Sheltering Rain (51 page)

And then she had seen him the next day, when Thom had waited till Sabine came to the yard, and then asked if she wanted to go for a ride. Just the two of them. She had looked over the gray's door to find him already brushed off and saddled, as if she were being given no choice. Sabine had felt more awkward then, even though it was obvious from the tone of his voice that he wasn't going to make a pass at her or anything; the thought that he might say something about the previous evening was somehow more excruciating.

But he had behaved like nothing had happened, had chatted about horses, and Annie, and the new baby, and how stunned everybody was, and had taken her on a long, meandering ride across the countryside, encouraging her to jump a couple of ditches that she wouldn't have managed on her own, and laughing when she refused point-blank to attempt a Wexford bank. Yes, she said, trying not to laugh back at him. She knew she had done it before. But it was different, seeing things in cold blood. He had nodded at that, and said she wasn't wrong. Like she had said something much wiser than she had meant.

It wasn't even as if anything big had happened between them on the ride. But when she came back, she felt relaxed again, as if Thom were restored to her—as someone to talk to, at least. Besides, she thought, having studied him quite hard when she knew he wasn't looking, she thought she might not fancy him so much now, especially after her mother told her how close Thom had come to being her father. You couldn't look at anyone the same way after that.

Predictably, it was less simple with her mother. The day after the baby, Kate had still been all emotional and quivery, saying she couldn't eat breakfast, and drifting off into daydreams that made her eyes fill with tears. She had also, rather self-consciously, hugged Joy at the breakfast table, which Sabine found a little excessive, although Mrs. H said afterward that it was “just lovely” that they were all friends again, especially after all this time. (Then again, Mrs. H thought everything was “just lovely” for weeks—she even said it once when Lynda announced that she had picked up a parking ticket in New Ross.) Sabine, who had felt increasingly embarrassed at how frightened she had been at the birth, and how much they had all hung on to each other, had decided to be very cool about everything. It was only a baby, after all, she said, when they threatened to go on about it for too long. It had been rather irritating, the way her mother and grandmother had exchanged glances and smirked when she did, like they had always shared some kind of empathy, and knew what she was doing.

Kate had, however, gotten something right. She had come up to see her several days later, as she was getting changed, and, sitting on Sabine's bed, had asked quite bluntly whether she would prefer to stay in Ireland or go back to England. Sabine, her thick blue jumper halfway over her head, had said through the wool (secretly glad that she didn't have to see her mother's face) that she quite liked Ireland, and that she thought that she could do her next exams here just as well, and rather surprisingly her mother hadn't cried at all. She had sounded sort of upbeat, and said that if that was what Sabine wanted, then that's what they should do. Then she had left. No soul-searching, no droning on and on about how she wanted to be her friend, and just wanted them to be happy, blah blah blah. Just matter-of-fact. Sabine had been quite shocked to emerge from the jumper to find her already gone.

Then a couple of days later, when they were alone in the drawing room, she asked Sabine what she would feel about them selling their house in Hackney and moving over here, to be near Granny permanently. You mean, you want to be near Thom, Sabine thought, but she was too surprised that her opinion apparently counted to be too mean about it.

“I thought we could buy one of the cottages up the road,” said Kate, who looked more cheerful than Sabine had seen in ages. “Something nearby. Just a two-bedroom thing. Because we'd have plenty left over from the sale of the London house. And there's no reason why I can't work from here. We could have fun choosing something.”

Sabine, suddenly wary, had wanted to ask her if Thom was going to move in with them, but Kate had preempted her.

“Thom is going to stay where he is for the time being. I think there's quite enough upheaval in this family for now. But he will be spending a lot of time with us, if that's okay by you.”

“So, what is it? Didn't he want to move in?” said Sabine, failing to keep the hint of derision from her voice. It was like history repeating itself all over.

“I haven't asked him, darling,” said Kate. “I thought it was about time you and I had a bit of fun by ourselves.” She paused. “And we both know where to find him, don't we?”

