The Book of Lies (27 page)

I hope they get married and stay together for ever. I hope it wasn't just a silly affair. I've kept their secret for them all this time, so they'd better make it worth my effort.

But it's hard to know what secrets should stay secret, and here's another good example.

It was the most important day of Dad's life. We'd arrived an hour early at White Rock, and we were all dressed up like it was a party. It was a lovely spring day and I felt so proud. I stupidly imagined that I'd finally see Dad happy once he had the Memorial in place. I remember looking around at all these people and thinking they were clapping for him as he stepped up to the microphone. He was wearing a dark blue suit – I think it was the suit he'd married Mum in. I looked at her and smiled. That's when it all went wrong. Dad never normally read from notes but he pulled some crumpled papers from his jacket pocket. Then he started speaking, but he slurred and stumbled over his words and he was swaying like he'd fall right over. People started murmuring and I had to grip Mum's hand. When a man in the crowd told Dad to speak up he glared back. Suddenly he turned and lurched down from the platform. Everyone was talking and I wanted to go after him, but Mum held onto me. I don't remember her saying anything to anyone about blood-sugar, but apparently she did, when people asked her what was wrong. Oh well. Maybe I heard it, maybe I didn't. That only came out later, after he was dead.

Dad was Diabetic. Mum said it might've come on because of the Occupation, if he was undernourished as a baby. Her and Dr Senner were the only ones who knew and at first it wasn't a problem, since Dad kept fit and super-healthy and ate his rabbit-food. But over time things started to slip. Mum says she saw the changes after Grandma died – Dad complained of headaches and his moods went up and down. Eventually Dr Senner persuaded him to have some tests. They said Dad needed insulin, which wasn't good. He hit the roof, and that's when he threw the TV out.

Mum says Dad wasn't ever cross with me, he was mostly cross with himself. She also says the real reason he locked himself in his study was because he didn't ever want me to see him injecting himself.

‘You have to remember he wasn't always so shut off from us. It was just the last few years. He didn't cope well with his illness. He wouldn't listen to me. He wouldn't listen to anyone.'

(I listened, though.)

‘I'm sorry I didn't tell you but it was what he wanted. He was so proud, and only told me the half of it, in any case.'

We were on the sofa sitting side by side, and she reached out and squeezed my hand.

‘People will know soon so you should hear it first from me. They'll be surprised. Everyone thought your father was pretty much unsinkable.'

And then Constable Priaulx arrived.

Dad didn't like secrets but in the end his secret killed him. Diabetics have to be careful if they cut themselves, because of the danger of infection. Dad had been too busy organising the Occupation Memorial to get his bad hand seen to. Mum said the infection spread to his heart.

Of course, when I found the first bottle of whisky in Dad's study I took it straight to Mum. She said Dad couldn't have drunk that much since there's a lot of sugar in alcohol. She suggested he drank a bit for pain relief, after he'd cut his hand. I thought that sounded right. Until I found the other bottles. That made me worry more. So I went and asked Dr Senner if Dad had been in terrible pain. Dr Senner told me that Diabetics don't necessarily feel pain because their nerve endings go numb. Dr Senner said Dad didn't realise how serious his hand was, because it didn't even hurt.

It's hard to know who or what to trust, but I suppose I can trust what I saw. It was the night after White Rock. Dad was in his study with the door firmly closed, and I was on the stairs. I was sitting on the very spot where I'm sitting now, in fact. I like it here, because I can see halfway into the kitchen and all the way into the sitting room, and I can listen out for the study door. I used to sit here all the time when I was meant to be in bed, hoping to see Mum and Dad touch or hug or kiss like a married couple should. I never did, and I had to wonder what it was that kept them together but so far apart.

That night, Mum had already gone to bed. She'd hardly talked to Dad since the unveiling, and she didn't even bother to tell him ‘Goodnight'. I was worried she was planning to leave him, and I honestly couldn't blame her. But I didn't like Dad sleeping in his study on that rough old sofa again. I imagined myself going in and telling him so. I planned to knock on his door and surprise him and then we'd have a proper chat about important, adult things. I probably would've also tried to hug him, even though he'd have been appalled.

