A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  She said, “Has she gone off somewhere, then?”

  “Won't come out of her room.”

  “You've taken the lock off the door?”

  “No need for it now.”

  “No need?” She felt a shudder run through her. She clasped her arms round her body although the house was not the least bit cold.

  “No need,” Henry repeated, and as if he wanted to illustrate a point, he went to the sink where the water was dripping and he used the wooden spoon to fish something out.

  It was a pair of woman's knickers that he held up, and he allowed the water to run off them and pool on the floor. Valerie could see the faint stain that was still upon them despite the soaking and despite the bleach. She felt a wave of nausea as she understood exactly why her brother had kept his daughter in her room.

  “So she's not,” Valerie said.

  “One breeze in hell.” He jerked his head in the direction of the bedrooms. “So she won't come out. You can talk to her if you have a mind to. But she's got the door locked from the inside now and she's been wailing like a cat when you drown its kittens. Bloody little fool.” He slammed down the lid of the washing machine, pushed a few buttons, and set it to its business.

  Valerie went to her niece's bedroom door. She tapped on it and said her name, adding, “It's Auntie Val, darling. Will you open the door?” but Cynthia was utterly silent within. At this, Valerie thought about the worst. She cried, “Cynthia? Cynthia! I'd like to speak to you. Open the door please.” Again, silence was the only reply. Deathly silence. Inhuman silence. There seemed to Valerie to be only one way that a seventeen-year-old girl went from wailing like a cat to perfect stillness. She hurried back to her brother.

  “We need to get into that bedroom,” she said. “She may have harmed—”

  “Rubbish. She'll come out when she's ready.” He barked a bitter laugh. “Maybe she's grown to like it in there.”

  “Henry, you can't just let her—”

  “Don't tell me what I can and can't!” he shouted. “Don't you sodding ever tell me one bloody thing more. You've told me enough. You've done your part. I'll cope with the rest the way I want to.”

  This was her biggest fear: her brother's coping. Because what he was coping with was something far larger than a daughter's sexual activity. Had it been some boy from town, from the college, Henry might have warned Cynthia of the dangers, might have seen to it that every precaution was taken to safeguard her from the fallout of sex that was casual but nonetheless highly charged because it was all so new to her. But this had been more than the budding of a daughter's sexual awareness. This had been a seduction and a betrayal so profound that when Valerie had first revealed it to her brother, he had not believed her. He could not bring himself to believe her. He'd retreated from the information like an animal stunned by a blow to the head. She'd said, “Listen to me, Henry. It's the truth, and if you don't do something, God only knows what will happen to the girl.”

  Those were the fateful words: if you don't do something. The affair was now over, and she was desperate to know what that something had been.

  Henry looked at her long after he had spoken, with the way I want to ringing between them like the bells of St. Martin's Church. Valerie raised her hand to her lips and pressed them back against her teeth as if this gesture could stop her from saying what she was thinking, what she most feared.

  Henry read her as easily as he'd always done. He gave her a look from head to toe. He said, “Got the guilts, Val? Not to worry, girl.”

  Her relieved, “Oh Harry, thank God, because I—” was cut short when her brother completed his confession.

  “You weren't the only one to tell me about them.”

  Chapter 22

  RUTH ENTERED HER BROTHER'S bedroom for the first time since his death. The moment had come, she decided, to sort through his clothes. Not so much because anything made this an immediate necessity, but because sorting through his clothes afforded her employment, which was what she wanted. She wanted to do something related to Guy, something that would put her close enough to feel his comforting presence but at the same time keep her distant enough to prevent her from learning anything more about the many ways in which he'd deceived her.

  She went to the wardrobe and removed his favourite tweed jacket from its hanger. Taking a moment to absorb the familiar scent of his shaving lotion, she slid her hand into each pocket in turn, emptying them of a handkerchief, a roll of breath mints, a biro, and a piece of paper torn from a small spiral notebook, its ragged edges still intact. This last was folded into a tiny square, which Ruth unfolded. C + G = ♥4ever! had been written upon it in an unmistakably adolescent hand. Ruth hastily crumpled the paper in her fist and found herself looking left and right as if someone might have been watching her, some avenging angel seeking the sort of proof she herself had just stumbled upon.

