Sheltering Rain Read Free Page A

and escape while they were all listening. But as she walked past the doorway of the drawing room, guests were already beginning to filter out. A teary-eyed Stella, the corners of her eyes drawn down in disappointment, was among the first.
    â€œOh, Joy, can you believe it?”
    â€œWhat?” said Joy, dumbly, wondering how quickly she could walk past her.
    â€œThe bloody, bloody wireless. What a day for it to break. I can’t believe they’ve got only one in the house. Surely everybody’s got more than one wireless.”
    â€œNo need to fret, Stella, dear,” said Duncan Alleyne, one hand fingering his mustache, the other lingering on Stella’s shoulder just a little too long for his professed brand of paternal interest. “It won’t take long for one of the men to go and fetch one from the Marchants’ house. You’ll hardly miss a thing.”
    â€œBut we’ll miss the whole beginning. And we’ll never get to hear it again. There probably won’t even be another coronation in our lifetime. Oh, I can’t believe it.” Stella was properly crying now, oblivious to the guests around her, some of whom had evidently regarded the sacred ceremony of kings as a rather irritating interruption to a perfectly good party.
    â€œStella—I’ve got to go,” Joy whispered. “I’m really sorry. I’m not well.”
    â€œBut you can’t—at least stay until they’ve got the wireless.”
    â€œI’ll call for you tomorrow.” Swiftly, seeing that her parents were still in the group that sat unnoticing around the dead wireless, Joy ran for the door. Nodding briefly to the boy who let her out, Joy was out, alone in the damp night air, with only the whining dive-bomb of the mosquitoes to keep her company, and the faintest of misgivings about the man she had left behind.
    T he expatriates of Hong Kong were used to living well, with an almost nightly schedule of drinks and dinners, so it was not uncommon for there to be few gweilo faces around first thing in the morning. But Joy, whose unfortunate accident with the pink drinks had left her feeling remarkably clearheaded on waking, found herself in the rare position of being a minority of one.
    It was as if the whole of the Peak were suffering a hangover. While pairs of Chinese men and women trod softly past, some bearing heavy baskets or dragging trailers of rubbish, there was not a white person to be seen. Outside the white-painted houses, set back from the road, streams of colored bunting hung apologetically, and pictures of the smiling princess curled from windows, looking themselves exhausted from the excesses of the night before.
    Padding around the teak-floored apartment, both she and Bei-Lin communicating in whispers (neither wanted to wake Alice and Graham, whose feverish, rambling arguments had stretched long into the early hours), she had decided the only thing for it was a trip to the New Territories so that she could go riding. Everyone would be spiky-headed and miserable today; and the wet heat pressed down harder than ever, magnifying hangover headaches, and ensuring that the day would be spent in a bad-tempered torpor, stretched out under fans on the soft furnishings. It was not a day to be in town. The problem Joy faced was that this was the one morning in which there was no one around to take her out of it.
    She had walked to Stella’s at around ten, but the curtains had been drawn, and she hadn’t liked to call in. Her own father, who could usually be relied upon to drive his princess, would be unlikely to rise before midday. Not having many friends, there was no one else she felt comfortable calling upon. Seated on a wicker chair by the window, Joy toyed with the idea of taking a tram to the center of town, and then catching a train, but she had never done it alone and Bei-Lin had refused to accompany her, knowing that the mistress would be in an even fouler temper