Sheltering Rain

  "The Ballantynes were always Masters of Foxhounds. That's the leader of the hunt. They started the pack, back at the end of the nineteenth century. And your grandfather has spent the best part of his life making sure it carried on. He was Master until about ten years ago, when he stopped riding. They're a wonderful pack. The last time I went out you should have heard them give tongue." She paused briefly, and smiled, savoring her reminiscences.

  Sabine, fighting the urge to giggle at her grandmother's last words, didn't tell her she had ulterior motives. She was convinced the poor dogs would be kept in cruelty; no contented animal could make a noise like those dogs had made. And the thought that they lived in concrete sheds, away from the comforts of warm fires and worn rugs, made her feel almost tearful. What she would do when she saw them, she wasn't quite sure. On her bad days, she resolved to set them free, or contact the local animal-rights people to make a fuss. But that would get all of them in trouble, including Thom. On her better days, she didn't think about the dogs at all.

  They were kept a five-minute walk from the house, in a yard surrounded by concrete pens, some of which had high metal gates, or heavy-duty wire in front. It looked like a sort of prison, thought Sabine sourly, as she skipped to keep up with her grandmother. It smelled of disinfectant and dog excrement and something else foul she couldn't identify. How could she look after her Labradors so well, and yet leave these dogs out in this cold?

  "How's Horatio doing, Niall?"

  "A little better, Mrs. Ballantyne," said the middle-aged man who had emerged from one of the sheds as they approached. He wore a long leather apron, like a blacksmith, and his face centered too closely around his nose, as if someone had squashed it all together. "The dressing should come off that foot fairly soon, and it's all healing up nicely underneath."

  "Shall we have a look." It wasn't a question. Her grandmother marched briskly over to a corner pen, and peered into the dark. From behind her, Sabine could just make out a dog, lying in the straw, its bandaged paw tucked protectively under its body.

  "What happened to him?" Sabine asked the man. The dog had raised his ears at his arrival, as if expecting something, and drooped a little when he turned away to face her.

  "Got run over by a horse. One of the guests at the Equestrian Center didn't hold back, and caught this poor old bugger under the hoof." He shook his head disapprovingly.

  "I'll tell you what, Mrs. Ballantyne. They don't give them even the basic rules to follow before they send them out. They just take the money and push them out the gate. Don't even care if they can ride, half the time."

  Her grandmother nodded, her gaze still fixed on the dog.

  "You're quite right, Niall. You're quite right."

  "It's been a lot worse since they turned it into a hotel. At least before it was mainly locals. Now it's all your holiday-makers, businessmen, and the like, and all they care about is going out for a day's hunting. You can't tell them nothing. Old John MacRae at the yard there tells me you'd weep if you'd see the state some of the horses are brought back in."

  Her grandmother stared at him. "What, lame are they?"

  "Lame'd be the best of it. Some of them keep them going for four, six hours, till they're practically broken winded. He had one bleeding at the nose, the other day. And that little chestnut mare they bought back from Tipperary? You remember the one? Scarred all down here." He pointed at his own side. "Because the stupid woman took it upon herself to wear spurs, and put them on the wrong way up."

  Sabine watched as her grandmother winced in sympathy. It was an expression she had never seen before.

  "I think I'll have a word with Mitchell Kilhoun," she said, firmly. "I'll tell him he has to look after his animals better or we won't let them out with the hunt."

  "You'll have a word with the Master?"

  "I certainly will," she said.

  "That'd be grand, Mrs. Ballantyne. It breaks my heart to see good animals injured for nothing." He gazed over at the hound, who was licking its good paw in misplaced sympathy. "Poor old bugger could have been shot."

  Sabine, who had been gazing absently at the dog, looked sharply up at him.

  "Shot?"

  Niall looked briefly at her grandmother, then back at Sabine.

  "Yes, miss. Shot. Would have been the kindest thing for him."

  "To be shot? How do you work that out?"

  Niall frowned slightly.

  "Well, a hound with three legs isn't no good to anyone, is he? He'd get left behind. Maybe even bullied. No kindness in that, now, is there?"

