Sheltering Rain (17 page)

Joy felt a sudden welling of fury at the sight of her personal memories strewn carelessly across the rug, as if they were of so little significance. How dare she! How dare she go through these personal things without even asking! She had a sudden sense of her granddaughter as an intruder, as someone surreptitiously ferreting around in her past. Those photographs were
personal
. They were her life, her memories, her private reminders of years past. And then to just leave them carelessly scattered—as if they were of so little consequence.

Choking back a little sob of indignation, Joy stooped, and began throwing the loose photographs back into the box, before replacing its lid, unnecessarily firmly. Then she strode to the door, and marched swiftly down the stairs, so that the dogs, rather than waiting eagerly, scattered at her approach.

I
t was actually the third time Sabine had seen
Breakfast at Tiffany's
. She knew this bit, where the party woman's hat got set alight and no one noticed. She knew this other bit, where Audrey Hepburn fell asleep in George Peppard's bed (he never tried to do anything to her, not like he would have in real life). And as for the bit where she made him look up his book in the library—well, Sabine could practically recite that bit off by heart. But it didn't matter, because she was much more interested in Annie.

For a woman who seemed to do little other than watch films all day—Annie had subscriptions to all the cable channels, as well as video shops within a twenty-five-mile radius—she rarely seemed to actually watch any of them. Since Sabine had been there, which was almost the whole first hour of
Breakfast at Tiffany's
, she had flicked through two magazines, made marks against a few items of clothing in a thick catalog, walked over to look out of the window at least twice, and frequently absented herself altogether, instead staring past the screen into the middle distance. It had gotten to the point where it was more interesting for Sabine to stop watching the film and watch Annie.

But then Annie never seemed to be able to concentrate on anything much. In conversations, as they leaned conspiratorially together over a cup of tea, she would suddenly lose the thread of whatever they were talking about, so that Sabine would have to remind her. Or her face would go all blank, and occasionally she would disappear upstairs for five or ten minutes. Sometimes she would even just drop off to sleep, even in front of guests, as if staying in the present were simply too exhausting. At first, Sabine had found it a bit unnerving, and had wondered whether she were doing something wrong. But then she saw that Annie did it with everyone—with Patrick, with her mother, even with Thom—and she decided it was just Annie's way. As Thom said, everyone had his way, and, provided there was nothing personal, you should just accept it.

“So where were you at this morning, Sabine?” Annie, her feet tucked under her on the big blue sofa, turned away from the television screen. She was wearing a huge fisherman's jumper that seemed to swallow her up. Patrick's probably. “Did you go riding?”

Sabine nodded. She found she had unconsciously mimicked Annie's pose on the opposite sofa, and her bottom leg was getting pins and needles.

“Did Thom take you?”

“Yes.” She straightened her leg, observing her socked foot. “Have you ever seen the hounds?”

“Have I seen the hounds? Of course I have. You'll see them up and down this road often enough in the hunting season.”

“I mean where they live.”

Annie looked at her inquiringly.

“The kennels? Sure. Grisly place, isn't it? Why, did you get a bit of a shock?”

Sabine nodded. She didn't want to tell Annie the whole story. Annie's home was where she got to pretend that life was normal, with television and gossip, and no mad old people, stupid rules, and dead things.

Annie noted Sabine's expression, and then swung her legs around and planted her feet on the floor.

“He shouldn't have taken you. It's not a nice place if you're not used to livestock.”

“It wasn't Thom. Do all dead horses go there?”

“It's not just horses. You get cows, sheep, all sorts. They've got to go somewhere. I wouldn't get upset about it. Now, I'm going to put the kettle on. Do you want a cup?”

But of course it took Annie some fifteen minutes to ask Patrick if he wanted tea. By the time she returned to the living room, Audrey Hepburn had gotten together with George Peppard and found her missing cat and Sabine had decided she may have overreacted at the kennels. The animals were dead, as Annie said. And dogs had to eat something. It had just been a bit of a shock to see the rawness of it all. Especially for a vegetarian.

