoon teas.

  But now the sun was sinking in the hazy blue sky. It was very still and the air was tinged with autumn, the faint scent of woodsmoke, and plump wasps buzzing lazily around the hollyhocks that grew along the dividing fence to the overgrown garden next-door. The cat whizzed down the tree and jumped on to Jane’s lap, inclining his head meaningfully. She fondled him absently, absorbing the scene around her: the children playing happily with their cousins, their uncle pushing them on the swing.

  Sorrow overwhelmed her unexpectedly as she became sharply conscious of a vital missing element in this happy family scene. Mick should be pushing his children on the swing, not Eddie. Mick should be giving his son encouragement as he embarked upon a new phase in his life as a schoolboy.

  The first anniversary of Mick’s departure had passed unmentioned but not unnoticed by Jane three months ago. Although nowadays she was too busy to dwell upon his absence unduly, she often found herself overcome by a longing to see him, to touch him, to feel his arms around her. This was one such moment.

  Inevitably, as time passed, she had become accustomed to not having him around. The children rarely mentioned him now, Davey hardly ever. Pip occasionally said she wanted her daddy but she didn’t persist. Jane sometimes thought it was probably just as well that children of that age didn’t have long memories.

  ‘A penny for them?’ said Marie, looking at her friend.

  ‘I was thinking about Mick, actually,’ confessed Jane.

  ‘Aah . . .’

  ‘He doesn’t deserve it but I still miss him,’ she said sadly. ‘Sometimes I want him so badly, I think I’ll go mad.’

  ‘You’re bound to feel like that at times.’

  ‘I can go for days without thinking about him . . . then suddenly it hits me again.’

  ‘He’ll be back.’

  ‘You don’t still believe that?’

  ‘I’m convinced of it,’ said Marie. ‘You two belong together and that’s how it will be again. I don’t know when . . . I just know it will happen.’

  Chapter Nine

  One evening in November of the following year, Ron Beach sat alone at a corner table in a pub in the seaside resort of Bognor Regis, smoking a cigarette, drinking beer and reading the newspaper. An item of news about someone called Margaret Thatcher being appointed as shadow transport minister didn’t interest him in the least. As someone who was living hand to mouth outside the system, politics was of no concern to Ron. A piece about the arrest of Bruce Reynolds, the last unapprehended Great Train Robbery suspect, leapt off the page at him though. He wondered why it made his stomach churn? Could it be that he himself was a criminal of some sort?

  Finishing his drink, he went to the bar and ordered another. If he’d had any mates he’d have stood at the bar and chatted but he didn’t know anyone well enough to do that. He had a nodding acquaintance with some of the regulars because he’d been using the pub for over two years; he even occasionally made up the numbers at darts. But he didn’t have friends. A man in his position daren’t get too pally with anyone.

  Realising, without much interest, that he ought to eat something, he bought a steak and kidney pie and took it back to the table with his drink. He could count the number of times that he’d bothered to cook for himself in his bedsit on one hand. A fried egg sandwich now and again, nothing more. Had it not been for the fact that this was his night off, he would have had a meal supplied at the hotel where he worked in the kitchen, washing up. The job was strictly casual labour, cash in hand, the only sort of employment available to someone without a P45 or National Insurance number, which he didn’t have because Ron Beach didn’t exist so far as officialdom was concerned.

  When he’d finished eating and drinking, he left the pub and walked along the seafront, a rough-looking man in a shabby duffel coat which he’d bought secondhand. He pulled up the hood against the weather, the cold wind taking his breath as it howled across the promenade. He preferred it along here out of season, though, because he felt less of a misfit without the colour and gaiety of the holiday crowds around him. Being so close to the elements soothed him too: the cutting wind on his face, the salt taste in the air, the angry sound of the sea roaring out of the darkness. It was deserted but for him, the lit windows of the big hotels shining anonymously into the bleakness, the smaller establishments having closed for the winter.

  His thoughts drifted back to the day he’d first arrived here nearly two and a half years ago. It hadn’t been winter then. It had been a beautiful summer’s evening when he’d found himself on the beach with no idea of who he was, how he’d got there or why.

  At the memory of how terrifying that blankness had initially been, his heart beat faster. He’d felt hysterical at the time, hadn’t known what to do. Stricken with panic, he’d headed for the nearest police station or hospital, whichever he came across first. But before he’d reached either, some sixth sense made him wonder if it would be wise to make himself known to the authorities, a feeling that he might be in trouble of some sort haunting him.

