Sheltering Rain

  "Good. Because you only have to let me know, you know. I . . ." he paused, awkwardly "Well. Anyway. I'm glad you've got it sorted."

  Kate stared at her wineglass, and felt wretched. It was worse that he was being nice. She found it easier when he was yelling at her. When she had told him about the affair, he had actually screamed that she was a whore--a word that had curiously failed to hurt her at the time, in part because it was what she secretly felt herself, but also because it was the only really nasty thing he had ever done, and it gave her an excuse to feel furious with him.

  "Actually," he said. "I need to talk to you."

  Kate's heart leaped into her mouth. Geoff was gazing at her; his eyes liquid and softened, his face kind. Please don't be in love with me anymore, she begged him, silently. I can't bear the responsibility.

  "Shall I get your stuff down first?" she said, briskly. "Then we can talk afterward."

  "No."

  She stared at him.

  "Look, I'd like to talk to you now."

  We spend our whole lives trying to get men to talk, she thought. And then when they do we wish we were a million miles away.

  At that point, O'Malley padded silently into the room, his black coat bristling and dusted with raindrops. Ignoring her, he walked up to Geoff, and after sniffing with a studied lack of interest at his trouser leg, jumped lightly up beside him on the sofa. Not you, too, thought Kate, desperately.

  "This is all very awkward," he began.

  "No. No, it's me who should feel awkward. Geoff, I'm so sorry about what happened. I really am. You are such a wonderful man, and I would give anything for things not to have turned out the way they have. I'm so, so sorry. But I've moved on. Moved on, you know?" Here she smiled at him in a way that she hoped conveyed all the love and thanks she had felt about their relationship over the years--and also her determination that there was nothing left to resurrect.

  "That's very sweet," he said, looking down at his shoes. They were new, she suddenly noticed. Thick-soled. Expensive looking. Very unlike Geoff. "I'm glad you said that. Because I felt slightly awkward about coming here today."

  "You need never feel awkward coming here," Kate said earnestly, half believing that she meant it. "Sabine will always want to see you. And I will always . . ."--here she struggled for the right words--"always care about you. I would hate that we would never see each other again."

  "You really feel that?" He was leaning toward her, both hands resting lightly on his knees.

  "I do," she said. "Geoff, you have been a huge part of my life."

  "But you've moved on."

  Kate felt her eyes fill with tears.

  "I have."

  "I'm glad," he said, and for the first time, his expression seemed to relax. "Because what I need to tell you--well, I was a bit worried, because I didn't know how you were."

  Kate stared at him, uncomprehending.

  "Look, it just makes it a bit easier for me. Because I've moved on, too. I've--well, I've met someone."

  Kate's mind went blank.

  Geoff shook his head slightly, as if what he were saying were unbelievable even to himself.

  "I've met someone. And it seems pretty serious. And it's made me realize that you were right. You were right to do what you did. Oh, I know I was as hurt as anything at the time. You can't believe how hurt. Which makes it all the more astonishing, really, that this could happen so quickly. Because when did you tell me--what was it, six weeks ago?"

  Kate nodded her head dumbly.

  "But this person--this woman--has made me realize that your decision was incredibly brave. Because we were just drifting. We weren't really challenging each other, or making each other happy. And I've got that now. And if you've got it, too, well--God, I can't believe I'm saying this--but I just feel that it's all worked out--somehow--for the best. As long as Sabine is okay, that is."

  There was a faint ringing sound in Kate's ears. She shook her head, trying to get rid of it.

  "Are you okay?" said Geoff, reaching out a hand.

  "I'm fine," she said, softly. "Just a bit--surprised." The shoes, she thought suddenly. This woman had made him buy the shoes. He had been gone three weeks, and already this woman had him buying decent shoes.

  "Who is she?" she said, lifting her head. "Is she anyone I know?"

  Geoff looked a little uncomfortable.

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  He paused.

  "It's Soraya."

  Kate looked blank. Then: "Soraya? Not Soraya from your work?"

  "Yup. That Soraya."

  "Soraya, who has come here for dinner? What, five or six times?"

