The Father's House Read online

  Lucy was mortified. She had been touched, no – actually shoved aside – by a non-follower. What if the taint, the corruption, was catching? She felt dirty.

  “George! What do you think you’re doing?” A woman with a pushchair emerged from the gateway at number 38. “Don’t be so rude!”

  “Sorry!” shouted George from the middle of the zebra crossing, tossing his ginger curls and giving Lucy a cheerful wave.

  “I do apologise, love,” said the woman. “He’s so rough sometimes. He’s got too much energy for his own good – and for everyone else’s good too.”

  Lucy was surprised. Never in her life had anyone apologised to her. She had always thought it was something children did to grown-ups. She felt embarrassed, so she just smiled and nodded. Perhaps the incident had been a warning to her from the Magnifico for having been tempted. Thank goodness she hadn’t succumbed. She made her way down the rest of the hill towards the tube station and waited patiently for the lights to change so she could cross. Children and aunts from the Drax and Copse communes were still coming down the High Street to her right, so she wasn’t late. There, on the other side of the road, just a few yards up, stood her school, tall and wide, red and glowering. Apart from a number 10 next to the door frame there was nothing to distinguish it from the other big houses on that side of the road. The Magnifico’s school was anonymous.

  Children were climbing the steps to the door as Lucy approached. Some of the aunts were turning away having fulfilled their escort duties and enjoyed their morning chats. For the first time Lucy started to wonder why Aunt Sarah was going to be too busy to bring her ever again. It must be something momentous because, as the two temptations had demonstrated, the risk of being influenced by the vice and corruption of non-followers was a very real thing. Lucy hadn’t fully appreciated that until now and she felt ashamed, because she had become increasingly irritated lately when Aunt Sarah went on and on about the saving of her soul.

  Reluctantly she climbed the school steps and the sun seemed to go in. She followed her fellow pupils down a wide hall, dark with wooden panelling. By the time she reached the cloakroom her stomach was churning and her throat tightening, just as they had done every school day since she first came here ten years ago. She hung her coat on a hook labelled ‘Lucy Copse’, returned to the hall, and joined a queue waiting to enter the assembly room in an orderly fashion. The boy behind her blew on the back of her neck and made her shiver. She swung her leg back as unobtrusively as she could and kicked out at him with her heel.

  “No shuffling!” shouted a teacher.

  The children filed into assembly silently, class by class, row after row. The room was large and high-ceilinged, closed in on itself by dreary, grey window blinds. Several dangling light bulbs threw a cold, harsh light on about two hundred children from the age of four to sixteen. The headmaster stood on a platform at the far end of the room flanked by his teaching staff, his long black gown draped over his stout stomach like a musty old curtain. Behind him, across the entire back wall, was a mural painting of the Magnifico’s first Holy Envoy, his first representative on Earth hundreds of years ago. He was leaning against a rock with staring eyes and a sword pierced his bleeding chest. The message, ‘Martyred for the Sake of your Soul’, was painted in large black letters across the top.

  Those eyes would be staring, staring, at Lucy, wherever she sat. Today, to her dismay, a sinful question popped up in her mind. How could he have been martyred for the sake of her soul? He couldn’t possibly have known about her all those hundreds of years ago when she wasn’t even born. She pushed the question away, but his eyes still pierced her as though he could see her most secret thoughts.

  As soon as the pupils were seated and the shuffling and sniffing and coughing had faded away, the headmaster raised his hands high and they all stood up again. Lucy managed to shift her gaze away from the first Holy Envoy, and fixed it on the headmaster’s wobbling jowls.

  “The Magnifico blesses you, my children,” he boomed with his eyes closed, his fat arms outstretched, and his head thrown back.

  “We thank the Magnifico, Headmaster,” chanted the children.

  “The Magnifico watches over you,” he thundered.

  “We are grateful for his observance, Headmaster,” they responded dutifully.

  “Sinners must be punished, for the sake of their souls.” His voice rose to a bellow then sank to a hiss.

