A Place of Hiding

  “I need to believe in myself,” she said simply. It sounded as if she despaired the very effort to speak, and he understood from this how much she loathed the fact that he had failed to understand her.

  “But you've got to know your work is good,” he said. “How can you go to Bermondsey and capture it like this”—with a gesture towards the wall—“and not know that your work is good? Better than good. Good God, it's brilliant.”

  “Because knowing all that happens here,” she replied. Her voice had become subdued now and her posture—so rigid a moment before—released its tension so that she seemed to sag in front of him. She pointed to her head upon the word here and she placed her hand beneath her left breast as she said, “But believing all that happens here. So far I've not been able to bridge the distance between the two. And if I can't do that . . . How can I weather what I have to weather to do something that will prove me to myself?”

  There it was, he thought. She didn't add the rest, for which he blessed her. Proving herself as a woman through childbirth had been denied his wife. She was looking for something to define who she was.

  He said, “My love . . .” but had no other words. Yet those alone seemed to comprise more kindness from him than she could bear because the metal of her eyes went to liquid in an instant, and she held up a hand to prevent him from crossing the room to comfort her.

  “All the time,” she said, “no matter what happens, there's this voice inside me whispering that I'm deluding myself.”

  “Isn't that the curse of all artists? Aren't those who succeed the ones who're able to ignore their doubts?”

  “But I haven't come up with a way not to listen to it. You're playing at pictures, it tells me. You're just pretending. You're wasting your time.”

  “How can you think you're deluding yourself when you take pictures like these?”

  “You're my husband,” she countered. “What else can you say?”

  St. James knew there was no real way to argue against that point. As her husband, he wanted her happiness. Both of them knew that—aside from her father—he'd be the very last person to utter a word that might destroy it. He felt defeated, and she must have read that defeat on his face, because she said, “Isn't the real proof in the pudding? You saw it for yourself. Next to no one came to see them.”

  They were back to that again. “That's owing to the weather.”

  “It feels like more than the weather to me.”

  How it did and didn't feel seemed like a fruitless direction to take, as amorphous and groundless as an idiot's logic. Always the scientist, St. James said, “Well, what result did you hope for? What would have been reasonable for your first showing in London?”

  She considered this question, running her fingers along the white door-jamb as if she could read the answer there in Braille. “I don't know,” she finally admitted. “I think I'm too afraid to know.”

  “Too afraid of what?”

  “I can see my expectations were out of kilter. I know that even if I'm the next Annie Leibovitz, it's going to take time. But what if everything else about me is like my expectations? What if everything else is out of kilter as well?”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as: What if the joke's on me? That's what I've been asking myself all evening. What if I'm just being humoured by people? By your family. By our friends. By Mr. Hobart. What if they're accepting my pictures on suffrage? Very nice, Madam, yes, and we'll hang them in the gallery, they'll do little enough harm in the month of December, when no one's considering art shows anyway in the midst of their Christmas shopping and besides, we need something to cover our walls for a month and no one else is willing to exhibit. What if that's the case?”

  “That's insulting to everyone. Family, friends. Everyone, Deborah. And to me as well.”

  The tears she'd been holding back spilled over then. She raised a fist to her mouth as if she knew fully well how childish was her reaction to her disappointment. Yet, he knew, she couldn't help herself. At the end of the day, Deborah simply was who Deborah was.

  “She's a terribly sensitive little thing, isn't she, dear?” his mother had remarked once, her expression suggesting that proximity to Deborah's emotion was akin to exposure to tuberculosis.

  “You see, I need this,” Deborah said to him. “And if I'm not to have it, I want to know, because I do need something. Do you understand?”

  He crossed the room to her and took her in his arms, knowing that what she wept for was only remotely connected to their dismal night in Little Newport Street. He wanted to tell her that none of it mattered, but he wouldn't lie. He wanted to take her struggle from her, but he had his own. He wanted to make their life together easier for both of them, but he had no power. So instead, he pressed her head against his shoulder.

