A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  In the house, he found his father nodding in his chair with pages of the Guernsey Press scattered like overlarge playing cards round him on the floor. Frank realised as he saw the paper that he hadn't told Mrs. Petit to keep it from his father, so he had an uneasy few moments as he gathered the pages up and scanned them for a mention of Guy's death. He breathed more easily when he saw there was none today. Tomorrow would be different with coverage of the funeral. For today, he was safe.

  He went on to the kitchen where he put the newspaper back into order and set about making their tea. On her final visit to Graham, Mrs. Petit had thoughtfully brought a pie along with her, and she'd affixed a jaunty label to its tin. Chicken & leek, enjoy! was written on a from-Betty's-kitchen card woven through the plastic tines of a miniature pitchfork upended and driven through the crust.

  This would do nicely, Frank thought. He filled the kettle and rooted out the tea tin. He spooned English Breakfast into the pot.

  He was setting the plates and the cutlery on the table mats when his father stirred in the sitting room. Frank heard him give an awakening snort first, followed by the startled gasp of someone who hadn't intended to fall asleep.

  “Time's it?” Graham Ouseley called out. “That you, Frank?”

  Frank went to the door. He saw that his father's chin was wet and that a string of saliva had followed a groove from his mouth to form a stalactite of phlegm on his jaw.

  “Getting our tea,” he said.

  “How long you been home?”

  “A few minutes. You were asleep. I didn't like to wake you. How'd you get on with Mrs. Petit?”

  “She helped me to the toilet. I don't like women in the toilet with me, Frank.” Graham plucked at the blanket that was covering his knees. “Where you been all these hours? What time's it gone?”

  Frank looked at the old alarm clock on the cooker. He was surprised to see it was after four. “Let me ring Mrs. Petit so she doesn't think she's meant to pop round any longer,” he said. After he'd done that, he went back to answer his father's question, only to find him nodding off again. The blanket had slipped, so Frank adjusted it, tucking it in round Graham's spindly legs and easing back the old man's chair to keep his head from flopping onto his bony chest. With a handkerchief, he wiped his father's chin and removed the stringy saliva from his jaw. Old age, he thought, was a real bugger. Once a man's three-score-and-ten was exceeded, he was on the slippery slope to complete incapacity.

  He got their tea ready: high tea in the old manner of labourers. He heated the pie and sliced wedges from it. He put out a salad and buttered the bread. When the food was laid out and the tea was brewed, he went to fetch Graham and brought him into the kitchen. He could have served him on a tray in his chair, but he wanted them to be face-to-face for the conversation that they needed to have. Face-to-face implied man-to-man: two men speaking, not a father and his son.

  Graham ate the chicken-and-leek pie appreciatively, the affront at having been taken to the toilet by Mrs. Petit forgotten in the pleasure of her cooking. He even had a second helping, a rare occurrence for a man who normally consumed less food than an adolescent girl.

  Frank decided to allow him to enjoy the meal before he broke the news. So they dined mostly in silence, with Frank meditating on the best approach into their conversation and Graham commenting only sporadically on the food, mostly on the gravy, which was the best he'd had, he declared, since Frank's mum passed on. That was how he always referred to Grace Ouseley's drowning. The tragedy at the reservoir—Graham and Grace thrashing in the water and only one of them emerging alive—had been lost to time.

  The food spurred Graham's thoughts from his wife to wartime and specifically to the Red Cross parcels the islanders had at long last received when the lack of supplies on Guernsey had reduced the populace to parsnip coffee and sugar beet syrup. From Canada had come an unthinkable largesse, Graham informed his son: chocolate biscuits, my lad, and didn't they go a treat with real tea? sardines and milk powder, tins of salmon and prunes and ham and corned beef. Ah, it was a fine, fine day when the Red Cross parcels proved to the people of Guernsey that, small though the island was, it was not forgotten by the rest of the world.

