Sheltering Rain (45 page)

His right hand she picked up and, looking briefly down, placed, slowly but firmly, on her bare left breast.

“Shhh,” she said, her eyes wide, lost in his.

Under his hand, her skin trembled.

Thom stared at her, his own eyes widened, his breath short with shock.

“Sabine . . . ,” he said again, shaking his head. But she reached up, and, pulling his head down, lifted her lips to his.

There was a brief, terrible silence. And then Thom broke away, pushing himself backward, stammering and shaking his head.

“Sabine. No. No, I'm sorry—I'm sorry—but . . .” He turned toward the door, holding on to it. Then he picked up the bucket with his silicone hand, his good one wiping at his eyes, at his face, as if to dispel his own vision. A light flickered on in the tack room, its fluorescent strip reflected in the cobbles of the yard. Outside in the yard, Bertie began to bark.

“Sabine. I can't—you're lovely, really, but . . .”

Sabine had begun to shake. She stood before him in the near dark, suddenly pulling her shirt awkwardly around her, her bottom lip trembling. She looked very fragile, and very young.

Thom, his face suddenly filled with concern, took a step back toward her.

“Oh, God, Sabine, come here. . . .”

But she pushed past him, and with a muffled sob, fled into the darkness.

K
ate found Joy in the study, a chaotic knot of gray hair visible atop a stiffly upright green quilted back. She was seated at the desk where Kate's father had once sat, sifting through a box of paperwork, some of which she placed in a neat pile before her, but most of which was thrown into the metal wastebasket beside her feet. There was no meditative consideration of each piece, just a brisk glance and then a firm referral, to either front or below. To her left sat the box of photographs that Kate had found Sabine leafing through two days previously, seemingly next in line for systematic and apparently ruthless rationalization.

Kate, who had half-run up the stairs, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door, despite the fact that she was already inside the room.

Joy turned around in her seat. She looked mildly surprised to see her daughter standing there, and glanced behind her, as if expecting someone else.

“Well. You'll be pleased to know you got what you wanted.”

Kate walked into the room, running her finger along the shelf, her voice, low and even.

Joy frowned.

“Honestly, Mummy, I knew you disapproved of me, but the fact that it's taken you just—what is it—two and a half months? Well, that was impressive. Even by your standards.”

Joy shook her head, turned fully around.

“I'm sorry. I don't quite understand—”

“Sabine. It's taken you a matter of weeks. But she now despises me as much as you do.”

Mother and daughter stood, staring at each other in the dusty old room. It was their longest contact since Kate's arrival.

Joy lifted herself from the chair; her movements were slower than Kate remembered, they seemed to cost her more.

“Katherine—whatever has happened between you and Sabine has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

She moved around to face her daughter, one hand still clamped on the back of the chair.

“I have no idea what you're talking about. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got things to see to downstairs.”

“Oh,
there's
a surprise.”

Joy's head shot up.

“Well. There's always something to do downstairs, isn't there? Always something to do rather than talk to me, your own daughter.”

“You're getting hysterical.” Joy refused to look at Kate, who was now standing in her path.

“No, Mummy. I'm not hysterical. I'm perfectly calm. I just think it's about time you and I had a chat. I am
tired
”— here she couldn't avoid the lift in her voice–“of having you politely ignore me, like I was some kind of bad smell. I want to talk to you, and I'd like to do it now.”

Joy looked at the door, and then around her at the floor, which had been largely cleared of the boxes that had laid there for years. There were dark squares on the old carpets, dusty stencils of where they had stood.

“Well, let's try and make it fairly swift. I don't like to leave your father for too long.”

Kate felt the fury rise up in her throat, like bile.

“What have you said to Sabine about me?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“What have you said? She was fine, when she left London. Fine. And now she despises everything I do. Everything I am. And do you know what, Mummy? Some of the things she says—well, they could have come straight from your mouth.”

Joy stood stiffly, bracing herself.

