The Rain Before it Falls (26 page)

The next day I came back first thing in the morning and watched as Imogen got into the car with her mother. I followed the car as they drove off to school. It seemed that she was just attending a normal high school near the city centre, not a special school for the blind. That afternoon I waited outside the school entrance, but Imogen was picked up by her mother, and there was no opportunity to speak to her. In any case I had no idea what I was going to say! The same thing happened the next day. But on the next afternoon, the Wednesday, I was in luck and I saw her come out through the gates by herself, and walk down to the bus stop a few hundred yards down the road. I walked to the bus stop behind her, and I got on the same bus as she did. I was amazed by how easily she did everything, how she seemed to know the exact position of the doors and the height of the steps and everything like that. People kept taking her by the arm and trying to help her, but she didn’t really need it.

The bus was crowded and a gentleman got up to give her his seat. She sat down and I found that I was standing in the aisle right next to her. I stood there like that for almost fifteen minutes, until we both got off. It was an incredible feeling, being so close to my lovely daughter again. As we got off the bus, I actually took her arm and helped her down the step. Actually touched her. And she said, ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ I don’t know how she knew I was a woman not a man.

We were at a stop near the university, now, and she walked to the front entrance of what looked like an imitation of an old Oxford or Cambridge college. There was a boy waiting for her there – a student who I suppose was about nineteen or twenty – and the two of them kissed on the steps. I noticed how she ran her fingers over his face, around his chin and down his neck. He was a very good-looking boy and I could see that she liked the touch of him. He took her by the arm and they went for a walk in the park near by – Queen’s Park, I believe it’s called. I followed them at a distance, at first, but then I began to get worried and self-conscious. Also I was feeling very agitated after touching her, and hearing her speak to me. My heart was going nineteen to the dozen. So I took the bus back to my motel room and lay down for a while.

The next day, her mother picked her up in the car again. But on Friday afternoon Imogen went back to the bus stop after school, and once more I followed her.

This time luck was even more on my side. She was early for her meeting with the boyfriend, so she went to Queen’s Park by herself, and sat down on a bench to wait. She was wearing a grey herringbone coat and pale blue jeans, and she left her stick resting against the bench beside her while she tilted her face back and enjoyed the feel of the sun and the breeze. It was autumn: lovely weather – cold and crisp. She had a half-smile on her face. I wished she could have seen the leaves on the trees and on the grass all around her. They were absolutely beautiful – every shade of green, yellow, red and brown you could imagine. There were lots of big grey squirrels running about between the leaves. I remember them, for some reason.

I’d already worked out what I was going to do. I took the cashmere scarf from around my neck and sat down beside her and said, ‘Excuse me, is this yours?’ She put out her hands and felt it and said, ‘A scarf. No, it’s not mine. Did somebody drop it?’ I told her I’d found it on the path and then I said, ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ and she said no she didn’t, and then before I’d even had the chance to think how I was going to keep the conversation going, she saved me the trouble, by asking: ‘You’re English, aren’t you?’ She had noticed my English accent, and suddenly for the first time it occurred to me that she might even recognize my voice. But I don’t think she did. It was all such a long time ago, after all.

There was so much I wanted to say to her, so much I wanted to ask, but we didn’t have much time, and I couldn’t be too direct. Instead, all I could do was make small talk with her, as if she were a stranger. Most of the time we talked about the differences between Canada and England. She said that she remembered England well, even though she hadn’t been back for nearly eight years. She said that she could remember the dampness and the greyness of it, and I asked her – without meaning to be rude – how she could talk about the greyness of it when she couldn’t see; and she said that although she’d lost her sight very young, she could still remember what the world looked like. She could still remember shapes and colours. Trying to keep my voice from trembling, I asked her how she had come to be blind; but when she replied, she didn’t say anything about me, as such: just that there had been a bad accident, and she couldn’t remember much about it. And then she said something I remember very well: that she knew what people thought – that because she was blind, her life must be terribly sad and difficult – but she didn’t feel it was like that at all. So far, she said, her life had been as happy and as rich and as full as anybody else’s. Which was a wonderful thing for me to hear, as I’m sure you can well believe.

Much too soon, I could see her boyfriend coming towards us; and at the same moment, she said, ‘Ah, here he is’ – because she’d heard his footsteps, and obviously recognized them. She got up and they kissed again and once more he took her by the arm and off they went together. But not before she’d wished me goodbye, and said that it was ‘Nice talking to you, ma’am.’ As they went, I could hear him asking her, ‘Who was that?’ but I didn’t hear what she answered. I sat on the bench and watched them until they were out of sight. It was a clear afternoon, and because Imogen’s hair was so blonde you could make them out for a long time.

After that, I had nothing more to do in Toronto. I’d found my daughter again and I could see that she was well and happy, and she was being well cared for. I knew now that as soon as she was eighteen I would write to her family and ask if I could see her again. That day was more than a year away and it seemed an awful long time to wait, but I felt I could probably manage it, having seen her and spoken to her this one time.