  "You would really have shot him?" Sabine stared at her grandmother.

  "Niall's right, Sabine. An injured hound has no life."

  "Well, he has no life if you shoot him." Sabine, enraged, felt suddenly, inexplicably tearful. "How can you be so cruel? How would you like it if I shot Bertie just because he couldn't do his job any more? Don't you have any sense of responsibility?"

  Her grandmother took a deep breath. She exchanged a glance with Niall, and then moved as if to steer Sabine back toward the big house.

  "They're not pets, dear. They're not like Bertie and Bella. They are hounds, specially bred--"

  She was interrupted by the grinding roar of the Land Rover as it swerved into the yard, closely followed by a battered pale-blue trailer. The clattering sound of its approach was met by a cacophany of noise from two of the kennels, and then suddenly the hounds swarmed out into the pens, throwing themselves against the wire in an ecstasy of barking and whining, tumbling on top of one another in an effort to get closer to the outside.

  Amid the noise, the driver's door of the Land Rover opened, and Michael jumped lightly out. "Sorry I took so long, Niall. Wasn't no one there to load the bloody thing. Oh, sorry Mrs. Ballantyne, I didn't see you there."

  "Come on, Sabine," said her grandmother, suddenly steering her firmly toward the gate. "Let's go back to the house."

  But Sabine resisted.

  "What's going to happen to the dog with the paw? Horatio? Is he going to be shot?"

  Her grandmother glanced briefly at the trailer, the back of which Michael had begun to lower. And began to push, gently, at the small of Sabine's back.

  "No. He won't be shot. As Niall said, the vet says he's getting better."

  "But, why don't you treat them like the other dogs?"

  Niall took the other side of the ramp and, between them, Michael and Niall lowered it to the ground, letting it drop the last six inches with a resounding clang that set the dogs baying even more furiously. They looked, Sabine noted privately, a little scary.

  "Sabine, come on. We really must get on."

  Her grandmother was actually tugging at her now. Sabine stood firmly, staring at her in some amazement. What was the urgency? What was it she didn't want her to see?

  A stiff, dark brown leg answered her question. It swung out like an errant clock hand, and stuck rigidly from the back of the trailer at an improbable angle, pointing upward toward the chimneys. On the end of it was a black hoof, still shiny with some kind of decorative unguent. As Sabine watched, Niall casually looped a rope around it and pulled, while Michael, who had run lightly up the ramp, grunted out of sight, in his apparent efforts to propel the thing down.

  "What are they doing?" she whispered. She was too shocked to speak properly.

  "It's dead, Sabine." Her grandmother's weary tone suggested this had been expected. "It can't feel a thing."

  Sabine turned to her grandmother, her eyes filled with tears. Behind her the dogs threw themselves frenziedly against the wire.

  "But what are they doing?"

  Sabine's grandmother gazed at the corpse of the bay horse, which was sliding, inch by inch, down the ramp.

  She paused.

  "It's going to the flesh house."

  "The flesh house? The flesh house?"

  "The hounds have to eat something, dear."

  Sabine's eyes grew wide. She stared at the dead horse, and then at the slavering hounds behind h
er. All she could see was teeth and gums and spittle.

  "They'll rip it to shreds." Her voice choked, and both palms flew unconsciously to her face. "Oh, my God, I can't believe you're just going to let them rip it to shreds. Oh, God . . ."

  The two men paused, then resumed their pulling, as Sabine bolted through the gate and ran back toward the house.

  Mrs. H had made the cup of tea some half an hour ago. But by the time Joy Ballantyne remembered to pick up the mug from the edge of the Aga, a skin had formed on it, so that a pale brown sun sat in the middle of the surface of the liquid.

  She should have known it would be a bad idea to take Sabine to the kennels. They were a mucky business at the best of times, and the girl was still covered with the cellophane sheen of the city. City dwellers found it hard to confront the brutal business of life and death up close, and the city was shot through Sabine like an arrow. And Joy had quite enough to deal with as it was, what with Edward becoming so much worse.

