The Children’s Home (11 page)

They were seated in the schoolroom. He had never seen a room so full. There were children everywhere, so many he began to wonder if there were children in the house that he had never seen before, if new children had arrived without his having been told. But the impression of fullness was created by the room itself, by its size and by the memories he had of it, of its emptiness; the contrast of its emptiness. It did him good to see it filled like this.

Each head was bowed, he saw, above a sheet of white paper, with a book beneath it to serve as support, and poised above each sheet of paper was a small hand with a pen or pencil in it. Some of them surely were too young to be writing actual words, he thought, and imagined they were drawing, or mimicking their elders. He stepped a little closer, to see what they were doing. He was leaning over to examine the work of the nearest child, who happened to be Moira, when David spoke.

“We are writing,” he said, in his patient adult’s voice. “We need to be able to write, you see. Reading alone isn’t enough. Writing’s how things are passed on. Otherwise everything we know would die with us and be forgotten.”

Morgan smiled. “Of course it is, David.”

David pointed at a blackboard that Morgan hadn’t seen before, its easel near the wall behind David’s back. Morgan read the words that someone, presumably David, had written on the board, in yellow chalk. They’d been written in capital letters, to make them easier for little hands to copy, he supposed, but that only made their sense more awful. Morgan’s hand rose to his mouth to stifle a cry. This is what they said:

I AM ONLY A CHILD BUT ALREADY I HAVE UNDERSTOOD THE WICKEDNESS OF THE WORLD.

in which Trilby and Pate return to the house

A
few weeks after that, when the weather had turned for the worse, Trilby and Pate came back. They weren’t alone this time. Morgan was wandering from his bedroom along the hall upstairs when he heard noises outside; engines being turned off, voices; he hurried across the landing to one of the windows that overlooked the drive. There were two black cars, both armored, and a group of men beside them, among them Trilby and Pate. One of the men he didn’t recognize had opened the back door of the larger car and was letting out a pair of dogs on leashes. For a moment he saw his mother’s wolfhounds before him as the two gray dogs tugged towards the house, their mouths open; the stronger of the two began to bark and was whipped across the haunches with the loose end of a leash. Trilby and Pate were in suits, as they had been the first time, but the other men, five of them, were in a sort of uniform that meant nothing to Morgan, olive-green trousers and jackets, heavy boots, belts; one of them was black with ringlets of oiled hair to his shoulders, the others had blond hair shaved almost to the scalp. They all wore slim metal batons dangling from their waists. Hardly breathing, Morgan watched Trilby take off his hat and wipe his forehead on his sleeve before replacing it. When one of the uniformed men glanced up towards the house, Morgan darted back from the glass; he was shocked to realize that, for minutes together, he had forgotten how he looked. Had he been seen by them? he wondered, his heart beating fast. He stood there, trying to calm down. When he heard a noise behind him, he knew that he would find David.

The boy was holding something out to him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, walking towards Morgan. He seemed to have grown in the last few days; not just taller, but older. He looked now like a young adolescent, slightly ungainly, his wrists and ankles too thin for the rest of him. He reminded Morgan of the Doctor, of how the Doctor might have been as a teenage boy, and also of himself; he had Morgan’s beauty. Then Morgan saw what he was being offered. He shuddered.

“Where did this come from?” he said.

“That doesn’t matter now. Put it on,” said the boy in a low flat voice, as though he were talking in his sleep or reading from a card. His eyes were fixed on Morgan’s.

Morgan took hold of the hollow face, which felt as though it were made of flesh-colored wax and weighed almost nothing, and lifted it rapidly to his own. For a moment he could see nothing; he must have closed his eyes as the face approached, its inner side towards him. His hands were brisk and eager as they pressed the cool wax to the wounds and to the part of him that was healthy, without distinction. When he opened his eyes again, both good and bad, he saw that the world was the same and that the eyelids of the face were as able to move as his;
were
his. He parted his lips to speak and the lips of the mask moved with them and the sound they made was the whole sound of a human voice, though unrecognizable to Morgan. Trembling, his hands skirted the edge of the mask, but there was no edge to speak of, only the slightest change in texture as the waxlike skin lapped over and into his own skin, absorbing its warmth. And then even that faint difference seemed to disappear.

