The Father's House

by Larche Davies

  The man then opened the right-hand rear door and started pulling at something heavy. Lucy saw a shoe dangling off one foot, a rucked up trouser leg, and then two legs. Out came the body of a woman. The man threw her over his shoulder, her head and arms dangling. Her thick auburn hair fell loosely down his back. Aunt Sarah appeared at the lobby door and the father spoke to her briefly. The big man disappeared into the lobby with his burden, and the father and Aunt Sarah followed. A minute later a light shone out from a small side window up in the second-floor flat.

  What Dorothy had said about her mother flashed cross Lucy’s mind, and a shiver ran down her spine as she thought she might be witnessing an abduction. She pushed the idea aside. Aunt Sarah was there, and she would never be involved in something like that. It must have been a new tenant arriving. Perhaps she’d been taken ill. Even so, the possibility of Dorothy’s disposal and her own suddenly seemed more real.

  The driver of the car was leaning against the bonnet and rolling a cigarette. He wore a chauffeur’s livery with a peaked cap which hid his face as he bent forward to light the straggling bits of tobacco. The way he used his hands reminded her of Thomas, and she smiled as she tried to imagine him in a chauffeur’s outfit. He’d be chuffed to have the chance to drive a car like that. Shaking out the match the man looked at his watch, and Lucy suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be in the cellar. She had to make a quick decision – whether to go back, or run away.

  Her head buzzed rapidly with pros and cons and she realised that a hasty escape without preparation could be disastrous. She needed to find her birth record first. Also, Thomas had once told her that the police were infiltrated with the Magnifico’s agents. If they picked her up they would bring her straight back, and her punishment would be far worse than three nights in the cellar, especially if what Dorothy had said about disposals was true.

  Once in her own bed she’d have time to think about what she had just seen. There may have been some reasonable explanation. It would be wrong to jump to conclusions. At least she would have a roof over her head while she made her plans. Now that she knew how to get through the coal hole she would always have an escape route via the cellar if she needed it.

  Running low along the pavement past the privet hedge that hid the front garden, she reached the path and slipped down into the coal hole. The cover was heavy but not too difficult to pull over, and it settled into place as though it had never been lifted. Back in the pitch darkness she slid down the underlay on the concrete slope, groped to her left for the candle and matches and, in the flickering light, made her way back to the wooden stairs. She snuffed the candle and put it and the matches back in the plastic bag, and hid them under the bottom step. If she ever needed them again the plastic bag would keep them from getting damp.

  She was only just in time. Footsteps approached and the key turned. Lucy stood up blinking and stepped out into the hall. As she emerged Aunt Sarah was on her way to the bathroom with the towels. She looked at Lucy’s inscrutable face, and was proud of the child’s dignity. When she took the dirty clothes away and shook them out, she wondered why there was grass on the back of the jumper.

  Lucy was on tenterhooks and burning with curiosity. She wondered if Aunt Sarah would say anything about the new arrival. When she was clean and sitting in the kitchen in her pyjamas, Aunt Sarah handed her a mug of hot chocolate.

  “Tomorrow, make sure you and Paul play quietly if you go in the garden after school,” she said. “We’ve got a new tenant on the top floor, and she’s not at all well.”

  Later, as she lay in bed, Lucy heard the opening creak of the big double gates on the further side of the house. The car crunched down the gravel drive and out into the road, and the gates slowly shut. Who was the woman with the lovely auburn hair? Lucy wondered. More importantly however, she started making, discarding, and remaking plans, for getting hold of those records.

  Father Copse checked the girl on the bed in the second-floor flat. Her breathing was even and her colour was good. Her wonderful red hair was a mess and there was mud on her clothes. She had been chosen for her looks alright! Drax would be green with envy if he ever found out. He had a penchant for redheads. Part of her sleeve had been torn away, and her arm was bruising rapidly. She had obviously put up a struggle, so she had spirit. Copse liked strong women. It was such a triumph to master them.

  His wife, one of many, stood in the doorway watching him with sorrowful green eyes.

  “At least she’ll be company for you,” he said

  She sighed. “Poor thing,” she said sadly, and turned away.

  Back in his study he sat at his desk with the Wives’ file in front of him. He recorded the date, and the name ‘as yet unknown’. He wrote a brief description of the girl’s colouring and approximate height. Tomorrow he would find out her name. Certainly she was a beauty, and whoever had tracked her down would have ensured she had brains. But he didn’t really want another wife. He wanted fewer, not more. He had had enough of wives. And he didn’t want more children either. Now he’d have two women upstairs living in the lap of luxury and costing him a fortune. If she proved amenable to conversion to the Holy Cause, he’d send her over to the commune. It’d be cheaper.

  All his hopes now lay with the post of deputy to the Holy Envoy. If he were to be appointed he would be able to hand over his domestic responsibilities to another father. He would just keep the woman upstairs, and, of course, the two children in the flat below. He had plans for them. The boy was the most handsome of all his sons, and he intended grooming him to become a father. As for the girl, well, she didn’t look up to much at the moment but, judging from her colouring and bone structure, she was going to be strikingly beautiful one day in an exotic sort of way. If he proved right about that he’d be able to use her for negotiating purposes with other fathers. He cursed when he remembered Lucy had brought dishonour on the household. It was just the sort of thing that could hamper his chance of promotion to the Deputy Envoy post, and would greatly please his fellow candidates, especially Father Drax.

