Near And Dear

by Pamela Evans

  ‘Cor, it’s coming to something when a man can’t even move in with his wife and kids without having to wait until she’s ready,’ he complained. ‘But, okay, have it your way. Just don’t keep me waiting too long ’cause I need to be with you.’ He reached across the table and put his hand on hers. ‘We’ll make a go of it, babe, you’ll see. Once we’re together again, everything will fall into place. We’re a pair, you and me.’

  There was something decidedly unwholesome about Mick’s attitude towards her. Jane got the impression he would stop at nothing to force her to do what he wanted.

  When she left the hotel later that afternoon, she was relieved to be away from him and very worried indeed about the future.

  Jane was in the kitchen cooking fish fingers and baked beans for the children’s tea when the sound of squabbling drifted in from the living room.

  ‘You touch the cat again and I’m telling Mum,’ threatened Davey.

  ‘I’m not hurting him,’ came Pip’s retort. ‘Anyway, he likes me better than he likes you.’

  ‘You mustn’t keep picking him up and carrying him around,’ said Davey. ‘He doesn’t like it.’

  ‘He does!’

  ‘Doesn’t!’

  ‘You’re stupid.’

  ‘Oh, keep quiet, you pest,’ ordered Davey. ‘Magpie’s coming on in a minute.’

  ‘I wanna watch Animal Magic on the other side,’ protested Pip.

  ‘We’re watching Magpie . . .’

  Neither of them had any after-school activities today which was unusual. When they were bored they were anathema to each other and passed the time trading insults. Usually it went straight over Jane’s head but today it made her want to scream.

  It was a week since her meeting with Mick and her nerves were in shreds. She dreaded the telephone’s ringing in case it was him. She lay awake at night worrying about what she should do. Her head was throbbing and her eyes were sore with tiredness. The children’s voices were grating on her already overstretched nervous system and it was a relief when they finally fell silent.

  But not for long. A sudden shriek pierced the air and Pip, red-faced and howling, thudded into the kitchen with Davey behind her.

  ‘He hit me, Mummy!’ the girl wailed to her mother who was busy turning fish fingers over on the grill-pan.

  ‘She hit me first,’ declared Davey.

  ‘He started it!’

  ‘Liar . . .’

  ‘Tell him, Mum.’

  ‘Tell her, Mum,’ said Davey.

  Something snapped inside Jane. She rammed the grill-pan back into place, threw the fork she’d been using down on the table and turned on them, marching them both back into the living room.

  ‘What is it with you two?’ she demanded, standing before them. ‘Why can’t you be pleasant to each other for more than five minutes at a time?’

  ‘It was him . . .’

  ‘It was her . . .’

  ‘It was both of you,’ she screamed, at such volume they both shrank back and stared at her in bewilderment because their mother didn’t normally carry on like this.

  ‘You, Davey, are eleven years old, and you, Pip, are ten,’ she said. ‘And you are both behaving like a couple of three year olds!’

  Neither said a word. United now against the enemy adult, they stood close together. Pip slipped her hand into Davey’s.

  Jane couldn’t stop herself. The words poured out as though of their own volition.

  ‘As if I don’t have enough on my mind, you two have to give me trouble I can do without.’ She put her hand to her aching head. ‘I’ve just about had enough, do you hear . . . enough! If you’re going to behave like babies, I shall have to treat you like babies and put you to bed . . . now.’

  They stared at her in silence. The threat of an early bedtime was the ultimate deterrent.

  ‘So if I hear so much as one more cross word pass between you, that is what I’ll do,’ she roared. ‘Is that clear?’

  They stood trembling before her.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ said Pip, eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘We won’t argue again,’ said Davey, looking pale and worried.

  All Jane’s anger drained away, leaving her remorseful and near to tears herself. They had been troublesome but they hadn’t deserved quite such an onslaught. She shouldn’t take her own wretchedness out on them.

  ‘Okay.’ She put her arms around them both. ‘Let’s all calm down, shall we?’

  They nodded warily.

  ‘You’ve probably missed most of the programmes you were quarrelling about by this time, anyway,’ she said. ‘But tea will be ready soon.’

  Leaving them sitting quietly in front of the television, she departed to the kitchen to rescue the burning fish fingers, her own eyes smarting with tears. This couldn’t go on. She had to decide what to do about Mick, one way or the other.

  Giles look stricken later that evening after she’d told him of Mick’s return.

  ‘I thought you seemed a bit edgy this last few days.’

  ‘I didn’t want to say anything to you about it until I’d decided what to do,’ said Jane, perching on the edge of the armchair opposite him in his living room. He was sitting on the sofa with a pile of exercise books beside him.

  ‘And now you have decided?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You’re taking him back, aren’t you?’ said Giles bleakly.

  ‘I honestly don’t know what else I can do, Giles,’ she said, sounding distraught. ‘I’ve nearly gone out of my mind this past week, thinking about it. But when all is said and done, he is still my husband and the father of my children and he wants us all to be together again.’

  ‘Do you think you can make it work after everything that’s happened?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ she said with a sad shake of the head. ‘But I do think that I have to try.’

