Sheltering Rain (41 page)

“I thought I'd just do some soup. And bread and butter. Mrs. H was kind enough to leave us a loaf.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Sabine turned away from her, back to the photographs.

But Kate didn't go away.

“What are you doing?”

What do you
think
? thought Sabine. “Just sorting through some old photographs,” she said, noncommittally. “Grandmother said I could.”

Kate's gaze had landed on the top of the box.

“Is that me?” She walked over and bent down, picking up the photograph of herself and the Chinese boy. “My God,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “I haven't seen these for years.”

Sabine said nothing.

“It's Tung-Li,” she said. “My amah's son. We used to play together . . . until—” She broke off. “He was a sweetheart. Terribly shy. He was probably my first childhood friend. There were only a few months between us.”

Sabine, despite herself, looked over.

“There was a pool at the back of the apartments where we lived. In Hong Kong. And when none of the other families were around, he and I used to play water dragons in there. Or ride my red bicycle around the edge. We fell in a couple of times, if I remember. My amah was furious.” She laughed. “She had a hell of a job drying off anything in the wet season, so having one's best shoes in the swimming pool was really a no-no.”

“How old are you there?”

Kate frowned. “I think we moved to the swimming pool place when I was about four, so . . . probably about five? Or six?”

“What happened to him?”

Kate's expression changed. She looked suddenly less animated.

“Well, I sort of had to stop playing with him.”

“Why?”

Kate paused.

“It's just the way things were then. Your—your granny had very firm ideas about what was proper. And apparently playing with Tung-Li wasn't proper. Not for a girl like me.”

“What, even though you'd been friends for all that time?”

“Yes.” Kate thought back, her face now closing off with remembered injustice.

Sabine stared at the photograph.

“It doesn't sound like Grandmother,” she said.

Kate's head shot up. She couldn't help herself.

“You don't think so, do you?”

“She's always been all right with me.”

“Well, darling, one day you'll find out that Granny is not always the sweet old lady that you now think. She can be as hard as nails, too.”

Sabine looked at her mother, simultaneously shocked by her unusually hard tone, and perversely feeling the need to contradict it.

“You think it's fair to separate two children, just because of the color of their skin?”

“No,” said Sabine, conscious of the feeling of being backed into a corner. “But things were different then, weren't they? People didn't see things the same way. It was the way they were brought up.”

“So you'd have thought it was fine if I'd made you eat meat back home—because that was the way I was brought up? Because it was, you know. If I'd refused to eat meat here I would have been told to live off potatoes or nothing.”

“No, of course not.”

“So, Sabine, how come everything Granny does is somehow okay, somehow excusable? And yet how come everything I do, no matter how well intended, is thrown back in my face?”

Kate didn't know where this had come from, yet somehow the sight of that picture had brought the ancient sense of injustice back to the surface, and made her infuriated again. She was tired of taking the rap for all the wrongs of the world, tired of taking Sabine's sharp cracks with equanimity, of being burdened both by the guilty acknowledgment that she had ruined everyone's lives and by having to keep moving on, nodding and smiling, from underneath it.

“Sometimes, Sabine, believe it or not, your mum is the wronged party. Occasionally, just occasionally, she is in the right.”

She had reckoned, however, without her daughter's inbuilt mulishness. And the capacity of the sixteen-year-old for self-righteous self-belief.

“I can't believe you think you're always in the right,” Sabine said, furiously. “Not after the way you've behaved.”

“What?”

“Fair enough. So, Grandmother made you have other friends when you were living out in the tropics. She was probably only trying to do what was right for you. You would have probably gotten people talking about you and stuff, the way things were then.”

Kate began to shake her head, slowly, disbelievingly.

“She's told me lots about it, you know. About all the rules and things. About how people got talked about if they didn't do things the right way. And even if you were right, it's not as if you've gotten it right since, is it? It's not like you ever put other people first. I mean you can't even be bothered to spend time with your own dad, even though you came here because you thought he was dying. You're too busy flirting with anyone who comes your way. So that you can add another bloody failed relationship to your list.”

“Sabine!”

“Well, it's true.” Sabine was aware she was overstepping a mark, but felt too infuriated to care. Who was her mother to judge other people? “You get through men like Grandfather gets through handkerchiefs. You don't seem to care how it looks. You could have been more like Grandmother and Grandfather and hung on till you found the right person. Had some commitment. Really stuck with something. You know, real, true love. But you just go from man to man without even caring. I mean, look at Justin! How long did he last? And Geoff? God, you don't even care about him getting married.”

Kate, about to launch into an equally heated response, froze.

There was a brief silence.

“What did you say?”

Sabine paused.

“Geoff. He's getting married.”

She took a deep breath, suddenly aware that her mother might not have gotten a letter after all. “I thought you knew.”

Kate looked down at her feet, stuck a hand out to a shelf, to steady herself.

“No,” she said carefully. “I didn't know. When did he tell you?”

Silently, Sabine pulled the crumpled letter from her back pocket and handed it to her mother. Kate, now leaning against a desk, read the contents without speaking.

“Well, that didn't take him long, did it?”

Oh, God, thought Sabine suddenly. Her eyes have gone all watery.

“I thought you knew,” she said again.

“No, I didn't. It's quite possible he wrote to me at home, but I wouldn't have gotten it, being here.”

There was a lengthy silence. Outside, someone dropped a water bucket, sending a distant crash reverberating through the yard and a male voice yelled at a horse to stand still. Kate didn't even jump; she stood up, like someone sleepwalking, and made her way slowly to the door.

“Well. I'll do some soup then,” she said, rubbing her hair from her face. “And some bread.”

Sabine sat on the floor, feeling like she might cry.

“I'm sorry, Mum,” she said.