  “The sinners are grateful for his blessed guidance,” was the murmured reply.

  Lucy joined in the chanting but closed her eyes and tried not to look at the guidance cane which hung from a hook at the side of the headmaster’s chair. Any child who displeased the Magnifico would be beaten with the cane up on that platform in front of the whole school. Once one of the boys had whispered to Lucy that he’d heard it was illegal, and someone should tell the government about it. But Lucy knew that the Magnifico’s word was the true law and that anyone who reported it to the outside world would suffer the fire of the melting flesh.

  The thought of that fire burned constantly somewhere in the back of Lucy’s mind and she knew the guidance cane was important to the saving of the soul, but she cringed each time it was used on a fellow pupil. It was the same boys every time. David, who sat next to her in class, was one them. The teachers said he was ‘insolent’. Lucy liked him, though of course she couldn’t be friends with someone who’d had the guidance. His half-sister, Dorothy, had been caned a couple of times too. They must have inherited the same genes for cheekiness. Lucy knew she would drop dead with the shame if the guidance ever happened to her.

  Suddenly her heart sank. A small brazier was being wheeled on from the side of the stage. The headmaster, with a flourish, poured a scented liquid into it and it burst into flames. John, the skinniest boy in her class – in the whole school – was being called up yet again. She closed her eyes and quickly ran her fingers back and forth along her reminder, trying to soothe the beating of her heart. Would he remember what she had told him? “Just stroke your reminder and the Magnifico will help you. It always works for me.”

  The headmaster stood John in front of him and looked into his eyes. “What do we have here, Boy?” He waved his hand towards the brazier.

  John’s face twitched as he whispered, “The fire of the burning flesh, Sir, or melting flesh, Sir.”

  “And why is it here, Boy?”

  “To remind us what awaits the sinner, Sir.”

  “And what is this for, Boy?” said the headmaster, unhooking the guidance cane from the side of his chair. “To guide sinners along the path towards righteousness, Sir.”

  Lucy could barely hear the response. She was willing John to listen to her mind. Stroke the reminder, stroke the reminder.

  “Roll up your trouser legs, Boy.” Red marks from the previous caning still showed on John’s calves. This was the fourth time in two months

  Lucy’s lips moved silently as she begged the Magnifico to forgive John’s sin. She remembered the first time he had pulled a face when the teacher spoke to him in class. His mouth had twisted and his right eye twitched. The other children had looked on horrified at his impertinence, and then someone had giggled. Despite the first beating he had done it again, and again, and the twitch got worse each time. Once Lucy had asked him why he didn’t stop, and he said he couldn’t.

  “Don’t be silly. Of course you can!” she had said.

  Now she opened her eyes and held her breath. John’s face was twisting and twitching. His fingers ran frantically back and forth along the full circle of his reminder. Then, as he silently accepted the grievance, Lucy knew he had spoken the truth. He genuinely couldn’t stop. A wave of shame swept through her as she remembered what she had said. She looked sideways at David and saw his fists were clenched till they were white to the bone. The entire assembly was silent.

  When it was all over and the brazier had been wheeled back into the wings, and the closing hymn to the Magnifico had been sung, the subdued children
shuffled down the hallway to their various dreary classrooms. Lucy settled herself at her desk and pulled out her books for the first lesson. She looked neither right nor left. Each child stared straight ahead, at the teacher or at the board. All hands rested on the desktops. No-one whispered to his or her neighbour, or giggled, or sniggered, or fidgeted. Absolute silence reigned until the teacher spoke, and then the school day started on its usual routine of prayers, maths, English, prayers again, Spanish or French, geography, then prayers and the lunch break. After lunch there would be reading from the Magnifico’s Holy Vision, followed by computers or carpentry for the boys, sewing or cooking for the girls, and more prayers.

