A Place of Hiding

Margaret felt an icy wind chill her neck. “Are you saying...?” but she knew that he was. She glanced round them. Her smile felt like a death mask. She drew her son out of the hall. She led him down the passage and beyond the dining room to the butler’s pantry, where she shut the door upon them. She didn’t like to think where their conversation was heading. She didn’t want to think where their conversation was heading. Less did she like or want to think what where it was heading might imply about the recent past. But she couldn’t stop the force of things she herself had brought into motion, so she spoke.

“What are you telling me, Adrian?” She kept her back to the door of the butler’s pantry so he couldn’t escape her. There was a second door— this one to the dining room—but she felt confident that he wouldn’t go there. The murmur of voices beyond it told them both that the room was occupied. And he’d started to twitch—his eyes beginning to unfocus— which heralded a state he wouldn’t want strangers to observe. When he didn’t reply at once, Margaret repeated her question. She spoke more gently now because, despite her impatience with him, she could see his suffering. “What happened, Adrian?”

“You know,” he answered dully. “You knew him so you know the rest.”

Margaret clasped his face between her palms. She said, “No. I can’t believe...” She tightened her hold on him. “You were his son. He would have drawn the line at that. Because of that. You were his son.”

“As if that mattered.” Adrian jerked away from her. “Just like you were his wife. That didn’t matter a whole hell of a lot either.”

“But Guy and Carmel ? Carmel Fitzgerald? Carmel who never had ten remotely amusing words to say to anyone and probably wouldn’t have known a clever comment from—” Margaret brought herself up short. She looked away.

“Right. So she was perfect for me,” Adrian said. “She wasn’t used to anyone clever so she was easy pickings.”

“That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I was thinking. She’s a lovely girl. You and she together—”

“What difference does it make what you were thinking? It’s the truth. He saw it. She was going to be easy. Dad saw that and he had to make his move. Because if he ever left one patch of ground unploughed when it was right in front of him just begging for it, Mother—” His voice cracked. Beyond them in the dining room, the clink of plates and cutlery suggested that the caterers were beginning to clear away the food as the reception drew to a close. Margaret glanced at the door behind her son and knew that it was only a matter of moments before they were interrupted.

She couldn’t bear the thought that he should be seen like this, with his face gone greasy and his chapped lips trembling. He was reduced to childhood in an instant and she was reduced to the woman she’d always been as his mother, caught between telling him to get a grip on himself before someone saw him as a puling sniveler and crushing him to her bosom to comfort him while vowing to be avenged on his adversaries. But it was the thought of vengeance that brought Margaret quickly round to seeing Adrian as the man he was today, not as the child he once had been. And the chill on her neck turned to frost in her blood as she considered the ways that vengeance might have played out here on Guernsey.

The door handle rattled behind her son and the door swung open, hitting him in the back. A grey-haired woman popped her head inside, saw Margaret’s rigid face, said, “Oh! Sorry,” and disappeared. But her intrusion was sign enough. Margaret hustled her son out of the room. She led him upstairs and into her bedroom, thankful that Ruth had placed her in the western half of the house, away from her own room and away from Guy’s. She and her son would have privacy here, and privacy was what they needed.

She sat Adrian down on the dressing table’s stool and she fetched a bottle of single malt from her suitcase. Ruth was notoriously niggardly with the drink, and Margaret thanked God for this as otherwise she wouldn’t have thought to come supplied. She poured a full two fingers and shot them down, then poured again and handed the glass to her son.

“I don’t—”

“You do. This will steady your nerves.” She waited until he had obeyed her, draining the glass and then holding it loosely between his palms. Then she said to him, “Are you certain, Adrian? He liked to flirt. You know that. It may have been nothing more. Did you see them together? Did you—” She hated to ask for the grisly details but she needed the facts.

“I didn’t need to see them. She was different with me afterwards. I guessed.”

“Did you speak to him? Accuse him?”

“Of course I did. What do you take me for?”

“And what did he say?”

“He denied it. But I forced him to—”

“Forced him?” She could scarcely breathe.

“I lied. I told him she’d confessed. So he did as well.”

“And then?”

“Nothing. We went back to England, Carmel and I. You know the rest.”

“My God, then why did you come back here again?” she asked him.

“He’d had your fiancée right under your nose. Why did you—”

“I was badgered into coming back, as you might recall,” Adrian said.

“What did you tell me? He’d be so pleased to see me?”