A Place of Hiding

The girl looked up again at the mention of Brouard. “Who are you?”


Deborah explained. On their drive from Le Grand Havre China had told her that she’d not heard a whisper about Guy Brouard and anyone called Cynthia Moullin while she herself had been at Le Reposoir. As far as she’d known, Ana?s Abbott was Guy Brouard’s only lover. “They both sure acted like it,” China had said. So it was clear that this girl had been out of the picture prior to the Rivers’ arrival on Guernsey. It remained to be seen why she was out of the picture and at whose instigation. Cynthia’s lips began trembling, curving downwards as Deborah introduced China and herself and laid out the reasons for their visit to the Shell House. By the time everything had been explained to her, the first tears were snaking down her cheeks. She did nothing to stop them. They dripped onto the grey sweatshirt she was wearing, marking it with miniature ovals of her grief.

“I wanted it,” she wept. “He wanted it, too. He never said and I never said but we both knew. He just looked at me this one time before we did it and I knew everything had changed between us. I could see it all in his face—what it would mean to him and everything—and I said to him,

‘Don’t use anything.’ And he smiled that smile which meant he knew what I was thinking and it was okay. It would’ve made everything easier in the end. It would’ve made it logical for us to get married.”

Deborah looked at China. China mouthed her reaction: wow. Deborah said to Cynthia, “You were engaged to Guy Brouard?”

“Would’ve been,” she said. “And now...Guy. Oh Guy.” She wept without embarrassment, like a little girl. “There’s nothing left. If there’d been a baby, I’d’ve had something. But now he’s truly, really dead and I can’t bear it and I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. He says, ‘Go on, now. Get on with your life. You’re free to go about like before,’ and he acts like he didn’t pray for this to happen, like he didn’t think I’d run off if I could and hide till I’d had the baby and it was too late for him to do anything to stop it. He talks about how it would’ve ruined my life, when my life’s ruined now. And he’s glad about that. He’s glad. He’s glad. ” She threw her arms round the wishing well, weeping against its granular rim. They definitely had their question answered, Deborah thought. There could hardly be a cloud in the sky of certainty about Cynthia Moullin’s relationship with Guy Brouard. And the he that she hated had to be her father. Deborah couldn’t imagine who else would have had the concerns she was attributing to the he she so despised. She said, “Cynthia, may we help you into the house? It’s cold out here and as you’ve only that sweatshirt...”

“No! I will never go back in there! I’ll stay out here till I die. I want to.”

“I don’t expect your dad’s going to let that happen.”

“He wants it as much as I do,” she said. “ ‘Hand over the wheel,’ he says to me. ‘You’re not deserving of its protection, girl.’ Like I was supposed to be hurt by that. Like I was supposed to get his meaning. He’s saying ‘You’re no daughter of mine,’ and I’m supposed to hear that without his saying it. But I don’t care a bloody whit, see. I do not care.”

Deborah looked at China in some confusion. China shrugged her own mystification. These were waters far too deep just to wade in. Obviously, some sort of life belt was needed.

“I’d already given it to Guy anyway,” Cynthia said. “Months ago. I told him to carry it with him always. It was stupid, I know. It wasn’t anything but a stupid stone. But I told him it would keep him safe, and I expect he believed...because I told him...I told him...” Her sobbing renewed.

“But it didn’t, did it? It was only a bloody stupid stone. ”

The girl was a fascinating mix of innocence, sensuality, naivete, and vulnerability. Deborah could see her appeal to a man who might want to educate her in the ways of the world, to protect her from it simultaneously, and to initiate her into some of its delights. Cynthia Moullin offered something of a full-service relationship, a definite temptation for a man with a need to maintain an aura of superiority at all times. In fact, Deborah could see herself in the younger girl before her: the person she might have been had she not struck out on her own in America for three years. It was this realisation that prompted her to kneel by the girl and put her hand gently on the back of her neck. She said, “Cynthia, I’m terribly sorry for what you’re going through. But please. Let us take you into the house. You want to die now, but you won’t want that always. Believe me. I know it.”

“So do I,” China said. “Really, Cynthia. She’s telling you the truth.”