A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  Simon said this last more quietly than the rest. Deborah raised her head to look at him again. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There's more, Simon. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Just this. Are you the only person he knows in London?”

  “Probably.”

  “I see.”

  “I see?”

  “He might well need you, then, Deborah.”

  “And does that bother you if he does?”

  “Not bother. No. But are there other family members?”

  “Just their mum.”

  “The tree-sitter. Yes. Well, it might be wise to phone her. What about the father? You said China has a different father to Cherokee's?”

  Deborah winced. “Hers is in prison, my love. At least he was when we lived together.” And when she saw the concern on Simon's face—expressing nothing so much as like father, like daughter?—she went on to say, “It was nothing serious. I mean, he didn't kill anyone. China never talked about him much, but I know it had something to do with drugs. An illegal lab somewhere? I think that was it. It's not like he pushed heroin on the street, though.”

  “Well, that's comforting.”

  “She's not like him, Simon.”

  He made a grumbling sound, which she took for his hesitant agreement. They lay in silence then, content with each other, her head back on his chest and his fingers once again in her hair.

  Deborah loved her husband differently in moments like this. She felt more his equal. The sensation came not only from their quiet conversation but also—and perhaps more important for her—from what had preceded their conversation. For the fact that her body could give him such pleasure always seemed to balance the scales between them and that she could be a witness to that pleasure allowed her to feel even momentarily her husband's superior. Because of this, her own pleasure had long been secondary to his, a fact that Deborah knew would horrify the liberated women of her world. But that's just how it was.

  “I reacted badly,” she finally murmured. “Tonight. I'm sorry, my love. I do put you through it.”

  Simon had no trouble following the line of her thinking. “Expectations destroy our peace of mind, don't they? They're future disappointments, planned out in advance.”

  “I did have it all planned out. Scores of people with champagne glasses in their hands, standing awestruck in front of my pictures. ‘My God, she's a genius,' they declare to each other. ‘The very idea of taking a Polaroid . . . Did you know they could be black and white? And the size of them . . . Heavens, I must own one at once. No. Wait. I must have at least ten.' ”

  “‘The new flat in Canary Wharf demands them,' ” Simon added.

  “‘Not to mention the cottage in the Cotswolds.' ”

  “‘And the house near Bath.' ”

  They laughed together. Then they were silent. Deborah shifted her position to look at her husband.

  “It still stings,” she admitted. “Not as much. Not nearly. But a bit. It's still there.”

  “Yes,” he said. “There's no quick panacea for being thwarted. We all want what we want. And not getting it doesn't mean we cease to want it. I do know that. Believe me. I know.”

  She looked away from him quickly, realising that what he was acknowledging traveled a much greater distance than comprised the brief journey to this night's disappointment. She was grateful that he understood, that he'd always understood no matter how supremely rational logical cool and incisive were his comments on her life. Her eyes ached with tears, but she wouldn't allow him to see them. She wanted to give him the momentary gift of her tranquil acceptance of inequity. When she'd managed to displace sorrow with what she hoped would sound like determination, she turned back to him.

  “I'm going to sort myself out properly,” she said. “I may strike out in a whole new direction.”

  He observed her in his usual manner, an unblinking gaze that generally unnerved lawyers when he was testifying in court and always reduced his university students to hopeless stammers. But for her the gaze was softened by his lips, which curved in a smile, and by his hands, which reached for her again.

  “Wonderful,” he said as he pulled her to him. “I'd like to make a few suggestions right now.”

  Deborah was up before dawn. She'd lain awake for hours before falling asleep, and when she'd finally nodded off, she'd tossed and turned through a series of incomprehensible dreams. In them she was back in Santa Barbara, not as she'd been—a young student at Brooks Institute of Photography—but rather as someone else entirely: a sort of ambulance driver whose apparent responsibility it was not only to fetch a recently harvested human heart for transplant but also to fetch it from a hospital she could not find. Without her delivery, the patient—lying for some reason not in an operating theatre but in the car repair bay at the petrol station behind which she and China had once lived—would die within an hour, especially since his heart had already been removed, with a gaping hole left in his chest. Or it might have been her heart instead of his. Deborah couldn't tell from the partially shrouded form that was raised in the repair bay on a hydaulic lift.

  In her dream, she drove desperately through the palm-lined streets to no avail. She couldn't remember a single thing about Santa Barbara and no one would help her with directions. When she woke up, she found that she'd thrown off the covers and was so damp with sweat that she was actually shivering. She looked at the clock and eased out of bed, padding over to the bathroom, where she bathed the worst of the nightmare away. When she returned to the bedroom, she found Simon awake. He said her name in the darkness and then, “What time is it? What are you doing?”

  She said, “Terrible dreams.”

  “Not art collectors waving their chequebooks at you?”

  “No, sad to say. Art collectors waving their Annie Leibovitzes at me.”

  “Ah. Well. It could have been worse.”

  “Really? How?”

  “It could have been Karsch.”