“Where did you find this?” Morgan insisted.

David took his hand. “Come downstairs,” he said. “We’ll see them off.”

“The Doctor?” said Morgan, hearing this voice that wasn’t his, and yet was.

“Doctor Crane isn’t here at the moment,” David said. “You’ll have to protect us by yourself.” He squeezed Morgan’s hand in his. “Don’t worry. We’ll be all right.”

Morgan didn’t stumble as he walked down the stairs and across the hall. He wasn’t sure if it was David’s hand that guided him, or his own new eyes, through which he saw the world as two quite separate images for the first few steps and then, with the ease of a hand sliding into the perfect fit of a glove, as one. One world within his eyes: two eyes, one world. He breathed and felt cool air in his mouth and nose, the light and healing flutter of it. By the time he had reached the door, he was aware only of himself. Even David had melted back.

The men were standing in a roughly formed triangle, with Pate at its apex no more than a foot from the door frame. Morgan opened both doors and stepped forward. He smiled and the face smiled with him, but it wasn’t
like
that; his whole face smiled, his muscles moving the wax, which no longer felt like wax but was his own flesh. And now this has happened to me, he thought, and I am whole again. And we are here, together, in the house, with our enemy before us. This is too good to miss, it struck him; Engel will surely appear before it is over. He smiled more broadly, raising his good hand to his cheeks to discover dimples. Perhaps I am beautiful again, he thought, the way I used to be before the accident. He wished the house possessed a mirror.

“Yes,” he said, and the voice he heard now was the voice he had lost; the hiss had gone. He had forgotten what his voice was like. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Finally. You must be the owner,” said Pate in an officious manner. Trilby, immediately behind his left shoulder, nodded.

“And you are—?”

“From the ministry,” said Pate, hostile, aggrieved. “This isn’t our first visit.”

“So I believe,” said Morgan. And then, because the sound of his hissless voice was like music to him, he added, gesturing them into the house, “Please.” He knew they would be safe inside, safer even; David would have known what to do.

“You were told, I imagine?”

“Of your previous visit? Yes.” Morgan stood to one side as the men entered, bending at the waist to stroke the head of the smaller of the dogs, which allowed this, pulling its head back to lick Morgan’s palm with its long dark tongue. The soldier who held the leashes tugged the dog away.

“My mother kept wolfhounds,” Morgan said. This was the first dog he had touched since then, he thought, but didn’t say.

“We’re back here for the children,” Pate said. “We know they’re being hidden here. You won’t get away with it this time.”

The tone of the man, both aggressive and base, made Morgan want to laugh; and so he did. He felt no fear at all, a sensation so new to him he experienced it as power. When he had finished laughing, he said, “There are no children here.”

“That’s as may be,” said Pate. He added, in a tone that struck Morgan as one of pathetic, infantile cunning, “Then you won’t have any reason not to allow us to look for them? If there are none?”

“Of course not,” Morgan said. He was staring into the house now, towards the rich dark sweep of the stairs. Apart from the snuffling of the dogs at the men’s feet, there was absolute silence. He had faith in the children and their ability to disappear when the occasion required it, faith, even more, in David; still, a little more time would hardly hurt. Besides, with his new face, he was curious. “Before you start your futile search, perhaps you could tell me, in the simplest language you know, why the ministry supposes I should be harboring children? I live here with my housekeeper and a small household of staff I rarely see. I have no wife, no family. My parents are dead. Apart from my dear friend Doctor Crane, whom I believe you have met, I am to all intents and purposes a hermit. What on earth would I do with children? What would children do with me?” How wonderful his voice was, thought Morgan, as clear and crisp as a metal bell. He could have listened to himself all day.

Pate and Trilby glanced at each other.

“Our information is reserved,” Pate said.

“And what would you do with any children you found here, assuming you did?” Morgan felt reckless. There was nothing they could do to him, or anyone else. He understood himself as power. The body is a weapon, he thought, in the right hands. He would remember thinking this, much later, when he was telling the Doctor what had happened, and wonder what use he had imagined his body would be when it came to it; he would say it too, and the Doctor would nod, apparently understanding, yet also perhaps perplexed, because Morgan was being anything but clear. In what sense, he would say. The body becomes a weapon most effectively in death, Morgan said, straining forward to be understood.

