Sheltering Rain (18 page)

Annie, who had been standing helplessly, closed the front door, and walked over to the table. She laid a hand on Sabine's shoulder.

“Look,” she said. “Mrs. Ballantyne, I'm sure Sabine didn't mean any harm.”

Patrick walked silently into the middle of the room. “Is everything okay here?” he said.

“You go on up, Patrick. Everything's fine.”

“We've got guests. They're wondering what's going on.”

“I know, love. Go on up,” Annie said. “There'll be no more noise.”

Joy shook her head slightly, as if she had forgotten the presence of the other woman. She glanced up and saw Patrick, and looked suddenly abashed at her own outpouring of emotion.

“I'm so sorry, Annie. Patrick,” she said eventually. “It's not like me to lose my temper.”

He looked at Joy and Sabine warily.

“Really. I'm so, so sorry.”

“I'll just be upstairs if you need me,” he said to his wife, and walked out.

There was a brief silence, broken only by the sound of Sabine's shuddering and sniffing. Joy shook her head, as if rousing herself from a reverie. She put both hands to her cheeks, as if feeling their temperature, and then moved stiffly toward the door.

“Annie, I'm so sorry. Please accept my apologies. I—I—yes. Well. I think I had better get back to the house. Sabine, I'll see you later.”

Sabine refused to look up from the table.

“I'm sorry,” said Joy, opening the door.

“You're all right, Mrs. Ballantyne,” said Annie. “It's no problem at all. I'll let Sabine finish her tea and she'll be back with you later.”

J
oy sat on the edge of her husband's bed. He lay, propped up against a bank of white cushions, gazing across the room at the fire, which Mrs. H had stoked up before she left. It was dark outside, and the only light in the room came from a bedside lamp, and the flames, which flickered in the reflections of the mahogany bedposts, and in the brass handles of the chest of drawers under the window.

“Oh, Edward. I've done an awful thing,” she said.

Edward's eyes swiveled rheumily across to Joy's face.

“I completely lost my temper with Sabine. In front of Annie and Patrick. I don't know what came over me.”

She rubbed at her eyes with one hand, the other clutching a handkerchief that she had pulled out of her drawer on her return home. It was unlike Joy to cry. She wasn't even sure when she had last done so. But she had been haunted by the thin adolescent figure who had burst into childish tears in front of her, and haunted more by her own violent feelings toward her.

“She got into the study, you see.”

Joy took a deep breath, and took Edward's hand. It was bony and dry. Touching it, she could remember when it had been broad and spade-fingered, tanned from working outside.

“She had been rooting through the old Hong Kong pictures. And there was something about seeing them again. . . . I—oh, Edward, I just completely lost my temper.”

Edward kept his gaze steady on her face. She thought she could feel the faintest of answering squeezes.

“She's only a child, isn't she? She doesn't understand. Why shouldn't she look through the photographs? She knows little enough about her family, God knows. Oh, God, Edward, I feel like such an old fool. I wish I could take it all back.”

Joy rubbed at her face with the handkerchief. She knew what she had to do, but she wasn't sure how to do it. It was unlike her to turn to Edward for advice. But he seemed to be having a better day. And there wasn't anyone else who could begin to understand. “You were always better with people. Much better than I was. What can I do to make it up to her?”

Joy gazed at her husband, and shifted her weight, so that she could bend better to hear him speak.

Edward's eyes moved away from hers, as if he were deep in thought. After a lengthy pause he shifted his face toward her. Joy stooped lower. She knew he had trouble speaking at the moment.

When his voice emerged, it was hoarse and crackly, like rice paper.

“Are we having sausages tonight?” he said.

T
he one advantage to living in a house mathematically bisected by rules and regulations was that it definitely made it easier to sneak around. Sabine had timed her return to Kilcarrion for eight-fifteen, when she knew her grandmother would be eating in the dining room. Even when her grandfather ate upstairs in his room Joy would eat there, at a carefully set table, as if solitarily upholding some grand tradition. And she had worked out a back route, which didn't even involve her passing the dining room; if she came through the back door, and walked silently along the corridor that led to the boot room, she could come up the back stairs, and out onto the main landing without her grandmother even knowing she was there.

