Sheltering Rain

  Annie noted Sabine's expression, and then swung her legs around and planted her feet on the floor.

  "He shouldn't have taken you. It's not a nice place if you're not used to livestock."

  "It wasn't Thom. Do all dead horses go there?"

  "It's not just horses. You get cows, sheep, all sorts. They've got to go somewhere. I wouldn't get upset about it. Now, I'm going to put the kettle on. Do you want a cup?"

  But of course it took Annie some fifteen minutes to ask Patrick if he wanted tea. By the time she returned to the living room, Audrey Hepburn had gotten together with George Peppard and found her missing cat and Sabine had decided she may have overreacted at the kennels. The animals were dead, as Annie said. And dogs had to eat something. It had just been a bit of a shock to see the rawness of it all. Especially for a vegetarian.

  In London, her mother was careful to respect her views on eating meat, making sure that there were always cheese and pasta sauce and tofu in the fridge. And Geoff had often cooked vegetarian for all of them. It made it easier, he said. And it was probably good for them not to eat too much fat. Because it was hard enough trying to keep hold of your beliefs without everyone treating them as if they were some bit of adolescent nonsense. Here, people kept "forgetting" that she didn't eat meat, and serving it up anyway. Or acting as if it were some bizarre foible that she was sure to grow out of. But then there was no life and death at home. Unless you counted what you saw on television. Here it seemed to be everywhere: in the small animals that Bertie worried in the yard; in the horribly named flesh house at the kennels; in her grandfather's creased and craggy face, which no longer seemed to have the energy to even distinguish its various expressions.

  "Is my grandfather going to die?" she asked.

  Annie paused in the entrance to the kitchen, and then rubbed both hands awkwardly down the hem of her jumper.

  "He's not well," she conceded.

  "Why won't anyone give me a straight answer? I know he's ill, and I can't ask my grandmother. I just want to know if he's going to die."

  Annie began to pour the tea into stripy mugs. She was silent for a bit, and then she turned to Sabine.

  "What difference does it make?" she asked.

  "It doesn't make any difference. I just want people to be honest with me."

  "Honesty, pah. You can have too much honesty, believe me."

  Sabine, uncomfortably, realized there was a faint note of aggression in Annie's tone.

  "If it doesn't make any difference, then it doesn't matter. You should just appreciate him while he's here. Love him, even."

  Sabine's eyes widened at this. The idea that love was something one could inflict on that crotchety old man seemed faintly ridiculous.

  "He--he's not really a very loving-type person," she ventured, slowly.

  "Why? Because he's old? And difficult? Or because you find him uncomfortable to be around?"

  Sabine felt increasingly uneasy at the tone of Annie's voice. Annie had been one of the few people she felt understood her, and now she was acting like Sabine had somehow said something wrong.

  "I didn't mean to offend you," she said, sulkily.

  Annie placed a mug of tea in front of her. When Sabine looked up again, she was gazing at her, and her eyes were kind.

  "You didn't offend me, Sabine. I just think it's important to love people while you have them. However long you have them." Here, her eyes began to fill with tears, and she looked away.

  She had done it again. Sabine felt herself chill, conscious that she had somehow again made Annie cry. Why couldn't she get the measure of any of these people? Why did she always feel like she was misreading some crucial signal, like she did when she was hanging around with a crowd she didn't know at home, and couldn't get any of their sayings and in-jokes?

  "I do try to be nice to everyone," she ventured, quietly, desperate to have Annie think well of her again.

  Annie sniffed, and wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve. "I'm sure you do, Sabine. You hardly know them, is all."

  "It's just they're not easy people to show feelings to. They're not very--well--feelingly, if you know what I mean."

  Annie laughed, and placed her hand on Sabine's. It was cool and soft and dry. Sabine's own were hot with discomfort.

  "You're not wrong there. Getting those two to show their feelings . . . well, you'd probably have more luck asking the Duke."

  They both laughed, companionably, into the silence. Sabine felt herself relax. They had apparently passed over whatever invisible turbulence she had blundered into.