  Not that she required proof at this point. Not that she had ever required it. One didn't need proof for what one knew was a monstrous fact because one had actually seen the truth of it before one's eyes . . .

  Ruth experienced the same kind of sickness that had hit her on the day she'd returned unexpectedly early from her Samaritans meeting. She'd not yet had a diagnosis for her pain. Calling it arthritis, she'd been dosing herself with aspirin and hoping for the best. But on this day, the intensity of the aching made her useless for anything other than getting herself home and getting herself supine on her bed. So she'd left the meeting long before its conclusion and she'd driven back to Le Reposoir.

  Climbing the stairs took an effort: her will against the reality of her weakness. She won that battle and staggered along the corridor to her bedroom, next to Guy's. She had her hand on the doorknob when she heard the laughter. Then a girl's voice cried out, “Guy, don't! That tickles!”

  Ruth stood like salt because she knew that voice and because she knew it, she didn't move from her door. She couldn't move because she couldn't believe. For that reason, she told herself there was probably a very simple explanation for what her brother was doing in his bedroom with a teenager.

  Had she quickly removed herself from the corridor, she might have been able to cling to that belief. But before she could even think about making herself scarce, her brother's bedroom door opened. Guy came out, shrugging a dressing gown over his naked body as he said into the room, “I'll use one of Ruth's scarves, then. You'll love it.”

  He turned and saw his sister. To his credit—to his one and only credit—his cheeks went from flushed to waxen in an instant. Ruth took a step towards him, but he grabbed the knob of the door and pulled it shut. Behind it, Cynthia Moullin called out, “What's going on? Guy?” while Guy and his sister faced each other.

  Ruth said, “Step away, frère,” as Guy said hoarsely, “Good God, Ruth. Why are you home?”

  She said, “To see, I suppose,” and she shouldered past him to reach the door.

  He didn't try to stop her, and she wondered at that now. It was almost as if he'd wanted her to see everything: the girl on the bed—slender, beautiful, naked, fresh, and so unused—and the tassel he'd been teasing her with, left on her thigh, where he'd last been applying it.

  She'd said, “Get dressed,” to Cynthia Moullin.

  “I don't think I will” was the girl's reply.

  They'd stayed there, the three of them, actors waiting for a cue that did not come: Guy by the door, Ruth near the wardrobe, the girl on the bed. Cynthia looked at Guy and raised an eyebrow, and Ruth had wondered how any adolescent caught in this kind of situation could possibly look so sure of what would happen next.

  Guy said, “Ruth.”

  Ruth said, “No.” And to the girl, “Get dressed and get out of this house. If your father could see you—”

  Which was as far as she got because Guy came to her then and put his arm round her shoulders. He said her name again. Then quietly—and incredibly—into her ear, “We want to be alone right now, Ruthie, if you don't mind. Obviously, we didn't know you'
d come home.”

  It was the absolute rationality of Guy's statement in circumstances where rationality was least expected that propelled Ruth out of the room. She went into the corridor, and Guy murmured, “We'll talk later” as he shut the door. Before it closed completely, Ruth heard him say to the girl, “I suppose we'll do without the scarf for now,” and then the old floor creaked under him as he crossed to her and the old bed creaked as he joined her on it.

  Afterwards—hours, it seemed, although it was probably twenty-five minutes—water ran for a while and a hair dryer blew. Ruth lay on her bed and listened to the sounds, so domestic and natural that she could almost pretend she'd been mistaken in what she'd seen.

  But Guy did not allow that. He came to her once Cynthia had departed. It was dark by then, and Ruth hadn't yet turned on a light. She would have preferred to remain in the darkness indefinitely, but he didn't allow that. He made his way over to her bedside table and switched on the lamp. “I knew you wouldn't be sleeping,” he said.

