The Father's House (10 page)

“What!”

“Just joking.”

Dorothy peeped over the pile of rubble and then leaned towards Lucy.

“You can't imagine how awful David feels and he's really, really sorry.”

“It's done now,” said Lucy quietly. “There's worse things in life. Look at poor John!”

Dorothy nodded. “Thanks.”

They sat in sober silence for a while. “No-one could help John,” said Dorothy eventually, “but we thought if we warned you about something it might help make amends, not that anything could really make up for what David did.”

The stab of fear jabbed at Lucy again. She held her breath.

“We've discovered something, and I know you believe in the purpose and all that, but I can't not tell you, and if you report us it's what we deserve because of what David did yesterday.”

The fire of the melting flesh flickered before Lucy's very eyes.

Dorothy leaned closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “You know how when we're sixteen we have to marry the Magnifico?”

Lucy nodded.

“You probably don't know that girls with a bad conduct record, like me, aren't considered fit to be his wives, either as mothers or as aunts.”

“No. I didn't know that,” said Lucy, immediately wondering if she could make use of this piece of information herself to avoid having to get married.

“Well, what David and I have just found out is that if a girl isn't fit to be a wife she's disposed of. She just disappears. They can't take the risk of letting her free in the outside world because she might damage the Holy Cause.”

Lucy ignored the pain in her legs as she tried to struggle to her feet. “What's the matter with you? You're mad. You're just trying to frighten me.”

Dorothy grabbed her arm and pulled her down. “I'm not,” she hissed. “I'm trying to help you. You've only had the guidance once so you might be alright, but I have to warn you in case. You've got to save yourself. It's easy for them to get rid of girls because we don't have birth certificates, only the boys. People who don't have birth certificates don't exist in the outside world.”

Lucy felt sick. “That can't be true. The headmaster said some girls would be trained for careers.”

“It is true, because I've heard the aunts discussing it. Some of them don't think it's right, but they have to obey the Magnifico. Girls who are trained for careers are given fake birth certificates, and whatever documents they need to get a job. But that'll never happen to you or me, because we're a risk – we've had the guidance.”

“I don't believe you.”

An expression of utter bleakness passed over Dorothy's face. Her voice caught in her throat. “I'll tell you something else, and then you might believe me.” She stopped.

There was a long pause. Lucy waited.

“Well, once when I was little, one of the aunts said if I didn't behave myself I'd go the same way as my mother, and I didn't know what she meant.”

“Well?”

Dorothy swallowed hard then sat up straight. She spoke quietly but firmly. “Did you know that the mothers in the breeding rooms are always selected for their beauty and brains – same as the fathers – except that some of them are abducted, kidnapped?”

Lucy shook her head.

“Well my mother was one of them. She was abducted off the street but she refused to be converted to the Holy Cause, so after I was taken away from her they disposed of her. I can just remember her a little.”

Lucy's stomach was churning.

“How?” she managed to whisper.

“By lethal injection.”

Dorothy stood up. Lucy watched as she unsuccessfully tried to retrieve her usual cheeky expression. She bent down to whisper. “I'll be sixteen in September, and it's April now, so I've got five months. I don't know what happens in the outside world if I can't get a job, but I'd rather starve to death out there than wait to be disposed of here.”

As she edged her way along past the pile of rubble she turned back to Lucy.

“It's David's fault you had the guidance. Although we won't blame you if you report him, we beg you not to – or to repeat what I've told you today.”

She sidled out into the playground. Lucy waited a moment and emerged just as the bell was ringing.

Lucy crossed at the lights and started walking uphill. Her mind was buzzing with the horror of what had happened to Dorothy's mother (if it was true and if Dorothy wasn't completely crazy). There was a long queue at the bus stop, and she looked at it longingly, wondering if she dare join it just to stand there among people who belonged to the outside world. A bus was a wonderful thing, she thought. It could carry her away for ever. But if she wasn't registered, if she didn't exist, she would never even be allowed to earn the money for the fare. She'd have to walk.

David pushed his bike and followed at a distance as Lucy trudged despondently up the road. Matthew called after him from outside the school, but he just waved and pointed up and to the left, towards the common.

“Lucy!” called David, when she was halfway down the lane between the houses. “Wait for me.”

“You'll get into trouble,” she said when he caught up with her.

“I'm really, really sorry,” he said.

“I'm not going to report you if that's what you're worried about.”

“It's not. I'm just truly sorry. I'll go and tell them it was my fault if that's what you want.”

Lucy stopped and looked at him. “I don't want that,” she said at last. “It wouldn't take what happened away.” She twisted her reminder. “And it's made me learn something.”

She turned away from him, but he followed. They slowly crossed the common together. Her mind was on tonight's visit to the cellar. It held no terrors for her now. It almost gave her a sense of adventure.

“Which is your house?”

“It'll never be my house even if I live there for ever!” She exclaimed bitterly, pointing at number 3 Mortimor Road. “It's the father's house, and look how furiously angry it is! It's watching me now all the way from over there, and when I get back Aunt Sarah will say she told me to hurry home and disobedient children will be burned in the fire of the melting flesh.”

Self-pity turned to anger. “I shall be trapped for ever in that house, and it's not right. Why should I be stopped from having a registered birth and being an existing person and getting a job and earning my own money?”

