The Hiding Places

by Catherine Robertson

  ‘I’ll slap you now,’ said Sunny. ‘We’re not here to talk about you!’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Edward. ‘My apologies.’

  He slotted a butter knife into the flap of the envelope, and looked Oran in the eye.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘No,’ said Oran.

  ‘Would you prefer if I viewed the papers first?’ said Edward. ‘Or do you want to rip the Band-Aid off in one go?’

  ‘Will you judge me harshly if I choose the former?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Edward. ‘Though you do realise the chances are high that this information will be essentially meaningless to you at this stage? These are names to fill in boxes on your family tree, nothing more. I’m sure someone somewhere will have stories and photographs, but until we find those, these people will be no more alive to you than print on a page.’

  ‘Myself, I’ve always found print on a page to be teeming with life,’ said Oran, ‘but I take your point.’

  ‘Are you ready now?’ said Edward.

  ‘No,’ said Oran.

  ‘Good man.’

  Edward sliced open the envelope, reached in and extracted the contents in one swift movement, as if to take it by surprise and thus put it off guard.

  They watched him scan the two pieces of paper, eyes travelling over one then the other and back again. When he lifted his head, it was not Oran he looked at first.

  Sunny held his gaze, her expression thoughtful. Edward’s own expression, April saw, was unusually agitated.

  ‘Well, go on,’ Sunny said to him, in a flat, cool voice.

  ‘God, yes,’ said Oran, staring wide-eyed at the pair of them. ‘I’m about to expire from being agog.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Edward handed Oran the first document — ‘This is your mother’s birth certificate’ — then the second — ‘And her mother’s, your real grandmother’s, for added reference.’

  ‘Can you read them with me?’ Oran said to April. ‘I need a bolster.’

  April shuffled round her chair, and together they read the documents. They read them once, and then a second time, just to be sure.

  ‘Oh, my,’ said April.

  ‘I’m incapable even of saying “Oh, my”,’ said Oran. ‘I’ve received a sap to the skull in life’s back alley, and been robbed of all power of speech.’

  He held a piece of paper in each hand. His eyes, still huge, shuttled between them as if trying to decipher two riddles that had been set by a particularly malicious Sphinx.

  ‘My grandmother. My mother’s real mother with the summer-gold hair,’ said Oran. ‘Lily Jane Blythe. Daughter of Ellis and Martha. There can’t be two of them, can there? Can there?’

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ said Edward.

  ‘And — Father Unknown? Any thoughts?’

  ‘Do you have any?’

  ‘My critical faculties have received blunt-force trauma,’ said Oran. ‘Help me out here!’

  Edward caught April’s eye, and his silent question was clear: should he say something? April shook her head briefly. They should let Oran come to it in his own time.

  ‘My mother’s name is given here as Marianne Rowena Jemima Blythe,’ said Oran. ‘Am I reading too much into that? Am I, in fact, going mad?’

  April put her arm around his hunched-up shoulders and hugged him.

  ‘You’re not,’ she said. ‘But I suspect those names show that Lily did not lie when she had them write Father Unknown.’

  ‘You’re saying that the truth is forever unknowable?’ said Oran.

  ‘Does that bother you?’

  Oran traced his finger under the words that spelled his mother’s full name.

  ‘It’s always been my belief,’ he said, ‘that life has to contain mysteries that will never be explained. I mean, what would we do if we had nothing to wonder about, nothing to baffle us, keep us poised on our tip-toes? Our quest to divine the secrets of the universe seems to me to be the whole point of our existence. If we were to finally know it all, I think we’d vanish. In a puff of now pointless dust.’

  ‘So it doesn’t bother you?’ said April.

  ‘No, it bloody well does!’ said Oran. ‘But unless God decides to write me a clue across the heavens in letters of fire, there’s bastardly all I can do but accept it!’

  April glanced over at Sunny, but she was away somewhere in the beyond. Or more likely in the before, and no wonder. April was dying to ask Sunny how much of this was genuinely news to her, but could not gather up the nerve.

