The Father's House Page 7

  Lucy jumped down from the box and hastily scrabbled her way back into the darkness. When the door opened she was sitting on the bottom step. She emerged as filthy as the night before, her eyes screwed up against the blinding light. The bath water was running, and she made her way to her room to fetch her night clothes.

  When the father had departed Aunt Sarah fetched a kettle of boiling water and poured it into the bath. Lucy was surprised and silently grateful. Aunt Sarah took away the dirty clothes. There was no washing machine and no dryer, but the extra work would be nothing if she could only ease the child’s misery without displeasing the Magnifico.

  Later, Lucy lay in bed and thought of George’s mother who’d made him apologise. His father thought Lucy was a nutter, but he was called Dad. No way was Father Copse a dad. She couldn’t even call him her father. He was the father, not hers, just the Magnifico’s agent and nothing more.

  She waited until long after Aunt Sarah had gone to bed, then crept out to the kitchen and found the torch. Its light moved over the table and chairs and cupboards and worktops, but there was nothing that could help her climb the concrete slope in the cellar. She tried the back door and the door to the lobby but they were both locked and the keys were hidden in Aunt Sarah’s secret hiding place. Lucy switched off the torch and put it back on the shelf by the door. She sat down at the table and laid her head on her arms.

  For a moment she slept. She was woken by a dragging sound outside near the bins, and sat bolt upright. The window looked out onto the side path. She stepped over and peeped cautiously through. To the left she could see the side and back of the garage. A hooded figure was shifting the ladder slightly and steadying it at the bottom. It climbed the ladder and stepped over a small turret. Crossing over to the further side of the flat roof of the garage, it dropped down on all fours, disappeared briefly, and then reappeared crawling very gingerly along the high garden wall towards the lime tree to the right. It clambered onto a bough that stretched over the wall towards the next-door garden, and then vanished into the darkness of the branches that faced the windows at the side of the wing.

  Lucy watched and waited for what seemed like an eternity. She knew she should go and tell Aunt Sarah, but couldn’t move. Suddenly the figure reappeared along the bough. Lucy could see it clearly in the moonlight. Instead of returning along the wall it swung down from the branch’s lowest point, landed with a faint thump on the lawn, and disappeared behind the wing. Lucy ran to the back door and looked through the glass panes. She caught a quick glimpse of it before it vanished through the back gate into the alley that ran along behind the houses.

  Her mind was suddenly alive and clear as a bell. She remembered the candles that Aunt Sarah kept in the dresser drawer. Taking one candle and a box of matches, she put them in an old plastic bag retrieved from the kitchen rubbish bin. She picked up the torch and made her way quietly to the cellar door. Silently she turned the handle and switched on the torch. She went down the wooden stairs and put the plastic bag with its contents under the bottom step. Shutting the door carefully behind her she crept back to the kitchen, put the torch in its place, and tiptoed down the hall to her room. She switched on the light and checked her clothes for coal dust. There seemed to be no visible signs of the cellar. Giving the clothes a good sniff she decided they didn’t smell of the cellar either. She was almost looking forward to tomorrow. Despite the strange behaviour of the hooded figure she slept well.

  Lucy tapped at the shell of her boiled egg. “Aunt Sarah,” she said. “What’s a nutter?”

  Sarah’s stern brow wrinkled for a moment, and she looked perplexed.

  “I don’t know. It’s not a word I’ve heard. Is it someone who gathers nuts?”

  “I think it’s supposed to be an insult,” said Lucy. “Yesterday in the street a boy called someone a nutter, and it sounded rude.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about that then. Was the boy from your school?”

  “No.”

  “I hope you didn’t talk to him.”

  “No. I was just walking past and I heard it.”

  “Good. Now eat up and get a move on.”

  In the lunch break Lucy found Dorothy sitting behind a pile of rubble at the rear of the bicycle shed. Her heart lifted as soon as she saw her. Dorothy, with her rosy cheeks and laughing eyes, always made her feel better, even if she didn’t have faith in the Magnifico’s purpose. But something was wrong. Those cheeks were pale and the eyes were dull.

