by Pamela Evans
‘Thanks, Jane.’
‘A pleasure.’
They sat in her living room with their coffee by the open french doors.
‘I take it Kevin has your permission to camp out tonight?’
Giles nodded.
‘Actually, while the kids are occupied and we’re on our own, I’ve got something I want to say to you, something I’ve been thinking about for a while and have finally come to a decision about.’
Her heart pounded. On several occasions lately she’d felt as though their relationship was about to change course. A week or so ago when they’d all gone ice-skating at Richmond Ice Rink, she’d ended up on her bottom on the ice. Giles had helped her up and they’d laughed so much and the physical vibrations between them had been so strong, she’d expected something to happen then. But the moment had passed as had many other similar ones. They were on the verge of a love affair, though, she was sure of it.
‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense, then?’ urged Jane excitedly.
‘I’m moving away,’ he said.
She was too stunned to speak, his words affecting her like a physical assault.
‘Moving away?’ she muttered at last, staring at him in disbelief.
‘That’s right,’ said Giles in a controlled manner. ‘I’m putting the cottage up for sale.’
‘But why?’
‘Too many memories for me here,’ he explained. ‘Lena is everywhere in the cottage. It’s like living with her ghost.’
‘Well, I must say, I’m surprised at your decision,’ Jane said. ‘I did think you might want to move away immediately after she died. But when you didn’t, I thought you’d decided to stay on indefinitely?’
‘I had. I thought I could cope. But Lena’s presence is still so strong! I can hear her laughing and talking about the place, and the pain of losing her is unbearable. Just when I think I’m over it, it all comes back.’
‘I see,’ said Jane dully.
‘I think I need a new start somewhere else,’ Giles explained. ‘And there’s a job going in Sussex. If I don’t get that one there’ll be others around the country. I really need to get away.’
‘I’ll miss you terribly, Giles.’
He stared fixedly into his coffee mug, avoiding her eyes.
‘Yes, I shall miss you too.’ There was no mention of their seeing each other after his move, she noticed. It was as though he wanted to make a clean break. ‘But I have to move on.’
‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’ she said desperately. ‘I mean, you have lots of friends here. It won’t be easy starting afresh somewhere else.’
‘I have to give it a try,’ he insisted.
‘Does Kevin know?’
‘Not yet.’
‘He’ll be devastated,’ said Jane with a sad shake of the head. ‘So will Davey.’
‘Yes . . . I know.’
‘Oh, Giles, please reconsider? For Kevin’s sake, if not your own,’ she urged him impulsively. ‘He’s already lost his mother, don’t make him lose his friends as well.’
‘I have to do what I think is right for both of us in the long term,’ he said gravely. ‘People have far worse things to cope with than moving to a new area. Children are very adaptable.’
It struck Jane in that moment that she was going to have to fight to keep Giles. Being forced to imagine life without him had made her realise just how deeply she cared for him. She was sure he had begun to fall in love with her, too. He would probably admit it to himself in due course anyway, but now that things had taken such an unexpected turn, she wasn’t prepared to wait and run the risk of losing him. Immediate action was definitely called for.
‘Oh, well, I suppose you know your own business best,’ she said mildly.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Changing the subject,’ she said casually, ‘do you fancy joining me for a spot of supper tonight? After we’ve settled the boys in the tent and Pip has gone to bed?’
‘I’d like that, Jane,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble with the meal tonight,’ said Giles that evening as he and Jane sat at the candlelit table near the window in her living room, drinking wine and contemplating the lamb with redcurrant sauce that she had cooked for them. There was a small bowl of sweet peas from the garden in the centre of the table, their scent adding to the romantic atmosphere. ‘And you’re looking absolutely stunning.’
‘Thank you, Giles,’ she said, smiling and making him aware of how gorgeous she looked in her summery trouser suit in pale green, with her hair shining and her face enhanced with a touch of make-up.
‘So what’s the special occasion?’ he enquired, because eating together was usually a casual affair. He deliberately made the tone of his next comment light because his awareness of her as a woman had been troubling him lately and he was anxious to defuse the situation. ‘Are you planning to seduce me?’
If that was what it took, that was what she would do. But she said in a frivolous manner, ‘What an old-fashioned word.’
‘I’m an old-fashioned man.’
She cast an approving eye over Giles’s tanned face which had a boyishness to it that belied his thirty-seven years. His thick wavy hair was neatly layered, his white open-necked shirt sitting well on his muscular frame.
‘Conventional rather than old-fashioned, I’d say,’ remarked Jane.
‘That makes me sound really boring.’
‘It certainly wasn’t meant to.’ Despite the banter, there was an underlying seriousness in the atmosphere. ‘But conventional isn’t a word normally associated with sudden impulses, is it?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that I don’t think you want to move away from Tug Lane any more than I want you to go,’ she said.
‘We’ll see each other from time to time,’ he said evasively, and without a suggestion of any sort of commitment. ‘The boys won’t lose touch. I know you’re worried about their being split up.’
‘We’ve been so happy this last few months, Giles, you and me and the children,’ she said. ‘Why throw it all away?’