  The morning dragged. Lucy couldn’t concentrate. The board, and even the teacher, were eclipsed by John’s poor twitching face and the reminder round his skeletal wrist. At last it was geography, which meant it was nearly lunchtime. Lucy perked up a little. She liked geography because sometimes the class would be allowed to watch documentaries on a television set perched high up on a shelf in the corner of the classroom. Father Copse didn’t allow television at number 3 Mortimor Road as it corrupted the soul, but geography programmes were carefully chosen and educational and showed the various countries where the current Holy Envoy had his offices. Lucy loved those documentaries, and would sit and imagine herself wandering through some exotic bazaar dressed in crimson silk and feeling the warmth of the sun on her back. Her secret hope was that one day the Magnifico would give her permission (through Father Copse of course) to travel to different places. It would be sad to have to stay at home till she was an old lady and look after everyone, like Aunt Sarah.

  In today’s class, despite the television, Lucy couldn’t focus. She was just wondering if she could pluck up courage to approach the headmaster and explain to him that John couldn’t help twitching, when she nearly jumped out of her skin. Aunt Judith Geography was shouting.

  “David! Come to the front. Bring me your books.”

  What on earth had he had done? He was sitting right next to Lucy, but she hadn’t noticed a thing. David stood up nonchalantly. She would have been mortified, but he didn’t seem to care. He scratched his leg, tossed back his ash-blond hair, and picked up his books, sliding a scrap of paper sideways onto the floor as he did so. Giving Lucy’s pigtail a little tug, he passed behind her chair to reach the aisle. Aunt Judith Geography checked through his books but couldn’t find fault with them. She looked down at his wrist.

  “Where’s your reminder?” she snapped. He pulled up his shirt sleeve. “You know it should be exposed at all times. Sit down right here where I can see you, and pay attention.”

  As Lucy glanced across his empty seat his friend, Matthew, caught her eye and winked. She turned away and fixed her gaze attentively on the teacher. After a few minutes she dropped her pen and leaned down to retrieve it – and the fallen piece of paper. There was nothing on it except over and over again, pigs, pigs, pigs. Lucy put it into her blazer pocket and, when lunch time came, she hurried to the cloakroom and squeezed it under the tap into a tiny ball of indecipherable mush. She then went to search for John, but couldn’t find him anywhere.

  After lunch she looked for him again during the compulsory hour out of doors. The entire school population was milling around in the field at the back of the building, but John was nowhere to be seen. The sense of guilt was gnawing at Lucy. If only she hadn’t been so unsympathetic. Her tongue had been as sharp as Aunt Sarah’s. Poor John! She felt she would burst if she couldn’t comfort him and tell him how sorry she was. For some reason his reminder hadn’t worked, and this gave her a terrible sinking feeling because she knew it must have been the Magnifico’s will. If it hadn’t worked for John the time might come when it wouldn’t work for her. She was still looking for him when Matthew came towards her across the yard, his good-natured face eager for information.

  “Hi there!” he said cheerfully. “What was David writing on that bit of paper?”

  Everyone liked Matthew. He was always happy and full of jokes that were so silly one couldn’t help laughing. But today Lucy wasn’t in the mood. He annoyed her. How he could be so perky after what had happened to John? He was actually laughing now! She remembered his wink in the classroom with indignation. Why should she satisfy his curiosity?

  “It was nothing,” she said with a shrug. “Just something about Glory to the Magnifico. I put it in the bin.” She turned away.

  Despite the wintry sunshine the field was bleak and cold, and the black thorny branches of the leafless hedges closed in on the children like a prison wall. Aunt Mavis Mathematics was organising a game of rounders. Boring! Lucy felt too miserable to join in. She crept out of sight round the side of the school building to a quiet spot between the bicycle shed and the garden wall. The sun was still shining but the ground was cold and hard. She was just in the process of folding up her coat to make a cushion when David’s half-sister, the cheeky Dorothy, escaped the game of rounders and plonked herself down next to her.

  “I saw you come to school on your own today,” she said, arranging herself carefully so that she managed to sit on a bit of Lucy’s coat. “I’m being nosy. I want to know why your aunt wasn’t with you.”

