The New Neighbours

by Costeloe Diney

  For the sake of the children Jill and Anthony celebrated Christmas in the usual way, and Nancy came to help celebrate with them.

  “I’m not sure I should come this year,” she said to Jill. “It might be better if you had a family Christmas on your own.”

  “Oh no, Mum.” Jill was horrified. “You must come! I can’t cope with us just being ourselves. Isabelle is going home for Christmas and New Year, and Anthony and I will have too much time alone.”

  “But time alone is what you need, darling,” Nancy pointed out gently. “You have to rebuild your relationship, and that will take time and effort. I would only be in the way.”

  But Jill couldn’t face the evenings of strained silences, or the emptiness when Anthony disappeared into his study and left her sitting upstairs alone, and in the end she had applied to him to press the invitation on Nancy. Anthony did so readily enough. He, too, was not looking forward to the long hours of the holiday period that he would have to spend at home. The shock and the hurt he had sustained when he had discovered Jill’s affair seemed still as fresh as ever. Only when he was immersed in his work could he forget the pain and feel at all like his old self. As soon as he left the office he began to dread the evening ahead. Jill was doing her best to be normal, to be as she always had been, pleased to see him home, a drink poured and waiting, supper in the oven, but it was that very effort at normality that he found so hard to take. How could she put this dreadful thing that had come between them behind her so easily? How could she act as if nothing had happened, when the whole of his world had been shaken to its foundations? He tortured himself with visions of her in bed with that pony-tailed student, of his hands on her body, doing things to her that made her writhe and cry out with pleasure. Anthony knew it was complete stupidity to torture himself in this way, but he couldn’t help it, the visions rose unbidden to his mind. He knew he would be unable to make love to her while these pictures played in his mind, and rather than risk the humiliation of failure, he preferred not to touch her at all. If she touched him, even casually as she brushed past, he felt himself withdraw from her… and so did she.

  Much better, he decided, if Nancy were with them over Christmas, making it as normal as possible for the children and allowing him and Jill to maintain a façade by providing one for her.

  So Nancy had come. There was only one problem with that; it meant Anthony had to move back into the marital bed, as Nancy had to sleep in Anthony’s study, as she always did.

  “I suppose she could sleep in Isabelle’s room,” Anthony suggested, tentatively.

  “No she could not,” Jill had said firmly. “At least, I’m not asking Isabelle to clear all her stuff away before she goes. You can if you like.” Anthony hadn’t liked. He simply moved his clothes back up to their shared bedroom the morning before Christmas Eve, leaving the bed already installed in the study free to be made up for Nancy. Since then, even after Nancy had returned to her own home, Jill and Anthony had slept side by side, each conscious of the other, but neither crossing the divide… one because he could not and the other because she dare not. Christmas Day had relentlessly occurred. There was the early start when the children found their stockings waiting on the ends of their beds, the presents round the tree, Christmas lunch and tea. Games to play and stories to read, and the final tears before bed at the end of an exciting day.

  As she watched them each going through his own private hell, Nancy longed to knock their heads together and make them see sense. It was while Anthony had taken the children to the park on Boxing Day that she had the chance to tackle Jill about it.

  “I don’t understand you,” she said as they sat together with a cup of coffee. “Haven’t you discussed anything… said anything?”

  Jill shook her head. “I can’t, Mum. It has to come from him. He has to want me here. He has to make the first move.”

  “Why?” Nancy wasn’t being obstructive, she genuinely wanted to know. “Why can’t you say something?”

  “Because, if he can’t forgive me… if he doesn’t love me enough to forgive me, it’s never going to work. He says he needs time to decide, so that’s what I’m trying to give him, that’s all.”

  “But you still love him?”

  “Yes,” Jill said. “I really do, and as it’s all my fault I’ve got to be the one who waits. If I push him into a decision, it may be the wrong one. I have to give him the time he needs.”

