They are standing in the garden examining the sky. This became Bill’s habit in June, when the extreme temperatures began reaping horticultural casualties. Ruth joined him, and now this sky-watching ritual is well established. He is squinting at a distant grey mash of gathering clouds, his brow furrowing.
‘Do you think it could be rain?’ he asks optimistically.
‘I wouldn’t like to say,’ Ruth replies. They have been fooled before. Clouds materialize and then evanesce without a single drop of moisture falling. Her brow is lined too. But it is not the promise of rain that is absorbing her, although she does grant that there is a queer silvery quality to the light this evening. It is their conversation of minutes ago that is fraying her thoughts and unravelling her composure. Bill mentioned, almost casually, almost in passing, that he has been unable to get hold of Owen since he returned from his holiday in Italy and dropped the car off. Again, in isolation this comment would not have been a source of undue concern. Their son lives in London where there is life at night. He is in the heart of theatre land. It is probable, likely even, that when Bill rang he was out and about watching a show, or eating at a restaurant. No, it is his elaboration that is unsettling her.
‘Someone answered the ’phone all right. On each occasion. And I rung three times in all, Ruth. I could hear them breathing down the line and some music playing in the background. I asked if Owen was there. I said, it’s Bill Abingdon here, Owen’s father, and can I speak to him. Not a word of answer. The first time I wondered if I’d dialled the wrong number, so I hung up and had another go. I even tried his flatmates’ names, Sean, and the one we met, the woman who stayed here overnight, Naomi. Not a sausage. Bizarre. Still, I should think there’s a plausible explanation.’
And now Naomi’s image keeps hatching in her reverie, the perplexing eyes of different colours, the way they glazed over periodically, the messy tired hair that looked as if it had been repeatedly dyed. As she gazes at the sky and prays for her husband’s sake that rain is imminent, her maternal instinct tells her that there is something odd about this woman, something menacing.
She hoods her eyes with a hand and peers and peers. All in all, Ruth has had a strange day. Days have become monotonous for her, one very like another. But this one she has felt, and this in itself is remarkable. Because she has not felt anything very much for years, it seems. There is an expression that seems apt when describing the all-pervasive mood of this particular day, the calm before the storm – except that, increasingly, she is not calm.
This morning she went to visit Sarah’s grave, the grassy hump frizzled to tired brown straw. And there was nothing unusual about this. She goes most days, keeps it tidy, takes flowers. Only the flowers have been a problem of late with this intolerable heat. You’d have thought, being married to a gardener, that he would have managed to come up with something. But no, the gardens he worked in, and their own, have become wastelands, the plants so dehydrated you imagine that you hear them crying out for water as you stroll past the beds. She’d finally settled for shop-bought carnations, pale pink as it happens, and then immediately regretted her purchase. She hates carnations, well, certainly the modern varieties. The old-fashioned sort are passable, she supposes. They are larger and at least they have a scent. But the ones everyone has nowadays are small fussy flowers, with absolutely no fragrance whatsoever. What she especially dislikes about them are the very things that make them so popular, the longevity of the cut blossoms, the way weeks after they have past their best the eye can be tricked into believing that there is still life in them.
She asked Bill to stop at the supermarket on the way home. When she emerged with cardboard boxes and no groceries he was perturbed. ‘Whatever are those for?’ he wanted to know. She gave him a wan smile in reply. When they got home she made a bee-line for Sarah’s room and began sorting through her things. Bill hovered uneasily outside the door. ‘What are you doing, love?’ he asked at last, peeping in. By then she had filled one box and made a start on the other.
‘I’m going through Sarah’s things, sorting out some bits and pieces for the Church sale, and some for Oxfam.’ He looked stricken when she glanced up.
‘Is that a . . . a good idea?’ he said hesitantly, stroking the bald crown of his head, where the line of his Frankenstein scar could still be clearly detected.
She smiled to herself wistfully. ‘After fifteen years, ooh, I think so. We’ll have a memory box for her treasures, our treasures, but not a memory room.’ He helped her for a while. Then, sensing that what she craved most was to be left alone, he busied himself filling his watering cans with the used bath water they saved each day for the purpose. What struck her suddenly, as she folded small items of clothing, was the sudden revelation that she had to earn Sarah’s love, that every glorious day she spent with her was a labour, not of love, but for love. And here was the difference between her son and her daughter, Owen and Sarah. Owen’s love for her was unconditional. She was overcome with a choking sensation, and deep inside her chest there was a stab of pain. She took a sharp intake of breath at the realization. She had taken her son’s rare devotion, the more mature accepting love, entirely for granted. She thought about the shop-bought carnations, the way they duped you into believing they still had life in them, when in fact they were long dead.
Now she leaves Bill cloud gazing, comes indoors and tries her son’s ’phone number twice, but no one answers. Throughout the evening the calm that is not calm, persists. She finds that she cannot settle to an episode of Dad’s Army, that she is up and down fussing constantly. So that when the doorbell rings, she is ready for it.
It is Bill who seems entirely flabbergasted to find two uniformed policemen standing on their doorstep.
‘Mr and Mrs Abingdon, I wonder if we could come inside and have a word with you,’ asks the taller of the two. She is aware of her heart suddenly, aware that it is starting to beat extremely fast. They wait for her to sit down, wait for Bill to lower himself into a seat beside her. They take their caps off respectfully. ‘It’s about your son, Owen.’ She is keening, a high shrill note. It is too late, she thinks. He is dead. My son is dead. I have woken up too late.
The rain that started to fall as they left Wantage is cascading down by the time they reach London. Ruth stares out of the car window and she sees that there are people dancing in the streets, dancing in the deluge sheeting down from dark grey skies. They are tearing open their clothes and letting the rain wash the dust of this ceaseless summer away. Her son’s injuries are not thought to be life threatening. This is what the police told her, that he was attacked with a knife, that his hand was badly cut, that he is receiving treatment at hospital. She can hear the raindrops hammering down on the car’s roof. She can see the gutters running with shining life-giving water.