Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories (17 page)

Which he did. Unchanged, still wearing the same bizarre clothes, thinner, perhaps, but as cheerful as ever. Whistling, he began to sweep up the first of the leaves. Now, it was the Rodrigo Guitar Concerto. Abigail, in jeans and a scarlet sweater, went out to help him. They built a fire and pale smoke rose, a grey plume, up into the still, early-autumn air. Tammy stepped back from the bonfire and leaned on his broom. Across the fire and the smoke their eyes met. He smiled at Abigail. He said, “You look really nice in red. Never seen you wear red before.”

She was embarrassed, but gratified as well. It was years since she had been paid such a warm and spontaneous compliment.

“It … it’s only an old jersey.”

“It’s a good colour.”

The compliment stayed with her, warming her, all through the next day. That morning, she walked to the village to do her shopping. Next door to the chemist was a small boutique, recently opened. In the window was a dress. A silk dress, very simple, neatly belted, the skirt a fan of deep pleats. The dress was red. Without allowing herself a second thought, Abigail walked into the shop, tried on the dress and bought it.

She did not tell Yvonne the reason she had been so impulsive. “Red?” said Yvonne. “But, darling, you never wear red.”

Abigail bit her lip. “You don’t think it’s too bright? Too young?”

“No, of course I don’t. I’m just astonished at your doing something so out of character. But I’m pleased, too. You can’t go on mouldering around in dun-coloured clothes forever. Anyway, I had a great-aunt who lived to be eighty-four, and she always went to funerals in a sapphire-blue hat with feathers.”

“What’s that got to do with my red dress?”

“Nothing, I suppose.” They began to laugh together, like schoolgirls. “I’m glad you bought it. I’ll have to throw a party, so that you can wear it.”

*   *   *

But, in October, the cheerful whistling suddenly stopped. Tammy came to work silent and uncommunicative. Abigail, terrified that he was going to hand in his notice, gathered up her courage and asked him if anything was the matter. He said yes, everything. Poppy had left him. She had taken the children and gone to her mother in Leeds.

Abigail was devastated. She sat on the edge of the cucumber frame and said, “For good?”

“No, not for good. Just for a visit, she says. But we had a row. She’s so fed up with Quarry Cottage, and I can’t really blame her. She’s scared the kids’ll fall down the quarry bank, and the little one’s been coughing at nights. She says it’s the damp.”

“What are you going to do?”

He said, “I can’t go back to Leeds. I can’t go back to living in a city. Not after all this.” A tired gesture somehow involved the garden, the wood, the flaming borders, the golden oak leaves.

“But she’s your wife. And your children…”

“She’ll come back,” said Tammy, but he did not sound convinced. Abigail ached with sympathy for him. At lunchtime, when he settled down to his meagre snack, she filled a bowl with soup and carried it out to where he slumped, despondent, by the greenhouse.

“If your wife isn’t here to take care of you, then I must,” she told him, and he smiled gratefully, and took the soup.

Unbelievably, Poppy and the children returned, but the tuneful whistling was not resumed. Abigail felt herself caught up in some television soap opera: “The Continuing Saga of Tammy Hoadey.” She told herself the problems were between Tammy and Poppy, husband and wife. It was no concern of Abigail’s. She would not interfere.

But remaining a bystander was not to be possible. A week or so later, Tammy sought her out and said that he wanted to ask a favour of her. The favour was that Abigail should buy one of Tammy’s pictures.

She said, “But I’ve never seen any of your pictures.”

“I brought one with me. On the back of the bike. It’s framed.” She stared at him, trapped in embarrassment, and he went off and returned with a large parcel wrapped in crumpled brown paper and tied up with binder twine. He undid the knots and held the picture out for Abigail to inspect.

She saw the silvered frame, the bright colours, the upside-down procession of odd little people, and felt total incomprehension of this new form of art. It was so out of her league, so foreign to any of Dr. Haliday’s pictures, that she could think of nothing to say. She started to blush. Tammy stayed silent. At last Abigail blurted out, “How much do you want for it?”

“A hundred and fifty pounds.”

“A hundred and fifty? Tammy, I haven’t got a hundred and fifty pounds to spend on a picture.”

“Have you got fifty?”

