The Father's House Read online

  Lucy had never seen any children or adults coming or going from this house, but then she wouldn’t have if they were always abroad. Anyway, the father’s instructions had always been to avoid social contact with non-followers. It struck Lucy that though she had occasionally seen a neighbour going in and out on the other side of the father’s house, she didn’t know who she was either.

  She carefully selected clean clothes from the younger boy’s room for Paul to wear after his bath. There was nothing big enough for her in the girl’s room, so she decided she’d have to make do with the older boy’s clothes until she had washed her own and Paul’s. For once in her life she was glad she was skinny.

  They went to the big marble bathroom. Lucy tried various knobs and taps in the shower but couldn’t find how to make it work, so they filled the huge copper bath with lovely steaming hot water and laid thick white towels on a chair nearby, and had the only hot bath they had ever had in their lives. Lucy shampooed Paul’s hair and then her own, and they laughed to see how different they looked with their hair full of bubbles. She rinsed their heads thoroughly, pulled out the plug, and reached for the towels.

  Before they went downstairs again they admired themselves in the long wall mirror. Paul was immaculately dressed in trousers made of a fine cord material in rich navy blue, and a soft cable-knit sweater in cream-coloured cashmere. The trousers were a little long for him, but Lucy had tucked up the hems. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and they both wore trainers that they had taken, brand new, from their boxes.

  “We’ll have to be very careful not to get them dirty,” said Lucy. “We’ll have to put them back exactly as they were as soon as I’ve washed our clothes.”

  “I want them,” said Paul, rubbing his hand gently over the soft cashmere.

  “We’re only borrowing them. We can’t keep them.”

  “They’re mine!” wailed Paul

  “Stop your nonsense.” Lucy realised she sounded just like Aunt Sarah and softened her tone. “Come on. Let’s go and see if our food has melted.”

  They went downstairs and had ice cream for breakfast.

  Very early on the Sunday morning Father Arthur was sitting in his office in the northern commune with his head in his hands.

  He had watched the news on television, read the papers, and received texts from the Holy Leaders. So, his house had been burned to the ground. No need to guess who was to blame. With luck the one death would turn out to be Drax. The redhead had escaped and would have told everything she knew to the police by now, but so what? Perhaps she didn’t know much. Even if she did Father Copse didn’t exist anymore. More importantly, the woman – his woman – lay in a hospital bed surrounded by police waiting for her to wake up from a coma. It was annoying that Thomas had switched off his phone. There was a job that needed to be done and Thomas was the one person he could trust. He had to get a long, thick swatch of Belinda’s hair.

  Two hours later Thomas was still switched off. Father Arthur made himself a coffee. It was not as good as Sarah’s but would have to do. The circle of pain was squeezing his head and it felt hot. The Magnifico was telling him to go down south and look for Thomas. In the bathroom he cut off his magnificent hair and then went over the whole of his head with his electric razor. His scalp felt quite sore but that was a small thing to be suffered for the sake of the Holy Cause. He looked at the pile of glossy black locks at the bottom of the bathroom bin. The sight of it hurt him more than his scalp. So sad! Such beautiful hair! But it would grow again. He cut off the bushy bits of his eyebrows until they looked almost elegant. There was no need to shave the bristle on his chin. It would perfect the disguise. He looked in the mirror and saw with a shock that he was no longer handsome. Indeed, had it been anyone else’s face he would have said they were ugly. Depressing, but a temporary necessity. Even the faithful Sarah wouldn’t recognise him.

  In the corner of the office was a safe containing the commune’s housekeeping budget for an entire month. He took out only half the money. After all, he couldn’t let the children starve. He sent a coded text message to the Holy Leaders saying that the Magnifico had placed a crown of pain on his head and told him that Drax was responsible for the fire, and had given him direct orders to take money from the commune safe and go south where He had work for him to do.

