Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories Read online

  Aunt Nora said, “I hope you’re not asking me to make any sort of comment.”

  Julian frowned. “How do you mean?”

  “I would never dream of taking sides. But I think you were right to come over and talk to me. Sometimes just talking about things helps to keep one’s sense of proportion.”

  “You think I’ve lost mine?”

  “No, I don’t mean that at all. But I think you must take the long view. I always think a new marriage is a little like a baby. It needs to be cuddled and loved for the first two years, to be wrapped in security.

  “Just now you and Amanda only have each other to think about. This is the time that you shape your life together so that when the bad times come—which they will—there’ll be something there to remember, to hold you together.”

  “You think I’m being selfish?”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to comment.”

  “You think her complaints are justified?”

  Aunt Nora laughed. “I think that if she’s complaining, you haven’t got too much to worry about. It’s when she stops complaining that you have trouble on your hands.”

  He laid down his glass. “What sort of trouble?”

  “I leave you to work that out for yourself. And now I think you should go, or Amanda will think you’ve had a terrible accident.” They stood up. “Julian, do come again. But bring Amanda with you next time.”

  He was still in a thoughtful mood when he reached home. Amanda opened the door before he had time to find his keys and they stood eyeing each other, their faces solemn.

  Then she smiled. “Hello.”

  It was all right. “Darling.” He stepped indoors and kissed her. “I’m sorry about everything.”

  “Oh, Julian, I’m sorry, too. Did you have a good day?”

  “No—but it’s all right now. I’m a bit late because I called in to see Aunt Nora on the way back home. She sent you her love, of course.”

  Later, Amanda said casually, “Could I have the car tomorrow?”

  “Yes, of course. Going somewhere special?”

  “No,” she said, not looking at him. “It’s just that I might need it, that’s all.”

  He waited for her to tell him more, but she didn’t. Why did she want the car? Perhaps she was going to have lunch with a girl-friend in town.

  The next evening when he got home, Amanda was in the sitting-room watching television, wearing her smartest clothes.

  He said, “How did you get along?” and waited to be told all about her day.

  But she only said, “All right.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She seemed intent on the television, so he left her and went out into the kitchen to find himself a beer. As he opened the refrigerator door, he suddenly stopped dead. Aunt Nora’s words came clear as a bell: ‘It’s when she stops complaining that you have trouble on your hands.’

  Amanda had, it was obvious, stopped complaining. What was it about her that was different? And why those clothes?

  Carefully testing the ground, he said, “Well, how’s the bathroom going?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to get at it today.”

  “Do you still want to buy the carpet? I could probably call Tommy and he could get hold of someone else to play golf on Saturday.”

  Amanda laughed. “Oh, it doesn’t matter that much. No point in changing any plans.”

  “But—”

  “Anyway,” she interrupted his self-sacrifice without even bothering to listen, “I shall probably be busy on Saturday myself.” She looked at her watch. “When do you want to eat?”

  He didn’t want to eat. His stomach was a vacuum probed by ghastly suspicions. She didn’t mind being left on her own any more. She had occupations of her own … appointments. Dates?

  But she wouldn’t … not Amanda.

  But why not? She was young and attractive. Before Julian had finally pinned her down, there had been a horde of young men waiting to take her out.

  “Julian, I asked you when you wanted to eat.”

  He gazed at her as though he had never seen her before. He managed to say, through an unexplained obstruction in his throat, “Any time.”

  He found himself longing for a cold, for flu—anything would do, provided it gave him a cast-iron excuse not to play golf at Wentworth on Saturday. But his health, perversely, remained unimpaired. When he left, Amanda was still in bed, which was quite out of character.

  He played in a stupor. Eventually, Tommy was moved to ask, “Anything wrong?”

  “Um? No, nothing.”

  “Just seem a bit preoccupied. We’re seven down, you know.”

