by Amy Lord
Soft light illuminated Caleb as he worked his way around the room, lighting candles and storm lanterns to chase away the dark. When he finished we were encircled by the flickering of many flames, each one alive somehow.
We stood there, neither speaking. I let my bag fall to the ground with a thud, my eyes drifting around the room. We were in what must once have been a study. Bookshelves lined the walls, climbing high to the ceiling. Most of the books were long gone; I could make out the thick haze of dust that had settled along the wood. I let my mind wander, picturing the room as it must have been years ago, full of heavy leather-bound volumes, perhaps with prints on the walls.
Caleb didn’t interrupt my reverie, only stood and waited. Eventually I turned back to him. ‘So, you wanted me to come here?’
He gave a nod. ‘We know where Simon is, for definite.’
I stared at him, a strange sensation rising in my chest. ‘How do you know?’
He examined my face. ‘We have people, on the inside. They tell us things when they can, although it’s incredibly dangerous for them.’
‘Where is he?’ I couldn’t breathe.
Caleb tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans. ‘It’s as we thought. The Authorisation Bureau have him at their headquarters.’
‘No, no, that can’t be right. My stepfather, he told me…’ I trailed off, the long years of my life with the major stretching out in front of me. I could picture the conversations we’d had about his work. I always knew that he lied, but I didn’t realise how naive I was in my understanding of the truth.
Caleb came closer and laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘We know all about your stepfather, Clara. Of course, it’s natural that he wouldn’t tell you the truth about his work. Especially because of your father.’
I pulled away from him. ‘Why would he care about my father after so long? The major got everything he wanted – he knew my father was dead and would never trouble him again.’
Silence hung between us. His brow furrowed. ‘Your father isn’t dead, Clara.’
The ground beneath my feet was suddenly unstable. It came rushing up to meet me as my legs went weak. When I came to my senses, Caleb was crouching beside me, his face concerned.
My eyes flickered. ‘Are you alright?’ He touched my cheek.
I struggled to sit up, the room spinning. ‘I’m sorry, I… I don’t understand.’
He sighed. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have told you like this, Clara. I thought your mother would have told you the truth about what happened.’
Nausea quickened in my throat. ‘What does my mother have to do with this? Please, just tell me.’
He sat carefully beside me, folding his legs in front of him. I waited for him to speak.
‘Your father was in prison for a long, long time. He had a difficult experience. They weren’t… easy on him.’
Tears pricked my eyes as I remembered the kind man who would read me poetry before bed. I remembered how his hands always seemed so large as he held the book reverently.
‘Go on.’ My voice cracked; the words barely audible.
Caleb looked away. ‘After so many years had gone by, it was decided that your father no longer served a purpose for the Authorisation Bureau. For whatever reason, they decided it wouldn’t be appropriate to simply execute him. Instead, they decided to send him into exile.’
Blood thundered in my ears. ‘I don’t… exile?’
‘Perhaps it was some act of kindness on the part of your stepfather. He couldn’t kill the man who he had become so attached to, in a perverse way. So he sent him away.’
My hands shook. ‘Are you saying that the major knew, all these years, where he was?’
Caleb looked at me sadly. ‘Your stepfather is the one who handled his case. He oversaw the interrogations, decided on the punishments, carried out the investigations. It was only after they had held your father for over a decade that he was released. You must have been beginning your academic career at the time.’
I couldn’t process his words. ‘You mean, all that time when I was growing up, he was alive? Every day my stepfather went to work, he was seeing my father and he never breathed a word of it?’
‘I’m not sure of the specifics, Clara. But yes, he knew. I think he kept your father alive to torment him, at first, as he built a relationship with your mother. But somehow, he was afraid of him. Afraid that he was still the one thing in your mother’s heart; the one thing he wanted to break down until he could be sure of her feelings for him. In the end, it went on for so long that it didn’t matter. When they released your father, he wasn’t the same man you knew. And they didn’t just let him go. As a condition of his release, he was transported to Ireland. From there, they took him to America. They still have contacts there who will watch people if they consider them a threat.’
My face was wet with tears. I struggled to hold on, to hear the rest of the story.
‘That’s where I met him. There are others like us around the world, who left Britain to escape the junta and haven’t been able to return for fear of their own safety. But they make plans and they take action, quietly, in the hope that things will change and they can come back.
‘When he heard that I was returning to the country, your father asked me to bring a message. To your mother. He wanted his family to know that he was still alive. That he was free.’
I couldn’t take any more. Scrambling to my feet, I vomited in the corner of the room, my body heaving. When there was no more, I pressed my forehead against the cool wall, trying to steady myself as what was left of my world tumbled around me.
‘Why wouldn’t she tell me that he was alive?’ I couldn’t stop myself from wailing. ‘Why?’
Caleb carried on. ‘I came to your house, when I knew that your stepfather was away. I sat in the living room and spoke to your mother, told her that her husband was alive. That he still thought of her, and you, after everything. She thanked me and asked me to leave. That’s the only time I ever saw her.’
