Sarah Evans 'Seasonally Adjusted'

I’ve always loved the rain, its different tones and textures: the soft caress of the faintest drizzle, so light it barely falls, but hangs suspended; the drama of a sullen tantrum, pelting furiously down, accompanied by a cacophony of sound and shards of light.
It brings back memories. Like the first notes of an almost forgotten song, for me it’s the quality of rain which draws me back.
Still I’d hoped it wouldn’t rain today. I know how Abi will take it. I hope it doesn’t mean she won’t come.
I woke this morning to a persistent plodding patter. I hoped it wasn’t a bad omen. (I’ve never believed in omens.)
Lake District rain I thought.
‘Do you remember?’ I pictured asking Abi. And of course she will, though she might say no just to spite me. But her memories will be different to mine.

*

We went camping in Borrowdale for a week when we were little. Seatoller: the wettest place in England. I can’t imagine what drove my parents to choose it; they weren’t the robust outdoors sort.
We pitched our tent in some farmer’s field. We were the only ones who stuck it through a week of continual rain.
I had red wellies and a pink raincoat. I looked and saw, absorbed from morning to night: raindrops swinging beneath a lead; an astonishing profusion of spiders’ webs, weighted down by tiny spheres, lit up by occasional shafts of brightness. I made waves ripple out in spreading puddles, felt the upwards spray as I jumped, free from the dictatorship of cleanliness and admonishments to stay dry. I watched the emotion of the sky, its different shades of anger. Layers of grey moved one against another, snagged on the high peaks and decapitated them, so all we saw were low flat table-tops. I wondered how the clouds could deliver so much rain and not run out. Instinctively I knew it was futile to rail against the weather: you had to defy it, accept all it had to offer.
Abi spent the week moaning miserably. She’d have sat in the car all day if she’d been allowed. ‘Everything’s wet!’ she griped, when the truth was it was just a bit damp round the edges. ‘Angie splashed me!’ she accused. ‘She did it deliberately!’ Which was only half true. She glared at me, imagining I only said I liked the rain to get at her, aggrandising her place in my world.
That was the start, of the mutual animosity. We were never how sisters should be.

*

The note I sent last week ended: ‘Meet me at the Chocolate Teapot cafe on the High Street at eleven.’ I always thought it such a silly name. I hope that it’s still there.
I was ready by ten, peering out anxiously from lace curtains at the B & B, feeling so strange to be back looking out over the slate roofs and swelling hills I used to know so well. I wished the flow of drops would ease, or at least reduce down to a fine light spray. Though even wedding day rain might be too much for Abi.

*

‘What a shame!’ people condoled, assuming I must want a blazing sun. I always found a clear blue sky unspeakably dull. A day with proper clouds, with the chancy promise of some action, is so much more interesting.
Besides, it was just a mist, like being in the softest of clouds. Beads of bright jewels stuck to the lace, glistened in the sun struggling to show through. That white marshmallow dress, which had seemed a good idea at the time, was itchy-hot and cling-film tight. It was a relief to feel the caress of water on my face, damp like a kiss.
Abi glowered in pink bridesmaid satin, shrank back into the church porch, refusing to come out for the photos. ‘The dress will get soaked.’ As if it mattered, she’d only be wearing it the once. So in the wedding album she is missing. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked her. But who to ask if not a sister.
I hadn’t realised the depth of her continuing rancour: my meeting Matt, the repercussions of barbecue rain.

*

It’s not as if they were going out, just she had hoped they might. She’d never had much luck with boys. I hadn’t wanted to go – a neighbour’s barbecue didn’t sound much fun – it was her who insisted I accompany her, though her plan was just to abandon me if she got the chance.
She made such a fuss. She watched the sky all day, turned on every news to get the forecast. She seemed to think it was going to rain on purpose, as if the weather could be bothered with her passing fancy.
It was a heavy sultry day; I thought it would be a great relief if the heat did break. People thronged round the barbecue which the hosts gamely got going. They paused to glance anxiously up at the gathering darkening clouds, which might just pass on by, or might linger to shed their weighty load.
Suddenly he was there, better looking than I’d expected. Usually she seemed to set her sights so low, but still end up disappointed. He came straight over. But I could see right away he wasn’t interested, not like that. It was one of those ‘I like you as a friend’ type things. Still I tried, to fade into the background, pretend I wasn’t there. But there was no-one else interesting to talk to. And I’m not the fading type.
Although we’d been anticipating it, it still caught us unawares. A deceptive ray of sunshine fanned out from an opening in the clouds, like god in some old testament film. And then the deluge came. Great biblical drops of rain hailed down. Chaos ensued, a mad dash towards the house. Abi dithered, weakly said, ‘We should head in,’ then fled, as if she had an allergy. I think she expected him to follow. I just stood there, closed my eyes and lifted up my face, drinking in sweet water from the heavens. When I opened my eyes Matt was looking at me, and I knew: it wasn’t for Abi he’d hung around so long chatting.
‘We’d better help!’ I said. Suddenly I was all action, dashing here and there, joining the other few brave souls sweeping up food, salvaging cushions before they soaked up water like a sponge.
He was drenched by the time we’d finished; his hair slicked back, his shirt sticking to his torso. He pulled it off. Abi flushed so red, and I just laughed, said it was a pity I couldn’t do the same. I didn’t mean it as a flirt, it just slipped out.
Perhaps if it hadn’t rained, if there hadn’t been a head-flinging moment, the removal of a shirt revealing a taut muscular chest, a passing tease, I’d have ended up with someone else. Someone who wore better, who would not have keeled over so suddenly one Sunday morning during breakfast, with a once and for all heart attack at the age of fifty-five.
Perhaps I’d have kept my sister.
She never forgave me. But it was hardly my fault she seemed to pair up with such miserable types, and even they didn’t stick around that long. Resentment simmered, a storm brewing, waiting for the final trigger before the flood.

