Sheltering Rain

  "Sabine, this is Auntie May," said Thom. "She's Annie's mam's, and my own mam's, sister. And that's Steven, her husband. They know your mam from when she lived over here."

  "Can you all sit yourselves at the table? Mack, take out some serving spoons, will you?"

  "A gorgeous girl, your mother," said the woman, placing a plump hand on Sabine's arm. "She used to go to the odd dance with my Sarah. The two of them used to make a right pair. Is she over with you?"

  "No. She had to stay at home to work."

  "Now that's a shame. A real shame. I would have loved to have seen her. Of course I'd have seen her myself when I went over--what was it, Steven? Two years ago?--but what with my hips and all . . . it's difficult for me to travel much."

  Sabine nodded, as she was steered to her chair, unsure what she was meant to contribute.

  "Arthritis. A killer, it is. Very little the doctors can do, I'm told. So I'll be in a wheelchair before long. And that'll be the end of me walking. But you tell your mother I said hello, won't you?"

  "Sabine, you make sure you just help yourself to everything. This bunch of savages won't wait, so you'll just have to dive in."

  "You tell her if she's ever passing she's to drop by. As I said, I may not be able to actually get out much by then, but she'll always find a warm welcome."

  "Are your hips worse, May? You never said." This was accompanied by a barely audible chuckle.

  "Auntie Ellen? Can I have some juice?"

  "The potatoes, Sabine. You won't get fat on politeness around here," said Thom. "If you don't grab your dish while you can, you can bet someone else will."

  Throughout this entire exchange, Annie had kept her gaze steady on the curtains opposite, her mind apparently far, far away from the clamor of the overcrowded front room. Patrick, who normally kept up some kind of physical contact with his wife, whether it be stroking her back, or holding her hand, was, unusually, looking away from her and drinking his can of beer with a kind of grim determination.

  Oh, God, Sabine thought suddenly, as she gazed at them. It's falling apart. She was an expert at spotting the signs, after all.

  "Have some more vegetables, Sabine. You've hardly taken enough to feed a fly."

  "You leave her alone there, Mack. She'll have what she wants, won't you Sabine?"

  Like a tongue that cannot help but return to worry a loose tooth, Sabine found her attention returning again and again during the meal to the unhappy dynamic between Annie and Patrick. She noticed how Patrick did try, two or three times, to speak to his wife, but how, even when she deigned to answer, she barely seemed to actually see him. Her gaze was always focused on some invisible point just past him. She noticed how Annie drank more than usual, so that her own mother eventually surreptitiously placed a glass of water in front of her. She noticed how Thom, who evidently recognized a little of what was going on, lavished a large amount of his own attention on Annie, trying to make her laugh, colluding with Patrick, drawing her into conversations when she had already seemingly absented herself from the party.

  It had been a pity that she had become increasingly anxious watching all this, as Sabine thought she would have probably rather enjoyed herself otherwise. As well as two huge turkeys, there were loads of really nice vegetables, and a piece of salmon just for her, and everyone talked over themselves so much that it didn't matter whether she joined in or sat back and just listened. Thom's family kept teasing him about his solitary nature, and how he was going to end up as a hermit, living in a shed at the bottom of the woods. "I'm sure I saw a little tin-roofed thing down there the last time I walked through," said Steven. "That'd be your first mortgage, would it, Thommo?"

  "Nah. That's the home of his girlfriend," said one of the young boys, who both seemed to be called James. "She's out there catching bats to put in her supper."

  Mr. and Mrs. H, meanwhile, kept touching each other, and catching each other's eye in a way that, had it been her own parents, Sabine would have found distinctly embarrassing. They were always pawing at each other, and every now and then Mr. H would say something in Mrs. H's ear that would make her blush and exclaim, "Oh, Mack!" and then the rest of the table would catch on and start baying at them to "hold off a wee while," and "can you not wait until we've put the kids to bed?"

  Yet, through all this, Annie, while raising the odd smile, was about as animated as one of Mrs. H's ornaments. Except distinctly less cheerful. Sabine watched her, and felt a sense of foreboding. Why was it so hard for Annie just to enjoy herself?

