Silver Rain

by Jan Ruth

  She smiled at his sarcasm and they took drinks and biscuits through to the lounge. They talked about the view and the weather, and then eventually he said, ‘I’m sorry for spoiling your Christmas like that, but I just couldn’t carry on. I was at the end of my tether.’

  ‘I totally understand.’

  ‘The emotional scars are one thing but the financial mess is now as distasteful as the animal mess. Do you know, just before Christmas a one-legged man turned up, wanting money to feed seven ponies! Seven ponies I thought she’d sold at market.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We were all right until he came back,’ he said. ‘Like a fucking cuckoo.’

  Kate wasn’t sure it was possible to be a cuckoo in your own nest.

  ‘It was bad enough having to live with him in the same bloody house!’ he went on, starting to shout. ‘And then, I find out he’s told Helen! Helen, the biggest mouth in Cheshire and North Wales combined. I mean, how bloody stupid is he?’

  ‘What did he tell Helen? Sorry, that’s none of my business.’

  He struggled to his feet then, jingling the change in his pocket and wandering across to look through the picture window. ‘We made a pact. His side of the deal, was to keep his mouth shut and stay away.’

  ‘And Fran?’

  At this, he seemed to crumple. He collapsed back down into his chair and rubbed his eyes. ‘Fran is a mess. This has been building for years, you know? She needs help and I’ve tried. I’ve tried. Fran is in love with everything and everybody except me, have you not noticed? Even the bloody dogs come before me. All those broken animals she collects are her babies.’

  Kate took their cups into the kitchen and stared at the shiny new sink. Despite her initial irritation she did feel concerned for Fran, locked in a world of make-believe and popping pills. She felt desperately sorry for her brother-in-law, usurped from his own home and estranged from his daughter, through no real fault of his own. The one, rather insidious action he’d taken was the one of conspiracy with the flat and the way he’d planned it behind everyone’s back. Although, in desperation, could she really blame him? It was the same desperation which had driven Helen to speak, before she was silenced by the trifle.

  ‘Will you divorce Fran?’ she asked him.

  ‘Divorce? All I want, is for Fran to see sense.’

  ‘And Al?’

  ‘He’ll get his thirty pieces of silver from Chathill. Final severance pay.’

  They parted awkwardly, George clasping her hand and wishing her a happy new year. Neither of them knew quite how to proceed with each other, but she felt better having made some sort of gesture.

  On the way home, she had to pull over to answer her mobile. It was her mother, in high spirits. Unlike everyone else Kate knew, she’d had a wonderful Christmas, but she could never recall everything in a single conversation and so relayed gossip as it occurred to her. Bert had sorted her out with a new, all-singing all-dancing phone, pre-programmed with everyone’s numbers, including mobiles, which she could previously never manage. This was not a good thing.

  She wanted to tell Kate about Betty Hislop’s hysterectomy, although she couldn’t bring herself to name actual body parts and so the conversation broke down into a tiresome guessing game.

  ‘I had no idea, did you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That she’d had it all taken away,’ her mother said, then dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Down below. You know.’

  ‘You can’t tell by just looking at her, you’d have to scan her.’

  ‘I can’t stand her either. What’s it called, when women have their downstairs taken out?’

  ‘A refurbishment? A knock-through? You are allowed to say ovaries and womb, you know.’

  ‘Yes, well. I’m coming back as a man.’

  ‘You’d rather have a penis with a little brain in it, then?’

  ‘I never brought you up to be so vulgar.’

  ‘Cock, and fanny would be more vulgar.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath and a lot of tutting. ‘You need to wash your mouth out with carbolic soap!’

  Her mother disconnected on her. Kate opened the car window, enjoying the sharp air. She wished the clarity of it could stop her mind jumping from one issue to the next. Did they have an affair, was that it?

  At home, she logged on to Facebook. A message popped up from Annemarie. ‘Any chance you can have Jake? We’ve all got a bloody bug, been in the bog all Christmas.’

