Sheltering Rain (52 page)

“I guess I would have liked him to have been proud of me,” Kate said, sadly. “It's pretty hard, feeling like you get everything wrong in the eyes of those you love.”

She glanced at her daughter, a smile playing around her lips. “Yes, believe it or not, even at my age.”

Sabine looked at her mother for a while. Then she reached out a hand.

“I don't think you get everything wrong,” she said, her voice low and rushed, as if betraying a confidence. “I know I'm not very nice to you sometimes, but I do think you're okay, as a mum. As a rule. I mean I know that you love me and stuff. Which is important.”

She had started to blush.

“And I bet Grandfather was proud of you,” she continued. “I bet he was really. But he just couldn't show it. They were never very good at emotions, Grandmother and Grandfather. Not like you and me. Honestly.” She paused, and squeezed her mother's arm. “
I know
.”

Downstairs they could hear Julia's shrill voice as she helped Mrs. H rearrange the drawing room for after the funeral. There was the scraping sound of furniture moving, and a pause, as Julia again apparently burst into tears.

Kate looked at her daughter's hand, then looked up and smiled slowly.

“You're probably right,” she said.

E
dward Ballantyne was buried on a day so wet that the roads around the cemetery flooded, forcing the smaller group of mourners to wade through water ankle-deep in order to get near the grave, which, to everyone's relief, was on slightly higher ground. It had rained solidly for two days, turning the skies the color of wet ashes, the grass to mud, and obscuring the various bouquets under the steam of their protective cellophane. Several of the older people from the village, having retreated to the knave of the little church, tutted at the incivility of the weather, muttering about omens and symbols, but Joy had simply smiled oddly to herself, ignoring her wet shoes, and said to those inquiring that she thought it “fitting.” She even told Sabine matter-of-factly to go and put her Wellingtons on if she liked, so that her granddaughter, tearful at her first funeral, had looked shocked and asked her mother whether Joy was “okay.” “Remember what you told me. About emotions,” whispered Kate, and Sabine, after some pensive thought, had seemed vaguely satisfied.

He had a good turnout. Surprising, really, said Mrs. H, from under her own umbrella, considering how rude he had been to most of the village at some time or another. But Thom, arm in arm with Kate, had shaken his head and whispered that people knew better than that. Besides, it was about respect, he told Kate, who had herself been quietly amazed at the number of mourners in the church. There were few who didn't admire what he and his family had done for the hunt, and those that didn't had come for Joy. “It's a blood thing. They know good breeding when they see it,” he had said quietly, and squeezed Kate's arm.

“They know a good wake when they see it,” muttered Mrs. H, who on Joy's instructions had bought two whole legs of ham, a side of salmon, and enough alcohol, according to Christopher, to sink a small ship. She had observed the already lightening mood of the village mourners behind them, the distant but discernable swell of chatter as, duty over, they anticipated a good do back at the big house.

Kate huddled closer under Thom's umbrella, awkward in her new black coat, grateful that the rain splashing onto her face would wash away any suggestion of tears. She had found it impossible to stay furious with her father; her mother had seen to that. He was only human, she had said firmly, her old hands gripping her daughter's as she had raged against the old man on the night of his death. Just as Kate was. And more to the point, she said, it was not Kate's place to be angry.

But that had meant that Kate was left with only the options of grief and sorrow at her father's departure. And a lingering guilt that, had she tried harder, she might have been able to draw one fragile line back across the gaping hole that had existed too long between the two sides of her family. “Sabine did that for you,” Thom had said. “Just be glad of that.” But it was too early to be very glad about anything.

The vicar's voice, a dull murmur under the persistent hiss of the rain, had talked of dust and ashes, and somewhere behind them Julia, supported by Christopher, had begun to sob noisily until, apologizing profusely, she was taken away. They could hear her protesting her inability to bear it halfway back to Kilcarrion.

The remaining mourners seemed to take that as a sign to start peeling away from the graveside, too, and walked off alone or in pairs, under a variety of dark or gaudily inappropriate umbrellas. Annie and Patrick lingered nearby, baby Roisin invisibly pressed to her mother's chest, Patrick looming over the two of them like a protective bear. They now stepped forward. “You let me know what I can do, now,” said Annie to Joy, as the vicar with a final nod and touch of her arm, walked as briskly as he could back to the shelter of the church, his robes billowing behind him.

“And I mean it, Mrs. Ballantyne. You've done enough for me.”

“You're very kind, Annie,” said Joy, as the rain ran in torrents down the curves of her umbrella. “I'll do just that.”

“She won't you know,” Annie could be heard to mutter fondly, as they walked slowly away. “Stubborn as a mule, that woman.”

