The Children’s Home (13 page)

“We can go and see the car this afternoon,” he said, turning to Crane. “Take it out, perhaps. Would you like that? You were keen on the idea, I seem to remember. You thought we could use it, I’m not sure why.”

Crane jumped up from the desk, as thrilled as the boy. “Your father’s car?” he said. “The one he was driving when he died?”

“Yes,” said Morgan, “though it’s more like a tank than a car. A rich man’s tank. White leather upholstery, if my memory serves me. And my grandfather’s coat of arms on the door.”

“Yes,” said David, more excited than before, fired by the Doctor, “and wood, it’s lined with wood inside. You can smell the polish.”

“I can get petrol,” Crane said. “I have an allowance, as a doctor. It isn’t much but it’ll get us into town and back.”

“Into town?” said Morgan.

“Or anywhere else,” the Doctor said rapidly, as if to take back his words. “Though town is the safest place these days, oddly enough. It’s not like the country, you know. Not anymore. In the country anything can happen.”

“Yet it never does,” said Morgan. “Not here at least.”

“That’s because you protect us here,” said David, reaching out to squeeze Morgan’s wounded hand in an odd, adult way. “You keep us safe.”

“I always thought it was you, David, you and the others, who protected me,” said Morgan wryly, wanting to withdraw his hand yet, more deeply, anxiously happy to have it held. “I certainly didn’t keep Moira safe.”

“Moira didn’t need to go,” said David.

“What do you mean?” said Morgan.

“Not if it hadn’t been needed in another way, I mean.”

“Another way?” said the Doctor.

David nodded. “You’ll see. Don’t worry.” He turned to Melissa, who had walked into the room while he was speaking. He must have heard her steps. She was just inside the door, ignoring the two men, her eyes on David. “Won’t they, Melissa? They’ll all see. We’ll show them.”

“The car’s ready then?” she said to David. He nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s nearly time to go.”

She grinned. “I’ll tell the others.”

in which the children sing

L
ater that day Morgan went upstairs, to the room where the woman was kept, and found that she had been removed from the box. She had been placed upright in the center of the room, on a carved wooden stand that raised her to what would have been her normal height. Around her, kneeling or seated, were the children, all of the children as far as Morgan could tell. He stood by the door, all at once unnerved, afraid to be seen; the room was so full of children, circle upon concentric circle, with the calmly smiling woman of wax and paint at the heart of it. For a moment his mind went back to that other circle of children, these same children, around what was left of the man. He shuddered, closed his eyes against the unwanted image.

The door to her womb had been closed and she was perfect; she might have been alive. For a moment, Morgan thought he saw her move, the pale extended hand turned up a little as if to beckon him across to her, her mouth trembling faintly as if she were about to speak. But he couldn’t be sure. He was about to turn and leave, still shaken, not wanting to be there, when he became aware of a noise in the room, so low as to be almost imperceptible; a sort of crooning composed of many tiny threads of sound. He listened harder. It was the children. The children were singing. He knew that he had been seen and that his presence didn’t matter. He was neither welcome nor unwelcome. The children were shoulder to shoulder, rocking from left to right as they sang, their movement as slight, unearthly, as their song. Where are they from? he thought, for the thousandth time. Who are they? What do they want from me? And then, as sounds become clearer the longer you listen, he heard what the song was saying. It was the first syllable of human speech to be uttered in almost every part of the world, he had read this in a book of his grandfather’s about language. Ma-ma-ma-ma. The primal sound, a simple parting of the lips around air, that makes us what we are.

in which the car is tested for the first time and David is curious

T
he first time, Crane took the wheel. They followed the drive to the gate, Morgan and David beside the Doctor, with half a dozen of the children crowded into the backseat of the car. David was right; the car was almost silent. With all the windows closed, Morgan had the sense of being in an aquarium. There was something about the window glass, its thickness probably, that gave the sense of water, though whether the water was inside or outside the glass was impossible to tell. Morgan felt that he was breathing a substance that was heavier and more viscous than air.

