Sheltering Rain (42 page)

She gazed at him, troubled, her bottom lip pushed out. She had never seen him angry before; she had never known him to say so many things at the same time before. She almost flinched as he moved off his bucket, and sat down next to her on the crates.

“Look, even if you don't know yet, Kate, I do. And I don't care about all the other eejits you've been out with, and I don't care about the fact that we live in different places. Or that we don't even like the same things. Because it's just details, okay? It's just details.”

He took her hand, and held it between his own two. “And I know I'm not perfect. I'm too used to being on my own, and I get crabby about stupid things, and . . . and I've got a bloody arm gone. I know I'm not the man I was.”

She shook her head, not wanting him to mention it, not wanting him to suggest it as a factor.

He shook his head back at her, his voice suddenly quieting. “But I tell you, Kate, I'll tell you this—if you go now, you're wrong. Really wrong. And it'll be because you're the one who's crippled, not me.”

He paused, then seemingly out of nowhere, lifted her hand and pressed her palm to his mouth. He kept it there, his eyes closed, apparently silenced by his own action. Kate, heedless of the tears now rolling down her cheeks, reached out her other hand and stroked the side of his face.

“But how do we know, Thom?” she said, tearfully. “How do I know?”

“Because I know,” he said, opening his eyes. “And just for once, you're going to have to trust me on that.”

T
hey walked out of the summerhouse together like wary travelers venturing out after a great storm, for once not thinking about the possibility of being seen. Thom said he had to check on the horses, and Kate said she would accompany him, hoping to locate Sabine. She wanted Sabine not to be anxious, to know that she was fine about Geoff, even if she didn't yet feel ready to tell her why.

Liam was sitting outside the tack room on a bale of hay, polishing a bridle with a soft cloth, and whistling through his teeth to a tune on the radio. He gave them a knowing look as they approached, but said nothing.

“Are the horses in from the bottom field?” said Thom, checking the bottom bolts on a stable door.

“Yup.”

“Is Sabine back?”

“Just taken the gray into the stable. We've moved him into the far one, as the roof's started leaking on that middle one again.”

Thom swore quietly under his breath, glancing up at the missing tiles. “I'll have to throw another tarpaulin over it. We don't have any of those tiles left just to wedge in, do we?”

“Used them up months ago,” said Liam. “Been anywhere nice?” He looked Kate slowly up and down, so that she was conscious of her flushed cheeks, her tingling skin.

“Just sorting out a bit of paperwork,” said Thom. “I thought you said all the horses were in.”

Liam turned to face him, and then followed his gaze down past the barn to the bottom fields.

“They are.”

“So who's that?”

Liam stood, and squinted into the peach-colored evening sunlight, holding a hand up to his brow.

“Looks like the Duke,” he said, frowning. “But he's been lame for months. That horse isn't lame.”

Thom was silent, his face unmoving.

Liam adjusted his hand, trying to see better. “And who's that on him? Someone's on him.”

“What is it?” said Sabine, who had just approached, carrying her saddle. She glanced at her mother, wondering what she was doing in the yard.

“I can't see,” said Kate. “I can't see anything that far.”

“That's Mrs. Ballan—”

Liam stopped, as Thom placed a hand on his arm.

“C'mon,” he said, quietly. “We'll leave them to it.”

“What?” said Sabine. “Is that my grandmother riding? Who is she riding?”

“Bloody hell. She's not ridden in years.” Liam shook his head in astonishment.

“C'mon,” said Thom, steering them away toward the house. “Let's go inside.”

He glanced over his shoulder as they walked away, leaving the distant, regal figures of the old woman and the stiff old horse outlined against the setting sun; his once-proud head held high, his ears flicking backward and forward to the sound of her voice, as they wove their way slowly down to the woods.