  “Well, I hope he makes some sort of decision soon,” said Nancy, “because all this is tearing you both apart.” She longed to talk to Anthony herself, but she knew that it would probably do more harm than good if she interfered, so she managed to bite her tongue and say nothing. After New Year, she returned home, and still nothing had even begun to be resolved. Jill and Anthony continued to live on the surface of their lives, talking only superficially, but neither had found the courage to take their communication any deeper. Isabelle had come back from France, and life fell back into its routine groove.

  Then, last night, as they sat over the supper table Anthony had suddenly said, “Something’s come up. After supper we must talk properly.” He looked across at her. “Where’s Isabelle, did you say?”

  “Babysitting for the Forresters. She won’t be back for some time yet.” Jill cleared the table and left the dishes in the sink. Now was not the time to be washing dishes, and anyway she didn’t want to spend even ten minutes wondering if Anthony was going to say that he didn’t want to go on as they were. She made them coffee and carried it into the sitting room. For a moment or two, she fussed about with cups and a coffee table, and then she sat down in her armchair, setting her own coffee cup on the floor beside her.

  Anthony took a mouthful of coffee and then put his cup down too. “I’ve been offered a job in the London office,” he said without preamble. “I’ve decided to accept, and I shall have to live in London.”

  Jill stared at him. “Does that mean you’re leaving me?” she asked in a low voice.

  Anthony gave a slight shrug. “That’s up to you,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘up to me’?” demanded Jill.

  “Just what I say,” replied Anthony calmly. “I shall go and live in London, if you want to come too, you can.”

  “And the children…?”

  “Them too, of course, but this isn’t about the children,” said Anthony.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Anthony, of course it is,” cried Jill. “They are our prime concern.”

  “What I’m trying to say,” Anthony said patiently, “is, that obviously the children will be with you, wherever you are, whether you come to London or you stay here, and which you do is up to you.”

  “Do you want me to come?” asked Jill softly, and then looking at his tired face, she plucked up courage to ask the question that would make her decision for her. “Do you still love me, Anthony?”

  “Love you? Of course I still love you,” his voice was full of anguish, “that’s the problem, don’t you see? I never stopped loving you, but that’s why it’s so difficult. I loved you all the time you were loving him… all the time I thought you were loving me.”

  Jill ached to go to him, to put her arms round him and soothe away his hurt, but she was afraid to, afraid that he would repel her, as the cause of his pain. Tears slid silently down her cheeks, and she could only murmur, “I’m sorry, Anthony, so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Something inside her told that now was the time she should be fighting for her marriage, but somehow the words wouldn’t come.

  “Well, that’s the situation,” Anthony said. “My new job starts in two weeks. Think about it, and let me know what you’ve decided.” He got to his feet, his coffee left cooling beside his chair, and walked to the stairs. Jill jumped up too.

  “Anthony,” she cried, “we can’t possibly leave it like this. Please, let’s talk things through, right from the start.” She caught at his hand and he paused, looking back at her.

  Now, now was her chance, and she mi
ght not get another. She must speak to him, take charge of the conversation. Her grip tightened on his hand as if physically to hold him from going down to his study, and she drew a deep breath.

  “Anthony, you may not believe this,” she began quietly, “but I love you more than anyone else in the world.” His face remained impassive, but she could see he was listening. “I made a fool of myself, disgraced myself, and hurt you so badly. I, well, I don’t know what to say to you. Sorry is such a useless word, I could say it to the end of time and not really tell you how I feel. You say you love me and you always have, but do you love me enough to forgive me for the torment I put you through?” Her eyes searched his face. “You have to love me enough to forgive me completely, Anthony, or else we’ve got no future together. It won’t be any good going to London together if we simply take our problems with us. I want us to give our marriage another try, Anthony, more than anything, but I know now that it won’t work unless we can both put my affair with Ben behind us. It’ll be no good going to London and then to live there as we have been here the past few weeks. If we come with you, the children and I, we have to come as a complete family unit, a proper family.” Her gaze held his. “I want to be with you Anthony, as we always were. I want to share your life, and your love and your bed, but I can’t do it if you can’t forgive me. I’m willing to beg for that forgiveness, but if you can’t give it we have no future together.”

