A Place of Hiding

The rough wind of revelation had destroyed it. The insubstantial structure itself might never have been. To have lived more than half a century pretending he was not responsible for the deaths of good men...

Frank did not know how he would ever scrape together a fond feeling for his father from the foul detritus which that single fact left in Graham Ouseley’s wake.

He did know he could not do it now. Perhaps someday... If he reached the same age...If he looked on life differently at that point in time... Behind him, he heard the line of traffic begin to move at last.

He turned and saw that the lorry at the junction had finally managed to disentangle itself from its situation. He climbed back into his own car then and eased into the stream of vehicles leaving St. Sampson. He headed with them towards St. Peter Port, picking up speed at last when he cleared the industrial area in Bulwer Avenue and burst from it onto the road that followed the elongated crescent of Belle Greve Bay. He had another stop to make before returning to the Talbot Valley, so he kept on south with the water on his left and St. Peter Port rising like a grey terraced fortress on his right. He wound up through the trees in LeVal des Terres and pulled into Fort Road not fifteen minutes after the time he’d agreed to appear at the Debieres’ house.

He would have preferred to avoid another conversation with Nobby. But when the architect had phoned him and had been so insistent, habitual guilt produced sufficient motivation for Frank to say, “Very well, I’ll call in” and to name the time he’d most likely turn up. Nobby answered the door himself and took Frank into the kitchen, where in the apparent absence of his wife, he was getting the boys’ tea. The room was unbearably hot, and Nobby was greasy-faced with sweat. The air was heavily laden with the odour of a batch of fish fingers previously burnt. From the sitting room came the noise of a computer game in operation, with suitable explosions rhythmically sounding as the player skilfully obliterated bad guys.

“Caroline’s in town.” Nobby bent to inspect a baking sheet that he eased out of the oven. The current set of fish fingers steamed upon it, producing a further malevolent odour. He grimaced. “How can they stand these things?”

“Anything their parents hate,” Frank noted.

Nobby shoved them onto the work top and used a wooden spoon to push them onto a plate. He grabbed a bag of frozen chips from the fridge and dumped these onto the baking sheet, which he returned to the oven. In the meantime, on the hob a pan boiled enthusiastically. It sent a cloud of steam to hover like the ghost of Mrs. Beeton above them. Nobby stirred this and lifted out a spoonful of peas. They were unnaturally green, as if dyed. He looked at them doubtfully, then dropped them back into the boiling water. He said, “She should be here for this. She’s better at it. I’m hopeless.”

Frank knew that his former pupil had not phoned him for a cooking lesson, but he also knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it much longer in the overheated kitchen. So he took over, seeking out a colander into which he dumped the peas, then covering them and the odious fish fingers with foil while the chips were cooking. This done, he opened the kitchen window and said, “What did you want to see me about, Nobby?” to the other man, who’d gone to set the table for his sons.

“She’s in town,” he said.

“You mentioned that.”

“She’s applying for a job. Ask me where.”

“All right. Where?”

Nobby gave a laugh, utterly devoid of humour. “Citizens Advice Bureau. Ask me doing what.”

“Nobby...” Frank was tired.

“Writing their bloody pamphlets,” Nobby said with another laugh, this one high and sounding wild. “She’s gone from Architectural Review to Citizens Advice. Credit that to me. I told her to resign. Write your novel, I told her. Go after your dream. Just like I did.”

“I’m sorry it happened,” Frank said. “You can’t possibly know how sorry.”

“I don’t expect I can. But here’s the real kick in the arse: It was all for nothing. Right from the first. Have you realised that? Or did you know it all along?”

Frank frowned. “How? What was...?”