A Place of Hiding (6 page)

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?”

“All sorts of things. There but not there. So it was a . . . well, rather a bond between China and me. Another bond, that is. Beyond photography. And other things. The motherless bit.”

Simon turned down the burner beneath the soup and leaned against the cooker, watching his wife. “Tough years, those,” he said quietly.

“Yes. Well.” She blinked and offered him a quick smile. “We all muddled through them, didn't we?”

“We did that,” Simon acknowledged.

Peach raised her nose from snuffling around the floor, head cocked and ears at the ready. On the window sill above the sink, the great grey Alaska—who'd been indolently studying the worm tracks of rain against the glass—rose and gave a languid feline stretch, with his eyes fixed on the basement stairs which descended right next to the old dresser on which the cat frequently spent his days. A moment later, the door above them creaked and the dog barked once. Alaska leaped down from the window sill and vanished to seek slumber in the larder.

Cherokee's voice called, “Debs?”

“Down here,” Deborah replied. “We've made you soup and soldiers.”

Cherokee joined them. He looked much improved. He was shorter than Simon by an inch or two and more athletic, but the pyjamas and dressing gown sat on him easily, and the trembles had gone. His feet were bare, however.

“I should have thought of slippers,” Deborah said.

“I'm fine,” Cherokee replied. “You've been great. Thanks. To both of you. It must be a real freak-out, me showing up like this. I appreciate being taken in.” He nodded to Simon, who took the pan of soup to the table and ladled some into the bowl.

“This is something of a red-letter day, I must tell you,” Deborah said. “Simon's actually opened a carton of soup. He'll usually do only tins.”

“Thank you very much,” Simon remarked.

Cherokee smiled, but he looked exhausted, like someone operating from the last vestiges of energy at the end of a terrible day.

“Have your soup,” Deborah said. “You're stopping the night, by the way.”

“No. I can't ask you—”

“Don't be silly. Your clothes are in the dryer and they'll be done in a while, but you surely didn't expect to go back out on the streets to find a hotel at this time of night.”

“Deborah's right,” Simon agreed. “We've plenty of room. You're more than welcome.”

Cherokee's face mirrored relief and gratitude despite his exhaustion. “Thanks. I feel like . . .” He shook his head. “I feel like a kid. You know how they get? Lost in the grocery store except they don't know that they're lost till they look up from what they're doing—reading a comic book or something—and they see their mom's out of sight and then they flip out. That's what it feels like. What it
felt
like.”

“Well, you're quite safe now,” Deborah assured him.

“I didn't want to leave a message on your machine,” Cherokee said. “When I phoned. It would have been a real downer to come home to. So I decided to try to find the house instead. I got totally screwed up on that yellow line on the subway and ended up at Tower Hill before I could figure what the hell I'd done wrong.”

“Ghastly,” Deborah murmured.

“Bad luck,” Simon said.

A little silence fell among them then, broken only by the sounds of the rain. It splattered on the flagstones outside the kitchen door and slid in ceaseless rivulets down the window. There were three of them—and a hopeful dog—in the midnight kitchen. But they were not alone. The Question was there, too. It squatted among them like a palpable being, breathing noisome breath that could not be ignored. Neither Deborah nor her husband asked it. But as things turned out, neither needed to do so.

Cherokee dipped his spoon into his bowl. He raised it to his mouth. But he lowered it slowly without tasting the soup. He stared into the bowl for a moment before he raised his head and looked from Deborah to her husband.

“Here's what happened,” he said.

 

He was responsible for everything, he told them. If it hadn't been for him, China wouldn't have gone to Guernsey in the first place. But he'd needed money, and when this deal came up to carry a package from California to the English Channel and to get paid for carrying it
and
to have the airline tickets provided . . . well, it seemed too good to be true.

He asked China to go because there were two tickets and the deal was that a man and woman had to carry the package over together. He thought Why not? And why not ask Chine? She never went anywhere. She'd never even been out of California.

He had to talk her into it. It took a few days, but she'd just broken up with Matt—did Debs remember China's boyfriend? the filmmaker she'd been with forever?—and she decided she wanted a break. So she called him and told him she wanted to go, and he made the arrangements. They carried the package from Tustin, south of LA, where it had originated, to a place on Guernsey outside of St. Peter Port.

“What was in the package?” Deborah pictured a drug bust at the airport, complete with dogs snarling and China and Cherokee backed into the wall like foxes seeking shelter.

