The Father's House Read online

  “Where am I?”

  No-one answered. There was no need. She looked around the sparsely furnished cell and knew where she was. It was something that had happened to others. It had happened to her mother, but she had never really believed it could happen to her.

  “You may be here for a few days yet,” said an aunt. “The Holy Vision is on the table if you want something to read. We’ll bring you your supper later.”

  Supper! As if she could eat!

  The aunts left and locked the door behind them. Dorothy looked around her. There was a table, a chair, and a sort of camp bed. She lay down on the bed. Five months of freedom passed before her eyes like a documentary film. Had it been worth it? There was Tom who’d looked after her for weeks. He had shown her the safest railway arches to sleep under, the best restaurant bins for food, the most confusing side roads for avoiding pursuers, how to use money and a mobile phone, and how to beg and to kiss. That had surely been worth it. But Tom had said he had to go away for a while and that he’d contact a friend who would look after her and find her a proper job.

  That was when things went wrong. The friend got her an interview in a small hotel and left her there on her own in a smart little lounge to wait for the proprietor. A girl with dreamy eyes brought her a drink, put it gently down on the coffee table next to a potted plant, and floated away. A few minutes later another girl looked in. She was more alert and smiled at Dorothy.

  “Drink up,” she said.

  Dorothy sniffed the drink, and wondered what alcohol smelled like.

  “You’ll be glad of it if you’re new to all this,” said the girl with a wink. “It’ll help you relax. Be quick about it before the old cow comes or I’ll get into trouble.”

  Dorothy was beginning to feel uncomfortable. All she wanted was a job, not a drink. She didn’t want to sound rude so she just nodded and waited till the girl had left, and then hastily poured it into the potted plant.

  She was leaning back in her chair with the empty glass in her hand when a smartly-dressed middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway.

  “Ah, good!” she commented. “They gave you a drink. We like to look after people.” She sat herself down opposite Dorothy and seemed to be waiting for something.

  “Oh well, I haven’t got all day,” she said at last. “Let’s get straight to the point. Are you experienced?”

  Dorothy gazed at her blankly. “I’ve got no experience at all of hotel work,” she said, “but I’m a quick learner.”

  “Well, I don’t normally take girls off the street. You’d have to have a health check.”

  What on earth was she talking about? Suddenly a horrible sick feeling had grabbed at Dorothy’s stomach. She’d heard of places like this. One of the girls under the railway arches had told her about them. Next time she saw Tom she’d have to warn him about his friend.

  “There’s been a mistake.” She stood up. “I have to go.” Thank goodness she hadn’t touched the drink. She hurried through the hall and was out in the street before the woman had time to get out of her chair. Tom couldn’t possibly have known what his friend was like. She’d have to tell him as soon as he got back from wherever it was.

  Outside, the friend was leaning against the wall talking on his mobile phone. Dorothy started to run and he ran after her. “Hey, wait!” He caught her arm, and she shook it off. With her fist curled into a hard little ball she turned and punched his nose and ran. She was a fast runner but when she looked back over her shoulder there he was, just yards behind, with blood all over his face. Then she did the most stupid thing she’d ever done in her life. She ran into a policeman.

  “Maria!” Claudia called softly, on the Friday morning. “Eureka! At least I hope it’s eureka.”

  She stood in a corner of the living room moving her feet up and down. The floor creaked beneath the rug.

  “Let’s look,” she whispered.

  “He’s gone,” laughed Maria. “There’s no need to whisper while he’s away.”

  They rolled back the rug and the underlay, and revealed the floorboard. It was split several inches down from a nail at one corner. On their hands and knees they prised the wood away from the nail with the knives from their meal tray, and wrenched it up with their hands, splitting it full length. In the next board a corner nail was loose. That came out easily with the use of a fork. Digging around the remaining nails with the knives and the fork they loosened all three until the board came up quite easily. Working intensely, they repeated the process until they had lifted four boards.