  In his predecessor’s wardrobe he found a raincoat. It was short in the sleeves but would serve his purpose. He stuffed the money into the pockets, locked the safe up again, switched off his mobile phone, and stepped out of the commune door into a howling gale. The driving rain cooled his newly shaven head and he knew he was doing the right thing.

  Down in the south the Holy Leaders had already sprung into action. They had a disposal infiltrator in the Mortimor Hospital waiting for a suitable opportunity to inject Maria before she woke up from her coma, and one of their social workers had succeeded in taking David from the police station into care. He was now in the cells behind Drax House, and he and Dorothy would be disposed of as soon as the news story had died down. Public attention would be drawn away by a fabricated scandal to be created by journalist infiltrators faithful to the Holy Cause. As for Father Drax, he would be given a full opportunity to give his side of the story before any action was taken against him. It was important to be fair and objective in all matters.

  Father Arthur reached the house after dark. The fire had been totally extinguished and the men had departed, leaving a cordon around the ruins. In the light from the streetlamp the garage stood solitary and blackened, its doors and its window still intact. He would sleep there like a tramp in his own backyard. But the house! Where were the signs of his old life in all this ash and rubble? The ground floor had been completely burned out and the flats above had collapsed into it. A scorched scrap of Persian carpet peeped up through lumps of plaster. He scrabbled away at some concrete and tugged at the corner of a picture frame, but it came away in his hands. And the woman? The most beautiful of all his possessions? His heart would surely break if he couldn’t have her hair. As for his files and housekeeping records, there was no sign of them. Father Copse and his history had been wiped out by the flames.

  He daren’t hang about. Someone would see him. He sidled into the garage and shook out some of the sacks in the corner to the right of the door. Those could be shifted about a bit to make a mattress and he would cover himself with his raincoat. First he must find food. He took some of the cash out of the raincoat pockets and draped it over the handlebars of the lawnmower. It slid to the floor, but he couldn’t be bothered to pick it up. Later he would be glad of it, but for now the outside air was mild enough. Stuffing the money into his trouser pockets he set off for the High Street to find a shop that was open on a Sunday.

  Paul and Lucy sat in front of a television set watching cartoons. They had found it in a small sitting room leading off the kitchen. The screen flickered and darted colourfully onto the walls of the room and the closed curtains. Paul was enthralled. He sat buried in the soft cushions of a velvet-covered armchair, his eyes fixed on the magic of the screen.

  Lucy’s eyes too were fixed on the screen, but her mind was elsewhere. She was glad that Aunt Sarah had outwitted the fire of the melting flesh by dying before it reached her. Now her soul was safe. She may well have been stern and unsmiling and over-focused on the hereafter, but Lucy knew in her heart that she had done her best for them. David’s warning had come true and had been dealt with for now, but there was still Dorothy, and tomorrow was Monday – only one day to go before she was sixteen. Lucy shivered. She wished she could think of some way to break a padlock.

  Saturday and Sunday had been spent playing with toys in the upstairs rooms and watching television, and they had tried the various foods that they had managed to defrost, but all the time their own predicament as well as Dorothy’s had been preying on Lucy’s mind. On the Saturday a man had come to the front door and rung the bell and called “Hello!” through the letter box, and she and Paul had hidden in the hall
cupboard. Then a voice had said “Don’t bother. The neighbour says they’re in the States.” The man had gone away but Lucy didn’t feel safe. She knew they couldn’t stay here for ever. The diplomat’s family might come back any time. The broken pane in the back door would immediately alert the owners that there had been a break-in. They would call the police, the house would be searched, and she and Paul would be found.

  She left Paul for a moment and found a brush and pan, and carefully swept up the broken glass inside and outside the back door. Aunt Sarah would not want her to leave a mess. With a tea cloth wrapped round her fingers she managed to pull the remaining shards out from the sides of the pane and dropped them in the pan. There was nowhere safe to put them so she wrapped them all up in the cloth, tied it in a knot, and dropped them into the kitchen bin.