  He looked at her long, murmured, “Ma soeur chérie,” and sounded so deeply troubled that at first Ruth thought he meant to apologise. She was wrong.

  He went to the small overstuffed armchair and sank into it. He looked somehow transported, Ruth thought.

  “She's the one,” he said in a tone that a man might use to identify a sacred relic. “She's come to me at last. Can you credit that, Ruth? After all these years? She's definitely the one.” He rose as if the emotion within him couldn't be contained. He began to move about the room. As he spoke, he touched the curtains at the window, the edge of Ruth's earliest needlepoint, the corner of the chest of drawers, the lace that fretted the edge of a mat. “We mean to marry,” he said. “I'm not telling you that because you found us . . . like that today. I meant to tell you after her birthday. We both meant to tell you. Together.”

  Her birthday. Ruth gazed at her brother. She felt caught in a world she didn't recognise, one ruled by the maxim If it feels good, do it; explain yourself later but only if you're caught.

  Guy said, “She'll be eighteen in three months. We thought a birthday dinner . . . You, her father, and her sisters. Perhaps Adrian will come over from England as well. We thought I'd put the ring in among her gifts and when she opens it . . .” He grinned. He looked, Ruth had to admit, rather like a boy. “What a surprise it'll be. Can you keep mum till then?”

  Ruth said, “This is—” but could go no further with words. She could only imagine and what she imagined was too terrible to face, so she turned her head away.

  Guy said, “Ruth, you've nothing to fear from this. Your home is with me as it always has been. Cyn knows that and she wants it as well. She loves you like . . .” But he didn't complete the thought.

  This allowed her to complete it. “A grandmother,” she said. “And what does that make you?”

  “Age isn't important in love.”

  “My God. You're fifty years—”

  “I know how much older I am,” he snapped. He came back to the bed and stood looking down at her. His face was perplexed. “I thought you'd actually celebrate this. The two of us. Loving each other. Wanting a life together.”

  “How long?” she asked.

  “No one knows how long anyone's going to live.”

  “I meant how long. Today . . . This couldn't have been . . . She was too familiar.”

  Guy didn't answer at first and Ruth's palms dampened as she realised exactly what his reluctance implied. She said, “Tell me. If you don't, she will.”

  He said, “Her sixteenth birthday, Ruth.”

  It was worse than she'd thought because she knew what it meant: that her brother had taken the girl on the very day it had become completely legal to do so. This would mean he'd had his eye on her for God only knew how long. He'd laid his plans, and he'd carefully orchestrated her seduction. My God, she thought, when Henry found out . . . when he worked it all out as she herself had just done . . .

  She said numbly, “But what about Anaïs?”

  “What about Anaïs?”

  “You said the same about her. Don't you remember? You said, ‘She's the one.' And you believed it then. So what makes you think—”

  “This is different.”

  “Guy, it's always different. In your mind, it's different. But that's only because it's new.”

  “You don't understand. How could you? Our lives have taken such different paths.”

  “I've seen you walk every step of yours,” Ruth said, “and this is—”

  “Bigger,” he cut in. “Profound. Transforming. If I'm mad enough to walk away from her and from what we have, then I deserve to be alone forever.”

  “But what about Henry?”

  Guy looked away.

  Ruth saw, then, that Guy knew very well that in order to get to Cynthia, he'd engaged in a calculated use of his friend Henry Moullin. She saw that Guy's “Let's get Henry to take a look at the problem” about this or that round the estate had been his way of gaining access to Henry's daughter. And just as he would doubtless rationalise this machination with regard to Henry if she challenged him about it, so would he continue to rationalise what she knew was in effect yet another delusion about a woman who'd ostensibly won his heart. Oh, he believed that Cynthia Moullin was the one. But so had he believed about Margaret and then JoAnna and all the Margarets and JoAnnas since them, up to and including Anaïs Abbott. He was talking about marrying this latest Margaret-and-JoAnna only because she was eighteen years old and she wanted him and he liked what this did for his old man's ego. In time, though, his eye would stray. Or hers would. But in either case, people were going to be hurt. They were going to be devastated. Ruth had to do something to prevent all that.

