It's Raining Men (40 page)

She needed to get in the van with him. She ran around to the passenger door but it was wedged against a thick and prickly hedge and she really had to jerk hard to get it open far enough for her
to climb inside. Her face and arms were stinging with scratches and she re-opened the wound on her leg by catching it on the step.

Once in the truck, she was in a position to push Frank backwards away from the wheel in order to see his face. He was a dead-weight. She thought he had bumped his head and knocked himself out.
Then, when she saw his face, she wondered if he was drunk. His eyes were bloodshot, the lids drooping as if daylight was hurting him, and he was so very pale.

‘Frank, have you crashed? Are you hurt?’

‘No,’ he said, his big farmer’s hands reaching upwards to his head. ‘Migraine.’

‘Frank, I’ve got tablets,’ said May, plunging her hand into her bag and pulling out the capsule which Lara had bought her for her birthday. It contained a pair of tights, a
sewing kit, a pen, pair of scissors, nail file, emergency five-pound note and some Ibuprofen. She popped two out and put them in his hand. He swallowed them dry. Then May remembered the small
bottle of Diet Coke in her bag. By now it was warm and rather flat but it was good enough for washing some tablets down. She used to get a lot of migraines and knew how debilitating they were. She
still did get the odd one, but they were rare these days.

‘Thanks.’ Frank could talk no more. He had sunk forwards again, and his hands were cradling his head, but that was bringing him only a modicum of comfort and May knew that the best
thing was to make no noise until the tablets kicked in. If his migraines were anything like hers used to be, he’d be ultrasensitive to light and sound. She sat with him, waiting silently, not
disturbing him, letting him concentrate on existing through the pain. She could imagine the thump thump thump in his temple and pitied him.

After fifteen minutes, Frank shifted position.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ replied May.

‘They come on so fast and I have to stop driving or I’d crash.’

‘I thought you had crashed.’

Frank twisted his head slowly around to her. ‘Thanks, May. I usually carry some tablets on me but I stupidly ran out and forgot to buy some more.’

‘Here.’ May put the packet of Ibuprofen in his glove compartment. ‘Keep these. Just in case.’

He looked absolutely shocking. His face was drained of colour and his usually cheerful brown eyes were dead.

‘Can I drive the truck up to the farm for you?’ asked May.

‘No, it’s fine,’ replied Frank.

‘Well, it obviously isn’t. Shift over here.’

May struggled out of the passenger seat again and walked around to the driver’s side, this time snagging her face on a fierce bramble. She was cut to ribbons. Maybe she should have kept
two of those Ibuprofen back. She bullied Frank into the passenger side and then got in where he had been sitting and adjusted the seat slightly forwards.

‘And just in case you think I don’t know what I’m doing, you’d be wrong. Dad was a car mechanic. I can drive anything from minis to Luton vans.’

She slipped off the handbrake, reversed out of the bush and forward up the hill. This is one way of seeing the farm, she realized. Though not the way she had originally planned.

She pulled right down the lane, as directed by the ‘Hathersage Farm This Way – Slow Ducks’ sign. Two ducks waddled noisily across the lane in front of them as if protesting
about their presence. May pulled up in an obvious parking space at the side of a very nice classic Jaguar, presumably his ‘going out in’ vehicle, when he was taking Daisy to her posh
French restaurant, although she doubted they’d be going tonight. The house was even prettier close up. It was painted the colour of fresh creamy butter and the heads of bright red flowers
bobbed in sea-green painted boxes at the windows.

Frank stumbled out of the truck and in through the unlocked farmhouse door, May following him into a large square kitchen and really hoping Daisy wasn’t around to witness this. Not that
May had any intentions of doing anything more than wringing out a cold cloth and applying it to Frank’s head, as she used to do for herself.

Frank had crumpled onto a seat at a wooden table.

‘Here, hold this,’ said May, moving his hand and pressing the cloth against his forehead. He groaned a thank you.

What a lovely house, thought May. It was delightfully old-fashioned and simple but comfy and inviting. The broad kitchen window afforded a beautiful view of the cove. It was like looking out at
a painting.

‘Can I get you anything? A cup of tea or some water or something?’ asked May.