  Edward, thank goodness, was not such a wimp.

  ‘Did you really not know?’ he said to Sunny. ‘Did Lily not drop even one hint in all those years you corresponded?’

  Sunny took her time meeting his eye.

  ‘Believe me or not, I don’t give two hoots either way,’ she said, ‘but no, Lily told me nothing. And since you are doubtless forming a wrongheaded opinion of her as we speak, I will categorically state that she would not have stayed silent out of shame. If she did indeed sleep with both James and Rowan, she would have done so out of pure affection and love for them both and would never have regretted it.’

  ‘I have no reason to doubt you,’ said Edward. ‘You knew her. I did not. Though you’re making me rather wish that I had. She sounds an uncommon kind of person. A better kind.’

  Whether Edward intended to mollify or whether he was entirely sincere, his words had a calming effect. Sunny’s cool mask softened into an expression of wistful fondness.

  ‘Lily was a true friend,’ she said. ‘Generous and unfailingly loyal. If she said nothing to me, then it would have been because she’d made a promise not to.’

  ‘To whom, do you think?’

  ‘Her father and mother?’ said Sunny. ‘Or the Reverend Brownlow? In the end, I don’t believe it matters to whom she made the promise, only that she honoured it to the last. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  CHAPTER 39

  mid-October

  The temperature was dropping daily along with the first of the autumn leaves. In Empyrean’s garden, the Virginia creeper and the maples were becoming steeped in red, beginning to glow like embers against a darkening ground. Dahlias continued to flower, shaggy heads in the colours of bold-print frocks favoured by a certain type of older woman. The chiffchaffs were leaving, following the thermals, while the robin, the winter bird, his breast growing ever redder like the leaves, had begun again to sing.

  And Jack was ill. He had a hacking cough that was stripping the gloss from his skin and digging hollows in his cheeks. He was in the brown wool jacket and corduroy trousers he’d been wearing when April first saw him; a mild fever was making him feel the cold.

  ‘I can get you something for that cough,’ April said. ‘From the pharmacy.’

  ‘It’ll pass,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t think you could ever get sick.’

  ‘Wish that were so.’ He folded his arms, hunched up to find some warmth. ‘I hate feeling like this. Hate it.’

  April put her arms around him, and kissed him on the cheek. His skin was dry, his usual sunglow-warmth replaced by a more hectic internal heat that did not bring any comfort. They were in the garden, sitting on the blanket, backs against the brick wall, which gave some shelter from a wind that blew in at intervals, bringing with it a hint of frost. April was warm enough in jeans and a thick jumper, but she knew it would not be long before a coat, scarf and gloves would be required.

  ‘Come into the cottage,’ she said. ‘For an hour or so, to warm up and have a cup of tea. You can cope with being indoors for that long, surely?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so stubborn! It’s an hour. It won’t kill you!’

  ‘If I come in, I may never go out again.’

  ‘So? There’s room for two. Why not spend the winter with me? Why not spend it warm and dry and safe?’

  ‘Safe?’ A slight smile. ‘Is that what I’ll be?’

  Dear God, he could be aggravating.
>
  ‘Yes! Safer than being out there.’ April gestured towards the woods. ‘Safe from hunger and cold and wild animals and—’ She ran out of threats. ‘Just — safe …’

  The cough overtook him again. Gabe, who’d been lying on his other side, got up and nudged his arm, concerned. April had already seen that Gabe was thinner and his coat had lost its shine, as if reacting in sympathy with his master. What would happen to Gabe, she wondered, if Jack could not look after him? He could hunt for himself, but dogs were sociable animals. If Jack were not there, who would keep Gabe company? Gabe probably needed his master more than Jack needed a dog, but who knew? They could be as dependent on each other as flower and bee. Which would mean, of course, that they did not need her at all.

  Jack’s breath was rattling in his chest, but the coughing had subsided. She leaned her head on his shoulder to draw comfort from his physical proximity and, knowing full well she was angling for reassurance, got her next words out quickly.

