A Place of Hiding

Not that she required proof at this point. Not that she had ever required it. One didn’t need proof for what one knew was a monstrous fact because one had actually seen the truth of it before one’s eyes...Ruth experienced the same kind of sickness that had hit her on the day she’d returned unexpectedly early from her Samaritans meeting. She’d not yet had a diagnosis for her pain. Calling it arthritis, she’d been dosing herself with aspirin and hoping for the best. But on this day, the intensity of the aching made her useless for anything other than getting herself home and getting herself supine on her bed. So she’d left the meeting long before its conclusion and she’d driven back to Le Reposoir. Climbing the stairs took an effort: her will against the reality of her weakness. She won that battle and staggered along the corridor to her bedroom, next to Guy’s. She had her hand on the doorknob when she heard the laughter. Then a girl’s voice cried out, “Guy, don’t! That tickles!”


Ruth stood like salt because she knew that voice and because she knew it, she didn’t move from her door. She couldn’t move because she couldn’t believe. For that reason, she told herself there was probably a very simple explanation for what her brother was doing in his bedroom with a teenager.

Had she quickly removed herself from the corridor, she might have been able to cling to that belief. But before she could even think about making herself scarce, her brother’s bedroom door opened. Guy came out, shrugging a dressing gown over his naked body as he said into the room,

“I’ll use one of Ruth’s scarves, then. You’ll love it.”

He turned and saw his sister. To his credit—to his one and only credit—his cheeks went from flushed to waxen in an instant. Ruth took a step towards him, but he grabbed the knob of the door and pulled it shut. Behind it, Cynthia Moullin called out, “What’s going on? Guy?” while Guy and his sister faced each other.

Ruth said, “Step away, frère, ” as Guy said hoarsely, “Good God, Ruth. Why are you home?”

She said, “To see, I suppose,” and she shouldered past him to reach the door.

He didn’t try to stop her, and she wondered at that now. It was almost as if he’d wanted her to see everything: the girl on the bed—slender, beautiful, naked, fresh, and so unused—and the tassel he’d been teasing her with, left on her thigh, where he’d last been applying it. She’d said, “Get dressed,” to Cynthia Moullin.

“I don’t think I will” was the girl’s reply.

They’d stayed there, the three of them, actors waiting for a cue that did not come: Guy by the door, Ruth near the wardrobe, the girl on the bed. Cynthia looked at Guy and raised an eyebrow, and Ruth had wondered how any adolescent caught in this kind of situation could possibly look so sure of what would happen next.

Guy said, “Ruth.”

Ruth said, “No.” And to the girl, “Get dressed and get out of this house. If your father could see you—”

Which was as far as she got because Guy came to her then and put his arm round her shoulders. He said her name again. Then quietly—and incredibly—into her ear, “We want to be alone right now, Ruthie, if you don’t mind. Obviously, we didn’t know you’d come home.”

It was the absolute rationality of Guy’s statement in circumstances where rationality was least expected that propelled Ruth out of the room. She went into the corridor, and Guy murmured, “We’ll talk later” as he shut the door. Before it closed completely, Ruth heard him say to the girl,

“I suppose we’ll do without the scarf for now,” and then the old floor creaked under him as he crossed to her and the old bed creaked as he joined her on it.

Afterwards—hours, it seemed, although it was probably twenty-five minutes—water ran for a while and a hair dryer blew. Ruth lay on her bed and listened to the sounds, so domestic and natural that she could almost pretend she’d been mistaken in what she’d seen.

But Guy did not allow that. He came to her once Cynthia had departed. It was dark by then, and Ruth hadn’t yet turned on a light. She would have preferred to remain in the darkness indefinitely, but he didn’t allow that. He made his way over to her bedside table and switched on the lamp. “I knew you wouldn’t be sleeping,” he said.

He looked at her long, murmured, “Ma soeur chérie,” and sounded so deeply troubled that at first Ruth thought he meant to apologise. She was wrong.

He went to the small overstuffed armchair and sank into it. He looked somehow transported, Ruth thought.

“She’s the one,” he said in a tone that a man might use to identify a sacred relic. “She’s come to me at last. Can you credit that, Ruth? After all these years? She’s definitely the one.” He rose as if the emotion within him couldn’t be contained. He began to move about the room. As he spoke, he touched the curtains at the window, the edge of Ruth’s earliest needlepoint, the corner of the chest of drawers, the lace that fretted the edge of a mat. “We mean to marry,” he said. “I’m not telling you that because you found us... like that today. I meant to tell you after her birthday. We both meant to tell you. Together.”

Her birthday. Ruth gazed at her brother. She felt caught in a world she didn’t recognise, one ruled by the maxim If it feels good, do it; explain yourself later but only if you’re caught.

Guy said, “She’ll be eighteen in three months. We thought a birthday dinner...You, her father, and her sisters. Perhaps Adrian will come over from England as well. We thought I’d put the ring in among her gifts and when she opens it...” He grinned. He looked, Ruth had to admit, rather like a boy. “What a surprise it’ll be. Can you keep mum till then?”