Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories (18 page)

“Yes,” said Abigail. “I know. I came to your gallery about four years ago. With my father. You had an exhibition of Victorian flower paintings.”

“You came to that? How very nice. It was a delightful collection.”

“Yes, we enjoyed it so much.”

“I…”

But the wind had blown a dark shower cloud over the sun, and now it started, suddenly, to rain.

“I think,” said Abigail, “it would be better if we went indoors.” And she led the way into the house, through the garden door, directly into the sitting-room. It looked pretty and fresh, the fire flickering in the grate, an arrangement of dahlias on the piano, and over the mantel-piece, the brilliant mosaic of Tammy’s picture.

Coming behind her, he saw this at once. “Now, that’s Hoadey’s work.”

“Yes.” Abigail closed the glass door behind them and unknotted her headscarf. “I bought it from him. He needed the money. He and his family lived in a gruesome cottage down by the quarry. It was all he could find. They were always on the breadline. It seemed a dreadfully hand-to-mouth existence.”

“Is this the only picture you have?”

“Yes.”

“Is this the one you showed to Martin York?”

Abigail frowned. “Do you know Martin York?”

“Yes, he’s a good friend of mine.” Geoffrey Arland turned to face Abigail. “He told me about Tammy Hoadey because he thought I would be interested. What he didn’t know was that I’ve been interested in Hoadey’s work ever since I caught sight of a couple of his pictures in an exhibition in Leeds some time ago. But they were both sold, and for some reason I was never able to make contact with Hoadey. He seems to be an elusive sort of man.”

Abigail said, “He gardened for me.”

“It’s a beautiful garden.”

“It was. My father made it. But he died at the beginning of spring and our old gardener didn’t have the heart to go on without him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” said Abigail inadequately.

“So now you live alone?”

“For the moment I do.”

He said, “Decisions are difficult at such a time … I mean, when you lose someone close to you. My wife died about two years ago, and I’ve only just had the courage to up sticks and move. Not very far, admittedly. Just from a house in St. John’s Wood to a flat in Chelsea. But still, it was something of an upheaval.”

“If I can’t find another gardener, I suppose I shall have to move. I couldn’t bear to stay here and watch it all go to rack and ruin, and it’s too big for me to manage on my own.”

They smiled at each other, understanding. She said, “I could make you a cup of coffee.”

“No, really, I must be on my way. I’ve got to get back to London, preferably before the rush-hour. If he does come back, you could get in touch with me?”

“Of course.”

The rain had stopped. Abigail opened the door and they moved back out onto the terrace. The flagstones shone wet, the rain clouds had been blown away, and now the garden was suffused in misty golden sunlight.

“Do you ever come up to London?”

“Yes, sometimes. To see the dentist or something boring like that.”

“Next time you come to the dentist, I hope you’ll visit my gallery again.”

“Yes. Perhaps. And I’m sorry about Tammy.”

“I’m sorry too,” said Geoffrey Arland.

*   *   *

November passed and then it was December. The garden lay grey and bare beneath the dark wintry skies. Abigail abandoned the garden and moved indoors, to write the first of the Christmas cards, do her tapestry, watch television. For the first time since her father died, she knew loneliness. Next year, she told herself, I shall be forty-one. Next year I will be decisive and competent. I must find a job, make new friends, have people for dinner. No one could do any of these things except herself, and she knew this, but at the moment she had hardly the heart to walk up to the village. She certainly hadn’t the energy to undertake a trip to London. Geoffrey Arland’s card remained, just as she had left it, tucked into the frame of Tammy’s picture. But it was beginning to grow dusty, to curl at the corners, and soon, she knew, she would throw it into the fire.

Her low spirits turned out, inevitably, to be the onset of a bad cold and she was forced to spend two gloomy days in bed. On the third morning she awoke late. She knew it was late, because she could hear sounds of the vacuum cleaner from downstairs, which meant that Mrs. Brewer had let herself in with her latchkey and started work. Beyond Abigail’s open curtains the sky was filling with light, turning from early grey to a pale, pristine, wintry blue. The hours stretched ahead of her like an empty void. Then Mrs. Brewer turned off the vacuum cleaner, and Abigail heard the bird singing.

