The Children’s Home (10 page)

They stopped and David put the head down on a table beneath one of the skylights, where it could be seen by everyone. The Doctor stood beside him, the other children forming a ragged circle around the two. David rotated the head slowly until it had been seen by everyone, smiling when some of the smaller children giggled nervously. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Is there, Doctor?”

“No,” said the Doctor, crouching down to examine the head more closely. “Nothing at all.” He looked at the eyes, which were made of glass, he imagined, nut-brown, the irises flecked with red and black, and the lashes, surely human, applied with infinite care to the wax. The cheeks were flushed and the full lips ribbed as finely as those of a child, almost adhesive in their moistness. The chin had the faintest suggestion of stubble, as though numerous grains of beard had been needled beneath the final layer of wax.

He was close enough to kiss it when David performed his final trick of the morning and the face swung away from the head, grazing the face of the Doctor, who leapt back, startled, even unnerved. “You see,” the boy said with a tone of pride, “with the woman you can see the baby; here you can see the bones and then the brain.” He touched the back of the head a second time and the front of the skull gave a shudder and then detached itself from the head as the face had done. At this point, the Doctor lost his caution and was simply awed. “What workmanship,” he marveled. “Look,” said David, moving the bone layer back into place, “the nose isn’t part of the head at all. It’s only on the face. Beneath it there’s a sort of hole. And look at the eyes. They join up here. You can’t tell anything until it’s open.”

The Doctor thought of the time the artist must have spent with the dead to know such things. He closed up the head and then opened it, astonished by the clocklike precision of the hinges, which seemed to have been made of brass and, but for the central pin, were deeply embedded into the wax. When the head was closed, there was a person, his eyes, his mouth, a person who might have lived as he lived and have seen and spoken and heard as he did; then, one layer down, the hard unfeeling shell that outlives the rest and is indistinguishable at first glance from a hundred thousand others, the underlying oneness; and, finally, coiled gray matter, the workings of which are all that survive, beyond bone and expression, when the brain that thought and the skull that held the brain are equally gone to dust. But that’s not guaranteed, thought the Doctor, not anymore; that even the workings of the brain will last more than the time it takes to tell them is no foregone conclusion.

in which Morgan questions Doctor Crane and the idea of movement is considered

I
t was David’s discovery, so it seemed only fitting that David should decide when Morgan would see the head. Not yet, he told the Doctor. Not yet. Then, in a tone that amused the Doctor, coming from a child of—what would David be now?—ten? he had the mind of a ten-year-old, that was certain, yet might have been younger, must have been younger, in this knowing, portentous tone that seemed so inappropriate, he said, “The time will come. You’ll see.” It didn’t occur to any of them how curious it was that Morgan should never be the discoverer himself; that his own house should remain so mysterious to him. While the others rooted and ferreted, the Doctor in one way and the children in another, Morgan would sit in his book room and wonder what the world he had made for himself might mean; or rather, what the world that had formed itself around him might want from him. Because that was where its meaning, and by extension his, would finally lie; in the demands it made on him. Sometimes it came to him that there was that other larger world the Doctor had described, that encircled the garden as the garden encircled him, and he wondered why his grandfather’s house had been passed over and why he had been left alone. Was it possible that the wall was enough? He would have pestered the Doctor for more detail if some foreboding hadn’t stopped him, perhaps the fear that the Doctor would know something shameful and refuse to tell him, to protect him perhaps. He imagined himself the dirty secret at the heart of the world, the overlooked madwoman raving in the attic of a house that occupied everything there was, each brick and pane and board, the wondering prince in the hair-filled mask of iron he had dreamt of as a boy and never been able to forget.

But he still asked other questions.

“When you’re away from here, away from the house, I wonder, where do you go?” Morgan asked the Doctor one evening, after they had eaten and Engel had taken the children off to bed.

The Doctor shrugged. “I have a room,” he said.

“And you leave it without worrying? Without wondering what might happen?”

“Worrying? Why should I be worrying?”