“I have no idea what you're talking about. I have not spoken to Sabine about you.”

Kate laughed, a hollow, humorless laugh.

“Oh, you might not have said anything specific. But I know you, Mummy. I know how you are. How the things that you don't say can be as poisonous as anything you do. And believe me, something has happened. Because my own daughter now holds you up as a bloody template for true love. And everything I do is now bloody well deficient.”

“That is nothing to do with me.” Joy's face was rigid. “And I really don't have time for this. Really.”

But Kate would not be stopped.

“You know what? I'm sorry I couldn't be like you and Daddy, okay? I'm sorry I never did the whole white-wedding thing. I'm sorry I'm not still with my childhood sweetheart. But you know what? Times change, believe it or not, and not many bloody people my age are with their childhood sweethearts.”

Joy stood, gripping the chair even more tightly.

“I can't live up to you, okay? I can't live up to you and Daddy and your bloody love story to end all love stories, okay? But it doesn't make me a bad person. It doesn't mean you can judge me for every little thing I do.”

“I have never judged you.”

“Oh, come
on
, Mother. You've found me wanting on every little thing I ever did. You judged me for Sabine, for Jim. You made it plain you didn't approve of Geoff, even though he was a bloody doctor.”

“I didn't judge you. I just wanted you to be happy.”

“Oh, rubbish! Rubbish! You couldn't even let me have the friends I wanted when I was a child! Look!” She reached over, and pulled the photograph of herself and Tung-Li from the pile. “Remember him? I bet you don't.”

Joy glanced at the picture, and looked away.

“I remember very well who that is, thank you.”

“Yes. Tung-Li. My best friend. My best friend who I wasn't allowed to play with because you didn't think a girl of my class should be playing with her amah's son.”

Joy looked suddenly weary. She stepped backward, onto the chair.

“That's not it, Katherine. You've got it quite wrong.”

“Oh, have I? I seem to remember you were pretty unequivocal about it at the time. In fact, I think you told me. Not appropriate, that was the phrase you used. Do you remember that? Because I still bloody remember, Mother. That was how much it hurt me. Not Appropriate.”

“That's not how it was.” Joy's voice was quiet now.

“He wasn't good enough for you. Just like nothing I've ever done has been good enough for you. How I live my life, who I fell in love with, how I brought up my daughter. No, not even who I chose as my friend. At bloody six years old! Not bloody appropriate!”

“You've got it wrong.”

“How? How have I got it bloody wrong? I was six years old!”

“I've told you, it's just not how it was.”

“So you tell me!”

“All right! All right. I'll tell you.” Joy took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. “The reason I couldn't let you play with Tung-Li . . .”

She paused, took another breath. Outside the door, one of the dogs scratched and whined to be let in.

“The reason I couldn't let you play with Tung-Li is because . . . I couldn't bear it. Because it was too hard.”

She opened her eyes, and looked straight at Kate. They were glistening, bright with tears. “Because he was your brother.”

J
oy Ballantyne was so ill with morning sickness, her mother told her friends afterward, that her husband had fired two cook-amahs in succession, convinced that they must be trying to poison her. The first Alice had taken somewhat personally, having gone to some lengths to secure the services of the number one amah herself—a task that had involved fighting off advances from no less than one of the Jardine family—but even she had to admit that Joy's frequent vomiting and inability to move from the sofa for weeks was not what one normally associated with a healthy pregnancy.

Because from a little over six weeks, when Joy informed Edward of his impending fatherhood, she had become progressively more ill, her complexion blanching, and taking on a peculiar yellowish-gray hue, and her normally springy hair becoming dull and lifeless, despite her mother's endless attempts to set it. She found it difficult to move, complaining of motion sickness, equally wearing to talk, and almost impossible to socialize, as the vomiting outbursts would often come violently and without warning. Living in that block full of people didn't help, Alice remarked. “All those cook-amahs frying up garlic and goodness knows what in the day. Pig intestines hanging out to dry. Fried turnip paste. That revolting fruit that smells like something rotting.” “Yes, thank you, Mother,” Joy had choked, and leaned over to relieve herself in her washing-up bowl.

