The Father's House Read online

  The woman looked up at the sky. The sun had gone behind a cloud. Perhaps it would rain, perhaps not. It would make no difference to her. Seasons would come and go, the leaves on the lime would change colour and fall and grow again. Nevertheless, as she looked at the tree, its sprouting spring foliage gave her pleasure. Suddenly she realised that gazing up at her through the lacework of twigs was a pair of big anxious eyes.

  Lucy stayed still. She knew she had been seen. Two arms appeared next to the face and struggled with the window. The bottom section shot up with a bang and the face pressed itself up against the bars. Lucy twisted herself round to face the tree trunk and slithered down until she reached the lowest branch. For a moment she swung from her hands and then dropped. As she reached the ground she heard Aunt Sarah calling for her. Hot in the face, she sauntered as casually as she could over to the back door. Aunt Sarah emerged with a brush and pan in one hand, looking cross.

  “Where have you been? You’re supposed to be looking after Paul.”

  “I was just looking for another trowel to dig my garden,” said Lucy. “Paul’s been using mine.”

  “Well, don’t leave him like that again. Goodness knows what he’ll get up to. I’m much too busy to be watching you all the time. Quick, come in both of you. It’s raining.”

  Paul was humming his little tune, and singing the one and only song that he knew. “I can see you, I can hear you, I can watch your every action,” he sang. He abandoned his garden and followed Lucy into the kitchen.

  “Aunt Sarah, I saw Lucy up in the sky.”

  “Did you indeed!” said Sarah. “Come and play indoors now while it’s raining, both of you, and don’t get under my feet.”

  There’s something up with that child, thought Sarah.

  Lucy was tense and fidgety for the rest of the school holidays, and hardly ate her food. Each day she waited for the tenant to put in a complaint about her, and for the father’s massive hand to grab the back of her neck. She couldn’t help wondering how unsuitable girls were disposed of. Would it be the lethal injection, the same as Dorothy’s mother? Lucy longed for the beginning of term so she could ask Dorothy more questions – even though she might not want to believe the answers.

  When the summer term began in the first week of May Dorothy was no longer there. Lucy looked for her in the corridor and in the cloakroom but there was no sign of her. At lunch time she searched in vain in the bushes surrounding the playing field and behind the bicycle shed. Nobody referred to her absence, and eventually Lucy asked one of the girls from the Drax commune where she was.

  “We don’t know. She went to bed one night and wasn’t there in the morning. We’re not allowed to talk about it.” The girl ran off.

  That evening Lucy waited in the corridor for David to come out of the boys’ cloakroom. She studied the noticeboard with one eye on the cloakroom door. There was a note saying that the Wednesday prayer meeting had been cancelled because the Holy Leaders were away on the Envoy’s business. Why on earth couldn’t people pray without the Holy Leaders? Next to it was list of the last end of term exam results. There was her name, and she’d done well. In fact she had by far the highest marks in her class. At least the father couldn’t be angry with her for that.

  Dorothy’s name was not listed.

  A group of boys emerged from the cloakroom shifting their satchels onto their backs and pulling on their caps. Lucy moved as casually as she could away from the board, and stood aside as they went past. David was among the stragglers. His blazer was spotlessly clean and his silvery-blond hair was neatly combed down ready to face critical inspection by the aunts at Drax House. He and Matthew were whispering about something a teacher had said. Matthew put an arm round David’s shoulder.

  Catching Lucy’s eye David wriggled away and put his satchel down on the floor and rummaged through it. “You go on,” he said to Matthew. “I haven’t got my homework book. I’ll have to go back.”

  Matthew joined the group of boys in front and disappeared down the steps. Lucy walked past David and he fastened up his satchel. Out on the steps she slowed down until he was alongside her.

  “Do you know where Dorothy is?” she asked, looking straight ahead and scarcely moving her lips.

  “Gone,” muttered David through clenched teeth. “But I don’t know where.”