  The joists underneath were firm and in good condition and spaced about eighteen inches apart. Pipes and electric wires ran along the gap.

  “We’ll never get through those,” said Claudia. “We’ll have to do some more.”

  They worked hard all morning. By midday they had managed to force up five more floorboards with good clear gaps between the joists.

  “I won’t be able to squeeze through there,” said Maria, “but you might.”

  Lying on their stomachs and stretching down with knives in their hands, they tried to reach the lath and plaster ceiling below, but the space was too deep. Maria jumped up and fetched a broom. She banged the handle down onto the plaster. It was hard and solid. However fiercely she banged, it had no effect. They gazed down into the space and racked their brains for a tool of some sort.

  “Water!” announced Maria suddenly. “A flood!” She ran to the bathroom and filled a large plastic bowl with hot water, and carried it to the living room.

  “We’ll do this all day and all night if we have to,” she said, pouring the water through the joists. “We’ll pour and pour, and bang with the broom handle, and it’ll get soggy and collapse. His cleaner won’t come up till Monday. We’ve got two days. We’ll never have this chance again.” Her parents’ faces swam before her eyes and filled her with an energy she’d never known before.

  “My father’s going to be so angry with me,” puffed Claudia, as she thumped away with the broom handle. “He told me not to walk home alone if I had to work late. I was supposed to ring him for a lift, but I’d been there all day in that stuffy library writing my dissertation. The outside air seemed so fresh and sharp and I just needed to stretch my legs. And, you know, you never think it could happen to you.”

  “No. We all think we’re invincible till it happens!” Maria grunted as she poured another bowlful into the gap. “But he’ll be over the moon to find you! Of course he won’t be angry – or if he is it’ll be because of the relief.”

  On that same Friday morning Lucy dragged herself reluctantly to school. She kept to herself in the playground and tried to avoid the Drax House children.

  “Murderer,” whispered a girl, passing in the corridor. Lucy flushed scarlet.

  “Liar!” she retorted angrily, but immediately wished she hadn’t. Any response to insult usually led to further taunts. In the past she would have run her fingers along her reminder and that would have kept her calm, but she couldn’t bear to touch it these days. She was angrier with herself than with the girl, for losing her self-control. Linking David’s warning that she was to be Copse’s downfall, together with the rat poison incident, had made her jumpy.

  After school David followed her down the steps.

  “Meet me on the common as soon as you get home,” he muttered, scarcely moving his lips as Matthew loomed up behind him.

  Lucy pretended she hadn’t heard and marched off, over at the lights and up South Hill. George was not in his usual post and she hurried past his house. She had always liked David, but now she wasn’t sure if she could trust him. Perhaps she shouldn’t meet him. How could she know that he wasn’t trying to frighten her with false information.

  Thomas usually came on a Friday. He would know what to do. When she reached number 3 Mortimor Road she went straight round the back into the garden, but he wasn’t there. She waited a little, and in the end she decided she’d go on the common and listen to what David had to say, but she woul
dn’t have to believe it. Checking that Aunt Sarah wasn’t watching, she hastily crossed back over the road and disappeared into the bushes surrounding the pond. David would know where to look for her. She waited for what seemed like an eternity.

  Back in Drax House David was racking his brain for some means of escape, when Matthew told him to wait for him in the hall while he just popped in to Senior Aunt Sonia’s office.

  “I only want to ask her about the badge on my new blazer. I’ll be back in a tick.”

  You have to report to her more like, thought David bitterly. As soon as the office door closed behind Matthew, he ran. Less than ten minutes later he was cycling over the grass towards the pond. He chained the bike to the base of a bush and slipped through the foliage. Lucy was just about to leave.

  “Sorry I took so long. Nobody saw me,” he said. “I hope.”

  He crouched down by the side of the pond and pulled Lucy down next to him.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’ve got two things to tell you, and you mustn’t be unreasonable.” His piercing blue eyes looked urgently into hers.

  “I’m listening.”