Joy had been surprisingly okay about her Mum and Thom, too. Sabine had told her grandmother almost warily, expecting some gruff expression of disapproval. But Joy, who had curiously seemed to know already, had not even looked up from what she was doing, had said that Thom was a good man, and that she was sure he knew what he was doing.

She hadn't actually said the same of her mother, Sabine realized afterward. But as Mrs. H said, you couldn't have everything.

Bobby, meanwhile, had made some crummy joke when she told him she was staying; something along the lines of her “not being able to leave him alone.” But when he stopped cracking jokes, he did say that she'd have a grand time getting to know what he described as “the rest of the gang.” And he told her about a Hunt Ball in two weeks' time that they could go to, and a party at Adamstown this weekend where there was going to be a live band, and where, he said, they would have the best laugh. He seemed pretty pleased, really. She didn't like to tell him she had started to develop the teensiest of crushes on his elder brother.

E
dward Ballantyne died three weeks to the day after Roisin Connolly's birth, slipping quietly and efficiently away between the lunchtime news and the first of Lynda's afternoon soaps. It was all right, Lynda told Mrs. H afterward. She always made sure she video'd all her episodes at home, in case of just such an eventuality. Mrs. H was rather tight-lipped with Lynda after that.

Sabine, who had been out riding with Bobby at Manor Farm, had been inconsolable when she returned, blaming herself for his “being on his own” when he went, despite the fact that even she had had to admit that he barely seemed even to wake up anymore. But Joy had let her into his room, and sat next to the bed, and held her until she stopped crying, and Sabine had had to acknowledge, as her grandmother said, that he looked much more peaceful now. At least what remained of her grandfather; it was as if the little essence of him that had remained had drifted away altogether, leaving just this placid, sunken old face and almost-cold hands, which sat on the scarlet quilt like relics of another life. Sabine had thought briefly of Thom's hand when she first touched one; but Thom's hand, while not a living thing, was somehow infused with his own zest for life. Her grandfather's hands were like dusty, crepey museum exhibits, carrying only the most distant echoes of times past.

“You shouldn't have made her sit with him,” said Kate, who had been waiting in the corridor, pale and grim-faced, when they finally emerged. “She'll have nightmares.”

“Rubbish,” said her grandmother, who was curiously composed and dry-eyed. “It's her grandfather. She had a right to say good-bye to him. Do you good to say good-bye to him, too.” But her mother had shook her head, and, one hand to her face, had disappeared into her room for a couple of hours.

Christopher and Julia had arrived that evening: Julia already dressed in black, and so tearful that she had to be repeatedly comforted by Joy. “I can't bear it,” she said, sobbing into the older woman's shoulder. “I'm no good with death.” As if anybody was, said Mrs. H, disapprovingly. Julia also took pains to tell Joy at every opportunity that “she knew how she felt.” It was less than a year since she had lost Mam'selle, after all.

Christopher, meanwhile, had just looked rather pale and corpselike himself and spoke like he had a mouthful of corks. He had rubbed Kate's back awkwardly when she had finally come downstairs, and said he hoped that things wouldn't get “difficult.” Sabine knew he was talking about the furniture with labels on, but Kate simply said that she was going to “leave everything up to Mummy.” It was her house, after all, now. Her things. It wasn't as if either of them were in dire financial straits. And Christopher had nodded and left her pretty well alone, which seemed to suit both of them.

Joy, meanwhile, had busied herself with the funeral arrangements, declining all offers of help, but not in the slightly rigid, brusque manner she had employed while her husband was dying. Now, while still briskly efficient, she had become gentler, as if all her hard edges had been rubbed off, and a little meditative. “She'll lose it later on,” Julia sniffed, mournfully, watching Joy's departing back as they sat in the drawing room after supper. “Delayed grief, that's what it will be. It didn't hit me properly about Mam'selle until we buried her.”