In London, her mother was careful to respect her views on eating meat, making sure that there were always cheese and pasta sauce and tofu in the fridge. And Geoff had often cooked vegetarian for all of them. It made it easier, he said. And it was probably good for them not to eat too much fat. Because it was hard enough trying to keep hold of your beliefs without everyone treating them as if they were some bit of adolescent nonsense. Here, people kept “forgetting” that she didn't eat meat, and serving it up anyway. Or acting as if it were some bizarre foible that she was sure to grow out of. But then there was no life and death at home. Unless you counted what you saw on television. Here it seemed to be everywhere: in the small animals that Bertie worried in the yard; in the horribly named flesh house at the kennels; in her grandfather's creased and craggy face, which no longer seemed to have the energy to even distinguish its various expressions.

“Is my grandfather going to die?” she asked.

Annie paused in the entrance to the kitchen, and then rubbed both hands awkwardly down the hem of her jumper.

“He's not well,” she conceded.

“Why won't anyone give me a straight answer? I know he's ill, and I can't ask my grandmother. I just want to know if he's going to die.”

Annie began to pour the tea into stripy mugs. She was silent for a bit, and then she turned to Sabine.

“What difference does it make?” she asked.

“It doesn't make any difference. I just want people to be honest with me.”

“Honesty,
pah
. You can have too much honesty, believe me.”

Sabine, uncomfortably, realized there was a faint note of aggression in Annie's tone.

“If it doesn't make any difference, then it doesn't matter. You should just appreciate him while he's here. Love him, even.”

Sabine's eyes widened at this. The idea that love was something one could inflict on that crotchety old man seemed faintly ridiculous.

“He—he's not really a very loving-type person,” she ventured, slowly.

“Why? Because he's old? And difficult? Or because you find him uncomfortable to be around?”

Sabine felt increasingly uneasy at the tone of Annie's voice. Annie had been one of the few people she felt understood her, and now she was acting like Sabine had somehow said something wrong.

“I didn't mean to offend you,” she said, sulkily.

Annie placed a mug of tea in front of her. When Sabine looked up again, she was gazing at her, and her eyes were kind.

“You didn't offend me, Sabine. I just think it's important to love people while you have them. However long you have them.” Here, her eyes began to fill with tears, and she looked away.

She had done it again. Sabine felt herself chill, conscious that she had somehow again made Annie cry. Why couldn't she get the measure of any of these people? Why did she always feel like she was misreading some crucial signal, like she did when she was hanging around with a crowd she didn't know at home, and couldn't get any of their sayings and in-jokes?

“I do
try
to be nice to everyone,” she ventured, quietly, desperate to have Annie think well of her again.

Annie sniffed, and wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve. “I'm sure you do, Sabine. You hardly know them, is all.”

“It's just they're not easy people to show feelings to. They're not very—well—feelingly, if you know what I mean.”

Annie laughed, and placed her hand on Sabine's. It was cool and soft and dry. Sabine's own were hot with discomfort.

“You're not wrong there. Getting those two to show their feelings . . . well, you'd probably have more luck asking the Duke.”

They both laughed, companionably, into the silence. Sabine felt herself relax. They had apparently passed over whatever invisible turbulence she had blundered into.

“But, seriously, Sabine. I mean it. Just because they're not easy with showing it, doesn't mean they don't feel it.”

They were interrupted by a sharp rapping on the door. With a quick, quizzical glance at Sabine (Mrs. H and Thom always let themselves in) Annie got out of her chair and walked to the door, pushing her hair behind her ears as she did.

Sabine started to see Joy standing there, tall and rigid in her headscarf, her face taut and her arms, padded in their quilted jacket, fixed awkwardly to her sides.

“I'm so sorry to trouble you, Annie. I was wondering whether I could talk to Sabine.”

“Of course, Mrs. Ballantyne.” Annie stepped backward, pulling the door farther open. “Come right on in.”