  She lifted her head, unconsciously, like a hound, trying to detect any sound of movement from the upper floors. But Mrs. H was out shopping, and the house lay in silence, the only sounds the distant clanking of the hot water system, and the occasional snore and fart of the two dogs, who lay at her feet.

  Joy sighed. She had pondered long and hard what to do with this girl, how to tease some enthusiasm, some life out of that tense, watchful little face. But she didn't seem to want to do anything, just kept shutting herself away in her room, or trying to make herself disappear in different parts of the house, her dissatisfaction at being at Kilcarrion emanating from her very being like an unpleasant smell. She seemed uncomfortable anywhere: in her room, at supper, if touched by someone when she hadn't been expecting it, even in her own skin.

  Had Kate been like this? Perhaps she had. Joy, sipping at her lukewarm tea in the empty kitchen, flicked through memories like someone trying to locate a page in a book--Kate's adolescent sulks, her fury at her parents' inability to understand her own preoccupations, her later determination not to ride, so that the bay horse they had spent months finding for her had stood unridden in the bottom field, a permanent physical reminder of the abyss that lay between them. She was so different from her older brother, Christopher, who spent every weekend away from Dublin point-to-pointing with his horses. It was hard to believe they were of the same blood. But here it was again in the shape of Kate's daughter.

  She had thought this could be rather fun, Joy conceded sadly, as she finished her tea. She had wanted to like Sabine. She had wanted to give her a really fun stay here, full of fresh air and activity and good food, and send her back with a glow in those pale cheeks, and so had spent hours trying to track down a really nice little horse that could be her companion. Most of all, she had wanted the chance to behave like she had a granddaughter, instead of trying to shut out the thought of her, like she had had to since she and Kate had properly fallen out. When Kate had telephoned out of the blue and asked if she could send her over to stay, she had mistaken Joy's silence for reticence and immediately, touchily withdrawn her request. But Joy's silence had simply been a reaction of stunned pleasure--never in the past ten years had she imagined she'd have the chance simply to have her granddaughter around.

  Now the only times they were both comfortable appeared to be when Sabine disappeared over to Annie's house. Which she seemed to do with increasing frequency. Sabine didn't even seem to like her. And she had to admit that she found the young girl's company made her uncomfortable, even irritable.

  Perhaps we're just too old for her, she thought, noting the creaking in her knees as she bent to stroke Bella's soft head. We're too old and too boring and she's used to a city life, the kind of life we couldn't hope to understand. Computers, that was what she wanted, wasn't it? Computers and television? Foolish to think she'd just fit in with us. Foolish to get cross with her, just because she doesn't understand the Duke. Hadn't yet had to exercise any real responsibility. And I should be sorry for her, not frustrated by her, Joy thought. What a rotten, disjointed little life she's had so far. She can't help who she is. That was really down to Kate.

  "Come on, chaps," she said, straightening. "Let's go and find Sabine, shall we?"

  Joy's severe exterior contradicted a certain generosity of spirit. Although set in her ways, she was not so rigid that she couldn't flex a little when she was wrong. There were things she could do to make the girl happier, she was sure. Give her a few pounds and ask Annie if she would take her to the cinema. It would do Annie good to get out. She could see if Thom would teach her to drive the Land Rover around the bottom fields. She'd like that. Try to find some common ground.

  Joy made her way up the stairs. When she had come up earlier, to bring Edward some fresh water, she had heard sobbing from the blue room, and exasperated and unsure whether any approach would be rebuffed, she had softly made her way back downstairs. She remembered that now with some sense of shame. For God's sake, woman, she scolded herself. She's just a child. You're the one who should be grown-up enough to approach her.

  She stood outside the door, listening for sounds of movement, and then knocked, softly, twice.

  There was no answer.

  Joy knocked again, and then pushed the door slowly. The bed, although bearing the imprint of a recent inhabitant, was empty. She glanced around, and then feeling somehow conscious of invading Sabine's privacy, she withdrew. She was probably at Annie's. Joy bit back a sudden sense of sadness at the thought that her own granddaughter found it easier to sit in a house full of strangers than with her closest family.

  It's not her fault, she told herself. We just haven't tried hard enough to understand her.