Standing up quickly I padded downstairs, but once I got to his study door I waited for a minute. Then I bent down. I know I shouldn't have done it, and I promise you I never normally look through keyholes and spy on people.

Dad was sitting in his chair with a bottle on the desk in front of him. It was definitely whisky, and it was half-drunk already. His hair was messed up and his eyes looked red and tired. He was staring down at a piece of paper and running his fingers over its edges. Then he picked up the bottle with his good hand and took a long slug. He wiped his mouth and looked back at the paper. I knew it was a letter because it had been folded neatly to fit in an envelope. I don't know what it said but it was bad news, for sure. At the time I imagined it was a letter from Mum saying so long and goodbye, you good-for-nothing husband. But later I decided it was a letter from Dr Senner saying come into the surgery or you'll soon be dead.

It was only much-much later, when I found the letter tucked inside Grandma's leather folder, that I worked out what I'd actually seen. Then everything I thought I knew had to change again. It was annoying, because by then I'd gotten very attached to my version of the truth.

I suppose that's the thing about History, there are always several versions of that thing we call the truth.

A Mother's Story [Extract]

Not for publication
By E.P. Rozier,
12
/
4
/
81

Shortly before my mother suffered her second and fatal stroke she provided me with fresh information regarding the imprisonment of her eldest son, Charles André Rozier, during the years of Occupation. Her statement, which was only offered on condition that it never be published, goes some way towards explaining her years of silence.

Shocking though this now seems, my mother believed that it was her husband, Hubert Rozier, who had alerted the German police to their eldest son's activities. Hubert had become anxious about Charlie's increasingly irresponsible behaviour. The Occupation gave young people ample opportunities to misbehave, and Charlie for one showed no respect for authority and was continually going out after curfew ‘looking for trouble'. The sense of crisis and fracture between father and son deepened as the years wore on. Hubert had never recovered from his experiences of the First World War, and the Occupation brought back many bad memories. ‘It was as if an old wound was re-opened, and it slowly bled him dry,' said Arlette.

Hubert withdrew from family life, leaving his wife to run the household single-handedly, which she did as best she could, but by that time Charlie was spending large amounts of time outside the family home and there was little she could do to stop him. She often heard Hubert muttering about this. Hubert felt certain that some tragedy would befall his eldest son and warned Arlette that Charlie was mixing with ‘bad company'.

Arlette was certain that Hubert informed on his own son in a desperate and misguided attempt to stop Charlie doing something foolhardy and life-threatening. He intended it as a warning to his teenage son, hoping to show Charlie that he was putting himself and his family in danger. Having found an unlikely friend in the form of Anton Vern, Hubert confided in him and the two men planned the house search.

Their plan might even have worked had it not been for Charlie's scrapbook, hidden under the floorboards of the spare room Hubert now occupied. Arlette was adamant that Hubert knew nothing of the scrapbook until it was discovered. Had he known of its contents or its whereabouts, he would surely never have allowed the search to take place. This would explain his readiness to claim it as his own.

Sadly, at this stage in her life La Duchesse was not the most reliable of sources. Although she was able to recall events from her early childhood with almost photographic accuracy, the years of the Occupation were marred by tragedy and heartbreak. Her voice would falter when asked to recall these troubling times:

‘Hubert was becoming like a stranger to me. I'm not even sure if he trusted me. Working for the Germans was hard on all of us and Hubert locked himself up in a strange world where we were all against him. He could become agitated and suspicious for no reason.

‘He'd often ask me where Charlie was, and if I shrugged and said I didn't know I could see the despair in his eyes. When the German soldiers came to search the house I felt sure it was because of something he'd said to Vern. He wasn't at all surprised. But then they found this scrapbook and I didn't know what to think. I was terrified that we'd all be sent to France, and I could tell from Hubert's face he wasn't expecting it. Still, he knew what he had to do and in that moment I was reminded of the man I had married.