  She stood back and admired her work. The door looked so much tidier, and if that man called again and checked around the back he might not notice that the bottom pane had no glass. She wondered if David had heard anything about Dorothy. If he’d been with the police all this time he must have told them everything and they would have rescued her by now. The thought made her feel a lot better. Even so, she couldn’t stop worrying that something might have gone wrong.

  Sitting down again with Paul in front of the television she tried to visualise the route to the outside entrance of the underground passage through which Dorothy would pass on the way to disposal.

  When she was small Lucy had been to Drax House with Aunt Sarah many times, but there had been no social visits for a few years now because Aunt Sarah thought the fathers might have fallen out. She remembered playing in the large garden at the back of the house, and they had occasionally had picnics in the woodland beyond the garden fence. She knew about the entrance from the side road into the woodland because sometimes they had gone in that way for their picnics. As she pictured Dorothy’s route out of the underground passage she realised that the side road would provide easy access to a waiting van, and nausea swept over her as she pictured poor Dorothy’s body being bundled into it.

  Her attention was caught by a change on the television screen. The cartoons had finished and were now being followed by advertisements. Paul objected to the disappearance of the cartoon characters and Lucy pressed various buttons on the remote control to find some more. A man’s head appeared and she caught the words, “and now to the news where you are.” For a second Lucy wondered how on earth the man could have known where she and Paul were. Then she realised this must be the local news.

  Paul climbed out of his chair and wandered around the room, while she watched with interest. There was an item about hooligans in the High Street just beyond the Magnifico’s school, and she recognised the shops. She waited eagerly for further familiar scenes. There was something about objections to planning permission for a new supermarket. Suddenly she was riveted.

  The man was talking about a failure to identify the body of the individual who had died in Friday night’s fire at 3 Mortimor Road. Examination of the site had established that the cause of the fire was arson. The owner was still abroad and could not be contacted. A woman who had allegedly been abducted by the owner had been returned to her family, and police were still waiting at the hospital bedside of another woman, believed to have been a resident, who remained in a coma. A young girl and boy were understood to have resided at the house and were missing. The public was asked to report any possible sightings to the police. A man caught at the scene was still being questioned. A fourteen year old boy, found on the common while the fire was in progress, had been detained for questioning, but had disappeared while in the care of an individual claiming to be a social worker.

  Lucy’s heart sank right down into the bottom of her stomach. The story was followed by something about council tax, and then the weather, but she heard none of it. If the fourteen year old boy was David, why would he have been released to a social worker? If anyone could have given information to the police it would have been David. She had no doubt that it was he who had hammered the nails into the tyres, and who had chained up the gate. He must have seen the whole thing from the bushes on the common – the perfect witness.

  The news item buzzed around in Lucy’s head. If the social worker was an infiltrator, David would not be safe. In fact he would be in great danger. He was probably in the cells at this moment, awaiting disposal along with Dorothy. She would have to do something! Her eyes were fixed on Paul as he pottered gently in and out of the furniture. How could she make a rescue bid with a little boy to look after? She couldn’t leave him here on his own. Her mind reached out in all directions, seeking suggestions.

  Paul was the least of the obstacles. Without the code she would never break through the padlock. She tried to visualise the contents of Thomas’s toolbox. He had once sawed through a chain with a special tool, but it had been noisy and so heavy that she knew she wouldn’t have the strength to use it. She remembered a time when he had locked himself out of the garage. He had poked the keyhole with a piece of bent coat hanger wire while holding the lock down with a piece of metal. That seemed simple, but it might not work on a coded padlock. Even so, it was the only thing she could think of. She would have to get to the garage and find Thomas’s toolbox.

  Lucy lifted the blind on the back door and peeped through into the back garden. It was already dark outside. If she could find the cartoons again perhaps she could leave Paul on his own, just long enough to find something in the garage – anything that might be useful to her.

  “Paul,” she said, as the cartoon channel reappeared, “I’ve got to go out for a few minutes. You’re not to move from that chair till I get back.”