  “You have nothing to prove to me,” he said into her springy copper hair.

  “If only it was as easy as knowing that” was her reply.

  He started to say that it was as easy as making each day count instead of casting lines into a future neither of them could know. But he got only as far as drawing breath, when the doorbell rang long and loud, as if someone outside had fallen against it.

  Deborah stepped away from him, wiping her cheeks as she looked towards the door. “Tommy and Helen must have forgotten . . . Did they leave something here?” She looked round the room.

  “I don't think so.”

  The ringing continued, rousing the household dog from her slumber. As they went to the entry, Peach came barreling up the stairs from the kitchen, barking like the outraged badger hunter she was. Deborah scooped up the squirming dachshund.

  St. James opened the door. He said, “Have you decided—” but he cut off his own words when he saw neither Thomas Lynley nor his wife.

  Instead, a dark-jacketed man—his thick hair matted by the rain and his blue jeans soaked against his skin—huddled in the shadows against the iron railing at the far side of the top front step. He was squinting in the light and he said to St. James, “Are you—?” and nothing more as he looked beyond to where Deborah was standing, the dog in her arms, just behind her husband. “Thank God,” he said. “I must've gotten turned around ten times. I caught the Underground at Victoria, but I went the wrong way and didn't figure it out till . . . Then the map got soaked. Then it blew away. Then I lost the address. But now. Thank God . . .”

  With that, he moved fully into the light, saying only, “Debs. What a frigging miracle. I was starting to think I'd never find you.”

  Debs. Deborah stepped forward, hardly daring to believe. The time and the place came back to her in a rush. As did the people from that time and that place. She set Peach on the floor and joined her husband at the door to have a better look. She said, “Simon! Good Lord. I don't believe . . .” But instead of completing her thought, she decided to see for herself what seemed real enough, no matter how unexpected it was. She reached for the man on the step and drew him inside the house. She said, “Cherokee?” Her first thought was how could it be that the brother of her old friend would come to be standing in her front doorway. Then, seeing it was true, that he was actually there, she cried, “Oh my God, Simon. It's Cherokee River.”

  Simon seemed nonplussed. He shut the door behind them as Peach scooted forward and sniffed their visitor's shoes. Apparently not liking what she discovered there, she backed off from him and began to bark.

  Deborah said, “Hush, Peach. This is a friend.”

  To which remark, Simon said, “Who . . . ?” as he picked up the dog and quieted her.

  “Cherokee River,” Deborah repeated. “It is Cherokee, isn't it?” she asked the man. For although she was fairly certain it was he, nearly six years had passed since she'd last seen him, and even during the period of their acquaintance, she'd met him only half a dozen times. She didn't wait for him to reply, saying, “Come into the study. We've a fire burning. Lord, you're soaked. Is that a cut on your head? What are you doing here?” She led him to the ottoman
before the fire and insisted that he remove his jacket. This might have at one time been water resistant, but that time had passed and now it shed rivulets onto the floor. Deborah tossed it on the hearth, where Peach went to investigate.

  Simon said reflectively, “Cherokee River?”

  “China's brother,” Deborah said in reply.

  Simon looked at the man, who'd begun to shiver. “From California?”

  “Yes. China. From Santa Barbara. Cherokee, what on earth . . . ? Here. Do sit down. Please sit by the fire. Simon, is there a blanket . . . ? A towel . . . ?”

  “I'll fetch them.”

  “Do hurry!” Deborah cried, for stripped of his jacket Cherokee had begun to shake like a man who was bordering on convulsions. His skin was so white that it was cast with blue, and his teeth had bitten a tear in his lip that was starting to ooze blood onto his chin. This was in addition to a nasty-looking cut on his temple, which Deborah examined, saying, “This needs a plaster. What's happened to you, Cherokee? You've not been mugged?” Then, “No. Don't answer. Let me get you something to warm you up first.”