‘None of what then followed surprised me. It was entirely in his character to lay down his life on a point of principle. I suppose that was his last show of strength, but it was all because of what? A stupid mistake? I wasn't ever angry with Charlie but I put him out of my head. I thought he was dead, which might make me sound heartless but by then my heart was broken. All I had was you. Don't think I didn't love your brother, but after the War he came back so full of bitterness and anger, and he still idolised his father. Hubert could do no wrong in Charlie's eyes. There were times I wanted to tell him the truth about the sorry mess of it. I wanted to remind him of what his father put us all through. Hubert had fallen apart, and he'd let his family fall apart around him. Still, talking like that wouldn't have done any of us any good, and talking doesn't bring people back. It wouldn't have changed nothing.

‘We have all of us lived with our loss, now all we remember is that loss.' Could Hubert really have informed on his own son, and then offered himself as sacrifice? I had always thought that it was the living who told us the most about the past, but perhaps there is only truth after death, or in death. My mother spoke of the matter this one time, and never again.

[N.B. Write again to Anton Vern.]

22ND DECEMBER 1985
,
6
p.m.

[In the box room, pretending to look for missing fairy lights]

Dad stayed in his study for two whole days after his Waterloo at White Rock, but I don't know that for sure because I was at school. Mum said she checked on him the morning he died, but she wasn't able to say when. She was frustrated with him, she admitted, and she was worried he'd not taken his insulin. But she didn't call Dr Senner about it. All I remember is that she dropped me at school early and I spent the whole day dreading going home. In the end I went over to Vicky's for my tea.

When I got back at six Mum was in the hall, with her ear glued to the phone. She told me to go and sit in the garden, which is exactly what I did. Dr Senner drove up, and then there was an ambulance. Dad's heart had already stopped, though. When Mum told me it was heart failure I thought that sounded right.

But it was a lot to take in at once and I don't think I processed all the facts. I usually have to write stuff down and repeat it over and over. Perhaps you can see why I've become a bit suspicious. It doesn't take a (Village) idiot to work out that there's no simple or single explanation for anything, there's just an OFFICIAL VERSION that tidies all the secrets away.

And here's the biggest secret so far: I wasn't ever very interested in the Bloody-Stupid German Occupation, but I thought I might find something in Dad's books and journals and letters to explain what Mum wouldn't. Shouldn't History explain everything?

But then, knowing everything doesn't necessarily mean you'll be happier/better-off. Sometimes the more you know, the worse it is. I wish I hadn't known about Therese and her affair, for instance, or that I'd
told
Nic I knew. I wasn't trying to stir up trouble – I just wanted to show Nic that I could keep a secret. I wrote her a letter, explaining how I finally understood why she was being so horrible to me. I told her that it couldn't have been easy for her, living with lies. I said I was sick of it, too. I laid it on mega-deluxe thick but was still so deep-pile nice to her. I told her we were just the same. And do you know how she repaid me? You wouldn't believe it. Well, you probably would.

Every year on Bonfire Night there is a firework display at Saumarez Park. Saumarez Park is Guernsey's only proper park – you'd think there'd be lots of open, rolling fields and green space but, according to Miss Jones, Guernsey is more densely populated than most of Northern Europe. This is on account of the Posho-Porsche-Driving English People and their Swiss-Wanker Bankers (who, of course, pay for the fireworks).

Perhaps it was odd that Vicky had asked me to go with her to the display, but I'd helped her collect dandelions for her New-Recipe-Dandelion-Wine and I'd even been her guinea pig. I thought that meant we were friends again. I was glad. It felt like things were getting back to normal. When we got to Saumarez Park I didn't smell a rat (i.e. her). I didn't want to look a gift horse (i.e. two-faced cow) in the mouth.

Mum was running the stand for the Christian Aid tin-rattlers and offered to give us a lift. I almost got excited, since I hadn't been out for ever. I did notice that Vicky went quiet in the car on the way there, but I just assumed it was because we'd been talking about her birthday at the end of the month. She was planning a big party and was worried re: inviting me.