The Hiding Places

by Catherine Robertson

  ‘Who else?’ Sunny said. ‘His appalling wife and her vile cohorts, of course.’

  She comes to me now, he’d said.

  April had a sudden urge to find Oran and console him, but she knew he would be too proud to admit he’d been a victim, and would refuse to lay any blame upon his wife.

  Edward touched Sunny on the arm. ‘Shall we see how your sponge has fared?’

  ‘Oh, it won’t even place,’ said Sunny. ‘They want to encourage new entrants. Apparently it’s demoralising that the same person wins year after year. I should have done the gracious thing long ago.’

  ‘And stopped entering?’

  ‘And died!’ said Sunny.

  At the produce tent door, she unbuttoned her umbrella, a long, black, sturdy item with wooden handle and tip that looked as if its original owner had been a Victorian prime minister. Once outside, she snapped it open. There was room under it for all three of them, but she did not offer. Edward pulled up the collar of his mackintosh and hunched into it. April resigned herself to getting wet. Kit’s yellow mac was too warm for this weather and if Kit had ever owned an umbrella it was now in Canada.

  In the baking tent, the smell of sugar and butter, real this time, managed to only just mask the whiff of steaming clothing and damp dog.

  Sunny’s sponge had been awarded first place.

  ‘Hmph,’ she said.

  ‘Home?’ said Edward. ‘Or the nearest pub?’

  ‘Home,’ said Sunny. ‘I’ve had enough of other people.’

  By the time they arrived at Sunny’s, the rain had stopped and the cloud lifted. Droplets still hung heavy on the furniture in the outdoor courtyard, so they had tea in the kitchen. Sunny produced a tin of ginger biscuits. April knew Sunny would offer her some, even though she always refused. This time, though, April took one, and when no one was looking nibbled on the edge. When the spicy sugary mix hit her tongue, she felt it rush right through her bloodstream. April put the rest of the biscuit back on her plate, carefully, as if it were the incendiary device its effect on her suggested. She’d not eat any more. Who knows what it might lead to?

  Sunny was watching her now, curious but obviously content to let it go without comment, for which April was grateful. In her head, April could hear Oran urging her to ask the question. She owed it to him, she decided, and took the plunge.

  ‘Did James and Rowan ever have romantic intentions towards Lily?’

  Sunny went absolutely still.

  ‘What on earth makes you ask that?’

  The cool, flat voice, so unlike Sunny’s usual brisk liveliness, made April want to squirm in her chair. But it was too late to back out.

  ‘I found some drawings in James’s folio,’ she said. ‘It could be my imagination working overtime, but — they made me wonder.’

  ‘I don’t know the drawings you mean.’

  ‘No. Well—’

  ‘There was nothing between those three. Nothing at all.’

  April did not dare ask if she were sure.

  Fortunately, Edward’s interest had been piqued.

  ‘You sound very certain,’ he said. ‘Almost too certain. Have you something to hide?’

  ‘Utter nonsense!’ The heat was back in Sunny’s voice. ‘If James or Rowan had had any romantic interest regarding Lily, then it would have come out in the open long before they went to war. You forget that, back then, if a woman wasn’t married by age twenty, she was on the shelf! Perry and I declared our love when we were fifteen, and that was not unusual. No,’ she shook her head once, vehemently, ‘James and Rowan had no interest in Lily other than a friendly one. Of that I have no doubt whatsoever!’

  ‘Evidence would support that, to be fair,’ said Edward. ‘Rowan was persona non grata at the Blythes by age eighteen, was he not? And I’d have thought Lily the farmer’s daughter would hardly have been considered a good match for James. Or had her advertising fame eclipsed her humble origins by then?’

  His concession brought Sunny’s hackles down a fraction.

  ‘I’ve never seen the drawings you mentioned,’ she said to April. ‘But if they show James, Rowan and Lily together, it’s just possible that they refer to an incident that occurred during the summer war was declared.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Sunny, to April’s surprise, looked discomfited.