  Al’s page was devoid of activity as usual. He was very likely too busy, distracted with the farm, Fran and Becca. Whenever she allowed her mind to drift, abstract pictures of him dominated her thoughts. Slumped in the hospital waiting room, fingers threaded through his hair. The bunch of singing flowers, the way he cuddled his pregnant dog. The silly voices he did for Barnaby and Rupert, over and over without losing patience. That fragile, scented scrap of paper tied with a ribbon.

  I owe you something special.

  Since he’d kissed her, held her, touched her, parts of her anatomy had shown signs of life. Is it okay to say that, Mother? Because she’d not thought of anything else since.

  Around midnight the phone rang, disturbing her from a deep sleep. Since Tia had returned to London, she always kept her mobile switched on, as if it were some sort of lifeline. An invisible, umbilical cord from the big bad city to the safe confines of a semi-detached house in North Wales. Well, she could easily turn that cliche on its head, and given the current circumstances it was more likely that she would be calling Tia. She grabbed her reading glasses and looked at the pulsing screen, saw it was Al, and her thumb wavered between answer and reject. She switched the phone off.

  *

  Her mother accepted her apology with a lot of fussy embarrassment.

  ‘It’s not like you to say words like that.’

  ‘No. Anyway, I’m sorry if you were offended.’

  They’d been to the doctors, the chemist and the supermarket. On passing her sister’s house, they left a large box of Imodium and some bottles of Lucozade on the high shelf in the porch. Back at Rhos House, Kate unpacked the shopping. The lunchtime news on the television was so loud she had to virtually shout. ‘I wish you’d get a hearing aid!’

  There was no response because her mother was in the kitchen, boiling handkerchiefs, pushing them into an old pan with a wooden spatula. Kate sighed and went to grab the remote control. As she fumbled with the unfamiliar buttons the tail-end of a news report had her look up sharply, and then she was waiting to hear it confirmed, urging the local news and weather to finish so they’d go to the recap. It was more or less a single sentence, accompanied by a black and white picture of a beautiful blonde woman in her thirties, with upswept hair and long blue eyes. She’d died alone, age eighty-six. Star of Nine Good Men and Running on Empty.

  Ruby Martinez was dead.

  Another bombshell. One which raised a different list of emotive questions. She didn’t really want to think about another earth-shattering issue, she already felt overloaded in that department, but she couldn’t help wondering how it might make Al feel, the death of the woman who’d rejected him as a five year old and then again, as a thirty-six year old. Should she call him, send a card? Did he even know she was dead? Was it normal to call her daughter and discuss matters like this?

  Tia was always running somewhere, heavy traffic noise and the wail of sirens in the background. ‘For Chrissakes, Mum. If anything happened with freaky Fran, it was years ago! Answer me this; is he married?’

  ‘Divorced.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Widowed.’

  ‘There’s the frigging answer then.’

  Kate rolled her eyes. Tia’s world was black and white, it was so simple, but everything in Kate’s head made her feel distinctly grey, and undistinguished.

  He had some kind of history with Fran.

  His mother’s dead.

  Chapter Fifteen
r />   Al.

  Kate had ignored his call. He was prepared to beg in order to plead his case but when several days passed by and she also ignored his e-mail, Al forced himself to accept that she’d blown him out. She was no longer interested in him as a friend and a token book agent, let alone a possible love interest. Shortly after this though, Jo also disconnected from him on Facebook and this seemed the final insult, but then the landline phone account was terminated, and so they lost the Internet anyway. Becca was unimpressed and sighed a lot.

  ‘I thought you didn’t bother with it,’ Al said.

  ‘I kind of need it, for school? It’s okay, I’ll go round to Dad’s, he’s got a high-speed connection.’

  He didn’t blame her in the least, but the effect it had on Fran manifested itself in her deteriorating health, and trying to get her to see sense or agree to talk to a doctor, continued to fall on deaf ears and she’d virtually stopped eating. He craved Kate’s grounded advice about this, about all kinds of things, especially over the letter.

