Sheltering Rain, Page 25

  Joy tried to understand, but, as she told Edward privately, it was rather galling to have to play down one's personal happiness in order to keep one's mother in a good humor.

  "I know," she said to Alice shortly after her unaccompanied visit to Stanley, as her mother fingered the newly purchased table linen with a barely concealed look of disapproval. "Perhaps you could help me find an amah."

  "What kind of amah?"

  "I don't know," said Joy, who was frankly exhausted. "Just someone to help out a bit. Do some washing. I hadn't realized how many shirts Edward would get through in the humidity."

  "But who does your cooking?"

  "I have been," said Joy, almost apologetically. "When we're not entertaining, that is. I quite like cooking for him."

  "You'll need a wash-amah and a number-one amah for cooking," said Alice, firmly, her confidence boosted by Joy's apparent deficiencies on the domestic front. "And then number-one amah can look after the children when they come."

  She didn't seem to notice Joy's sharp glance in her direction.

  "Now," she said, leafing through her little leather-bound address book, "there's a wash-amah called Mary in Causeway Bay who is looking for work. I took the liberty of taking her number last week, because Bei-Lin was being absolutely impossible, and I thought she should know that she's not irreplaceable, no matter how long she's been with me. She's not been the same since your father passed on, you know. Definitely more sullen, she is. And I'm sure Judy Beresford said she knew of a number-one amah whose family was heading overseas. I'll ring her and find out if she's still available. She'll be very good for you." She paused, glancing at Joy, her brows briefly lowering suspiciously. "That's if I'm not interfering," she said.

  Good news about the shirts," said Edward, as they ate supper. "You have many strengths, my darling, but laundry is not one of them. I was beginning to think I was going to have to do them myself. But what on earth do we need another hired help for? It's not as if we have children."

  Joy looked up from her food.

  Edward met her gaze. Then stared, for a long time, at the table in front of her.

  "How come you're not drinking?" he said.

  Kate stood just behind the door, watching from the hallway as her mother and daughter sat, heads almost touching, discussing one of the sepia-tinted photographs in Joy's calloused hands. Sabine, bent over, was exclaiming that the old white car was "so cool," while Joy laughed about how fearful she was of driving it on Hong Kong's already crowded roads. "I had only just learned to drive," she was saying. "Your grandfather taught me, as the instructors were so expensive, but he did have to grit his teeth rather. And we always had to stop afterward for a brandy dry."

  She had come up to try to find Sabine, who seemed to be permanently closeted with either one of her grandparents, reading to her grandfather, riding her horse, or bombarding her grandmother with questions about life "in the olden days," as she put it, even now that the threat of Christopher and Julia had receded as far as Dublin. It meant that for the past few days of her stay, Kate, at something of a loose end, had found herself trailing sadly around the house and its grounds, asking somewhat pathetically if anyone had seen her daughter, grateful for any time Sabine chose to spend in her company.

  But then Sabine seemed to be choosing to spend as little time as possible in her company. And Kate told herself she did not feel so much rejected (Sabine hadn't wanted to spend much time with her since she turned thirteen) as completely bemused by this apparent passion for all things Irish. She seemed to have embraced her grandparents with an unself-conscious affection, discovered an unlikely love for the little gray horse in the back field, and, most surprising of all, relinquished her urban need to be "cool" in all circumstances. She didn't even care that her trainers were covered in mud. But she also failed to disguise her evident irritation at Kate's attempts to help, whether it be an offer to carry up her father's lunch tray, or to give Sabine a break by reading to him. "She's quite proprietorial about him these days," said Mrs. H, with some affection. "You'd never have guessed it from the way she was when she came."

  Mrs. H had been the one voice of sanity in the house, providing the warmest of the various welcomes (they were welcomes, Kate thought bitterly, only in the loosest sense of the word), and reassuring her that her daughter's evident happiness at Kilcarrion had been a relatively recent development. But then Kate saw the way Sabine spoke to Mrs. H, and that made her feel excluded and inadequate, too.

  There had been one brief thawing in their relationship, when Kate had visited Sabine's room one night and volunteered the information that she and Justin were no longer together. She thought she had a responsibility to let Sabine know, and had told her gently, fearful of the possibility that this would be interpreted as further upheaval in her daughter's life (and also of making herself cry if she allowed herself to describe it as anything less than briefly and clinically). But Sabine had merely gone very still, as if listening for something that she had long expected to hear, and then satisfied, told her that it was "hardly a surprise."

  "So you don't mind?"

  "Why should I mind? He was a prat."

  Kate tried not to flinch at Sabine's blunt assessment. She had forgotten her daughter's delicate way with words.

  "So you think I've done the right thing?"

  "Why should I care what you've done? It's your life." Sabine had turned away, as if keen to read her book, signifying the conversation was closed. She paused. "I was half expecting it anyway," she muttered, staring unseeing at the page in front of her.

  Kate sat, her eyes fixed on her daughter's face.

  "Well, you've never stuck at anything, have you? None of your relationships lasts. Not like Grandmother and Grandfather."