  ‘I have to confess I’m not entirely sure,’ she said. ‘It was never spoken of, at the behest, I gather, of Ellis Blythe, who I suspect wanted to spare his daughter any shameful publicity, the attentions brought on by her advertising fame, as you called it, being quite enough in his eyes.’

  ‘I thought you four were as thick as thieves?’ said Edward. ‘Why weren’t you let in on it?’

  ‘Well, I was so busy at the time,’ said Sunny. ‘My father had finally died, and a month later our house was ripped apart by a frightful storm. Great chunks of the roof were blown clean off, and the holes let in more rain than we had buckets to catch. The water then seeped into the walls and shorted the house’s antediluvian electrics, which meant we had no lights, no geyser for hot water and no telephone. My mother had sold everything of value by that stage, so we had no money to make even temporary repairs. If Cora Potts hadn’t taken us in, we would have been faced with living in a house that was no better than a freezing ruin!’

  ‘You moved permanently into Empyrean?’ said April.

  ‘We did. In June ’39.’

  ‘What did Lewis Potts have to say about that?’ said Edward.

  Sunny waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, he was in a generous mood, if you can call it that. He’d been made an offer for his business by some large firm — Levers, as I recall — and was on the verge of becoming eye-wateringly wealthy. His political career was waxing, too. He organised an enormous Save Agriculture march on Parliament. Thousands of farmers turned up, from all around the country. It made front-page headlines, which was incredible considering what else was happening at the time.’

  ‘Such as Hitler invading Czechoslovakia,’ said Edward. ‘Minor events like that.’

  ‘The fascists tried to disrupt the march,’ said Sunny. ‘Lewis Potts went and had a word with them and they faded off. He had nothing ill to say about them, though. I suspect he might have joined them, if he’d been more convinced they’d gain real political clout.’

  Edward leaned forward.

  ‘Much as I’d like to imagine Oswald Mosley being usurped by Lewis Potts,’ he said, ‘this is distracting us from the main play. What do you believe befell the lovely Lily?’

  Sunny hesitated, as if concerned about breaching a confidence.

  ‘From something I heard Martha Blythe say in an unguarded moment, I think there was a sexual attack made on Lily,’ she said. ‘And I think James and Rowan prevented it.’

  ‘Who attacked her?’ said April. ‘Someone they knew? Or a stranger?’

  ‘That I cannot tell you. I also have no idea how far the assailant got. However, I’m sure the Blythes would have called in the police had it been really serious. Fortunate, then, for everyone that James and Rowan intervened before it became so.’

  ‘Poor Lily,’ said April.

  ‘Yes, poor Lily,’ said Sunny. ‘But you know, incredibly, it did not change her. She was still as trusting and as loving as ever. I suppose you could be mean and blame that on a lack of intelligence, but my belief is she simply had one of those robustly positive natures, the kind that always sees the good in people and finds light even in the darkest of times. Even at the end, nursing her mother, no other family around her, she was not unhappy …’

  A crack in Sunny’s voice made Edward and April glance at each other, alarmed. Sunny on the verge of tears seemed somehow ominous, like a rumbling in the ground, black clouds gathering on the horizon.

  April reached out her hand and covered Sunny’s. The older woman’s skin felt as feathery and fragile as a butterfly wing.

  ‘We won’t talk about this any more if it upsets you,’ she said.

 
; ‘Oh!’ Sunny took April’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m being a silly old fool.’

  She fished a handkerchief out of her trouser pocket and blew her nose.

  ‘Xandy sent me a postcard,’ she said. ‘From Ulan Bator.’

  ‘I see,’ said Edward. ‘Did he say he probably wouldn’t make your birthday?’

  ‘Swine,’ said Sunny. ‘Rotten hound.’

  ‘Which number is Xandy?’ said April.

  ‘He’s my fifth,’ said Sunny. ‘His birthday is the day after mine. He’ll turn sixty and good luck to him.’

  ‘What on earth is he doing in Ulan Bator?’

  ‘Working on the Trans-Mongolian railway? Breeding yaks? I don’t care.’

  ‘I doubt that’s true,’ said Edward. ‘But I sympathise. Rejection does make one feel like thumping something. Or someone.’

