A Place of Hiding

Time was short. With Guy’s death, Frank had thought they’d bought silence. But this day had shown him otherwise. Graham was determined to set off on the course of his own destruction. Although he’d managed to hide himself away for more than fifty years, his refuge was gone, and there was no sanctuary now from what would befall him.

Frank’s legs felt as if he were dragging irons as he approached the chest of drawers in his bedroom. He picked up the list from where he’d placed it and as he descended the stairs he carried it in front of him like a sacrificial offering.

In the sitting room, the television was showing two doctors in scrubs, hovering over a patient in an operating theatre. Frank switched this off and turned to his father. He was still asleep, with his jaw agape, a dribble of saliva pooling in the cavity of his lower lip.

Frank bent to him and put his hand on Graham’s shoulder. He said,

“Dad, wake up. We’ve got to talk,” and he gave him a gentle shake. Graham’s eyes opened behind the thick glass of his spectacles. He blinked in confusion, then said, “Must’ve dropped off, Frankie. Wha’s the time?”

“Late,” Frank said. “Time to go to sleep properly.”

Graham said, “Oh. Righ’, lad,” and he made a move to rise. Frank said, “Not yet, though. Look at this first, Dad,” and he held the food receipt out before him, level with his father’s failing vision. Graham knitted his brows as his gaze swept over the piece of paper. He said, “Wha’s this, then?”

“You tell me. It’s got your name on it. See? Right here. There’s a date as well. Eighteenth of August, nineteen forty-three. It’s mostly written in German. What d’you make of it, Dad?”

His father shook his head. “Nothing. Don’t know a thing about it.”

His assertion seemed genuine, as it no doubt was to him.

“D’you know what it says? The German, I mean. Can you translate it?”

“Don’t speak Kraut, do I? Never did. Never will.” Graham rustled round in his chair, moved forward, and put his hands on its arms.

“Not yet, Dad,” Frank said to stop him. “Let me read this to you.”

“Time for bed, you said.” Graham’s voice sounded wary.

“Time for this first. It says six sausages. One dozen eggs. Two kilos flour. Six kilos potatoes. One kilo beans. And tobacco, Dad. Real tobacco. Two hundred grams of it. This is what the Germans gave to you.”

“The Krauts?” Graham said. “Rubbish. Where’d you get...Lemme see.” He made a weak grab for it.

Frank moved it out of his reach and said, “Here’s what happened, Dad. You were sick of it, I think. The scrabbling just to stay alive. Thin rations. Then no rations at all. Brambles for tea. Potato peels for cake. You were hungry and tired and sick to death of eating roots and weeds. So you gave them names—”

“I never—”

“You gave them the ones they wanted because what you wanted was a decent smoke. And meat. God, how you wanted meat. And you knew the way to get it. That’s what happened. Three lives in exchange for six sausages. A fair bargain when you’ve been reduced to eating the household cat.”

“Tha’s not true!” Graham protested. “You gone mad, or what?”

“This is your name, isn’t it? This is the signature of the Feldkommandant on the bottom of the page. Heine. Right there. Look at it, Dad. You were approved from on high for special treatment. Slipped a little sustenance now and then to see you through the war. If I have a look through the rest of the documents, how many more of these am I going to find?”

“I don’ know what you’re talking about.”

“No. You don’t. You’ve made yourself forget. What else could you do when the lot of them died? You didn’t expect that, did you? You thought they’d just do time and come home. I’ll give you that much.”

“You’ve gone mad, boy. Let me out of this chair. Back away with you. Back away, I say, or I’ll know the reason why.”

That paternal threat he’d heard as a child, so infrequently as to be nearly forgotten, worked on Frank now. He took a step back. He watched his father struggle out of the chair.

“I’m going to bed, I am,” Graham said to his son. “ ’Nough of this twaddle. Things to do tomorrow and I mean to be rested ’n order to do

’em. And mind you, Frank”—with a trembling finger pointed at Frank’s chest—“don’t you plan to stand in my way. You hear me? There’s tales to be told and I mean to tell ’em.”

“Aren’t you listening to me?” Frank asked in anguish. “You were one of them. You turned in your mates. You went to the Nazis. You struck a deal. And you’ve spent the last sixty years denying it.”