A bird? She listened more intently. It was not a bird. It was a person whistling Mozart.
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
Abigail sprang from her bed and ran to the window, holding back the curtains with both hands. And saw, below her in the garden, the familiar figure; the red-tasseled cap, the long green pullover, the boots. He had his spade over his shoulder; he was heading for the vegetable garden, his feet making tracks on the frosty lawn. She threw up the sash, regardless of the fact that she was wearing only her night-dress.

“Tammy!”

He stopped short, turned, his face tilted up towards her. He grinned. He said, “Hello, there.”

She bundled herself into the nearest clothes to hand and ran downstairs and out of doors. He was waiting for her by the back door, grinning sheepishly.

“Tammy, what are you
doing
here?”

“I’ve come back.”

“All of you? Poppy and the children too?”

“No, they’re still in Leeds. I’ve gone back to teaching again. But it’s the school holidays, so I’m here now on my own. I’m back in the Quarry Cottage.” Abigail stared in puzzlement. “I’ve come to work off that fifty pounds I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I bought the picture. I’m going to keep it.”

“I’m glad of that, but even so I want to work off my debt.” He scratched the back of his neck. “You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you? Or scarpered with your money? I’m sorry I went off like that, without letting you know. But the little boy got worse, he got flu and Poppy was frightened of pneumonia. His temperature was up, so we took him away from that house; it wasn’t healthy. We went back to Poppy’s mother. He was very ill for a bit, but he’s all right now. Anyway, a teaching job came up. They’re hard to get nowadays, so I thought I’d better grab the chance.”

“You should have
told
me.”

“I’m not much of a one at writing letters and the local telephone-box was always being vandalized. But I told Poppy that these holidays I’d be coming back to Brookleigh.”

“But what about your painting?”

“I’ve put that behind me…”

“But…”

“The children come first. Poppy and the children. I see that now.”

“But, Tammy…”

He said, “Your telephone’s ringing.”

Abigail listened. It was, too. She said, “Mrs. Brewer will answer it.” But it kept on ringing, so she left Tammy standing there and went back into the house.

“Hello?”

“Miss Haliday?”

“Yes.”

“This is Geoffrey Arland speaking…”

Geoffrey Arland. Abigail felt her mouth drop in astonishment at the extraordinariness of the coincidence. Naturally unaware of her gaping amazement, he went on, “I’m very sorry to ring you so early in the morning, but I have rather a busy day ahead of me, and I thought I’d have a better chance of getting hold of you now rather than later. I wondered if there was any hope of you getting up to town between now and Christmas. We’re mounting an exhibition which I would particularly like to show you. And I thought we could perhaps have lunch together? Almost any day would suit me, but…”

Abigail found her voice at last. She said, “Tammy’s back!”

Geoffrey Arland, interrupted in mid-flow, was naturally disconcerted. “I beg your pardon?”

“Tammy’s back. Tammy Hoadey. The artist you came to look for.”

“He’s back with you?” Geoffrey Arland’s voice was at once quite different, imperative, and businesslike.

“Yes. He turned up today, this very morning.”

“Did you tell him I’d been to Brookleigh?”

“I haven’t had the chance.”

“I want to see him.”

“I’ll bring him up to London,” said Abigail. “I’ll drive him up in my car.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow if you like.”

“Has he got any work to show me?”

“I’ll ask him.”

“Bring anything he’s got. And if he hasn’t got any work at Brookleigh, then just bring him.”

“I’ll do that.”

“I’ll expect you in the morning. Come straight to the galleries. We’ll have a talk with him and I’ll take you both out for lunch.”

“We should be with you about eleven.”

For a moment neither of them said anything. And then, “What a miracle,” said Geoffrey Arland and he did not sound businesslike any longer, but pleased and grateful.

“They happen.” Abigail was smiling so widely, her face felt quite strange. “I am so
glad
you called.”

“I’m glad too. For all sorts of reasons.”

*   *   *

He rang off, and after a while Abigail put down her receiver. She stood by the telephone and hugged herself. Nothing had changed and everything had changed. Upstairs, Mrs. Brewer continued to move ponderously about behind her vacuum cleaner, but tomorrow Abigail and Tammy were driving to London to see Geoffrey Arland; to show him all Tammy’s pictures; to be taken out for lunch. Abigail would wear her red dress. And Tammy? What would Tammy wear?

