The Father's House (2 page)

The father had to be obeyed. It was every aunt's ordained duty to follow his instructions, and to raise his children in the righteous path of the Magnifico. Sarah glanced up at the guidance cane that hung on the wall by the kitchen door, and was thankful she had never had to use it on Lucy. Despite all her recent doubts and questionings and lapses of faith, Lucy was a good girl. It was probably just her age. Sarah had heard that girls could become a bit difficult when they reached fourteen – though she herself had certainly never been difficult, and she couldn't think of anyone else in her commune who had been either (apart from one or two naughty boys). It was one of these modern ideas – just a phase that was all, and it would pass. Sarah prided herself on having brought up a polite, well-behaved child who knew right from wrong.

She cleared up the kitchen and took the rubbish out through the back door, then round to the left behind the rear wing, and down the side of the house to the bins. Thomas, the gardener, was just inside the garage doors changing out of his respectable jacket into his gardening anorak. Sarah greeted him but there was no time for a chat, and she never felt comfortable with him anyway – there was something about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She hurried back to the kitchen, peeled some potatoes and put them in water.

As she dried her hands she looked up at the clock. She must get a move on. Flicking a switch high on the kitchen wall, she waited for a moment, listening for a voice from the little back room that she had prepared for the newcomer. There it was. Getting a bit scratchy these days. “I can see you. I can hear you. I can watch your every action…” She switched it off and went to check the room. Adjusting a small loudspeaker that emerged from a corner of the ceiling, she turned it slightly more towards the cot. That voice had hissed at her throughout her own childhood and had burrowed into her mind. Even after she was old enough to realise it was recorded, it had kept her on the straight and narrow path laid out by the Magnifico. No child could fail to benefit from it.

She made sure that the bars on the window were firm and rust-free, and straightened the bedding on the cot. The blanket was thin and hard, as were hers and Lucy's. Both she and Lucy knew the importance of stoicism and endurance. They were blessed in that their upbringing would lead to the saving of their souls, and Sarah would do her best to ensure the same for the newcomer.

At eleven o'clock a door upstairs in the rear wing banged shut and Sarah heard heavy footsteps coming down into the lobby behind the kitchen. A key turned in the lobby door and Father Copse appeared, carrying a small child. Towering over Sarah from his immense height, dark eyes smouldering under heavy black brows, he wasted no time on courtesies.

“His name is Paul. He's three. He'll be with you till he's sixteen, and I expect you to bring him up in the teachings of the Magnifico. Should he fail to appreciate his good fortune in any way it will be your duty to be generous with the guidance.”

Putting the child on the floor he took the guidance cane down from the wall, flexed it between his hands, and hung it up again. He flicked the switch for the loudspeaker, waited for the Magnifico's voice, and then opened the door to the hall and went to inspect the newly prepared bedroom. Like Sarah, he adjusted the loudspeaker slightly and checked the bars on the window.

“He doesn't need those,” he said, pointing to an electric fan heater and a small mat at the side of the cot. “Make sure they're removed.”

Sarah nodded silently, gazing down at her rough red hands, unable to look into those burning eyes and wishing he would go. She wanted to comfort the child who was standing alone in the kitchen, rigid with anxiety.

“I must go to work. When I get back tonight I'll send his clothes down in the dumb waiter. I'll keep an eye on his progress over the next few days. If he seems unlikely to conform he'll have to go to the commune, and the aunts there can look after him.”

He left through the lobby and locked the door to the kitchen behind him, removing the key. Sarah could hear him unbolting the outer lobby door at the side of the house. She watched through the kitchen window as he strode down the side path that ran between the house and the garage. When he reached the driveway he turned left, and disappeared into the front garden through an arch in the high laurel hedge. She heard the click of the front gate and gave a sigh of relief.

She bent down to pick up the boy and half carried him to the sagging armchair in the corner of the kitchen. He was heavy and she pulled him with difficulty onto her spacious lap. Nuzzling her face into his soft curls, she held him close.

