Once outside, George offered to drive Camille and Rudy home, so Nessa and Joshua between them placed the sleeping woman, whose name was apparently Perpetua, in the backseat of Betsy’s car, and Joshua sat down next to her, leaving Nessa to sit next to Betsy in the front. It made them all feel more comfortable, but even so, Betsy found herself constrained, and didn’t try to talk to Nessa all through the drive home.
Almost since the time they had retired from the ice, Betsy and her late husband Malcolm Lynch had lived here in Edinburgh, trying to train the next generations of ice dancers, and watching the amount of British ice dancers grow thin on the ground. Malcolm had dreamed of coaching a pair to Olympic gold. By the time he’d died, about five months past now, he would have been satisfied with just coaching a pair to the Olympics again. “The podium would have been nice, since we never managed that,” he’d said when he was on his deathbed.
“If I get Nessa and George that far,” she’d told him, “they’ll count for you too.”
The last pair they’d gotten to the Olympics, in fact, had been Alice and Roddy Fiddleson back in 1988, just before they’d retired to have their pair of kids, which they’d coached themselves initially, but handed over to the more skilled Betsy and Malcolm when age rules had forced them onto the senior level. Nessa Ross and George Fiddleson had come to them with twice their parents’ potential, and after three years of hard work Betsy believed that she could get them that far. Even gold wasn’t a complete impossibility. They’d finished tenth at the previous year’s World Championships, and she was confident that this year they’d finish higher.
For the first couple of weeks that after they’d left their parents to come to Edinburgh, Nessa and George had lived with Betsy and Malcolm, and they were frequent visitors to her house, especially after Malcolm’s death, so they were very familiar with it. Nessa helped Joshua carry Perpetua up the walk and into the house, then turned and asked Betsy, “Where do we put her? I assume he’s going in the guest bedroom, but there’s not really room for two in that bed.”
“Put her in the old study. She’ll be most out of the way there.” Malcolm had used the study more than Betsy, who preferred to do most of her work in the living room. Now the study was pretty much a display room of old photographs and Nationals medals.
By the time she had followed them into the house, Betsy had decided that if Joshua was going to live in the house with her, she ought to try to be a considerate hostess. Thomas Bennett would have kept himself apart from his guest as much as possible, but Betsy did not think that Thomas Bennett ought to direct her actions too much, or even at all. So she called to them, “Come to the living room when you’re done and I’ll make all three of us tea.” It was a bit early in the morning for it, perhaps, but then again, Joshua hadn’t been eating.
“Good, tea sounds good,” Nessa called back, so Betsy boiled some tea and ended up making toast as well. She wondered if Joshua could cook; she suspected he couldn’t, but it would make things easier if he could.
She was surprised when Joshua came in and carried the toast out to the living room, until Nessa came in for the tea tray and whispered, “I gave him orders to help. We may need him, but we can’t let him be in charge.”
Betsy and Nessa had both already eaten, but Nessa may not have eaten much, and she buttered her toast and munched steadily, as did Joshua. Betsy herself sipped her tea and felt her mind regressing, for the furnishings of her living room were old-fashioned enough that she could easily think herself in one of his daughter’s homes, enjoying the relative peace of being away from his wife.
She was mildly startled when Nessa asked, “So where do you keep your Austen books?”
“Oh! I think they’re in the guest bedroom. But you have a copy of Emma already.”
“Yes, but I want whichever book this Brandon is from. I’ve never seen George actually punch anyone-threaten to, yes, actually do it, no-and I want to know who he is.”
“I don’t know if you will get much clarity,” Betsy warned her. “Especially because Colonel Brandon is the sort of character who will meet another man for a duel, but I can’t really see him just punching anyone in such a manner. Perhaps the clash of personalities resulted in an action neither man would take on his own? Joshua? You ought to be the expert in this.”
“My ability to help you is limited. As Gabriel Isaac’s right-hand man I did have to deal with the leaders of the fictionkin, but I didn’t care to be with them, and I didn’t ask them too many questions.”
Nessa threw him another one of her glares, for which Betsy did not blame her. “Well,” she said, “I’ll lend you my copy of Sense and Sensibility, for whatever good it will do. I had best give you warning that it was her first novel, and it shows. It’s a good novel, but not without its flaws.”