Because there was no way she was speaking to her again. The next time she saw her, it would be to say good-bye. She would wait until her grandmother had gone to bed, and then she would tiptoe silently into the living room and call her mother, to tell her she was coming home. Her grandmother didn't have a phone in her room, so she wouldn't hear a thing. And her grandfather never heard anything anyway. As long as the dogs didn't get excited and start barking, she would have it all planned and ready before her grandmother could do anything about it.

The little knot of tension that Sabine had felt for the remainder of her stay at Annie's had not dissipated as she made her plans, but Sabine didn't mind. She was almost grateful. Her sense of fury and injustice helped give her the determination to move on. Yes, she would miss Thom and Annie and Mrs. H, and it was a shame that she had just started, if she had to admit it, to enjoy herself a bit. But there was no way she was staying one more day with that woman. No way. At one point after her grandmother had left, when she had been at the snot-and-shudder stage of crying, she had suggested to Annie that perhaps she could sleep in her spare room. The one next door to Annie and Patrick's room, which never got used by guests. Then she wouldn't have to come back to Kilcarrion at all. But Annie had gone all funny again, and said no, no one was to use that room, and Sabine had decided not to push it. She needed all the friends she could get at the moment.

Sabine pulled out her holdall from under the bed, and began to throw in her clothes. It was better this way, she told herself. She and her grandmother just didn't get on. She could understand now why her mother never came back to Ireland—imagine growing up with that! Sabine felt a sudden stab of longing for her mother, and comforted herself with the thought that this time the following evening she would be back in the house in Hackney. That was the important thing. She would deal with the Justin thing later.

She moved to the chest of drawers, hauling them open and throwing her clothes in the holdall chaotically, careless of whether they were likely to crease. She was fed up with doing things the so-called right way. From now on she would simply do things her way.

But as she packed, she found she couldn't think too hard about Justin. Or Geoff. Or about the good things at Kilcarrion, like riding with Thom this morning, and the way he put his hand on her shoulder and told her he'd make a horsewoman of her yet. Or the way he kept leaning across to her when they untacked their horses in the yard, and gave Liam a warning glare when he tried to make rude jokes in front of her. Or Mrs. H, and her food, which was loads nicer than she was likely to get at home, with just Mum around. Or Bertie, who followed her around now, and seemed to adore her in a way O'Malley never did, even though she had raised him herself from a kitten. Or even Annie, as weird as she was. Because if she thought too hard about any of these things, Sabine found that what she really wanted was to cry. A lot.

She jumped at the soft knock on the door, then froze. Caught in the act, she thought silently. But then she realized that whatever her grandmother did these days made her feel like that.

Sabine stood still and said nothing, knowing who it was likely to be, but eventually the door opened anyway, slowly and cautiously, making a soft swooshing noise on the blue shag pile.

Her grandmother stood before her, bearing a small wooden tray, on which stood a bowl of tomato soup and some of Mrs. H's buttered soda bread. Sabine stared at her for a minute, tense and still, awaiting the next onslaught.

But Joy merely looked down at the tray.

“I thought you might be hungry,” she said, pausing, and then as if having herself waited for some protest, walked slowly over to the dressing table. If she noticed the half-packed bag, she didn't say anything.

She placed the tray gently on the cleared space, and then turned around so that she was facing her granddaughter.

“It's only canned tomato, I'm afraid. I hope that's all right.”

Sabine, who stood motionless beside the bed, nodded warily.

There was a lengthy silence. Sabine waited for Joy to move. But she didn't seem to want to.

Instead she clasped her hands together, a little awkwardly, and half lifted them toward Sabine, forcing her face into a kind of bright smile. Then she thrust them deep into the pockets of her padded waistcoat.

“Thom tells me you rode very well today. Very tidy, he said.”

Sabine stared at her.

“Yes. He said you and the little gray got on terribly well. Which is good news. Very good news. He said you had soft hands. And a very nice seat.”