“It'll be alright,” she murmured. “Just be a good boy and do as you're told and have faith in the Magnifico's holy word, and everything will be alright. It's your soul that's important, not what happens in this old world.”

The child started wailing and Sarah cuddled him to her. What the Magnifico had decreed had to be. It was the written word of the
Holy Vision
.

As Lucy crossed Mortimor Road onto the common she was tempted to nip through the bushes to see if there was ice on the pond, but she suspected Aunt Sarah might be watching. She kept to the path and spoke to no-one. Not that there was anyone to speak to. Her initial panic had gone and was now replaced with a sense of rather nervous excitement. The frost on the common was sparkling in the cold winter sunlight. The sky was an icy blue. All the stars of the night before had disappeared, and she smiled to herself as she thought how silly she had been to think they could possibly have been eyes. The Magnifico didn't seem quite so terrifying in the daylight.

The sense of freedom was very pleasant. Lucy almost skipped along the path towards South Hill, taking in great breaths of the sharp, clean air. Even the scruffy backs of the terraced houses ahead of her looked pretty under the pale blue sky. When she reached the little lane that led between the houses to South Hill, she turned and looked back. Number 3 Mortimor Road glared at her from the other side of the common, and she pulled a face at it. She was glad she was here and not there.

Nearly three doors down South Hill, temptation raised its serpent's head again. Two temptations already this morning, and she'd only left the house a quarter of an hour ago. The Magnifico must be testing her. This time it was the lollipop lady – a delightfully smiling lollipop lady – surrounded by children and mothers and two or three teenagers. They mingled together as though they belonged. There must be something very comfortable about belonging. It surely couldn't do any harm to go over at the zebra crossing instead of at the lights down by the Underground station. The lollipop lady stepped out into the middle of the road and held up her hand. All traffic stopped. What an amazing feeling it must be to have such power, just one little woman against all the buses and taxis and cars of London!

As Lucy approached the crossing, her joy in her newly found freedom was replaced by an overwhelming shyness. These strangers knew each other and chatted together. They would stare at her and wonder why she had pushed herself among them. She knew that they were to be pitied, for they were doomed to suffer the fire of the melting flesh. Even so, she longed to be among them – as long as she didn't have to actually touch them. Luckily the thought of the fire reminded her that she too would suffer that fate if she built up a record of too many sins, and she pulled back.

The lollipop lady called out, “Come on, love, or you'll miss your chance.” She didn't reply because she had been told not to speak to anyone and that kind strangers were up to no good, but as she shook her head she couldn't help smiling back.

At that moment she was knocked sideways as a boy shot out of the gate of number 38 South Hill and took a flying leap, landing on the zebra crossing with both feet.

Lucy was mortified. She had been touched, no – actually shoved aside – by a non-follower. What if the taint, the corruption, was catching? She felt dirty.

“George! What do you think you're doing?” A woman with a pushchair emerged from the gateway at number 38. “Don't be so rude!”

“Sorry!” shouted George from the middle of the zebra crossing, tossing his ginger curls and giving Lucy a cheerful wave.

“I do apologise, love,” said the woman. “He's so rough sometimes. He's got too much energy for his own good – and for everyone else's good too.”

Lucy was surprised. Never in her life had anyone apologised to her. She had always thought it was something children did to grown-ups. She felt embarrassed, so she just smiled and nodded. Perhaps the incident had been a warning to her from the Magnifico for having been tempted. Thank goodness she hadn't succumbed. She made her way down the rest of the hill towards the tube station and waited patiently for the lights to change so she could cross. Children and aunts from the Drax and Copse communes were still coming down the High Street to her right, so she wasn't late. There, on the other side of the road, just a few yards up, stood her school, tall and wide, red and glowering. Apart from a number 10 next to the door frame there was nothing to distinguish it from the other big houses on that side of the road. The Magnifico's school was anonymous.