  She laughed and told him to go back to sleep. It was early yet, too early for her dad to be up and about, and she herself certainly wasn't going to trip up and down the stairs with Simon's morning tea as her father did. “Dad spoils you, by the way,” she informed her husband.

  “I consider it only a minor payment for having taken you off his hands.”

  She heard the rustle of the bedclothes as he changed his position. He sighed deeply, welcoming back sleep. She left him to it.

  Downstairs, she brewed herself a cup of tea in the kitchen, where Peach looked up from her basket by the cooker and Alaska emerged from the larder, where, from the snow-tipped look of him, he doubtless had spent the night on top of a leaking flour bag. Both animals came across the red tiles to Deborah, who stood at the draining board beneath the basement window while her water heated in the electric kettle. She listened to the rain continue to fall on the flagstones of the area just outside the back door. There had been only a brief respite from it during the night, sometime after three, as she lay awake listening not only to the wind and the waves of rainfall hitting the window but also to the committee in her head that was shrilly advising her what to do: with her day, with her life, with her career, and above all with and for Cherokee River.

  She eyed Peach as Alaska began to saunter back and forth meaningfully between her legs. The dog hated going out in the rain—walkies became carries whenever there was so much as a drop of precipitation—so a walk was out of the question. But a quick dash up into the back garden to do the necessary was completely in order. Peach seemed to read Deborah's mind, however. The dachshund beat a hasty retreat back into her basket as Alaska began to mew.

  “Don't plan on a lengthy lie-in,” Deborah told the dog, who watched her mournfully, making her eyes go diamond-shaped in that way she had when she wanted to look especially pathetic. “If you don't go out right now for me, Dad shall take you on a march to the river. You do know that, don't you?”

  Peach seemed willing to risk it.
She deliberately lowered her head to her paws and let her eyes sink closed. Deborah said, “Very well,” and shook out the cat's daily allotment of food, placing it carefully out of the reach of the dog who, she knew, would appropriate it the instant her back was turned, feigned sleep notwithstanding. She made her tea and carried it upstairs, feeling her way in the dark.

  It was frigid in the study. She eased the door shut and lit the gas fire. In a folder on one of the bookshelves she'd been assembling a set of small Polaroids that represented what she wanted to photograph next. She carried this to the desk, where she sat in Simon's worn leather chair and began to flip through the pictures.

  She thought about Dorothea Lange and wondered if she herself had what it took to capture in a single face that was the right face one unforgettable image that could define an era. She had no 1930s dust bowl America whose hopelessness etched itself on the countenance of a nation, though. And to be successful in capturing an image of this, her own age, she knew she would have to think beyond the box that had long been defined by that remarkable aching arid face of a woman, accompanied by her children and a generation of despair. She thought she was up to at least half of the work: the thinking part of it. But she wondered if the rest was what she really wanted to do: spend another twelve months on the street, take another ten or twelve thousand photographs, always attempting to look beyond the mobile-phone-dominated fast-paced world that distorted the truth of what was really there. Even if she managed all that, what would it gain her in the long run? At the moment, she simply didn't know.

  She sighed and placed the pictures on the desk. She wondered not for the first time if China had chosen the wiser path. Commercial photography paid the rent, bought food, and put clothes on one's body. It didn't necessarily have to be a soulless endeavour. And despite the fact that Deborah was in the fortunate position of not having to pay the rent, buy the food, or put clothes upon anyone, the very fact of that caused her to want to make a contribution somewhere else. If she wasn't needed to assist in their economic situation, then at least she could use her talent to contribute to the society in which they lived.

  But could turning to commercial photography actually do that? she wondered. And what kind of commercial pictures would she take? At least China's pictures related to her interest in architecture. She'd actually set out to be a photographer of buildings, and professionally doing precisely what she had set out to do was not in any way selling out, not as Deborah would consider herself selling out if she took the easier route and went commercial. And if she did sell out, what on earth would she take pictures of? Toddlers' birthday parties? Rock stars being released from gaol?

  Gaol . . . Lord. Deborah groaned. She rested her forehead in her hands and closed her eyes. How important was any of this, measured against China's situation? China, who had been there in Santa Barbara, a caring presence when she needed one most. I've seen the two of you together, Debs. If you tell him the truth, he'll take the next plane back. He'll want to marry you. He wants to already. But not like this, Deborah had told her. It can't be like this.

  So China had made the necessary arrangements. China had taken her to the necessary clinic. Afterwards, China had sat by her bed so when she opened her eyes, the first person she saw was China herself, simply waiting. Then saying, “Hey, girl,” with such an expression of kindness that Deborah thought in the span of her life she would never again have such a friend.

  That friendship was a call to action. She could not allow China to believe, any longer than possible, that she was alone. But what to do was the question, because—

  A floor board creaked somewhere in the corridor outside the study. Deborah raised her head. Another board creaked. She got up, crossed the room, and pulled open the door.

  In the diffused light that came from a lamp still lit outside on the early-morning street, Cherokee River was removing his jacket from the radiator, where Deborah had placed it to dry overnight. His intention seemed unmistakable.