  He sighed and rose to put the file away. The prospect of another wife and yet more children was an indication of the Magnifico’s trust in him as a true and valued follower, and he must bear his burden with gratitude. But he was so tired! A hot circle of pressure was squeezing his head. It came more frequently these days – his ring of fire, his crown of pain. The Magnifico was trying to tell him something, He picked up the intercom and phoned down to the kitchen for some coffee and a piece of chocolate cake.

  Sarah had just finished hand-washing Lucy’s clothes for the third night running. They were now dripping on the wooden airer over the bath, and she was about to go to bed. She pushed away the thought that the father had two hands and could have made his own coffee, and that he had two legs and could have come down to get his own cake.

  Lucy’s incarceration had upset her deeply, though of course it was not for her to question the Magnifico’s instructions. Bitterness raised its ugly head for a moment, but she managed to slap it down. She pushed some loose wisps of hair into the bun at the back of her head, washed her hands, and prepared the tray for its upward journey. Her reward was yet to come in the next world, and she looked forward to that.

  The woman upstairs peeped in on her new companion. She’d sleep for a while yet, the father had said when he left. Sleep? A charming euphemism for drugged up to the eyeballs.

  Wives had come and gone before, and Maria intended do all she could to persuade this latest one to pretend to take up the Holy Cause. If she could act convincingly enough she might be transferred to the commune where there was more chance of escape, perhaps even with her own child.

  With a sinking heart she realised this new arrival meant that the Holy Leaders would come, and the brainwashing would begin all over again. The videos and the recordings would tell the stories of the discovery of the first Holy Envoy as a baby in an empty fruit crate. He, an abandoned child of destitution, was destined to lead his fol
lowers to a life of strict morality and, through his martyrdom, to Paradise. In the name of the Magnifico, he and his successors would rule the world and cleanse it of sin. The only music would be hymns of praise. There would be one race, one language, one religion and one ruler.

  She sat down by the bed and held the girl’s hand. It was the hand of a very young woman, perhaps nineteen or twenty, on the threshold of adulthood and full of hopes and plans – just as Maria had been when they brought her in fifteen years ago. Now all hopes and plans would come to nothing unless there was some means of escape. Her only joy would be to nurse her child for a week or two, if she had one. Maria studied the porcelain skin and delicate features, and smoothed the glorious hair. Somewhere, someone would be desperately searching for a daughter or sister or lover. She thought sadly of her own beloved parents, far away in the west of Wales. Their hearts must have broken long ago.

  She rose from the chair and went to the window. It looked out over the back garden, but was too high and too small to give much of a view. Looking down into the branches of the big lime tree, she longed to see its leaves burst forth again, a fresh green reminder of the seasons of the outside world. The window sash pushed up easily, and she breathed in the night air. She studied the steel bars minutely and gave them a tug or two as she had done many times before. They were criss-crossed and set into the surrounding concrete. There was no way she could remove them.

  There was a rustling sound and she looked towards the bed. The girl’s hands were fluttering slightly and her lips moved. Maria approached and took her hand, and her eyes opened dimly.

  “Where am I?”

  “I’ll explain later,” she said gently. “What’s your name?”

  “Claudia.” The girl’s eyes closed. “What’s yours?”

  “He took my name away long ago. I used to be called Maria.”

  She stroked the smooth hand as her mind travelled its never-ending journey searching for ways to get out of here. Once she had tried to climb into the dumb waiter but the space was too shallow, and that woman, Martha, who came to clean once a week, was always accompanied by a minder, so there was no chance of overcoming her. Martha would never have helped her even if the minder hadn’t been there. She was rigid with religion and devoted to the service of the Magnifico.

  Claudia opened her eyes again.

  “I’ll fetch you some water.” Maria’s soft lilting voice was soothing. “When you’ve woken up properly I’ll explain where you are.”

  By the time spring came Paul had grown into a quiet and solemn child. He followed Lucy round like a little dog, and when the school holidays began at the end of April she was put in charge of him.

  “I’ve got enough to do without running around after a little busybody all day,” said Sarah. “You can look after him. It’ll be good practice for you for when you’re an aunt.”

  If it was raining they would sit at the kitchen table drawing, or would squash together in Aunt Sarah’s sagging chair and Lucy would read to him from her old book of fairy stories. Sometimes she would teach him his ABC and how to count on his fingers. When it was fine they went over the road to the common and played by the pond, or they would kick a ball in the garden or dig their flowerbeds.

  Lucy had her own plot where she grew the seeds that Thomas brought her from his job with the corporation gardens. Paul was given a plot too, and together they marked it out with little white pebbles gathered from the drive in front of the garage. Thomas offered to make them a swing. With Aunt Sarah’s permission, he screwed rings into a fine strong branch of the big lime tree, pulled ropes through and secured them tightly. He made a seat like a box that Paul could sit in safely and yet was big enough for Lucy, with holes for their legs to stick out. Paul loved the swing. Lucy would push him back and forth, higher and higher, and he was happy.