Children were climbing the steps to the door as Lucy approached. Some of the aunts were turning away having fulfilled their escort duties and enjoyed their morning chats. For the first time Lucy started to wonder why Aunt Sarah was going to be too busy to bring her ever again. It must be something momentous because, as the two temptations had demonstrated, the risk of being influenced by the vice and corruption of non-followers was a very real thing. Lucy hadn't fully appreciated that until now and she felt ashamed, because she had become increasingly irritated lately when Aunt Sarah went on and on about the saving of her soul.

Reluctantly she climbed the school steps and the sun seemed to go in. She followed her fellow pupils down a wide hall, dark with wooden panelling. By the time she reached the cloakroom her stomach was churning and her throat tightening, just as they had done every school day since she first came here ten years ago. She hung her coat on a hook labelled ‘Lucy Copse', returned to the hall, and joined a queue waiting to enter the assembly room in an orderly fashion. The boy behind her blew on the back of her neck and made her shiver. She swung her leg back as unobtrusively as she could and kicked out at him with her heel.

“No shuffling!” shouted a teacher.

The children filed into assembly silently, class by class, row after row. The room was large and high-ceilinged, closed in on itself by dreary, grey window blinds. Several dangling light bulbs threw a cold, harsh light on about two hundred children from the age of four to sixteen. The headmaster stood on a platform at the far end of the room flanked by his teaching staff, his long black gown draped over his stout stomach like a musty old curtain. Behind him, across the entire back wall, was a mural painting of the Magnifico's first Holy Envoy, his first representative on Earth hundreds of years ago. He was leaning against a rock with staring eyes and a sword pierced his bleeding chest. The message, ‘Martyred for the Sake of your Soul', was painted in large black letters across the top.

Those eyes would be staring, staring, at Lucy, wherever she sat. Today, to her dismay, a sinful question popped up in her mind. How could he have been martyred for the sake of her soul? He couldn't possibly have known about her all those hundreds of years ago when she wasn't even born. She pushed the question away, but his eyes still pierced her as though he could see her most secret thoughts.

As soon as the pupils were seated and the shuffling and sniffing and coughing had faded away, the headmaster raised his hands high and they all stood up again. Lucy managed to shift her gaze away from the first Holy Envoy, and fixed it on the headmaster's wobbling jowls.

“The Magnifico blesses you, my children,” he boomed with his eyes closed, his fat arms outstretched, and his head thrown back.

“We thank the Magnifico, Headmaster,” chanted the children.

“The Magnifico watches over you,” he thundered.

“We are grateful for his observance, Headmaster,” they responded dutifully.

“Sinners must be punished, for the sake of their souls.” His voice rose to a bellow then sank to a hiss.

“The sinners are grateful for his blessed guidance,” was the murmured reply.

Lucy joined in the chanting but closed her eyes and tried not to look at the guidance cane which hung from a hook at the side of the headmaster's chair. Any child who displeased the Magnifico would be beaten with the cane up on that platform in front of the whole school. Once one of the boys had whispered to Lucy that he'd heard it was illegal, and someone should tell the government about it. But Lucy knew that the Magnifico's word was the true law and that anyone who reported it to the outside world would suffer the fire of the melting flesh.

The thought of that fire burned constantly somewhere in the back of Lucy's mind and she knew the guidance cane was important to the saving of the soul, but she cringed each time it was used on a fellow pupil. It was the same boys every time. David, who sat next to her in class, was one them. The teachers said he was ‘insolent'. Lucy liked him, though of course she couldn't be friends with someone who'd had the guidance. His half-sister, Dorothy, had been caned a couple of times too. They must have inherited the same genes for cheekiness. Lucy knew she would drop dead with the shame if the guidance ever happened to her.

Suddenly her heart sank. A small brazier was being wheeled on from the side of the stage. The headmaster, with a flourish, poured a scented liquid into it and it burst into flames. John, the skinniest boy in her class – in the whole school – was being called up yet again. She closed her eyes and quickly ran her fingers back and forth along her reminder, trying to soothe the beating of her heart. Would he remember what she had told him? “Just stroke your reminder and the Magnifico will help you. It always works for me.”