  So she'd spoken to Henry. Ruth told herself this action was to save Cynthia from getting her heart broken, and she needed to believe that even now. A thousand different things had made the affair between her brother and the teenager more than just morally and ethically wrong. If Guy lacked the wisdom and the courage to end it gently and to set the girl free to have a full and real life—a life with a future—then she must take steps to make it impossible for him to do anything else.

  Her decision had been to tell Henry Moullin only a partial truth: that Cynthia was, perhaps, getting too fond of Guy. Hanging about Le Reposoir a bit too much instead of spending time with her friends or upon her studies, making excuses to drop in at the estate and visit her aunt, using far too many of her free hours following Guy about. Ruth called it calf love and said that Henry might want to speak to the girl . . .

  He'd done so. Cynthia responded with a frankness Ruth had not expected. It wasn't a school-girl crush and it wasn't calf love, she told her father placidly. There was really nothing to worry about, Daddy. They meant to marry, for she and her father's friend were lovers and had been for nearly two years.

  So Henry stormed to Le Reposoir and found Guy feeding the ducks at the edge of the tropical garden. Stephen Abbott had been with him, but that hadn't mattered a whit to Henry. He shouted, “You filthy piece of rot!” and advanced upon Guy. “I'm going to kill you, you bastard. I'll cut off your prick and shove it down your throat. God damn you to hell. You touched my daughter!”

  Stephen had come on the run to fetch Ruth, babbling. She caught the name Henry Moullin and the words “yelling about Cyn” and she dropped what she was doing and followed the boy outside. Hurrying across the croquet lawn, she could hear the raging for herself. She looked round frantically for someone who could intervene, but Kevin and Valerie's car was gone and only she and Stephen were there to stop the violence.

  For it would be violence, Ruth had realised. How stupid she'd been to think a father would face the man who'd seduced his daughter and not want to throttle him, not want to kill him.

  Even as she approached the tropical garden, she could hear the blows. Henry was grunting and raging, the ducks were squawking, but Guy was utterly silent. As the grave. She gave a cry and rushed through the shrubbery.

>   The bodies were everywhere. Blood, feathers, and death. Henry stood amid the ducks he'd beaten with the board he still carried. His chest heaved, and his face was twisted with his tears.

  He'd lifted a shaking arm and pointed to Guy, who stood transfixed near a palm, a bag of feed spilling out at his feet. “You stay away,” Henry hissed at him. “I'll kill you next if you touch her again.”

  Now in Guy's bedroom, Ruth relived it all. She felt the tremendous weight of her own responsibility for what had happened. Meaning well had not been enough. It had not spared Cynthia. It had not saved Guy.

  She folded her brother's coat slowly. She turned as slowly and went back to the wardrobe to pull out the next garment.

  As she was removing trousers from a hanger, the bedroom door swung open and Margaret Chamberlain said, “I want to talk to you, Ruth. You managed to avoid me at dinner last night—the long day, the arthritis, the necessary rest . . . how convenient for you. But you aren't going to avoid me now.”

  Ruth stopped what she was doing. “I haven't been avoiding you.”

  Margaret sputtered derisively and came into the room. She looked, Ruth saw, much the worse for wear. Her French twist was askew, with locks of hair slipping from its generally careful roll. Her jewellery didn't complement her day's clothing as it always did, and she'd forgotten the sunglasses that, rain or shine, habitually perched on the top of her head.

  “We've been to see a solicitor,” she announced. “Adrian and I. You knew we would, of course.”

  Ruth laid the trousers gently on Guy's bed. “Yes,” she said.

  “So did he, obviously. Which was why he made sure we'd be cut off at the pass before we got to it.”

  Ruth said nothing.

  Margaret's lips became thin. She said, “Isn't that the case, Ruth?” with a malignant smile. “Didn't Guy know exactly how I'd react when he disinherited his only son?”