  Lucy felt flattered. Dorothy was fifteen and lived in Father Drax’s commune, so Lucy didn’t know her very well. It was nice to be noticed by someone from the class above. All the same, she was embarrassed. It wasn’t against the rules but she didn’t mix with people who had received the guidance cane if she could help it – apart from poor John of course, and that was because she felt so sorry for him. She didn’t feel sorry for Dorothy or for David because they never seemed to care, and really they ought to care if they valued their souls.

  “Aunt Sarah was too busy to bring me,” she said shyly. “I’ll be coming on my own from now on.”

  “Nice!” said Dorothy. She plucked at a blade of withered brown grass and twisted it round a twig. With the twig between her lips, she took a puff on an imaginary cigarette and then craned her head to peep round the corner of the shed towards the playing field. “What did you think of today’s assembly?”

  Lucy’s face fell. “Horrible!”

  Aunt Mavis Mathematics was clapping her hands and calling people in, and the two girls jumped to their feet. Dorothy ran out towards the field, but Lucy waited until she had gone and then sidled out, and walked as unobtrusively as she could towards the rear door of the school building. She hoped the Magnifico hadn’t noticed her chatting with a past recipient of the guidance cane.

  School ended at five o’clock, and Dorothy was standing outside the bicycle shed waiting for David. He emerged pushing his bike, and they made their way in miserable silence over the junction and up the High Street towards Drax House.

  “I feel so guilty,” he blurted out after a few minutes.

  “Me too,” muttered Dorothy.

  “I just sat there and didn’t do anything to help him.”

  Dorothy sighed. “Don’t wallow in your own guilt,” she said. “We all just sat there. You’re not the only one.” She caught a powerful whiff of exhaust fumes and spluttered. “Ugh! Just look at that traffic!”

  David struggled to push the bike through the throng of workers as they poured down the pavement towards the Underground. He veered left onto a small patch of grass and plonked himself down on a bench with the bike at his side.

  “Let’s sit here for a few minutes,” he said, “till the crowd has gone. Lucky things!”

  They watched as the non-followers went by, on their way to proper homes with proper families, and Magnifico-free lives.

  “It’s obvious he can’t help it,” said David eventually. “He just twitches more and more each time they do it. Why can’t they see that?”

  “Perhaps they do see it, but if they accept that he’s ill they’ll have to hand him over to the good doctors,” said Dorothy quietly.

  They both digested this thought.

  “We’ve just got to get out of here!” exclaimed David.
“I can’t stand it any longer. Why do we just keep going on about running away instead of actually doing it?”

  “Where can we go? The infiltrators are everywhere. We’d only get caught and brought back, and then things would be worse.” Dorothy shivered. “They might even send us to the disposal cells.”

  “There must something we can do. We’ve just got to plan it properly.”

  “Well, I still think our original idea was best,” said Dorothy slowly. “Me to disappear first, find a job, and get a message back to you when it’s safe to come.”

  She knew David wanted them both to go at the same time, but they had to be practical. They were more likely to be caught if they were together, and at least she looked nearly old enough to get a job – or so she hoped. The problem would be how to get the message back to him when she had found somewhere safe to live.

  “I was trying to talk to Lucy Copse today,” she said, “because if I go first we’ll need an outside friend to get a message through. We can’t trust anyone in the commune now. They’ve just started training some kid to be an infiltrator, which means whoever it is will practise by spying on the rest of us.”

  David groaned. “How do you know?”

  Dorothy glanced over her shoulder, not that anyone could have overheard above the traffic noise. “The aunts were talking about it last night,” she whispered, “when I was hiding in the linen cupboard. For all we know there might be others being trained too, so we’ve got to be really careful. Lucy can’t spy on us from Father Copse’s house and we might be able to trust her. We’ll have to try and get to know her better.”

  They sat in silence for some time, both minds running through a mental list of possible trainee infiltrators. The traffic was still at a standstill, but the crowd on the pavement had dwindled slightly and was now bulging out of the entrance to the tube station. “Come on,” said Dorothy standing up. They walked slowly up the hill, comfortable to be with each other, and in no hurry to reach the commune.