  Dorothy looked up as Lucy approached. “Ah, there you are,” she said.

  “Why are you sitting here?” asked Lucy. “Are you feeling sad?”

  “It’s only so they can’t see me,” Dorothy explained. “I’ve got something to tell you – to warn you about.”

  Lucy felt a stab of fear. Dorothy shifted up a bit to make room for her and gave her a little push. “Come on. Get further back out of sight. If we’re seen they’ll think we’re plotting. That’s why I didn’t come yesterday.”

  “What would we be plotting?” asked Lucy, squeezing herself further along. She sat down gingerly, carefully adjusting her legs to avoid the sore bits.

  “I don’t know, but they’ll think we are. Running away perhaps.”

  “What!”

  “Just joking.”

  Dorothy peeped over the pile of rubble and then leaned towards Lucy.

  “You can’t imagine how awful David feels and he’s really, really sorry.”

  “It’s done now,” said Lucy quietly. “There’s worse things in life. Look at poor John!”

  Dorothy nodded. “Thanks.”

  They sat in sober silence for a while. “No-one could help John,” said Dorothy eventually, “but we thought if we warned you about something it might help make amends, not that anything could really make up for what David did.”

  The stab of fear jabbed at Lucy again. She held her breath.

  “We’ve discovered something, and I know you believe in the purpose and all that, but I can’t not tell you, and if you report us it’s what we deserve because of what David did yesterday.”

  The fire of the melting flesh flickered before Lucy’s very eyes.

  Dorothy leaned closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “You know how when we’re sixteen we have to marry the Magnifico?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “You probably don’t know that girls with a bad conduct record, like me, aren’t considered fit to be his wives, either as mothers or as aunts.”

  “No. I didn’t know that,” said Lucy, immediately wondering if she could make use of this piece of information herself to avoid having to get married.

  “Well, what David and I have just found out is that if a girl isn’t fit to be a wife she’s disposed of. She just disappears. They can’t take the risk of letting her free in the outside world because she might damage the Holy Cause.”

  Lucy ignored the pain in her legs as she tried to struggle to her feet. “What’s the matter with you? You’re mad. You’re just trying to frighten me.”

  Dorothy grabbed her arm and pulled her down. “I’m not,” she hissed. “I’m trying to help you. You’ve only had the guidance once so you might be alright, but I have to warn you in case. You’ve got to save yourself. It’s easy for them to get rid of girls because we don’t have birth certificates, only the boys. People who don’t have birth certificates don’t exist in the outside world.”

  Lucy felt sick. “That can’t be true. The headmaster said some girls would be trained for careers.”

  “It is true, because I’ve heard the aunts discussing it. Some of them don’t think it’s right, but they have to obey the Magnifico. Girls who are trained for careers are given fake birth certificates, and whatever documents they need to get a job. But that’ll never happen to you or me, because we’re a risk – we’ve had the guidance.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  An expression of utter bleakness passed over Dorothy’s face. Her voice caught in her throat. “I’ll tel
l you something else, and then you might believe me.” She stopped.

  There was a long pause. Lucy waited.

  “Well, once when I was little, one of the aunts said if I didn’t behave myself I’d go the same way as my mother, and I didn’t know what she meant.”

  “Well?”

  Dorothy swallowed hard then sat up straight. She spoke quietly but firmly. “Did you know that the mothers in the breeding rooms are always selected for their beauty and brains – same as the fathers – except that some of them are abducted, kidnapped?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “Well my mother was one of them. She was abducted off the street but she refused to be converted to the Holy Cause, so after I was taken away from her they disposed of her. I can just remember her a little.”

  Lucy’s stomach was churning.

  “How?” she managed to whisper.

  “By lethal injection.”