J
oy stayed in her room for two days after the Duke was put down; the first time, said Mrs. H, that she could remember her succumbing to anything, let alone grief. She had risen at dawn, and spent the first two hours of the morning in the old horse's box, grooming him and talking to him, so that when the vet finally arrived, he found not a sorrowful, condemned animal, but an apparently buoyant one, his battered old coat burnished by sheer effort into a pseudohealthy gloss. She had then stood with him unflinching, one hand on his face, his chin resting comfortably on her shoulder, as the vet raised the humane killer. So relaxed was the Duke in this position that when he fell, his weight almost pulled her down underneath him; it was only Thom, waiting behind her, who had managed to drag her away in time. They had all stood for some minutes, unspeaking, looking at the still body on the thickly cushioned floor. And then, with a polite thank-you to the vet, she had walked resolutely out of the stable toward the house, her arms stiffly by her sides, her chin raised. And not looked back.

She was funny like that, mused Mrs. H. Wanting to send the old horse off proud. Spending all that time on him. Not like her own husband, thought Sabine, knowing it was what everybody was thinking.

Because it was during the second day that Joy had locked herself in her room, refusing food and asking visitors, somewhat formally, to please leave her alone, that Edward's breathing worsened, and Lynda took it upon herself to call the doctor, out of fear that if she didn't, he might not be around by the time his wife deigned to reemerge.

Sabine, white-faced and watchful, had sat holding her grandfather's hand as the doctor took his pulse, pressed his stethoscope to his bony old chest, and conferred in hushed whispers with Lynda.

“It's all right,” she said irritably. “You can tell me. I am his granddaughter.”

“Where's Mrs. Ballantyne?” he said, ignoring her.

“She's not coming out of her room today. So you'll have to talk to me.”

The doctor and Lynda exchanged looks.

“Her horse died,” said Lynda, with a raised eyebrow. And seemed vaguely disappointed when the doctor nodded, as if he understood.

“Is Christopher around?”

“He's away.”

“Is your mother still here?” he said.

“Yes, but she doesn't have anything to do with my grandfather.” Sabine spoke slowly and carefully, as if she were talking to idiots.

“It's that kind of family,” said Lynda. She was becoming rather free with her opinions these days.

“Look, why don't you just talk to me? I'll tell my grandmother when she comes out.”

The doctor nodded, as if contemplating this response. But then he looked at Sabine, and compressed his mouth into a thin line.

“I don't think we can wait that long.”

Shortly afterward Kate, flushed with the new confidence of the well-loved, decided to take matters into her own hands. She had marched along the corridor, rapped sharply on her mother's door, and, ignoring Joy's croaking protestations, had walked into the sparsely furnished little room, and told her that the doctor urgently needed to talk to her.

“I can't come right now,” said Joy, not looking at her. She was lying on her single bed, her back turned to the door, her long, thin legs, in their battered corduroy trousers, curled up in a near-fetal position. “Tell him I'll call him later.”

Kate, who had never seen her mother look vulnerable (she wasn't even aware that she had ever assumed a horizontal position in daylight before), tried to keep her voice firm. To sound determined.

“I'm afraid he wants to speak to you now. Daddy's really not well.”

Joy lay still on the bed. Kate stood there for a long minute, waiting for some kind of response.

“I'm sorry about the Duke, Mummy. But you are going to have to get up. You are needed downstairs.”

Outside, she could hear Sabine padding softly down the corridor to her own room, sniffing mournfully. When she had finally gauged the seriousness of her grandfather's condition, she had, somewhat out of character, burst into noisy tears; a helpless, childish burst of crying where her fists screwed like balls into her eyes, and rivers of snot and dribble fought for channels down her chin. It had been Kate's shock at this uncharacteristic display of emotion that had fueled her decision to act. At some point, her mother was going to have to talk to her. It was all very well her leaving everything to Sabine, but at times like this she had to remember that her granddaughter was only sixteen years old.

“Mummy—”

“Please go away,” said Joy, lifting her head slightly, so that Kate could just make out the red-rimmed eyes, the flattened, matted gray hair. “I just want to be left alone.”