Just then Betsy’s mobile rang a certain song called “Things Go Bump in the Night,” and she sighed and reached for her bag, asking, “What does she want now?” She picked it up and activated it. “Hello, Nancy?” Mentally she tried to figure out how early in the morning/late at night it was for her caller, but she wasn’t sure where in the United States she was located at the moment.
On the other side of the line, Nancy Kerrigan said without preamble, “Michelle Kwan wants in.”
“What?” Betsy demanded so loudly both Nessa and Joshua abandoned their pieces of toast to stare at her. She’d agreed to choreograph this slowly dying annual show after two choreographers had decided they couldn’t be bothered and Kerrigan had apparently desperately flipped through some directory and found her. Michelle Kwan wanting to skate in it did not make sense. “Are you sure?”
“The contract will be drawn up by the end of the week. At which time I want you to be here. And you know what? You’re bringing your two students with you.”
So she thought she had more negotiation leverage than she had last summer. Which was a sensible assumption on her part. As part of their deal for Betsy’s choreographing Halloween on Ice, Nessa and George got to open the show, and since their performance was completely separate from everyone else’s, it had been agreed that they could stay in Scotland until October.
“I know you want your two students’ exposure, Betsy,” Nancy was continuing. “Especially now that we’re going to get a lot more viewers.”
“If the show isn’t partly preempted. I know that’s happened more than once in the past few years, and don’t think I don’t realize that their number will be the first one left on the cutting room floor if it happens this year.”
“It won’t happen. I promise.”
It was absurd to believe that she was capable of making that promise, and she knew that Betsy knew that. And there were far graver difficulties. “Nancy, if you are seriously suggesting the three of us spend a month in the States, then I must tell you we can’t afford to. Especially since Nessa’s mother is having difficulties with her health and may have to come live with her. Can you really afford to pay our expenses? And then there’s the matter of their training. This isn’t the best time for them to let up.”
“Spend a month in the States?” Nessa sounded appalled.
There was a pause over the phone before Nancy replied, “Well, perhaps not the entire month then. But seriously, running in here the night before simply isn’t going to work. Two weeks, at least. And you’re going to have to meet with Michelle earlier; she isn’t going to learn a routine in only two weeks. I’ll try to see if she’ll be willing to fly over there, but we can’t rely on that.”
“If someone else was willing to do her number, I’ll be perfectly happy sharing credit.”
“There’s noone else, Betsy. Trust me.”
“Well, ask her if she’s willing to fly to Edinburgh and then call me back. Good day.” She hung up, looked at the dismay on Nessa’s face and said, “Don’t look so unhappy, Nessa; you and George are about to share ice with Michelle Kwan.”
“Really?” Betsy had been mildly worried this wouldn’t help, but fortunately it did; Nessa brightened up immediately. “But are you sure we can miss the month of training?”
“If I can help it it won’t be a month, but we’ll have to wait on that. Meanwhile, do you think we should tell George before it’s settled?”
“No,” said Nessa quickly. “He won’t like this at all. He wouldn’t have in the first place; you know what he thinks of Kerrigan. It’ll be better to wait until we know if we can delay the departure.”
During the break between the two sessions Sergei insisted his own head was likewise clear, and Natalia didn’t think he was deliberately lying. Yet something happened to him every time Sheila Russo happened to come within five feet of him. In accordance with long-held custom the two pairs on the ice made no necessary acknowledgment of each other’s presence-occasionally they teased and spurred each other but never when the day was this long-but being near her inevitably caused him to stumble, and even fall a couple of times.
Finally when Vitali called a halt, about half an hour after the British pair and their coach had left for the day, he shook his head and demanded, “What’s happened to the two of you today? We have a less crowded rink than anticipated; you should have skated better than usual. It’s not your foot again, Serega?”
Natalia and Sergei looked at each other helplessly, letting their demeanor project confusion to his eyes.
“I want you both back tomorrow. Now let me look at your feet, Nata.”
She’d given up protesting over this, but now a new anxiety rose in Natalia, and she asked, “Are you sure that’s necessary?”
He was so irked he made eye contact with her, as he now asked, “Is there something you need to tell me?”
“No!” she protested all too quickly. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t keep this from him. Why had she let Sergei talk her into it?
“Your feet, Nata.”
