Ice Dancing Episode 85

It hurt my vanity, I suppose. Our whole relationship had become habitual. We had lived uncomfortably in our marriage as we had lived in that cold old farmhouse, because it was what we had done for so many years that change seemed impossible.

We were part of the landscape. And when we upset our personal applecarts so comprehensively, the whole community seemed to be disturbed.

Upheaval

Our upheaval sent shock waves through the village. People are made profoundly uncomfortable by change, even when it involves mere acquaintances. Resentful even. This isn’t a stable community by any means. No community ever is. It’s full of changes, people moving in and out, and it’s full of small factions too.

But it’s held steady by all kinds of unseen checks and balances, and even a small upheaval in one part can cause chaos elsewhere.

Most of the land was to be sold off to a big neighbouring farm owned by Jim and Margaret Elliot. Just as Sandy had been waiting hopefully for Joe’s cottage, the Elliots had been waiting hopefully for Drumbrethan to come on the market.

They had kids who were interested in farming, so Drumbrethan would solve the problem of who would inherit their farmhouse. It was the way of the future, even here in this traditional corner of the West of Scotland: bigger farms with economies of scale.

In the meantime, though, they planned to rent it out.

The thought of dismantling and dividing up the contents of the house appalled us both. It wasn’t just our own things, but the heavy furniture, the ornaments and pictures that had belonged to Sandy’s family for generations, as well as the possessions I had brought from my parents’ house. It seemed like a sacrilege to destroy the entity that the house had become.

In fact there was a sense in which we felt worse about breaking up the house than we did about breaking up the marriage.

We’ve come to an agreement with the Elliots that quite a lot of the furniture can be left for the new tenants. Fortunately, Fiona left for Edinburgh and Freshers’

Week before anything too drastic got under way.

I helped her to pack up her own possessions, and we drove her through to her hall of residence, promising that the rest of her things would be safe.

Guilt

I don’t know about Sandy, but I still felt horribly guilty. How would she cope with being away for the first time from a home that she knew was being dismantled in her absence? I vowed that whatever happened, there would be somewhere comfortable and homely for her to return to at Christmas.

“You can come and stay with us for a while,” said Annie, while all this was going on. “Just till you get yourself sorted out.”

But I didn’t go to Annie’s house. Instead, I went to Joe’s cottage, not just because it reminded me of Joe, but because of the memories it held of my dear, lovely Louise.

Sandy and I are treating the clearing of the farmhouse like a laborious project, an unpleasant task that has to be got through, somehow or other. It’s a little like the aftermath of a bereavement. We’ve arranged to sell what we can’t leave or accommodate between us.

We’ll send the beasts to market and have a farm sale to dispose of any machinery the Elliots don’t want or need. Then we’ll split the proceeds.

Sandy will be able to buy somewhere small for himself and Mary, there will be money for Fiona to finish her education debt free, and I’ll have just about enough to get myself started on… what? What will I do with the second half of my life? And where will I go to live it?

“You have to phone Joe,” said Annie, a little while ago. “Phone him or email him. He needs to know what’s been happening. You need to talk to him about all this.”

But I think I just had so much to cope with that I didn’t want to add one more complication: that of learning how he would react to the news. So I kept putting it off.

For a week or so I found myself going online without opening his emails. I would reach for the telephone twenty times a day, but it seemed too easy. Like Joe himself, I didn’t think I deserved a happy ending.

I put the cottage telephone on call monitoring and for a while I didn’t even answer Canadian calls, although Joe phoned me several times.

The only person I would speak to was Fiona, in Edinburgh, who seemed relieved to be away from it all.

It was Annie who kept me from sliding towards depression. She walked up the hill and fed me cups of tea and toast in the morning, soup and glasses of wine in the evening. She took me out shopping. She practically forced me to go for walks. She even managed to coax me into the pub with Verena and Mandy.

Exasperated

The autumn line dancing would be starting soon but I told them I didn’t want to go.

Predictably, it was an exasperated Annie who dialled the number at last, said: “Joe, Helen has something important to tell you,” and put the phone into my reluctant hand.

I had no idea how he was going to take the news. What would he do, now that my situation had changed, now that I was essentially a free woman or would be when the divorce came through? Would he be relieved or alarmed?

I could feel my heart pounding as I told him about Sandy and Mary. The silence at the other end only compounded my anxiety.

“I don’t believe it,” he said at last. “It’s true though. All this time, while we’ve been worrying about the two of us, Sandy and Mary...”

“Honey, I don’t care about them. But I thought…”

“What?”

His voice shook a little.

“Ah God, Helen, I thought you didn’t want me any more. You didn’t answer my calls or my emails. I thought you didn’t love me any more. I thought you’d stopped even going to the cottage.”

What would he do, now that the situation had changed, now that I was essentially a free woman... would he be relieved or alarmed?

More tomorrow.

Ice Dancing by Catherine Czerkawska, Dyrock Publishing, £9.99 and Kindle E-reader from £2.99. For more of her books, including The Posy Ring and A Proper Person To Be Detained, see saraband.net