Ice Dancing

Episode 81

NI was still reluctant to confide in Annie... The bombshell, when it came, was from a wholly unexpected quarter

one of this was Sandy’s fault. He was blameless and that made it much worse. Our marriage was like a shell after the egg has hatched. It was already in pieces. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put this one together again.

Late in the summer, Fiona was invited to spend a couple of weeks in Ireland with Lizzie’s family, in a holiday cottage in Donegal.

“Would you mind?” she asked.

“No. I think you should go. You could do with a break before term starts. Away you go and enjoy yourself.”

The house was empty without her, like a rehearsal for her absence. When I thought of the future all I could see was a miserable descent into middle age, cooking conventional meals for Sandy and Bruce, feeding chickens, wading through mud, wrestling with the accounts and line dancing with Annie, or whatever stunt we happened upon for next year and the year after and the year after that.

Time would pass quickly. Another twenty years and retirement would loom. The thought of it didn’t fill me with excitement or hope. Only fear and revulsion. You don’t need anybody for line dancing. You don’t need a partner. You can do it and keep your mind and body occupied and you don’t need anybody else at all.

Bruce was very disappointed at not getting the cottage to live in and so was Charlie McGowan.

“A perfectly good house, lying empty there,” he said to Sandy and Sandy agreed with him.

“Why don’t you write to Joe?” said Sandy. “Ask him if he wants to sell?”

“Why should I do that? He told us he’s not ready to sell yet. He doesn’t need the money. He may even come back to the Kestrels. Besides, it’s my bolthole. I’m quite happy about it being empty. I get to use it without paying for it. It’s great.”

Actually, it was a blessing for Charlie, because he finally moved to town and found himself a new job and that summer he found a new wife too, what Annie called a Wedding Cake: a glossy young woman with big blonde hair and blue varnished fingernails.

Then Betty, who had had a slight stroke and got rather frail all of a sudden, moved in with them, but I wondered how she would get on with the Wedding Cake and whether they would live happily together and who would win out in the end: Betty or the Wedding Cake? My money was on Betty.

Maisie Murtagh missed Betty terribly, but eventually she took up with one of the elderly men who was a leading light in the bowling club and has a stall at the monthly antique market in the town. She baked cakes and shortbread biscuits for him, and he gave her a new hat – well, not exactly new, because it came from his stall – a toque in green felt with a diamante brooch on the side. She started helping him with his stall and they seemed very happy together.

Annie and I didn’t exactly fall out over Joe, although for a while the irritation remained, like a sore place in our friendship that never quite healed over. But I was still reluctant to confide in her, reluctant to tell her what had really happened. The bombshell, when it came, was from a wholly unexpected quarter.

In early August, much to everyone’s astonishment, Mary and Morris split up. There was a tremendous quarrel and Morris, quiet, kindly Morris, smashed a whole twenty-four piece dinner service on the kitchen floor. Soon afterwards, Mary went off to live in a rented flat in town, leaving the two little girls behind her, with Morris struggling to cope on his own. The village was loud in its disapproval of Mary’s behaviour but Sandy, much to my surprise, refused to do anything about it. He even seemed reluctant to talk about it.

“Leave well alone,” he said. “It’s none of our business.”

“How can we leave well alone? We have to do something about the kids, at least, Sandy.”

I couldn’t believe that Mary wouldn’t have confided in Sandy. Had Morris been having an affair? What on earth could have caused such an earthquake in their lives? But Sandy didn’t seem any wiser than I was.

“You never know what goes on in a marriage. Morris says he doesn’t want any help. He says he’ll manage. And anyway, Aunty Isa is going to lend a hand.”

Soon after that, Isa moved into the farmhouse, and Morris began to look a little less harassed.

“How could Mary do it?” I asked Sandy. “What on earth possessed her to go off and leave her girls like that? I can hardly believe it.”

That part amazed me. How could she leave her kids? I could imagine myself leaving Sandy, but I don’t think I could have left Fiona behind, not when she was so young. Mary’s daughters were only eight and eleven years old. But it seemed she could, and after all, men do that kind of thing all the time. It was what Joe had done, when I thought about it. Albeit reluctantly.

Sandy shrugged. “You never know what goes on behind closed doors, do you?” he said. “Maybe she thinks they’ll be better off with Morris and their granny.”

“But she was always so maternal. So settled. She seemed so settled and contented.”

As I never had been, I thought, guiltily. “Was she really?” asked Sandy. “Well it seemed that way to me.” Nobody knows anything, I thought. Nobody knows what another person may be feeling. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems on the surface.

“The girls seem to be coping well enough anyway,” observed Sandy.

This was true. I had been up to the farm and had to admit that the atmosphere there was calm and cheerful, better than it had ever been when Mary was in residence.

“But I’ll go and speak to her if you like,” said Sandy. “See if she needs any help.”

That night, as he had promised, he drove into town to see Mary, and I took advantage of his absence by going down to the village to visit Annie.

Right from the start, I sensed that she was feeling uncomfortable with me.

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