  ‘It makes me feel old,’ said Sunny, fiercely. ‘It makes me feel my time is running out. It makes me want to scream at my rotten children that they have no idea what will happen next — to them or to me or to anyone they love — and so they should seize every chance for joy that they can!’

  She crushed the handkerchief into a tight ball.

  ‘You know, even with the threat of war so close, we young ones had no real sense of it. That summer of 1939, we were fifteen, sixteen, and full of love and life. We were singing with the joy of it all. We had no idea that the darkness was coming for us. If I had not been so absolutely in love, I’m not sure I could have borne any of it.’

  CHAPTER 25

  August, 1939

  James found Rowan outside Old Ted’s cottage, sitting on a stool, oiling his rifle. Though only mid-morning, it was already uncomfortably hot, and Rowan had his trousers rolled up to the knee and his shirt off. He also had new bruises on his upper arm, small ones in a row, fingertip size.

  ‘Rifle didn’t pass muster.’ Rowan saw James looking. ‘I have to do it again.’

  James sat down on the grass and considered taking off his own shirt. By midday, the heat would be unbearable. He was glad his father had invited so many people cub hunting that he didn’t have a spare horse for James. James had no love of horses, and even less desire to sweat in a coat and jodhpurs. Last year he’d had to go; after he’d won the lakeside race his father wanted to show off his champion son to the local bigwigs. This year the races had been put off because people were worried about what Reverend Brownlow insisted on calling ‘the grave national crisis’, so James had been unable to defend his title. He would have won, he knew. His only real challenger would have been Day, and he was too busy these days riding around in his car with Sunny to go out training. James would have left Day panting in the dirt.

  ‘You do know you’re probably stronger than Ted now,’ James said to Rowan. ‘You don’t have to put up with it.’

  Rowan peered down the barrel of the rifle, and shoved the oiled cloth in with a rod once more.

  ‘I owe him,’ he said. ‘He’s looked after me.’

  ‘So he should have! You’re his grandson!’

  Rowan gave him a quick, crooked smile. ‘Only half.’

  ‘Do you think he knows?’ James said, after a moment. ‘Who your father is?’

  ‘No.’ Rowan snapped shut the rifle, laid it across his knee. ‘Which is why he’s stayed angry all these years.’ He looked at James. ‘That’s partly why I put up with it. I know I’m just the target, not the cause.’

  ‘Still,’ said James, ‘he shouldn’t. It’s not right.’

  Rowan stood, rifle in one hand, stool scooped up in the other. ‘It will stop soon enough.’

  James scrambled to his feet. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m almost sixteen. Ted’s always said I’ll have to leave the cottage when I turn sixteen. It’s fair enough,’ he said, as if anticipating James’s protest. ‘I should be able to look after myself. I’m not a boy any more.’

  He walked inside the cottage. James did not follow him, for the simple reason that Rowan’s words had rooted him to the spot. Sixteen. Not a boy any more.

  James was sixteen. Had been for a whole seven weeks, and so, by Rowan’s reckoning, he was now a man. But he didn’t feel like one.

  How could he be a man when he’d never kissed a girl, never even held hands with one? Day and Sunny, out in his bloody car yet again, were probably kissing right now. James did not want to think about Day kissing Sunny. Those thoughts tended to be accompanied by others less well formed that ascended from somewhere labyrinthine and dark.

  It was hard to avoid thinking about them, though, because the couple was right in front of him all the bloody time, and had been since the beginning of summer, when Sunny and her bloody mother moved in.

  No one had told James how long the two women would be staying. But he knew their house was now a wreck, and that they’d sold everything to pay the death duties when Sunny’s father had finally shuffled off. James had been roped in to lift paintings off walls, and help Ellis Blythe and Rowan pile them, along with all but a few pieces of furniture, onto the farm wagon.

  ‘I don’t care what price you get for it all,’ Sunny’s mother had told Farmer Blythe. ‘Sell it for kindling if you must.’

  The local antique dealer had rapidly followed up his first offer with a significantly more generous one when Ellis Blythe had drawn himself up to his full height and stood over the man.

  ‘He didn’t even need to say anything,’ James had remarked admiringly to Rowan. ‘All he had to do was loom.’