*

I took a taxi into town. I’m here early, perched in the window where I can look and listen. It’s still the same as I remember it: a nice snug cafe, with tea leaves in pots and milk in jugs. The High Street looks the way it always did, not yet surrendered to the dull uniformity of brands and chains. I let my pot of Earl Grey brew, eye up the pile of scones on the counter for later.
The rain has picked up pace, the wind is getting up. People struggle with blown-out umbrellas. Usually I like the rain, but today it just feels dreary, turning the world monochrome, an element to be battled against.
My letter said, ‘Dear Abi, Why don’t we meet up? It will be to your advantage.’
It was such a simple thing to do, I should have done it earlier. I wonder if that promise will be enough to lure her here. I’ve never known anyone hate the wet as much as Abi. I picture her, an arched cat, hostile to the slightest whiff of damp, forever at the mercy of seasonally adjusted moods.
Lately I’ve felt the onset of old age, the loss of that edge of certainty. I feel the need for companionship that runs deeper than the need to be amusing. Blood runs thicker than the water streaming down the window.
I filter though my memories to the regular tapping of drops against the pane. Funeral rain, I think, and I feel fearful.

*

It was a driving November rain at our mother’s funeral. Relentlessly it sought out every inch of you, drilling through outer layers to underwear and skin. Everyone said it was a dismal day for a burial, as if these events aren’t miserable enough. It’s hard to look suitably sombre with plastic macs and brightly coloured umbrellas. Hard to linger and contemplate round the open grave, to focus on the departed, when it’s bucketing down.
But although it was the type of rain even I can’t say I like, I was glad. It seemed fitting. It added to the melancholy of the occasion, made a theatre of it. If I could have it rain for my funeral, I would.
Just a small collective of mourners had gathered. Two daughters, though you wouldn’t know to look at us that we were sisters. I stood up straight; a hunched stance wouldn’t offer any protection from the wet. The rain pulled my hair long and straight, water trickled down my upright back. I stood the taller the more Abi seemed to fold over, struggling with a too small umbrella that kept threatening to turn inside out. Matt kept back, huddled in the doorway to the church. Our daughter, Cheryl, had come dressed for fell-walking: Gort-tex hood up, plastic trousers pulled over. The rain mingled with our grief, formed deepening puddles of black tears.
We went back to the house, our childhood home, where Abi had moved back after some ill-defined ‘bad period’. I shook my head. Beads of water went flying everywhere. ‘Like a dog,’ Abi complained shivering.
The conversation went something like this.
‘So what about the will?’ I got straight to the point.
Abi looked aghast. ‘On the day of her funeral?’
‘Well when else? We need to get on with things, get it sorted.’
‘There is no will.’ Abi was forced to admit it.
‘But we spoke about it, you were going to have a chat with her.’ I had my accusation at the ready. I’d suspected this. I’d offered to talk to Mum myself, but Abi had insisted she would do it.
‘I wasn’t expecting this, you know.’ Mum’s life had ended so abruptly with that stroke, she’d seemed so well for her age.
‘I don’t suppose it matters.’ I backed down. It wasn’t worth arguing now. ‘After all it’s pretty straightforward, there are only the two of us. We’ll apply for probate, split everything fifty-fifty.’
‘But the house...’ Abi looked aghast, and I saw what she had assumed.
‘Will have to be sold.’ This was hardly unreasonable.
‘It’s my home.’
‘You can get something else, something more suitable, smaller.’
I’ve replayed it. It doesn’t sound so irreversible. I don’t think I was unfair. What did she expect? It was my inheritance too. True Matt had done quite well for himself, but he was a spendthrift, what was earned got spent. I wanted some little nest-egg for myself, put by for a rainy day.
But perhaps it would have been different if we’d had a clear bright sky, with a winter sun attempting warmth; if I hadn’t wanted to get back to change out of sodden clothes; if her natural misery had not been compounded. Perhaps I’d have listened better, she’d have explained properly what she later claimed to mean.
The house was sold. It wasn’t such a big sum after the lawyers, the estate agents, the splitting it in two. She was suspicious of the survey, the finding of rotten timber in the loft, the result of years of rain seeping through unfixed cracks. I saw her reluctance to accept the reduced offer as unwillingness to sell at all. It seemed a fair price for a house in poor condition, in a not particularly upmarket area. I couldn’t have known prices would soar the way they did. Just as she got it wrong, waiting, renting, thinking property prices surely must go down. She missed her chance for the security of bricks and mortar.
The last time I saw her was when we handed the keys over to the estate agents. She case me a look full of angry resentment. Then I got that letter from her, brimming over with rash emotion, a point of no return. ‘I never want to see you again.’
She had this stubborn idea I’d stolen everything from her. First her man. Then her home. The letter was rather melodramatic, ‘You’re not a sister to me.’
She didn’t even come to Matt’s funeral, which followed with such cruel haste, didn’t send a card. Of course it was quite a big affair, we had a lot of friends. But still I missed her. It didn’t rain for Matt, just as I didn’t seem able to cry. The sun mocked me with its unrelenting cheer.
Cheryl tries to keep in touch. ‘Honestly Mum, you’re like two five year olds,’ she says. She’s explained Abi’s point of view. How she’d been left without her mother, on her own, she was going through a difficult patch. And no she didn’t expect the house to just be hers, but we could have waited, the way property prices went it would have been a good investment. It’s not as if I needed the money there and then.
Cheryl describes a miserable sort of existence, a life narrowed down, the combination of feeling hard done by and being hard up, exacerbated by the creep of age. Like drips from a leaky gutter, I’ve been a constant source of irritation to her. I picture small economies: cut-price bread; lights carefully switched off behind her.