  She wondered for a moment whether to tell him the Magnifico would be watching him if he moved, but felt sick at the thought.

  Paul was absorbed in the bright dancing colours.

  “Did you hear me, Paul? You are not to move till I get back.”

  Paul nodded his head, his eyes still fixed on the screen.

  Dorothy lay on the bed in a heap. The key turned in the lock and two kitchen aunts appeared. One of them guarded the door while the other one put a tray on the table.

  “Eat up,” she said. “We made something especially nice for you.” She stepped over to the bed and took Dorothy’s hand in hers. “It’ll be days yet. Perhaps they’ll give you time to repent and let you come back to us, you never know.”

  “And even if they don’t,” the aunt at the door said kindly, “you’ll be better off than in other countries where they get stoned to death or shot. You’ll just feel a tiny prick in your arm and you’ll go to sleep. No more worries.”

  Everything went black and when Dorothy came to, the aunts had left.

  She slid off the bed and went over to the table. Never ever would she be able to eat another morsel. What was the point? It made her feel sick to look at it. She covered the tray over with the table napkin and shoved it away next to the copy of the Holy Vision. Of course, as the aunt had said, they might give her a chance to repent. She brightened a little at the thought. And the fact was now that she had experience of some of the nastiness in the outside world, the Magnifico’s world had a lot to be said for it. An orderly existence where everyone knew their place without protest or disturbance must surely be a good thing. If she followed the rules she’d be safe, even if she was stuck in the kitchens or the breeding rooms for the rest of her life. She opened up the Holy Vision and started to read. She’d have to know her stuff if she was to put forward a convincing plea.

  After a while she closed the book. It was so boring and, anyway, it had been dinned into them so often at school she more or less knew it by heart. As she sat back thinking how best to convince the Holy Leaders that she had reformed, she heard heavy footsteps coming down the corridor from Drax House. She put her ear to the door. There were men’s voices. Her heart seemed to stop. Was this it? Then she heard a key being inserted in a lock, but it wasn’t the lock to her door. She waited. Someone was be
ing settled into the cell next to hers.

  “That’s it, mate,” said a voice. She recognised the commune caretaker’s deep growl. “Good luck, that’s all I can say.” The door clanged and the footsteps faded away up the corridor.

  There was absolute silence. Then, through the thickness of two doors, very faintly, she heard a muffled voice call, “Dorothy! Are you there?”

  “David, I’m here,” she yelled at the top of her voice. Holy Mag! She mustn’t do that. They’d hear her up in Drax House if she wasn’t careful. The sudden joy in her heart turned to horror. How did they catch him? She would never plead for forgiveness and leave David to face his fate alone.

  Lucy let herself out via the back door in case someone happened to be passing the front of the house. She ran along the back alley and into the father’s garden. Her eyes quickly became used to the dark. The sight of the rubble and ruined walls was a shock, but she had no time to linger.

  Following her old route she crept silently behind the shrubs, along the garden wall round to where the garage still stood. She went down the gap between the garage and the wall and came out in front of the doors. For a moment she stopped to look around. All that remained of the high laurel hedge with its arch through to the front garden was a collection of black branches twisted like great pieces of charcoal. The big double gate with its diamond-shaped holes was totally wrecked, leaving the gravel driveway open to the world.

  The doors to the garage were slightly open and Lucy slipped inside. She felt on the window sill to the right for Thomas’s torch. It was still there. Stepping around the gardening equipment, tins of paint, and an old bike, she crossed over to the shelves at the far end. The toolbox was in its proper position on the middle shelf. She shone the torch into it trying to keep the light as low as possible and took out a screwdriver and the awl. There were gadgets and other tools on the shelves and on the floor, but there was nothing that looked as though it would help her pick a lock or break open a padlock. She wondered if long nails would do the trick. At the thought of nails she remembered David and the tyres, and noticed that the hammer was missing.