Sheltering Rain (37 page)

“I'm going to wear my black jumper, the polo-neck one, so that he doesn't get any ideas,” she had told her grandfather. “And my jeans, so that I don't look like I've tried or anything.”

Her grandfather's eyes had swiveled across to her. Behind him, the technology, encased in its plastic surround, bleeped a regular pulse. “Don't look at me like that,” she said, scoldingly. “It's perfectly smart for nowadays. Just because you lot used to wear suits and stuff to go out.”

Her grandfather had looked away again. Sabine had grinned at him, and placed his hand back on the bedspread.

“Besides. If he's a right pug, then I want to make myself look as horrible as I can.”

But Bobby McAndrew hadn't looked terribly puggy. He had worn a pair of dark green trousers, dark brown, heavy-soled boots, and his own black woolen polo neck, which had made her want to giggle. Perhaps he was terrified that she was going to jump on him. He had also driven his own car, which was quite impressive; it was only a little Vauxhall, but it was a nice color. And Sabine, who had never been on a date with anyone who drove before (she hadn't actually been on that many dates full stop), quite enjoyed the feeling of maturity conveyed by a boyfriend with wheels. She also liked the chivalrous way that Bobby reminded her to do up her seat belt (as opposed to when her mother reminded her, in which case she was simply being a nag). She leaned forward and turned on the stereo, and the voice of a famous female singer had flooded the car, warbling on about lost love and sleepless nights. Listening, Sabine had realized with a start that it was well over a month since she had heard any kind of pop music. The woman's voice, once one of her favorites, sounded almost alien, a bit self-indulgent, and silly. She had leaned forward again and turned it off.

“You don't like music?” said Bobby, glancing over at her. He smelled of aftershave. It wasn't too awful.

“Not really in the mood for it,” she had replied, and gazed coolly out of the window, quietly pleased with the way that sounded.

The showing had been on early, the film had been funny enough to make her laugh out loud without thinking, and Bobby had failed to embarrass himself or her by clammy-handing her in the dark (she had spent much of the first half on the edge of her seat, primed to retaliate), so when he asked if she fancied a pizza, Sabine said yes. No one had told her what time she had to be back, and at Kilcarrion such opportunities were to be relished. She also, she admitted, didn't mind spending a bit more time with Bobby; it was good after all this time to hang out with someone her own age. Even if she had forgotten quite how irritating teenage boys could be.

“Vegetarian, are you?” said Bobby, eyeing her choice of pizza over his menu.

“Yes. So?”

“And you hunt?”

She sighed. Gazed around her at the bustling restaurant. The waitress had looked at her as if she were too young to be there.

“I went once. To see what it was like. And we didn't catch anything, did we?”

“Do you wear leather shoes?” He leaned down, as if to peer under the table.

“Yes, I do. Until they make decent rubber ones I don't have much choice.”

“Do you eat wine gums? You know they're made out of bits of cows. It's the gelatin in them.”

Sabine grimaced, wishing Bobby would change the subject. He had done this nonstop since they left the cinema; this conversation-as-battle thing, joking and trying to score points off her. It had made her laugh at first; now it was becoming exhausting.

“Do you ever stop going on?” she said, with a smile, to try to take the sting out of her words.

“Going on?”

“I just don't eat meat. I don't want a fight about it.”

“Point taken.”

He had looked up at her from under his lashes, the faintest flicker of embarrassment showing on his face. From behind him, the waitress, who had stacked shoes and too much makeup, dropped a glass of Coke heavily onto the table.

“So how's the old man? I hear he's on his last legs.”

“He's all right.” Sabine felt strangely defensive. “How come you're so interested in my family, anyway?”

“I told you, London girl. Here, we like to know everything about everyone's business.”

“Nosy.”

“No, just efficient gatherers of information. Knowledge is power, you know.”

“I'd rather have money.”

He paused, rubbing his hand through his hair. “Actually, I asked because I wanted to know when you'd be going back to England.”