  “An' we needed to see that, we did,” Graham declared. “The Jerrys might've wanted us to think their bloody sod of a Führer was going to walk on water and multiply the loaves once the world was his, but we'd've died, Frankie, before he passed as much as a sausage in our direction.”

  A smear of gravy was on Graham's chin, and Frank leaned forward and wiped it off. He said, “Those times were tough.”

  “But people don't know it like they ought, do they? Oh, they think of the Jews and the gypsies, they do. They think of places like Holland and France. And the Blitz. Bloody hell, how they think of the Blitz, which the noble English—those very same English whose bloody king abandoned us to the Jerrys, mind you, with a farewell-for-now-and-I-know-you'll-get-on-with-the-enemy-lads-and-lasses . . .” Graham had a gobbet of chicken pie on his fork and he held it shakily in the air, where it hung suspended like an example of those German bombers and just as likely to drop its load.

  Frank leaned forward again and gently guided the fork to his father's mouth. Graham accepted the chicken, chewing and talking at once. “They still live it, those English, Frank. London gets bombed and the world is meant never to forget it for fifteen seconds, while here . . . ? Hell. We may's well've just been minor inconvenienced, for all the memories the world has of what happened. Never you mind the port getting bombed—twenty-nine dead in that, Frankie, and never a weapon we even had to defend ourselves—and those poor Jew ladies sent to the camps and the executions of whoever they chose to call a spy. It might've not happened for all the world knows. But we shall soon fix that up right and proper. Won't we, boy?”

  So here was the moment at last, Frank thought. He wouldn't have to manufacture an entrée to the conversation he needed to have with his father. All he had to do was to seize the day, so he made the decision before he could talk himself out of it and said, “Dad, there's something come up, I'm afraid. I haven't wanted to tell you about it. I know what the museum means to you, and I guess I didn't have the nerve to put a spanner in the dream.”

  Graham cocked his head and presented to his son what he always claimed was his better ear. “Say again?” he said.

  Frank knew for a fact that there was nothing wrong with his father's hearing unless something was being said that he preferred not to hear. So he just went on. Guy Brouard, he told his father, had passed away a week ago. His death was quite sudden and unexpected and clearly he'd been fit as a fiddle and unthinking of his own demise since he'd not considered what his passing might do to their plans for the wartime museum.

  “Wha's this?” Graham shook his head as if trying to clear it. “You say Guy's dead? That's not what you're saying, is it, my boy?”

  Unfortunately, Frank said, that's exactly what he was saying. And the fact of the matter was that, for some reason, Guy Brouard hadn't provided for every eventuality in the fashion one might have expected of him. His will left no money for the wartime museum, so the plan to build it was going to be shelved.

  Graham said, “Doing what?” as he swallowed his food and with a trembling hand took up his milky tea. “Set out mines, they did. Schrapnellemine Thirty-fives. Demolition charges, too. Riegel mines. Put up warning flags but think what it was like. Little yellow banners telling us not to set foot on what was ours. The world's got to know this, laddie. Got to know we used carageen moss for our jelly.”

  “I know, Dad. It's important that no one forgets.” Frank had little appetite for the rest of his pie. He pushed the plate towards the centre of the table and scooted his chair so that he was speaking directly into his father's ear. No mistaking what I'm telling you, his actions said. Listen up, Dad. Things have changed for good. He said, “Dad, there's not going to be a museum. We don't have the money. We were depending on Guy to finance the building and he's not left funds in his
will to do that. Now, I know you can hear me, Dad, and I'm sorry to say it, that sorry, believe me. I wouldn't have told you at all—I didn't actually plan to tell you Guy had passed away—but once I heard his will read, I felt I didn't have the choice. I'm sorry.” And he told himself that he was sorry although that was only part of his tale.

  Graham's hand splashed hot tea onto his chest as he tried to raise the cup to his lips. Frank reached forward to steady his movement, but Graham jerked away from him, spilling more. He wore a thick waistcoat fully buttoned over his flannel shirt, so the liquid didn't scald him. And it seemed more important to him to avoid contact with his son than to dampen his clothes. “Me and you,” Graham muttered, his eyes looking dim. “We had our plan, Frankie.”