  The words were quietly said, but held the powerful kickback of a firearm, and Kate, wounded, had backed out of the room. Since then Sabine had been slightly warmer to her, as if aware that she had perhaps been too harsh, but she still seemed more comfortable around almost anyone else at the house.

  And now, this morning, she hadn't been able to find her at all, and the study had provided the answer.

  Yet seeing them sit there, close, relaxed, more comfortable with each other's company than either of them ever was in hers, Kate felt a huge lump rise to her throat, and a childish sensation of being left out. She turned, and closing the door softly behind her, made her way back down the stairs.

  Had Sabine been aware of the tears that her mother shed in her absence, she might have felt some measure of guilt, or a desire to comfort her--she was not, after all, a malicious girl. But she was sixteen, and as such, had more important things to think about--like whether or not to go out with Bobby McAndrew. He had rung two days after the hunt (keen, but not toe-clenchingly keen, she had noted approvingly) and suggested they go out--to the pub, or the pictures, or whatever she fancied. Joy, who had initially answered the telephone, had seemed too distracted to take very much notice, merely handing the receiver over to the paling Sabine with the remark that "one of her little friends" was calling. Bobby, who had overheard, had laughed, stating: "It's your little friend Bobby here," and that had sort of broken the ice, so that Sabine didn't feel quite so weirded out by the idea of going on a date with an Irish boy.

  But now, with Saturday a matter of days away, she found herself wavering in her determination to go. It would be easy to get out of the house (no one seemed to take too much notice of what she was doing at the moment) but she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to spend an evening with Bobby after all. She couldn't remember if she fancied him, for a start; his face had sort of become blurry and indistinct, and all she really remembered was that he didn't have dark brown hair or olive skin, which was, she had recently decided with the aid of one of Mrs. H's women's magazines, "her type." And he would probably want to jump her bones at the end of the evening, especially if they went to the cinema, and even if she liked him, she hadn't worked out whether that would be a bit like being unfaithful
. Because even if Thom had not yet shown any proper signs of wanting to jump her bones, she didn't want to close off that particular avenue just yet. He might be being shy.

  Annie was no help, either. True, she had listened to Sabine's predicament, but it was in that Annie-esque way that seemed to involve looking out of the window, rubbing lengthily at her hands, flicking on the television once or twice, and then walking around the room aimlessly, as if looking for something she had lost (if she could only remember what it was).

  "You should go," she said, vaguely. "It's good for you to make friends."

  "I don't need any more friends."

  "Well, then it will be good for you to get out of that house. That's an awful lot of time you've been spending with your grandfather."

  "But what if he wants to be more than friends?"

  "Well, then you've got yourself a boyfriend."

  "But what if I don't know if I want a boyfriend?"

  Annie had looked rather exhausted at this point, and told Sabine She Really Didn't Know, and She Was Terribly Tired, and then, eventually, Would She Mind Coming Back Later, Because She Thought She Might Take A Little Nap. Which, frustratingly, was roughly what most conversations with Annie seemed to consist of these days. Sabine would have liked to ask her mother, and maybe even ask her if she would buy her something new to wear. But her mother would either flap embarrassingly about Sabine's "date" as she would call it, and insist on driving her there so that she could say hello, or get all hurt and silent about the fact that she was making a life for herself in Ireland. She knew it bugged her mother, the fact that she liked it here. But that's not my fault, she wanted to yell at her, when she saw her slinking around the house with a face like a wet weekend, as Mrs. H would have put it. You were the one who turned our lives upside down. You made me come here.

  She had been quite pleased about the Justin thing, even if she hadn't let Kate know. But it was so obvious that he had dumped her mother, and not the other way around, and somehow that made it even harder for Sabine to have any respect for her.

  She told her grandfather in the end. It was quite easy to talk to him these days, now that he didn't yell at her to speak up all the time, or get cross about mealtimes. He just liked her to sit with him and chat away; she could tell because his face would sort of relax, like melting butter, and occasionally, when she held his hand (it was actually sort of papery and soft--not creepy, like she had expected), he would squeeze it ever so faintly when she finished talking, like he understood.

  "You'd probably like him," she told him, her socked feet up on the bed beside him. "Because he's into hunting, and he's quite a good rider. He doesn't hold the mane or anything when he goes over jumps. You might even know his family. They're called McAndrew."

  (Here she was sure she felt a soft increase in pressure.)

  "But it's not a serious date or anything. I mean I'm not going to marry him and have his babies. It's just good for me to make some friends."

  A thin, clear trail of saliva had somehow leaked out of the side of his mouth, like a tiny river making its way down a mountainside. Sabine took the handkerchief from the bedside table and wiped at it gently.

  "I once did that on a tube," she said, grinning. "I had been out really, really late the night before, although Mum doesn't know this, because I was staying at my mate's house, and I just fell asleep on this man next to me. And when I woke up there was this little damp patch on his shoulder where I'd dribbled on him. I wanted to die."

  She paused, and gazed at him.

  "Well, I was really embarrassed, anyway. I suppose it's not a bad trick though. If I decide I don't like this Bobby McAndrew, then I can always just dribble on him in the cinema. That should see him off."

  Sabine jumped off the bed, conscious that it was nearly time for the nurse to return from her lunch break.