The car glided slowly along the drive until they were within feet of the gate, which stood open as it always did, because the knowledge of the monster inside the house was enough, supposed Morgan, to protect it from intruders. Then Crane stopped and glanced across David at Morgan, who shook his head. A moan of disappointment rose from the backseat, but David turned round swiftly and hushed them. “He’s right. Not yet,” he said. “We’re still not ready.”

“Ready for what?” said Morgan.

David was normally so patient. But this time he said, “How many times must you ask and not be told before you stop? Why can’t you just wait?”

“You have no right, David, to talk to me in this manner,” said Morgan, irritated, but also unnerved, as though a trusted, favorite dog had growled at his touch.

“I have no right?” said David, in a voice and tone that Morgan had never heard before, both authoritative and hurt. “
You
have no right to question me.”

“That’s quite enough,” said Crane. “David, behave yourself. How dare you talk to Morgan like that? After all he has done for you. For all of you.”

“You’re right,” said David, flushed with anger. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, but not to Morgan, his head cast down. One of the smaller children giggled and Morgan’s horrified instinct was to reach round and slap her, because he was afraid to slap David, who was quivering with rage beside him. It would have been like striking the dog, the dog he thought he knew. Cautiously, he touched the boy’s shoulder.

“We needn’t argue, you know,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “If you would only tell me your purpose, David, share it with me. I know you have one, and I know that I am part of it, we all are, which makes it worse, my curiosity I mean. I wonder what use I can possibly be to you, you see.” He paused. “The truth is that I’m scared. I don’t want to let you down.”

“You won’t,” whispered David. “Just trust me. Just do what I say. Then everything will be all right. You won’t let us down.”

“We won’t let you,” said Melissa from behind.

“The next time,” said Crane, “I’ll bring some petrol with me. It won’t be difficult.”

“What?” said Morgan. “On your bicycle?”

Crane laughed. “No,” he said as he turned the car and drove it back towards the garage. “I do still have my car, you know, though I rarely use it unless I have to. For house calls, occasionally. Nothing like this, of course. I’ve never needed an armored limousine with its own coat of arms. Your father must have been very rich.”

“He was,” said Morgan. “And so am I, thanks to him. And to my grandfather, of course.”

“It was your grandfather who made all the money though, wasn’t it?” said David. “Your father just made sure that it wasn’t frittered away. He just held on to it.”

Morgan was startled. “What on earth do you know about my grandfather?”

David looked at him, apparently just as surprised. “But everything in this house was your grandfather’s once, wasn’t it? It was all his stuff, the furniture, the books, the carpets, the woman. The boathouse. Even though he never saw it, not even once. We’d none of us be here, none of us, if it wasn’t for him.”

“But he’s been dead for years,” said Morgan.

“I know that,” said David. “But I’ve been reading about him. I found his diary, I suppose it was, and it’s all about what he did before he had this house built, when he was traveling around all those different countries. He thought he was a good man, your grandfather.”

“My mother didn’t think he was,” Morgan said. “He just took what he wanted from wherever he found it, she always said.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said David firmly. “She doesn’t count.”

“Your mother’s dead,” said Melissa, with an air of such satisfaction that Morgan wondered, with a sense of chill, if she had ever had any notion of what it meant to have a mother. Yet he had seen her cling to Engel, and cry to be picked up. He had seen her run towards him as he walked across the garden, and raise her face to his, unflinching, to be kissed.

in which Morgan and David visit the boathouse

A
few days later David brought the wax face back to Morgan and told him that it was time they went to look for Moira. Morgan shook his head nervously. “I don’t want to,” he said, his voice sounding strange to him. “That makes no difference,” David said. “It’s time to go. If we don’t go now, we’ll miss our chance.” He held the face out. “Come on,” he said, and it was as if he had understood that Morgan really wanted to put the face on again; despite himself he gave a slow knowing smile, his hands quite steady. Morgan took the face, as loose and fine as silk, softer than he remembered it, more skinlike, and raised it towards his eyes and it seemed to move of its own accord until it was sealed to his skull as closely as if it had been his own face, so that he felt, his heart beating rapidly, that it was. He was whole again. He strode around the mirrorless house, followed by David, who eventually said that he could see himself in the water if he wanted. They went down to the boathouse together.

