Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher

and through the arch of the gatehouse, their headlights flashing on the ancient walls. The old and shabby rooms, flower-filled and soft with candle-light, would ring with voices and laughter.
    Never again, never again. It was a miracle that the old ways had endured so long. Kinton was a ridiculous, outdated anachronism, perhaps, but no more of an anachronism than Mabel herself. It was she who had achieved so much, by sticking to what she believed in; by knowing what she wanted out of life, by being prepared to pay for it. She had turned the castle into a home, filled it with other people’s children, seen only beauty in the cold and lofty rooms. She had tended her garden, walked her dogs, gathered friends around her fireside. She had, by some stubborn contrivance, managed to hold together the tattered fabric of threadbare carpets and recalcitrant boilers and crumbling walls. She had been, for so long, indomitable.
    Driving slowly down the street, up the ramp and through the arch, Tom thought about that word, indomitable. And it occurred to him, then, that Kitty and Mabel had a lot in common. They were both unconventional to the point of eccentricity, their actions incomprehensible to ordinary beings. But they were survivors, too. In one way or another, whatever happened, he knew that they would both survive.
    *   *   *
    He was in his cheerless bedroom, standing at his dressing-table and trying to tie his bow-tie in the inadequate light, when there came a tap at his door.
    “Tom.”
    He turned. It was Mabel. She looked magnificent in a long brown dress of old-fashioned cut, with inherited diamonds in her ears, and the pearls that Ned had given her on her wedding day around her neck.
    He stopped struggling with his bow-tie. He said, “You look wonderful,” and meant it.
    She closed the door behind her and came towards him. “You know, Tom, I feel rather wonderful. Quite youthful and festive. Do you want me to help you with your tie? I always used to have to tie Ned’s for him, poor man, he was incapable of deciding which end was which.” Tom, who had already made this decision stood, obediently, while she dealt with it for him. “There.” She gave the finished effort a little pat. “Perfect.”
    They stood looking at each other, smiling.
    He said, “Perhaps this is as good a time as any to give you your present.” He went to take it from the top of the dressing-table, a large, flat parcel, painstakingly wrapped in crisp white paper and tied with a gold ribbon.
    “Oh, Tom, you are a dear boy. You shouldn’t have brought me anything. Just having you here with me is gift enough.”
    But she carried it, in obvious pleasure and anticipation, to the bed, where she sat herself down and proceeded to undo the wrappings. He went to sit beside her. The ribbon and the paper fell away, and the old print, mounted and framed, was revealed.
    “Tom! Oh, Tom, it’s Kinton. Where did you find a print of Kinton?”
    “By some extraordinary chance, in an antique shop in Salisbury. There were two or three in a sort of job-lot and this was one of them.” He recalled the pleasure he had had in buying it, in finding such a perfect present for Mabel; not flinching at the inflated sum the dealer was asking. “I took it back to London and got it mounted and framed there.”
    She peered at it short-sightedly, because, with her evening gown, she was not wearing her glasses. “It must be very old. At least two hundred years, I should think. How very kind of you. I shall take it with me…”
    “Take it with you?”
    “Yes.” She laid the picture carefully on the bed beside her and turned to him. “I wasn’t going to tell you tonight, but perhaps I will, after all. It’s right that you should be the first to know. I’m going to leave Kinton. It’s become, all at once, too much for me. Too big and too old.” She laughed. “Rather like me.”
    “Where will you go?”
    “There’s a small house in the main street of the