  "But, seriously, Sabine. I mean it. Just because they're not easy with showing it, doesn't mean they don't feel it."

  They were interrupted by a sharp rapping on the door. With a quick, quizzical glance at Sabine (Mrs. H and Thom always let themselves in) Annie got out of her chair and walked to the door, pushing her hair behind her ears as she did.

  Sabine started to see Joy standing there, tall and rigid in her headscarf, her face taut and her arms, padded in their quilted jacket, fixed awkwardly to her sides.

  "I'm so sorry to trouble you, Annie. I was wondering whether I could talk to Sabine."

  "Of course, Mrs. Ballantyne." Annie stepped backward, pulling the door farther open. "Come right on in."

  "No, I won't come in, thank you very much. Sabine, I'd like you to come home."

  Sabine stared at Joy, noting the barely repressed sense of fury emanating from her grandmother. She quickly ran through a checklist of possible misdemeanors: No, the shampoo bottles were in her room, her boots were clean, her bedroom door was shut to stop Bertie getting in. Yet something in Joy's face left her distinctly unwilling to leave the comfort and safety of Annie's house. She stared at Joy, trying hard to quell her growing sense of unease.

  "I was just having a cup of tea," she said. "I'll come along after."

  Joy flinched slightly. Something in her eyes turned hard and steely.

  "Sabine," she said. "I'd like you to come home now."

  Sabine's heart had begun to thump.

  "No," she said. "I'm having my tea."

  Annie's eyes flickered between the two visitors. "Sabine . . ." she said, and her voice held a warning.

  "I'm sure it can't be that urgent," said Sabine, defiantly. She knew she was in uncharted territory now, but something in her rebelled against being marched home to that miserable house, to be railed against for some minor domestic misdemeanor. Sabine had had enough.

  "I'll come when I'm ready," she said.

  Something in Joy appeared to erupt. She marched past Annie into the room, carrying the chill air of outside around her like a radioactive buzz.

  "How dare you," she breathed. "How dare you go through my private things. How dare you start ransacking my private photographs without even thinking to ask me. Those were private, you understand? They were not meant for you to look at."

  Sabine remembered the photographs with a start, her face pinking with discovery. She had not even thought of putting them away. It seemed unnecessary, as no one ever went into the room. But any sense of guilt was overshadowed by the scale of her grandmother's response. She had never seen her lose her temper before. Her voice crackled, like a dry log in a fire, and her hair seemed suddenly electrified, springing free from its two clips. But as the tirade continued into the charged atmosphere, the adrenaline infected her, and Sabine found herself suddenly shouting in response.

  "They're only photographs!" she said, yelling over her grandmother's voice. "All I did was look through a box of bloody photographs! I was hardly going down your underwear drawer, was I?"

  "They were not yours to go through! You had no right!" Joy's voice lifted on the last word, making her sound curiously adolescent.

  "Right? Right?" Sabine stood up, pushing her chair back behind her with a shuddering bump. "I've not had a single bloody right since I came here. There's bloody nothing I can do without your permission, is there? I can't walk around the house, I can't talk to the s
taff, I can't even have a bloody bath without worrying whether someone's going to come in and stick a ruler in to see whether I'm using too much water."

  "Those were my personal things!" Joy shouted. "How would you like it if I went through your personal things?"

  "You know what? Why don't you go and have a look! Because I haven't got any personal things, have I? I don't get to keep my personal bloody toothbrush in the bathroom. I don't get to watch the programs I want. I can't even use the telephone to make a personal call!" Here Sabine's voice began to break, and she rubbed at her eyes, determined not to let the older woman see her cry.

  "Sabine, you could do anything you wanted. But not if you just skulk around the place, refusing to join in. You have to join in."

  "To what? Hunting? Feeding dead horses to the dogs? Sorry, hounds? Joining the eight million people a day who faff around preparing my grandfather's boiled eggs?" Sabine was dimly aware that Patrick was now standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

  "You are a guest in my house," said Joy, speaking as if she were fighting to control her breath. "And while you are a guest, the least I expect is for you not to go rummaging around in things that don't concern you."