Kate smiled at her, a slow, sad smile.

“Not your fault, darling,” she said. “Not your fault.”

T
hey had eaten lunch in near silence; Sabine, unusually, trying to make conversation, consumed with guilt over her unwitting bombshell. Kate had nodded, and smiled, grateful for her daughter's rare attempts to spare her feelings, but both had been relieved when it was finally over and they could go somewhere where their recent conversation didn't loom over them, like a rain cloud threatening further showers. In Sabine's case, this meant riding the gray over to Manor Farm, where they had said she was free to use the cross-country course on their land to practice her jumping skills. In Kate's, it meant spending the first proper time since she had arrived at Kilcarrion sitting with her father.

She had sat for best part of an hour in the chair next to his bed, while Lynda periodically appeared to check monitors, bedpans, and offer cups of tea. Although every attempt had been made to make his room cheerful, sitting in the near silence, staring at the once animated face, the father who had once swung her in his arms, and reduced her to putty by tickling, Kate had felt consumed by the gloom, saddened by the fact that she had been unable to live up to what he wanted of her, and the fact that he was going to die without them being able to bridge the abyss between them. I do try to get it right, she told him. I do try to make things work, to put other people first. But you and Mum are a hard double act to live up to; I wish you'd understand that. I wish you'd tell Sabine that.

He didn't respond; she didn't expect him to. She just sat there, willing her silent thoughts across to him, and thumbing unseeing through the books that Sabine had placed on his bedside table.

I
t was nearly dark when she sought Thom out, and asked him to meet her in the summerhouse. He had looked carefully at her expression, noted her inability to look him in the eye, and said nothing.

When he arrived, whistling his way through the overgrown gardens, he didn't kiss her, just leaned against the door frame in an overly casual manner, and smiled.

She was sitting on the crates where he had placed the blanket, her arms placed protectively around her knees like a child, her hair half covering her face.

“It has to stop. Here.”

Thom ducked his head in order to try and catch her eye. His tone was light, humorous.

“Till you change your mind again?” He paused. “Shall I give you half an hour?”

Kate looked up. Her eyes, behind her glasses, were red-rimmed, sore.

“No. I'm not going to change my mind. I'm going home.”

“I don't understand.”

“I don't expect you to.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“What I say. I'm going home. To London.”

“What?”

It was the first time he had sounded angry. Kate glanced up at him, and saw the hurt and incomprehension on his face.

“Look, Kate, I know you. I know you change your mind like the wind changes direction. But what the hell is this all about?”

Kate looked away from him, not wanting to see.

“I'm doing this for all of us,” she said, quietly.

“What is this?”

“Like I said, it's best for everybody.”

“Bullshit.”

“You—you don't understand.”

“So tell me.”

Kate pressed her eyes tightly shut, wishing she could be anywhere but here. “It was just something I heard, today. Something Sabine told me. And it made me realize that whatever I might think about you, however we might feel right now, that I'm just back on track to make the same mistakes I always have.”

She paused, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve.

“I didn't give this enough thought, Thom. I didn't think about whether it had a chance of going anywhere. I didn't think about the people it would hurt if it all fell apart. And it will fall apart, you see? You and I have absolutely nothing in common. We live in different countries. We don't know anything about each other apart from the fact that we still find each other physically attractive.

“So, it's a pretty sure thing that I'll manage to screw this up somehow. And the thing is, every time I screw something up, I lose another little bit of my daughter's respect. Worse, I lose a bit of my own.”

She sat, trying not to sniff, her face now buried in her crossed arms, so that her voice emerged muffled.

“Anyway. I thought about all this today, and I decided it's best for everyone if I just go back home. I'm going to get the ferry tomorrow. Daddy won't miss me—he hasn't even realized I'm here. And my mother has done her best to ignore me since I arrived. Sabine . . .” Here, she let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Sabine, I've decided should stay here. She's much happier over here than she ever was in London. Even you noticed it, and you've only known her a couple of months. She can come home if and when she feels like it. Or to start university. I'm not going to force her to do anything. But I just thought I should let you know.”

She stared through her arms at her feet. They had bits of straw sticking to them, from earlier, when she had walked around the yard, trying to locate her mother.

“So, that's it, is it?”

She looked up. Thom was breathing hard, rubbing at the back of his head with his good hand.

“Bye-bye, Thom, again. Sorry if I led you on, but I've decided what's best for everyone and you're just going to have to lump it.”

Kate stared at him.

“Well, bullshit, Kate. Bullshit. I'm not going to let you do this again. You don't dictate single-handedly what happens in any relationship, and you don't presume to act on my behalf.”

He turned and began pacing up and down the cramped floorspace, seemingly oblivious to the tins that he kicked as he moved. The air crackled, electrified with his anger.

“I've sat here for days listening to you tell me what's right and what's wrong with us getting together. And I know you, so I figured the best thing was to sit tight, just let you get it all out of your system. But just because you decide something is wrong, doesn't mean that it is, okay? Just because you've suddenly decided you've dipped your toe too far into the water, doesn't mean you can pull the bloody plug out.”

He shook his head to himself, trying to calm his breathing, and sat down heavily on an upturned bucket.

“Look. Kate. I've been in love with you a long time. An awful long time. And I've been out with all sorts of girls since—lovely girls, with big smiles and bigger hearts. Girls, believe it or not, even lovelier than you. And the more I went out with, the more I realized that if something's missing at the core of it, if you don't feel that—that—that bloody thing, the thing that is just incontrovertibly right—then there's no point. Right? And then you come back, which I never expected, and I knew straightaway. I knew from the first time I saw you in here, swearing at the walls and crying like a bloody adolescent, and something in here”—he thumped at his chest—“something just went ‘
Ahh
. So
there
it is.' And I knew.”