  He moved one step down ahead of her just as the headmaster emerged from the front door. At the bottom of the steps he turned left as always, towards the entrance to the bike shed, and Lucy stepped over to the traffic lights. The headmaster waddled past David and climbed into a car parked at the side of the building. David lingered until he had driven off, then fetched his bike. Instead of following the other boys as they aimed for the High Street he pushed his bike towards the lights, and stood behind Lucy.

  The green man appeared and, as Lucy moved off, Matthew looked back.

  “Hey! David! Why are you going that way?” he shouted.

  “Bike practice!” David called back.

  He was too late to catch the green man and Lucy had already crossed. She glanced over at him, and walked on slowly up the hill.

  He bent down and fiddled with one of his tyres. Out of the side of his eye he watched as Matthew cycled up the High Street towards the Drax House commune. When the green man came again he crossed and waited until a red double-decker bus blocked Matthew from view, then he hurriedly pushed the bike up South Hill. When he caught up with Lucy she was talking to a scruffy-looking little boy of about ten who sat on the gate at number 38.

  As David came up George turned towards him. “Here’s another snoot from the snooty sect. A nutter from the nuthouse.”

  “Nutter yourself,” said Lucy, and moved on wishing she had a better vocabulary for dealing with insults. David ignored George. He hastened up the hill alongside her.

  “He’s right,” he said. “They’re a bunch of nutters. They’re crazy and they’re evil.”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” said Lucy. “I just wish I knew where Dorothy was.”

  “So do I. But she’ll be alright, as long as she doesn’t get caught. All I know is that if some of the mothers manage to get away they have to make sure they’re not caught.”

  “What happens if they are?” asked Lucy, hardly wanting to hear the answer.

  “Disposal.”

  Lucy’s heart plummeted. She didn’t want to believe it, but she was terribly afraid it might be true. Fear for Dorothy clutched at her insides.

  “How will we ever know what happened, if we never hear from her again?” she asked tremulously.

  David’s voice cracked. “We won’t.”

  They turned into the lane towards the common.

  “Listen,” said David. “You can trust me for ever because you didn’t tell on me about the hymn singing, but don’t trust anyone else. I must go back now.”

  He jumped onto his bike. Lucy stared after him. The silver-blond hair that he had smoothed down so neatly was now blowing all over the place in the wind, and his shirt had come out at the back. The aunts at Drax House would not be pleased. They took pride in their reputation for clean and tidy children. As Lucy walked over the common all she could see was Dorothy’s cheeky smile, and she felt bereft. If Dorothy could have seen the misery on her face at this moment she would have said, “Stop looking so dismal! Hold your head up and be proud. You’ll think of something.” When she was halfway along the path Lucy turned round and could see George sitting on his back wall, staring after her. He waved.

  Sarah scooped blue rat poison into one end of a bit of plastic piping. She squeezed her large hips into the gap between the garage and the garden wall, and carefully put the piping down on the ground. This was the fourth time she had done so since Lucy told her about the rat, and she hoped it would be the last. The poison had disappeared from the first dose, and a few days later she had found a dead rat near the bin. Last time only half the dose had gone so it looked as though there might be no more rats. If none went this time
she would know that they were all dead and she could relax.

  She straightened herself up, looked upwards and wondered briefly why there was a wooden cover over part of the gap above her head, and then backed out. It was hard to turn round in the narrow space. She jammed a piece of hardboard across the entrance and then secured a piece of wire fencing over it, to keep Paul out. She dragged one of the bins up against it just for good measure.

  Back in the kitchen she washed her hands thoroughly and started to prepare Lucy’s tea. Paul would wake up soon and there wouldn’t be much peace for quite a while. Acting on an uncharacteristic impulse, she cut two small slices from the father’s favourite coffee and walnut cake and laid them on the children’s plates. He would never know, and she hoped the Magnifico had too many serious matters on his mind to bother about it.

  Lucy noticed the cake as soon as she came in. The anxious look in her eyes vanished briefly and she smiled. Sarah was glad. She longed to ask Lucy what was troubling her but knew she could not. The Magnifico had decreed that children must receive no comfort from those about them. They had to find the strength within themselves to deal with their own difficulties.