  "Yes."

  Soraya, Asian queen of psychiatry. Soraya, forty-something, doe-eyed goddess of quality designer labels and expensive shoes. Soraya, inheritor of a vast, immaculately furnished Georgian house in Islington, a private income, and no children. Soraya, witch. Husband-stealer. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.

  "She didn't waste any time, did she?" She couldn't keep the note of bitterness from her voice.

  Geoff shrugged and smiled ruefully.

  "She was pretty careful to ask whether it was definite. She's very proper, you know. When I told her it was, she told me that if she didn't snap me up, someone else would. She reckons there's a shortage of decent, grown-up men." He had the grace to blush at repeating her compliments, but neither could he quite hide his pride in them.

  Kate could not believe this. Geoff, snapped up by the most eligible single woman either of them knew. Geoff, who had suddenly become the glittering prize of the female middle classes. How had this happened? Was she so shortsighted that she had missed some quality in him all along?

  "I only told you because you said you were happy with Justin. I would never do anything to hurt you, you know that."

  "Oh, don't worry about us. We're fine. Ecstatic." She knew she sounded childish, but somehow couldn't help it.

  They sat in silence for some minutes, Kate drinking her wine too fast. Eventually, she spoke again.

  "Is it serious?"

  "Yes. It is."

  "After three weeks?"

  "No point hanging around at my age." He tried to make it sound like a joke.

  "What, as in living together?" She was incredulous. How could he have a new life already? When she had not even begun to come to terms with the loss of their old one?

  "Well, I've got the Bromley place on a three-month lease. But, yes, I spend most of my time in Islington."

  "How nice for you."

  "You know that stuff has never been important to me."

  Kate stared at his shoes. Until now, she thought. Soraya will have you kitted out and turned into one of those designer intellectuals, all Nicole Fahri jackets and linen shirts, before you know it.

  Geoff stroked the cat. Both of them looked too much at ease.

  "Did--did anything happen between you before?" The suspicion, which had wormed its way into her mind, had suddenly filled her head like a multiheaded, toxic Medusa.

  "What?"

  "Well, this all seems terribly convenient, doesn't it? Three weeks after you move out of here you're practically moved in with one of our friends. You've got to admit it's pretty fast work."

  Geoff's expression was deadly serious.

  "Kate, I can categorically promise you that nothing happened until you told me about your--about Justin. I had thought of Soraya as an attractive woman, but no more than any of our friends. Well, perhaps more attractive, but I'd never thought about her more than anyone else, if you know what I mean."

  He was telling the truth. Geoff had always found it impossible to lie. So why did she feel so bitter?

  "She says she always liked me, but she wouldn't have gone near me while I was with someone else. And if she hadn't made a move--well, I would have probably slunk into my rather horrid new flat and licked my wounds for years. You know how I was. You know how I am. I'm just not the type. For infidelity."

  And I am, she thoug
ht. Although you're too kind to say it. Kate feeling suddenly, inexplicably, left behind, realized she wanted to howl. To shout and scream uninhibitedly, like someone cheated, and cry until her chest heaved and her stomach muscles hurt. And it was all her own fault.

  Perhaps, she thought, suddenly, insanely, she would seduce him. Leap on him, claw off his clothes, and make love to him with an animalistic passion that would leave him trembling, no longer smug and secure about the rightness of his new love. She wanted him suddenly insecure, anxious. She wanted to obliterate Soraya and her enigmatic Asian smile. She could do it, she knew she could do it. She knew him better than anyone, after all.

  Then she realized that Geoff was staring at her, his expression gentle and concerned. It was the kind of look, she realized, with some horror, he normally reserved for his patients. And that was worse than the near-infidelity. She pulled at her glasses, suddenly remembering with discomfort her pale, unmade appearance.

  "Are you okay?"

  "Okay? God, I'm great. Just stunned by your wonderful news. I'm so pleased for you." She stood, letting her silk shirt flop open at the collar, shaking her head slightly. "Isn't life grand, eh?"