  She hurried to the old drinks trolley that sat beneath the window overlooking Cheyne Row. There, she poured a stiff glass of brandy, which she took to Cherokee and pressed upon him.

  Cherokee raised the glass to his mouth, but his hands were shaking so badly that the glass merely chattered against his teeth and most of the brandy spilled down the front of his black T-shirt, which was wet like the rest of him. He said, “Shit. Sorry, Debs.” Either his voice, his condition, or the spilling of the drink seemed to disconcert Peach, for the little dog left off sniffing Cherokee's drenched jacket and began to bark at him again.

  Deborah hushed the dachshund, who wouldn't be still till she'd hauled her from the room and sent her to the kitchen. “She thinks she's a Doberman,” Deborah said wryly. “No one's ankles are safe around her.”

  Cherokee chuckled. Then a tremendous shudder took his body, and the brandy he was holding sloshed round inside the glass. Deborah joined him on the ottoman and put her arm round his shoulders. “Sorry,” he said again. “I got really freaked out.”

  “Don't apologise. Please.”

  “I've been wandering around in the rain. Smacked into a tree branch over near the river. I thought the bleeding stopped.”

  “Drink the brandy,” Deborah said. She was relieved to hear that he'd not fallen into some sort of trouble on the street. “Then I'll see to your head.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “Just a cut. But it does need seeing to. Here.” She had a tissue in her pocket and she used this to dab at the blood. “You've given us a surprise. What're you doing in London?”

  The study door opened and Simon returned. He carried both a towel and a blanket. Deborah took them from him, draping one round Cherokee's shoulders and using the other on his dripping hair. This was shorter than it had been during the years that Deborah had lived with the man's sister in Santa Barbara. But it was still wildly curly, so different to China's, as was his face, which was sensuous with the sort of heavily lidded eyes and full-lipped mouth that women pay surgeons mightily to create on them. He'd inherited all of the desirability genes, China River had often said of her brother, while she'd ended up looking like a fourth-century ascetic.

  “I called you first.” Cherokee clutched the blanket tightly. “At nine, this was. Chine gave me your address and number. I didn't think I'd need them, but then the plane was delayed because of the weather. And when there was finally a break in the storm, it was too damn late to go to the embassy. So I called you, but no one was here.”

  “The embassy?” Simon took Cherokee's glass and replaced his spilled brandy with more. “What's happened exactly?”

  Cherokee took the brandy, nodding his thanks. His hands were steadier. He gulped at the drink but began to cough.

  “You need to get out of those clothes,” Deborah said. “I expect a bath'll do the trick. I'm going to run one for you and while you're soaking, we'll throw your things in the dryer. All right?”

  “Hey, no. I can't. It's . . . hell, what time is it?”

  “Don't worry about the time. Simon, will you take him to the spare room and help him with his clothes? And no arguments, Cherokee. It isn't any trouble.”

  Deborah led the way upstairs. While her husband went in search of something dry for the man to wear when he was finished bathing, she turned the taps on in the tub. She laid out towels, and when Cherokee joined her—clothed in an old dressing gown of Simon's with a pair of Simon's pyjamas draped over his arm—she cleaned the cut on his head. He winced at the alcohol she dabbed on his skin. She held his head more firmly and said, “Grit your teeth.”

  “You don't provide bullets to bite?”

  “Only when I'm doing surgery. This doesn't count.” She tossed the cotton wool away and took up a plaster. “Cherokee, where've you come from tonight? Not Los Angeles, surely. Because you've no . . . Have you any luggage?”

  “Guernsey,” he said. “I came over from Guernsey. I set off this morning. I thought I'd get everything taken care of and get back there by tonight, so I didn't bring anything with me from the hotel. But I ended up spending most of the day at the airport, waiting for the weather to clear.”

  Deborah homed in on a single word. “Everything?” She fitted a plaster over his cut.

  “What?”

  “Getting everything taken care of today. What's everything?”