  Lucy didn’t have time to be happy. Her mind was constantly working on how to get away. The prospect of marriage in less than two years’ time preyed on her mind. Also, since her three nights in the cellar, and the new tenant’s arrival, Dorothy’s talk of abductions and disposals seemed more credible. If she didn’t manage to get into the father’s flat, she’d just have to leave without her birth record and hope for the best, but the more she thought about it the more difficult running away seemed to be. It was not just a matter of walking out of the door, because of Paul. She would never leave him behind, but how would she feed him, and keep him warm and clean if she couldn’t get work? And how would she find out who was the proper person to go to for documents? Was it a policeman, or a court, or someone in the government? She wouldn’t be able to ask any of them because they were all infiltrated. And she was just so ignorant! She knew absolutely nothing about the outside world.

  These thoughts ran continuously through Lucy’s mind as she and Paul played. The garden was huge, and full of places for hide-and-seek. She would shout to give Paul a clue from wherever she was, behind a shrub, or under the sacks in the garage, but her mind was elsewhere. If they went on the common no-one could see them behind the bushes that surrounded the pond and Lucy loved the privacy of their own secret world, but even there the same old questions were hammering away inside her head. Paul was fascinated by the tiny frogs and funny little insects that darted about on the water’s surface, but it was hard to snap out of her own thoughts and share his enthusiasm. She tried her best, because his pleasure gave her pleasure and she adored the sweetness of his smile, his big hazel-green eyes and his soft curly hair.

  One day, when the sun was shining and the night-time figure and rat were winter memories, and the leaves were beginning to unfold on the lime tree, Lucy climbed the ladder at the side of the garage and stepped over the turret onto the flat roof. She crossed over towards the garden wall and looked down into the gap between it and the garage. There was no sign of the rat. Perhaps she had imagined it.

  A narrow wooden platform spanned the gap at one end creating a little bridge from the garage to the wall. Cautiously, Lucy tested the bridge with her foot. It tipped slightly towards her. She jumped back and tried again, planting her foot well into the middle. It seemed steady. Looking over the back of the garage she checked that Paul was playing happily with the earth and singing to himself. Then, with one firm step onto the middle of the bridge she took another step that reached the top of the wall. It was about eighteen inches wide. She lowered herself onto her hands and knees and, not daring to look down, crawled towards the overhanging branch of the lime tree.

  Once in the tree she felt safe. The branches spread out comfortably in all directions from a good wide trunk that provided plenty of room for sitting. Lucy wondered if she would be allowed to ask Thomas to build her a tree house – though there was no point because she would be leaving. She would have to remember to say goodbye to Thomas before she went.

  Looking at the ground below, she reckoned she would be able to swing down safely if Aunt Sarah were to call her. She climbed a bit higher and, seating herself comfortably between two boughs, she had a good look over the wall at the house next door. There was a large garden like the father’s but with nothing of interest, just a big lawn marked out in faded white lines for tennis, and flowerbeds all round. The grass needed mowing, and the beds were full of weeds. According to Aunt Sarah the owner was a diplomat, and was always away in other countries. He should have arranged for someone like Thomas to come in and look after the garden. The father’s garden was nice and tidy in comparison, and much more interesting with all its shrubs and trees and secret places.

  She turned round in the hollow of the branches and looked up at the house. From an angle she could almost see into the father’s flat on the first floor. If only Thomas’s ladder were longer she’d be able to smash the window and climb in. It was a pity the drainpipe wasn’t closer to the window because she could have climbed that easily. Pulling herself higher she moved up and over until she found a niche which gave her a better view. Her skinny little figure fitted nicely into the fork of a branch. The first-
floor window was big and from here she could see down and into what she guessed was the father’s living room. There was a desk under the window and beyond that two armchairs and a sofa. In fact, she could see right through the room and out through a window on the other side. It was lucky he was at work because he would have been extremely angry if he’d caught her staring in.

  On the second floor the windows were small and the bars made it difficult to see anything more than the white sides of the casement, and the fringed edge of a partially drawn blind.

  It was interesting to see the world from a different angle. Lucy sat there watching Paul as he pottered around humming to himself. She called to him and waved, and he laughed to see her in such a strange place.

  A black cloud went over the sun and a breeze blew up. The bright spring leaves fluttered and Lucy felt a heavy drop of rain. As she was about to turn herself around ready to climb down she had one more look up at the second-floor window, and a face appeared. She didn’t move. The tenant was looking down into the garden. Lucy could see that it was not a man, but a beautiful woman with dark brown hair.

  She had been told many times never to bother the tenant, and she knew that if there was a complaint about her she would be punished, and the sin would be added to her record. Dorothy’s warning about the dreaded disposal was never far from her mind. She pressed herself back against the tree trunk and hoped that her own brown hair was acting as a camouflage.