  Anthony moved towards her, he did not release his hand from hers but neither did he take the other, nor draw her into his arms. He looked down at her, and she could see there were tears in his eyes too.

  “It isn’t that I can’t forgive you,” he said huskily, “it’s that I can’t forget. I keep thinking of you and him together… imagining things he did to you, with you…” he choked on a sob.

  Jill dropped his hand and very gently put her arms round him. “Anthony, darling, you must stop torturing yourself like that,” she pleaded. “With Ben I had sex, with you I make love. Remember on the hill in Ireland? That was us, you and me, making love. You being beside me when the children were born; the two of us sitting up with Sylvia when she was so ill as a baby. That was us. Ben was a fling, a moment’s madness because I was bored, fed up and lonely, Ben is a thing of the past, the real thing now is us, you, me, Sylvia and Tom.

  “So. I’m asking you, Anthony, please can you forgive me, so that I can come back to you?”

  She still had her arms round him, but he stood stiff and straight.

  “Don’t you want me?” she whispered.

  His arms closed convulsively around her and he spoke into her hair. “Of course I want you,” he groaned.

  Still holding Jill’s hand, Anthony had switched off the lights and led the way upstairs. In the bedroom he had taken her into his arms and kissed her, gently at first and then as he explored her mouth with mounting intensity. By the light of the bedside lamp, he had undressed her, kissing her body as it was slowly revealed, her neck, her breasts with their taut nipples, the smooth soft skin of her stomach, and she had returned his kisses, running her hands down the length of his back and round under his buttocks, stroking, smoothing, tickling with the tips of her fingers. He laid her on the bed and let his eyes rove over her body, quivering, expectant, waiting for him, as he pulled off his own clothes. Jill reached up to pull him down beside her. For a moment his body was against her, the length of their bodies burning together and then suddenly he rolled away and lay with his back to her, leaving her cold and exposed on her side of the bed. For a moment she did nothing, so abrupt was his departure, then she rolled over herself, so that her breasts brushed against his back and whispered softly, “Anthony?”

  “I can’t,” came his bleak reply. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  She raised herself up on her elbow and resting her chin on his shoulder, looked down at him and saw that indeed he couldn’t. She slid her arm round his chest and nestled against his back, curving her body round his as they had always used to sleep.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured into his ear. “It doesn’t matter one little bit.” But it did, and they both knew it.

  Neither of them had spoken again that night. Anthony had simply reached up and turned the light off. The movement had removed him from the circle of her arm. Jill didn’t know if that were intentional or not, but when he lay back down he was no longer close against her, and the sudden chill round her body also crept into her mind.

  In the morning, Anthony got up at the usual time. Jill had not slept well. For hours she had lain wide awake, her mind churning as she went over and over what had happened. She had finally gambled everything to bring Anthony back to her and she had lost. He had responded as best he could, he had told her he loved her and wanted her but when it came to the final moment, his own body had defied him, leaving them worse off than before.

  She lay in the bed with her eyes shut and listened to him moving softly round the room, gathering his clothes and then going quietly into the bathroom. At some time, they had to face each other in the cold light of day, Jill decided, and she too got up. She followed him into the bathroom and had her shower while he shaved, as she always had done, then she went back to dress. He had not turned when she came in, but he had looked at her in the mirror and said, “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you. I’ve an early appointment this morning.”

  They’d had breakfast and then he’d gone, and Jill was left wondering where they went from there. Neither of them had mentioned the previous evening, perhaps because neither knew what to say. Impotence wasn’t something you could discuss across the breakfast cereal, and it was a relief to both of them when he got up to leave. When he’d gone, Jill took her second cup of coffee into the window and looked out across the Circle. She could hear Isabelle getting the children dressed upstairs, and knew that very soon she was going to have to be the usual, smiling Mummy.

