Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher Page A

village. I’ve had my eye on it for a little while. I shall do it up and put in some central heating, and the dogs and I will move there just as soon as possible, and live out the rest of our lives with the pork-butcher on one side and the newsagent on the other.”
    Tom, picturing this, smiled. He said, “I’m not surprised, you know. Sorry, but not surprised. Coming home this evening, driving down the street, I saw the castle and I knew then that there was no way it could carry on for very much longer.”
    “I’d like to have died here. But then, I might have to be very ill and old first, and what a tiresome worry I should have been to all my good friends and relations.”
    “You’ve got years to go yet.”
    “I’m not sorry, you know. There comes a time to end everything; like leaving a party when you’re really enjoying yourself. And we’ve had good times here, haven’t we? It’s so full of happy memories for me, and I would hate to sit around and grow old, and let them all turn stale.”
    “What will happen to Kinton?”
    “I’ve no idea. Perhaps someone will want to buy it for a school or a hospital, or a remand home, but I doubt it. Perhaps the National Trust will take it over. Perhaps it will just crumble to bits. It’s not far from that already. Dry rot in the basement. Deathwatch beetle in the west tower.” She laughed and struck him a loving blow on the knee. “Bats in the belfry.”
    Tom laughed with her. He said, “If you want to do up the house in the village, why don’t you ask Kitty to help you?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Mabel. “I thought we’d come round to the subject of Kitty sooner or later.”
    “That little house of hers. I was wordless with admiration. The work she’s put into it beggars belief.”
    “I know. She’s a maddening, pig-headed child, but one has to take off one’s hat to her.”
    “She’s not as tough as she likes people to think.”
    “No. She’s been through a bad time. After the divorce, I asked her and Crispin to live with me for a little, but she wouldn’t. She said she had to sort her own mess out for herself.” She fell silent. Tom could feel her eyes upon his face, and looking up, found himself on the receiving end of her thoughtful, calculating gaze.
    Before he could speak, Mabel asked him, “What did you do today, you and Kitty?”
    “Looked at the house. Had lunch in the Dog and Duck at Caxford, drove to Alnwick and did some shopping. I bought her some blue-and-white Spode plates for her dresser. Then I took her home. That’s all.”
    “You were always very close to Kitty. I think perhaps you were always the only person who really understood her.”
    “You told me once that I should marry her.”
    “And you said that it would be incestuous.”
    “And you said that one day she would be beautiful.”
    “And you told me that you could wait.”
    “I’ve waited,” said Tom.
    Mabel sat, vastly patient, waiting to see if he was going to enlarge upon this. When he didn’t, she simply said, “Don’t wait too long.”
    From far away, in the depths of the castle, came the faint sound of music. They listened. As though in deference to the occasion of the party, the longhaired boys with the disco had chosen to start off the evening with a selection of Strauss waltzes.
    Mabel was pleased. “How pretty! But I thought,” she added, as though the complicated stereo sytem were an instrument on which the two young men were going to perform, “that they could only play rock and roll.”
    He was about to explain, when there came yet another knock at his door.
    “Mabel.”
    “I’m in here, come along.”
    The door opened slowly, and Kitty’s head appeared around the edge of it. Tom got to his feet.
    “Mabel, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Eustace says the first cars are beginning to arrive and you’ve got to be downstairs to greet your guests.”
    “Heavens.” Mabel heaved herself off the bed, tidied her bun, smoothed down the brown