A Place of Hiding

“What time would you choose?”


Deborah pondered this. “There was an Easter before my mum di ed...A fête on one of the village greens. There were pony rides available for fifty p and I had just that much money. I knew if I spent it, it would be all gone, up in smoke for three minutes in the pony ring and I’d have nothing to spend on anything else. I couldn’t decide what to do. I got all hot and bothered because I was afraid that whatever I did decide would be the wrong decision and I’d regret it and be miserable. So we talked about it, Mum and I. There’s no wrong decision, she told me. There’s just what we decide and what we learn from deciding.” Deborah smiled at the memory. “I’d go back to that moment and live onward from there all over again if I could. Except she wouldn’t die this time.”

“So what did you do?” Cherokee asked her. “Ride the pony? Or not?”

Deborah considered the question. “Isn’t that odd? I can’t remember. I suppose the pony wasn’t all that important to me, even then. It was what she said to me that made a difference. It was how she was.”

“Lucky,” China said.

“Yes,” Deborah replied.

A knock sounded on the door at that, followed by a ringing of the buzzer that seemed insistent. Cherokee went to see who’d come calling. He opened the door to reveal two uniformed constables standing on the front step, one of them looking round anxiously as if checking the potential for ambush and the other having removed a baton which he was slapping lightly against his palm.

“Mr. Cherokee River?” Baton Constable said. He didn’t wait for a reply, as he clearly knew to whom he was speaking. “You’ll need to come with us, sir.”

Cherokee said, “What? Where?”

China rose. “Cherokee? What...?” but she didn’t apparently need to finish her question.

Deborah went to her. She slid her arm round her old friend’s waist. Deborah said, “Please. What’s going on?”

Whereupon Cherokee River was given the formal caution by the States of Guernsey Police.

They’d brought handcuffs with them, but they didn’t use them. One of them said, “If you’ll come with us, sir.”

The other took Cherokee by the arm and led him briskly away.





Chapter 20


The secondary cottages at the water mill were poorly provided with light because generally Frank didn’t work inside either of them in the late afternoons or evenings. But he didn’t need a lot of light to find what he was looking for among the papers in the filing cabinet. He knew where the single document was, and his personal hell comprised the fact that he also knew what the document said.

He drew it forth. A crisp manila folder held it like a layer of smooth skin. Its skeleton, however, was a tattered envelope with crumpled corners, long missing its little metal clasp. During the final days of the war, the occupying forces on the island had suffered from a degree of hubris that was most surprising, considering the defeats piling upon the German military everywhere else. On Guernsey, they had even refused to surrender at first, so determined were they to disbelieve that their plan for European domination and eugenic perfection would come to nothing. When Major-General Heine finally climbed aboard HMS Bulldog to negotiate the terms of his surrender of the island, it was a full day after victory had been declared and was being celebrated in the rest of Europe. Holding on to what little they had left in those final days, and perhaps wanting to leave their mark on the island as every successive presence on Guernsey had done throughout time, the Germans had not destroyed all that they had produced. Some creations—like gun emplacements—were impervious to easy demolition. Others—like that which Frank held in his hands—acted as an unspoken message that there were islanders whose selfinterest had superseded their feelings of brotherhood and whose actions as a result wore the guise of espousing the German cause. That this guise was inaccurate wouldn’t have meant anything to the Occupiers. What counted was the shock value attached to having betrayal writ large and bold: in spiky handwriting, in black and white.