  "They're just bloody pictures! A few stinking pictures! Apart from the ones with my mum in, they're not even very nice!" Sabine began to cry. "God, I can't believe you are making this into such a big deal. I was bored, okay? I was bored, and fed up, and I wanted to see what my mum looked like when she was my age. If I'd known you were going to throw a bloody wobbly about it I wouldn't have gone anywhere near your stupid pictures. I hate you. I hate you and I wish I was at home." The crying dissolved into deep, ragged sobs. Sabine sank down onto the table and buried her face in her crossed arms.

  Annie, who had been standing helplessly, closed the front door, and walked over to the table. She laid a hand on Sabine's shoulder.

  "Look," she said. "Mrs. Ballantyne, I'm sure Sabine didn't mean any harm."

  Patrick walked silently into the middle of the room. "Is everything okay here?" he said.

  "You go on up, Patrick. Everything's fine."

  "We've got guests. They're wondering what's going on."

  "I know, love. Go on up," Annie said. "There'll be no more noise."

  Joy shook her head slightly, as if she had forgotten the presence of the other woman. She glanced up and saw Patrick, and looked suddenly abashed at her own outpouring of emotion.

  "I'm so sorry, Annie. Patrick," she said eventually. "It's not like me to lose my temper."

  He looked at Joy and Sabine warily.

  "Really. I'm so, so sorry."

  "I'll just be upstairs if you need me," he said to his wife, and walked out.

  There was a brief silence, broken only by the sound of Sabine's shuddering and sniffing. Joy shook her head, as if rousing herself from a reverie. She put both hands to her cheeks, as if feeling their temperature, and then moved stiffly toward the door.

  "Annie, I'm so sorry. Please accept my apologies. I--I--yes. Well. I think I had better get back to the house. Sabine, I'll see you later."

  Sabine refused to look up from the table.

  "I'm sorry," said Joy, opening the door.

  "You're all right, Mrs. Ballantyne," said Annie. "It's no problem at all. I'll let Sabine finish her tea and she'll be back with you later."

  Joy sat on the edge of her husband's bed. He lay, propped up against a bank of white cushions, gazing across the room at the fire, which Mrs. H had stoked up before she left. It was dark outside, and the only light in the room came from a bedside lamp, and the flames, which flickered in the reflections of the mahogany bedposts, and in the brass handles of the chest of drawers under the window.

  "Oh, Edward. I've done an awful thing," she said.

  Edward's eyes swiveled rheumily across to Joy's face.

  "I completely lost my temper with Sabine. In front of Annie and Patrick. I don't know what came over me."

  She rubbed at her eyes with one hand, the other clutching a handkerchief that she had pulled out of her drawer on her return home. It was unlike Joy to cry. She wasn't even sure when she had last done so. But she had been haunted by the thin adolescent figure who had burst into childish tears in front of her, and haunted more by her own violent feelings toward her.

  "She got into the study, you see."

  Joy took a deep breath, and took Edward's hand. It was bony and dry. Touching it, she could remember when it had been broad and spade-fingered, tanned from working outside.

  "She had been rooting through the old Hong Kong pictures. And there was something about seeing them again. . . . I--oh, Edward, I just completely lost my temper."

  Edward kept his gaze steady on her face. She thought she could feel the faintest of answering squeezes.

  "She's only a child, isn't she? She doesn't understand. Why shouldn't she look through the photographs? She knows little enough about her family, God knows. Oh, God, Edward, I feel like such an old fool. I wish I could take it all back."

  Joy rubbed at her face with the handkerchief. She knew what she had to do, but she wasn't sure how to do it. It was unlike her to turn to Edward for advice. But he seemed to be having a better day. And there wasn't anyone else who could begin to understand. "You were always better with people. Much better than I was. What can I do to make it up to her?"

  Joy gazed at her husband, and shifted her weight, so that she could bend better to hear him speak.

  Edward's eyes moved away from hers, as if he were deep in thought. After a lengthy pause he shifted his face toward her. Joy stooped lower. She knew he had trouble speaking at the moment.

