Sheltering Rain (28 page)

“I'll set you a place.”

Satisfied, her grandfather sat back in his chair, and gazed around him, as if trying to locate something. When he caught sight of Sabine, he stopped and laid a hand heavily down on the table.

“Ahh. There you are.”

Sabine smiled uncertainly.

“Now.” He paused, inhaling wheezily. “I understand you've been out hunting.”

It was said with some satisfaction.

Before Sabine could speak, Joy reemerged with crockery and cutlery, which she laid briskly and precisely in front of her husband.

“Yes. She's had a jolly good day out.”

Edward peered slowly upward at his wife, his face blank, but his voice thick with irritation.

“I want to speak to my granddaughter. I would rather you didn't interrupt.”

Joy raised an eyebrow, but ignored him. She returned to her place, and began dishing out the vegetable casserole.

“Now . . . ,” he said carefully, eyeing Sabine with something that she almost swore was mischief. “Was it a good day?”

Apart from quite enjoying the spectacle of seeing her grandmother told off, Sabine, relishing the taste of the first mouthful, hardly wanted to be interrupted by speech.

“Yes,” she said, nodding vigorously so that he wouldn't ask her to repeat herself.

“Good, good . . .” He sat back again, smiling. “What horse was it you rode? Was it the Duke?”

“No, Edward. The Duke is lame. You know the Duke is lame.”

“What?”

“The Duke. Is Lame.” Joy poured Sabine a small glass of red wine and pushed it toward her.

“Ohhh. Lame, is he?” Her grandfather paused and looked at his food. “Oh, dear . . . What's this?”

“It's vegetable casserole,” said Joy, loudly. “It's Sabine's favorite.”

“What meat is it?” he prodded unsteadily at it with his fork. “I haven't got any meat in mine.”

“It doesn't have meat. It's all vegetables.”

He looked up suspiciously.

“But where's the meat?”

Joy looked briefly exasperated.

“I didn't give you any,” she said, finally. “There was none left.” She glanced swiftly at Sabine, acknowledging her lie, but daring her granddaughter to do the same.

Edward stared at his plate.

“Ohhh . . . Does it have sweet corn in it?”

“Yes,” said Joy, picking at her own food. “It does. You'll have to pick it out.”

“I don't like sweet corn.”

“Sabine jumped a Wexford bank today,” Joy said determinedly, her voice lifting. “Thom told me.”

“You jumped a bank? Jolly well done.” The corners of her grandfather's mouth lifted into a smile. Sabine found that her own met it. She still found herself swelling with pride when she thought about it.

“Jolly tricky, those banks.”

“The horse did it all, really,” Sabine said modestly. “I just hung on.”

“Sometimes the best thing you can do is leave it to the horse,” said Joy, wiping her mouth. “Yours is a clever enough chap, anyway.”

Sabine, gazing around her at her grandparents as they ate, had a sudden sense of being part of a wider family, of how pleasant it could be to bask in their approval. She didn't think she had ever had a sense of pride like this; there had been passing her exams in the summer, but that had all been tinged with the Geoff-and-Justin thing; although she had felt privately pleased, to join in her mother's pleasure at her achievement would have meant some kind of collusion, and Sabine had spent those months feeling far too angry with her for that. Somehow, with her grandparents, it was less complicated. I don't really mind being here, she thought suddenly. I might even like it.

“So . . . how many times did you draw?”

Sabine looked up at her grandfather, and over at her grandmother's place, which had been suddenly vacated. She had no idea what he was talking about.

“Sorry?” she said weakly, listening for the sound of her grandmother's imminent return from the kitchen.

Her grandfather looked briefly impatient, apparently tried by the effort of having to repeat things that were patently easy to hear.

“I said, how many times did you
draw
?”

She couldn't have said exactly why, but Sabine didn't want to admit that she didn't know what he was talking about. She had so enjoyed their unaccustomed and tacit approval; it would have felt like breaking a spell. Her grandfather would be disappointed, as if she were some kind of imposter. Her grandmother would wear that blank, yet faintly exasperated expression that until so recently had characterized their every exchange. She would be Sabine, the townie outsider, again.

