Sheltering Rain

  Mrs. H's voice was quite cool, measured, as if this were her way of containing the raw, explosive emotion behind what she was saying. Sabine could feel it, like a huge shelf rising up to her esophagus, filling her chest, and making her want to cry out loud.

  "We hope she'll come through eventually," Mrs. H continued quietly. "It's been an awful few years. But some people seem to take longer than others."

  "I'm really sorry," Sabine whispered. An alcoholic. How crass Mrs. H must think she was.

  "You weren't to know," she said, patting her hand. "We don't talk about Niamh because it seems to make things worse. Annie doesn't like to have pictures of her around, so I keep this in my drawer. It's a pity though." She traced the outline of the little girl with her soft finger. "I would have liked to have a few pictures around. Just to remind me, y'know?"

  Sabine nodded, still transfixed by this little girl. Downstairs, she could hear Auntie May and the others laughing.

  "Is that her room? In Annie's house?"

  "Next to Annie and Patrick's? Yes, that was hers. Annie doesn't like people to go in." She sighed. "I keep telling her it's time to clear it out, but she won't listen. And I can't force her."

  Sabine thought for a minute.

  "Has . . . has she seen a doctor?"

  "Oh, she was offered counseling. And the priest tried to help. But I think she and Patrick thought they could get through it alone. Now, I think Patrick may be regretting that decision, but it's a bit late. She won't see anyone now. Not even a doctor. You've probably noticed, she doesn't really like going out of the house."

  They sat in silence, both reminded of Annie's abrupt departure that evening. Sabine gazed over at the picture of the little girl. She was wearing red Wellingtons and a T-shirt with a penguin on the front. Sabine didn't think she had ever seen a picture of a dead child up close before. Staring into her eyes, she almost fancied she could see something prescient there, some foreshadowing of her own death in that gappy smile.

  "Do you miss her?"

  Mrs. H shook her head, and, standing, placed the photograph carefully back into the drawer. When she closed it, she stood for a second, facing into the cupboard, so that Sabine could no longer see her face.

  "I miss both of them, Sabine. I miss both of them."

  Much as she loved Annie and her family, Sabine had been quite glad to spend a couple of days alone with her grandparents. She had needed the time to come to terms with what Mrs. H had told her, to resite Annie in her imagination from "eccentric and difficult" to "tragic young mother." She didn't really know what to say to a tragic young mother, and had not yet decided what this was going to mean for their friendship. Before they had felt like equals of sorts: Annie's being married kind of balanced out by her hopeless lack of practicality; Sabine's youth balanced by her superior knowledge of what was in and out (or that's how Sabine saw it, anyway). Now, everything had shifted. And Sabine wasn't sure how she was meant to behave. Mrs. H, seeming to sense this reticence, had been a decidedly unobtrusive presence in her life, while simultaneously letting Sabine know that it had been a pleasure having her to supper, and that everyone had enjoyed meeting her very much. She was nice like that; the whole family was.

  But then even her grandmother was being nice at the moment; she had served up vegetable pie for the previous night's supper, and now kedgeree, a weird concoction of rice and egg and fish and sultanas, which somehow combined to taste better than its parts. "It's a hunting breakfast, really," she had said, as Sabine had stared goggle-eyed at her plate. "But it makes a good light supper, too."

  Sabine decided she was in a good mood because her grandfather had "perked up" as the doctor called it. Glad as she was for everybody, Sabine wouldn't have quite called it perky. What it meant was that he had been able to walk downstairs, shooing the dogs away from him with his stick, and having eaten a miniscule amount, was now sitting in the drawing room in one of the high-backed chairs beside the fire.

  After she had helped her grandmother clear the table (this spirit of cooperation could work both ways, after all) Sabine was about to escape up to her room, when her grandmother called her back.

  "I've got to go out and check on the horses," she said, putting her quilted coat on, and tying an old woolen scarf at her neck. "I want to put a poultice on the Duke's leg, so I may be a little while. Would you mind keeping your grandfather company?"

  Sabine, her heart sinking, tried not to betray how much she did mind. Keeping her grandfather company appeared to be a contradiction in terms. He had hardly spoken over supper, except to remark "poor sheep," apparently in relation to some observation he had made a good few hours previously about the state of the neighboring farm's pasture. And he had barely seemed to notice she was there. He had certainly not noticed Bertie was there, and had managed to tread on him twice, eliciting bloodcurdling yelps, as he both sat down and raised himself from the table. The thought of having to make polite conversation with him for the whole hour before the ten o'clock news made Sabine want to run for the door.