  When his voice emerged, it was hoarse and crackly, like rice paper.

  "Are we having sausages tonight?" he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The one advantage to living in a house mathematically bisected by rules and regulations was that it definitely made it easier to sneak around. Sabine had timed her return to Kilcarrion for eight-fifteen, when she knew her grandmother would be eating in the dining room. Even when her grandfather ate upstairs in his room Joy would eat there, at a carefully set table, as if solitarily upholding some grand tradition. And she had worked out a back route, which didn't even involve her passing the dining room; if she came through the back door, and walked silently along the corridor that led to the boot room, she could come up the back stairs, and out onto the main landing without her grandmother even knowing she was there.

  Because there was no way she was speaking to her again. The next time she saw her, it would be to say good-bye. She would wait until her grandmother had gone to bed, and then she would tiptoe silently into the living room and call her mother, to tell her she was coming home. Her grandmother didn't have a phone in her room, so she wouldn't hear a thing. And her grandfather never heard anything anyway. As long as the dogs didn't get excited and start barking, she would have it all planned and ready before her grandmother could do anything about it.

  The little knot of tension that Sabine had felt for the remainder of her stay at Annie's had not dissipated as she made her plans, but Sabine didn't mind. She was almost grateful. Her sense of fury and injustice helped give her the determination to move on. Yes, she would miss Thom and Annie and Mrs. H, and it was a shame that she had just started, if she had to admit it, to enjoy herself a bit. But there was no way she was staying one more day with that woman. No way. At one point after her grandmother had left, when she had been at the snot-and-shudder stage of crying, she had suggested to Annie that perhaps she could sleep in her spare room. The one next door to Annie and Patrick's room, which never got used by guests. Then she wouldn't have to come back to Kilcarrion at all. But Annie had gone all funny again, and said no, no one was to use that room, and Sabine had decided not to push it. She needed all the friends she could get at the moment.

  Sabine pulled out her holdall from under the bed, and began to throw in her clothes. It was better this way, she told herself. She and her grandmother just didn't get on.
She could understand now why her mother never came back to Ireland--imagine growing up with that! Sabine felt a sudden stab of longing for her mother, and comforted herself with the thought that this time the following evening she would be back in the house in Hackney. That was the important thing. She would deal with the Justin thing later.

  She moved to the chest of drawers, hauling them open and throwing her clothes in the holdall chaotically, careless of whether they were likely to crease. She was fed up with doing things the so-called right way. From now on she would simply do things her way.

  But as she packed, she found she couldn't think too hard about Justin. Or Geoff. Or about the good things at Kilcarrion, like riding with Thom this morning, and the way he put his hand on her shoulder and told her he'd make a horsewoman of her yet. Or the way he kept leaning across to her when they untacked their horses in the yard, and gave Liam a warning glare when he tried to make rude jokes in front of her. Or Mrs. H, and her food, which was loads nicer than she was likely to get at home, with just Mum around. Or Bertie, who followed her around now, and seemed to adore her in a way O'Malley never did, even though she had raised him herself from a kitten. Or even Annie, as weird as she was. Because if she thought too hard about any of these things, Sabine found that what she really wanted was to cry. A lot.

  She jumped at the soft knock on the door, then froze. Caught in the act, she thought silently. But then she realized that whatever her grandmother did these days made her feel like that.

  Sabine stood still and said nothing, knowing who it was likely to be, but eventually the door opened anyway, slowly and cautiously, making a soft swooshing noise on the blue shag pile.

  Her grandmother stood before her, bearing a small wooden tray, on which stood a bowl of tomato soup and some of Mrs. H's buttered soda bread. Sabine stared at her for a minute, tense and still, awaiting the next onslaught.

  But Joy merely looked down at the tray.

  "I thought you might be hungry," she said, pausing, and then as if having herself waited for some protest, walked slowly over to the dressing table. If she noticed the half-packed bag, she didn't say anything.

  She placed the tray gently on the cleared space, and then turned around so that she was facing her granddaughter.