  Geoff, aware that their meeting was being called to an abrupt close, stood also, placing his half-drunk glass of wine on the side table.

  "You're sure you don't mind? Believe it or not, it's important to me that you're okay with this."

  Kate's eyes glittered.

  "Mind? Why should I mind?"

  She smoothed at her hair, looking absently around the room.

  "Justin will be so amazed when I tell him how everything's worked out. So amazed. And pleased. Yes, we're both very pleased. Now, let's get your stuff, shall we?" she said brightly, and with a broad, fixed smile, walked toward the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That's it. Heels down, sit up straight. There, see? You're doing grand."

  "I feel like a sack of potatoes."

  "You're doing fine. Just lift your hands up a bit. Just off his neck."

  "They're the only thing keeping me on board."

  Sabine scowled into her scarf as Thom grinned at her, her breath sending a soft, hot blast back up against her face. Not that she was going to let him know, but she had to admit she was almost enjoying herself. The little gray horse moved obediently under her, its ears flicking backward and forward as Thom talked, its neck arched like that of a rocking horse. It hadn't tried to buck her off, bite her, kick her, swerve into a hedge, or bolt into the distance, as she had secretly feared. It hadn't even eyed her with that expression of malevolent intent particular to the riding school horses, but instead seemed simply satisfied to be out enjoying the crisp winter morning, accepting its human passenger as a necessary cost.

  "I told you your gran was a good judge of horseflesh," Thom said, from the greater height of the big bay horse beside her. He held both reins in his right hand, Western style, while his other arm hung loosely down his left side.

  "She wouldn't have put you on anything too lively. She made sure this one here was absolutely bombproof before she'd let them send it over. I heard her on the telephone myself."

  Sabine sensed that at this point she was meant to express some kind of gratitude, or admiration. But she couldn't. Her grandmother had barely seemed to notice her the past few days, and when she did it was only to observe some wrongdoing on her part. Like not washing the mud from her boots before putting them in the boot room. And letting Bertie sleep on her bed in the afternoon. She had even shouted at Mrs. H for putting the wrong sort of butter on Grandfather's scrambled egg, bringing the tray back down herself and going on and on about it as if poor old Mrs. H had tried to poison him or something. Sabine had wanted to shout back at her, but after her grandmother had gone back upstairs to his room with a reloaded tray, Mrs. H had put a hand on her shoulder and said it didn't matter. "She's under a lot of strain. We have to give her a bit of leeway," she said, shaking her head.

  "Why does everyone let them get away with it?" she asked Thom, as he dismounted to open a wooden gate.

  "Who? Get away with what?"

  "Them. My grandparents. Why do you all stay working for them when they're so awful to everybody? I can't believe they pay you a great whack, she's always going on about economizing." She spat out the word, as if it tasted bad.

  Thom pushed the gate open, tapping his horse on its side so that it pirouetted clumsily around him, and Sabine rode through, her horse's hooves making crude sucking noises in the mud.

  "She's all right."

  "No, she's not. She never says thank you to you for all the things that you do. And she was rude to Mrs. H yesterday. And yet none of you answers back."

  "No point. She doesn't mean it personally."

  "That's no excuse."

  "I'm not saying it is. But people have their ways, and that's hers. God, it's cold this morning." With a slight grunt, Thom shoved his foot in the stirrup and, pushing up, swung his other leg over the back of the horse. His boots were caked in mud.

  "But it's demeaning. She treats you like servants. Like you all lived in the nineteenth century."

  Thom patted the bay horse's muscular neck.

  "Well, I suppose you could say we are her servants."

  "That's ridiculous. You're staff."

  Thom was grinning again now. His smile rose up above the scarf wrapped tightly around his neck.

  "So, what's the difference?"

  "There just is a difference."

  "Go on."

  Sabine stared at her horse's ears. Back and forth went the right one. Thom could be immensely irritating sometimes.

  "It's what she makes it. Them. Both of them. The difference is in how they treat you--as equals, or as . . . as . . . well, without any respect."

  She glanced furtively at Thom, wondering if she'd gone too far. She had realized halfway through the conversation that he might legitimately be offended by what she was saying.