“Six.”

“What?”

“Six.” It sounded like a good, middling sort of a number.

“Six times?” Her grandfather's eyes widened.

Her grandmother walked back in, bearing a loaded bread board.

“Did you hear that, Joy? Sabine's hunt today. Drew
six times
.”

Joy shot a sharp look at Sabine. Sabine, already aware that she had said the wrong thing, tried very hard to convey some kind of explanation in her return look.

“That's astonishing,” he said, shaking his head at his plate. “Last time I heard of a hunt drawing six times must have been . . . was it nineteen sixty-seven, Joy? That winter we had the Pettigrews over. That was five or six times, wasn't it?”

“I don't remember,” said Joy, shortly.

“I might have got it wrong,” said Sabine, desperately.

“Six times,” said her grandfather, shaking his head again. “Well, well . . . Still, jolly good season, sixty-seven. Good horses that year, too. Do you remember that little colt we bought in Tipperary, Joy? What was his name?”

“Master Ridley.”

“Master Ridley. That's the one. All the way to Tipperary, and we spent so much money on the horse we didn't have any money over for the hotel. Had to stay in a caravan. Didn't we, darling?”

“We did.”

“Yes. Stayed in a caravan. Freezing it was. Full of holes.”

“It certainly was.”

“Jolly good fun, that. Yes.” He smiled slowly to himself, his creased old face taut with the effort and Sabine, glancing over at Joy, noted that she had allowed her own expression to soften slightly. “Yes,” she said. “Jolly good fun.”

“Sounds a laugh,” Sabine mumbled, taking the opportunity to help herself to another dumpling.

“Six times . . . D'you know, there's nothing like hound music,” he said, lifting his head, as if sampling some distant tune. “No sound like it.”

He paused, and then looked directly at Sabine, as if really seeing her for the first time.

“Not like your mother at all, are you?” he said.

And then collapsed, face first, into his casserole.

For a brief, dreadful second, Sabine stared at him, wondering absently if this was some kind of joke. Then Joy, with a shout of horror, leaped from her seat and ran over, lifting her husband's head from the plate, and cradling it to her shoulder. “Get the doctor!” she yelled at Sabine.

Sabine, jolted from her frozen state, pushed her chair back and bolted from the room. As she rummaged through the numbers on the telephone table, dialing the number with shaking hands, the terrible vision of her grandfather swam in front of her. It was an image that, she already knew, would haunt her long after its origins had been restored to normality. His eyes had been half closed, his mouth half open. Streams of hot, tomato-colored liquid ran in rivulets down the crags of his face. They had dripped off the flowery scarf and onto his immaculate white shoulders, like pale, thinned blood.

K
ate sat down on the sofa next to Justin, and considered whether she should lean against him, and perhaps gently run her fingers through his hair. Or reach for his hand. Or even rest her fingers on his thigh, in a relaxed yet proprietorial manner. She paused, gazing surreptitiously at his face, trying to gauge which would be the most appropriate. These were not concerns she might have worried over at such length two months ago, but two months ago she had still felt uninhibited with him, confident that her every move upon him would be met by a return gesture.

Because Justin-of-today did not share Justin-of-two-months-ago's constant desire to touch, hold, or stroke her. Most nights he didn't even seem that bothered about whether he even sat next to her. And Kate, desperate to bridge this apparent distance between them, found herself acutely self-conscious, trying to manufacture a warmth that no longer existed without her efforts.

She settled for a seat right up close to him, and a leg casually resting next to his.

“Do you want more wine?”

He didn't take his eyes from the television.

“Yeah. Lovely.”

“I love Fleurie. It's my special treat to myself.”

He snorted slightly at something on screen. Then glanced next to him, where she was filling his glass.

“Very nice.”

