A Place of Hiding

Kevin wouldn’t like this. He’d say, “Why’re you doing this, Val?” And she wouldn’t be able to make a reply that was direct and honest, because for too long there had simply been too much at stake to be direct and honest about anything. Answer, answer, answer, she thought.

He’d left quite early. The weather was getting rougher every day, he’d said, and he needed to see to that leak in the front windows of Mary Beth’s house. With the exposure she had—looking directly west onto Portelet Bay—when the rains came, she was going to have a real problem on her hands. The lower windows affected the sitting room and the water would destroy her carpet, not to mention encourage mould to grow, and Val knew how Mary Beth’s girls both had allergies to damp. Upstairs, even worse, the windows belonged to the two girls’ bedrooms. He couldn’t have his nieces sleeping in their beds while the rain seeped in and ran down the wallpaper, now, could he? He had responsibilities as a brotherin-law, and he didn’t like to disregard them. So off he’d gone to see to his sister-in-law’s windows. Helpless, helpless Mary Beth Duffy, Valerie thought, thrust into an untimely widowhood by a defect of heart that had killed her husband, walking from a taxi to the door of a hotel in Kuwait. All over for Corey in less than one minute. Kev shared that defect of heart with his twin, but none of them had known that till Corey died on that street, in that endless sunshine, in that heat of Kuwait. Thus Kevin owed his life to Corey’s death. A congenital defect in one twin suggested the possibility of such a defect in the other. Kevin had magic planted in his chest now, a device that would have saved Corey had anyone ever suspected that there was something wrong with his heart. Valerie knew her husband felt doubly responsible for his brother’s wife and his brother’s children as a result. While she tried to remind herself that he was only living up to a sense of obligation that wouldn’t have even existed had Corey not died, she couldn’t help looking at the bedside clock and asking herself how long it really did take to seal four or five windows. The girls would be at school—Kev’s two nieces—and Mary Beth would be grateful. Her gratitude in conjunction with her grief could combine to make an intoxicating brew. Make me forget, Kev. Help me forget.

The phone kept ringing, ringing, ringing. Valerie listened, head bent to the task. She pressed her fingers against her eyes. She knew quite well how seduction worked. She’d seen it happen before her eyes. A world history between a man and a woman grew from sidelong glances and knowing looks. It gained definition from those moments of casual contact for which existed an easy explanation: Fingers touch when a plate is passed; a hand on the arm merely emphasises an amusing remark. After that, a flush on the skin presaged a hunger within the eyes. In the end came the reasons to hang about, to see the beloved, to be seen and desired.

How had all of them come to this? she wondered. Where would everything lead if no one spoke?

She’d never been able to lie convincingly. Put to the question, she either had to ignore it, walk away from it, pretend to misunderstand it, or tell the truth. Looking someone in the eye and deliberately misleading them was beyond her meagre acting abilities. When asked “What do you know about this, Val?” her only options were to run or to speak. She’d been absolutely certain of what she’d seen from the window on the morning of Guy Brouard’s death. She was certain still, even now. She’d been certain then because it had all seemed so much in keeping with how Guy Brouard lived: the early-morning passage on his way to the bay where every day he reenacted a swim that was less exercise to him than it was reassurance of a prowess and virility that time was finally draining away, and then moments later, the figure who followed him. Valerie was certain now about who that figure had been because she’d seen the way Guy Brouard had been with the American woman—charming and charmed in that manner he had, part old world courtesy, part new world familiarity—and she knew how his ways could make a woman feel and what his ways could cause a woman to do.