“But isn’t it dangerous to leave a room alone?” said Morgan, wondering if he sounded as foolish as he felt. Yet he had had this conversation with himself that afternoon and everything had made perfect sense. Perhaps he had overrehearsed. He wasn’t sure in any case why this mattered so much to him, this life the Doctor might have away from the house, which by now he hardly left, except once a week, for half a day, when Morgan supposed he saw his other patients, because surely there would be others who needed the Doctor’s care, out there, in that other world. Apart from that single afternoon each week, the Doctor was here in the house with them all. Sometimes, they passed so much time together, Morgan had the impression that his own body had been miraculously doubled, or split in half, and that beside him was the Doctor.

Sometimes he thought of himself as the Doctor.

“Rooms are never alone,” said the Doctor with a laugh. “Only the people who live in them can be alone. I am alone, perhaps, in mine.” He paused. “But you shouldn’t worry on my behalf. There is nothing in my room in the city that matters to me in the slightest. It is quite bare. A bed, a desk, a chair. Even the window gives onto a painted brick wall only feet away. I always thought I liked the idea of living in a cell. I thought it appealed to the monk in me, because I admired the idea of vocation, you see, my father gave me that. But now, when I think of how I lived there, day after day, for almost four years in the end, I see that it didn’t appeal to the monk in me at all, but to the convict. I was a prisoner there, in the bareness, and that was what appealed to me.” He smiled. “But now I am a free man, Morgan. Besides, I would never have been a satisfactory convict. Convicts leave their mark as often and as deeply as they can.”

“I should like to see it,” Morgan said, in a tone that struck them both as stubborn and contrary, although to what wasn’t clear; as though his wishes were being opposed.

“If you wish. I could take you there if you like.”

But the sudden willingness in the Doctor’s voice had a strange effect on Morgan. “I didn’t mean that I should like to leave the grounds,” he snapped.

“Yet there’s no earthly reason why you shouldn’t,” the Doctor said in a low voice.

“No earthly reason,” repeated Morgan. Crane said no more. Soon after this conversation, Morgan heard him leave the house. He heard Crane’s car start up, its wheels move briefly against the gravel. He is going back to his cell in the city, Morgan thought, to his narrow monk’s bed. I have disappointed him, he thought. Without Crane, with the children in bed, there was silence.

He had always loved silence, the blanket of it, but the children bridled against it, as children do. They would wait for him to leave the room before beginning their racket once more, their shouting and sparring and rearranging of objects, to what purpose he didn’t know; perhaps there was no purpose, he would think, and be proved wrong. He imagined the willful destruction of toys and board games, child-sized pieces of furniture, only to find, when he investigated their cupboards and boxes at night and he could wander at will around the house, that everything was whole and in its place. They left no mark, other than those in his silence, dents and bruises on the surface of that frail receptacle into which he had always withdrawn, and in which he no longer found any comfort.

That night, when Morgan couldn’t sleep for thinking, he heard a muffled rustling in the corridor outside his room. He lay there for a while, alert to what might be there, which seemed both light and numerous. It was hard to tell if the noise were produced by limbs or voices; it sounded like a mixture of whispering and shuffling; a leisurely ruffle of wings perhaps. He would have opened the door to see, but that would have had the unwanted effect of bringing the noise, which had begun to have the form of music, to an end. Movement, he thought, that’s what it takes. I am being reminded of movement.

in which the car is prepared for service

A
few days later Morgan sent a note with Daisy to the head gardener.

“What does it say?” she said.

“Open it, my dear, and read it, if you like,” Morgan said. Daisy opened the note.

“It says Dear Mr. Green I would be grateful if you would see what can be done to ensure that my father’s car is repaired and restored to full working order. No expense need be spared. Please inform me of your progress as soon as is reasonable,” read Daisy. She looked up. “Is that the old car in the garage with the cloth all over it? The one that’s been banged in at the front? The one with the rats in it?”

“Yes.”

“But what do you want it for?” she said. She sounded anxious.