  But even a more generous purchase price hadn’t been enough. Sunny’s mother owed the revenue department more than she could pay, and her house was now unliveable. All of which, thought James, means Sunny and her mother will not be leaving any time soon.

  James rather wished his father had objected, but they’d caught him at a good time. Levers were about to increase the first offer they’d made, which had been laughably low, according to his father, and soon they’d be rolling in it. James’s mother could have invited the whole village to move in and his father would have thrown open the door and bid them a hearty welcome.

  At least it wasn’t long until school started again. Only another two weeks that he’d have to grit his teeth and put up with Sunny canoodling with his best friend, and his mother conspiring with her best friend. They were conspiring, James knew it. Dimity and Cora, always whispering in corners and going off together. Sometimes they argued — about what, James had never been in a position to overhear, but the tone of their voices always sounded like Sunny’s mother angrily trying to persuade his own of something. Unsuccessfully, because the arguments always ended with Sunny’s mother storming off and his mother quietly retreating to her room, much as she did when his father got angry with her.

  Using anger to get what you want was a man’s tactic, thought James, and Sunny’s mother was very like a man. She was nearly as tall as James, and she had presence, confidence. He had seen forthright men, captains of industry and masters of England’s destiny, begin a conversation with Sunny’s mother on exactly the same note of jovial, indulgent superiority and end it on either a huge belly laugh or an indignant splutter. The end, of course, determining whether any further conversations would begin. Sunny’s mother did not let anyone get the better of her. She was, as his father with grudging admiration admitted, a fighter.

  Fighting. That was another thing men did, this time one that James absolutely did not want to do. But Hitler had annexed Austria, and war was like Farmer Blythe — looming. James would not be old enough to enlist until he was eighteen, but he knew that if England was at war in two years’ time, his father would expect him to do so. James’s father had not fought in the previous war. He’d been born with misshapen feet, which made him unfit for service. James’s feet were fine. He was young, fit and strong. You couldn’t be excused simply because you were terrified. The army called that cowardice, and shot you.

  The clunk of the cottage door shutting brought James back to earth. Rowan had his trouse
rs rolled down and his shirt, waistcoat and cap on. He had the rifle under his arm, and a leather satchel slung across his chest.

  ‘Time to patrol,’ he said. ‘Want to come?’

  ‘You don’t really need that gun, do you?’ said James. ‘It’s just for show, isn’t it?’

  ‘There’s all sorts try their luck when the hunt’s on,’ said Rowan. ‘While the gates are open and the rails down they think it’s fair game to sneak in and steal what they can. But I tell you what,’ he added, ‘if someone shoots me, I give you permission to take the rifle and pop them back.’

  ‘Try not to let that happen,’ said James. ‘With my aim, I’m more likely to shoot myself.’

  They walked into the woods. Old Ted was circling the perimeter clockwise, so Rowan was to do the opposite. If they came across anyone who looked like they were up to no good, then a warning shot was to be fired as an alert, and the trespasser directed at gunpoint to the nearest road and sent on their way with no illusions as to what would happen to them if they returned. Old Ted had a shotgun as well as a rifle, because a good pelting with shot was not only an excellent disincentive but also a way of marking the thieving bastards so the police could more easily identify them. Old Ted had no faith in the local constabulary’s ability to fight even the pettiest of crimes, and he couldn’t waste time herding every ne’er-do-well down to the police station. Branding them with buckshot would have to do.

  The woods were marginally cooler than the cottage clearing, but James was still sweating. Rowan wasn’t, he noticed. He supposed Rowan was used to being outside in heat like this. His face and arms were so tanned that, with his brown hair and brown eyes, he did indeed look like the Gypsy everyone suspected Rowan’s father was. James wondered if Ted would have been more tolerant if the man had been respectable.

  ‘Where will you go when Ted turfs you out?’ said James.

  ‘I want to go away,’ said Rowan. ‘Far away. America. Or Canada. Somewhere with big woods. And mountains. And hardly any people.’

  ‘America?’ James was floored. ‘But who’ll take over as gamekeeper?’