The Hiding Places

by Catherine Robertson

  During October the temperature had steadily dropped, and James had wired more money from his account back home to buy a coat. He’d taken to sheltering in churches, slipping into a back pew if there was a service on and hunkering down until he’d gathered enough energy to get back on the road. One sermon had been a real tirade, the priest with spittle-flecked Savonarola-like fervour denouncing all manner of sin, from blasphemy to sodomy. The congregation up the front had worn most of the spit, which James had imagined raining down on them like fiery flakes from the sky.

  At the start of November, he’d seen queues of civilians and soldiers filing into a town hall, and he’d joined them to see what was going on. The British soldier at the door had told him it was a service for Hanukkah, organised by a Jewish bloke who worked for the Allied military body that now governed occupied territories. Entrance was supposed to be invitation-only, the soldier had said, but one more wouldn’t make any difference. Long as James didn’t mind that the catering consisted of army rations. Halfway through, there’d been a commotion at the door, a group of people speaking in accented English requesting admission. Polish refugees, survivors, according to an American corporal seated next to James, of the camps. ‘Can you imagine,’ the corporal had said, gripping a table knife in his fist like a switchblade, ‘seeing your family, your children, stripped of everything they owned, starved, gassed, shot, piled onto a heap of corpses. Six million dead, maybe more. If you’d been one of the German guards, how could you cope with that amount of innocent blood on your hands?’ You’d cope by burying it deep in your mind, James had thought. Or by blowing your brains out, though the shame of failure had most likely been a stronger motivator for Herr Hitler than remorse. The Jewish chaplain had been reluctant to let the group in — army rations would stretch only to those invited — but his protest had been overridden. No one in the hall would eat if these people were refused. The group, two families or perhaps the glued-together shards of several, were thin but standing tall, grateful but resolute. Nothing more to lose, James had thought. Makes you bold because you no longer need to care.

  The following evening, he’d nearly stepped on a body lying in the gutter. He’d telephoned the police from a bar, and they’d identified the body as that of a Jew, another camp survivor, perhaps one of the group earlier, who’d lived in the top flat of the adjacent building. The man had jumped to his death from the roof, had been their conclusion. Too much darkness in the soul, one policeman had said and made the sign of the cross over his heart.

  Mid-December, his money had run out. There must be some mistake, he’d said to the cashier at the city bank. No mistake, the cashier had said, and given James a look as if he were some kind of conman, a fraud. The account was bare. James had used all his flattering charm to persuade an official at the British Embassy that his situation was dire enough to warrant a free phone call home, and had begun the conversation with his father on much the same note, assuming that the lack of money had been an oversight and could be quickly rectified. But no, his father had stopped his allowance. James had been away too long. He was reneging on his responsibilities at home.

  The touch-paper had ignited. James’s guns had blazed. If anyone had reneged on his responsibilities, it was his father! Because of his father’s greed and mismanagement, James had no business to take over. He had no chance to complete his university degree. Because of his father’s blinkered arrogance, he no longer had a family. His mother had left. Sunny had left. Strangers ran the farm. His childhood home was empty apart from a hypocritical, corrupt and twisted old shit of a man. His father had stolen James’s inheritance, his friends, his family and his future — everything that had ever made James Potts anything special. Now, James was penniless, unqualified and adrift. Responsibilities? His father could go hang!

  James had expected a tirade in return, terminating in an ultimatum, a threat. But his father had only said in a quiet voice, ‘Come home, my boy’, and ended the call. An embassy official had popped his head around the door and asked if everything was all right, though the whole embassy had surely been able to hear that it was not. So very British, James had thought. To speak in a code of omission, ostensibly to reduce the risk of causing offence but really to cover your back, so you could plausibly deny you ever meant such a thing.

  The embassy could help by arranging a passage home for him, James had said to the official. His father would wire the money directly to them.

  And now he was at the house, opening up the side door that was never locked. It seemed too official to use the front entrance, too symbolic of a return of a long-lost son, who, in all the stories, would be greeted lovingly by his family and friends and all the other people who’d gathered to welcome him home.

  The kitchen was empty. The drawing and dining rooms, too. James did not call out, but ascended the stairs and entered his mother’s bedroom. There was no trace of her. Even the bed had been stripped down to a mattress on bare springs. Dust covered all the furniture like a white mould.

  The room, like the rest of the house, was freezing. James touched a radiator, and felt only cold metal. He left the room and, bypassing his own bedroom, made his way to the stairs that led up to the attic. He did not expect to find anything there but he had an urge to get as high as he could before he was required to descend again. There was one window in the attic and from it you could see across the fields to the farmhouse. From this distance, it would look as if nothing had changed.

  In the attic was a linen chest. Inside it James found what was left of his mother. The blanket she used for picnics, for extra warmth in the car and, folded up under her knees, for gardening. Underneath it, her clothes. Underneath those, right at the bottom, the box of secrets.

