A Place of Hiding

Paul made no reply to Frank’s specious effort at a genial welcome. Instead, his milky grey eyes filled with tears, which he rubbed away by lifting his arm and scoring his face with the overworn flannel of his shirt. He wore no jacket, which was second cousin to insanity in this weather, and his wrists hung out from his shirt like white parentheses finishing off arms the size of sycamore saplings. He tried to say something but he gave a strangled sob instead. Taboo took the opportunity to enter the cottage unbidden. There was nothing for it but to ask the boy in. Frank did so, sitting him down on the cane-bottomed chair and shoving the door closed against the December cold. But as he turned, he saw Paul was on his feet. He’d shrugged his rucksack off as if it were a burden he hoped someone would take from his shoulders, and he was bent forward against a stack of cardboard boxes in the attitude of someone either embracing their contents or exposing his back for scourging.

Frank thought it was a little of both. For the boxes represented one of the bonds that Paul Fielder had with Guy Brouard at the same time as they would serve to remind him that Guy Brouard was gone forever. The boy would doubtless be devastated by Guy’s death regardless of what he knew or didn’t know of the terrible manner in which he’d met it. Living as he probably did in circumstances where he was one of many with parents ill-suited for any undertaking beyond boozing and bonking, he’d certainly have blossomed under the attention Guy Brouard had showered upon him. True, Frank himself had never actually seen evidence of that blossoming in the times Paul had attended Guy at Moulin des Niaux, but then again, he hadn’t known the taciturn boy before Guy’s advent in his life. The near-silent watchfulness that appeared to be the hallmark of Paul’s character whenever the three of them were sorting through the wartime contents of the cottages might have actually been an astounding evolution from an abnormal and absolute mutism that had gone before. Paul’s thin shoulders trembled and his neck, against which his fine hair curled like the locks of a Renaissance putto, looked too delicate to support his head. This he dropped forward to rest on the top box in the stack. His body heaved. He gulped convulsively.

Frank felt out of his depth. He approached the boy and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder, saying, “There, there,” and wondering how he would reply if the boy said, “Where, where?” in reply. But Paul said nothing, merely continued in his pose. Taboo came to sit at his feet and watched him.

Frank wanted to say that he mourned the passing of Guy Brouard with equal depth, but despite his desire to comfort the boy, he knew how unlikely it was that anyone on the island save the man’s own sister felt a grief akin to Paul’s. Thus, he could offer Paul one of two things: completely inadequate words of comfort or the opportunity to carry on with the work that he, Guy, and the boy himself had been engaged in. The first Frank knew he couldn’t carry off. As to the second, he couldn’t bear the thought. So the only option was to send the teenager on his way. Frank said, “See here, Paul, I’m sorry you’re upset. But shouldn’t you be at school? It’s not end of term yet, is it?”

Paul raised a flushed face to Frank. His nose was running and he wiped it on the heel of his hand. He looked simultaneously so pathetic and so hopeful that it came to Frank all in a rush exactly why the boy had come to see him.

Good God, he was looking for a replacement, seeking another Guy Brouard to show an interest in him, to give him a reason to...what?

Dream his dreams? Persevere in their attainment? What, exactly, had Guy Brouard promised this pitiful boy? Certainly nothing that Frank Ouseley—forever childless—could help him acquire. Not with a ninetytwo-year-old father to care for. And not with the burdens he himself was trying to carry: of expectations that had run fast and headlong into an incomprehensible reality. As if in confirmation of Frank’s suspicions, Paul snuffled and stilled his spasmodically heaving chest. He wiped his nose a final time along his flannel sleeve, and he looked round him as if only then he’d become aware of where he was. He sucked in on his lip, his hands plucking at the tattered hem of his shirt. Then he went across the room to where a stack of boxes stood, with to be sorted written in black felt pen on the top and sides of each.

Frank’s spirits sank. It was as he thought: The boy was here to bond with him and carry on with the work as a sign of that bond. This wouldn’t do. Paul pulled the top box from the stack and gingerly set it down on the floor as Taboo joined him. He squatted next to it. With Taboo sinking into his usual posture of blowsy head on paws and devoted eyes fixed on his silent master, Paul carefully opened the box as he’d seen Guy and Frank do a hundred times. The contents constituted a jumble of wartime medals, old belt buckles, boots, Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht caps, and other items of apparel worn by those enemy troops in the distant past. He did as Guy and Frank had themselves done: He spread a polythene sheet on the stone floor, and he began to set the items out upon it, preparatory to cataloguing each of them in the three-ring notebook that they had been using. He rose to get the notebook from its storage place, which was at the back of the filing drawer from which Frank had only moments before pulled the copies of G.I.F.T. Frank saw his opportunity. He cried out, “Hey! See here, young man!” and he shot across the room to slam the filing drawer shut as the boy pulled it open. He moved so quickly and spoke at such a volume that Taboo leaped up and began to bark.