Sheltering Rain (9 page)

Sabine spent the best part of an hour lying on her bed, earphones on loud, reading a 1970s potboiler that Mrs. H had brought her. Mrs. H had evidently decided she understood what young girls needed—romance and more cake—and the way Sabine felt, Mrs. H had gotten it just about right.

It wasn't exactly literature. There was, however, lots of panting in it. The women were divided into sluts who panted with ill-concealed lust over distracted male heroes, who were just trying to get on with saving the world, or virgins, who panted with restrained longing as the same heroes skillfully seduced them. Only the men actually did anything. The women either got killed off (the sluts) or hitched to the men (the virgins). And despite all the panting, there was relatively little real sex (Sabine flicked first through to see). Perhaps this was what being in a Catholic country was all about. Lots of panting and not much of anything really going on. “Like you, Bella,” she said, stroking the dog on her bed.

Panting made her think of Dean Baxter. She had almost kissed him once. It was not like he would have been her first kiss; she had snogged loads of boys, and had done more than snog with some, although less than most of the girls she knew. She had known he was flirting with her, and they had been sitting on the wall of the estate after dark, and he had been sitting really close and joking with her so that she pushed him and he pushed her back, all just an excuse to touch each other really. And she had known that they probably would kiss and felt okay about it because she had liked him for ages and although he was a laugh, he wasn't too pushy, and he wasn't the type to go bragging to his mates afterward. Plus, he didn't think she was weird because her house was full of books and her mum wore second-hand clothes. He had even told some of the girls to back off when they called her “Brainache” and “Spod” for not smoking and taking her exams early. But then he had gotten carried away, and instead of pushing her back, he had picked her up in a fireman's lift, as if he was going to take her somewhere, and she had panicked and shouted at him to put her down, and when he had laughed, she had hit him repeatedly, too hard, across the head. He had dropped her after that, stood back and looked at her, holding his reddened ear, and asked her what was the matter with her. But she couldn't really explain, so she had just laughed, even though she felt like crying, and tried to make a joke of it. But he hadn't laughed, and things had never been quite the same between them, and then a week later she had heard he was hanging around with Amanda Gallagher. Amanda Bloody Gallagher with her long, girlie-girl hair, fabric-conditioned clothes, and cheap perfume. Probably Amanda Bloody Baxter by the time she got home. Perhaps it was time to forget about Dean Baxter. He had bad skin on his back, anyway. His sister had told her.

Sabine shook her head, clearing it of unwelcome thoughts, and thought about Thom instead. She always found it was easier if you thought about someone else. He was the only man around who was remotely good-looking, she had decided. Pretty handsome, in fact. She had never been out with an older man, although her mate Ali had, and she said they “really knew their way around.” But she couldn't quite get past the idea of his arm. She worried that if she ever got around to kissing him (or would they just pant, him being Irish?) and they took off their clothes, she might run away in fright when she saw his stump. She liked him too much to upset him like that.

She didn't know whether he fancied her. He always seemed pretty pleased to see her, and always seemed to like her hanging around. Plus, she could tell him anything. But it was hard to imagine him overcome with passion, or staring at her with intense longing. He was too withdrawn, somehow. Too restrained. Maybe he just needed time. Maybe grown-up romance worked differently.

Thinking about grown-up romance made Sabine think of her mother, and she slid off the bed, keen to distract herself.

With Bella padding around after her, she opened her cupboards, breathing in the musty smell of things long undisturbed, and gazing into their dark depths. Her grandparents didn't even have the right sort of junk; other people's bedroom cupboards were filled with cocktail dresses, and old board games, or boxes of letters, or electronic gadgets that no longer worked. Here they had piles of moldering white embroidered linen, tablecloths and the like, a broken lamp shade, and some books, with titles like
A Girl's Guide to Horsemanship
and
Bunty Annual 1967
.

Emboldened by the complicit, silent house, Sabine set off to explore some of the other rooms. Her grandfather's door was closed, but between his and the bathroom was another room that she had not yet been into. Pulling the handle down slowly so that she didn't make a noise, she opened the door and slid in.