  ‘You won’t be alone, either. You’ll be with me.’

  His mouth brushed her hair in a brief kiss.

  ‘You’re a good friend, April Turner,’ was all he said.

  And it was all she knew she could expect.

  She raised her head from his shoulder. ‘Can I get you some water?’

  ‘Tap’s stopped working,’ he said, with an apologetic grimace. ‘I tried it earlier.’

  That news seemed ominous to April, but she would have struggled to explain why.

  He misread her look of concern. ‘Don’t worry. The garden will get the rain. Best thing to do now is to finish the pruning and give it a good lot of manure. That’ll set it up for spring.’

  It did not escape April that he had not specified who would do this.

  He was coughing again. Hunched forward, one fist over his mouth, the other holding his chest in an attempt to relieve the pain. He sat back, head resting against the brick wall, eyes closed, struggling for breath.

  ‘Times like this,’ he said, ‘I can see exactly why someone might pray for a quick, merciful death.’

  ‘Just because it’s quick doesn’t mean there won’t be at least one moment of terror and panic,’ said April. ‘Unless you never saw it coming …’

  He put his arms around her and kissed her temple. April could feel her pulse beat under the brief pressure of his mouth.

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ he said, ‘I have seen things that make me believe you might be wrong.’

  ‘You’ve seen people die peacefully? I’m not sure I want to know.’

  ‘I came across a jackdaw once,’ he said, which did not, April noted, directly answer her question. ‘It was lying in a late fall of snow. I could tell it was very ill, not far off death, and I was about to end its suffering when two more jackdaws landed right beside me. And then more began to land, and more and more, so many all closing in around the bird in the snow that I had to back away. I stood at a distance, watching. Fifty jackdaws I counted, black as coal against the white. They made no noise, no jackdaw screech, just stood there, in a circle all around their fellow bird, for perhaps no more than two or three minutes, though, to me, it may as well have been two or three centuries. Then off they flew, all at once, in a great jet-feathered cloud. The bird was still lying there, but now it was dead; I went to check. They had not touched it but perhaps they had helped it on its way. To this day, I have no idea.’ He shook his head slowly, half smiling. ‘A mystery.’

  ‘Like you,’ said April.

  ‘Me?’ he said, surprised. ‘I’m no mystery. I’m as predictable as they come.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Well, you know exactly what I’m thinking now, don’t you?’

  His hands had begun to move under her jersey.

  ‘Oh,’ said April. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

  She caught his wrist. ‘I thought you were ill?’

  ‘I’m very ill,’ he said, ‘but my heart’s still beating and my blood, a bit sluggishly, I admit, is still flowing.’

  He lowered her hand and placed it where she could confirm the truth of that statement.

  ‘And so if you don’t mind the risk of catching whatever it is I’ve got—?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then I’ll make the most of it,’ he said, and kissed her full and hungrily on the mouth.

  CHAPTER 40

  December, 1946

  How had he been away so long?

  No, thought James, that was the wrong question. The right one was: how had three years gone by like no time at all? Two and a half of them he’d spent in a war that had, for him, alternately raced and crawled to its end. Victory in Europe sounded so definite but it was an artificial punctuation point. It had taken two more months for James to be assigned a demob group number, and then the date they’d given for his release had seemed as far away as the moon. It had been calculated on his age and number of years in service, deducting time, reluctantly, in recognition of his medal (he owed Major Cowan for that one). Without that medal, James would still be in Italy. As it was, it had been a year before he’d escaped the camp. He’d left it in June, two days before his birthday, still wearing his uniform, his civvies apparently waiting for him back in England.

  To be fair, he’d not hated the camp, more been bored senseless by the interminable wait. In October 1945 his regiment had moved into abandoned Italian army barracks, across the river from a mid-sized town, at the foot of a rural hill upon which sat a twelfth-century citadel. It was no fairytale castle with turrets and crenellations and flags. It was a featureless squat octagon with seven solid pillars, nothing inside but crumbling walls and a chilly stone courtyard. It had been built by an emperor, who had once forced a wise man to knuckle down and finish some great works, free from distraction within its walls. James had taken up drawing again to pass the time, but once you’d seen one side of the citadel, you’d seen them all. Likewise the banks of the nearby river, and the sheep grazing on the surrounding green fields. His comrades, too, had done nothing but lie around smoking, drinking illicit grappa and playing cards. There were only so many listless soldiers you could include in a sketchbook before the subject palled.