A wave of anger swept through me. I clenched my fists and banged them hard against the wall, the shock reverberating through my skull.
Caleb grasped my shoulders and pulled me away. I let him draw me in against his chest. We stood for a long time, quietly, as I battled with my emotions.
‘What about Simon? What are you going to do?’
He stared at me, his expression serious. ‘We’re going to get him back.’
*
When we emerged from the old study and made our way deeper into the house, we found Elizabeth. I looked at her in surprise; I had forgotten that she was coming here.
She sat at the kitchen table, with a lantern glowing beside her.
‘I thought I’d leave you alone,’ she said softly.
I flushed, conscious of how I must look, my face tear stained and puffy, my clothes marked with vomit.
Caleb bustled past me and rummaged in a cupboard under the sink. He pulled out two cans of Coke and handed one to me. I stared at it; I hadn’t seen any for years, not since the factories closed and most of the manufacturing moved abroad. Noticing my amazement, he said, ‘We get supplies from a few places. There are warehouses still full of stuff that you can’t buy any more since they restricted imports. When was the last time you had a Twix?’
I popped open the can and took a sip. The drink fizzed across my tongue in a shock of sweetness. I gulped it down, savouring the way the sugar clung to my teeth. It reminded me of childhood.
We sat at the table beside Elizabeth. ‘Tell me what happens next.’
They exchanged a glance. ‘We need to find out more information first,’ Caleb said. ‘I’ve already left a message for one of our contacts; he’s going to report back as soon as he can find out where Simon is being held.’
‘But I thought you said he was at the Authorisation Bureau headquarters?’
Caleb gave a dark smile. ‘Have you ever been there, Clara?’
I remembered the day I was sent away to sc
hool. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. ‘Yes. My stepfather brought me there once, to scare me. I knew a secret he didn’t want me to share.’ Anger surged through me. ‘Did you know they were responsible for the Whitehall bombing?’
His reaction was a disappointment. I’d expected shock, but there was only resignation. ‘Sure. That’s something we found out many years ago. It’s an open secret in some circles.’
‘So I was afraid for years and everyone knew anyway?’ It hurt to think about how much I’d lost because of the regime, because of my stepfather.
Caleb and Elizabeth exchanged a look. She continued to discuss the Authorisation Bureau’s headquarters, her gaze somewhere to one side, allowing me to compose myself as she talked.
‘It’s got floor after floor built underground. That’s where they keep the prisoners, the ones they think will be useful in some way.’
I shuddered. Caleb continued, ‘There are tunnels there too. Some of them are ancient, over two hundred years old. There are modern ones, which provide secret ways in and out of the building, should it come under attack.’
I looked from Caleb to Elizabeth. ‘And you’re planning to use these tunnels to access the building?’
They nodded. ‘We’ve been working for years to build a map of the tunnels, but it’s proved incredibly difficult as there are no comprehensive plans. Most were created here and there and never officially recorded. We’ve had to go on hearsay and the reports of our undercover people. But we’re getting close.’
Caleb leaned towards me. ‘It won’t be long now and we’ll be able to go in and get Simon back. You can bring him home.’
Thirty-one
The news that my father was still alive overwhelmed me. For days I could think of nothing else; it haunted my dreams. I pictured him as he might look now, the man he could have become. I created elaborate fantasy lives in my mind, none of which felt real.
The truth was, my father, my real dad, was so far back in the depths of my memory that he had ceased to be a part of my real life. I thought about him every single day, had done for years, but somewhere along the line he had become nothing more than a construct that I crafted my carefully curated memories onto.
I couldn’t admit it to myself, but I was afraid. I didn’t know what he had endured, locked away with the Authorisation Bureau. But he had spent so long with them – with the major – that he had to have been through so much pain. And pain like that, it changes you. He wouldn’t be the same restless dreamer with his love of poetry. He would be older, harder, the edges sharp around something fundamentally broken. He wouldn’t be the man I knew.
After lying awake into the early hours for the fifth night in a row, I decided to confront my mother. I’d been distracted at work for days; it would be easy to claim sickness and take the day off.
It was a convoluted journey to my mother’s house, using the chaotic public transport system. I didn’t bother to wait for morning; instead I clambered out of bed, the icy night air biting at my ankles as I moved around the apartment getting dressed, the only light seeping into the room from the street lights outside.
The streets were empty, bathed in the silence of the early hours. I swaddled myself in my winter clothes, drifting unseen through the city.
By the time I reached my mother’s house, a watery light had broken over the horizon. I waited in a narrow grove of oak trees at the end of their driveway, watching the uniformed neighbours as they emerged from their homes, climbed into their cars and left for the day. It was only when the major’s car rolled away, with him in the back seat, immersed in paperwork, that I approached the house.
I rang the doorbell and waited, rubbing my hands together. My breath emerged in bursts of mist. Eventually the door opened behind me and I turned, expecting to see the housekeeper, a sour-faced woman who had replaced Mary after she retired to live with her sister on the south coast. My mother stood in the doorway, in her expensive silk dressing gown and slippers; her eyebrows rose when she saw me.