It was a man's room, a study of sorts, but without the air of recent activity that characterized the yard office downstairs. That had tables full of letters, and ledgers, and color catalogs full of “stud” horses with names like “Filigree Jumping Jake III—by Filigree Flancake out of Jumping Jemimah,” all of whom looked pretty much the same to her, although Thom had said you could count their differences in tens of thousands of guineas. This study held the dusty air of neglect, its half-opened curtains hanging perfectly still, as if they had not been disturbed in years. It smelled of mildewed paper, and unbeaten carpets, and tiny particles of dust glinted, suspended in the air, as she moved. Sabine closed the door softly behind her, and walked into the center of the room, so that Bella paused hopefully and then dropped, groaning, onto the rug.

There were no pictures of horses on the walls in here, apart from a framed cartoon of a shouting huntsman; just a yellowed, framed map of the Far East and a few black-and-white photographs of people in 1950s gear to cover the vast expanse of William Morris–style wallpaper. On built-in shelves by the window sat various-sized boxes, some of which had rolled-up manuscripts on the top, while on the center of the desk stood a large model of a gray battleship, presumably to scale. On a dark wood bookshelf to her right stood lots of hardbacked books, mainly about war and Southeast Asia, punctuated by a couple of humorous cartoon compilations and a paperback on after-dinner speaking. On the top shelf sat a series of decrepit leather-bound books, the gilt almost entirely rubbed off their spines.

It was the other side of the room that caught her eye. Two leather-bound photograph albums, resting on a large box. Judging by their generous icing of dust, they had not been moved for some years.

Sabine crouched down and gently pulled out one of the albums. It was labeled: 1955–. Sitting cross-legged, she pulled it into her lap and opened it, fingering the fine tissue between each of its stiff leaves.

The pictures sat one to a page, and the first was of her grandmother. At least she thought it was her grandmother. It was a posed, studio shot of a young woman on a window seat, wearing a dark, slightly severe suit with a tiny collar, a matching dress, and a string of pearls. Her hair, which was dark brown instead of gray, had been set into waves, and she was wearing the makeup of the age: heavy brows and lashes, and dark, carefully outlined lips. She looked, for all her posing, slightly embarrassed, as if she had been caught doing something suspect. The next photograph was of her with a tall, young man. They stood next to a stand with a plant on it, he beaming with pride; her arm posted uncertainly through his, barely acknowledging him. She looked less embarrassed this time, more sure of herself, curiously dignified. It was something about her bearing, or her tall, slender frame. She didn't slouch over her breasts, looking faintly apologetic, in the way that her own mother did.

Sabine, now engrossed, flicked through the entire album. Toward the end of it, as well as pictures of her grandmother, looking at her most relaxed in a snapshot with another young, incredibly glamorous woman, were pictures of a baby in the kind of elaborate christening robe that you never saw now: all intricate crochet, and tiny, silk-covered buttons. There was no label, so Sabine found herself staring hard at the picture, trying to work out whether this smiling, swaddled baby could possibly be her mother or her uncle Christopher. You couldn't even tell whether it was a boy or a girl—and at that age they seemed to dress babies the same.

But it was in the box that things really started to get interesting: a cardboard-backed picture of her grandmother (it was definitely her, she had decided), arm in arm with the glamorous, shorter girl, both holding little Union Jack pennants, and laughing unrestrainedly. It was odd to think her grandmother had laughed like that once. Behind them was some kind of party, or gathering, with most of the men handsome in white, like Richard Gere in
An Officer and a Gentleman
. There was a tray of tall glasses beside them, which made Sabine wonder if she was drunk, and gilt lettering at the bottom announced that the event had been in honor of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, in 1953. That was history! Sabine had had to sit still and digest that for a moment; her grandmother had been around to make history.