  And then he’d been set free. He’d been expected to take a passage home right away, but he had not. He’d crossed the river into the town, bought better-fitting Italian-made clothes and a decent pair of boots, ditched the uniform by the side of the road and begun to walk. On the evening of his birthday, he’d entered a larger town where a handsome young Englishman was a desirable commodity, and so he’d celebrated with too much red wine and a rough coupling in a doorway with a girl whose lips seemed far too pale for her dark skin, as if she was gravely ill and this was the first sign.

  The following day, he’d been buffeted by a summer storm, wincing as the wind threw road dust and gravel into his face with the force of an enraged woman hurling crockery at her unfaithful lover. He’d pressed on, and the extra effort had meant he’d arrived at his next stop so famished that he could barely see straight. He’d found a small osteria and devoured a plate of pasta and half a roast chicken. It was old, a stewing bird really, but he’d ripped it apart and stuffed it down, and followed it with some kind of cake with nuts and, again, too many glasses of red wine. The osteria’s owners had directed him to potential accommodation, but James had only walked a few feet when his over-indulgence caught up with him and he’d vomited copiously onto the cobbled street, splashing his boots with vile half-digested slush. He had not bothered to find the accommodation, but had spent the night under a bridge near a stream where he’d washed his boots, sleeping fitfully between queasy dreams.

  In other villages, there’d been no food for him to buy, and he’d walked quickly through, past inhabitants who all had the same gaunt imprint of deprivation and fear. In one market square, he’d seen two middle-aged women fighting over what looked like a wheel of cheese. He did not know enough Italian to understand the imprecations they spat at each other but he guessed they were th
e standard insults, slurs on one’s family and one’s virtue, and one’s family’s virtue. As he’d passed, James had had to quell an urge to laugh. They’d been matronly women and their close grip on the cheese wheel meant it had got wedged between their bosoms. If they’d let go, it would not have fallen but been held fast by two bombazine-covered clamps. He had not waited to see which woman won the prize.

  On the outskirts of a bombed city, four sullen, angry young men had robbed him at knifepoint. They’d taken his lira, which he had not cared about as he had access to plenty more, and his boots, which he’d resented very much, having just broken them in. He’d remembered then one of his regiment, an older man demobbed before his younger comrades, warning them that ‘the Eyeties were getting nasty’. The man had read that a gang of youths in Rome, who called themselves the Tosatori, the haircutters, were grabbing local women who went out with Allied soldiers and shaving their heads roughly with knives, not caring if they drew blood. James had then recalled the pale-lipped girl in the doorway. It had never occurred to him that he could have put her in danger. It would not be the first time that he’d been the instrument of someone’s downfall, he’d thought. And, just like both those other occasions, there’d be no chance to go back and make it right.

  A week into his third month on the road, he’d walked into a town’s historical centre in time to see a grand palazzo on fire. The fire crew, such as it was, had been there, but the building was too far ablaze for them to save it, and they’d been concentrating instead on preventing the fire from spreading. James’s Italian had improved to the point where he’d understood that someone was trapped inside the house, the owner, a wealthy old man. One bystander had lamented the loss of the man’s art collection, but the other had been more concerned about the palazzo’s beautiful garden. Neither had expressed any regret for the man, who, James had gathered, was a miser who would not even donate money to help repair the local cathedral. He’d once been heard to curse at the Monsignor himself, and spit at His Holiness’s feet. As the roof of the palazzo had fallen inwards in a shower of sparks, the two bystanders had suggested that the man might now be regretting his renunciation of the church. Without the last rites, he’d be going straight to a place that closely resembled what was now his flaming tomb.