So off I went to see my mother. I knew that she was unwell. She had cancer of the throat and she was spending most of her time in hospital, now. In fact she passed away just four weeks after my meeting with Imogen. I saw her several times before she died. It would be nice to say that we made up all our differences, and that everything was made good again between us. That would have given me ‘closure’, as I believe the psychologists call it. But I’m afraid my mother remained cantankerous and critical right up until the end. The plain fact is that she never really liked me, and never wanted me. I had been a mistake; and that, to some extent, is what I remain in my own eyes, to this day. The knowledge never goes, can never be undone. You just have to find a way to live with it.

During this time I was staying with my half-sister, Alice. I’d never had much time for her, when we were children – the age difference had always seemed too great – but now I could see what a kind and good person she’d become. And I suppose we bonded, of course, over the death of our mother. Anyway, it was Alice who persuaded me to stay on in Canada. I settled down there and got myself a part-time job and ended up staying there for the next fourteen years. After Mum died my stepfather Charles never remarried, and towards the end of his life he needed quite a bit of looking after, so I was at least able to make myself useful there. He died last year and that’s really why I’ve come back to England; I suppose there was nothing left for me to do in Canada. That, and a little bit of homesickness, although I don’t really have anything to be homesick for.

You must still be wondering about Imogen. I wish I had something good to tell you. But when I did finally pluck up the courage to write to her family, they wrote back with some dreadful news. Imogen died. She died in a road accident, of all things. It was the school holidays, and she was out in the park with her brothers one morning, taking that dog for a walk. And apparently, although it had never done anything like this before, the dog suddenly ran off, barking, into the road, and Imogen heard him and ran off after him. Such a dangerous thing to do, but I don’t suppose she was thinking.
He
managed to dodge all the traffic, and landed up safe and sound on the other side of the road: but she was hit by a car. She didn’t have a chance, poor girl. It happened in a flash. She wouldn’t have felt anything. It was one week before her seventeenth birthday, and almost six months to the day after I’d seen her in Toronto. April 16th, 1992. The day my daughter died.

How do you console yourself when something like that happens? For months I was in a sort of denial, trying…

There were only a few lines left, but Gill read no more. The last page dropped on to the table as she sat back, despondent, and her fingers loosened their grip on the paper.

She gazed ahead of her for perhaps a minute or more, unable to think, her powers of reasoning all but crushed by the weight of the sudden disappointment bearing down upon her.

Then scattered thoughts began shooting through her mind, rapidly, at random.

A dog that ran away, inexplicably. First Beatrix in pursuit, then Imogen. Mother and granddaughter, almost fifty years apart…

The Auvergne: Rosamond imagining that she would arrive there when she died. Gill herself travelling there with her husband, and then driving alone along an empty road. A blackbird thudding into her windscreen, a horrible intimation of death…

When was that? 1992? April? It had happened in the afternoon, late in the afternoon. Imogen had died in the morning. Toronto… France… What was the time difference?

Nothing was random, after all. There was a pattern: a pattern to be found somewhere…

Then she was startled out of her chair by the telephone’s ringing. Caller display told her that it was Elizabeth. She grabbed the handset from its cradle on the wall.

‘Hello, love? Is everything OK?’

‘Yes, Mum, I’m fine. I just wondered if Catharine had called you yet.’

‘Catharine? No. Why should Catharine call me?’

‘Oh, you haven’t heard.’ A pause. ‘Daniel left her.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘He told her last night.’

‘Oh, poor Catharine.’

‘She came round to my place at about ten, crying her eyes out. I let her stay the night here. She’s gone back now and she said she was probably going to call you… Mum, are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m still here.’

‘Are
you
OK?’

‘Yes, only… Only, I’ve had some news today as well.’

‘What sort of news?’

‘It’s fine, love, really. I’ll call you again later. Is that all right? I’ll call you in about half an hour. I’d better get off the line, your sister might be trying to get through.’

Gill hung up and stood in the centre of the kitchen, giddy, her thoughts still spiralling. A patchwork, made up of… coincidences? Was that what they were? If only she could stand back, see the design more clearly. But if anything it was getting fainter, already. From far away, far off in London, Catharine’s sense of loss and abandonment was transmitting itself, stealing into her mother’s heart, freighted with anger as well as pain. That bastard Daniel… She had
known,
she had known all along that he would do something like this…

But no…
Don’t let the present wipe out the past.
Not yet. The answer was there, it was there for the finding. Surely she was being offered something precious beyond belief, some supreme revelation. There was
meaning
in all this…

The phone rang again. Caller display told her that it was Catharine this time. Gill waited, waited just a few more seconds before picking up and in that stretched instant she felt the promise of revelation curl, evaporate and vanish; watched in despair as it slipped for ever through her mind’s grasping fingers. Even before she heard her daughter’s first, broken words, she knew that it was too late. The pattern she had been searching for had gone. Worse than that – it had never existed. How could it? What she had been hoping for was a figment, a dream, an impossible thing: like the rain before it falls.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Note

The Rain Before It Falls

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