He was waiting for her, just as she had left him when the telephone started to ring. He was leaning on his spade, filling his pipe, waiting for her to return. As she appeared, he looked up and said, “I thought I’d start in on the digging…”

She very nearly said,
To hell with the garden.
“Tammy, did you take your pictures with you, when you went back to Leeds?”

“No, I left them behind. They’re still at Quarry Cottage.”

“How many?”

“A dozen or so.”

“And there’s something else I must ask you. Have you—have you got a suit?”

He looked as though he thought she had gone mad. But, “Yes,” he said. “It was my father’s. I wear it to funerals.”

“Perfect,” said Abigail. “And now don’t talk for at least ten minutes because I’ve got an awful lot to tell you.”

*   *   *

Mrs. Brewer hoped that Miss Haliday was giving Tammy Hoadey his notice. She had seen him coming up the lane on his bicycle, cool as a cucumber, without so much as a word of warning or explanation. Cheeky devil, she had thought, turning up out of the blue just as though he had never been away.

Now at the sink, filling the kettle for her morning cup of tea, she watched them at it: Miss Haliday talking nineteen to the dozen (and that wasn’t her usual way) and Tammy just standing there like an idiot. She’s giving him a piece of her mind at last, Mrs. Brewer told herself with satisfaction. It’s what he’s been needing, all these months. A piece of her mind.

But she was wrong. For when Miss Haliday stopped talking, nothing happened at all. She and Tammy just stood, quite still, staring at each other. And then Tammy Hoadey let his spade fall to the ground, tossed his pipe into the air, flung wide his arms and wrapped Miss Haliday in a bearlike embrace. And Miss Haliday, far from resisting such impudent goings-on, put her arms around his neck and hugged Tammy, right there in front of Mrs. Brewer’s eyes, and took her feet off the ground, and was swung into the air, careless and graceless as some flighty teen-age girl.

Well, whatever next? Mrs. Brewer asked herself as the stream of water filled the kettle and overflowed, unheeded, into the sink. Whatever next?

A G
IRL
I U
SED TO
K
NOW

The cable-car, at ten o’clock in the morning, was as crammed with humanity as a London bus at rush-hour. Grinding, swaying slightly, it mounted, with hideous steadiness, up into the clear, blindingly bright air, high over the snowfields and scattered chalets of the valley. Behind them, the village sank away—houses, shops, hotels clustered around the main street. Far below lay great tracts of glittering snow, blue-shadowed beneath random stands of fir. Ahead and above it climbed—it gave Jeannie vertigo just to think about it—towards the distant peak piercing the dark-blue sky like a needle of ice …

The peak. The Kreisler. Just below it stood the sturdy wooden buildings of the upper cable station, the complex of the restaurant. The face of this edifice was one enormous window, flashing signals of reflected sunshine, and overhead fluttered the flags of many nations. Both the cable-car station and the restaurant had seemed, from the village, as distant as the moon, but now, with every moment, they drew closer.

Jeannie swallowed. Her mouth felt dry, her stomach tight with apprehension. Pressed into a corner of the cable-car, she turned her head to look for Alistair, but he and Anne and Colin had become separated from her in the rush to get on board, and he was away over on the other side. Easy to spot, because he was so tall, his profile blunt and handsome. She willed him to turn and catch her eye, to give her a smile of reassurance, but all his concentration was for the mountain, for the morning’s run down the Kreisler and back into the village.

Last night, as the four of them had sat in the bar of the hotel, she had said, “I won’t come.” There was dancing going on and a jolly band in lederhosen.

“But of course you must. That was the whole point of your coming on holiday, so that we could all ski together. It’s no fun if you spend the whole time rabbiting around on the nursery slopes.”

“I’m not good enough.”

“It’s not difficult. Just long. We’ll take it at your speed.”

That was even worse. “I’ll hold you back.”

“Don’t be so self-abasing.”

“I don’t want to come.”

“You’re not frightened, are you?”

She was, but she said, “Not really. Just frightened of spoiling it for you.”

“You won’t spoil it.” He sounded marvellously certain of this, just as he was marvellously certain of himself. He seemed not to know the meaning of physical fear, and so was unable to recognize it in another person.