  ‘Well, Jane,’ he said dully, ‘I can’t pretend it isn’t a blow.’

  He looked utterly desolate but was far too much of a gentleman to make things worse for her by causing a scene, she knew that. Her heart bled for him, especially knowing what agony he had already suffered over the loss of a woman.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Giles.’

  ‘No more than I am. Do you still love him now that you’ve seen him again?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I still feel a certain affection for him. It could hardly be otherwise as we’ve been together since we were teenagers. But I’m not in love with him. Not any more.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I feel sorry for him, though,’ she said. ‘He’s a pathetic character somehow now, despite the fact that he’s doing well.’

  ‘So you’re having him back out of duty and pity?’

  ‘And because I care what happens to him.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like a recipe for success to me.’

  ‘I have to try, Giles,’ she said, her voice thick with feeling. ‘I can’t turn him away. I married him for better or worse.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I feel I have a duty to the children as well as to Mick, to try again,’ she said. ‘He is their father after all.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can say to that, is there?’ said Giles bitterly. ‘The last thing I would ever do is come between man and wife.’

  ‘Oh, Giles, I’m so sorry,’ she said, going over to him with tears in her eyes and sitting beside him to take his hand. ‘You’ll have to try to forget me.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  ‘We’ll both have to give it our very best shot.’

  ‘Which will be impossible while we’re living next-door to each other,’ he told her. ‘I’ll just have to put my cottage up for sale.’

  ‘Oh, Giles, I can’t let you do that! It wouldn’t be fair to you or Kevin.’

  ‘I won’t go far,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay in the area so that the boys can still see each other on a regular basis. But actually living next-door to you will be jus
t too much for me to bear.’ He drew in his breath sharply, eyes full of pain. ‘Seeing you with him in the garden and knowing you’re with him on the other side of the wall . . . I couldn’t take that.’

  ‘It would be wretched for us both,’ agreed Jane sadly.

  ‘I’ll put my place on the market.’

  ‘But I feel so guilty . . . you’re having to move house because of me,’ she said.

  ‘It isn’t because of you, it’s because of the circumstances. Just one of those things.’

  ‘I’m the one who should move, not you, since I’m the one who’s causing the problem,’ she said. ‘Mick’s keen to get me out of my cottage anyway.’

  ‘But you love the place.’

  ‘I know. I’ve told him I’m not prepared to give it up. But he wants us to live in a new des. res. on some executive estate in Brighton.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And Brighton?’

  ‘His business is there.’

  ‘And yours is here.’

  ‘That’s of no importance to Mick,’ she said. ‘He’s finding it difficult to adapt to the idea of my being in business and wants me to give it up. He isn’t used to my having any sort of independence.’

  ‘Sounds to me as though you need to hang on to your cottage then. Especially as your kitchen there is kitted out for baking.’

  ‘There is that.’

  ‘Don’t worry . . . it’ll be easier if I’m the one to move.’ Although Jane felt bad about Giles having to go away, she was relieved to be able to stay put because she was convinced that to give up her cottage would be the first step back to total domination by Mick. She didn’t want to burden Giles with her doubts about the success of the reconciliation. Firstly because she didn’t want to worry him or give him false hope, and secondly because it seemed disloyal to Mick somehow. She had to do everything in her power to make it work with him and this meant a clean break with Giles.

  ‘I’m so sorry it’s come to this,’ she told him again.

  ‘Well, I suppose I’ve always known there was a chance he’d come back. I mean, it isn’t as though he was dead.’

  ‘Whereas I always knew that Lena couldn’t come back.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Their eyes met in an agonising moment of regret. Jane wondered if she might feel less guilty if Giles were to throw his weight about and make a scene. But that wasn’t his way. He was far too gentle.

  ‘I’ve been so happy with you, Giles,’ she said. ‘I’m going to miss you more than you could possibly imagine.’

  ‘And I you.’

  Then she was in his arms for one final bitter-sweet embrace. When she slipped quietly out of his back door and through the gap in the fence, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  One Saturday in the spring, around noon, Mick came down the narrow, winding staircase of Jane’s cottage, muttering a string of expletives.

  ‘One of these days someone is gonna fall and break their neck on those bloody stairs,’ he complained, marching into the kitchen where his wife was busy at the table doing some paperwork. ‘They’re nothing short of primitive . . . like everything else in this dump!’

  ‘The children and I have never had any problem with them at all,’ she said through clenched teeth because Mick’s constant criticism of her home was becoming tedious.

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve got against moving into a decent-sized house,’ he grumbled. ‘As well as being a museum piece, this place is far too poky for a family to live in.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ she said. ‘There’s more than enough space for what we need.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ he mocked. ‘There isn’t room to swing a cat in here.’

  ‘It isn’t as big as the sort of house you want us to move into, certainly,’ she said. ‘But it’s perfectly adequate . . . and lovely and cosy.’ She looked at him. ‘Don’t you think it has a special kind of feel about it?’

  ‘Yeah, it feels as though it’s about to fall down at any minute,’ was his facetious reply.

  ‘Oh, very funny,’ she countered.

  ‘It’s an absolute hole and not our sort of thing at all.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Jane objected. ‘I really love it here.’

