A Place of Hiding

“You’re my husband,” she countered. “What else can you say?”


St. James knew there was no real way to argue against that point. As her husband, he wanted her happiness. Both of them knew that—aside from her father—he’d be the very last person to utter a word that might destroy it. He felt defeated, and she must have read that defeat on his face, because she said, “Isn’t the real proof in the pudding? You saw it for yourself. Next to no one came to see them.”

They were back to that again. “That’s owing to the weather.”

“It feels like more than the weather to me.”

How it did and didn’t feel seemed like a fruitless direction to take, as amorphous and groundless as an idiot’s logic. Always the scientist, St. James said, “Well, what result did you hope for? What would have been reasonable for your first showing in London?”

She considered this question, running her fingers along the white door-jamb as if she could read the answer there in Braille. “I don’t know,”

she finally admitted. “I think I’m too afraid to know.”

“Too afraid of what?”

“I can see my expectations were out of kilter. I know that even if I’m the next Annie Leibovitz, it’s going to take time. But what if everything else about me is like my expectations? What if everything else is out of kilter as well?”

“Such as?”

“Such as: What if the joke’s on me? That’s what I’ve been asking myself all evening. What if I’m just being humoured by people? By your family. By our friends. By Mr. Hobart. What if they’re accepting my pictures on suffrage? Very nice, Madam, yes, and we’ll hang them in the gallery, they’ll do little enough harm in the month of December, when no one’s considering art shows anyway in the midst of their Christmas shopping and besides, we need something to cover our walls for a month and no one else is willing to exhibit. What if that’s the case?”

“That’s insulting to everyone. Family, friends. Everyone, Deborah. And to me as well.”

The tears she’d been holding back spilled over then. She raised a fist to her mouth as if she knew fully well how childish was her reaction to her disappointment. Yet, he knew, she couldn’t help herself. At the end of the day, Deborah simply was who Deborah was.

“She’s a terribly sensitive little thing, isn’t she, dear?” his mother had remarked once, her expression suggesting that proximity to Deborah’s emotion was akin to exposure to tuberculosis.

“You see, I need this,” Deborah said to him. “And if I’m not to have it, I want to know, because I do need something. Do you understand?”

He crossed the room to her and took her in his arms, knowing that what she wept for was only remotely connected to their dismal night in Little Newport Street. He wanted to tell her that none of it mattered, but he wouldn’t lie. He wanted to take her struggle from her, but he had his own. He wanted to make their life together easier for both of them, but he had no power. So instead, he pressed her head against his shoulder.

“You have nothing to prove to me,” he said into her springy copper hair.

“If only it was as easy as knowing that” was her reply. He started to say that it was as easy as making each day count instead of casting lines into a future neither of them could know. But he got only as far as drawing breath, when the doorbell rang long and loud, as if someone outside had fallen against it.

Deborah stepped away from him, wiping her cheeks as she looked towards the door. “Tommy and Helen must have forgotten...Did they leave something here?” She looked round the room.

“I don’t think so.”

The ringing continued, rousing the household dog from her slumber. As they went to the entry, Peach came barreling up the stairs from the kitchen, barking like the outraged badger hunter she was. Deborah scooped up the squirming dachshund.

St. James opened the door. He said, “Have you decided—” but he cut off his own words when he saw neither Thomas Lynley nor his wife. Instead, a dark-jacketed man—his thick hair matted by the rain and his blue jeans soaked against his skin—huddled in the shadows against the iron railing at the far side of the top front step. He was squinting in the light and he said to St. James, “Are you—?” and nothing more as he looked beyond to where Deborah was standing, the dog in her arms, just behind her husband. “Thank God,” he said. “I must’ve gotten turned around ten times. I caught the Underground at Victoria, but I went the wrong way and didn’t figure it out till...Then the map got soaked. Then it blew away. Then I lost the address. But now. Thank God...”