Sabine's careful monitoring of her grandmother was briefly diverted by the thought of Thom examining her backside. Was it all riding terminology? Or had he been looking at her for other reasons?

“Anyway. He seemed to think the pair of you would be jumping soon. He's a lovely jumper, that gray. I've seen him out in the field. Brave as a lion, he is. A really generous little soul.”

She was beginning to look really uncomfortable, Sabine realized suddenly. She was now twisting her hands together around an old white handkerchief, and she seemed to find it difficult to meet Sabine's eye.

“He'll do a Wexford bank, you know. With no trouble.”

Sabine paused, feeling suddenly sad at this old woman's discomfort. It didn't actually make her feel better at all. She lifted her head, and spoke.

“What's that?”

“A Wexford bank? Oh, it's the hardest thing. Not an easy jump at all.” Joy was speaking too fast now, as if in relief at Sabine's response. “It's a big old earth bank, probably five or six feet high, with a wide ditch on each side. The horses gallop up to it, then leap onto the top, and the clever ones balance there briefly, as if they were on tiptoes.” Here she brought her hands together, facing down, and moved them side by side, like someone adjusting her weight. “Then they leap off again over the other ditch. But they won't all do it, you see. It requires a lot of bravery. And a little wisdom. And some always choose to take the easy route.”

“By the gate.”

“Yes,” said her grandmother, looking at her very seriously. “Some will always take the gate.”

The two women stood in silence for a moment. Then her grandmother moved slowly away from the tray, and back toward the door. When she got there, she turned around. She looked very old, and rather sad.

“You know, I thought it would probably be a very good idea if I sorted out that study. I was wondering if you might give me a hand. Perhaps I could even tell you a few bits about where your mother grew up.” She paused. “That's if you wouldn't be bored.”

There was a long silence, as Sabine stared at her hands. She wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

“You know, I'd really be terribly grateful.”

Sabine gazed at her, and then at the tray. Then she glanced over at the holdall on the floor, where her socks hung over the edge, like rude blue tongues.

“All right,” she said.

S.S
. Destiny,
Indian Ocean, 1954

M
rs. Lipscombe, from under her wide blue hat, was telling them how she had given birth. Again. The midwife had given her brandy, which she had thrown up, not being a drinker (“not then, anyway,” she said, and laughed dryly), and the silly woman had bent over, trying to wipe it off her shoes. That, unfortunately, was the point at which Georgina Lipscombe had pulled herself upright, and with a roar, grabbed whatever came to hand, and bore down. Propelled by an almighty final push, the bloodied Rosalind had shot halfway across the room, to be caught like a rugby ball by the vigilant maid who had been waiting nearby.

“Pulled a great handful of that woman's hair out, I did,” Mrs. Lipscombe said with some pride. “They said I wouldn't let go of it for the best part of an hour. All poking through my fingers, it was. She was
furious
.”

Joy and Stella, seated beside her on sun loungers, exchanged the minutest of grimaces. Georgina Lipscombe's stories were a useful source of entertainment, but once she'd had a couple of gin and tonics, they did tend to get rather gory.

“Was she all right?” said Joy, politely.

“Rosalind? Oh, she was fine. Weren't you, darling?”

Rosalind Lipscombe sat on the edge of the swimming pool, her plump, childish legs half submerged in the cool blue water. As her mother spoke, she lifted her head and stared briefly at the three women before returning to examine her pale feet. Hard as it was to discern any expression, Joy thought she, too, had probably heard this story many times before.

“I don't know why she doesn't swim. It's so hot. Rosie, darling. Why don't you have a swim? You'll burn terribly sitting there.”

Rosalind looked up at her mother reclining on the sundeck, and then, silently, withdrew her feet from the water and padded away from the pool and over to the changing rooms.

Georgina Lipscombe raised an eyebrow.

“You girls'll find out soon enough. Ugh! The pain! I told Johnnie that was it. That was absolutely it. I was never going through it again.” She paused, exhaling a thin plume of smoke into the bright air. “Of course, I had Arthur within the year.”