  "Sure," she said, and walked slowly into the dining room.

  He had his eyes closed, so Sabine picked a copy of Country Life from the pile on the coffee table, and walked silently over to the overstuffed chair opposite. She would have quite liked to lay on the sofa, but the room was so cold and damp that a place near the fire was a prerequisite for any kind of inactive stay.

  She flicked through the magazine for some minutes, wondering which of the exotic homes in the Maldives belonged to various pop stars, and then snorting at the blonde, vacant-eyed debs. But there was nothing very interesting, unless you were interested in old churches of East Anglia, or organic butchers, and so before long she found herself staring at her grandfather instead.

  He had more lines on his face than anyone she had ever seen; they didn't sweep down in long, etched lines, like Geoff's had when he got worried about his patients. Or faint delicate ones, little whispers from the future, like those she could see on her mother. No, her grandfather's crisscrossed one another in an almost regular pattern, almost like the markings of an old map, except more parched-looking. In places the skin was so thin that she could see blue veins running underneath it like B-roads, half camouflaged by large brown liver spots, and where it joined his scalp, odd, stray gray hairs stuck out like lone travelers in the desert.

  It was hard to imagine ever being that old. Sabine looked down at her own hands, her own skin, through which only the faintest of mauve lines could be detected, plumped up by youth and good living. His were so bony that they looked almost clawlike, the nails thickened and yellowed, like horn.

  She started slightly as he opened his eyes. She knew it was rude to stare, and he would no doubt remind her of it. He gazed at her from under reptilian lids, then his gaze slid left and then right, assessing that they were alone in the room. In the silence, the logs spluttered and crackled, sending small sparks flying out, like lemmings, over the grate.

  He opened his mouth slightly, paused, and then spoke.

  "I'm afraid I don't do much anymore," he said, slowly, enunciating each word with some care.

  Sabine stared at him. His face looked suddenly animated, as if concentrating hard on the message it was trying to get across.

  "I tend . . . to just be."

  He closed his mouth slowly, as if the effort of speaking had exhausted it, but maintained his steady gaze.

  Sabine, gazing back, felt the faintest flicker of understanding. And some sympathy, aware that she had just received some kind of apology. She nodded, the faintest of movements, an acknowledgment of her own, and then turned to face the fire.

  "Good," he said, finally. And closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The morning of the hunt, Kilcarrion remembered what it was for. It was as if the house itself had awoken from a deep slumber, and began creaking into action like the cogs of a rarely used machine, bent on pursuing its purpose. Sabine awoke to find her clothes laid out at the end of her bed, a cup
of hot tea thrust into her hands by Mrs. H, and a level of activity downstairs and outside that made the Kilcarrion walk look like a sedate stroll. The dogs, infected by it, barked and scrabbled in the hall; the telephone rang periodically, like some kind of alarm, heralding the minute changing of arrangements. Even the boiler, whose distant rumblings would often wake Sabine in the middle of the night, seemed to clank and shudder more determinedly.

  Mrs. H fussed around, lighting her fire, straightening her things, and telling her who was going to be "out" today, while her grandmother kept popping her head around the door, and urging Sabine to "do come on," except she said it like she was excited, rather than angry. Sabine could hear her downstairs in the yard, barking instructions at the lads, as, slowly, and with shaky fingers, she tried to get herself dressed.

  While obviously revolting, immoral, and the height of cruelty, it had to be said that foxhunting was a pretty glamorous sport. She could tell from the clothes she had been lent by Joy: silk-lined and made to measure, the navy-blue coat, and cream jodhpurs made her look like a character out of a period drama (her grandmother had smiled broadly as she finished her off--the first time she had done so widely and unself-consciously); she could tell by the way her horse and Thom's horse were both plaited and quartered, their coats burnished to a conkery sheen by a good hour's heavy-duty grooming; she could tell by the way her grandmother had fussed and flapped in a distinctly ungrandmotherly way about tying Sabine's stock, how to safely attach her own gold pin, and whether her boots were shiny enough. . . . All of which was why, some two hours later, when she and the horses were eventually unloaded at the meet, it was patently clear to Sabine that they had somehow ended up in the wrong place.

