House of the Lost (37 page)

Zoia said slowly, ‘I might find that acceptable.’

‘And in turn, we would also be solving the problem of the Black House orphans for you.’ Sister Teresa stood up, as if she considered the matter settled. She stood up. ‘I’ll collect Mara early tomorrow morning,’ she said and went out.

Mara thought it might be a bit scary to be on her own with Sister Teresa, but it was not, although the journey was longer than Mara had imagined any journey could be. She had never been outside the village before, and had no idea how they would travel. Did Sister Teresa have a car? Mara had been in a car twice but only for very short distances. They might go on a train, of course. She had never been on a train, in fact she had never even seen a train, except for pictures in books.

They did not go in a car, but on trains and buses. Sister Teresa had made the journey before so she knew what they had to do and was able to tell Mara where they were, and how this was the border between Romania and Hungary they were crossing.

Mara was fearful about what was ahead and worried about her grandmother and brother, but it was pretty exciting to be going on this journey, seeing places she had never heard of. She looked out of the windows for most of the time, seeing how the countryside became wilder and how the mountains were different.

‘They’re dangerous, of course, those mountains,’ said Sister Teresa. ‘There are bears and wolves in them. But there’s also some of the most beautiful plant life you can imagine. Potentilla and gentian and things you’ll never see in the towns. You’ll have lessons at Debreczen, of course, and you’ll have to work hard. There were a couple of English sisters there last time I went: if they’re still there, you might try to learn a little English. It’s a very widely spoken language and it might one day be useful for you.’

Later, when they were at the back of the jolting bus, winding its way up a steep mountain path, she talked about what had happened at the Black House.

‘I’m as sure as I can be that you didn’t kill Annaleise Simonescu with deliberate intent,’ she said and Mara looked at her gratefully. ‘But I can’t be completely sure because no one can see inside another person’s mind. You were responsible for her death, but if you remember your catechism, for a sin to be mortal there has to be full knowledge, free will and grave matter. I don’t think you had any of those. But that woman – Zoia – thinks you meant to kill and she wants you punished very severely.’

‘Am I going to be?’

Sister Teresa hesitated. ‘It won’t be a life of luxury,’ she said. ‘The Debreczen House is a poor one. But it isn’t a punishment place and they’ll be kind to you. What I said about you helping with the cleaning and cooking was true, though.’

‘I don’t mind cleaning and cooking. Would I be allowed to go home sometimes?’

‘I don’t know. I wish you could simply have gone home to your grandmother and Mikhail – if I could have taken you, I would. But it was too dangerous. I made a kind of bargain with Miss Calciu, you see. I have to honour that.’

‘Why couldn’t I say goodbye to them?’ Mara had cried all over again at discovering she was not allowed to do this. Sister Teresa had brought a hastily packed bag from the convent, with a nightdress and a clean jumper and skirt and underthings. Mara had no idea who they belonged to.

‘I couldn’t risk it,’ said Sister Teresa. ‘If either of us had gone to your grandmother’s house, Zoia would have known about it. Her people would have been ordered to watch us, and she would have seen it as a trick. She might have taken you back into the Black House, and I’m not sure if I could have got you out a second time.’

‘She’d have shut me inside the well-house again,’ said Mara in a scared whisper. ‘She hated me because of what happened. Sister, I told them a lie.’ There it was, admitted to at last. ‘I said I heard some of the sisters talking about Matthew’s father, and how he was trying to find Matthew’s mother and rescue her. But really it was my grandmother who told me about it.’

She waited for Sister Teresa to be angry, but Sister Teresa said, ‘Lies are very bad things indeed, Mara, but I understand you told that lie to protect your family.’

‘Yes,’ said Mara in a very small voice. ‘Um, Sister, did anything happen because of it?’

‘To the nuns, you mean? There are always consequences from a lie, and there were consequences this time. Two of the sisters are with the Securitate at the moment. We think they will be allowed home, though.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mara again. ‘I’ll confess the lie. But I’m glad my grandmother and Mikhail are all right.’ This seemed to go down well, so feeling a bit braver she said, ‘Sister Teresa, why did Zoia hate me so very much? I didn’t understand that. I know what happened to Annaleise – Miss Simonescu – was bad, but it wasn’t as if she was Zoia’s family or anything like that.’

Sister Teresa took a moment to reply, and when she did her voice sounded awkward, as if she was not sure if she was using the right words. She said, ‘God makes people differently, Mara. Sometimes people – ladies – form very deep attachments to one another. Sometimes men do so, as well. Zoia had a deep attachment for Miss Simonescu. That’s all we need to know.’

‘Oh. Yes, I see. Sister – do you know about the children in the Black House?’

‘I know there are children there.’

Mara saw Sister Teresa’s lips tighten. ‘They’re in cages!’ It came out in an angry explosion, and Mara bit her lip. ‘I saw them by mistake,’ she said. ‘I think that’s part of why they put me in the well-house. Sister, they were crying – they were only little babies . . .’

Sister Teresa turned her head to look down at Mara. ‘I did know about them,’ she said. ‘That was why I made the bargain.’

Debreczen, when they finally reached it, was small and old and felt somehow secretive. The streets were shadowy because the buildings were of thick old stone – Mara pressed against the windows of the trundly little bus to see better. The convent was a few kilometres outside the town: it was much nearer to the mountains than Mara had expected, and it almost seemed to be built into them.

Once inside, it was cool and dim; there were stone corridors and small cell-like rooms. Mara was shown a dormitory where she would sleep with four other girls who were living there. They were all older than Mara and she felt a bit scared of them.

‘They will be your friends,’ said Sister Teresa, when she left Debreczen two days later. ‘You will come to know and love them.’