And that left only Thom, Kate, Sabine, and Joy, a tall, stern figure in a black suit that appeared to have last seen good use in the late 1950s, standing quietly beside the grave, not even looking up as the vicar disappeared into the church.

Thom had turned toward the departing Patrick and Annie, evidently deciding his place was with them, first propelling Kate toward her mother. But Kate, at the sight of her mother's resolute, black back, had suddenly begun to cry, and Sabine had motioned to him that he should take her with him. If Grandmother was really upset, then the last thing she needed was Kate crying all over her.

J
oy, oblivious to the mud rising slowly over the sides of her shoes, stood beside the dark earth, encrusted with its floral burden, not really looking at anything. She had half-expected to cry, had rather feared embarrassing herself in front of all those gawping people. She knew she had probably rather disappointed them by not doing so. But the thing was, she actually felt rather better, as if a huge cloud had been blown away.

Sorry, dear, she told him silently, as soon as she acknowledged it. You know I don't mean you. It had been rather easier talking to Edward now that he was gone, as if not seeing him there, in his pain and incapacity, a physical reminder of their life before, had freed her up to love him uncomplicatedly again. She knew her manner had lightened, that Julia and Mrs. H and all the rest were treading carefully around her, believing this to somehow be the calm before the storm, that they were predicting perhaps it would be tonight, at the wake, that she would retire, suddenly felled by grief. She had told him silently that she might do that, just to keep them happy. She wanted to give him a good send-off, yes, but she didn't want to spend too much time playing the hostess, keeping the near strangers happy. She still didn't really like parties, even now.

Edward would understand that.

Joy blinked, suddenly aware that she had let her umbrella fall forward and that rainwater was now trickling down her back. She looked up at the sky, wondering absently whether the paler patch of gray would infect the rest, then turned to find Sabine beside her. The young girl was staring up into her face, her eyes swollen, her own expression concerned, and she slid her young arm determinedly through hers as if comforting both of them.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“I'm fine, Sabine.” Joy stared down at where the coffin lay. It really didn't seem to have anything to do with Edward at all.

“Are you sad?”

Joy smiled. Thought for a minute.

“No, darling, not terribly. Not for him, anyway.”

She took a deep breath. “I think your grandfather was ready to go. He was rather an active chap, and I don't think he liked sitting around doing nothing. I couldn't wish for him to be alive longer than he was.”

“But, won't you miss him?”

Joy paused.

“Of course I'll miss him. But we had some lovely times, your grandfather and I. And I'll have those forever.”

Sabine seemed satisfied.

“And I suppose you don't have to worry about him anymore,” she said.

“No. None of us do.”

The sky was definitely clearing a little. The rain came down in finer threads, as if no longer convinced by its own invincible right to deluge, and already considering its next destination. The two women turned, and began walking back down the hill.

“I've got something for you,” said Sabine suddenly, reaching into her pocket. “It was in the last box of stuff in the study. I thought you should have it today. I mean, I don't know anything about religious stuff, but Mrs. H says readings can be a comfort at . . . well, times like these.”

She handed her grandmother a scrap of paper, handwritten and faded by age. She had to move closer under Joy's umbrella to try to save it from getting wet, but even then at least two of the words got splashed, sending the ancient ink bleeding outward in miniscule tendrils of blue.

“It's your writing, so I thought it might mean something to you. Is it all right? I mean, it is a religious thing, isn't it? I know you're not really a Godbotherer or anything, but I thought it might be fitting for Grandfather.”

Joy stood, gazing at the little piece of paper, as it became gradually softened and darkened by the droplets of water, and felt a large lump lodge itself somewhere back in her throat.

“It is your writing,” said Sabine, a little defensively.

“Yes, it is my writing. And it is sort of religious,” Joy said, eventually, her voice cracking. “But, yes, it is all right. In fact it's . . . it's very . . . appropriate. Thank you very much.”

Sabine looked up, and then smiled approvingly, grief clearing from her young face like the clouds above them.

“Good. As I said, I'm usually a bit rubbish at that kind of thing,” she said, and then, arm in arm, a little unsteadily as they tried to negotiate the rough ground, the old woman and her granddaughter splashed their way back toward the house.

JOJO MOYES
is a British novelist and journalist. She is one of only a few authors to have twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association and has been translated into eleven different languages.

www.jojomoyes.com

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Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

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Author photograph © by Lizzie Sanders

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-06-001289-2

S
HELTERING RAIN
. Copyright © 2002 by JoJo Moyes. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First William Morrow Hardcover Published 2002.

First HarperTorch Mass Market Published 2003.

First William Morrow Paperback Published 2013.

EPub Edition August 2013 ISBN 9780062311597