  They were not in the grounds of some stately home, surrounded by pink-coats (they were never called red, her grandmother had said), and drinking champagne or whatever it was from a silver stirrup cup. Under driving rain, they had been unloaded at a crossroads seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and as the horses' hooves came crashing down the wooden ramp onto the tarmac, all Sabine could see were a motley array of muddy ponies bearing children in plastic mackintoshes and sweatshirts, a couple of large, clumsy horses and tweedy farmers, and an array of rather scruffy horses and footfollowers of all different sizes and colors, flanked by people in waterproofs and carrying umbrellas, their hair wet and windswept, or woolen hats pulled firmly over their heads. There were even a couple of young men in camouflage jackets, seated on quad bikes. And there was mud everywhere: on the verges, churned into brown soup by the wheeling, impatient hooves of the horses; on the boots of the riders; and halfway up the legs of the hounds, who milled about between them all, letting out the occasional bark or yelp. There were only about three people wearing pink coats, and one of those, disappointingly, as he had a thread-veined face and a bulbous, pockmarked nose, Thom had pointed out as the Master.

  It was not like the pictures, not like the placemats on her grandparents' tables, which depicted a herd of spindle-thin Thoroughbreds and pink-coated men of privilege. It was not like the oil paintings she had viewed on their walls. It wasn't even like the news reports on television, where dreadlocked hunt saboteurs chanted and blew whistles, waging a class war against the minor members of royalty on horseback. It was like a kind of equine picket line, but with dogs and bikes added. And possibly more dirt.

  Sabine felt vaguely disappointed; although she still had ambivalent feelings about coming on a hunt, she had persuaded herself that it was important to see something up close before condemning it, and, more pertinently, had secretly looked forward to Thom seeing her not as the baby of the family, milling around in layers of jumpers and Wellington boots, but having to view her afresh, a vision of navy blue and polished leather, the dashing lady rider in her glamorous environment. Albeit a dashing lady rider whose nerves had left her with a frequent desire to go to the loo.

  "Here, take your Mars Bars," said Thom, stuffing a couple of chocolate bars into her hand. "You'll need them later." He had rammed his hat onto his head, and was trying to control the wheeling Birdie, a young Thoroughbred overexcited by his second trip out on the hunting field. The wind lifted the young horse's tail and flared his nostrils, and he skipped sideways and backward as leaves flicked up to meet him.

  "Bloody Liam's been winding them up," he said, as Joy expressed some concern. "Thought it would be a laugh to start blowing a hunting horn before we'd even loaded them. Now this lad doesn't know whether he's coming or going."

  The effect of a hunting horn on the horses of Kilcarrion had astonished Sabine. Thom had blown one once, several weeks ago, when he had been trying to persuade Sabine that horses actually enjoyed it. The Duke had rushed to his stable door and thrust his huge head over, glancing left and right, and then promptly relieved himself with excitement.

  "How do you know it's not just fear making them do that?" Sabine had challenged. "I'd probably come and have a look and poo myself if I was frightened of a noise."

  "You know when these lads are frightened," said Thom. "They'll lay their ears flat against their heads, and kick out. You'll see the whites of their eyes. You still don't believe me? Okay. If I was to open this door now, Dukey boy would go over and stand by the horse box, ready to go."

  Just to prove a point, he did, and he had.

  Sabine had almost laughed out loud at the sight of the old horse, walking determinedly over, and then waiting patiently by the ramp. And, as Thom had given him a Polo mint, and led him slowly back to his stable, she had to admit that even if she didn't like hunting, in this yard of quadrupeds at least, she was in a minority.

  Now, as Thom gave her a leg up onto the gray, Sabine found herself feeling sick with nerves. Picking up on the tension, the normally well-behaved horse stamped, and champed at his bit impatiently, his ears flicking backward and forward like gear levers.

  "Whatever you do, don't overtake the Master." A head-scarfed Joy, straightening Sabine's stirrup leathers, was repeating the instructions she had already given her twice on the journey over. "Keep your horse out of the way of the hounds, and don't go barging your way over the jumps. If someone is lined up, then you hold back and wait for them to go. Don't gallop through the middle of fields. And don't wear that little man out," she said, stroking the horse's nose with a damp hand. "Let him go until he's tired, and then we'll come and meet you with the horse box. I don't want you pushing him till dark, just because you get carried away."