  The letter. His first thought had been to tear it up, burn it. It was creased and crumpled because he’d screwed it into a ball and thrown it at the wall, only to smooth it out and read it, again and again. Sometimes he felt sick when he read through it, then at other times he wanted to bang his head on the wall and scream in silence. It seemed wrong to have to suffer twice for the death of a mother.

  So far he hadn’t acted on its brief instruction. There was a long, foreign- looking phone number he was supposed to call. He really wanted to erase the whole thing from his mind and not have to deal with it in any shape or form; physically, mentally or emotionally. In some ways, it drew an uncomfortable parallel with his brother, but they’d been through exhausting weeks of remorse years ago, and although he wasn’t keen to resurrect this aspect, he went to see George anyway.

  Considering it was four weeks or so after the Boxing Day debacle, his brother remained mostly hostile and unreasonable. He was making himself a meal for one, something Chinese. Al wanted to tell him he should have cooked the rice first and he was chopping the peppers too small, but the knife looked sharp.

  ‘Kate’s been round,’ George said, triumphantly.

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Nothing! But she’s not stupid, she can join the dots. What the fuck did you tell Helen for? She’s got a mouth as big as the bloody Channel tunnel!’

  ‘I was desperate, and we had a cash-flow problem.’

  ‘Snap!’

  ‘Listen, this situation with the farm. It’s killing Fran. I know you. You’ll be just as gutted to lose Chathill, all that work Mum and Dad put into it. Someone offered thirty per-cent below the asking price this morning, it’s just crazy.’

  ‘Not my fault, I’m afraid. I’ve been the only one earning for let’s see, fifty years?’ He paused to scoop bean-sprouts into a bowl. ‘If it doesn’t sell we can auction it, get rid. You see, if you love something the idea is to nurture it, feed it and keep it safe. Blind, selfish love is a very dangerous place to be.’

  ‘Stop patronising me. I know what love is.’

  ‘No, you don’t. If you knew what it was you’d never have taken something that belonged to me.’

  ‘I didn’t. They’re both at home, waiting for you. The rest of it’s in your head.’

  ‘Now who’s a patronising little git?’

  ‘Just come back and let’s talk it through. I think Fran needs to see a doctor, that’s the main issue here, not your misplaced pride.’

  George hit him then, a backhander with a wok. He’d hit him before, of course, but never with a hot pan. Searing heat and sharp pain shot across the left side of his face. Most of the damage was concentrated on his left eye and brow-bone as the impact came just as he moved his head, purely a reflex action. As the metallic taste of blood seeped into his mouth, the realisation that George was close to crying, fully compounded the shock. It was like going back fifteen years when it had all still been raw.

  He went from the flat, his head reeling and his shaking hand covering his split lip. In his car, he angled the rear view mirror so that he could see his smashed face, and rooted about for a tissue. Bloody hell, the situation was becoming intolerable. After a short while, he started the engine and drove the short distance home. Once parked, he switched the engine off and leant his forehead on the steering wheel, feeling sick and dizzy.

  Home. The prospective purchasers who’d turned up earlier that day had consisted of two men in sharp suits, with a builder in tow. They’d viewed everything with indifference; taking photographs, measuring, knocking on walls and tutting. He’d felt violated by them, thank Christ Becca had been at school. She’d been on such a high after Boxing Day, and it had fallen to Al to talk her through what was going on without alarming her.

  This was no mean feat, since her mother’s detached behaviour had only added to the worry of it all. On top of this she was over-tired from the exertion of riding fences all day and was up and down all night claiming she felt unwell.

  Outside, the buyers had balked at the mud underfoot and turned up expensive coat collars against the high wind, giving the paddocks nothing more than a sweeping glance. Looking at it through their eyes he couldn’t blame them. His rusting camper-van, home to twenty-two half-dead battery hens and three ducks, and the brown, one-hundred-per-cent-dead Christmas tree rolling around the paddock, didn’t exactly help to sell the place.