  Dorothy stood up. Lucy watched as she unsuccessfully tried to retrieve her usual cheeky expression. She bent down to whisper. “I’ll be sixteen in September, and it’s April now, so I’ve got five months. I don’t know what happens in the outside world if I can’t get a job, but I’d rather starve to death out there than wait to be disposed of here.”

  As she edged her way along past the pile of rubble she turned back to Lucy.

  “It’s David’s fault you had the guidance. Although we won’t blame you if you report him, we beg you not to – or to repeat what I’ve told you today.”

  She sidled out into the playground. Lucy waited a moment and emerged just as the bell was ringing.

  Lucy crossed at the lights and started walking uphill. Her mind was buzzing with the horror of what had happened to Dorothy’s mother (if it was true and if Dorothy wasn’t completely crazy). There was a long queue at the bus stop, and she looked at it longingly, wondering if she dare join it just to stand there among people who belonged to the outside world. A bus was a wonderful thing, she thought. It could carry her away for ever. But if she wasn’t registered, if she didn’t exist, she would never even be allowed to earn the money for the fare. She’d have to walk.

  David pushed his bike and followed at a distance as Lucy trudged despondently up the road. Matthew called after him from outside the school, but he just waved and pointed up and to the left, towards the common.

  “Lucy!” called David, when she was halfway down the lane between the houses. “Wait for me.”

  “You’ll get into trouble,” she said when he caught up with her.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” he said.

  “I’m not going to report you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “It’s not. I’m just truly sorry. I’ll go and tell them it was my fault if that’s what you want.”

  Lucy stopped and looked at him. “I don’t want that,” she said at last. “It wouldn’t take what happened away.” She twisted her reminder. “And it’s made me learn something.”

  She turned away from him, but he followed. They slowly crossed the common together. Her mind was on tonight’s visit to the cellar. It held no terrors for her now. It almost gave her a sense of adventure.

  “Which is your house?”

  “It’ll never be my house even if I live there for ever!” She exclaimed bitterly, pointing at number 3 Mortimor Road. “It’s the father’s house, and look how furiously angry it is! It’s watching me now all the way from over there, and when I get back Aunt Sarah will say she told me to hurry home and disobedient children will be burned in the fire of the melting flesh.”

  Self-pity turned to anger. “I shall be trapped for ever in that house, and it’s not right. Why should I be stopped from having a registered birth and being an existing person and getting a job and earning my own money?”

  David was surprised. He had often wondered what lay behind the inscrutable calm of that exquisitely delicate face. She had a sense of humour he knew, because sometimes when he was particularly silly at school, a suppressed laugh would bubble from her lips, but he had never really got to know her. It was as though she was trapped inside an invisible wall.

  He leaned on his bike and studied the house, thinking.

  “Does Father Copse live with you?” he asked.

  “No. He lives in a flat on the first floor.”

  “Do you ever go into his flat?”

  “No. We’re not allowed upstairs. They keep the door to the lobby locked, and that’s where the stairs are. Why d’you want to know?”

  David was thinking.

  “Just because you don’t exist in the outside world doesn’t mean you don’t exist in the Magnifico’s world,” he said slowly. “All the fathers have to keep records of the births of their children, and report on their welfare to the Holy Leaders. Somewhere up there in Father Copse’s flat he’ll have a record of your birth. In a box or a file or something. If you could find it and escape you could take it to somewhere official, as long as it wasn’t infiltrated of course, and ask them to give you a proper birth certificate. A court perhaps. Then you’d exist.”

  Lucy caught her breath and stared at him.

  “How do you know?” she said, hardly daring to believe him.

  “Dorothy hears things no-one else knows about.”

  As they came nearer to the house Lucy moved off the path, towards the bushes by the pond. “I’m allowed to play here with Paul,” she said.

  “Who’s Paul?”

  “I don’t know. He lives with us. The Magnifico sent him in January. He was with a foster aunt before that.”