  After finishing her homework Lucy sat at the table with Paul and admired his drawings. They were much too good for a little boy of three. “You’ll be a great artist one day,” she said, and he was pleased. Sarah was wringing out washing at the sink. She put it into a plastic tub and took it to the back door.

  “Watch him while I hang this out.”

  “Yes, Aunt Sarah,” replied Lucy.

  Paul knelt on his chair with both elbows on the table, intently focusing on his artistic efforts. He wrote PAUL and drew a picture. “Look. It’s me. Fluffy hair.”

  Lucy smiled. Her mind was far away. How would Dorothy manage in the outside world when she’d only ever lived in a commune?

  Aunt Sarah returned with the empty washing basket. She was in a good mood tonight. Lucy risked asking some questions.

  “What’s a sect, Aunt Sarah?”

  “It’s a sort of religion,” said Sarah. “You do ask strange questions.”

  “Do we have a sect?”

  “No. We have a religion, the only true religion, the Holy Cause. We are the elite.”

  “Why have we been chosen to be the elite?”

  “So we can be saved when all non-followers perish. Now get along with you. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

  Lucy lay tense in her bed. Wouldn’t Dorothy perish in the outside world? She would surely be safer back in the commune. Wasn’t Lucy safer too, in the father’s house? What else had she ever known? There was a distant memory, perhaps only a dream. She was high up in the doorway that led from the lobby to the kitchen, held in the arms of a giant, and looking down at a fat woman who stood by the window. Then she was on a lap and could feel a gentle face nuzzling down into her hair, and a loving voice was saying, “It’s going to be alright. Just be a good girl and everything will be alright.”

  She had been a good girl, but nothing felt all right. It felt all wrong.

  In the second-floor flat Maria was listening to the Holy Leaders. They sat in the armchairs like three crows, spilling out the familiar mantra as they stroked their beards and twisted their side curls round their fingers. Claudia lay on the couch, too listless to care what they said. If they wanted her to believe them she would. It didn’t matter to her one way or the other. All she wanted was to get out of here. Maria moved quietly around the room pretending to dust, tidying books, stacking magazines, no longer a target of the conversion techniques. The oily voices painting their pretty picture of Paradise would have made her laugh out loud years ago when she was young and free. Now they sickened her.

  “The Magnifico has a special place in Paradise for the mothers of his children,” one Holy Leader was saying.

  Maria thought of the pinched little face and the huge eyes that had stared at her out of the unfurled leaves of the lime tree. Every day, many times a day, she looked out of the window to see if it came again, but it never did.

  “The warmth of his eternal love will wrap itself around their souls and bring them comfort.” The voice droned on and on.

  “Their sacrifices in this world will be rewarded in the next. They will dwell in palaces, and feed on delicious foods. They will wear beautiful clothes and precious jewels, and bathe in crystal pools.”

  Claudia suddenly sat up.

  “Oh, for God’s sake just bloody well shut up!” she screamed. “You’re making me sick. What do I want with jewels? And I hate swimming, in crystal pools or anywhere else.” She swung herself off the sofa and stood up.

  The Holy Leaders were stunned into silence. Maria put her hand over her mouth and rushed into the bedroom slamming the door behind her. Throwing herself on the bed she tried to smother her splutters in the pillow, but gave up and rolled onto her side clutching her stomach. She gasped and wailed and laughed out loud till her sides ached.

  A few minutes later Claudia came into the room, tall, slender, straight, and electric with energy.

  “They’ve gone. What a bunch of revolting old windbags!” she said, dropping down on the bed beside Maria and joining in her laughter.

  Eventually Maria sat up, tears streaming down her face. With ever diminishing gasps she fished under her pillow for a handkerchief.

  “How do we get out of here?” said Claudia.

  Maria wiped her face and blew her nose. She put her finger to her lips.

  “Shush.” She pointed at the ceiling, the walls and the floor.

  “We don’t even try,” she said loudly. She stood up and beckoned. Claudia followed her to the sitting room.