*

My rainy-day fund: well, it’s raining now. It feels the right time to use it. I hope to see her. To make amends. We can go back to how we should have been.
I didn’t understand a word that nice young man said as he tried to earnestly explain the different options. ‘Risky’, the word didn’t mean a lot to me, but I grasped onto, ‘potentially high returns’. That would serve. I didn’t want the money sat idly, not finding anything to do.
I thought my letter would intrigue her. Who could resist ‘to your advantage’? I’m not admitting I was wrong. But I want to share my good fortune with her. The fund has spiraled upwards to quite a tidy sum. I plan to deduct the original capital (which after all was mine by rights), and split the rest. I’m not attaching conditions. She can take the money and go. But I hope she won’t. I hope we can begin again. Because the truth is, old age is lonely. Those friends who seemed important once, have drifted. No-one knows you like a sister, with that shared history, no matter how different you may be. I picture regular weekend visits: cups of tea in cosy cafes, lunch from Waitrose in my Aga toasted kitchen. I’m feeling expansive, full of the joys of philanthropy.
An old woman struggles her way along the street, looking half drowned and wary; grey hair straggles a worn face. I realise with a shock it’s her. The spokes of her umbrella hang loose at strange angles. She never could find umbrellas that worked, never did wear the rain well.
I watch her hesitate, not quite drawing parallel. I don’t think she’s spotted me; she’s weighing up all those years of animosity, doesn’t know how much there is to forfeit. She stops, then starts again, and walks on by. The misery of the rain has tipped the balance.
But I’ve never been one to leave things down to chance. I stumble up ungracefully, scatter a handful of coins across the table and grab my things. I’m worried I’ll lose her, because it feels if we don’t make up now, we never will.
She’s hurrying across the busy high street, as if she knows herself pursued. I hasten after her. The roads are rivers of rain; drivers lean forward to peer through windscreen wipers working furiously. I hear the sharp screech of brakes, the skid of tyres failing in their struggle to grip the tarmac, join with the sickening thud of metal meeting flesh and bone.
And then...
I am sitting on the kerb, my face buried against rough fabric, an arm heavy across my shoulders.
‘She’s my sister’. It’s Abi’s voice, claiming ownership to the gathering crowd.
‘Where does it hurt?’ I hear the unexpected gentleness in her tone; I follow the locus of pain to its source.
‘My ankle.’
We sit naked against the elements, the rain drenching through our clothes, her arm supporting me as we wait for the ambulance someone has phoned. And I think, if it hadn’t been for the rain.