‘Clara! What are you doing here?’
I ignored the question, craning my neck to see past her into the house. ‘What, no housekeeper? It’s not like you to answer the door yourself.’
I took a step forward and she opened the door enough to let me into the house. I peeled off my boots and heavy coat in the hallway while she waited. In a small act of rebellion, I left the boots in the middle of the floor, one shoe toppled over, scattering grains of dirt across the expensive hardwood boards.
Tossing my coat over the newel post on the banister, I strode along the hall and into the living room, my mother behind me. I didn’t sit down. Instead I turned to fix her with my gaze, arms folded across my chest. She settled on the edge of the sofa, hands folded primly on her knees, eyes darting around the room.
‘So,’ I said. ‘My father’s alive then.’
Her mouth opened then closed, lips pressed together in a tight line.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
She reached up a delicately manicured hand to smooth her hair. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Clara. And I think it’s cruel of you to come here and blurt something like that out when you know that your father has been dead for years.’ She sniffed.
I snorted. ‘Oh, okay. So you’re telling me someone didn’t come to this house, what, two, three years ago, and tell you that they’d met Dad in America?’ She stared straight ahead, chin aloft, refusing to meet my eye. ‘Are you that fucking evil that you pretend it didn’t happen? That your own husband isn’t still alive?’
I jabbed my finger at her. ‘Because he is still your husband, you know. All this,’ I waved a hand at the expensive furnishings and glossy wallpaper that decorated the room, ‘It’s all bollocks. It’s not yours, it’s his. And you’re not even married to him.’
She looked at me coldly. ‘You want the truth? Fine.’
She stood up, head still held high, and left the room. Suddenly deflated, I didn’t know what to do. I went to the window and gazed out across the gardens, still thick with early morning haze.
Several minutes passed before my mother returned, a piece of yellowed paper clutched in her hand. She held it out to me.
‘Darius arranged this before we were married.’
Her hand trembled slightly as I took the sheet of paper. I stared at it for a long time, unable to decipher what I was seeing. It was a certificate of annulment.
My father’s name was there in bold type, his stunted signature – so familiar even after all this time – struck me a vicious blow to the heart. My mother’s name sat beside it, her longhand letters curling across the page.
My hand dropped to my side, the paper fluttering to the ground, face down. ‘He knew you were getting married to someone else?’
She nodded, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘Darius told him. He forced your father to sign the paperwork so that he could marry me.’
My voice cracked. ‘How could you do that to him? Don’t tell me you didn’t know; your signature is on that certificate. The marriage wouldn’t have been legal without it.’
She sat on the sofa with a sigh, curling her legs underneath her body. She wasn’t the polished woman I had always known: even in the dim early morning light there were lines deepening around her eyes, the soft sag of the skin at her throat, the stray hairs left untouched around the arch of her brow. For the first time I saw her as a woman, not just my mother.
‘I knew. Darius came to me a few days before the wedding with some documents. He had me sign before he went to your father. He knew that would hurt him more, to have the wedding confirmed on paper, in my own writing. It would be a betrayal. In the end, he went one better. He took me to the prison so I could tell your father I wanted to end our marriage.’
‘You saw him. You saw Dad, and you didn’t tell me?’ My voice was pained. ‘You didn’t have to marry the major you know. Maybe if you hadn’t, Dad would be here with us now.’
She fixed me with a fierce
stare. ‘But I did, Clara. Don’t you see that? Without your stepfather, where would we be now? Do you think that you would have gone to such a good school and become an academic?’ She shook her head. ‘They wouldn’t have touched you. Not after what happened to your father. I did it for you.’
I started to weep. ‘Don’t tell me you betrayed my dad for me, for a man I’ve always hated. You did everything for yourself. Why else would you let me think he was dead for all these years? You didn’t want to stir up the past, disrupt your comfortable little life here.’
Her voice rose. ‘Comfortable? You call my life comfortable? Well yes, if all you care about are possessions, then I suppose it is. No Clara, this place is a prison.’
‘A prison? You’re comparing your life to my dad’s again, as though you’ve had it harder.’ I sneered. ‘You disgust me.’
I stormed past her into the hall and began struggling with my boots, trying to force my feet inside. The laces were still too tight and they wouldn’t go. She ran out and caught my arm as I was yanking my coat on, the front door half open, cold air flooding in.
‘Please, Clara! Don’t leave – we can talk about this!’
I shoved her away. ‘I don’t want to talk to you ever again. You’re not my mother.’
She let go and I burst outside into the frigid air, my lungs burning with cold as I gasped through my tears. I broke into a sprint, trying to get away from the house as fast as I could, my feet leaving hasty prints on the frost-covered driveway.
When I reached the street, I couldn’t breathe. I stopped for a moment. She was standing in the doorway, watching me. I turned my back on her and walked away, jagged breaths rattling in my ears.
*
I didn’t go home. A fire possessed me and I needed to do something; I couldn’t cope with another night staring at the walls of my empty apartment, imagining Simon’s voice echoing through them.