‘Tea would be grand, please. I always crave tea when I have one of these,’ he replied, still in pain. May used to have all sorts of funny cravings when she had a migraine: lettuce
sprinkled with vinegar, fruit pastilles, even the smell of Imperial Leather soap. She put the kettle on and dropped a tea bag from a tin on the work surface into each of two clean cups she found on
the draining board. She remembered he took a single sugar and small splash of milk.

‘Thank you, May,’ he said. His face was recovering its colour, she noted. ‘I might have been down there for hours. They’re getting worse.’

‘Have you been to see a doctor?’ asked May gently.

‘Yes. They’re definitely migraines. I’ve had all the tests. Stress-heads. Not that I have a particularly stressful life, so I can’t really understand it.’

Whatever he said, Frank Hathersage was a man with the world on his shoulders and the weight was breaking him.

‘Frank . . .’ May started. She had to bite her lip to stop herself, then found she was unable to keep her mouth shut. ‘You’re not okay. Any idiot can see that.’

And, to her surprise, she watched Frank’s head shake slowly from side to side and heard him admit: ‘No, you’re right, I’m not.’

She let him talk; he knew she was listening.

‘I’m not in love with Daisy. God forgive me, I don’t even like her. I owe her, though, after what I did to her and I have to look after her. But the thought of marrying her . .
. yet I half-killed her. I’ve crippled her.’ He was trying to cover up the fact that his eyes were wet. May’s heart almost leapt with her desire to console him.

‘There has to be another way of helping her rather than by sacrificing your whole life, Frank.’

‘It’s what we do here. We look after our own.’

‘Not to the extent of making yourself ill, surely,’ said May. ‘You can’t marry Daisy if you don’t love her. It wouldn’t be fair on her either.’

‘She knows I don’t love her,’ Frank admitted. ‘But her family think it’s my duty to do the decent thing. She loves me. Unless I run away I have to do what is
expected of me. And if I did run away I’d never live with myself for being a coward.’

‘Oh, Frank. You can’t carry on like this. You’ll make yourself ill. Look at what the strain is doing to you.’ May’s hand instinctively reached for his to offer him
comfort. His fingers closed around hers and she watched him lifting them, touching them, examining them.

‘I really thought I could do it. I’d marry her, do my duty by her, move heaven and earth to get her walking again, and then maybe I could leave.’

‘Is there a chance she could walk again?’

‘It’s a slight one, but yes.’

‘And do you . . . do you . . . live together yet?’

Frank knew what she meant. ‘No. We’re waiting until after the wedding,’ he said, closing his eyes against the thought.

God, what a joy to come, thought May.

‘So, anyway, I thought I could do it. Then I saw you and you blew all my good intentions out of the water,’ said Frank, so quietly and matter-of-factly that May almost missed hearing
it.

‘What?’

‘I don’t know what hit me that morning I first met you but it really did strike me like lightning. My legs actually started to shake. I knew I could never get into a bed with Daisy
Unwin feeling what I did about another woman. I put it down to momentary madness, but I feel the same every time I see you.’

His fingers were threading themselves between hers. She should pull them away.

‘Your head was looking for someone else to go to and save you from the situation. I was someone you didn’t know—’

‘Don’t try to rationalize it, May. I’ve done that and it hasn’t worked. It wasn’t
someone
that brought me back to life that day, it was
you
.
I’ve only existed in between the times I’ve seen you this past week – I haven’t really been living. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking
about.’

May opened her mouth but the words wouldn’t come out. Yes, she had felt it; and no, it wasn’t because she’d been looking for someone to repair the heart that Michael had
shattered. It defied rationalization because it wasn’t rational. But it was powerful and frightening and undeniable. And thrilling.

Then the sound of a car driving up to the house smashed into their perfect moment.

‘That’s Pauline,’ said Frank.

May pointed. ‘Is that the back door?’

‘Yes,’ said Frank, banging his head with the heel of his hand as if trying to knock something out of it.

‘Tell her, Frank. Don’t marry her for the wrong reasons. Don’t be bullied into thinking they’re the right reasons.’

Then May slipped out of the back door.

Just before it shut she heard Daisy’s shrill tone: ‘You’ll never guess what happened to us today. One of those London bitches was going to glass me.’