“There are laws,” said Pate.

“With regard to children,” said Trilby.

One of the uniformed men coughed and glanced in a helpless sort of way towards the door, now closed. Morgan could see that the man was holding a cigarette, which had burnt down to the tip; there was the scent of burning cork in the hall. Let him sweat a little, he decided, but the black man walked across and opened the door as though the house were his. “I heard a voice,” the man said urgently. “There’s one outside.” Immediately, he was followed by the other men and the dogs, then by Morgan, whose heart was jumping. Was it possible that one of the children had not, somehow, known? Had his faith in their ability been misplaced? He stood on the top step of the flight that led down to the drive and watched as the dogs followed the wall, their noses to the ground, the men behind them in a line. Only Trilby had remained. He was standing beside Morgan as though they had known each other for many years, their coat sleeves almost touching. He had his notebook in one hand, his pencil in the other.

“Your doctor friend isn’t here,” he said, conversationally.

“And where do you take them, the children you find? What do you do with them in the end?” Morgan asked again.

“Oh, well, you shouldn’t worry about that. Nothing that dreadful happens,” Trilby said. They were standing in the drizzle, but Trilby’s head was protected. “They’re needed, you see.” He glanced at Morgan and then at the sky, as if to say he should get himself a hat, and Morgan thought for a moment that his face might be affected by the rain. Then he remembered that wax resisted water and laughed to himself, while Trilby stared after his colleagues. “We couldn’t manage without our children. That’s all,” he said. The group of men and dogs had disappeared behind the corner of the house by now.

“And your task is simply to find them?” Morgan said.

“Yes.” Trilby shrugged.

“And are there many lost children?”

Trilby pursed his lips. “More running wild than
lost
. It’s for their own good in the end, whatever the number. The weather’s getting worse all the time. You’ll have noticed? They say the axis of the earth has shifted in the last few decades but I wouldn’t know about that. It’s not my field, you see. Working in welfare, as I do. I leave that sort of thing to the experts. I find a hat protects me. So much of the body’s heat is lost through the head, you know. And, of course, it shelters me against the rain.”

That was when they heard one of the dogs begin a furious barking. Trilby headed off to the source of the noise, slowly breaking into a run, while Morgan followed. Above the barking of the dog, to which was added the high-pitched howling of the other beast, Morgan fancied he heard the faint but resilient crying of a child. He thought he recognized the cry as Moira’s. His face felt tight on him, as though the wax had shrunk. Surely it couldn’t be Moira, he thought. Surely not Moira.

Morgan and Trilby had rounded the corner before they heard the confused shouts of the other men. They were standing in a circle and staring into what might have been a hole, except that there was no hole, there was nothing but the damp gray gravel of the path. Pate turned round and called to Trilby. “Get over here, man, for God’s sake. They’ve taken Mill.”

But Morgan was staring at the black man, who had Moira in his arms. The first to arrive in the house, how many years ago now? and yet always a baby, always being carried by one of the others, never alone or in need, as though her well-being were the source of all their well-being, and not only that of the children, but of his and of Engel’s. She was lying in the man’s arms and her hands were reaching up and touching his face and the glistening locks of his oiled hair, as they had touched Morgan’s so often, in a sort of caress; touching them in what seemed to Morgan now the parody of a caress. “No,” he cried out as he ran towards the man, but this time the dogs lunged at him with bared teeth, snarling as his mother’s dogs might have done, and he backed away. Pate was muttering in a frenzied way to Trilby, who shook his head and looked at the other men. They had moved off into a cluster and were standing at a distance from the house, their boots on the wet grass of the lawn. In front of them, the dogs lay with their front paws stretched out and their tongues lolling from their mouths. The man holding Moira was the only one to seem unperturbed. Morgan felt the water run down his face, and registered this, despite himself, with a shudder of glee, as though nothing had been lost. When Moira turned to him and smiled, he said, “Don’t worry.” She smiled again. The black man held her up and shook her a little, to make her laugh, but Morgan said, “No, it’s cold and raining, you should cover her.” He stepped towards the man and held his arms out. “Here,” he said, “give her to me now. I’ll hold her for you.” But Pate stepped forward and took his arm.