  He had mixed feelings about selling Chathill. It was difficult to get past the emotional ties, and he’d had the best childhood here, idyllic. The long summer days, when wild honeysuckle thickened the hedges and dusk was infused with the liquorice perfume of sweet meadow hay, it was like drinking the elixir of summer itself. Good times, although they hadn’t realised it then, and now it was all about looking back.

  They’d lived more life than what could possibly lie ahead.

  He may have been born on the other side of the world, but there was something magical buried in the hills. Even subdued by January and obscured more often than not by shifting mist, the distant mountains were startling. It was astonishing how many different shades of greys, greens and browns there actually were, how many variations of sepia and granite. A hesitant flicker of pale sunlight would sometimes break through and highlight the stone wall roaming across Tal Y Fan. Al saw it through an artist’s eye and as a teenager he’d spent hours daydreaming and trying to paint it all. Eventually, he gave that up and turned to writing. George had framed his abstract daubs and sold them at the local show, maintaining it was all for charity.

  They’d spent the substantial profits on local ale and cider.

  In the end, it was all about money.

  The ensuing low offer for Chathill had been predictable and the agent had treated it with disdain. Al could simply dig his heels in and refuse to co-operate with anyone, deny them access to the property even, but then what? The future was grim with virtually no money coming in and everything in a steady decline. There was a possible trump card, of course, one which only he could bring into play.

  Sole beneficiary.

  His first thought was that it would be some kind of cruel trick, and why? Why had she done this, after a lifetime of no contact? Half of that lifetime had been spent searching for her, another massive drain on the finances, and his emotions. It was the first nail in the coffin of his marriage, and subsequently due to his deplorable behaviour, the final nail in the coffin of his relationship with George.

  After the visit to his brother’s flat, he tried to soothe his battered face with ice cubes packed into a plastic freezer bag. There was nothing in the bathroom cupboard to put on the cuts and burns, nothing of any use. No doubt in the morning he would be multicoloured with a closed eye. He told Fran and Becca he’d been mugged.

  ‘But where, Al?’

  ‘Just outside here, soon as it got dark.’

  ‘You’re a lousy liar. You’ve been out somewhere. Have you been fighting?’r />
  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Becca was more concerned that the hay had run out.

  ‘What am I supposed to feed Stilton?’

  Al put an arm across her shoulders. ‘Let’s have a talk.’

  Becca caved in, in the end. The following morning, he drove slowly behind her as she rode Stilton to the livery yard, his car full of rugs and buckets and his eye throbbing painfully. The yard was a swish place, full of teenage girls and a full set of show-jumps in the indoor school. There was a loose-box already prepared for Stilton, everything paid for. Even on that first day, she was soon lost in a crowd of new friends, billing and cooing over the new arrival and comparing tack.

  A couple of days after the horse was settled in, Becca tentatively suggested to her mother that she might try living at the flat. After all, Stilton was within walking distance, her father had promised to drive her to school instead of having to catch the bus, and there was a brand new computer in her room. Fran seemed curiously unaffected.

  ‘Are you sure it’s going to be okay?’ Becca whispered to Al.

  ‘I think you’ll be doing your dad a massive favour.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah, and I think we have to face some truths about the farm.

  She nodded sagely at this. ‘Mum’s going to be all right though, isn’t she?’

  He scrunched her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. ‘Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll talk to her.’

  Actually he had no idea what to do about Fran and the farm, or indeed about any of his relationships or his finances, let alone the letter. The only adults he had access to talk to about all of this were his grown children, although he couldn’t bring himself to tell them about the wicked witch they’d had for a real grandmother, now deceased.

  Following Boxing Day, Tom had been his usual aloof self, not wanting to get involved in the crossfire, clearly ashamed of Helen’s drunken visit and pissed with Al for being so childish. Maisie, was rather more astute and kept to problem solving, which was her forte. She listened patiently to the recent developments.