“Well … yes…” Cornered, she was driven to cruel truth. “But … well, it’s just not my sort of picture. I mean, I would
never
buy a picture like that.”

He was undeflected by this. “Well, would you lend me fifty pounds? Just for a bit? You can have the picture as surety.”

“But I thought you’d earned so much on the potatoes?”

“It all went in framing. And it’s my little boy’s birthday next week, and we owe the grocer. Poppy’s come to the end of her rope. She says if I don’t start selling pictures and making money, she’s going back to her mother for good.” He sounded desperate. “Like I said, I don’t blame her. It’s a hard deal for her.”

Abigail looked again at the picture. The colours, at least, were bright. She took it from Tammy. She said, “I’ll keep it for you. I’ll keep it safely.” And she went indoors and up to her bedroom and found her bag, and took from it five crisp ten-pound notes.

“This,” she told herself, “is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” But she closed her handbag and went downstairs and gave the money to Tammy.

He said, “I can never thank you enough.”

“I trust you,” Abigail told him. “I know you won’t let me down.”

*   *   *

At lunchtime that day Yvonne called. “Darling, it’s dreadfully short notice, but would you come and have dinner with us tonight? Maurice has just phoned from the office, and he’s bringing a business friend back for the night, and I thought it would be nice if you’d come and help me entertain him.”

Abigail did not really want to go. She felt depressed by Tammy’s problems, and not in the mood for a party. She began to make unenthusiastic noises, but Yvonne thought she was being stupid, and told her so. “You’re getting terribly old-maidish. What’s happened to all that impulsive spirit? Of course you’re coming. It’ll do you good and you can wear your new red dress.”

But Abigail did not wear the red dress. She was keeping the dress for … something. Some person. Some special day. She put on, instead, a brown dress that Yvonne had seen a dozen times before. She arranged her hair, made up her face, went downstairs. In the hall, Tammy’s picture, still in its untidy wrappings, lay on the chest by the telephone. Its presence was somehow pathetic, like a cry for help.
Unless I exhibit, I’m never going to sell anything.
Unless people saw his extraordinary pictures, he was never going to hope to get started. An idea occurred to Abigail. Perhaps Yvonne and Maurice would be interested. Perhaps they would like it so much that they would buy a picture of Tammy’s for themselves. And they would hang it in their sitting-room, and other people would see it and ask about him.

It was a faint hope. Maurice and Yvonne did not go in for patronage of the arts. But still, it was worth a try. Decisively, Abigail pulled on her coat, did up the buttons, gathered up the parcel, and set off.

*   *   *

Maurice’s friend was called Martin York. He was a very large man, taller than Maurice, and extremely fat. His head was bald, fringed with greying hair. He had come down from Glasgow for a meeting, he told Abigail over sherry, and had actually booked into a London hotel, but Maurice had persuaded him to cancel the booking and instead to spend the night at his home in Brookleigh.

“A charming little village. You live here?”

“Yes, I’ve lived here all my life, on and off.”

Maurice chipped into the conversation. “She’s got the prettiest house in the village. And quite the most enviable garden. How’s the new gardener doing, Abigail?”

“Well, he’s not so new now. He’s been working for me for some months.” She explained about Tammy to Martin York. “… he’s really an artist—a painter.” This seemed as good a moment as any to broach the subject of the picture. “As a matter of fact, I brought one of his paintings with me. I … I bought it from him. I thought you might be interested…”

Yvonne came through from the kitchen and caught the tail end of this remark. “Who, me? Darling, I never bought a picture in my life.”

“But we could look at it,” said Maurice quickly. He was a kind man and always ready to make amends for his wife’s forthright remarks.

“Oh, I’d like to
look
at it…”

So Abigail set down her sherry glass and went out to the hall where she had left Tammy’s picture along with her coat. She brought the parcel into the sitting-room and untied the binder twine and pulled aside the paper. She handed the picture to Maurice, who set it up on the seat of a chair, and then stood back, the better to inspect it.

The other two also arranged themselves, standing around in a half-circle. Nobody said anything. Abigail found that she was as nervous of their reaction as if she had herself been responsible for creating those little figures, that brilliant mosaic of colour. She wanted desperately for them all to admire and covet it. It was as though she were the mother of a cherished child being examined, and found wanting.