  So he’d gone instead to a pub and calmed himself with a good few whiskies which he paid for with the money he had found in his pocket. With enough alcohol inside him, he was able to believe that everything would come back to him after a night’s sleep.

  That first night he’d slept on the beach and although his memory hadn’t returned the next morning, he was sufficiently in control by then to deal with the situation. Inspired by his surroundi
ngs, he’d renamed himself Ron Beach, booked into the cheapest boarding house he could see and set about finding work in case his memory didn’t return before his money ran out.

  His most fruitful source of casual labour had been hotel kitchens, and garages where he’d wash cars. He’d stayed on at the boarding house until the end of the season then moved into a bedsit which gave him more privacy. Convinced that some sort of adversity lay in his unknown past, he lived in fear of being recognised.

  From time to time, he’d had flashes of memory. Hazy images of a woman and two children, and a man with dark, greying hair. Sometimes he saw a house with a Jaguar on the drive. But he couldn’t hold on to the pictures long enough to analyse them. He didn’t recognise the people but the images made him sad and frightened, and he had no idea what any of it meant.

  But now he turned off the seafront into the town and a street of Victorian houses where he rented his room. He shuffled along with his head down, a habit that came from the insecurity of a lost identity. Slowly, he made his way up the stairs to his room, the bare floorboards creaking beneath his step. He passed another tenant on the landing, a young man with a drug habit. They acknowledged each other only with a nod.

  Ron’s room was sparsely furnished with a single bed, an armchair, a wooden table and chair, and a wardrobe with a tarnished mirror. In the corner was a cracked sink, a food cupboard and a gas-ring. The floor was covered with brown linoleum and there was a rug by the gas fire which was so stained the pattern was barely distinguishable.

  The room was so cold he was shivering violently as he held a match to the gas fire, then shambled about the room with his coat on. When he eventually took it off and laid it on the bed as an extra blanket, he caught sight of himself in the wardrobe mirror and was startled to see himself smiling and wearing smart clothes. He narrowed his eyes at the distorted reflection, trying to hold the image in his mind, guessing it was a flashback to how he had once been rather than just wishful thinking.

  As the illusion faded, Ron stared gloomily at himself as he really was: a man with dark eyes and black hair which he cut himself with scissors to save the cost of a barber, a pathetic figure wearing a shapeless old jumper and trousers he’d bought from a junk stall. He didn’t know who he was but instinct told him that he wasn’t meant to be a loser. He might be living in squalor now but inside he was someone of importance. A conviction of this filled him with a sense of frustration and powerlessness that sapped his strength.

  Sitting down in the armchair by the fire, he switched on the portable radio he’d bought in a secondhand shop and listened to the Pete Murray Show. He enjoyed pop music. It made him think of being at the wheel of a car somewhere, feeling good about himself.

  When his shillings ran out in the gas meter, he had a quick wash at the sink, went to the communal toilet on the floor below then came back and got into bed, to escape from his bewildering and miserable life in sleep.

  ‘So . . . you’re going to be having some next-door neighbours at last then, Mrs Parker?’ said Mrs Robinson, a formidable lady of advanced years with blue-rinsed hair and small, darting eyes who lived with her husband in the big house opposite. She had waylaid Jane one January afternoon as the latter came out of her front gate in high black boots and a short scarlet coat, on her way round the corner to the alley behind Tug Lane where she parked her car.

  ‘We are?’ said Jane in a questioning tone because she had heard nothing about anyone moving into the cottage next-door.

  ‘A young couple came to look at the property while you were out the other day,’ explained Mrs Robinson, who was generally known as a gossip. Conservatively clad in a long grey coat and heavy boots, she was clutching the handle of a basket on wheels full of shopping.

  ‘Really?’ said Jane.

  ‘Yes. They seemed very keen to go ahead. They want to do the place up, refurbish and modernise it quite substantially, apparently.’

  ‘You’re very well informed?’

  ‘I just happened to be on my way to the shops when they were coming out of the cottage,’ she explained. ‘The agent had given them the key and left them to it by all accounts. They were very pleasant . . . and really quite chatty.’

  Which roughly translated meant she had seen them arrive and lain in wait behind her net curtains ready to approach them when they emerged. Jane tried to be tolerant and remember that nosiness was better than cold indifference and that every neighbourhood had its busybody, but Mrs Robinson’s superior attitude made this very difficult. Fortunately, Jane didn’t often run into her because she usually went out the back way to her car; she hadn’t done so today only because the back path was somewhat waterlogged from this morning’s heavy rain.