  Sabine, whose stomach was now turning over with fear, thought she was probably the least likely person to get carried away that she could see. Unless they meant in a coffin. Everyone else seemed to be grinning, exchanging greetings, and admiring horses. Was she the only one convinced that she was going to die?

  "Don't you worry, Mrs. Ballantyne," said Thom, swinging his leg over the saddle. "I'll take good care of her."

  "Don't let her get too far to the front of the field, Thom," Joy said, anxiously. "It's very wet going and there's a bit of a badly behaved crowd going to be up behind the Master."

  Sabine followed her gaze to a group of young men, who, laughing, were tickling one another's horses with their whips, making them shy and buck.

  "Idiots," said Thom, but smiling. "Don't worry, Mrs. Ballantyne. I'll hold back."

  And then, suddenly, with a few blasts on the horn, they were all off, the hundred or so shod hooves clattering along the wet road.

  "Smile!" said Thom, grinning down at her. "You'll have a grand time."

  Sabine didn't feel she could tell him what she thought: that she was more likely to kill herself under one of these insane animals' hooves, that she didn't feel able to jump off a curb, let alone over a five-barred gate, and that she felt so nauseous that it was quite likely she was going to have to throw up off the side of her horse.

  "I don't want to see anything killed," she said, her head down against the wind. "I don't want to be anywhere near. And if they try and do that blood thing on my face, I'll probably kill them all. Master or not."
br />   "I can't hear you," said Thom, pointing his whip ahead. "C'mon, stay with me. We're headed into that next field."

  From then on, the day seemed to pass by in a kind of blur. As soon as the horses felt the spring of wet turf beneath them, they bolted, racing up the side of the pitted, boggy hill, and Sabine, caught in their midst, found her initial lurch of fear displaced by a sense of mounting excitement, as the various grinning, mud-splattered faces cantered past her. When they had reached the top, Sabine had found that she too was grinning, and forgot to remove it when Thom arrived next to her.

  "You okay?" he said, raising his eyebrows.

  "Fine," she said, breathlessly.

  "We'll get some color in those cheeks today," he said, and then they were off again.

  The first part of the hunt flashed by at almost breakneck speed; boxed in to the ragtag assortment of horses and riders, Sabine found herself placing her trust in the little gray horse, frequently closing her eyes and clutching hold of his mane as they approached the stiles and hedges that they flew over in a moving population, like liquid. She didn't have time to stay frightened; and, soon, noticing the numbers of tiny children on ponies and reckless estate kids on scruffy skewbalds, she realized there was little that they were going to face that she, on the bigger, braver horse, couldn't, too.

  Sabine had no idea where she was headed. Or what she was meant to be doing. Her eyes stung, her mouth was filled with the taste of mud, kicked back by those in front, but she found her heart thumping with excitement, so that she often urged her horse to go faster, trying to make her way farther forward in the field. Thom tried to stick with her as much as possible, but often they would become separated, either when one had to wait to jump into the next field, or simply because the hunt divided, and there would be a period of standing around and blowing of horns until everyone was reunited.

  There was an awful lot of standing around in hunting, Sabine discovered. Usually just when you had got used to galloping along. It seemed to take place simply so that people could chat to one another, remarking upon their and their horses' performances, or gossiping about who had disappeared with whom, seemingly ignorant of the fact that the rain pelted down around them, sending channels of water down their waxed jackets and clamping the horses' tails unhappily to their quarters. The fact that Sabine knew no one except Thom did not seem to have excluded her from this: A plump, middle-aged woman had told her she was "doing grand" and remarked that she knew her mother; a very thin man with a beaky nose had told her that he knew her horse; and one of the scruffy children had asked if he could have a bite of her Mars Bar. She had given him the whole thing. But then she had been preoccupied, for it was as they stood around like this that a young girl with long blonde curly hair tied back in a hair net would frequently approach Thom, and chat and laugh, and elegantly wipe the dirt from her nose, or, smiling, ask him to do it for her. She fancied him; it was so obvious. She was practically gagging for him. But when Sabine said this to Thom as they waited for one of the older men to climb back aboard his recently vacated saddle, he looked blank, and shook his head as if he hadn't even noticed.