A Place of Hiding

Frank’s curse was the respect for history that had sent him first to read it at university, then to teach it to largely indifferent adolescents for nearly thirty years. It was the same respect that had been inculcated in him by his father. It was the same respect that had encouraged him to amass a collection which, he had hoped, would serve the purpose of remembrance long after he was gone.

He’d always believed the truth in the aphorism about remembering the past or being doomed to repeat it. He’d long seen in the armed struggles round the world man’s failure to acknowledge the futility of aggression. Invasion and domination resulted in oppression and rancour. What grew from that was violence in all of its forms. What didn’t grow from that was inherent good. Frank knew this, and he believed it fervently. He was a missionary attempting to win his small world to the knowledge he had been taught to hold dear, and his pulpit was constructed from the wartime properties that he’d collected over the years. Let these objects speak for themselves, he’d decided. Let people see them. Let them never forget.

So like the Germans before him, he’d destroyed nothing. He’d compiled so vast an array of goods that he’d long ago lost track of all that he had. If it was related to the war or the Occupation, he had wanted it. He hadn’t really even known what he had among his collection. For the longest time, he merely thought of everything only in the most generic terms. Guns. Uniforms. Daggers. Documents. Bullets. Tools. Hats. Only the advent of Guy Brouard made him start thinking differently. It could actually be a monument of sorts, Frank. Something that will serve todistinguish the island and the people who suffered. Not to mention those who died. That was the irony. That was the cause.

Frank carried the flimsy old envelope over to a rotting cane-bottomed chair. A floor lamp stood next to this, its shade discoloured and its tassel disengaged, and he switched it on and sat. It poured yellow light on his lap, which was where he placed the envelope, and he studied it for a minute before he opened it, drawing out a batch of fourteen fragile pieces of paper.

From halfway down the stack, he slid one out. He smoothed it against his thighs; he set the others onto the floor. He examined the remaining one with an intensity that would have suggested to an uninformed onlooker that he had never pondered it before. And why would he have done so, really? It was such an innocuous piece of paper. 6 Würstchen, he read. 1 Dutzend Eier, 2 kg. Mehl, 6 kg. Kartoffeln, 1 kg.Bohnen, 200 gr. Tabak.

It was a simple list, really, shoved in among the records of purchases of everything from petrol to paint. It was an unimportant document in the overall scheme of things, the sort of slip that might have gone misplaced without anyone ever being the wiser. Yet it spoke to Frank of many things, not the least of which was the arrogance of the Occupiers, who documented every move they made and then saved those documents against the time of a victory whose advocates they would want to identify. Had Frank not spent every one of his formative years right on into his solitary adulthood being taught the inestimable value of everything remotely related to Guernsey’s time of trial, he might have deliberately misplaced this single piece of paper, and no one would have been the wiser. But he would still have known that it had once existed, and nothing would ever obliterate that knowledge.

Indeed, had the museum remained unconsidered by the Ouseleys, this paper probably would have remained undiscovered, even by Frank himself. But once he and his father had grasped on to Guy Brouard’s offer to build the Graham Ouseley Wartime Museum for the education and betterment of the present and future citizens of Guernsey, the sorting, sifting, and organising essential to such an enterprise had begun. In the process, this list had come to light. 6 Würstchen, in 1943. 1 Dutzend Eier, 2 kg. Mehl,6 kg. Kartoffeln, 1 kg. Bohnen, 200 gr. Tabak.

Guy had been the one to find it, the one to say, “Frank, what d’you make of this?” as he spoke no German.

Frank himself had supplied the translation, doing it mindlessly and automatically, without pausing to read every line of it, without pausing to consider the ramifications. The meaning sank in as the last word —Tabak— drifted between his lips. As he’d become conscious of the implications, he’d lifted his gaze to the top of the paper and then shifted it to Guy, who’d already read it. Guy, who had lost both parents to the Germans, lost an entire family, lost a heritage. Guy said, “How will you deal with this?”

Frank made no reply.

Guy said, “You’re going to have to. You can’t let it go. Holy God, Frank. You don’t intend to let it go, do you?”

That had been the colour and the flavour of their days ever after. Haveyou dealt with it, Frank? Have you brought it up?