  ‘Oh, well, I shall meet them in due course,’ she remarked, eager to go because she was on her way to collect the children from school.

  ‘Teachers,’ announced Mrs Robinson as Jane began to walk away.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Schoolteachers,’ she declared triumphantly. ‘They’re both schoolteachers.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Jane was already edging away. The weather was raw and penetrating and she didn’t want the children to be kept waiting at the school gate. She was taking Melanie and Roy home in the car, too, as it was so cold.

  ‘They work at the Gram . . .’

  ‘That’s interesting.’ Jane had recognised the note in the other woman’s voice, the implication being that Jane, as a deserted wife who baked cakes for a living and sold them from a market stall, should feel threatened by having members of the professional classes living next-door to her. Stifling the urge to throttle her neighbour, she arranged her features into her sweetest smile. ‘I can’t wait to meet them.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jane’s refusal to be ruffled made Mrs Robinson even more determined to make her point. ‘At least they’ll bring some respectability to the area.’

  Jane looked her straight in the eyes and said, ‘I’m really pleased to hear that.’

  Mrs Robinson was clearly disconcerted by this implied challenge to her position as Tug Lane’s arbiter of good taste. Before she could utter another word, however, Jane had bidden her a hasty farewell and was off round the corner, boots clicking on the pavement, shoulder-length hair swinging.

  Driving away in the old green Morris Traveller she’d been forced to buy for business reasons, she couldn’t pretend to be thrilled at the prospect of having schoolteachers living next-door. They were bound to be crusty and authoritative. They would want peace and quiet around them - not easily attainable with two lively youngsters in the adjoining house and garden.

  Having had no one next-door for so long, Jane and the children had become spoiled. They were bound to feel more restricted when the new people moved in because Jane was determined to be a considerate neighbour.

  Stopping at the traffic lights, she turned on the heater, thinking what a treat it was to have a car on a bitterly cold day like this, especially as she spent so much time going to and from the school now that both children were there. Transport had become essential to Jane as her business grew, especially when she began to supply shops and cafes, who expected to have the cakes delivered. This runaround was by no means new but Eddie said that the mechanics were sound and should give her a few years’ service yet.

  With the growth in output, Jane had been forced to spend money on other things too - an industrial food mixer and a second oven. As her kitchen became home to a thriving cottage industry, a telephone also became essential.

  Now that she had been in business for a year and a half, she was making a steady living. She wasn’t rich by any means but the cottage now had carpets on the floor, decent furniture and a television set. They were also able to live to a reasonable standard. That was all she had ever wanted from her business: to be able to provide for her children properly. She had never been interested in empire-building.

  She didn’t hanker after the material acquisitions it had been second nature to want when she’d been with Mick: the latest g
adget, the smartest car, the swankiest house in the road. In fact, she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to move from the cottage she adored. When she came indoors, a sense of belonging washed over her, and she believed the children had come to feel that way too.

  Inevitably her life with Mick had receded into the past. She thought about him less often now and was used to being independent and making her own decisions. Life no longer held many fears for her but she often felt lonely in a way that the children couldn’t help.

  Oh, well, you can’t have everything, she thought, smiling as she drew up outside the school just in time to see a stream of youngsters begin to pour out of the gates.

  Because of the Saturday market, Friday was a very busy day for Jane in her cottage kitchen. She was up early and had already done some baking before taking the children to school. When she got back, she worked flat out until it was time to collect them, breaking off only to have a sandwich at lunchtime and feed the cat.

  With her livelihood depending on producing a certain number of cakes, interruptions were anathema to her during these vital hours. So when the doorbell rang one Friday morning a few days later, while she was spooning mixture into tins ready for the oven and had one batch almost ready to come out and go on to cooling trays, she marched to the door with an apron worn over her jeans, in no mood for Jehovah’s Witnesses or door-to-door salesmen.

  A man stood on the doorstep. He was about thirty, she thought, tall and fresh-complexioned with brown curly hair and an athletic look about him. He was wearing a navy blue duffel coat and a blue and white striped muffler around his neck; not the usual attire of a salesman.

  ‘Hello,’ he said with a warm smile.

  ‘Hi.’ Jane’s tone was abrupt. He might very well be gorgeous but whatever he was selling, she didn’t want any.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you . . .’

  ‘I am very busy.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She removed her hand from the door handle, looking meaningfully at the sticky mess of cake mixture deposited there.