‘I’ve told you why I have to go.’
‘I don’t believe that’s the real reason you feel you have to leave.’
He looked at her. She was so lovely with the candle-light shining on her face, her lips full and pink, the warmth in her eyes embracing him. His heart turned over.
‘You don’t?’
‘No. I think you’re running away from me, not the cottage and all its memories of Lena.’
‘Why on earth would I do that?’ he asked, but she could tell by the guarded look in his eyes that she was right.
‘Because you’re falling in love with me, Giles, that’s why.’
‘Oh, so now we have to add mindreading to your many talents, do we?’ he said tartly.
On impulse, she reached across the table and took his hand.
‘Please don’t be angry, Giles. The reason I believe this to be true is because I’m in love with you too,’ she said. ‘And like you, I feel guilty about it . . . because of Lena.’
He looked at her gravely, but there was tenderness in his eyes.
‘Oh, Jane. It wouldn’t be right,’ he said in a tortured voice, clutching her hand in both of his. ‘Not you and me. I’d feel as though I was being unfaithful to Lena.’
‘In a few months’ time, Lena will have been dead for two years,’ she pointed out. ‘Do you really think she wouldn’t want you to be happy with someone else?’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ he said. ‘And if it was anyone else, it would be different. But you and me . . . I mean, you and Lena were such good friends. It just feels so wrong, like a betrayal.’
She removed her hand and looked at him solemnly, sipping her wine.
‘Perhaps you need more time?’
He didn’t reply but stared into his wine glass, running his fingers idly around the rim.
‘I’m prepared to wait for as long as it takes
for you to feel able to accept another woman into your life. But I can’t lose you, Giles. You’re far too precious to me.’
‘Jane . . .’
‘I’d offer to move with you to Sussex or wherever you go if I thought it would help. But moving away won’t solve anything for you,’ she said. ‘Lena will always be in your thoughts, wherever you go and whoever you are with. You have to stop feeling guilty for being happy. She’s gone, Giles.’
It hurt to see him wince but facts had to be faced.
‘No one will ever take Lena’s place in your heart . . . not me, not anybody,’ she said. ‘I know that and I wouldn’t even try. But I also know that something special has grown between us.’
‘I can’t deny it,’ he said, sipping his wine. ‘And the guilt has been awful.’
‘I know,’ she said gently, looking into his eyes. ‘But as harsh and cliched as it may sound, life does have to go on for you without Lena.’
‘I’m not sure if I’m ready for another relationship yet,’ he confessed, his shandy-brown eyes full of doubt. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to you if I didn’t feel sure . . . didn’t feel able fully to commit myself.’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ she said. ‘I know I’ve been forward in bringing things out into the open. But when you said you were selling up, I knew I had to speak up or risk losing you. Life’s too short for pride and reticence, Giles.’ She swallowed hard, emotion welling up inside her. ‘We both know just how short it can be.’
‘Yes.’
The atmosphere was highly charged. Jane could feel his desire for her drawing her towards him. But she could still sense uncertainty.
‘I want you, Giles,’ she whispered. ‘Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here . . .’
A scream from outside startled them, shattering the mood completely.
‘The boys!’ they gasped in unison.
They were on their feet and heading for the back door when Kevin burst through it, ashen-faced and trembling.
‘Come quickly. Davey’s cut his hand badly . . . his finger’s hanging off,’ he told them with a sob in his voice.
Kevin’s description of the accident was a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one. The finger was not actually severed but his hand was quite badly cut - by a corned beef tin opened by torchlight. Giles and Jane found him sitting on the ground in the tent, looking as though he was about to pass out, with a handkerchief clutched to his hand, soaked with blood.
Giles took charge of the situation immediately, getting the trembling boy into the house and tying a tourniquet around his hand. Jane was busy calming Kevin and Pip who had been woken by the commotion and come downstairs in a fright. She was alarmed by the sight of so much blood.
‘I’ll take him to Casualty to get it seen to properly,’ said Giles.
‘I’ll go,’ offered Jane.
‘No, you stay here with Pip and Kevin,’ he said. ‘I won’t be long.’
And before she could say another word he was carrying Davey out of the house to his car, leaving Jane to comfort Kevin who was in a state of shock and crying silently. Apparently the corned beef had been appropriated from his father’s larder without Giles’s knowledge.
It was turned midnight by the time all the children were finally settled down and Jane and Giles flopped into armchairs in her living room to unwind with a glass of wine and some sandwiches, to make up for the meal that hadn’t been eaten. Kevin had tried to keep awake for his father and Davey to get home from the hospital but had been so sleepy, Jane had made up a bed for him in Davey’s room.
‘So, we read the Riot Act to the boys in a big way tomorrow . . . yes?’ said Giles.
Jane nodded.
‘But I do think they’ve learned their lesson,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they’ll be opening any more tins for the time being.’
‘Neither do I,’ agreed Giles. ‘They were both scared to death of all that blood.’
‘So was I,’ sighed Jane. ‘Thank goodness it wasn’t worse. I thought Davey would have to have more than a couple of stitches.’