But Mara knew she would never love anyone as much as she loved her grandmother and brother. She would not let herself believe she would never see them again. She could not bear that. She could not bear, either, to think she would never see Matthew again.

Even though Matthew did not know where Mara was, every time he thought about her being taken away, he had a dreadful picture of her locked in a stone cell with iron bars at the windows, beating her hands on those bars to get out.

Two days after Mara vanished a jeep came snarling down the lane. Matthew had been getting ready for bed, but he ran to the window when he heard it. His father opened the door as the men walked up to the house and Matthew’s heart began to race. He tried to think it would be one of the men’s ordinary visits, that they would come into the house and talk to his father, then go away again, that it would be all right.

But it was not. The men did not come inside; they grabbed his father there on the doorstep and half dragged him to the waiting jeep. He protested and struggled, but the men had him in a tight hold. The one who had talked to Matthew about art school, said, ‘No use in struggling, Andrei. We’ve finally got the evidence we need. One of the local children heard talk and repeated it to us – no, not your precious son,’ he said, in a sneery voice. ‘And we’ve got all the pieces of the jigsaw at last.’

Matthew’s father hardly seemed to hear. He was fighting the men for all he was worth. Matthew was astonished to see him like that, fighting and hitting out, his hair tumbling over his forehead, his collar loosened. They would overcome him, because there were too many of them. Matthew ran downstairs, skidding on the last few and almost falling over, then pelted across the hall to the open door. He snatched up the ash walking-stick in the coatstand to beat off the men. But when he got to the door he saw it would make no difference if he had all the weapons of an army, because the jeep was already driving off and it was too late.

His father was seated in the back, one of the men keeping firm hold of his arm. He turned round and shouted above the growl of the engine, ‘Matthew – everything will be all right. I’ll be back very soon. Almost certainly tomorrow. So stay here – and whatever happens, remember I love you very much . . .’

Matthew watched the jeep drive away, then went back up to his room, curled into a miserable huddle on the bed and cried into the pillow until it was soaked through.

His father did not come back the next day. Nor the next day nor the day after that. A whole lot of days went by, and Matthew ran home from school every afternoon, imagining that his father would be there and the men would somehow have been dealt with, and how Matthew himself would be able to feel safe again. But each time there was the sick stab of disappointment at finding only Wilma in the house. Each evening, he ate his supper – he did not want it but Wilma said he had to keep up his strength – and then did his homework.

He concentrated fiercely on this, because it stopped him thinking about what might be happening to his father, but when there was arithmetic homework, the memory of his father saying how he used to write stories about the troublesome figures was too much to bear. Matthew would walk about the bedroom very fast, hoping to fool the memories into going away, but they would not be fooled. He could not stop thinking about the comic story they had planned to write, with Matthew drawing the figures and his father making up the story. It would have been a good story because his father always had good ideas about these things. He had said they might try selling it to a newspaper – comic strips they called them. You could make quite a lot of money from comic strips, he had said, with the sudden narrow-eyed thoughtful look he wore when he was thinking up plots. Matthew loved that look. He could not bear to think he might never see it again.

Each night he sat in the window-seat of his bedroom, watching the lane, so he could see his father’s thin figure the minute it appeared. When it got dark he placed the little lamp by the window where it would shine out into the lane, so that when his father did come he would see the light like travellers in stories.

He wanted to find out where his father had been taken, but he had no idea where to start. Those typed words in the article he had found went through and through his mind. ‘
They vanish as abruptly and as completely as if by sorcery
,’ his father had written.

Had his father been taken to one of the nameless prisons described in the article? Was he shut away in one of those stone cells Matthew still sometimes dreamed about?

‘He’ll come back,’ said Wilma, wrapping her fat arms round Matthew and hugging him. Matthew found this comforting because Wilma always smelt of clean hair and soap and occasionally of baking. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘You’ll see. We’ll keep a watch and he’ll come home very soon.’

But although Matthew watched faithfully every night from his bedroom window, his father did not come home.

And Mara did not come home either.

The present

The shrilling of the phone sliced violently across Theo’s consciousness, splintering Mara’s world, and causing the images of the well-house and the feeling of Zoia’s bitter grief to vanish. He reached for the phone, hoping it would be Lesley.

But it was not Lesley, it was DS Leigh. ‘Just checking you’re all right.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Theo, forcing himself to climb out of 1970s Romania. ‘No more disturbances.’

‘Good. Has your cousin Lesley called?’

‘No.’ Theo did not say he was starting to feel slightly worried about this.

‘Well, let us know when she does. I’d like to be sure that other key is where we think,’ said Leigh. ‘I spoke to the nuns. They haven’t seen or heard anything out of the way, but they were very sorry to hear about your attack. The Bursar said you could have a room in the hospital wing if you don’t want to stay at Fenn on your own tonight.’

‘That’s kind of her,’ said Theo, ‘but I’ll be perfectly all right.’

‘Call if you need us,’ said Leigh.

Theo put the phone down, suddenly aware the room was cold. He switched off the computer, thinking he had had enough of that strange other-world for the night. It was half past ten, and he supposed at some stage he should go to bed, but he was reluctant. He knew he would keep seeing that dark crouching figure on the stair and lie awake listening for the creak of footsteps treading stealthily across the landing towards him . . . Because whoever he is, he’s got a key.

To counteract the deep unease this thought churned up, Theo made himself go round the house to check the bolts were still firmly in place, then made a mug of tea and returned to the warmth of the sitting room. He scanned the bookshelves, hoping to find something fairly undemanding to read, and saw the glossy booklet about St Luke’s hundred years, which the Bursar had given him. Just right. He took it to the sofa, pulled the rug back over him, and opened the pages.