A Place of Hiding

Adrian Brouard, he saw, had established himself as Chief Mourner. This was his right as Guy Brouard’s eldest child and only son. Any friend of Guy’s knew, however, that there had been no communication between the two men in at least three months, and what communication had preceded their estrangement had been characterised mostly by a battle of wills. The young man’s mother must have had a hand in positioning Adrian directly behind the coffin, Frank concluded. And to make sure he stayed there, she’d positioned herself directly behind him. Poor little Ruth came third, and she was followed by Ana?s Abbott and her two children, who’d somehow managed to insinuate themselves into the family for this occasion. The only people Ruth herself had probably asked to accompany her behind her brother’s coffin were the Duffys, but the position to which Valerie and Kevin had been relegated—trailing the Abbotts—didn’t allow them to offer her any comfort. Frank hoped she was able to take some solace from the number of people who’d shown up to express their affection for her and for her brother: friend and benefactor to so many people. For most of his life, Frank himself had eschewed friendship. It was enough for him that he had his dad. From the moment his mother drowned at the reservoir, they’d clung to each other—father and son—and having been a witness to Graham’s attempts first to rescue and then to revive his wife and then to the terrible guilt Graham had lived with for not having been quick enough at the first or competent enough at the second had bound Frank to his father inextricably. By the time he was forty years old, he’d known too much pain and sorrow, had Graham Ouseley, and Frank decided as a child that he would be the one to put an end to both. He had devoted most of his life to this effort, and when Guy Brouard had come along, the possibility of fellowship with another man for the first time laid itself in front of Frank like an apple from the serpent. He’d bitten at that apple like a victim of famine, never once recalling that a single bite was all condemnation ever took.

The funeral seemed endless. Each minister had to speak his own piece in addition to the eulogy itself, which Adrian Brouard stumbled through, reading off three typed sheets of foolscap. The mourners sang hymns appropriate to the occasion, and a soloist hidden somewhere above them lifted her voice in an operatic farewell.

Then it was over, at least the first part. The interment and the reception came next, both of them scheduled for Le Reposoir. The procession to the property was impressive. It strung all along the Quay, from Albert Pier to well beyond Victoria Marina. It slowly wound up Le Val des Terres beneath the thick winter-bare trees skirting along the steep-walled hillside. From there, it followed the road out of town, slicing between the wealth of Fort George on the east with its sprawling modern houses protected behind their hedges and their electric gates and the common housing of the west: streets and avenues thickly built up in the nineteenth century, Georgian and Regency semi-detached dwellings, as well as terraces that had grown decidedly the worse for wear. Just before St. Peter Port gave way to St. Martin, the cortege turned towards the east. The cars coursed beneath the trees, along a narrow road that gave way to an even narrower lane. Along one side of this ran a high stone wall. Along the other rose an earthen bank from which grew a hedge, gnarled and knotted by the December cold.

A break in the wall made way for two iron gates. These stood open and the hearse pulled onto the expansive grounds of Le Reposoir. The mourners followed, with Frank among them. He parked at the side of the drive and made his way along with everyone else in the general direction of the manor house.

Within ten steps, his solitude came to an end. A voice next to him said,

“This changes everything,” and he looked up to see that Bertrand Debiere had joined him.

The architect looked like hell on diet pills. Always far too thin for his extreme height, he seemed to have lost a full stone since the night of the party at Le Reposoir. The whites of his eyes were crisscrossed with spider legs of crimson, and the bones of his cheeks—always prominent anyway—

appeared to rise from his face like chicken eggs attempting to escape from beneath his skin.

“Nobby,” Frank said with a nod of hello. He used the architect’s nickname without a thought. He’d had him as a history student years before at the secondary modern school, and he’d never made it a habit to stand on ceremony when it came to anyone he’d formerly taught. “I didn’t see you at the service.”

Debiere gave no indication if he was bothered by Frank’s use of his nickname. As he’d never been called anything else by his intimates, he probably hadn’t noticed. He said, “Don’t you agree?”

“To what?”

“To the original idea. To my idea. We’ll have to return to it now, I dare say. Without Guy here, we can’t expect Ruth to spearhead things. She won’t know the first thing about this sort of building, and I can’t imagine she’ll want to learn. Can you?”

“Ah. The museum,” Frank said.

“It’ll still go forward. Guy would want that. But as to the design, that’ll have to change. I talked to him about it, but you probably know that already, don’t you? I know you were thick as thieves, you and Guy, so he probably told you that I cornered him. That night, you know. Just the two of us. After the fireworks. I had a closer look at the elevation drawing and I could see—well, who couldn’t if you know anything about architecture?—that this bloke from California had got everything wrong. You’d expect that from someone who designed without having a look at the site, wouldn’t you? Pretty ego-driven, if you ask me. Nothing I would have done, and I told Guy that. I know I was starting to bring him round, Frank.”

Nobby’s voice was eager. Frank glanced at him as they followed the procession that was wending its way to the west side of the house. He didn’t reply, although he could tell that Nobby was desperate for him to do so. The faint sheen on his upper lip betrayed him.

The architect continued. “All those windows, Frank. As if there’s a spectacular view at St. Saviour’s that we’re supposed to make use of, or something. He would have known there wasn’t if he’d come to see the site in the first place. And think what that’s going to do to the heating, all those great long windows. It’ll cost a bloody fortune to keep the place open out of season when the weather’s bad. I presume you want it open out of season, don’t you? If it’s for the island more than just for the tourists, then it has to be open when local people can get there, which they’re not likely even to attempt in the middle of summer when the crowds are here. Don’t you agree?”