David was surprised. He had often wondered what lay behind the inscrutable calm of that exquisitely delicate face. She had a sense of humour he knew, because sometimes when he was particularly silly at school, a suppressed laugh would bubble from her lips, but he had never really got to know her. It was as though she was trapped inside an invisible wall.

He leaned on his bike and studied the house, thinking.

“Does Father Copse live with you?” he asked.

“No. He lives in a flat on the first floor.”

“Do you ever go into his flat?”

“No. We're not allowed upstairs. They keep the door to the lobby locked, and that's where the stairs are. Why d'you want to know?”

David was thinking.

“Just because you don't exist in the outside world doesn't mean you don't exist in the Magnifico's world,” he said slowly. “All the fathers have to keep records of the births of their children, and report on their welfare to the Holy Leaders. Somewhere up there in Father Copse's flat he'll have a record of your birth. In a box or a file or something. If you could find it and escape you could take it to somewhere official, as long as it wasn't infiltrated of course, and ask them to give you a proper birth certificate. A court perhaps. Then you'd exist.”

Lucy caught her breath and stared at him.

“How do you know?” she said, hardly daring to believe him.

“Dorothy hears things no-one else knows about.”

As they came nearer to the house Lucy moved off the path, towards the bushes by the pond. “I'm allowed to play here with Paul,” she said.

“Who's Paul?”

“I don't know. He lives with us. The Magnifico sent him in January. He was with a foster aunt before that.”

Once they'd reached the bushes, out of sight of the house, Lucy relaxed a little and took time to think. “I don't know how I'd ever manage to get into his flat,” she said. “Even if I could get up there I wouldn't know where to start looking, because it must be enormous. It stretches over the back wing, and over the whole of our flat to the front. Maybe Thomas the gardener would have some ideas.”

“Whatever you do, don't tell a soul!” exclaimed David fiercely.

Lucy was taken aback. “But he's my friend,” she said.

“It doesn't matter. You must promise me you'll never, ever, tell anyone what I told you – or what Dorothy told you.” He caught Lucy by the arm and looked earnestly into her green eyes. “All it takes is one slip of the tongue, and not only will you be in danger of disposal, but so will Dorothy and so will I.”

She felt shaken. “Let go of my arm. OK. I promise.”

“You're lucky,” said David, “because you've got a chance. If you were in the Drax commune you'd never be able to get at your records because Father Drax doesn't keep them there. They're in his private house.”

“I must go in or I'll be in trouble.” The curtain of inscrutable courtesy came down. “And thank you for what you've told me. I'll try and think of something.”

David watched her go. She was fourteen, the same age as he was, but had the body and the crushed vulnerability of a little girl. It was easy to believe the rumour that Father Copse kept her half-starved. She turned, and her face lit up briefly as she smiled. He smiled back, waved, and jumped onto his bike. For a moment he'd caught a glimpse of the real Lucy. He sensed that despite her fragility, she was tough.

As Lucy crossed over the road to the house, she gritted her teeth and was determined. When she got at those records nothing would hold her back. Who did they think they were to decide what she should do with her life? If the Magnifico was reading her mind at this moment, she hoped he read so much he went blind! It would serve him right.

Lucy entered the cellar meekly. As soon as the father's footsteps had died away she took the candle out of the bag, taking care not to rustle it. The matches slipped out of her hand but she felt around in the dark and found them on the bottom step. She lit the candle and, stepping over and round the various obstacles, made her way to the far end of the cellar.

She blew out the candle and placed it with the matches against the base of the wall at the side of the slope so that it would be easy to find again. Then she stepped onto the crate and onto the box. Laying her body flat and digging her left knee into the disgusting bit of underlay, and pushing with the toes of her right foot, she worked her way up from the top of the box until she reached the ring of light. She felt with her fingers and pushed at a heavy circular bit of metal. It moved upwards and sideways. All it needed was a good shove.

Light poured in from above. With a final push with her toes Lucy grabbed the rim of the coal hole and pulled herself up. Her head poked above the path and she immediately recognised the street lamp which, together with the moonlight, had so obligingly provided the ring of light. She pulled herself out on to the path and stood up. The air was no colder outside than it was in the cellar, and was considerably fresher. She breathed deeply and looked around. The common lay silent just over the road. Its trees made sharp shadows in the bright March moonlight.

Lucy crossed the road and slipped into the bushes surrounding the pond. The water was a black mirror speckled with stars, and reflected a big round moon. She stood listening to the rustles and sighs of the earth and the shrubs, and was not afraid. Lying flat on her back on the ground, she closed her eyes. Out here in the open the stars no longer frightened her. The cold was nothing, and she felt at peace.

As she breathed in the sharp pure air and the sweet scent of the grass, she found it easy to believe, just for a moment, that the Magnifico did not exist and there was no purpose. Perhaps Dorothy was right after all. She pushed the heresy away. Aunt Sarah would not have lied to her all these years.

Something woke her. There was a noise at the house. She jumped up and peeped through the bushes. The automatic gates to the left of the house had opened and a long elegant car with blackened windows was purring up the drive towards the garage. The gate shut behind it and Lucy darted across the road to peer through the diamond-shaped holes that ran horizontally across its upper section. The car stopped before it reached the garage and an outside light was switched on over the lobby door. As the driver stepped out the father appeared. A giant of a man climbed out of the passenger seat and came round the car to speak to him. Was Lucy imagining things or did they each give a quick flick of the infiltrators' hand signal?