  Frank wouldn't have thought he could feel so wretchedly wounded as he watched his father's defences fall. The sensation, he thought, was akin to seeing a Goliath drop to his knees in front of him. He said, “Dad, I wouldn't hurt you for the world. If I knew of a way to build your museum without Guy's help, I'd do it. But there is no way. The cost's too high. We've got no course left but to let the idea go.”

  “People need to know,” Graham Ouseley protested, but his voice was weak and neither tea nor food was of interest to him any longer. “No one's meant to forget.”

  “I agree.” Frank sorted through his thoughts to find a way to ease the blow's pain. “Perhaps, in time, we'll find a way to make that happen.”

  Graham's shoulders drooped and he looked round the kitchen, like a sleepwalker awakened and confused. His hands fell to his lap and began to crumple his table napkin convulsively. His mouth worked upon words that he didn't say. His glance took in familiar objects and he seemed to cling to them for what they afforded him of comfort. He pushed away from the table and Frank rose as well, thinking his father wanted the toilet, his bed, or his chair in the sitting room. But as he took Graham's elbow, the old man resisted. What he wanted, it turned out, was on the work top where Frank had placed it, neatly refolded to its tabloid size with the shield of two crosses offset between the word Guernsey and its fellow, Press.

  Graham snatched up the newspaper and clutched it to his chest. “So be it,” he said to Frank. “The way's different, but the outcome's the same. That's what counts.”

  Frank tried to suss out the connection his father was making between the dissolution of their plans and the island's newspaper. He said doubtfully, “I expect the paper will run the story. From that we might interest a tax exile or two in making donations. But as to whether we'd be able to bring in enough cash from just an article in the paper . . . I don't think we can depend on it, Dad. Even if we could, this sort of thing takes years.” He didn't add the rest: that at ninety-two his father hardly possessed those years.

  Graham said, “I'll ring 'em up myself. They'll come. They'll be interested, they will. Once they know, they'll come running.” He even took three doddering steps towards the telephone, and he lifted the receiver as if he meant to make the call forthwith.

  Frank said, “I don't think we can expect the paper to see the story with the same sort of urgency, Dad. They'll probably cover it. It's got human interest value, for certain. But I don't think you ought to get your hopes—”

  “It's time,” Graham persisted, as if Frank had not spoken. “I promised myself. Before I die, I'll do it, I told myself. There's those who kept the faith and those who didn't. And the time has come. Before I die, Frank.” He rustled through some magazines that lay on the work top beneath a collection of a few days' post. He said, “Where's that directory gone to? What's the number, boy? Let's make the call.”

  But Frank was fixated on keeping the faith and breaking the faith and what his father actually meant. There were a thousand different ways to do each in life—keep or break faith—but in wartime when a land was occupied, there was only one. He said carefully, “Dad, I don't think . . .” God, he thought, how to stop his father from so reckless a course? “Listen, this isn't a good way to go about it. And it's far too soon—”

  “Time's going,” Graham said. “Time's almost gone. I swore to myself. I swore on their graves. They died for G.I.F.T. and no one paid. But now they shall. That's the way it is.” He unearthed the directory from a drawer of tea towels and table mats, and although it was no thick volume, he heaved it with a grunt to the work top. He began to leaf through it and his breath came fast, like a runner near the end of the race.

  Frank said in a final effort to stop him, “Dad, we've got to assemble the proof.”