  Cherokee's gaze flicked away from her. It was just for a moment but long enough for Deborah to feel trepidation. He'd said his sister had given him their Cheyne Row address, and from this Deborah had first assumed she'd provided it to her brother before he left the States, as one of those gestures one person makes to another when an upcoming journey is mentioned in passing. Going to London as part of your holiday? Oh, do call on my good friends there. Except when she really thought it out, Deborah had to admit how unlikely this scenario was in a situation in which she hadn't had contact with Cherokee's sister in the last five years. That made her think that if Cherokee himself wasn't in trouble but if he'd come in a rush from Guernsey to London with their address in his possession and the express purpose of going to the American embassy . . .

  She said, “Cherokee, has something happened to China? Is that why you're here?”

  He looked back at her. His face was bleak. “She's been arrested,” he said.

  “I didn't ask him anything more.” Deborah had found her husband in the basement kitchen, where, prescient as always, Simon had already gone to put soup on the cooker. Bread was toasting as well, and the scarred kitchen table where Deborah's father had prepared a hundred thousand meals over the years was set with one place. “I thought after his bath . . . It seemed better to let him recover a bit. That is, before he tells us . . . If he wants to tell us . . .” She frowned, running her thumbnail along the edge of the work top where a splinter in the wood felt like a pinprick in her conscience. She tried to tell herself that she had no reason to feel it, that friendships came and went in life and that's just how it was. But she was the one who'd stopped replying to letters from the other side of the Atlantic. For China River had been a part of Deborah's life that Deborah had wanted very much to forget.

  Simon shot her a look from the cooker, where he was stirring tomato soup with a wooden spoon. He appeared to read worry into her reluctance to speak, because he said, “It could be something relatively simple.”

  “How on earth can an arrest be simple?”

  “Not earth-shattering, I mean. A traffic accident. A misunderstanding in Boots that looks like shoplifting. Something like that.”

  “He can't have meant to go to the American embassy over shoplifting, Simon. And she's not a shoplifter anyway.”

  “How well do you actually know her?”

  “I know her well,” Deborah said. She felt the need to repeat it fiercely. “I know China River perfectly well.”

  “And her brother? Cherokee? What the dickens sort of name
is that anyway?”

  “The one he was given at birth, I expect.”

  “Parents from the days of Sergeant Pepper?”

  “Hmm. Their mother was a radical . . . some sort of hippie . . . No. Wait. She was an environmentalist. That's it. This was early on, before I knew her. She sat in trees.”

  Simon cast a wry look in her direction.

  “To keep them from being cut down,” Deborah said simply. “And Cherokee's father—they have different fathers—he was an environmentalist as well. Did he . . . ?” She thought about it, trying to remember. “I think he may have tied himself to railway tracks . . . somewhere in the desert?”

  “Presumably to protect them as well? God knows they're fast becoming extinct.”

  Deborah smiled. The toast popped up. Peach scooted out from her basket in the hope of fallout while Deborah crafted soldiers.

  “I don't know Cherokee all that well. Not like China. I spent holidays with China's family when I was in Santa Barbara, so I know him that way. From being with her family. Dinners at Christmas. New Year. Bank holidays. We'd drive down to . . . Where did her mother live? It was a town like a colour . . .”

  “A colour?”

  “Red, green, yellow. Ah. Orange, it was. She lived in a place called Orange. She would cook tofu turkey for the holidays. Black beans. Brown rice. Seaweed pie. Truly horrible things. We'd try to eat them, and then afterwards we'd find an excuse to go out for a drive and look for a restaurant that was open. Cherokee knew some highly questionable—but always thrifty—places to eat.”

  “That's commendable.”

  “So I'd see him then. Ten times altogether? He did come up to Santa Barbara once and spend a few nights on our sofa. He and China had a bit of a love-hate relationship back then. He's older but he never acted it, which exasperated her. So she tended to mother-hen him, which exasperated him. Their own mother . . . well, she wasn't much of a mother mother, if you see what I mean.”

  “Too busy with the trees?”