A Place of Hiding

“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.”