Yvonne broke the silence at last. “But it’s all upside down!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Darling, did you
really
buy it from Tammy Hoadey?”

“Yes,” lied Abigail, not having the nerve to disclose the arrangement she had made with Tammy.

“However much did you give him for it?”

“Yvonne!” her husband remonstrated sharply.

“Abigail doesn’t mind, do you, Abigail?”

“Fifty pounds,” Abigail told them, trying to sound cool.

“But you could have got something really good for fifty pounds!”

“I think it
is
really good,” said Abigail defiantly.

There was another long pause. Martin York had still said nothing. But he had taken out his spectacles and put them on, the better to inspect the picture. Abigail, unable to bear the silence a moment longer, turned to him.

“Do you like it?”

He took his spectacles off. “It’s full of innocence and vitality. And I love the colour. It’s like the work of a very sophisticated child. I am sure you will have great enjoyment from it.”

Abigail could have wept with gratitude. “I’m sure I will,” she told him. She went to rescue Tammy’s work from the others’ unappreciative gaze, to bundle it back into its crumpled wrapping.

“What did you say his name was?”

“Tammy Hoadey,” said Abigail. Maurice passed around the sherry decanter once more, and Yvonne started to talk about some new pony. Tammy was not mentioned again, and Abigail knew that her first tentative attempt at patronage had been a dismal failure.

*   *   *

The next Monday Tammy did not turn up for work. At the end of the week, Abigail made a few discreet inquiries. Nobody in the village had seen the Hoadeys. She let another day or two pass before getting out the car and driving down the rutted, rubbish-strewn lane which led to the old quarry. The dismal cottage lay by the lip of the cliff. No smoke rose from the chimney. The windows were shuttered, the door locked. In the trodden garden lay a child’s abandoned toy, a plastic tractor missing a wheel. Rooks cawed overhead, a thin wind stirred the black water at the base of the quarry.

“I know you won’t let me down.”

But he had gone, back to Leeds with his wife and children. To start teaching again, and to forget his dreams of becoming an artist. He had gone, taking Abigail’s fifty pounds with him, and she would never see him again.

She went home and took his picture from its wrapping and carried it into the sitting-room. She laid it on a chair, and went, with care, to take down the heavy canvas of some Highland glen that had hung forever above the mantel-piece. Its departure revealed a plethora of dust and cobwebs. She fetched a duster, cleaned these up, and then hung Tammy’s picture. She stood back and surveyed it: the pure, clean colours, the little procession of figures, walking up the walls of the canvas and across the top, like those old Hollywood musicals when people danced on the ceiling. She found herself smiling. The whole room felt different, as though a lively and entertaining person had just walked into it. Enjoyment. That was the word that Maurice’s friend had used. Tammy had gone, but he had left part of his engaging self behind.

*   *   *

Now it was nearly a month later. The autumn was truly here, cold winds and showers of rain, the beginning of frosts at night. After lunch Abigail, bundled against the cold, went out to tidy the rose-beds, dead-head the frosted blossoms, cut out the dead wood. She was wheeling a barrow of rubbish towards the compost heap when she heard the sound of an approaching car and saw a long, sleek black saloon come quietly around the curve of the lane and draw up at the side of the house. The door opened and a man got out. A tall stranger, silvery-haired, bespectacled, wearing a formal, dark overcoat. He looked almost as distinguished as his car. Abigail set down the wheelbarrow and went to meet him.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I’m looking for Tammy Hoadey and I was told in the village that you might be able to help me.”

“No, he isn’t here. He used to work for me, but he’s gone. I think he’s gone back to Leeds. With his wife and children.”

“You haven’t any idea how I could get in touch with him?”

“I’m afraid not.” She took off a gardening glove and tried to push a stray lock of hair under her headscarf. “He didn’t leave any address.”

“And he’s not coming back?”

“I’m not expecting him.”

“Oh, dear.” He smiled. It was a rueful smile, but all at once he looked much younger and not nearly so intimidating. “Perhaps I should explain. My name is Geoffrey Arland…” He felt inside his coat and produced, from an inner breast pocket, a business card. Abigail took it in her earthy hand.
Geoffrey Arland Galeries,
she read, and beneath this a prestigious Bond Street address. “As you can see, I’m an art dealer…”