Reluctantly Natalia got off the ice, so distraught she completely forgot to curtsey until Sergei hastily bowed, donned her skate guards, and sat down. At least Vitali let her unlace the skates herself, as impatient as he looked. He was even trying to make eye contact with her again, something Natalia would normally have thrilled at, but now she kept her eyes down.
This was absurd. He examined her feet every time she skated five hours or longer, on the command given to him long ago by her parents, who were convinced of a certain absurdity which had nearly made them insist she stop skating. But they hadn’t had the heart for that in the end, so they’d worked out their compromise of her submitting to long-distance mother-henning through her coaches, none of whom had dared disobeyed her powerful father, and it ought not to make her nervous.
It was only her feet and ankles. Handled a thousand times before by her coaches and other similar figures, and Sergei had even grasped at them plenty of times during the past six hours. What Vitali found in them didn’t even matter much; it had been understood long ago that her feet were to bruise and bleed like everyone else’s, and she didn’t care what risks her parents thought that entailed. Which meant they were hardly an alluring sight.
It shouldn’t have even mattered that Natalia was starting to think she might seriously be in love with her coach, because she was used to this.
But as Vitali knelt down, his pale blond hair brushing against her knees, and touched and poked at her in ways that Anne Wentworth would have thought of as scandalous, however technical and precise, Natalia suddenly came up short of breath and clutched at the seat. She didn’t dare look up and let Sergei see, but she couldn’t look at his hands and thumbs running gently but firmly over her skin. She looked desperately at the floor, but then his hand closed over the back of her ankle, and she was very nearly undone. And still there was the other foot to go.
“Nata? Are you ill? You feel hot.”
She had to answer him somehow, but how to explain?
“She did feel a little hot on occasion,” Sergei answered for her. “Hopefully a night’s rest will help, though.”
She was greatly relieved as Sergei knelt down and gave her his hand to hold; as their coach’s thumb ran hard on the sole of her other foot she squeezed it tightly. It looked as if her secret was out, but better for him to be the one to know than anyone else.
“Your feet seem fine, at least,” Vitali said several long minutes later. “Or as fine as they can be, considering. Go to bed early; you’re both to be here as soon as they open tomorrow.”
“Understood,” Sergei replied, and Natalia managed a “Yes” before he thankfully left. “It’s okay, Nata-ka,” he then murmured soothingly to Natalia. “Hopefully it’ll get better after the first time, right?”
She sighed and said, “Why couldn’t we have fallen in love, Serega? It was what we were supposed to do.”
It had been. There had even been a bit of a fairy tale element to their first meeting, she the ice princess cursed by partners who one after another had trouble making eye contact with her, he the poor boy who had come to Chicago in a somewhat desperate situation, and she’d immediately loved him in one way at least when he’d looked in her eyes for five minutes without flinching. She’d gone and had her boyfriends and he his girlfriends because they’d both been only 15, and there’d been other sex as well, but Natalia had patiently waited for the day she’d look at her best friend and know she’d never want anyone else ever again. And then it had failed to happen.
“It would have made things much easier,” Sergei agreed. He didn’t say any more, and for that Natalia was thankful.
She was disappointed when Louise wasn’t on that evening, but she opened up her email, typed in all three of her family’s addresses, then wrote,
My dearest beloved mother, father, and Louise,
Then she realized that she was writing in English. She deleted and rewrote.
Then for a while, she just sat there and stared.
The biggest event of the week was one she could not write about. It was still difficult to think about anything else. But the same Awakening that had driven every other thought from her head compelled her to write a long letter, instilling in her the knowledge that her family and especially her sister deserved no less. Fanny’s parents may never had written her, but Camille’s did so constantly. The first thing that had happened after George Fiddleson had dropped her off with her grandparents yesterday was she had found a package in the mail from them, containing a bundle of leggings she’d accidently left behind in France.
Well, that left a place to start. Thank you, she wrote, for sending me the leggings. The days are getting colder already, and I ripped another pair yesterday. She didn’t mention the circumstances under which she ripped them.
She wondered if she could mention that she’d gone to church that day, for the first time in her life. Run into Rudy there, who had wandered in for the same reason as her. They’d sat side by side and listened to a sermon very different from the kind Edmund would have given, but the familiar air had soothed them nonetheless.