  * * *

  They were, inevitably, beaten into the ground and Tommy was not pleased. He was even less pleased when Julian excused himself from playing a second round and said that he was going home.

  “There is something wrong,” said Tommy.

  “Why should there be anything wrong?”

  “Just thought you were beginning to look like a husband. Amanda’s not creating, is she? You must assert yourself, you know, Julian.”

  Stupid fool, thought Julian, roaring back towards London. What does he know about it? Looking like a husband, indeed. What does he expect me to look like? Miss World?

  But as he turned at last into their own little tree-lined street, all these bolstering blusterings collapsed about his ears. For the house was empty.

  He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. What was she doing? Where was she? She might have left him a note, but there was nothing. Only the hum of the refrigerator, the smell of polish.

  He thought, She’s not coming back. The very prospect left him cold and trembling. No Amanda. No laughter, no digging in the garden, no arguments. No love. The end of love.

  He had dropped his bag of clubs at the foot of the stairs. Now he stepped over them and settled himself on the bottom stair, because there didn’t seem to be anywhere better to sit.

  He thought back. That Sunday when she had gone to have lunch with her parents and had a lift home … Who had brought her? Julian had never got around to asking, but now he knew that it had been Guy Hanthorpe.

  Guy Hanthorpe had been Amanda’s most faithful boy-friend. He had known her all his life, for their parents were neighbours in the country. He was a stockbroker, successful and distinguished. Julian, who was stocky and dark, had disliked and resented the tall, fair Guy on sight.

  Perhaps they had been meeting each other secretly ever since Julian had brought her back from New York.

  He was still there, sitting in the dusk at the foot of the stairs, smoking himself silly and concocting heart-chilling fantasies, when he heard a car come up the road.

  It stopped outside the house, doors opened and shut, he heard voices, footsteps on the path.

  He got up and flung the door open.

  It was Amanda. And with her was Guy.

  “Darling, you’re back!” Amanda looked amazed.

  Julian said nothing. He simply stood and looked at Guy, aware of rage, like a vice, gripping his ribcage. He thought of hitting Guy; saw himself doing it, like some violent film, slow-motion.

  He saw his hand come up and smash itself into Guy’s amiable face. Saw Guy go down, crumpled, insensible, hitting his head as he fell; lying unconscious on the paving, blood seeping from his mouth, from the ghastly wound in his head …

  “Hello, Julian,” said Guy and Julian blinked, surprised to find that he hadn’t hit Guy after all.

  “Where have you been?” he asked Amanda.

  “Down at my mother’s. And Guy was seeing his mother, so he gave me a lift home.” Julian said nothing.

  Irritated, Amanda continued. “Do you think we could come in? It’s rather cool, and it’s beginning to drizzle.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  He stood aside, but Guy said, “Actually, I won’t, thank you.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m going out for dinner tonight, and I mus
t get back and get myself changed. So I’ll say goodbye. ’Bye, Amanda.” He gave her a peck on the cheek, raised a hand to Julian, and was off, plunging down the path on his long legs.

  Amanda called, “Goodbye, and thanks for the lift.”

  She stood in the hall and looked at the bag of golf clubs at the foot of the stairs. At the undrawn curtains. At Julian.

  She said, “Is anything wrong?”

  “No,” he said with fine bitterness. “Nothing. Just that I thought you weren’t ever coming home again.”

  “Never coming…? Have you gone out of your mind?”

  “I thought you were with Guy.”

  “I was.”

  “I mean, all day.”

  She laughed and then stopped laughing. “Julian, I told you, I’ve been with my mother.”

  “You didn’t tell me that this morning. And where were you the other day, when I came home and found you all dressed up and reeking of perfume?”

  “If you’re going to be like that, I shan’t tell you.”

  “Oh, yes, you will!” he yelled.

  After the yell, there was a terrible silence. Then Amanda said very quietly, “I have a feeling we should both take a deep breath and start at the beginning.”