Outside, in the corridor, Kate heard the sound of Sabine's door closing. She lowered her voice.

“You know what? It would be really nice if you listened to me. Just once.”

Joy looked away, through the window.

“Look, whatever you think of me, Mummy, I'm still Daddy's daughter. And I'm here. Christopher's not. And it's not fair for Sabine to have to cope with all this on her own. Someone has to decide whether Daddy is going to go into hospital, and, if not, what we are going to do.” She paused, rubbed at a mark on her trouser leg.

“Right. If you're not downstairs in five minutes, then I shall decide with the doctor what's the best thing to do with Daddy.” With a deep sigh, Kate turned and walked out of the little room, closing the door firmly behind her.

Joy arrived in the drawing room just as the doctor was finishing his cup of tea, her hair smoothed back, and her eyes almost obscured by puffy folds of skin.

“So sorry to have kept you waiting,” she told him.

Kate, seated opposite in one of the easy chairs beside the fire, didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I
t's like she would do almost anything rather than talk to me,” she said afterward, absently fingering an unidentified leather strap, as she sat with Thom in the tack room.

She was sunk into an old armchair, her legs stretched out near the three-bar electric heater that, while glowing brightly, seemed to do little to dispel the cold. The air, stark and clear outside, condensed into little clouds of steam as she spoke. “I mean, at a time like this a family is meant to pull together. Even a family like ours. And yet she just marches around, making herself busier and busier, staying away from Dad, and yet refusing to talk to me about what we should do about him. Christopher's stuck in Geneva at some conference, and Sabine is too young to have to make those sorts of decisions, so it's not like she's got anyone else to talk to, is it?”

Thom sat, rubbing the dirt from a bridle with a piece of wet sponge, deftly unpicking buckles and stripping it apart with his right hand.

“Am I really that useless? Is it so inconceivable that I might be able to help her?”

He shook his head.

“It's not about you. It's about her.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's easier for her to grieve for her horse than for her husband. She's so knotted up, your mother, so used to keeping it all inside. I don't suppose she knows how to deal with what's going on.”

Kate thought for a minute.

“I don't agree. She's always found it easy enough to get cross. I think it's about me. She just doesn't want to let me feel that anything I do could possibly be of any use to her.” She stood, facing the door. “She's never been proud of anything I did. I've always gotten it wrong in her eyes. She just doesn't want to let that change.”

“You're awful hard on her.”

“She's been awfully hard on me. Look, Thom, who was it who said I couldn't live at home when I got pregnant with Sabine? Huh? How much do you think that hurt me? I was eighteen years old, for God's sake.” Kate was now pacing the little room, running her hand along the saddle racks that lined one side.

“I thought you didn't want to stay.”

“I didn't. But that was partly because they were so bloody awful to me.”

Thom paused, lifted the bridle to the light, searching for patches of inbuilt grime, and then lowered it onto his knee.

“That was a long time ago. You should move on. We've moved on.”

Kate turned to him, her mouth set in an obstinate scowl that, had she seen it, her late grandmother Alice would doubtless have remarked was exactly like her mother's.

“I can't move on, Thom. Not till she stops judging me for everything I do. Not till she can start accepting me for who I am.”

She had folded her arms, and stood there, glaring at him, her hair falling over her face. He put the bridle down, and stood upright, placing his arms tightly around her, so that her body, inevitably, became fluid, and relaxed within them.

“Let it go.”

“I can't.”

“For now. We'll do something to take your mind off it.” His voice was soft, tender. Kate lifted her finger and traced his lips. The bottom one was very faintly blistered, from the cold.

“So, what did you have in mind?” she murmured. “You know the house is full of people.”

He grinned, his eyes lifting mischievously.

“I think it's about time you came riding.”

Kate stared, and then pulled back, away from him.

“Ohhh, no,” she said. “You might have gotten Sabine. You are not getting me. I've spent the last twenty years thanking God that I didn't have to get on another bloody horse. No way.”

Thom walked slowly toward her. He was still smiling.