  But he just shrugged, and pulled a wet leaf from an overhanging branch.

  "I don't see it like that. They're good people, your grandparents, but with old-fashioned ways. You've got to remember that they grew up with servants. They grew up in the colonies. They like things done a certain way, and they're just old and easily frustrated if that doesn't happen. Now"-- Thom pulled up his horse, and turned to look at her--"if it were just one person they treated badly, or shouted at, or whatever, I think we'd all walk out. There are no mugs in this place, Sabine, whatever you might think. But we understand them. And their ways. And although you might not see it, they respect us, too."

  Sabine still didn't agree, but something in Thom's manner meant that she was disinclined to pursue the conversation further.

  "And no matter what you might think of her right now, Mrs. H is right. She is under a lot of strain. You should open up to her a bit, Sabine. Talk to her. You might just be surprised."

  Sabine shrugged, as if it were beyond her to care. But the strain her grandmother was under, she knew, was down to her grandfather's encroaching ill health. He hadn't come down from his room for five days now, and the doctor, a young locum tenens with an earnest manner, had been a frequent visitor.

  Sabine hadn't liked to ask what was wrong. On the one occasion Mrs. H had asked her to take up his lunch tray, he had been asleep, and she had stood, frozen in the doorway, watching appalled and fascinated as, above the vibrant red of the oriental bedspread, the skeletal head painfully drew breath, wheezing and spluttering in fitful slumber. She couldn't have told if he looked unwell. He was too old to look anything but--well--old.

  "Is he going to die?" she asked Thom.

  He turned in his saddle and stared at her briefly, then looked away, as if considering something.

  "We're all going to die, Sabine."

  "That's not an answer."

  "Well, that's because I can't give you an answer. C'mon, the weather's closing in. We'd better get these horses back."

  It had all stemmed from the night of the hounds
. Nearly a week ago, Sabine had woken in the early hours to what sounded like a pack of wolves outside her window, their voices raised in a strangled, anguished chorus. They howled not in a mournful way, but with a kind of urgent blood-thirstiness, a bloodcurdling harmony, a song to raise primeval fears. Chilled, she had climbed slowly out of her bed, and padded barefoot to the window, half expecting in her dreamlike state to see a full moon. Instead, in the dim blue light, she had just been able to make out below her the thin figure of her grandmother, her dressing gown pulled tightly around her, running through the stable yard, a candlewick apparition. She was shouting at someone to come back. It wasn't the furious, electrified cry of someone chasing a criminal, but brisk, and yet almost pleading. "Come back, darling," she said. "Come back, now. Please."

  Sabine had stood, her hand raised at the window as her grandmother disappeared, unsure what to do. She half wanted to help, and yet even watching she had the strong sense that she was intruding on something private.

  Then, a few moments later, the howling had stopped. And she had heard footsteps, and then her grandmother's voice again, this time soft and scolding, like it was when she spoke to the Duke. Sabine had pushed back the curtain to see her grandmother slowly walking her grandfather back toward the back door. He stooped and limped, and the wind molded his pajamas around him in the wind, so that his bones seemed to poke right through, like warped coat hangers. "I was just checking on the hounds," he kept saying. "I know that man's not feeding them enough. I was just checking on the hounds."

  Sabine and her grandmother had not spoken about this incident. Sabine wasn't even sure if she was supposed to know. But from then on her grandfather had not emerged from his room. And at night, occasionally when she half woke, she could hear the brisk padding of her grandmother's steps along the corridor, as she checked that her husband was still in bed, and had not disappeared on another nocturnal engagement.

  Her curiosity awakened, Sabine did, however, ask her grandmother whether she could go and see the hounds. She had wanted Thom to take her, but her grandmother, after giving her one of her looks--as if she couldn't quite believe Sabine might be interested--said she could come up with her later that afternoon. "They're black-and-tans," she told Sabine as they walked briskly through the stable yard. "It's a special breed of hound, we've had in this area for generations." She pronounced it "hind." It was the longest sentence she had said to Sabine in over a week.