Nothing illegal, Cherokee told her. He was hired to carry architectural plans from Tustin to the English Channel island. And the lawyer who had hired him—

“A lawyer?” Simon queried. “Not the architect?”

No. Cherokee was hired by a lawyer, and that had sounded fishy to China, fishier even than being paid to carry a package to Europe as well as being given the airline tickets to do so. So China insisted that they open the package before they agreed to take it anywhere, which was what they did.

It was a good-size mailing tube, and if China had feared it was packed with drugs, weapons, explosives, or any other contraband that would have put them both in handcuffs, her fears were allayed when they unsealed it. Inside were the architectural plans that were supposed to be there, which set her mind at rest. His mind, too, Cherokee had to admit. For China's worries had unnerved him.

So they went to Guernsey to deliver the plans, with the intention of heading from there to Paris and onwards to Rome. It wouldn't be a long trip: Neither of them could afford that, so they were doing only two days in each place. But on Guernsey, their plans changed unexpectedly. They'd thought they'd make a quick exchange at the airport: paperwork for the promised payment and—

“What sort of payment are we talking about?” Simon asked.

Five thousand dollars, Cherokee told them. At their expressions of incredulity, he hastened to say that yeah, it was outrageous as all get-out and the amount of the payment was the number-one reason China had insisted they open the package because who the heck would give someone two free tickets to Europe
and
five thousand dollars just to carry something over from LA? But it turned out that doing outrageous stuff with money was what this whole deal was about in the first place. The man who wanted the architectural plans was richer than Howard Hughes, and he evidently did outrageous stuff with his money all the time.

However, they weren't met at the airport by someone with a cheque or a briefcase filled with cash or anything remotely resembling what they'd expected. Instead, they were met by a near-mute man called Kevin Something who hustled them to a van and drove them to a very cool spread a few miles away.

China was freaked out by this turn of events, which admittedly was disconcerting. There they were, enclosed in a car with a total stranger who didn't say fifteen words to them. It was very weird. But at the same time, it was like an adventure, and for his part Cherokee was intrigued.

Their destination turned out to be an awesome manor house sitting on God only knew how much acreage. The place was ancient—and completely restored, Debs—and China shifted into photographic mode the moment she laid eyes on it. Here was a whole
Architectural Digest
spread just waiting for her to shoot it.

China decided then and there that she wanted to do the photographs. Not only of the house but of the estate itself, which contained everything from duck ponds to prehistoric whatevers. China knew she'd been presented with an opportunity she might never get again, and although it meant taking the photographs on spec, she was willing to invest the time, the money, and the effort because the place was that sensational.

This was fine by Cherokee. She thought it would take only a couple of days and he'd have time to explore the island. The only question was whether the owner would go for the idea. Some people don't like their homes showing up in magazines. Too much inspiration for your B-and-E types.

Their host turned out to be a man called Guy—rhymed with
key—
Brouard, who was happy enough with the idea. He urged Cherokee and China to spend the night or perhaps a few days or whatever it took to get the photographs right. My sister and I live alone here, he told them, and visitors are always a diversion for us.

The man's son was also there as things turned out, and Cherokee thought at first that Guy Brouard might be hoping that China and the son would hook up. But the son was a disappearing type who showed up only at mealtimes and otherwise kept to himself. The sister was nice, though, and so was Brouard. So Cherokee and China felt right at home.

For her part, China connected big with Guy. They shared a common interest in architecture: hers because photographing buildings was her job, his because he was planning to put up a building on the island. He even took her to see the site and showed her some of the other structures on the island that were important historically. China should photograph all of Guernsey, he told her. She should do an entire book of pictures, not just enough for a magazine article. For so tiny a place it was steeped in history, and every society that had ever dwelt upon it had left its imprint in the form of buildings.

For their fourth and final night with the Brouards, a party had long been scheduled. It was a dressed-to-the-nines blowout that appeared to involve a cast of thousands. Neither China nor Cherokee knew what it was for, until midnight, when Guy Brouard gathered everyone together and announced that the design for his building—it turned out to be a museum—had finally been chosen. Drum rolls, excitement, champagne corks popping, and fireworks afterwards as he named the architect whose plans Cherokee and China had carried from California. A water colour of the place was brought out on an easel, and the partyers oohed, aahed, and went on drinking the Brouards' champagne until something like three in the morning.