But if the grief came, Joy didn't show it. And Lynda especially seemed almost offended by the lack of hysteria in the Ballantyne household. “I've got some sedatives, just in case,” she would say to anyone who passed as she packed up her belongings to leave. “You have only to say the word.” Julia took one in the end. She didn't really need it, she confided to Kate afterward. She just thought it somehow gave the right impression. She didn't want Lynda telling everyone in Wexford that the Ballantynes were uncaring, after all.

D
espite Julia's impressions to the contrary, Sabine was rather shocked at how sad her mother became after Grandfather's death. Not her usual, annoying, show-offy sadness, which manifested itself in all sorts of tears and tugging at her hair and smudged mascara. (That would have made Sabine cross; she felt that she had somehow greater grief rights than her mother when it came to her grandfather.) She was just really, really quiet, and pale, so much so that when Sabine caught sight of her near the summerhouse being hugged by a sympathetic Thom, her first response was not anger, or even irritation, but relief that somebody might be doing something to help. She still found any form of physical contact with her mother inexplicably difficult, and would withdraw from her embrace as soon as she could without causing obvious offense.

But her mother's sadness infected her; Sabine had cried hugely for two days and then felt secretly better. Her mother looked peculiar, and a little bit frustrated, like she was struggling with things she couldn't convey.

“How come you are so sad about Grandfather?” she said, eventually, as they sat in the study, packing the last two boxes in silence, a cooling mug of tea beside each. The room, now reduced to a few skeletal shelves and unevenly faded wallpaper, was going to be redecorated and resurrected as a bedroom. As one of the few remaining dry rooms in the house, it needed, Christopher said, to be utilized effectively, perhaps for a bed-and-breakfast. There would be a hole in the market, after all, now that Annie and Patrick were closing their doors for a while. (“Don't worry,” said Mrs. H, at Sabine's appalled response. “She'll soon frighten them off.”) So Sabine and her mother had jointly taken charge of the final boxes in the study; Sabine, having picked out her favorite photographs, was now sorting through the leftover bits of correspondence, secretly hoping that she would find a really juicy love letter. The photographs, which were now in chronological order, were going to be mounted in a leather album, her mother had decided, as a present for Granny. Most of them, anyway.

“I'm not being rude, or anything, but it wasn't as if you ever talked about him much when he was alive.”

She eyed her mother, aware that her words did not sound quite as gentle spoken out loud as they had in her head.

Kate placed the lid on the sturdy brown box, and paused for a minute, wiping dust from her nose.

“There were things . . . ,” she began. And then paused. “I . . . I suppose I just wish Daddy and I had understood each other a little better. We wasted so much time . . . and now it's all too late. That makes me a bit cross and a bit sad.”

Sabine leaned on the desk, fiddling with an old pen, unsure how to respond.

Kate turned toward her.

“I suppose I just wish we'd had a chance to be better friends. We really stopped being close when I was not much older than you.”

“Why?”

“Oh, the usual. He didn't approve of how I lived my life. He approved even less once I had you. Not that he didn't love you,” she added quickly.

Sabine shrugged. “I know.” She harbored a secret belief that her grandfather had loved her, by the end, more than anyone.

They sat in silence for a while, Sabine sifting through the faded documents, only really bothering to read the ones that were handwritten. There were lots of postcards, addressed to Kate and Christopher, in her grandfather's now-familiarly angular, austere handwriting, telling them the names of various ships he had been on, and weather conditions of places he had been. He seemed to have gone away for a bit after Kate was born, but she couldn't find any addressed just to Grandmother.

Kate, meanwhile, sat staring out of the window, apparently still lost in thought.

“I've been remembering how lovely he was to me when I was a child,” she said into the silence, so that Sabine looked up sharply.

“He was always taking me places: down to the dockyards, to see his work, up on the Peak tram, out to the little islands around Hong Kong so that Christopher and I could go exploring. He was a pretty good father, you know.”

Sabine looked at her, noting her mother's faintly defensive tone.

“He was all right. For an old stick.” She tried to hide the catch in her voice. She still found it quite hard to talk about him.