Sabine paused, her fork halfway to her mouth.

“Well, common sense says that if he—well, if you're here to help look after him, and he—well . . . I heard you'd probably be heading off soon.”

Why should you care? Sabine wanted to ask him. But it seemed too forward.

“He's not dying, if that's what you're saying.”

“So you'll be around awhile. I mean, your mam's not dragging you home with her.”

“My mum doesn't have any say over what I do,” said Sabine, pertly, skewering a piece of mushroom on her fork. “I could stay here forever if I wanted.”

“You don't miss London too much, then?”

Sabine thought for a moment.

“Actually, apart from a couple of my mates, I don't really miss it at all.”

It got easier after that. Bobby's manic conversational dueling eased off, and he seemed to relax, so that talking to him became more like talking to one of her friends. He still mugged at her, and did too many silly voices, and was a bit what Mrs. H would call “excitable,” but he looked at her in a nice way, and she decided, as they drove home, that if he tried to stick his tongue in her mouth she probably wouldn't hit him or anything. Not too hard, anyway.

“So, where's your dad?” he said. They had been singing to one of his tapes, which had just paused, while it turned itself over.

“My real dad? I don't see him.”

“What? Not at all?”

“Nope.”

“Did he and your mam have a falling out, or what?”

“Not really.” Sabine traced her finger around the steam on her window, writing her initials in curly lettering. “I don't think they were together very long before I came along. And I think he didn't really want to be a dad, and she didn't really want him involved anyway. Plus, she wanted to live in England.” This was the official version, the version her mum had told her back during her early teens, when she had been briefly fascinated by her origins.

“You don't mind?” Bobby looked incredulous.

“Why should I mind? I've never met him. If someone didn't want to be my dad, I'm hardly going to go chasing after him, am I?”

“Do you know who he is?”

“I don't know his name. I think my mum did tell me, but I've forgotten. I think he was an artist, though.”

Sabine wasn't being purposefully vague; her paternity, to her, genuinely wasn't a big deal. In London, there were loads of people her age who didn't have any contact with their real dads. The only times it had bothered her had been when she was much younger, and had wondered why her family wasn't like the ones in her books. She had thought about him a bit, since coming to Ireland; it was inevitable when you knew that he lived somewhere nearby. But it was like she said: She had far too much pride to go chasing after someone who had never been particularly interested in her. Besides, she knew such reunions didn't often work out: She had seen the talk shows.

But she didn't tell him the other bit. The bit her mum had told her when she was a bit tipsy; that they had gotten together when she had been his artist's model. The only other boy she'd confided that to had gotten all unnecessary and started going on about topless shots, and whether her mum was “a bit of a goer.” Sabine didn't think Bobby would do that, but she didn't know him quite well enough to be sure.

Bobby was silent for a minute, checking the mirrors as he indicated and headed toward Ballymalnaugh. It was nearly a quarter to eleven, according to the clock on his dashboard. She hoped no one was going to get funny about it when she got home.

“Dads are a right bore, anyhow,” he said, looking straight ahead. “You're probably better off without one. Mine's always on my case about stuff. Too much aggro, you know?”

Sabine nodded as if she did. She knew he was being kind because he felt bad for her. But that was okay.

T
he other date was not going quite so smoothly. In fact, it would not have been entirely inaccurate to say it was not going at all. Kate, having stood in front of her reflection in her room for some three quarters of an hour, had decided that she could not go out to dinner with Thom. There was Christopher, for a start; he was due back this evening and, the moment he discovered her plans for the evening, would be proffering barbed comments and declaiming indiscreetly to Julia that it was only to be expected of her. There was her mother, whose discovery of Kate “going below stairs” as she would no doubt see it, could make their already cool relationship only frostier. She hadn't liked it when she had gone out with Thom as a teenager; she was unlikely to like it any better now. It was probably not the done thing to go out with men, anyway, when your father was supposedly dying. She should really be sitting by his bedside looking pained. But that would displace Sabine, who already spent most of her time up there and seemed to get irritated whenever she offered to help. And Kate had to admit to being secretly relieved that no one seemed to want her to spend any time with him; they had hardly spoken since she left home, and he had made it clear that that was not likely to change.