Only Lara slept soundly that night. May’s head was too full of poor Frank to allow her brain to rest, and Clare was woken by a nightmare in which she was at work and
couldn’t go home until she had completed a pile of accounts, but the figures kept changing as soon as she had added up the columns. And whichever pen she used the ink turned to water and
wouldn’t write, however hard she pressed the nib down onto the paper. She got up at three o’clock to take some Nurofen and lay in the dark trying not to think about anything until they
took effect, but that proved to be impossible, even with the thick thrumming pain in her temple.

Her mind strayed to Raine and Seymour and their story: falling in love, Seymour carrying her from the lagoon, standing up for her against the mighty Reverend Unwin, sacrificing his immortal soul
for her by being buried in unconsecrated ground. She could imagine Ludwig doing those things for her. She couldn’t envisage Val Hathersage putting himself out at all, even for a woman he
purported to love. She wondered if he loved Colleen Landers. Probably – as much as he could. Some people could only love a little. Life must be less complicated for them, Clare thought. She
didn’t know if she was one of the unlucky or lucky ones, feeling everything so deeply and wanting the full fairy-story ending.

As the dull throb in her head began to lessen, Clare drifted off into a light, dreamless sleep, waking just after nine. She went down for a swim in the lagoon, diving deep into the bright water,
to a world devoid of the pressures found in the life above. The lagoon would stay for ever in her memories as a magical place, symbolizing a time when she took a step out of the madness of her
existence to stop and smell the roses. There weren’t enough of those times in her life and she couldn’t even predict when she would have the chance again.

She slipped out of the cave and into the main sea where the waters were decidedly cooler. She swam with a huge shoal of small fishes that didn’t seem in the slightest bit disturbed that a
big pink fish with black hair and odd-coloured eyes had decided to join them. When she looked up, she saw Raine waving down.

‘I’ll come up,’ Clare shouted on a whim, doubting that she would be heard, but Raine nodded and wheeled herself back into the cottage.

Wrapped in a towel, Clare made the long journey up the cavern steps to High Top. Either she was getting fitter or someone had reduced the number of steps, she thought, as she took the last
thirty at a run. Raine had opened the door for her and was waiting for her guest with a delighted smile on her face.

‘I’m so glad you could visit me again,’ said the old lady. ‘Sit down. Put that blanket around your shoulders.’

Clare sat down on the sofa next to a stretched-out Albert, who was asleep, his paws twitching in a dream. In less than three days Albert and Raine and High Top would be part of her past, and who
knew if she would ever see any of them again? It was a thought that she had to push back because the further it advanced to the front of her mind, the sadder she felt.

‘I don’t want to make your sofa wet,’ said Clare.

‘You smell of the sea,’ said Raine, breathing in deeply. ‘You love it as much as I do, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know how I’m going to leave it behind,’ said Clare. ‘I wish I could fit it in my suitcase.’

‘Let me make you some tea,’ said Raine. ‘And warm you up.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Clare.

But Raine insisted. ‘You’re my guest and after all you’ve done for me, it’s the very least I can do for you.’

Albert sensed a knee and awoke to move his bones over to Clare’s lap. He didn’t seem to mind that they were chilly. He was asleep again in seconds, purring, kneading his paws on her
skin. Clare could feel how thin he was as she lightly drew her fingers down his back, but at least he was content. She wished her life made her purr as much as his did.

Raine returned with the tea in a cup decorated with painted fish. Because she had to hold the cup while manoeuvring her chair, and had a slight tremor in her hands, she couldn’t avoid
spilling some of the tea over her blanket.

‘Thank you,’ said Clare, drawing warmth from the delicate china cup.

‘An old friend of mine came around yesterday,’ said Raine. ‘She was very impressed with how the house looks.’

‘Ah, that’s good.’ Clare smiled.

‘She’s the housekeeper up at Carlton Hall. You can see it from the side window there.’

‘I’ll have a look in a minute,’ replied Clare. ‘I don’t think Albert would be too happy if I moved.’

‘Oh, Albert,’ Raine said fondly. ‘He thinks the world revolves around him. The trouble is, in this house the world does. Gladys brought us some trout. He ate his share and half
of mine. I don’t know where he puts it; he’s so skinny these days.’