Ice Dancing Episode 84

Poor Morris was the only one who escaped censure. Actually, he’s not poor at all. He’s still living and working on his farm with his girls and Isa, and he manages very well, so far as I can see. I visit them often and do what I can to help. Morris always makes me welcome.

The girls see Mary on alternate weekends, although Morris speaks to her as little as possible. I think that he would like to confide in me, would like to talk to me about his wife and my husband and their treachery, but I steer clear of such conversations. After all, I’m not exactly innocent, am I? Who am I to discuss adultery with anyone?

As for Sandy and myself, after the arguments abated he moved into Mary’s rented flat in town and I went back up to the farm. For a week or two, Sandy would come in to work and Bruce would keep things going while he wasn’t there, but it was plain that nothing could ever be the same again and drastic measures would have to be taken.

Fiona came back from Ireland and, when I told her as gently as I could what had happened, she blamed me. But once she had spoken to her father, she blamed both of us.

We had a blazing row.

“You’re both as bad as each other!” she said. She was furiously angry and who could blame her? “You should be ashamed of yourselves. It’s disgusting. That’s what it is. Disgusting!”

In retrospect, I think she found it especially disgusting that her parents might be involved in physical relationships with other people.

After all, we were much too old for that kind of thing. She didn’t say it out loud, but she was thinking it.

She left me her dirty washing, packed up some clean clothes and went back to stay with Lizzie’s family again.

The following day, however, she phoned me from Lizzie’s house and we talked for a while in a careful, civilised fashion.

I said, “We still love you. We both still love you.”

She burst into tears at that. “What will I do? It’s all so scary! You’ve turned my whole world upside down.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But you’re on the verge of leaving anyway, Fiona.”

“I still need a home to come back to.” “Of course you do. Why wouldn’t you? And you’ll always have that. Always. In fact you’ll probably have two of them.”

“But are you and Joe really going to get together? Like my dad and Mary?” The thought of it clearly revolted her.

“I don’t know. Nothing’s decided yet. He’s still in Canada. He may not come back at all. And I’m not at all sure that I’d be able to go over there to be with him, even if he wanted me to.”

I would be able to go over on holiday for a while, but it would be very difficult for me to live and work there. I had checked up on that. Unless we married, eventually, and he forked out a very large sum of money, and even then it might not happen.

It struck me that Fiona and Lizzie must have been discussing it. I know that Annie had spoken to her, trying to sort fact from rumour for her.

The following day, we met in a cafe in town and drank lattes and pussyfooted around each other.

But at least she didn’t shout at me, and she hugged me before she left. The day after that, she came home to the farm, although I don’t think she has forgiven me or her father yet.

She was planning to move into university accommodation as soon as term began, but she said we could take her and her stuff through to Edinburgh, so long as Sandy and I did it together, and I thought we might be able to manage that without killing each other on the way. We would just have to try, for Fiona’s sake.

Maybe after a while, she won’t feel quite so betrayed and perhaps, as she gets older, she’ll begin to understand. Not yet, but in due course. Who knows?

I’m not even sure that I understand it properly myself yet. But the channels are open and it helps that she has friends with divorced parents. God alone knows what we’ll do at Christmas. I can’t think that far ahead.

With the help of a couple of solicitors, we began divorce proceedings. Morris told Mary he would burn the farm down rather than sell it, and I think she believed him. Or perhaps, like the rest of us, she had finally found her conscience.

At any rate, she sent for her clothes, her sewing machine and her Lladro ornaments, but told him he was welcome to keep the rest. Including her daughters. That’s what they said down in the village, although it wasn’t quite like that. It never is black and white like that, is it?

And if Morris had been the one to leave, there would have been disapproving comments, but nobody would have censured him in quite the same way as they censured Mary for running off and leaving her kids in a comfortable home with a loving father.

Maybe Mary had felt trapped too, had just gone along with other people’s expectations of her. Which was an uncomfortable thought.

I’m still not sure exactly how Sandy felt about her unexpected altruism but the solution soon became obvious. It was the only solution really. Our farm would have to be sold instead.

Sandy’s poor dad would have been birling in his grave. They said that down in the village as well. There had been Breckenridges at Drumbrethan for 100 years and more. A bit like the movie Cold Comfort Farm and the Starkadder family, I thought, but there was nobody to say it to, except Annie, and even she didn’t understand the reference.

“What?” she said. “Cold what?”

In a way, I think Sandy might have been relieved. It had all become a burden to him and he was sick of trying to make ends meet all the time. So perhaps, like me, he was ready for a change and maybe he had even had the same thought as me: “I hate my life.”

That idea disturbed me for a while. I was allowed to be discontented, but the thought of Sandy searching for a way out somehow upset me.

I think she found it especially disgusting that her parents might be involved in a physical relationship with other people...

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