A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George Page A

Graham went on, leaning his whippet's frame against Frank's own somewhat rounded shoulder. “Shredded up parsnips, we did, boy, when we could get 'em. Baked 'em first, o' course. Camellia leaves too, lime blossoms and lemon balm, lad. And then we threw bicarb in the pot to make the leaves go longer. Winklewater was what we called it. Well, we couldn't rightly call it tea.” He chuckled and his fragile shoulders shook. The chuckle segued into a cough. The cough turned into a wrestle for air. Frank grabbed his father to keep him upright.
    â€œSteady on, Dad.” He grasped Graham's fragile body firmly, despite his own fear that one day clutching on to him to keep him from falling was going to do worse damage than any fall he might actually take, snapping his bones like a dunlin's legs. “Here. Let's get you onto the toilet.”
    â€œDon't have to pee, boy,” Graham protested, trying to shake himself free. “Wha's the matter with you? Mind going, or something? Peed before we got into the bath.”
    â€œRight. I know that. I just want you to sit.”
    â€œNothing wrong with my legs. I c'n stand with the best of them. Had to do that when the Krauts were here. Stand still and look like you're queuing for meat.
Not
passing 'long the news, no sir. No radio receiver in
your
dung hill, son. Look like you'd just a'soon
heil
Mr. Dirty Moustache as say God save the King, and they didn't bother you. So you could do what you liked. If you were careful.”
    â€œI remember that, Dad,” Frank said patiently. “I remember your telling me about it.” Despite his father's protest, he lowered him onto the toilet seat, where he began to pat his body dry. As he did so, he listened with some concern to Graham's breathing, waiting for it to return to normal. Congestive heart failure, his doctor had said. There's medication, naturally, and we'll put him on it. But truth to tell, at his advanced age, it's only a matter of time. It's an act of God, Frank, that he's lived this long.
    When he'd first received the news, Frank had thought, No. Not now. Not yet and not until. But now he was ready to let his father go. He'd long ago realised how lucky he was to have had him around well into his own sixth decade, and while he'd hoped to have Graham Ouseley alive some eighteen months longer, he'd come to understand—with a grief that felt like a net from which he could never escape—that it was just as well this was not to be.
    â€œ
Did
I?” Graham asked, and he screwed up his face as he sorted through his memory. “Did I tell you all that afore, laddie? When?”
    Two or three hundred times, Frank thought. He'd been listening to his father's World War II stories since his childhood, and most of them he could repeat by heart. The Germans had occupied Guernsey for five years, preparatory to their foiled plan to invade England, and the deprivations the populace had endured—not to mention the myriad ways they had attempted to thwart German aims on the island—had long been the stuff of his father's conversation. While most children nursed from their mother's breasts, Frank had long suckled at the teat of Graham's reminiscence. Never forget this, Frankie. Whatever else happens in your life, my boy, you must never forget.
    He hadn't, and unlike so many children who might have grown weary of the tales their parents told them on Remembrance Sunday, Frank Ouseley had hung upon his father's words and had wished he'd managed to get himself born a decade earlier so that even as a child he could have been part of that troubled and heroic time.
    They had nothing to match it now. Not the Falklands or the Gulf—those abbreviated, nasty little conflicts that were fought about next to nothing and geared to stimulate the populace into flag-waving patriotism—and certainly not Northern Ireland, where he himself had served, ducking sniper fire in Belfast and wondering what the hell he was doing