A Place of Hiding

Was that too much to hope and plan for? Margaret certainly didn’t think so. But the last few days had shown her that her every attempt to smooth the way for Adrian, her every intercession on his behalf, the excuses she’d made for everything from sleepwalking to inadequate bowel control were just so many pearls in a food trough frequented by swine. Very well, she thought. So be it. But she would not leave Guernsey till she’d sorted him out about one thing. Evasions were fine. Looked at one way, they could even be construed as a pleasing sign of a long-delayed adulthood. But outright lies were unacceptable, now and always. For lies were the stuff of the terminally weak-minded.

She saw now that Adrian had probably been lying to her most of his life, both by action and by implication. But she’d been so caught up in her efforts to keep him away from the malign influence of his father that she’d accepted his version of every event in which he’d got caught up: from the supposedly accidental drowning of his puppy the night before her second marriage to the recent reason for his engagement’s termination. That he was still lying to her was something about which Margaret had little doubt. And this International Access business spoke of the greatest untruth he’d yet delivered.

So she said, “He sent you that money, didn’t he? Months ago. What I’m wondering is what you spent it on.”

Unsurprisingly, Adrian replied with “What are you talking about?”

He sounded indifferent. No. He actually sounded bored.

“Betting, was it? Card playing? Idiotic stock market gambles? I know there’s no International Access because you haven’t left the house in more than a year for anything other than visiting your father or seeing Carmel. But perhaps that’s it. Did you spend it on Carmel? Did you buy her a car?

Jewellery? A house?”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course. That’s exactly what I did. She agreed to marry me, and it must have been because I laid on the dosh like jelly on toast.”

“I’m not joking about this,” Margaret said. “You’ve lied about asking your father for money, you’ve lied about Carmel and her involvement with your father, you’ve allowed me to believe that your engagement ended because you wanted ‘different things’ from the woman who’d previously agreed to marry you...Exactly when haven’t you lied?”

He glanced her way. “What difference does it make?”

“What difference does what make?”

“Truth or lies. You see only what you want to see. I just make that easier for you.” He barreled past a minivan that was trundling along ahead of them. He sat on the horn as they overtook it and regained their own lane mere inches—it seemed—from an oncoming bus.

“How on earth can you say that?” Margaret demanded. “I’ve spent the better part of my life—”

“Living mine.”

“That is not the case. I’ve been involved, as any mother would be. I’ve been concerned.”

“To make sure things went your way.”

“And,” Margaret ventured onward, determined that Adrian would not direct the course of their conversation, “the gratitude I’ve received for my effort has all come in the form of outright falsehoods. Which is unacceptable. I deserve and demand nothing less than the truth. I mean to have it this instant.”

“Because you’re owed it?”

“That’s right.”

“Of course. But not because you’re naturally interested.”

“How dare you say that! I came here for you. I exposed myself to the absolute agony of my memories of that marriage—”

“Oh please,” he scoffed.

“—because of you. To make sure you got what you deserved from your father’s will because I knew he’d do anything he could to keep it from you. That was the only way he had left to punish me.”

“And why would he be interested in punishing you?”

“Because he believed that I’d won. Because he couldn’t cope with losing.”

“Won what?”

“Won you. I kept you from him for your own good, but he couldn’t see that. He could see it only as my act of vengeance because to see it any other way would have meant that he’d have to look at his life and assess the effect it might have had on his only son had I allowed you to be exposed to it. And he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to look. So he blamed me for keeping you apart.”

“Which you never intended to do, of course,” Adrian pointed out sardonically.

“Of course I intended it. What would you have had me do? A string of lovers. A string of mistresses when he was married to JoAnna. God only knows what else. Orgies, probably. Drugs. Drinking. Necrophilia and bestiality for all I know. Yes, I protected you from that. I’d do it all again. I was right to do it.”

“Which is why I owe you,” Adrian said. “I get the picture. So tell me”—he glanced at her as they paused to filter into the traffic at an intersection which would direct them towards the airport—“what is it exactly that you want to know?”

“What happened to his money? Not the money that bought all the things that were put into Ruth’s name, but the other money, the money he kept, because he must have kept a mountain of it. He couldn’t have had his little flings and kept a woman as high-maintenance as Ana?s Abbott on cash that Ruth doled out to him. She’s far too censorious to be financing his mistress’s lifestyle anyway. So what in God’s name happened to his money?