Alice had cheered up considerably since discovering she was about to be a grandmother (because of her physical condition, it was not a secret Joy had been able to keep for long) and had, with an almost indecent satisfaction, leaped into the role of matriarch at number fourteen Sunny Garden Towers. She replaced the last number one amah with a girl from Guangdong, Wai-Yip, rather younger than most cook-amahs but with a reputation for English cuisine, and, as Alice pointed out, a younger woman was likely to have more energy for the children. “Because I'll tell you now, Joy, they don't just wreck your body, they absolutely exhaust you. So you'll need someone who can take them off your hands.” She had also appointed the wash-amah, Mary, from Causeway Bay, and made sure she pointed out to Edward on almost every occasion the starched superiority of his shirts.

Joy, meanwhile, had wept silent, bitter tears, resentful of this alien parasite inside her, deeply depressed by the unrelenting nausea and frustrated by her own incapacity. Most of all she cursed this unwanted usurper for coming between her relationship with Edward: for the fact that she could no longer accompany him to social functions, for her appearance, which she knew disappointed him, even if he didn't say it, and for the fact that already it had somehow divided them, turning her not into a partner, but into an impending mother, to be fussed over and protected by womenfolk and doctors, to be banned from riding or playing tennis or any of the other physical things they had enjoyed together. He was already seeing her differently; she knew it. It was apparent in the cautious way in which he approached her after work, to plant a gentlemanly kiss on her cheek, instead of gathering her boisterously to him, as he used to do. It was there in the way he eyed her, as she shuffled from room to room, trying to look like she was coping, as her mother raised her eyebrows and remarked that “she'd never seen anyone look so pasty.” But the worst had come at ten weeks, when, evidently frustrated by the lack of physical closeness between them (she did usually accommodate him four or five times a week, after all), he had leaned over to her side of the bed and began gently touching her, his face looming over hers for a kiss.

Joy, who had been half asleep, had woken with a sense of panic. She had not told him the worst; that the very smell of his skin now made her want to be ill. When he had done nothing but kiss her cheek, she had been able to hide it under a forced smile. Now, the rhythmic touch of his hand made her queasy, his mouth upon hers made her dizzy with nausea. Oh, God, please don't do this, she prayed silently, as he moved on top of her, clamping her eyes shut in an effort to block out the mounting sensations within. And then, when she knew she could hold off no longer, pushed him roughly away from her and ran to the bathroom, where she was lengthily and noisily sick.

That had been the beginning of it; he had not wanted to hear her tearful explanations, had silently removed himself to the guest room, hurt emanating from him in palpable waves. He had not wanted to talk about it the following morning, even when the servants had been in the other room. But two nights later, when she had lain awake wondering why he was back so late from the dockyard, he had muttered two words: “Wan Chai.” And Joy had been filled with fear.

After that, Joy had never again asked her husband where he disappeared to, three or four nights a week. But despite being slack-jawed with exhaustion, she would lay awake in her double bed, waiting for the sound of the front door opening, and for him to stumble, usually drunk, into the guest room, where he had taken up near-permanent residence (apart from the nights when he was really drunk, in which case he would forget that he no longer shared her bed, and she would be forced out instead, nauseated by the alcoholic fumes). In the mornings, they didn't talk; Joy at her illest, and unsure what to say, and Edward suffering under the effects of the previous night's consumption, and apparently in a permanent rush to get to work. There was no one she could talk to about it; she somehow didn't want Alice to have the satisfaction—and it would be a satisfaction—of seeing her and Edward reduced to the kind of polarized unhappiness so apparent in the couples around them, and, with Stella in England, there was no one she really thought of as her friend. Edward had been her friend; she had never contemplated needing anybody else.