  She closed the door quietly behind her, as if Sabine were somehow present, and had gone just a few steps down the hall when the door of the study caught her eye. It was slightly ajar.

  Joy, irritated, was about to pull it shut, when some instinct told her to look inside. She opened the door and walked in.

  It was a room she rarely entered. Edward had given up using it several years ago, and Mrs. H was under his instructions to leave it alone, so it was easy to recognize that things had been disturbed. It would have been easy even if it hadn't been for the two boxes on the floor, and the open photograph album, propped up against one of the rolled rugs.

  Joy stared at the photographs, strewn across the floor. There was one of herself, and Stella, laughing at some joke. On coronation day. There was the junk that they had borrowed on Sundays, to visit the beach at Shek O. There was Edward, in his naval whites. And there was Kate, as a young girl. With her little friend. Her little Chinese friend.

  Joy felt a sudden welling of fury at the sight of her personal memories strewn carelessly across the rug, as if they were of so little significance. How dare she! How dare she go through these personal things without even asking! She had a sudden sense of her granddaughter as an intruder, as someone surreptitiously ferreting around in her past. Those photographs were personal. They were her life, her memories, her private reminders of years past. And then to just leave them carelessly scattered--as if they were of so little consequence.

  Choking back a little sob of indignation, Joy stooped, and began throwing the loose photographs back into the box, before replacing its lid, unnecessarily firmly. Then she strode to the door, and marched swiftly down the stairs, so that the dogs, rather than waiting eagerly, scattered at her approach.

  It was actually the third time Sabine had seen Breakfast at Tiffany's. She knew this bit, where the party woman's hat got set alight and no one noticed. She knew this other bit, where Audrey Hepburn fell asleep in George Peppard's bed (he never tried to do anything to her, not like he would have in real life). And as for the bit where she made him look up his book in the library--well, Sabine could practically recite that bit off by heart. But it didn't matter, because she was much more interested in Annie.

  For a woman who seemed to do little other than watch films all day--Annie had subscriptions to all t
he cable channels, as well as video shops within a twenty-five-mile radius--she rarely seemed to actually watch any of them. Since Sabine had been there, which was almost the whole first hour of Breakfast at Tiffany's, she had flicked through two magazines, made marks against a few items of clothing in a thick catalog, walked over to look out of the window at least twice, and frequently absented herself altogether, instead staring past the screen into the middle distance. It had gotten to the point where it was more interesting for Sabine to stop watching the film and watch Annie.

  But then Annie never seemed to be able to concentrate on anything much. In conversations, as they leaned conspiratorially together over a cup of tea, she would suddenly lose the thread of whatever they were talking about, so that Sabine would have to remind her. Or her face would go all blank, and occasionally she would disappear upstairs for five or ten minutes. Sometimes she would even just drop off to sleep, even in front of guests, as if staying in the present were simply too exhausting. At first, Sabine had found it a bit unnerving, and had wondered whether she were doing something wrong. But then she saw that Annie did it with everyone--with Patrick, with her mother, even with Thom--and she decided it was just Annie's way. As Thom said, everyone had his way, and, provided there was nothing personal, you should just accept it.

  "So where were you at this morning, Sabine?" Annie, her feet tucked under her on the big blue sofa, turned away from the television screen. She was wearing a huge fisherman's jumper that seemed to swallow her up. Patrick's probably. "Did you go riding?"

  Sabine nodded. She found she had unconsciously mimicked Annie's pose on the opposite sofa, and her bottom leg was getting pins and needles.

  "Did Thom take you?"

  "Yes." She straightened her leg, observing her socked foot. "Have you ever seen the hounds?"

  "Have I seen the hounds? Of course I have. You'll see them up and down this road often enough in the hunting season."

  "I mean where they live."

  Annie looked at her inquiringly.

  "The kennels? Sure. Grisly place, isn't it? Why, did you get a bit of a shock?"

  Sabine nodded. She didn't want to tell Annie the whole story. Annie's home was where she got to pretend that life was normal, with television and gossip, and no mad old people, stupid rules, and dead things.