  It was halfway through the pudding--a huge confection of chocolate and crushed biscuits, served with ice cream straight from the tub--that Sabine had felt a faint tugging feeling in her womb, a dull, low ache, that suddenly diverted her from table-watching, and caused her to press her legs together in fear.

  Oh, God, not here. Not now. The rhythms of her life in Ireland had been so far removed from home that she hadn't even considered it a possibility. But now, silently counting back the weeks as she picked at her chocolate pudding, she suddenly realized that if she hadn't remembered, her body certainly had.

  She waited until a particularly raucous exchange, and then slid, surreptitiously out of her chair

  "Can you point me to the bathroom?" she whispered to Mrs. H, who was breathless with laughter at something one of her older relatives had said.

  "Around the corner, first door on the right," said Mrs. H, laying a hand on her arm. "If that one's busy, try the one by the kitchen."

  Sabine locked herself in the bathroom, and with a sigh of dismay, observed the telltale sign that she had half suspected, and half feared. She had come completely unprepared. And there was no way she was sitting on Mrs. H's pale upholstery for the rest of the evening unless she had something that could make her feel at ease.

  For want of anything else, she wrapped a length of loo roll around her hand, and used that as a kind of temporary protection. And then, opening the various doors as silently as possible, conscious that perhaps it wasn't the done thing to go rooting around in your hosts' bathroom cupboards, she began to root around in her hosts' bathroom cupboards.

  Bubble bath, bleach, denture cream (for whom? she thought, trying and failing to picture Mrs. H's teeth), bath salts, spare soaps, and loo rolls. A pair of half-rusty tweezers, cotton wool, a hair net, some long-forgotten prescription medicine, and a bottle of shampoo. No tampons. No sanitary towels. Sabine sighed, and glanced around the bathroom to see if there was anywhere she might have missed.

  Having checked underneath the doily dolly, just in case (well, Mrs. H might have been shy), and in the airing cupboard, with the matching pastel-colored towels, Sabine was forced to conclude that Mrs. H was just a little bit too old to provide what she was searching for. The only other person was Annie--she was the right age, after all--but how on earth was she going to be able to get her away from the table to ask her, without drawing attention to herself? They were all so quick to poke fun at one another, and if they knew what she was after and made jokes about it, she would just die. She knew she would.

  Maybe if I wait here another few minutes, Sabine reasoned, seating herself on the toilet, which was clad in a strange, looped-cloth lid, they will finish pudding and move on to the sofas again. Then it will be easier for me to have a quick word with Annie.

  She sat for a while, inhaling the distant smell of synthetic pine, then jumped guiltily at the soft knock on the door. She held her breath for a moment, wondering whether it was one of the men after an empty loo, but then she heard Mrs. H's voice.

  "Sabine? Are you okay, love?"

  "Fine," said Sabine, trying to make her voice sound as natural as possible. Which meant it immediately rose an octave and wobbled.

  "Are you sure? You've been gone an awful long time."

  Sabine hesitated, then stood up, and walked to the door, opening it. Mrs. H was standing behind it, slightly stooped, as if she had been listening at the keyhole.

  "Are you okay, love?" she said, straightening
.

  Sabine chewed at her lip.

  "Sort of."

  "What's the problem? You can tell me."

  "I need to ask Annie for a . . . a thing."

  "A what?"

  Sabine looked away, her need wrestling with the acute awfulness of having to confess her problem.

  "Come on, love, don't be shy."

  "I'm not shy. Not really."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Can you get Annie for me?"

  Mrs. H frowned slightly, managing to maintain her smile.

  "Annie? Why do you want Annie?"

  "I need to ask her for something."

  "Need to ask her for what?"

  Was it really that hard to guess? Sabine found herself feeling suddenly impatient with Mrs. H, for not grasping the nature of her predicament.

  "I need to ask her for a pad. Or a tampon, or something." Even the words sounded embarrassing.

  Mrs. H's smile fell away, and she glanced behind her toward the noise emanating from the living room.

  "Can you get her?"

  "I don't think that would be a good idea, love."

  Mrs. H looked suddenly serious, the glow of the past few hours vanishing from her cheeks. "I'll tell you what, you stay in here, and I'll nip next door to Carrie's. My neighbor. She'll have something for you."

