Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

an unremarkable street. Two rows of small houses, little shops, a pub. It could have been anywhere. Except that, at the far end of this street, a cobbled ramp climbed a grassy slope and passed beneath the arch of a magnificent gatehouse. Beyond the gatehouse was a high-walled courtyard as big as a rugger pitch, and on the far side of this stood the castle. Four stories high, square and turreted with the pepper-pot towers; romantic, unexpected, incongruous.
    This was the home of Tom’s redoubtable Aunt Mabel.
    The older sister of Tom’s father, horse-mad, leathery, and down-to-earth, Mabel had never been expected to find a husband. But when she was approaching thirty, love—or something very much like it—had struck. At a horse show near Basingstoke, she had met Ned Kinnerton, allowed him to buy her a half-pint in the beer tent, and was married to him within the month.
    Her family had been, by all accounts, torn between delight and horror. Telephones all over Hampshire had buzzed with speculation.
    Isn’t it marvellous that she’s found a husband at last.
    He’s twice her age.
    She’s going to have to go and live in an enormous unheated castle in Northumberland.
    It’s his family home. It’s belonged to the Kinnertons for generations.
    Imagine the winters! Let’s hope I’m never invited to stay.
    But Mabel loved Kinton as much as Ned did. Their union was not blessed with children, which was sad because they would have made perfect parents, but, as though to make up for this slip of nature, a selection of nephews and nieces, as often as possible, descended from all quarters of the country upon Mabel and Ned for their school holidays, and more or less took the place over. Mabel never minded what anybody did, provided no one was ever unkind to an animal. So, unchecked, they climbed battlements, slept out in a makeshift tent beneath the cedar tree, poured make-believe boiling oil from the slit window over the massive front door, swam in the reedy lake that lay at the back of the castle, contrived bows and arrows, fell out of trees.
    After Ned died, everyone imagined that Mabel would move out of Kinton. But the only male relation who might have been capable of shouldering the massive responsibility of the castle had already taken off for Australia and was making a good life for himself there, and so Mabel remained. Don’t need to heat all the rooms, she pointed out and shut off the attics by means of draping old blankets across the tops of the circular stairs. Nice to have a bit of space for friends to come and stay. She moved the kitchen from the dungeonlike basement to the first floor and had installed a service lift that never worked, but apart from that, life carried on as before. Still housefuls of children—now in their teens and fast growing up. Still immense meals at the long mahogany dining-table. Still dogs everywhere, smouldering log fires, snapshots stuck into the frames of mirrors and left there forever, to grow dusty and curl at the corners.
    Kinton. He had arrived. He eased the car gently up the cobbled ramp, passed beneath the shadowed arch of the gatehouse. There was a notice posted which read:
    THIS IS A PRIVATE, OCCUPIED HOUSE. YOU ARE WELCOME TO LOOK AT IT, BUT PLEASE DON’T DRIVE CARS IN AND FRIGHTEN THE DOGS .
    On the far side of the gatehouse was an immense ragged lawn. The road separated and ran around this on both sides, to meet again in front of the massive front door. The encircling walls were part of the most ancient remains of the castle, and the crevices between their stones sprouted with wild valerian and wallflowers that had seeded themselves and flowered every year.
    There did not seem to be anybody about. Tom parked the car at the foot of the steps, turned off the engine and got out. The evening air smelt sweet and fresh—cold after London. He went up the steps and grappled with the huge wrought-iron latch of the front door and it swung slowly inwards, creaking slightly, like a door