She couldn’t mention, of course, that she wasn’t sure how she was going to manage to skate with him again on Monday. Because she wanted him now, and she wasn’t comfortable with wanting him. It wouldn’t be a good idea for them to date even if this had been a normal situation; the relationship would almost certainly not last, and might take their partnership with it. But now when she looked at him, she saw both her husband and her cousin. That might not have bothered Fanny, but it bothered Camille.
If it turned out they couldn’t continue...but no, she refused to consider that possibility. They must manage it, one way or another. She had to stay with him and have both of them and both of their families contributing money if Louise wanted to skate, which she did, and she would be hard-pressed to find a partner equal to him in either England or France. Finding him had been enough of a stroke of luck.
She finally wrote, I wasn’t able to practice today, but I spent a lot of time with Rudy, the most, I think, that I’ve spent with him off the ice. He has a very compassionate soul, underneath the hard words. Hard words which would never have come out of Edmund’s mouth. Camille was glad for it; anything to help her make a distinction. And we may spend more later this week; I think the ballet teacher is going to cancel again, though if she does, we really are going to need another one. She then realized she hadn’t talked much about the number of times the ballet teacher had canceled in the past, and felt ashamed.
At least she could make up for that now. Mrs. Rannow, she wrote, has only been here once since the beginning of August, just after Rudy arrived, before I met him, so I’ve never met her. Pamchenko warned us that she was unreliable, but Kate has since called him for clarification, and her behavior is worse than usual. I’m going to miss Maxine. Privately Camille wondered if any ballet teacher could teach her as well as Maxine had.
She then asked after three of them, and Louise’s schoolfriends. Again she caught herself writing in English, and went back and rewrote.
She needed to write more. The email was still pitifully short.
I’m hoping to improve my English by some reading in my spare time. I have started to read Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, and here she stopped, because this was an odd choice to the unknowing eye, with its fancy language. But then, she had started this paragraph with a lie already; she now would have no need to improve her English ever again. In fact, she again had to go back and rewrite in French. She did so, then resumed, and despite the language, I am getting on very well. I am finding it very interesting. More rewriting.
Of course she was finding it interesting. The first chapter had been her family history, spelled out in a way that she had never looked at it before, and included a bit of the conversations about her originally coming to the residence of her rich relatives that she had supposed must have taken place, but had never learned anything about. The first two pages of the second chapter had been much harder; they had brought back so many unpleasant memories that she had put the book down and abruptly decided to do her evening exercises unusually early. But she had been rewarded when she had returned and found, with every piece of dialogue written out for her benefit, Edmund’s first kindness to her, of so many in her life to come, and her own memory of it had risen in her head, along with the depth of love Fanny had felt for Edmund, the likes of which Camille had never known in her life.
How much of what else she had experienced by how much she had read so far could she relate? Should she make it appear as if she had only read a certain amount? I find it strange, in Mansfield Park, she finally wrote, that a young girl like the heroine should be so passive on things she felt so strongly about. This was something that she found more in her memories to marvel at than in what she had read so far. The common reader would not wonder half as much as Camille did how young Fanny had avoided going mad, though in her previous life the possibility of her going mad had never even so much as crossed her mind.
Rudy is reading the same book, but he has less time to read, due to his job. Rudy’s parents were urging Camille to get a job herself, but for the moment her parents and grandparents had still forbidden it until she could show them perfect school marks to prove that she could handle it. Even so, I wonder what he thinks about it. That would be the truest thing she’d written so far if it wasn’t such an understatement. I think I’ll ask him on Wednesday. He wouldn’t have much time to read more before Tuesday.
This was getting her nowhere; there were too many lies she was telling for her to take. Discouraged, she finished, I miss you all and hope to see you in December, made a last check to make sure it was all in French, and hit the Send button.
Forced to give up on the bottom shelf, she stood up, trying not to look at the sleeping woman in what had once been her husband’s favourite chair, and tried to think of where to look next.
One of the few things that Thomas Bennett did find more annoying than Betsy’s current situation was being interrupted when he was at his books. But when Joshua came in, Betsy did manage to refrain from the vicious snapping that she herself would have engaged in, in favour of his (nominally) more civilized snark. “If you are attempting to make yourself useful, Mr. Joshua, you may remove yourself from my study and...” But she got no further, for suddenly all her muscles failed her and she tumbled down to the floor, and found herself lying on her back staring up at her companion.