  And then she was gone.

  Sabine sat anxiously in the bathroom until she returned, mulling over the reasons why she wouldn't be allowed to ask Annie for a tampon. Were she and Patrick so poor that it would be an embarrassment? Did they have some weird religious objections to it? A girl in Sabine's school had told her, when they were younger, that Catholic girls didn't use tampons, as they took away their virginity. But Patrick and Annie were married and would have been doing it for years, so surely they couldn't really mind?

  Mrs. H, when she returned with her discreet paper bag, did not enlighten her. She just told her to come back when she was ready, and left Sabine alone.

  When Sabine returned to the living room they were all still seated around the table, although two of the women were helping Mrs. H to clear the dishes. There was an air of spent mirth, as if they had all shared some gigantic joke. Or perhaps that was just Sabine's acute sensitivity to her recent dilemma; she wasn't entirely sure.

  "You didn't want any more pudding, did you Sabine? I left your plate out in case."

  Sabine shook her head, glancing over at Annie. She was fiddling absently with her paper napkin, rolling and unrolling it at the corner.

  "Now, who's coming for a quick pint?" Mack stood at the far end of the table, and looked toward Patrick.

  "I'll join you for a wee while," said Thom.

  "You're no good, on bloody orange juice. Who's going to join me in a drink? Steven, you'll come. Good man. Patrick?"

  "I'll stay with Annie," he said, looking less than thrilled by the prospect.

  "Annie'll come with us, won't you, girl? About time you took a trip down to the Black Hen. You've not been in there in ages."

  Annie, glancing at her mother, shook her head. "Thanks, Dad, but I'm not really in the mood."

  "C'mon, girl. Your man there wants to have a drink, and he won't go without you, so come and indulge him for the one."

  "No. No. You're all right. I'll stay here and help Mam clear up."

  "You will not. The dishwasher will take care of this lot. Go on, Annie. Go and have a bit of fun for a change."

  There was a warm swell of collusion from the rest of the table. Go on, Annie, they murmured. Go on out. Go and have a drink.

  "C'mon, you. I'm sure you owe me a few pints by now, for all those videos I've brought you." Thom stood, and offered her his arm.

  "I really don't fancy it. Thanks."

  "Ahh, come on. Don't be a spoilsport when your old man wants to take you for a drink."

  Annie's face darkened. "Will you all just leave me alone? I do not want to go to the bloody pub. I just want to go home." And having silenced the room, she turned, and half ran out, followed swiftly by Mrs. H.

  Sabine stared at the faces around her, shocked by the ferocity of Annie's response. Thom, catching her eye, tried to give her a reassuring grin. A sort of "women! what'll they do next?" kind of a grin. It wasn't terribly convincing.

  "Ellen'll look after her," muttered Mack. "C'mon, lads. We'll head off."

  "Yes, you head off," said Auntie May, heaving herself into a standing position, and reaching for a pile of plates. "Go on, Patrick. It'll do you good to let your hair down a bit."

  "Y'all right here, Sabine?" Thom lowered his head and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  No, she wanted to answer. But it was obvious no one was going to invite her to the pub, so instead she just nodded in an agreeable manner. "Fine, thanks," she said.

  In silence, the men trooped out, just as Mrs. H was coming back in. She and Mack and Patrick exchanged a few quiet words, and then Mrs. H walked briskly into the middle of the room, smiling broadly.

  "Annie's gone home for a bit of a lie down. Bit of a headache coming, I think. She says she'll see you all later."

  Sabine looked around her, registering that there was no one there who believed in the veracity of what Mrs. H was saying. But no one seemed to want to question her, either; they just busied themselves with the clearing and tidying operation, striking up meaningless conversations about people Sabine had never heard of.

  "You go and sit down, Ellen," said Auntie May. "Go and keep Sabine company, and keep an eye on the boys. We'll take care of the kitchen. Go on, it's your anniversary, woman. And you haven't so much as sat down for five minutes since we've been here."

  Mrs. H protested until Auntie May held up a jeweled hand to silence her.

