A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(57)
This morning Graham had produced a monologue on the detectorvan, a piece of equipment the Nazis had used upon the island to rout out the last of the short-wave radio transmitters that citizens were using to gather information from those labeled enemies, particularly the French and the English. “Last one faced the rifles at Fort George,” Graham informed him.
“Poor sod from Luxembourg, he was. There’re those who say the detectorvan got him, but I say a quisling pointed the way. And we had those, damn
’em: Jerrybags and spies. Collaborators, Frank. Putting people in front of the firing squad without the blink of a sodding eyelash. God rot their souls.”
After that, it was the V for Victory Campaign and all the places that the twenty second letter of the alphabet not so mysteriously appeared on the island—rendered in chalk, in paint, and in still-wet concrete—to torment the Nazis.
And finally it was G.I.F.T.— Guernsey Independent From Terror— Graham Ouseley’s personal contribution to a population in peril. His year in prison had its origins in this underground newsletter. Along with three other islanders, for twenty-nine months he’d managed to produce it before the Gestapo came knocking at the cottage door. “I was betrayed,” Graham told his son. “Like them short-wave receivers. So don’t you ever forget this, Frank: Put to the test, those whose blood runs yellow are afraid of getting cut. Always the same, that, when times are rough. People point fingers if there’s something to be gained for themselves. But we shall make them squirm for it in the end. Long time in coming, but they shall pay.”
Frank left his father still waxing on this subject, confiding it to the television as he settled into the first of his shows for the day. Frank told him that Mrs. Petit would be looking in on him within the hour and he explained to his father that he himself would be seeing to some pressing business in St. Peter Port. He didn’t mention the funeral because he still hadn’t mentioned Guy Brouard’s death.
Luckily, his father didn’t ask the nature of the business. A surge of dramatic music from the telly caught his attention, and within a moment he’d submitted himself to a storyline involving two women, one man, some sort of terrier, and someone’s scheming mother-in-law. Seeing this, Frank took his leave.
As there was no synagogue on the island to accommodate what was a negligible Jewish population, and despite the fact that Guy Brouard was not a member of any Christian religion, his funeral service was held in the Town Church, not far from the harbour in St. Peter Port. In keeping with the importance of the deceased and the affection in which he was held by his fellow Guernseymen, the church of St. Martin—in whose parish LeReposoir sat—was deemed too small to hold the number of expected mourners. Indeed, so dear had he become to the people of the island in his nearly ten years as a resident that no fewer than seven ministers of God took part in his funeral.
Frank made it just in time, which was nothing short of a miracle considering the parking situation in the town. But the police had allocated both of the car parks on Albert Pier for the funeral goers, and while Frank was able to find a spot only at the far north end of the pier, by trotting all the way back to the church he managed to get inside just in advance of the coffin and the family.
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.