“I don't think I know your favorite wine.” She wanted them to talk to each other again, to really, really focus on each other, spilling secrets they hadn't known they held, desperate to pour themselves out in front of each other; here, this is all that I am, take me. When she and Justin had first gotten together, she had been struck by the idea of herself again as someone with potential; he had seemed to see endless possibilities in her, had made her believe she could be bigger than she was, that they could be bigger together. Now, when he came around, he sat himself, remote control in hand, in front of the television. Then asked what they were having for supper.

“It's called being settled,” he had said, when she had gently broached the subject one night. “It shows I'm comfortable with you. You can't expect high passion to last forever.”

But then why did I leave Geoff for you? she wanted to shout back at him. At least with him I didn't get to do the cooking and all the washing up. At least Geoff wanted to talk to me in the evenings. At least Geoff occasionally wanted to make love.

“So what is your favorite wine?”

“Sorry?”

“Your favorite wine. What is it?” She could hear new threads of steel in her voice.

“Wine?
Erm
. . . never really thought about it.” He paused, as if trying to engage half his brain on the task, aware that some kind of response was going to be necessary. “Some of the Chilean ones are nice.”

It was as if once the specter of Geoff and the threat of discovery were gone, there was no longer enough excitement to fuel his desire for her. And Kate had found herself fighting a resentfulness, a suspicion that she had slowly and unwittingly taken on another role, becoming a kind of mother substitute to him, providing meals, domesticity, and a safe haven for someone whose real passion was out on a distant road, seen through a lens shutter.

“It's a pretty nice arrangement for him,” Maggie had observed the previous week, eyeing Justin's bags of camera equipment in the hall.

“What is?”

“Nice house, place to stay, with food and sex all thrown in. Useful place to store cameras. And no responsibility. No commitments. No bills.” She raised an eyebrow, and walked briskly into the kitchen, where Kate had been making the tea.

“Why should he pay bills if he doesn't live here?” Kate had felt irritated by Maggie's tone. But she was also acutely conscious of Justin's proliferating bags of equipment; she had a feeling Sabine was not going to be quite as amenable to their presence as she was.

“No reason at all. I just thought that after all this time he would want to come and live here.”

“Look, Maggie. Not everyone wants to be like you and Hamish. Justin's a free spirit. More important, I've just come out of a very messy breakup. You know how messy. And the last thing I want is someone else diving in here, cluttering up my life, before I've even had a chance to enjoy it on my own.”

She had almost convinced herself.

“Ahh. I didn't realize you had split up with Geoff to be
on your own
. Sorry, darling. I thought you had said you wanted to be with
Justin
. So forgetful! Must be my Alzheimer's coming on.” And Maggie, with a sly sideways look, had effectively closed the conversation.

She was right, of course. But Kate was not about to admit that she had made a mistake. Because that would mean that all this pain, all this mess, the deeper fracturing of her already precarious relationship with her daughter, had all been for nothing. And it would mean that once again, despite being thirty-five and a veteran of God knows how many relationships, and someone who thought she knew exactly what she was doing, Kate had gotten it wrong about men. Again.

She thought, uncomfortably, of Sabine, whom she had last spoken to more than a week ago. Her daughter had been relatively pleasant, had unusually failed to berate her for any apparent shortcomings, had even failed to rise to the bait when Kate accidentally mentioned Justin. But when Kate had gently tried to suggest it might be a good time for her to start thinking about coming home, Sabine had politely but definitely changed the subject. Even more disturbing than the apparent refusal was its manner. Sabine had never expressed concern about her mother's feelings; most of the time she had gone out of her way to be unpleasant to her. This new, adult Sabine, was not just gently telling her she disapproved of her mother's life, but apparently creating her own, as far away as possible.

Kate fought the sudden lump in her throat. I'll just have to try harder, she thought, gazing at Justin's legs in their moleskin trousers, stretched out in front of her. I'll give Sabine a little space. Then remind her of all the things she loved about London. I won't be clingy and desperate; I'll just sit tight until she's ready to come back to me. And I won't read too much into Justin's behavior. He's a good man and he loves me; we've just fallen into boring domesticity a little too quickly. I just need to shake things up a little.