“No, I won't come in, thank you very much. Sabine, I'd like you to come home.”

Sabine stared at Joy, noting the barely repressed sense of fury emanating from her grandmother. She quickly ran through a checklist of possible misdemeanors: No, the shampoo bottles were in her room, her boots were clean, her bedroom door was shut to stop Bertie getting in. Yet something in Joy's face left her distinctly unwilling to leave the comfort and safety of Annie's house. She stared at Joy, trying hard to quell her growing sense of unease.

“I was just having a cup of tea,” she said. “I'll come along after.”

Joy flinched slightly. Something in her eyes turned hard and steely.

“Sabine,” she said. “I'd like you to come home
now
.”

Sabine's heart had begun to thump.

“No,” she said. “I'm having my tea.”

Annie's eyes flickered between the two visitors. “Sabine . . .” she said, and her voice held a warning.

“I'm sure it can't be that urgent,” said Sabine, defiantly. She knew she was in uncharted territory now, but something in her rebelled against being marched home to that miserable house, to be railed against for some minor domestic misdemeanor. Sabine had had enough.

“I'll come when I'm ready,” she said.

Something in Joy appeared to erupt. She marched past Annie into the room, carrying the chill air of outside around her like a radioactive buzz.

“How
dare
you,” she breathed. “How dare you go through my private things. How dare you start ransacking my private photographs without even thinking to ask me. Those were private, you understand? They were not meant for you to look at.”

Sabine remembered the photographs with a start, her face pinking with discovery. She had not even thought of putting them away. It seemed unnecessary, as no one ever went into the room. But any sense of guilt was overshadowed by the scale of her grandmother's response. She had never seen her lose her temper before. Her voice crackled, like a dry log in a fire, and her hair seemed suddenly electrified, springing free from its two clips. But as the tirade continued into the charged atmosphere, the adrenaline infected her, and Sabine found herself suddenly shouting in response.

“They're only photographs!” she said, yelling over her grandmother's voice. “All I did was look through a box of bloody photographs! I was hardly going down your underwear drawer, was I?”

“They were not yours to go through! You had no
right
!” Joy's voice lifted on the last word, making her sound curiously adolescent.

“Right? Right?” Sabine stood up, pushing her chair back behind her with a shuddering bump. “I've not had a single bloody right since I came here. There's bloody nothing I can do without your permission, is there? I can't walk around the house, I can't talk to the staff, I can't even have a bloody bath without worrying whether someone's going to come in and stick a ruler in to see whether I'm using too much water.”

“Those were my
personal things
!” Joy shouted. “How would you like it if I went through your personal things?”

“You know what? Why don't you go and have a look! Because I haven't got any personal things, have I? I don't get to keep my personal bloody toothbrush in the bathroom. I don't get to watch the programs I want. I can't even use the telephone to make a personal call!” Here Sabine's voice began to break, and she rubbed at her eyes, determined not to let the older woman see her cry.

“Sabine, you could do anything you wanted. But not if you just skulk around the place, refusing to join in. You have to join in.”

“To what? Hunting? Feeding dead horses to the dogs? Sorry,
hounds
? Joining the eight million people a day who faff around preparing my grandfather's boiled eggs?” Sabine was dimly aware that Patrick was now standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“You are a guest in my house,” said Joy, speaking as if she were fighting to control her breath. “And while you are a guest, the least I expect is for you not to go rummaging around in things that don't concern you.”

“They're just bloody pictures! A few stinking pictures! Apart from the ones with my mum in, they're not even very nice!” Sabine began to cry. “God, I can't believe you are making this into such a big deal. I was bored, okay? I was bored, and fed up, and I wanted to see what my mum looked like when she was my age. If I'd known you were going to throw a bloody wobbly about it I wouldn't have gone anywhere near your stupid pictures. I hate you. I hate you and I wish I was at home.” The crying dissolved into deep, ragged sobs. Sabine sank down onto the table and buried her face in her crossed arms.