  ‘But you’ve always liked modern houses,’ he said, sounding puzzled. ‘Big ones with plenty of luxury fittings.’

  ‘A long time ago I might have,’ she corrected him. ‘Now I prefer this place and I wish you’d stop finding fault with it.’

  Shadow came in through the cat-flap and rubbed himself in circles around Mick’s legs, purring loudly in the hope of attention.

  ‘Bloody moggy,’ he said, sending the animal flying across the room with his foot. ‘God knows why you wanna have a cat.’

  ‘He’s one of the family and we love him,’ she said, leaping up and rescuing the cat who was cowering in the corner. ‘And I won’t have you being cruel to him.’

  ‘I was being firm,’ said Mick. ‘It’s the only language cats understand.’

  ‘Rubbish! You be gentler with him in future or you’ll have me to answer to.’ Jane sat down again at the table with the cat in her lap. ‘It’s a good job the children didn’t see you boot him across the kitchen. They’d never forgive you.’

  ‘Where are they?’ he asked.

  ‘Davey is next-door with Kevin and Pip is at a friend’s house.’

  ‘They always used to be around the house before I went away,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘They were younger then,’ she said, stroking the cat before setting him down to wander off into the other room. ‘They have a life of their own outside the home now, and on Saturday mornings they usually go out to see friends. It’s perfectly normal for kids of their age.’

  ‘You’d think they’d stay in to see their dad at the weekend, wouldn’t you?’ he moaned. ‘It isn’t as though I’m here during the week.’

  Glancing up at the kitchen clock, then lowering her gaze meaningfully to the pyjamas and dressing gown in which he was dressed, she said, ‘If you were to get up at a reasonable hour, you’d see them before they go out. You can’t expect them to wait in until lunchtime.’

  ‘I’ll get up what time I please,’ said Mick gruffly.

  ‘That’s fine. But don’t complain about not seeing the children.’

  She turned her attention back to her figures. ‘What’s for breakfast?’ he asked after a while.

  In the middle of adding up a column of figures, Jane jotted something down to save having to repeat the entire process.

  ‘The children and I had toast and cereal,’ she said, looking up.

  ‘I don’t want that rubbish,’ he declared. ‘I want a proper breakfast . . . a fry up.’

  ‘But it’s almost lunchtime.’

  ‘I still want a fry up.’

  ‘Okay, Mick,’ she said patiently. ‘There are eggs and bacon and stuff in the fridge. Could you be a dear and see to it?’

  ‘You’re joking?’ he said, horrified. ‘I’m not doing that!’

  ‘But you can see how busy I am at the moment,’ she said, exasperated by his lack of co-operation. ‘Surely you don’t mind frying some eggs and bacon for yourself when you get up so late?’

  ‘I do mind and I’m not doing it,’ he said. ‘It’s your job.’

  ‘But I’ll be getting the lunch ready in a minute,’ she told him.

  He looked at her coldly. ‘Eggs, bacon, fried bread, tomatoes and sausages . . . that’s what I want, and I want it now,’ he commanded.

  ‘Please, Mick. I have to finish this . . . it’s really important.’

  ‘You can finish it when you’ve cooked my breakfast,’ he growled. ‘I’m sick and tired of coming second to some tinpot business you’ve got yourself involved in.’

  ‘Hardly a tinpot business,’ she objected. ‘It’s done well enough to keep the kids and me this last few years.’
>
  ‘But it doesn’t need to keep you now that I’m here, does it?’ he said for the umpteenth time since he’d been back. ‘It’s your own fault if you won’t do as I say and get shot of the cake shop . . . your own fault if you don’t have time to look after your husband properly.’

  ‘My business benefits us all . . . and our family life doesn’t suffer because of it,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve always made sure of that.’

  ‘I suffer.’

  ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word . . .’

  ‘But we don’t need you to make any money now,’ he continued as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘And I do need my breakfast.’

  Realising there was no point in trying to reason with him in this mood, Jane gathered up her papers and put them away in the bureau in the other room. Then she went back into the kitchen and took the frying pan from the cupboard. She was just getting some bacon out of the fridge when the telephone rang in the living room. It was Doris from the shop to say that her assistant had gone home sick and she urgently needed help until the Saturday morning rush was over. Jane told her she’d be right over.

  ‘Sorry, Mick, but I have to go out,’ she said, going back into the kitchen where he was sitting at the table, smoking and reading the newspaper.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘The shop . . . staff problems,’ she explained. ‘It’ll only be for an hour or so.’

  ‘What about my breakfast?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask you to help out by getting it yourself after all,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you won’t mind co-operating with me in a crisis?’

  ‘Haven’t I made myself clear? I do mind . . . I mind very much!’ he boomed.

  ‘In that case you’ll have to wait until I get back then, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Pip’s having lunch at her friend’s and I’ll pop next-door on my way out to tell Davey where I’m going.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘You can always make yourself useful and start preparing lunch,’ she said, ignoring his threat. ‘There’s a selection of cooked meats in the fridge and I’ve made a salad . . . also in the fridge. Plenty of crusty bread in the bread bin.’