But it wasn't just that this date was inappropriate, in so many ways. More important, it would just reaffirm all the worst beliefs that she increasingly harbored about herself: that she was incapable of functioning without a man, that she seemed to seek out the unsuitable, that she allowed herself to be so much flotsam and jetsam on the great, turbulent sea of romance. It's time I took charge, Kate told herself, eyeing her complexion, which had begun to dry out in the cold. It's time I learned to live on my own. To put my daughter first. To be a responsible adult, whatever that means.

What would Maggie do, she had wondered (a question she had increasingly asked herself, and one that had prompted the premature ending of her relationship with Justin—not that he had seemed unduly devastated by it). She would have canceled, she concluded, refusing to acknowledge the tiny sting of disappointment that Virtual Maggie's verdict invoked. She would definitely have canceled. In fact there was no way that you could look at it, no single approach, and not end up with Maggie canceling. She knew; she'd tried. Kate took a deep breath, pulled another jumper over her head, and went out into the yard to find Thom.

“I can't come.” It was a little balder than she had intended.

Thom was stringing up a hay net in one of the stables, under the watery light of a flickering electric bulb. Behind him, the big gray horse that she had seen that wet day in the copse ran an inquiring, rubbery muzzle around the remains of his feed bucket.

Thom didn't look round. “Why?”

“Because . . . it's a bit difficult. I've got to look after Sabine.”

“Sabine's out on a date.”

He finished tying a knot in the hay net, twisted it a couple of times, and then, with a slap of the horse's rump, walked out of the stable, bolting the two locks behind him. The yard, which was now dark and almost empty, echoed under his footsteps.

Kate stood, her mouth very slightly ajar.

“You didn't know? She's gone out with one of the McAndrew brothers. He's a good lad. You don't need to worry.”

Hurt, fury, and humiliation impacted themselves upon Kate like a car crash, mangling her confidence and self-possession. Sabine hadn't even mentioned this boy to her, yet the whole house evidently knew she was going out with him. How did it make her look, to be her mother, and yet the last person to know? What had she done to Sabine to make her want to wound her so?

Worse, she had shown her up to be a liar.

Thom walked on to the next stable, so that despite her wrong-footedness, she was forced to follow him. He opened the next stable, peered in, and then pulled out a half-empty water bucket.

“So why else can't you come?” he said, using his good arm to sluice the remaining water down the drain.

Kate looked at him, trying to determine whether there was any anger in his tone. There didn't seem to be.

“It's just too complicated,” she said, briskly.

Thom picked up the bucket and placed it back inside the stable, shutting the door behind him. He stopped for a moment, leaning against the metal covering that ran along the top.

“Because . . . ?”

His eyes were soft, hinting at amusement. His short, dark hair was sprinkled with hayseeds, like the pelt of an animal. Confined in her pockets, her hands itched silently to rub at it. Don't make me do this, Kate pleaded silently. Don't make me start going through the reasons.

“Thom . . .”

“Look. It's not a big deal. It was just a bite to eat. I thought you were looking fed up, and I know your family isn't the easiest lot. It was just meant to give you a bit of a break. Don't worry about it.”

He turned, and walked on to the next stable, leaving her behind him in the yard.

“Another time, eh?” he shouted over his shoulder. Cheerfully.

Kate stood, overwhelmed by a feeling of stupidity. She had misread it; he had just been offering a friendly couple of hours away from her family. Like her brother said, why did she assume the world revolved around her? She shifted her weight on her feet, aware of a growing numbness in her toes, yet unwilling to disappear into the house.

Go on, a silent voice urged her.

Don't you dare, said Virtual Maggie.

“Thom?”

“Yup?” He was in the tack room now, stuck his head out as she drew nearer. His expression was blank, friendly.