“This is where it happened,” said David, when they were both in the boathouse, standing side by side at the edge of the water. It was cooler and darker than in the garden, the tongue of lake a still, dark glass by their feet. Morgan leant forward a little, remained transfixed. David said again, in the same measured tone, “This is where it happened.” Morgan came to himself and stepped back.

“Yes,” he said.

“And this is where it will end,” said David.

Morgan was startled. “Where what will end?” He waited for an answer, but David was silent. He knelt beside Morgan’s feet and trailed his adolescent hand in the still water, backwards and forwards, until Morgan’s face was fractured into ribbons, lifting and falling. He caught a scent of blood in the air.

“I should like to go out in a boat,” said David.

Morgan shook his head.

“Why not?”

Morgan shook his head a second time, but did not speak.

“We may need to use the boat to find Moira.”

“Don’t be silly, David.”

This time, it was David’s turn to shake his head. “You have no idea where she is, do you? She may be at sea. We have to be prepared.”

It took Morgan a moment to realize that David, serious David, was teasing him. He leant forward again and there he was, his perfection, the dreadful lie of it, on his face for all to see, except that only those who knew him would know that it was a lie. So perhaps it wasn’t a lie at all, he told himself. This is the face I would have had, he thought; it belongs to me.

“My father took me out in a boat once,” David said, “when I was very young. We went fishing on a lake like this, but larger. There were tall trees all round, they made the water dark. It was a rowing boat and we tried to row together, but I was too small and we kept going round in circles. My father took over in the end. We stopped at the other side of the lake, in the shadow of the trees, and my father showed me how to bait my line. It was very quiet there, if I hadn’t been with my father I would have been afraid. After we’d been there I don’t know how long, waiting for a fish to bite, my father said that he’d caught something. He had to stand up it was so big. He had to fight to bring it towards the boat. I thought he was going to overturn the boat and I wanted to make him stop, but I was too scared to stand up in case I made it worse. He reeled his line in with the rod bending—it took forever—until I thought it would break and then, there it was, a long gray fish in the bottom of the boat, gray and green, bright and hard, with a yellow belly, and so angry. I’ve never seen anything so angry. It twisted and flapped and all I wanted to do was save it. I think my father knew that because he unhooked the fish, then picked it up in both his arms and threw it back into the lake.”

“You’ve never told me about your father,” said Morgan, but what he thought was, So David has a father, after all. “Where is he now? Do you know?”

“That’s all there is to tell,” said David. He looked up at Morgan, who remembered that he was wearing the face of wax. He was ashamed for a moment, and lifted his hand as if to take it off, but David smiled at him and stopped the hand with his own. “That’s when they came for him, you see, for all of us. That was the last day I saw him. We heard them from the boat. The shouting, people running. There were shots. He thought we’d be safer on land. I was taken away and left somewhere safe. That’s what they thought, anyway.”

“Where are you from?” said Morgan. He heard pain in his voice, and fear of what David might say, as though there could be no good answer to his question.

“I’m from where we were taken,” said David. “We all are.” And then he turned away, and would say no more. They left the boathouse. It had started to rain and the grass was cushion-soft and wet beneath their feet. When Morgan asked him about Moira, and what David had meant when he had brought him the face and said they would search for her, the boy turned on Morgan in a kind of fury.

“I don’t know everything,” he said. “Can’t you understand that? It isn’t my fault. Why can’t you all leave me alone?”

in which they take the car beyond the wall

O
ne day, not long after this, they decided they would take the car outside the grounds. Morgan drove, with the Doctor beside him to make sure that he knew what to do. He had driven years before, not only this car but a smaller one of his mother’s, although they had never gone more than a few miles before she insisted on being taken home; she would sit in the backseat as though Morgan were her driver, swathed in scented Indian shawls, muttering to herself with a suffering air, then tap his shoulder to say that her dogs would be missing her, they would have to return at once.