  "I'll let you know what happens," she said, cheerily, planting a kiss on his forehead. "Stay cool."

  Behind her, buried under the layers of quilt, and surrounded by his bleeping sentries, Sabine's grandfather closed his mouth.

  Kate had written four options on pieces of paper: GO BACK TO LONDON; GO BACK TO LONDON IN A WEEK; GO AND STAY AT A HOTEL AND BUGGER THE COST; AND DON'T LET THE BASTARDS GRIND YOU DOWN. According to Maggie, you were meant to fold them up, throw them in the air and grab one, and fate would decide which instruction you should follow (or perhaps it was Freud, Kate could never remember). As a method for action, it never failed to provide the wrong answer. While every cell in Kate's body urged her toward the ferry back to Fishguard, the paper method suggested number three, which, sensibly, she couldn't really afford and knew that it was the least likely to provide any kind of solution anyway.

  But this is what a week in the parental home had reduced her to, she mused, as she strode furiously through the mudlocked fields that ran alongside the river. Schoolgirl tricks and superstitions. A sulky resentment of her parents. An inability to speak without saying the wrong thing. An emotional age of fifteen.

  This was not how she had planned her return; she had wanted to sweep back in, serene and gracious, a successful writer, perhaps with a couple of books to her name; a handsome, intelligent partner, a happy, loving daughter; possessor of a natural self-confidence that would have forced them all to acknowledge that she had been right--that there had been other ways to live than theirs. That's why they're being nice to you, she had wanted to shout at her daughter. Because you're doing it all their way. It's easy for them to be nice to you when you're doing what they want. It's when you do what you want that it all gets complicated.

  But of course life didn't work like that. She had returned as--if not the family black sheep, then something definitely downtrodden, apparently stupid, and ready for the chop. She was just the misfit again--the one who didn't ride, who looked eccentric, who couldn't hold down a proper job, a decent relationship--a view so pervasive that now even her own daughter was viewing her through those same unrosy spectacles. And because she didn't have that well-paying job, or that decent man, she couldn't even take herself off for a drive, or disappear to the pub, or perhaps to watch a film, like any normal adult might, but was left impotently tramping through wet fields as her only real option to escape the horrors of the family home.

  Ballymalnaugh didn't even have particularly attractive countryside. Just row upon row of featureless, hillocky fields, their supposedly emerald green turned brown under the ceaseless gray skies, lined by scrubby hedges and punctuated by bleak, windswept crossroads. It didn't have the undulating charm of the Sussex Downs, or the wild, untamed beauty of the Peaks. What it did have, she thought sourly, was wet sheep. And skeletal, dripping trees. And mud.

  Of course, it had begun to rain. Because her whole life was part of some big cosmic joke. And of course, being a stupid townie, she hadn't thought to bring either a waterproof or an umbrella. As water began to seep determinedly down the back of her collar, Kate glanced up at the glowering sky, darkening as the evening began to close in, and thought longingly of option number one. Just go, she thought. Go back to London. Daddy seems stable enough; he could go on for months yet. She couldn't really be expected to put her whole life on hold until something happened, could she? But then there was the matter of Sabine; Kate had the unsettling suspicion that if she were to disappear to London, any chances of bringing Sabine home would disappear with her.

  As if echoing her mood, the rain suddenly came down harder, turning the gently permeating misty shower into near-solid, glassy sheets. Kate, pushing forward toward a copse, realized she could hardly see, the gray, wintry scenery around her becoming blurred and indistinct. Why don't they make windscreen wipers for glasses? she thought crossly, shivering in her near-sodden wool jacket, as she made for the slight cover of the trees.

  It was then that she heard the sound: a muffled, thumping sound, irregular in beat, punctuated by a distant jingling. Squinting, Kate glanced through the trees in the direction of the noise. She could see almost nothing through h
er blurred lenses, but gradually, through the rain, was able to make out the shape of a horse, coming toward her through the woodland. Huge and gray, snorting fearfully, and surrounded by the shifting steam of its own body, it looked like that of a medieval knight, returning from some awful battle. Kate shrank back into the trees.

  But the beast had apparently seen her. It slowed, and walked closer, its head lowering to confirm what it, in turn, thought it had seen. It was then that she saw him. Astride the horse, half hidden under a huge brown waterproof and a wide-brimmed hat, was Thom. He glanced over twice, as if making sure it was her, and then pulled up.

  "You all right?"

  Kate had to fight the paralysis that his sudden appearance had provoked. Her voice, when it came, was glib and urban, determinedly distanced from her true feelings.

  "Nothing that an umbrella, a complete change of clothes, and a new life wouldn't cure." She pushed her hair back from her face. "I'm just waiting for the rain to die down, so I can head back."

  "You look soaked." He paused. "Do you want to get up? This boy's good as gold. It'll get you back an awful lot faster."

  Kate eyed the huge gray horse, its huge, plate-sized hooves moving restlessly too close to her feet, its massive head shaking up and down with impatience to get out of the rain. Its eyes swiveled, flashing hints of white, while its breath came in shots of hot steam, like a dragon's.

  "Thanks. I think I'll wait."