And then there was the other, smaller photograph. Among the pictures of horses, and unrecognizable, smiling faces on long, thin boats, was a picture of a little girl, around six years old, who was definitely her mother. She had her mother's reddish, curly hair, and, even at that age, her peculiar, lock-kneed way of standing. She was holding hands with a little boy, who may or may not have been Chinese, and smiling broadly from under a straw hat. He seemed a little more awkward, not daring to look the camera straight in the face, but leaning toward the girl, as if for comfort.

So this was how my mother grew up, Sabine thought, fingering the sepia-tinted print. Surrounded by little Chinese boys and girls. She had always known that she spent the first part of her childhood abroad, but until now, looking at her pale cotton dress and hat, she hadn't conceived of her as something exotic. Curious, she began flicking through the other photographs, looking for other pictures of her mother.

Sabine was abruptly roused from her reverie by the sound of a door slamming downstairs and a muffled cry that could have been someone calling her name. Panicked, she leaped toward the door, followed by Bella, opening and swiftly closing it behind her. She glanced down at her watch. It was half past twelve.

She paused for a minute, whispered to the dog not to tell (“Oh, God,” she groaned when she realized who she was talking to. “They've got me at it now”), and then walked slowly down the stairs, brushing the dust from her hands as she went.

Mrs. H was in the kitchen, her apron already on. “Ahh. There you are. I'm running late, Sabine,” she said, smiling. “I got held up at Annie's. Has your grandfather mentioned what he wants for his lunch?”

“Erm. He hasn't said much, actually.”

“Ahh, well. I'll do him poached eggs on toast. He had a good breakfast so he won't want anything too heavy. What'll you want, the same?”

“Yeah. That'll be great.” Sabine realized with a lurch that she had not woken her grandfather an hour before his lunch, as instructed. She began to walk back upstairs, shooing away Bella, who tried to accompany her again, wondering whether, if he was really running late, she was going to have to help him get dressed. Please, God, don't let me have to touch him, she prayed, outside his door. Please don't let him mention anything about bed baths or chamber pots or whatever it is old people need to get ready. And please, God, let him have his teeth in so that I don't get hysterical.

“Er—hullo?” she called, through the door.

There was no reply.

“Hullo?” She said it louder this time, remembering his deafness. “Grand-Grandfather?”

Oh, God, he was asleep. She was going to have to touch him to wake him up. Sabine stood outside the door and took a deep breath. She didn't want to feel that crepey, translucent skin under her fingers. Old people made her feel funny, even when she looked at them at home. They seemed too vulnerable, too prone to breakage and bruising. Looking at them up close made her toes clench.

She thought of her grandmother's reaction if she didn't do it.

She knocked loudly, paused again, and entered.

The bed, which sat squarely at the far end of the room, was beautiful: a Gothic four-poster, from whose frame ancient bloodred tapestries with glints of Chinese gold thread hung between carved posts of glowing, darkened wood. On the bed itself sat layer upon layer of old silk counterpane, from under which pure white linen sheets could be glimpsed, like teeth in a glossy red mouth. It was the kind of bed one saw in American films, when they were trying to imagine what English stately homes were like. It had the twin, exotic sheen of the Far East, of emperors and opium dens. It was as far removed from her own, creaky iron-framed post as she could imagine.

But it didn't have him in it.

It took Sabine less than ten seconds to realize that not only was he not in it, but that there was nowhere else in the room that he could be. Unless he had climbed into the wardrobe, which she very much doubted (but checked, just to be sure).

He must be in the bathroom. Sabine strode back out of the room and along the corridor. The door was slightly ajar so she called out first, but, hearing no reply, she pushed at it and found that the bathroom, too, had a definite absence of old person.

Sabine's head began to race. Her grandmother hadn't told her that he was going to go out. She had said he was sleeping. So, where the hell was he? She checked her grandmother's empty room (much more frugal, she noted), the downstairs bathroom, and then, feeling increasingly panicked, every single room in the house, from breakfast room to the boot room. He was nowhere to be seen.

It was nearly a quarter to one.

She had to tell someone. She ran to the downstairs kitchen, and confessed to Mrs. H that she had somehow mislaid her grandfather.

“Is he not in his room?”

“No. No. I looked there first.”