  He lifted it out, tried the lid. It was not locked. Inside were only two items — the silver and gold keys on their chain and the ivory dog’s head. No robin’s egg, no four-leaf clover, no red nut concealing miraculously tiny elephants. He knew the enamelled brooch would not be there. And perhaps she had taken those other things with her, too. Perhaps she had never really liked the dog’s head with its unreliable face.

  James tipped the contents out onto the blanket and the dog’s head rolled immediately to the edge and slipped down into the depths of the chest. He decided not to search for it. It was an ugly thing, really, and hardly a lucky charm. The box he took, though, and its keys. To leave it in the chest would be to admit that the bond between him and his mother was no more, and while he suspected his mother had long since accepted that, he could not bring himself to do the same just yet.

  He was still carrying the bag he’d brought with him. A leather satchel, Italian-made, light because in it was all he owned in the world. Out of the attic, he considered dropping both satchel and box on his old bed, but the door was closed and he did not want to see if his room, too, had been stripped bare.

  James decided to leave them in the entranceway. They would be easy to grab if he needed to leave in a hurry. On the hall table he found a pile of letters. Most were official, from banks and lawyers’ firms and the revenue department. None of these had been opened. He found four addressed to him, three from Sunny, postmarked Nottingham, London and lastly Cairo, and one from Lily, sent from a Welsh town James had never heard of. He opened Sunny’s most recent letter. Perry had been given a job with the Foreign Office in Egypt. When James finally got back home, he was to call the embassy collect. The ambassador would pay, Sunny wrote. He owed her for the flies and the sand.

  Lily’s letter was dated October. Her father had died, suddenly, from a heart attack, in late June. Her eldest brother had been killed that month in a riot in Trieste, a sad post-war casualty, and the grief of losing two sons on top of the farm had been too much for her father. Her mother had taken very ill and, as both widowed daughters-in-law had gone back to their own families, Lily would be her full-time nurse. She wrote that the baby had been a girl, and Reverend Brownlow had given her to a good couple who could not have children of their own. Once ag
ain, she hoped James would forgive her. She hoped her father had forgiven her, too. He’d given up the farm for her sake, to spare her the shame. In Wales, all their neighbours thought Lily’s husband had been killed in the war. And they understood, with Ellis dead and Martha so unwell, why Lily could not keep the child. A pity, they all said. But that’s how life was. James let the letter fall back onto the pile.

  A clink of glass on glass, from his father’s study. Not wanting to betray his presence just yet, James trod quietly up the hallway. The study door was ajar and through the gap James could see his father in his black leather chair in front of a grate filled with ash and sharp-edged glittery pieces of coal. The lack of fire somehow made the room feel even icier than the rest of the house. His father was bent forward, elbows propped on his knees, a glass of whisky in one hand that James guessed was not the first of the day. A single light was on, an ornate Austrian glass table-lamp in garish colours that his mother had never liked. It stained one side of his father’s face yellow and red, leaving the other in black shadow. His father’s shoulders were shaking, James saw. His mouth moved as if chewing on itself. Lewis Potts was weeping.

  James went up to his bedroom. It was unchanged, the bed made, ready for him. He sat and let the seed of his plan grow and grow until its tendrils had looped and slithered and insinuated into even the furthest dark corners of his mind.

  CHAPTER 41

  late October

  She heard the scrabbling at the door before the knock. It was after ten at night and April was readying for bed. Her first thought was that it was Oran, in trouble, or drunk, or both. She was wrong.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ said April, opening the door wide.

  She had suppressed her surprise, in case he misinterpreted it as reluctance and went away again. But she could not help asking for a small amount of reassurance.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  His step inside had been a cautious one, and now, unsmiling and wary, he was glancing around at the walls and up at the beams in the ceiling, as if they were live things waiting to pounce.

  To her question, though, he gave a quick smile. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  Gabe, too, had slunk in, and was sitting up tense and straight beside the now closed door, front feet braced, ready to run at the first finger-click.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ said April. ‘Cup of tea? Toast?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  He looked at her properly for the first time, noted she had nothing on but knickers and a loose T-shirt.

  ‘You were off to bed,’ he said.

  ‘Only to read,’ she said. ‘I have a lot of reading to catch up on. The bookman at the village fair thinks I’m Christmas.’

  ‘Do you mind, then? My being here?’

  April had let him stand at a distance, fearing a sudden move on her part might spook him. But she sped now to close the gap, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. His mouth was cold, so she kissed it again to make it warm.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘I’m thrilled.’

  He pulled her tight to him and buried his face in her shoulder and hair.

  ‘I shouldn’t be here at all,’ he said, voice muffled. ‘But I was just so—’

  ‘You were what?’ April prompted gently.

  Instead of an answer, he kissed her hard, slid one hand under her T-shirt and down the back of her knickers. April shivered.

  ‘Cold hands,’ he murmured. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Soon fix that.’

  She took his hand and led him to the bedroom, and they made love with a physical intensity that bordered on roughness, the languor of summer long gone. The second time was gentler, slower, better for her, but he did not smile at her pleasure, as he’d always used to.