“I don’t think you and your friends are taking your situation seriously enough, Mrs. Weller,” he told her. “I currently have sapped your strength from you. Don’t worry; I have haven’t disrupted your vital functions, but I could that, and I barely have to draw breath to do so. What does that tell you?”
She felt a warmth in her mouth and vocal chords; she could move them now, but nothing else. “That you had better teach me, Kate, and her husband as much as you can. I know what response you are expecting, Mr. Joshua, but that is the only response I will give.”
“I don’t understand any of you,” he sighed. “Your primary concern now should be your survival. When all eight of those kids sat there in that crazy solidarity and told me they didn’t care if they died, but they weren’t learning magic, I thought...”
“That it felt like a cult?” Betsy cut him off. Joshua visibly flinched. “Alas, Mr. Joshua, we all have our human frailties. But you must understand, for all of them, survival is skating. Say they all learned magic and dealt with these cultists. What would they do then, haunted by all they did not accomplish? I can’t speak for the Russians, or the two youngsters, but my two ice dancers? Ice dancing is all they’ve ever been doing since they were about two years old and their parents put them down on the ice next to each other. They’ll have to do something else with their lives eventually, but if they don’t see it through to the end, they’ll never be content with themselves.
And that goes even more so for Diamond and Sheila. They, I fear, have a very grandiose dream of being the most famous pairs skaters in their generation-and they are genuinely capable of achieving it, which not true for all pairs. And if he is now burdened with the thoughts and feelings of Marianne Dashwood...no, you would certainly never get either of them to quit at this point in their lives, not if you put guns to their heads. A few more months and Sheila may be recovered completely from her eating disorder; that alone will make them refuse to stop now.”
The warmth from her jaw flowed into the rest of her body; she pulled herself to her feet. “Tomorrow night," Joshua said to her. "All three of you. Here. Whatever time you want, but I won’t budge on the day; you’ll find an excuse to put it off if I don’t put my foot down. Call them now.” He handed Betsy her phone.
Betsy rang Kate Mosley’s mobile. Her husband picked up. “Yes?”
“Hello, listen, it’s Betsy. I have Joshua here, and he is insisting we meet tomorrow night for our first magic lesson. He is not interested in compromise. What time would be most convenient for you two? I get home at about nine tomorrow.” She briefly considered that she might be later if Nancy called at the wrong time, but Joshua was still standing behind her, so she decided to just hope that she did not.
She heard him repeat her words to Kate, then ask, “Think we should give it until 9:30? Okay.” Then he replied into the phone, “How about 9:30?”
“9:30 then. Thank you very much, Mr. Dorsey. I trust you both are doing well?”
“Aside from some disturbing thoughts about the noise level in the modern world and similar, we’re holding up pretty well.”
Betsy too had noticed this, and wondered at how even she, born not long after the war in a much quieter world, had grown so accustomed to the roar of cars and other vehicles, including aeroplanes and such overhead, of even the hum of electronics, and how even everyday voices had raised in volume, unnoticed by the generations, to be heard over everything else. Rereading Pride and Prejudice earlier that day, she had wondered if, had she not read it already, she would have been able to concentrate over even the sounds of the house, so much did Thomas Bennett loath such sounds while he himself was reading.
“We shall have much to talk about, then, tomorrow night when Joshua is done with us. A very good night to you, sir.”
“And you, ma’am.” Betsy turned the phone off.
“You speak strangely,” Joshua observed.
“And you are at fault for that,” she reminded him.
“Even so, you have to watch it. You keep on talking like that and people are going to wonder why.”
“You are right.” Not the mention the dilemma the Russians and du Fayin were going to be in. Well, not Rubinstein, because she knew his English had already been very good, but Markova had been the opposite. Noone who knew her would ever believe her capable of speaking any language other than Russian that well. “As a matter of fact, someone had best speak to Markova about avoiding speaking in English if she can at all help it. This is going to be difficult; they’ve only been here half a year and none of us can claim to know them that well yet. Are you sure we cannot tell their coach?”
“They themselves said no, Mrs. Weller.”
At some point, Betsy decided right there and then, all three of them were going to change their minds. She didn’t know when, but she did know already it would prove necessary in time.