‘He told me he was sorry a dozen times at the hospital.’
‘Kevin did the same to me.’
‘If they wanted corned beef, why didn’t they ask and we’d have opened the tin for them?’
‘They obviously thought it would be more fun to do it themselves . . . more grown-up. They knew we wouldn’t let them take the tin out to the tent and open it by torchlight.’
‘Little horrors!’
‘They never get to spend the whole night in that tent, do they?’ she said. ‘It’s either too cold or too damp, they hear noises or see spiders . . . something always happens.’
‘Not normally as dramatic as this, though.’
‘No. Thank God.’
They ate their supper in companionable silence until Jane said, ‘So much for my attempt at a romantic interlude. ’
Giles couldn’t help but smile.
‘Kids certainly have a rotten sense of timing,’ he said.
‘Never a dull moment with our lot, that’s for sure,’ she laughed.
‘You can say that again,’ he said, thinking of all the incidents they had shared over the years, some happy, some worrying like tonight. He put his plate down on the coffee table and looked at her tenderly. ‘How can I possibly move away from you, Jane?’
‘I’m hoping you’ll find it impossible.’
‘Kevin and I will die of boredom without you lot next-door. ’
‘So . . . you’ll be staying, then?’ she said with a broad smile.
For reply, he stood up and opened his arms to her.
‘Come here,’ he said.
It was very much later when Giles crept across the moonlit garden and through the gap in the fence to his own cottage.
Summer became a time of intense pleasure and clandestine intimacy as Jane and Giles’s love affair blossomed. Because Giles was a schoolteacher and Jane still technically married, they decided that discretion was essential, for the time being anyway. Despite modern attitudes to these things, many people still looked to teachers to set an example, not least the headmaster of Giles’s school who held strict ideas about sexual morality and would be very upset indeed to discover that his games master was having an affair with a married woman.
Next year, when Mick had not been heard of for seven years, he would be presumed dead so far as the law was concerned and Jane could officially apply to remarry. Until the time when they could make definite plans to marry, they deemed it wise to keep their love a secret, though it wasn’t easy. Brimming with happiness, Jane wanted the world to know.
Ostensibly they were two lone parents who spent time together because of their children. They went on family outings - Sunday trips to the seaside and walking in Richmond Park or by the river. They picnicked at Runnymede, took the children ice skating and swimming at the baths, on river trips and sightseeing in London now that they were old enough to take an intelligent interest in their heritage. Like a real family it wasn’t all fun and laughter. There were the inevitable squabbles between the children and Jane and Giles didn’t always see eye to eye.
But beneath the surface of this casual matiness, love grew and passion simmered. People seeing Jane and Giles together couldn’t guess how much they longed to be alone. Only when the children were in bed at night did they steal a few precious, intimate moments. No one ever saw Giles slipping through the gap in the fence at frequent intervals to check on Kevin.
Jane felt positively reborn, her life transformed. She faced each day with renewed energy, enjoying her work all the more for having something special to look forward to outside it. Even the domestic chores didn’t seem so tedious in her new happiness. She had thought she could never love anyone but Mick. Now she knew she hadn’t known the meaning of the word until Giles had become her lover.
Loving Mick had meant domination and servitude, albeit she hadn’t objected at the time. Loving Giles meant being loved and cherished but not restricted, e
ither physically or mentally. They were equally matched, their relationship well-balanced. Jane had developed so much as a person the last few years, she felt no embarrassment about taking the sexual initiative with Giles, or refusing if she wasn’t in the mood, something she would never have dared to do with Mick.
It wasn’t all canoodling, though, even when she and Giles were alone. The other side of their relationship could get quite sparky at times, especially when they were discussing current affairs. Whether they were debating the troubles in Northern Ireland or the expulsion of Asians from Uganda to Britain by General Idi Amin, Jane’s views were taken seriously by him even though they sometimes got quite heated with each other. Mick had always been too busy making money to take any interest in anything outside his own personal ambitions, so this kind of discussion was new to her.
With Mick she had been limited and narrow. Now she fully embraced the world around her, enjoying the colour and richness of living life to the full. She sometimes thought how sad it was that Mick had never taken time to smell the flowers.
She and Giles took a keen interest in each other’s work. Giles’s job came especially into focus when school started in September because both Davey and Kevin would be candidates for selection to the Grammar School during this coming school year.
‘Will you feel awkward having the boys at your school, if they do get in?’ asked Jane one autumn evening as they sat together by the fire when the children were in bed and asleep.
‘I won’t but I’m sure Kevin will.’
‘Because it’ll make him seem different from the others?’
‘Exactly. About the last thing a schoolboy wants around him at school is a beady parental eye.’
‘Still it’s quite a big school, you might not see much of him.’
‘There is that. But I shall have to make sure that I treat him, and Davey for that matter, the same as any other pupil.’
‘Any hint of favouritism would be fatal.’
‘I’ll say it would.’ He seemed thoughtful. ‘But here I am, talking about Davey as though he’s my own son, the same as Kevin.’