“Wouldn’t you like to be driven round the grounds in my father’s car?” Morgan said. “It used to be a very fine car indeed, the best that money could buy. My father was proud of it. Who knows, maybe one day we could even go for a ride outside,” he added, as though this thought had just that moment occurred to him. But Daisy didn’t seem to be impressed.

“Have you told David you want to use the car?” she said in a low voice, hardly more than a whisper.

Morgan laughed. “Now why on earth should I tell David?” he said. “You think I should first ask David for permission?”

Daisy hung her head, but didn’t speak.

“Run along now and take my note to Mr. Green, and then come back and tell me what he says,” Morgan said after a moment. He watched the little girl as she ran down the garden, then hurried to the kitchen in an odd mood, needing to talk to Engel. She was mincing horseradish, her round cheeks streaming with tears.

“Sometimes I wonder whose house this is,” he said.

“I can’t think why,” said Engel.

“Yet it’s true, I do wonder. For example, can you think of any reason why I should need to ask David before I do things?” he said in a tone that he had intended to be playful, but that sounded, to his ear and no doubt to Engel’s, peeved.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Engel in an impatient way. “You’re the master here, you know that as well as I do. Needing to ask David!”

“I certainly believed that to be the case,” Morgan said. “But now I find that David, of all people, has to be informed of my every move.” He laughed, unconvinced, even hurt.

“I’ve never heard such nonsense,” said Engel.

Morgan walked to the window and stared out. It had started to rain. There was no sign of anyone outside. Daisy would have found Mr. Green by now and delivered his note. Perhaps the gardener was standing in the garage now, with the damaged car in front of him, wondering where to start. Perhaps he had already begun to kill with his spade the rats that were nesting there. What had possessed him to ask for such a thing, wondered Morgan.

“Where is he?”

“David?” Engel sniffed. “He’ll be about.”

“Where does he go, do you think?”

Engel put down the ragged horseradish root and stepped back from the mincer, wiping her eyes on her apron.

“This horseradish makes me cry like no other thing in the world,” she said.

“Where
does
he go, though?” Morgan repeated, as though to himself. “Where do they all go, come to that? Just listen. A houseful of children and not a sound.”

“And you’re complaining, my young man,” she said, as she did when she was annoyed with him, perhaps unaware that he welcomed it. “You should have lived in a whole house the size of this kitchen with children that made themselves heard and seen, as I have done.”

“No, not that. Not that at all.” He blinked as the pungency of the root reached him. “I’m not complaining. I wonder, that’s all it is.”

“You listen to the Doctor,” Engel said, with a trace of irritation. “He’ll tell you what’s what.”

“Why? Have you spoken to the Doctor about this?” asked Morgan sharply. Engel turned her back on him.

“I’ll not be questioned,” she said coldly. “Not by you or by anyone. Not in that way. You have no right.”

“Oh, Engel, please,” said Morgan, horrified. Engel had never used this tone with him. “The last thing I would do is question you or do anything, anything, that might upset you. You know that, surely. You know that I depend on you absolutely.”

“I know what I know,” she said. Then, in a gentler manner, she added, “You just talk to the Doctor, that’s all. He’s the one you should talk to, not me.”

But I have spoken to the Doctor and the Doctor knows nothing, thought Morgan, or will not tell me what he knows. And I still have no answer. Why
should
I have spoken to David? With a sense of fear he couldn’t understand, he wondered, And what would David have said? Do I need David’s consent before I do things? Who is he? What does he want from me? It struck him that the language David used had a religious quality to it. You couldn’t get round it, or through it. It blocked you, that’s all. It leaves you no choice. I wonder where they are now, he said to himself, and then the thought came to him that he would have this out with David. He would find him and talk to him, man-to-man. He left the kitchen and crossed the hall, almost running, fired by this idea. At the bottom of the stairs, he paused and listened, but could hear nothing above the sound of the rain, which was falling more heavily now, beating against the stone pathway around the house, striking the windowpanes. They must be inside the house, he thought, and began to climb the stairs.