  “Music!” announced Maria cheerfully. “That’s what we need. It’ll help you think about what the Holy Leaders have told you. You may see things differently when you’ve had time to absorb it all.”

  She chose some Wagner from her collection and slipped it into the player.

  “Just lie down and rest,” she called loudly over the music. “Just relax and this’ll help empty your mind of all your troubles.” Then she added, “I’m just going to have a shower.”

  She beckoned Claudia into the shower room that led off the hall, shut the door loudly, and turned on the tap.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you, but you didn’t seem to hear me,” she whispered, against the sound of the spraying water.

  “Tell me what?”

  “You’ve got to pretend to believe them and you’ve got to be convincing, or you’ll end up like me and never get out. Don’t make the mistake I made by refusing to be converted. I’m here forever until that horrible Father Copse gets sick of me and has me disposed of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you can convince them that you’re happy to give up the comforts of this world in return for the future delights of Paradise, and that you’re a sincere convert to the Holy Cause, you’ve got a good chance of being sent to live in the commune to be a mother or an aunt to Copse’s children. If you can be an aunt you may get an opportunity to escape. It’s more difficult if you’re a mother because they keep the ones they’re unsure of locked up on the upper floors.”

  “What happens if I don’t convert?”

  “You’ll be disposed of. By lethal injection.”

  Claudia looked at her in horror.

  “How come you’re still here?”

  “He’s besotted with me. I don’t know why. I’m never nice to him. I’ve had children by him, but all he does these days is stroke my hair, and I grit my teeth. He says it’s like his mother’s hair and he calls me by her name – Belinda. The rest of the time he just calls me ‘woman’.”

  Claudia gasped. “He’s crazy!”

  “Whatever you do, pretend to try and please him.” Maria turned the shower off, then quickly turned it on again.

  “The whole place is bugged, but I’ve never been able to find out where. Those idiot priests are probably in the flat below listening out for us at this very moment. He
’s at work all day, but he’ll listen in the evening because you’re new, so be careful what you say. Always put the music on, or the shower, or rustle a tissue near your mouth if you want to say anything that you don’t want him to hear.”

  She switched off the shower again, waited a moment and then opened the door.

  “That was a lovely shower, I feel so much better now,” she said loudly, turning down the music.

  “Good,” said Claudia equally loudly. “That music has done wonders for me too. Inspiring! I’m so glad I’ve had time to think. I’ll have to ask the Holy Leaders to come and explain it all to me again. Perhaps they’ll forgive me for my rudeness.”

  Downstairs the Holy Leaders listened with interest.

  “It’s all a sham,” said one of them.

  “Perhaps so,” said the other, “but it’s our holy duty to keep trying.”

  Later that evening the father changed out of his formal work suit and slipped into loose velvet trousers and an embroidered jacket. Crossing over to the sideboard he took his tray out of the dumb waiter then pressed the button to send it back to the kitchen. He settled himself down at the dining table and opened his napkin. He poured his wine and lifted the covers from the plates, taking pleasure in the sight and smell of a beautifully prepared meal.

  A few minutes later the whirring noise of the dumb waiter on its way up to the second floor reminded him to turn on the sound from upstairs. He had lost the habit of listening while the woman had been on her own, but now there were two of them up there it might be wise to hear what they had to say. Reaching over to the wall near the door, he pressed a switch and then took up his knife and fork. Music floated gently down and he could hear the soft murmur of women’s voices chatting about the colour of Claudia’s hair.

  So Claudia had recovered from her state of decline. Now he would get to know her. The Holy Leaders would no doubt report on today’s visit. If they were beginning to persuade her to the Holy Cause, his own striking good looks and charming manner should speed up the process. Maybe he could even make Belinda jealous by showering a younger woman with his attentions. Reaching out to the little side table, he pulled a hand mirror out of the drawer and practised his smile. It was still there, but it took more of an effort these days. He tried to crinkle his eyes a little more, but wasn’t really satisfied. Never mind. The pain in his head would pass off when he’d had something to eat.