  It made her think of Nancy, and she suddenly knew then what she was going to do. She would go to Nancy and tell her about moving to London. She would ask her to have Isabelle and the children so that she could go with Anthony and look for somewhere to live.

  “I’ll take the children to school this morning, Isabelle,” she said when they came down. “I have to go and visit my mother, so I’ll drive straight on. Perhaps you’d like the morning off and then pick Thomas up. I should be back in time to fetch Sylvia, but if not please collect her and give them their tea.”

  It was a clear January morning, with a stiff breeze sending the clouds scudding across a slate grey sky, but shafts of sunlight struck an occasional clump of snowdrops in the more sheltered parts of the hedgerows, and she found her spirits lifting. By the time she reached Meadow Cottage, she discovered that the drive had been therapeutic and she could talk quite easily to Nancy.

  “Anthony is going to work in the London office,” she told Nancy later, “we’re moving to London.”

  “Does that mean you’ve sorted things out?” Nancy asked.

  Jill smiled. “I think so,” she said fairly untruthfully. “We’re certainly going to give it another go. What I wondered, Mum, was whether you’d come and have the children again for a little while, so I can go up to London house-hunting. You’d have Isabelle too, so it shouldn’t be too much for you.”

  “Of course I will,” Nancy said, only too willing to help out if it meant that Jill and Anthony could start afresh, but she was surprised at the hug her daughter gave her. Jill had ceased to be demonstrative as far as she was concerned a long time ago. This hug had a sort of desperation to it, and even as she returned it, Nancy felt uneasy.

  “Are you all right, really?” she asked anxiously?

  Jill longed to tell her the truth of the matter, the real problem that now lay between her and Anthony, but she knew she could never disclose Anthony’s humiliation even to her mother, so she gave her a reassuring smile and said, “Yes, fine. You know, Mum, I’m sure this will be the best thing for us, a new start in a new place.”

  “I’m sur
e you’re right too,” Nancy agreed, and set aside her own worry that Jill was trying to escape her problems by moving away from them. However, she was glad that they were going to work at their marriage. She was fond of her son-in-law and thought that Jill had behaved very badly.

  “I’ll look forward to coming,” she said as Jill got in the car to drive home. “Tell them that when I come I’ll bring a chocolate cake.”

  As the children ate their tea, Jill watched the removal van finally drive away from next door. Strange both families should be leaving Dartmouth Close so soon after each other, she thought. She remembered her conversation with Angela over their coffee before Christmas. Ian and Angela had rescued their marriage and were setting off to start again in a new place, surely she and Anthony could do the same thing.

  When he came in that evening, Anthony greeted her with a light kiss on the lips, something he hadn’t done since before Ben. Jill found that recently she judged things as “before Ben” or “since Ben”. Before Ben, Anthony would sit in the living room nursing his drink and telling her about his day; since Ben he had taken to carrying his drink upstairs while he changed out of his suit, and then sitting straight down to supper before disappearing into his study. What would he do tonight?

  It turned out to be a mixture of both. He went upstairs to change and say goodnight to the children, and then he poured them each a drink and sat down in his own familiar chair and said, “They’re very pleased that I’m taking the London job. If you want to come up and house hunt, they’ll put us in a company flat. What do you say?”

  Jill smiled at him. “I say brilliant,” she said. “I’ve already organised for Mum to come and look after the children with Isabelle for a couple of weeks, so I can come whenever you want me.”

  That night they slept comfortably side by side, their bodies touching in tiny patches of heat, but with no move from either towards intimacy. Both of them knew that there was too much at stake to hurry anything now. It would take time, but, with luck, time was the one thing of which they had plenty, patience and love might accomplish the rest.