  Julian took his deep breath. “Right,” he said. “You start.”

  She said, “That day I went home for the day. I needed the car because I wanted to go and see the doctor. I’m still registered with my parents’ doctor and I haven’t got a doctor in London.

  “And I dressed myself up because I’m sick of wearing paint-stained jeans and my mother likes to see me looking smart. And today I had to go back to see the doctor again, because he wanted to give me another check-up and be completely sure.”

  Was she going to die? “Completely sure of what?”

  “And you had the car, so I had to go down by train, and Guy brought me back, very kindly, as he did the time before, and all you did was stand and glower at him. I’ve never been so ashamed.”

  “Amanda! What did the doctor say to you?”

  “I’m going to have a baby, of course.”

  “A baby!” He searched for words. “But we’ve only just got married!”

  “We’ve been married nearly four months. And we had a very long honeymoon…”

  “But we never meant…”

  “I know we never meant.” She sounded near to tears. “But it’s happened, and if you dare take that horrible tone of voice…”

  “A baby.” He said it again, but this time his voice was filled with wonder. “You’re going to have a baby! Oh, my darling, you are the most wonderful girl.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Mind? I’m thrilled!” He was astonished to find that it was true. “I’ve never been so thrilled about anything.”

  “Will the house be big enough for three?”

  “Of course it will.”

  “I don’t want to have to move. Our little house…”

  “We won’t move. We’ll stay here forever, and breed an enormous family and have rows of perambulators all the way up the garden path.”

  She said, “I didn’t want to tell you about what I was doing, Julian, because I couldn’t be sure myself, so I wanted to wait for a while.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except this…”

  And it didn’t. That evening Julian cooked supper for Amanda, and they ate it off a tray in front of the fire, and she put her feet up on the sofa because he said that that was what all expectant mothers were meant to do.

  When at last it was time to go to bed, Julian locked up the house, put his arm around his wife, and then led her gently towards the stairs.

  His precious bag of golf clubs still lay where he had dropped it, but he shoved it out of the way with his foot and left it. There would be plenty of time to put it away safely …

  CHRISTABEL

  Mrs. Lowyer awoke at her usual civilized hour of eight-thirty in the morning, to the hum of the combine harvester in the barley field. It was a good sound to wake up to on a late summer morning. She had always been very fond of this time of the year; loving the precious golden sunshine of Indian summers, the brilliance of laden rowan trees, the first taste of blackberries. She had been married—a long time ago—in September, and her only son Paul had been born a year later in the same month. And now his daughter was going to be married in a week’s time. Mrs. Lowyer lay in bed and watched the sky through the open window (she had never been able to bear sleeping with drawn curtains) and saw it blue as a robin’s egg between soft, slow-moving clouds.

  After a little she got up, put on her dressing-gown and slippers, and went to the window to inspect the outside world. Her window was at the back of the little house, overlooking the scrap of garden. Beyond the fence was the great, golden field of barley, and beyond that again, Shadwell, the old house where her son and his wife now lived, and where Mrs. Lowyer had lived and brought up her family for more than thirty years.

  The combine was moving across the farthest edge of the field. A huge scarlet monster, eating its way through the waist-high crop. It was too distant to see the driver, but she knew that it was Sam Crichtan. He ran the farm with only sporadic help, and he trusted no one but himself to work that precious, hideously expensive piece of equipment. She wondered how long he had been working. Probably since sun-up, and he would not stop until it was too dark to work any longer. He did this—seven days a week.

  Mrs. Lowyer sighed. For Sam; for changed days; for the fact that at sixty-seven she was too old to go out and give him a hand. And for another, nebulous reason that had been at the back of her mind for some time now, but which she refused to take out and inspect. She shut the window firmly and went downstairs to put out her little dachshund, Lucy, for her morning excursion, and then to light the gas and fill her breakfast kettle.