  "I'm not listening, Ellen. I told you, you keep an eye on those boys. It'll do my hips good to move around a bit, anyway. Stop them seizing up later on."

  Mrs. H, still clutching her dishcloth, sat down on the sofa beside Sabine. The boys had turned on the television, and sat, in their socks, staring blankly at the screen. Mrs. H tried, briefly, to talk to them, but it was clear that their attention was elsewhere. Sabine watched her, wondering whether she could ask the unaskable. It was getting to be too much, this feeling of being excluded from some really important secret. It took Sabine back to a recent incident at home, when all the girls in her class had split into exclusive little groups, and those she had thought of as her friends had turned on her and not let her know about a party they were holding, all looking at her with blank, sheeplike faces when she asked, increasingly anxiously, when and where it was. It was not that she really wanted to go (she wasn't actually that keen on parties). It was just the horror of being excluded.

  "Is Annie an alcoholic?" she asked Mrs. H.

  They had told her in the end, after all. Then it had been Jennifer Laing's turn to be left out.

  Mrs. H's face spun around to meet hers. She looked genuinely shocked.

  "Annie? Alcoholic? Of course not. Why do you say that?"

  Sabine flushed.

  "I'm not saying she looks alcoholic, or anything . . . It's just that you all seem nervous of her in company, and no one says anything when she acts a bit odd. I--I just wondered if it was because she drank too much."

  Mrs. H reached for her hair and began stroking it down, a nervous habit Sabine had never noticed before.

  "No, Sabine. She's not alcoholic."

  There was a lengthy silence, during which the boys began to squabble over the remote control.

  Sabine, listening to the distant clatter of crockery in the kitchen, began to feel simultaneously embarrassed for having said anything and resentful that, still, no one seemed inclined to give her a reason for Annie's odd behavior. It had become more odd, recently, as well. She seemed to have forgotten how to tidy up, so that every time Sabine stopped by, the living room, which had always leaned toward the vaguely messy, had started to appear somewhat chaotic. She fell asleep more often, and when awake, often didn't even seem to hear what you wer
e saying. Perhaps it was drugs, Sabine thought suddenly. It wasn't exactly the inner cities, but she was sure she had seen something on the news about drug use in rural areas. Perhaps Annie was on drugs.

  Mrs. H had been gazing at her hands. Then she stood, and motioned to Sabine to do the same, glancing behind her at the kitchen.

  "C'mon," she said. "Let's you and me have a little chat."

  Mrs. H's bedroom was as immaculately tidy as the rest of her house, and possibly even warmer. Her bed was headed by a raspberry-pink padded board, from which spread a huge, embroidered quilt. The pink of the quilt was matched by the velour curtains, and picked up by the trimmings of the cushions on the easy chair in the corner. A running frieze around the ceiling picked out carefully washed-out pastel images of bunches of grapes, interwoven with green stems and leaves. It was the kind of room that normally she and her mother would exchange mischievous grins at--they both knew it was poor taste to have everything matching--and yet Sabine didn't feel either as confident in her beliefs, or as malicious. At the moment the cozy, warm uniformity of Mrs. H's house seemed far more inviting than anything her own family had to offer.

  The far end of the room contained an array of fitted cupboards, some of which contained mirrored panels. It was from one of these, as Sabine watched herself duplicated, that Mrs. H opened a door, and then, slowly pulled out the drawer behind it.

  She motioned to Sabine to sit down, and then, walking back, sat heavily beside her, handing her its contents: a silver framed picture of a little girl, beaming into the sun, sitting aside a bright blue tricycle.

  "That's Niamh," she said.

  And then, as Sabine frowned, staring at the broad toothy grin, the blonde hair: "That's Annie's daughter. Was Annie's daughter."

  She paused.

  "She died two and a half years ago. A car hit her as she ran out of the gates. Annie hasn't really been the same since."

  Sabine stared back at the little girl, feeling her heart thump with shock and her own eyes prick suddenly with tears.

  "Three, she was. Just had her third birthday. It's been a bit difficult for Annie and Patrick, as they haven't been able to have another child. They've tried, but it's not happened. And that's been an extra burden for Annie to bear. That's why I didn't want you asking her for . . . well. You can see. It's just an added reminder, every month."