  Once they’d reached the bushes, out of sight of the house, Lucy relaxed a little and took time to think. “I don’t know how I’d ever manage to get into his flat,” she said. “Even if I could get up there I wouldn’t know where to start looking, because it must be enormous. It stretches over the back wing, and over the whole of our flat to the front. Maybe Thomas the gardener would have some ideas.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t tell a soul!” exclaimed David fiercely.

  Lucy was taken aback. “But he’s my friend,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter. You must promise me you’ll never, ever, tell anyone what I told you – or what Dorothy told you.” He caught Lucy by the arm and looked earnestly into her green eyes. “All it takes is one slip of the tongue, and not only will you be in danger of disposal, but so will Dorothy and so will I.”

  She felt shaken. “Let go of my arm. OK. I promise.”

  “You’re lucky,” said David, “because you’ve got a chance. If you were in the Drax commune you’d never be able to get at your records because Father Drax doesn’t keep them there. They’re in his private house.”

  “I must go in or I’ll be in trouble.” The curtain of inscrutable courtesy came down. “And thank you for what you’ve told me. I’ll try and think of something.”

  David watched her go. She was fourteen, the same age as he was, but had the body and the crushed vulnerability of a little girl. It was easy to believe the rumour that Father Copse kept her half-starved. She turned, and her face lit up briefly as she smiled. He smiled back, waved, and jumped onto his bike. For a moment he’d caught a glimpse of the real Lucy. He sensed that despite her fragility, she was tough.

  As Lucy crossed over the road to the house, she gritted her teeth and was determined. When she got at those records nothing would hold her back. Who did they think they were to decide what she should do with her life? If the Magnifico was reading her mind at this moment, she hoped he read so much he went blind! It would serve him right.

  Lucy entered the cellar meekly. As soon as the father’s footsteps had died away she took the candle out of the bag, taking care not to rustle it. The matches slipped out of her hand but she felt around in the dark and found them on the bottom step. She lit the candle and, stepping over and round the various obstacles, made her way to the far end of the cellar.

  She blew out the candle and placed it with the matches against the base of the wall at the s
ide of the slope so that it would be easy to find again. Then she stepped onto the crate and onto the box. Laying her body flat and digging her left knee into the disgusting bit of underlay, and pushing with the toes of her right foot, she worked her way up from the top of the box until she reached the ring of light. She felt with her fingers and pushed at a heavy circular bit of metal. It moved upwards and sideways. All it needed was a good shove.

  Light poured in from above. With a final push with her toes Lucy grabbed the rim of the coal hole and pulled herself up. Her head poked above the path and she immediately recognised the street lamp which, together with the moonlight, had so obligingly provided the ring of light. She pulled herself out on to the path and stood up. The air was no colder outside than it was in the cellar, and was considerably fresher. She breathed deeply and looked around. The common lay silent just over the road. Its trees made sharp shadows in the bright March moonlight.

  Lucy crossed the road and slipped into the bushes surrounding the pond. The water was a black mirror speckled with stars, and reflected a big round moon. She stood listening to the rustles and sighs of the earth and the shrubs, and was not afraid. Lying flat on her back on the ground, she closed her eyes. Out here in the open the stars no longer frightened her. The cold was nothing, and she felt at peace.

  As she breathed in the sharp pure air and the sweet scent of the grass, she found it easy to believe, just for a moment, that the Magnifico did not exist and there was no purpose. Perhaps Dorothy was right after all. She pushed the heresy away. Aunt Sarah would not have lied to her all these years.

  Something woke her. There was a noise at the house. She jumped up and peeped through the bushes. The automatic gates to the left of the house had opened and a long elegant car with blackened windows was purring up the drive towards the garage. The gate shut behind it and Lucy darted across the road to peer through the diamond-shaped holes that ran horizontally across its upper section. The car stopped before it reached the garage and an outside light was switched on over the lobby door. As the driver stepped out the father appeared. A giant of a man climbed out of the passenger seat and came round the car to speak to him. Was Lucy imagining things or did they each give a quick flick of the infiltrators’ hand signal?