The Ends of Our Tethers Read Online Free PDF

I’m done with it.”
    I realised that for months she had been pleasing me by playing a game she detested and suddenly I felt for her a terrible loving pity. Had she told the truth at the start I could easily have donewithout cribbage because we had enjoyed so many other things together – meals and films and small polite parties and lovemaking. But maybe she had only pretended to enjoy these things too because she loved, not me, but a conventional marriage.
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    One evening she explained she was having a steady love affair with a colleague and wanted to divorce me. I took several minutes to absorb the shock of this.
    â€œIf,” I said carefully, “you really need a child let us make one. Let us make it now. We don’t need someone else to give you one of those .”
    She smiled mournfully and said, “Too late, you poor old soul.”
    I was only twenty-four but shrugged and said again, “So be it.” In those days divorce by mutual consent was impossible under Scots law; one of the parties had to get it by proving the other’s misconduct. She gave me proof of her misconduct, I passed it to a lawyer and paid for half the costs of the action. I moved to a boarding-house leaving her the flat with all its furnishings so she had no reason for a grudge against me.

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    Years later at an office party I danced with a very lively little stranger. She had huge eyes, a mass of thick black hair, a slightly transatlantic accent and told me she was Polish-Canadian. Contact with her was so exciting that I asked her back to my place. She rolled the pupils of her eyes upwards and murmured, “No, no, impossible tonight, Charlie is very jealous. But we will keep in touch.”
    We did. I learned that both Charlie and her husband worked for the housing department. One morning the husband stopped me as we passed in a corridor and said, “You know my wife, I think. Has she told you I am divorcing her for promiscuity?”
    She had told me but I denied it. He said, “Yes. For promiscuity. Don’t worry, you will not be cited in court, you are only her latest. Steer clear of her if you value your sanity.”
    I thanked him for the advice but was enjoying my casual affair too much to take it. That she had Charlie as well as me made it all the more casual. 
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    Â One Sunday afternoon she arrived unexpectedly at my lodgings in a state ofhappy excitement. Early that morning she had discussed Charlie with a close woman friend who had burst into tears and confessed that she too was having an affair with Charlie.
    â€œGuess what I did then?” cried number 2. “I calmed her and cheered her up then rushed round to Charlie’s place and said, ‘Sit down, I’ve news for you.’ He went as white as a sheet. I told him I knew he’d been having it off with Sharon but I didn’t mind at all because I’ve been having it off with you. So now we can all carry on with our new partners and everything will be fine! Isn’t that wonderful? Now you can come and live with me!”
    Though foreseeing she would almost certainly marry me I pretended to agree that this was wonderful.
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    Her home was beside the Botanic Gardens. She had her office there and was the first in Glasgow – perhaps in Scotland – to run a dating and escort business by computer and telephone. It was a profitable business. She ran it efficiently yet insisted on also doing everything good Scottish housewives did, refusing allassistance because she was sure only she could do such things properly. Luckily she wanted no more children, having two girls and a son in their teens who often visited her but preferred their father’s house because, she said, “They think I’m too much of a bossy-boots.”
    She was certainly bossy. She both gave and was asked to many parties, and before setting out would glare at something I wore and say, “I refuse to be