  * * *

  By ten o’clock, dressed and breakfasted, she was out in her garden, snipping a few deadheads off the roses, pulling up a weed or two, staking a straggling clump of Michaelmas daisies. The combine now had cut a deep swath around the border of the field, and as she fiddled with scissors and string, it came surging up the slope towards the fence at the edge of her garden. She abandoned her flower-bed and went to wave as Sam passed. But he didn’t pass. He switched off the engine and stopped the immense machine. All clanking and turning and grinding ceased. The morning was all at once blessedly still. Sam opened the door of the cab and climbed down, and came stiffly and tiredly across the stubble towards her.

  She said, “I didn’t mean you to stop, I was just waving hello.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I thought you were going to offer me a cup of tea. I forgot to fill a flask and my throat’s as dry as the desert.”

  “Well, of course I’ll give you a cup of tea.” And something to eat as well, she decided privately, but she did not say this. “How will you get over the fence?”

  “Easy,” said Sam. He put a hand on the fence-post and vaulted lightly over. “Amazing what you can do if there’s a cup of tea in the offing.”

  She smiled. She had always liked Sam. For ten years he had been tenant farmer at Shadwell, and she had watched him, by sheer determination and plodding hard work, turn what had been a neglected, run-down property, into a viable proposition. Steadings were repaired, fences mended, profits—and she knew that at first these had been sadly meagre—ploughed back, again and again, into the land. She could not remember him ever taking a holiday, although in the early days he had had two men to help him. Now, with modern stream-lined methods and new machinery, he insisted on running the place more or less single-handed, and it was a constant wonder to Mrs. Lowyer that he didn’t die of exhaustion or become embittered and dour. He had, however, done neither of these things, but he was terribly thin, and looked much older than his thirty-two years, and sometimes so tired that she expected him to fall asleep on his feet.

  She said, “Come along then, and sit down for a minute.”

  “I can
’t stay more than ten. I’ve the whole field to finish before this evening. The forecast for tomorrow’s not too good.”

  “Well, provided we have a good day next Saturday, a little rain won’t do any harm.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I’m cutting today. Paul wants to use the field as a car-park for the wedding. He’s going to build a ramp up over the ha-ha so that the guests can walk from their cars up to the marquee…” They had reached the back door, and he paused to toe off his mud-caked wellington boots. There were holes in the toes of his socks, but she did not let on that she had noticed this. She led the way into her miniature kitchen and put on the kettle while Sam shrugged off his oil-stained jacket, pulled out a chair and settled himself with a sigh of relief at the kitchen table.

  “What time were you up this morning?” she asked him.

  “Six o’clock.”

  “You must feel as though you’ve done a day’s work already.” Without asking him, she took down the frying pan and opened the fridge to get out bacon and eggs and sausages. Behind her, he looked about him with appreciation.

  “Best-designed little kitchen I’ve ever seen, this one. Like a ship’s galley.”

  “It does very nicely for one person, but when I have guests to stay it does get a little overcrowded.”

  He lit himself, luxuriously, a briar pipe, as though it were one of the greatest treats in the world. Mrs. Lowyer found an ashtray and laid it on the table. The bacon began to sizzle in the pan.

  * * *

  Sam asked suddenly: “Didn’t you mind coming to live here after Paul and Felicity moved into Shadwell?”

  “No, I didn’t mind. I was fortunate that there was a house available for me, even though it is so tiny. The only thing that made me sad was leaving most of my furniture behind, because there simply wasn’t the space for it here. But I’ve got my favourite bits and pieces. And after all, what is furniture? Nothing worth breaking your heart over. And whenever I go up to the house, I’m able to see it and enjoy it. Felicity loves it too, and probably takes far better care of it than I ever did. She puts me to shame, she’s so capable, and of course she’s in her element now, planning Christabel’s wedding. Lists everywhere, charts pinned up on the kitchen wall, all her girl-friends roped in to do the flowers for her.”