  He was on his back now, staring upwards. What he saw, she could not tell. She doubted it was beams and plaster. His face was half in shadow, half illuminated by moonlight through the bedroom window, and his eyes were black as a barn owl’s. April had always thought of an owl’s eyes as large and golden, but two days ago at twilight, coming back from the hedgerows, basket filled with the last of the blackberries, she’d been halted by a gleam of white. It was perched on a low branch in a tree barely three feet away. It turned its head, swivelled it as only an owl can do, and she’d looked straight into its eyes. Black, no pupils visible, just two orbs as round and black as nightshade berries. It had blinked — white lids — and raised its wings, and flown off into the woods with no more sound than the hush of an oar on still water.

  April placed her hand on his face, coaxed it around towards her, so she could trace with her fingers his cheekbones and jaw, his nose and forehead and the bones around his eyes, his ears, the curve of his skull under his short, dark hair. She wanted to memorise him, keep his portrait forever in the locket of her mind. But even now, when he was so close that she could feel his breath on her skin, he seemed to slide away from her. It was like walking around a tree, she thought. The whorls of bark and branch nubs gave you a different image at every step. And though you knew the whole of it was essentially unchanged, recognising it could often depend on which way you came across it.

  But she would always recognise him, wouldn’t she? How could she not?

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For everything.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She kissed him. ‘Without you, I’d be …’

  The right words evaded her because she did not wish to think about it too deeply. And she did not need to, because it was in the past now. Done, gone. What came next was a much brighter thought, if not without its dark patches. But those would always be there. No one on earth could avoid those.

  He brushed his thumb over her mouth, and kissed her softly above her eyes.

  ‘Sleep now,’ he said. ‘And dream well.’

  When she woke, he and the dog were gone. She searched the cottage, looked all around it, even in the shed, walked to the edge of the woods in case he’d left something, anything, even a leaf from the sole of his boot. But there was nothing to be detected except the coolness of approaching rain and the bitter scent of the wild daisies that she’d crushed into the grass.

  CHAPTER 42

  January, 1947

  ‘They’re saying that if this keeps up, it may well turn into the greatest snowfall of the century. Do be sure you’re careful on your way home.’

  Reverend Brownlow ushered James into a warm parlour that was — well, to describe it as messy would be like describing the oceans as moist. His daughters must be aged — James made a quick calculation — four, five and six now. Their mother had herded them into the kitchen, so that James and her husband could talk uninterrupted. That is, as long as they did not consider yells, clanging and the occasional high-pitched whistling scream that reminded James of being shelled as interruptions.

  He took the armchair Reverend Brownlow had gestured to and rose again immediately. The object he’d sat on was hard and extremely knobbly.

  ‘Not again.’ Reverend Brownlow held out his hand for it. ‘How does she do it?’

  He looked up towards the high top shelf of the dresser. There James saw the other figures from the carved nativity set that for years had been as much part of the Blythes’ kitchen as the smell of baking and damp wool.

  ‘Katie is barely three,’ said the Reverend, ‘and yet she can climb like a mountain goat. Recently, we found her twenty feet up the old chestnut tree, and I’m not sure the scolding she received convinced her it had been in any way a bad idea.’

  Reverend Brownlow turned the wooden lamb over in his hand.

  ‘I should really give in and let her have this. The set was meant for the girls, but my fear is that not even hard oak would survive their games. They managed to pulverise to dust three lawn bowls but refused to tell me how. I suspect the Americans believe they have invented the ultimate weapon, but then they have not yet met the Brownlow sisters.’

  James could not resist.

 
‘May I?’

  He took back the lamb and let it nestle in the centre of his palm, plied its toffee-smooth surface with his fingers.

  ‘It was a gift from the Blythes,’ said Reverend Brownlow. ‘When they moved to Wales, they could not afford to take with them many possessions. Lily brought us quite a few things to give to the poor, but this she wanted us to keep. As a thank you. And, of course, a memento.’

  A flutter of knuckles at the parlour door. Mrs Brownlow’s pretty but harried face appeared round it.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She caught her husband’s eye. ‘Could you—?’

  ‘My apologies,’ he said to James. ‘I will be back. I just hope I can recall where I last left my whip and chair.’

  This time, James inspected the armchair before sinking into it. He was so very tired. Bone weary was the phrase, and it was entirely accurate. His bones ached as if they’d had enough of holding him up and would prefer to collapse to the ground in a rattling heap before flattening to dust, like Reverend Brownlow’s lawn bowls, in a final act of surrender.

  He gripped the wooden object in his hand hard, so as to feel that his muscles could still work if he wanted them to. He knew without looking that the lamb was not perfectly rendered, that one leg was awry, because he had long ago committed it to memory and only yesterday captured it in a drawing. When Reverend Brownlow had said Lily had given them the nativity set as a memento, she’d meant it to be one not of her family but of Rowan. The Reverend had been Rowan’s friend, which James had also been, and his ally, which James had not. James did not need a physical object to help him remember. There was no forgetting what he had done.