  “The first thing is I heard the aunts say Dorothy’s been taken to the disposal cells. I know where they are. They’re in the underground passage behind Drax House. It’s where they put people before they take them away to be disposed of.”

  Lucy caught her breath, and her heart seemed to stop beating.

  “I don’t believe you! It can’t be true! They wouldn’t really, actually, do it. Not to someone who’s only fifteen!”

  “You’ve got to believe me!” he insisted. “They even dispose of babies if they’re not likely to be any use to the Holy Cause – at least that’s what I’ve heard. And anyway, it must be just as horrible for someone of fifty as fifteen.”

  Lucy’s mouth was dry. She had to swallow hard before she could speak.

  “If she is there, is there any way we could get her out?”

  “I’m going to try. I know how to get there from the outside. They think we don’t know but we all do, all us kids. You go up that narrow road the other side of Drax House. There’s an entrance there into the woods behind the house, and if you go through the woods back towards the house, the passage is on the left just before you reach the garden fence.”

  Lucy forgot her doubts.

  “I’ll come with you!” she whispered, her mind immediately working on the problem of getting out through all Aunt Sarah’s locks and bolts at night. “I can get out through the cellar!”

  “No. I can’t go yet. There’s a problem. The entrance to the passageway is locked with a padlock and I don’t know the code to open it. All I know is it’s six numbers. I’ll just have to keep eavesdropping – that is if I can get back into the linen cupboard without being caught.”

  “Can’t you ask some of your friends if they know it?”

  “No. You can’t trust anyone, even your friends. Some of them are training as infiltrators, but I don’t know which ones. I only definitely know of one. They report back to the aunts on everything we do or say, and the aunts report to the Holy Leaders.”

  The thought of Thomas jumped into her head. He had been grooming her to be an infiltrator, and it had made her feel useful – important. Now the whole idea horrified her. She was shocked at her own naïvity. Holy Magnifico! They might even have asked her to spy on David and Dorothy! Or perhaps David was spying on her at this very moment.

  David shook himself. “Well, sitting here isn’t helping Dorothy. I simply have to find that code.” He looked at her anxiously. “Do you trust me?”

  Lucy had a question. “If you don’t know which ones are infiltrators, why did you risk singing those words in assembly? You could have been heard by a child infiltrator. One of the boys that dared you could have been one.”

  “It was the risk that was exciting. I’ve had the guidance cane so often that I don’t care about that anymore. But you could be right. Now I think it might have been deliberate, and guess who the infiltrator was! Sitting right next to me. It must have been something to do with trying to get you into trouble.”

  The significance sank in and Lucy gasped. “Holy Mag! Matthew! He’s your friend!”

  “Exactly!” said David bitterly.

  “OK. I’ll trust you,” whispered Lucy eventually. It was impossible to imagine how Dorothy must be feeling at this moment. “Well, at least it’s something that we know where she is. If you only had the code!”

  “The aunts might give me a clue. I’ll just have to keep listening, but there isn’t much time. She’ll be sixteen on Tuesday. They won’t keep her beyond that.”

  Lucy’s throat constricted. She couldn’t speak.

  David stood up, “The second thing I came to tell you is that one of the aunts said that Father Drax wants the redhead. I don’t know what that means. She said, ‘They’ll have to get into the house while Copse is away,’ and then someone said ‘what about the old woman?’ That’s all I heard, but I had to warn you. When is Father Copse away?”

  Lucy tried to get her voice back.

  “He’s gone,” she croaked. “He went this morning. He’ll be back on Monday.”

  David looked down at her stricken face.

  “Take Paul and get away from here before anything happens,” he whispered. “If I can get back into the linen cupboard after tea, I’ll keep listening. I’ll let you know if I hear anything – if you’re still here, that is.”

  He unchained his bike, and Lucy watched as he put in the code to the padlock. Then he left abruptly, and rode off over the common. As he approached the further side he did some practice twirls and swoops before disappearing down the little lane to South Hill.