  “You can't be leaving,” Deborah said incredulously.

  Cherokee whirled round. “Jeez. You scared the hell out of me. Where'd you come from like that?”

  Deborah indicated the study door, where behind her the lamp shone on Simon's desk and the gas fire dipped and bobbed a soft glow against the high ceiling. “I was up early. Sorting through some old pictures. But what are you doing? Where are you going?”

  He shifted his weight, ran his hand through his hair in that characteristic gesture of his. He indicated the stairs and the floors above. “Couldn't sleep. I swear I won't be able to again—anywhere—till I get someone over to Guernsey. So I figured the embassy . . .”

  “What time is it?” Deborah examined her wrist to discover she'd not put on her watch. She hadn't glanced at the clock in the study, but from the gloom outside—even exacerbated by the insufferable rain—she knew it couldn't be much later than six. “The embassy won't be open for hours.”

  “I figured there might be a line or something. I want to be first.”

  “You still can be, even if you have a cup of tea. Or coffee if you like. And something to eat.”

  “No. You've done enough already. Letting me stay here last night? Inviting me to stay? The soup and the bath and everything? You bailed me out.”

  “I'm glad of it. But I'm not going to hear of your going just now. There's no point. I'll drive you over there myself in plenty of time to be first in line if that's what you want.”

  “I don't want you to—”

  “You don't have to want me to anything,” Deborah said firmly. “I'm not offering. I'm insisting. So leave the jacket there and come with me.”

  Cherokee appeared to think this over for a moment: He looked at the door where its three window panes allowed the light to come through. Both of them could hear the persistent rain, and as if to emphasise the unpleasantness he would face if he ventured out, a gust of wind shot like a prize fighter's blow from the Thames and cracked loudly within the branches of the sycamore just along the street.

  He said reluctantly, “All right. Thanks.”

  Deborah led him downstairs to the kitchen. Peach looked up from her basket and growled. Alaska, who'd taken up his normal daytime position on the window sill, glanced over, blinked, and went back to his perusal of the patterns the rain was making on the panes.

  Deborah said, “Mind your manners,” to the dog and established Cherokee at the table, where he studied the scars that knife marks had made upon the wood and the burnt rings left from the assault of too-hot pans upon it. Deborah once again set the electric kettle to work and took a teapot from the ancient dresser. She said, “I'm making you a meal as well. When did you last have a real meal?” She glanced over at him. “I expect not yesterday.”

  “There was the soup.”

  Deborah snorted her disapproval. “You can't help China if you fall apart.” She went to the fridge for eggs and bacon; she took tomatoes from their basket near the sink and mushrooms from the dark corner near the outside door, where her father kept a large paper sack for them, hanging from a hook among the household's macs.

  Cherokee got up and walked over to the window above the sink, where he extended his hand to Alaska. The cat sniffed his fingers and, head lowered regally, allowed the man to scratch behind his ears. Deborah glanced over to see Cherokee gazing round the kitchen as if absorbing every one of its details. She followed his gaze to register what she took for granted: from the dried herbs that her father kept hanging in neatly arranged bunches to the copper-bottomed pots and pans that lined the wall within reach above the hob, from the old worn tiles on the floor to the dresser that held everything from serving platters to photographs of Simon's nieces and nephews.

  “This is a cool house, Debs,” Cherokee murmured.

  To Deborah, it was just the house in which she'd lived from childhood, first as the motherless daughter of Simon's indispensable right-hand man, then however briefly as Simon's lover before becoming Simon's wife. She knew its draughts, its
plumbing problems, and its exasperating lack of electrical outlets. To her, it was simply home. She said, “It's old and draughty and it's mostly maddening.”

  “Yeah? It looks like a mansion to me.”

  “Does it?” She forked nine rashers of bacon into a pan and set them cooking beneath the grill. “It actually belongs to Simon's whole family. It was quite a disaster when he took it over. Mice in the walls and foxes in the kitchen. He and Dad spent nearly two years making it livable. I suppose his brothers or his sister could move in with us now if they wanted to since it's everyone's house and not just ours. But they wouldn't do that. They know he and Dad did all the work.”

  “Simon has brothers and sisters, then,” Cherokee remarked.

  “Two brothers in Southampton . . . where the family business is . . . shipping . . . His sister's in London, though. She used to be a model but now she's campaigning to be an interviewer of obscure celebrities on an even more obscure cable channel that no one watches.” Deborah grinned. “Quite the character, is Sidney. That's Simon's sister. She drives her mum mad because she won't settle down. She's had dozens of lovers. We've met one after another at holidays and each one is always the man of her dreams at last at last.”

  “Lucky,” Cherokee said, “to have family like that.”

  A wistfulness in his voice prompted Deborah to turn from the cooker. “Would you like to ring yours?” she asked. “Your mum, I mean. You can use the phone on the dresser there. Or the one in the study if you'd like privacy. It's . . .” She looked at the wall clock and did the maths. “It's only ten-fifteen last night in California.”

  “I can't do that.” Cherokee returned to the table and dropped into a chair. “I promised China.”