  “We've got the bloody proof. It's all up here.” He pointed to his skull with a crooked finger, badly healed during wartime in his futile flight from discovery: the Gestapo coming for the men behind G.I.F.T., betrayed by someone on the island in whom they'd put their trust. Two of the four men responsible for the news-sheet had died in prison. Another had died attempting to escape. Only Graham had survived, but not unscathed. And not without the memory of three good lives lost in the cause of freedom and at the hands of a whisperer too long unidentified. The tacit agreement between politicians in England and politicians on the island precluded investigation and punishment once the war was over. Bygones were supposed to be bygones, and since evidence was deemed to be insufficient “to warrant the institution of criminal proceedings,” those whose self-interest had brought about the death of their fellows lived on untouched by their pasts, into a future their own acts had denied men far better than they themselves were. Part of the museum project would have set that record straight. Without the museum's collaboration section, the record into eternity would be as it was: the fact of betrayal locked in the minds of those who committed it and those who were affected by it. Everyone else would be allowed to live on without the knowledge of who had paid the price for the freedoms they now enjoyed and who had forced that fate upon them.

  “But, Dad,” Frank said although he knew he spoke in vain, “you're going to be asked for more proof than your word alone. You must know that.”

  “Well, see about getting it out of all that clobber,” Graham said with a nod towards the wall to indicate the cottages next door, where their collection was housed. “We'll have it ready for them when they come. Get on with it, boy.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “No!” Graham slammed his frail fist down onto the directory and he shook the telephone receiver at his son. “You get on with it and you do it now. No nonsense, Frank. I'm naming names.”

  Chapter 14

  DEBORAH AND CHEROKEE SAID very little on their way back to the Queen Margaret Apartments. The wind had come up and a light rain was falling, which gave them the excuse for silence, Deborah sheltering herself beneath an umbrella and Cherokee hunching his shoulders and turning up the collar of his coat. They retraced their route back down Mill Street and crossed the small square. The area was completely deserted, save for a yellow van parked in the middle of Market Street, into which an empty display case was being loaded from one of the vacant butcher's stalls. It was a dismal indication of the market's demise, and as if making a comment on the proceedings, one of the removal men stumbled and dropped his end of the case. Its glass shattered; its side dented. His partner cursed him for a bloody clumsy fool.

  “Tha's gonna cost us big!” he shouted.

  What the other man said was lost as Deborah and Cherokee turned the corner and began ascending Constitution Steps. But the thought was there, hanging between them: that which they'd done was costing them big.

  Cherokee was the one to break their silence. Midway up the hill, where the steps turned, he paused and said Deborah's name. She stopped in her climb and looked at him. The rain, she saw, had beaded his curly hair with a net of tiny drops that caught the light and his eyelashes spiked childlike with the damp. He was shivering. They were protected here from the wind, but even if that hadn't been the case, he wore a heavy jacket, so Deborah knew he wasn't reacting to the cold.

  His words affirmed this. “It's got to be nothing.”

  She didn't pretend
to need clarification. She knew how unlikely it was that anything else was on his mind. She said, “We still have to ask her about it.”

  “They said there could be others on the island. And that guy they mentioned—the one in Talbot Valley?—he's got a collection from the war that you wouldn't believe. I've seen it myself.”

  “When?”

  “One of the days . . . He was there for lunch and he was talking about it with Guy. He offered to show it to me, and Guy talked it up, so I thought, What the hell? and I went. Two of us went.”

  “Who else?”

  “Guy's kid friend. Paul Fielder.”

  “Did you see another of these rings then?”

  “No. But that doesn't mean there wasn't one. This guy had stuff everywhere. Boxes and bags of it. File cabinets. Shelves. It's all inside a couple of duplexes, and it's completely unorganized. If he had a ring and the ring ended up missing for one reason or another . . . Hell, he wouldn't even know. He can't have everything catalogued.”

  “Are you saying Paul Fielder may have pinched a ring while you were there?”

  “I'm not saying anything. Just that there's got to be another ring, because no way did China . . .” Awkwardly he drove his hands into his pockets and looked away from Deborah, up the hill in the direction of Clifton Street, the Queen Margaret Apartments, and the sister who waited for him in Flat B. “No way did China hurt anyone. You know it. I know it. This ring . . . It's someone else's.”