  Lucy’s chest was tight with fear. They wouldn’t keep Dorothy beyond Tuesday, and there was nothing she could do to help her. The father would be back on Monday. Today was Friday. If David was right, something was going to happen within the next two days. She had to warn Aunt Sarah, and she only hoped that she would believe her!

  Maria poured and Claudia jabbed. The prospect of freedom lifted their spirits to an almighty high and filled them with energy. They laughed as they worked, mocking the idiocies of the Holy Leaders and Copse’s absurd vanity. Their jokes seemed hilarious to them, and occasionally they would stop and collapse with stitches in their sides. Every now and then they swapped over tasks and Claudia would pour while Maria jabbed.

  Their evening meal was sent up earlier than usual, and they stopped for a break. Maria flopped back in an armchair and pictured the blue front door of her parents’ house, and the joy that would light up their faces as they opened it.

  “Fifteen years!” she exclaimed. “I’m afraid to hope.”

  “We’ll get there, don’t worry,” said Claudia. “If that Copse thinks I’m going be one of his wives he’s got another think coming. Anyway, he must be about a thousand years old!”

  “He’s forty,” laughed Maria.

  “Yuk! Decrepit! I can’t wait to see my boyfriend again. What a hunk!”

  By the time they returned to their task the plaster was soggy, and after a few more buckets and jabs at the lath the ceiling below collapsed. Claudia squeezed her head and shoulders down through the beams and found herself looking into a luxurious living room. Maria peered through the space alongside her. They could see a leather armchair and a Persian rug which was now saturated with water and covered with chunks of wet plaster.

  “Shall I try and get down?” asked Claudia.

  “The trouble is you may not be able to get back up again.”

  “No, but I won’t want to. I could ring for the police. He must have a phone there somewhere.”

  “But we don’t know where we are.”

  “True! I suppose the police could trace the call – unless his phone is bugged and goes through to some headquarters or other.”

  “We have to be careful, even with the police,” said Maria, “because they’re heavily infiltrated with the Holy Leaders’ agents. If
you could contact your father or your boyfriend first we’d be safer.”

  They pulled themselves back up and sat at the edge of the hole.

  “If I can’t get out of his flat through the door,” said Claudia, “I’ll simply jump out of the window.”

  Maria looked at her watch.

  “My God! The day’s gone in a flash. We’ve still got tomorrow. Let’s have a break now and work out a strategy. I’m too tired to think at the moment.”

  “Me too,” said Claudia.

  “Those banging noises have stopped at last,” remarked Aunt Sarah. “They’ve been going on all day and goodness knows where they came from. Next door must have workmen in.”

  Lucy watched her as she put the tenants’ meals into the dumb waiter and pressed the button that took it to the second floor. It was at least an hour before their usual eating time. Sarah was looking forward to an early night and a lie-in tomorrow morning. The dumb waiter whirred upwards, and she sat down to eat with the children.

  She gave them the same food as the tenants. Lucy had never smelled anything so delicious in her life, but she couldn’t swallow. She had to warn Aunt Sarah about the next two days and was certain she’d never believe her. She’d tell her not to talk rubbish and get on with her meal.

  “Something’s going to happen in this house before the father comes home.” Lucy’s voice was tense. “Within the next two days. Something bad.”

  “Who said that? One of the Drax House children I suppose.”

  “Yes. They heard the aunts talking about it.”

  Sarah was silent as she absorbed the information. A pain crept through her arm and chest and her head seemed to spin, just for a moment. Lucy looked curiously at her and was concerned. “Are you alright, Aunt Sarah? You’ve gone grey.” Sarah nodded faintly, and Lucy pretended to eat.

  The pain passed and Sarah’s head cleared.

  “Well, don’t you take any notice of them.” She was slightly breathless. “They’re just trying to frighten you. There’s too much gossiping in that commune.”

  Nevertheless Sarah was very worried indeed. She missed Martha who normally kept her in touch with what was going on. Tomorrow she would go to Copse House, ostensibly to ask after her bad back, but in reality to hear the latest rumours.