The Children’s Home (9 page)

Morgan’s good hand slid down the cheek of the woman onto her chin, resting for a second on the bone between her breasts, his fingers brushing the husk of the bee in the amber drop, then further down until they came to the edge of the part that had been opened to reveal the fetus.

“No, not like this, not like this, so bare and cruel,” he said under his breath, and closed the woman’s belly with his other hand, the damaged one, pushing until he heard the click within. She was closed to him now, and whole. He stroked her pale distended skin as tears poured down his cheeks.

“What on earth’s the matter?” Doctor Crane said.

“I don’t know,” said Morgan. “I wish I did.” When Doctor Crane put his arm round Morgan’s shoulder and pulled the man in towards him, so that his wounded face would rest on the taller man’s chest, Morgan began to cry as he had never cried before, not even as a child; he cried until he was utterly drained. The children around them were silent and observing, but happily so, as though they had known this would happen in the end, and were glad. Finally, Morgan broke away, although a hand remained on the Doctor’s waist.

“Well,” he said, and gave a short embarrassed laugh. “It seems I am an emotional creature.”

in which Doctor Crane inquires about Morgan’s sister and Morgan wonders about the nature of power

O
ne day, soon after the woman had been discovered, David asked Morgan about his sister.

“How do you know I’ve got a sister? Did Engel tell you?”

David shrugged. “I know you’ve got a sister,” he insisted, “but I don’t know her name.”

After a moment, because Morgan had almost forgotten his sister’s name he thought of her so rarely, he said, “She’s called Rebecca.”

“Why did she go away from here?”

“She’s never really been here, not since she was a child. She went away to school, you see, while I was educated at home.” Why am I telling this to David? he wondered. Why should he need to know? Morgan had no desire to talk about his sister, but he could see that David would insist; his small bright features were set with determination. He would have to talk. He closed his eyes for a second as if to think, although he was mostly trying not to think. “She went away and she stayed away, really. When my mother was ill, she hardly ever visited, whether through her own choice or not I couldn’t say. At Christmas perhaps. I saw her at my father’s funeral. She’s taller than I am, tall and blond, a striking woman. We aren’t alike at all. I don’t think I’ve seen her since then, though I know she visited me in hospital. She saw me, you see, and then she went.”

David wasn’t interested in this. “What does she do?” he said.

“Do? She works in the family business, I believe. There are letters sometimes, things to sign. She sends them and I sign them and send them back.”

“She’s important there?”

“Well, yes, I suppose she must be running the entire show. She’s the owner, after all, along with me, and I have no interest at all, I have never had any interest in the family business. After my father’s death, there was a manager, like a regent, who took over until my sister was old enough, but he must be retired by now. Rebecca always liked being in charge, I remember that. I think that was why my mother didn’t like her.” His mother had always disliked Rebecca even as a child. He saw his sister in his mind’s eye. A stubborn, hard-featured child with short fair hair tugged back from her face and tied with ribbon into a single clump that would gradually work itself free. Small plump hands clenched by her side. Hating her mother back.

“What is she like now?” said David. “I mean, is she good?”

“Good?” said Morgan. He considered this for a moment. “I’ve no idea. I don’t know her, you see, David. I’ve never thought of her as good, or not good, for that matter. I don’t know how those words work when I think of her. Good, bad.” He remembered that he was talking to a child. “I suppose goodness depends on what you do, as much as what you are. I think she may have sent Engel here to look after me, when I most needed to be looked after. That would have been a good thing for her to do.” So perhaps she is good, he said to himself.

David shook his head. “Engel isn’t here for you,” he said. He stood for a moment, in thought, before speaking again. “What does your family business do?” he said.

“Do?” Morgan hadn’t expected this question.

“Yes.” David sounded impatient now. He stamped his foot. “What does it do? It must do something.
Make
something, I don’t know.”

“Yes, it does,” said Morgan. “It makes power.”

David nodded.

“That’s what I hoped,” he said. He thought again. “Where does power come from, Morgan?” he said finally.

“Gas. Coal. The sun,” said Morgan.

“No, not that kind of power,” said David. “The other kind.”

“What other kind?”

“I’ve been reading books,” said David, in a long-suffering way, as though no explanation were really needed. “The kind of power that kings have, and Caesars.”

Morgan considered this. “From the strength of others, I suppose,” he said finally. “By stealing it from them and making it your own.”

David nodded, as if a suspicion had been confirmed, and walked off to look for the others.

•  •  •

Morgan brooded about this conversation for some time after David had left him. Not the power part, other than to smile to himself at David’s precociousness, but the part about Engel. If Engel wasn’t there for him, to meet his needs, then who
was
she there for? The children? Who else, if not? She must have been waiting for them to arrive, caring for him as a way of passing the time until the moment came for her to fulfill her role. But his sister? Did his sister know about the children? How much did Rebecca know about his life here? About the Doctor? How much did Rebecca know about their daily business in this house that was also hers, although she never came and had never loved it, as far as he could remember. Why should she? It has never been a house that welcomed love, he thought. And then he heard shouting rise up from the garden, children’s voices, and laughter. He crossed the room and looked down towards the lawn, where David and some of the smaller ones were chasing a ball. Not until now.

He observed them, unaware of the passage of time, until he felt a chill in the air from the opened window and saw the children run back into the house in a group, the ball forgotten until David paused, turned back to pick it up. Morgan watched the boy stand with the ball beneath his arm and look towards the lake, and the boathouse. He seemed to be waiting for a sign, or seeking one out, some sign that would have meaning only for him, thought Morgan. He stepped back into the room, shaken by some feeling he could not name. When he stepped forward and looked down once again towards the garden, David was no longer there.

in which the children lose their temper and make a discovery

T
he children sat in a huddle on the floor of the Doctor’s room, books scattered around them, some open, some closed, in terrible disorder. It hurt the Doctor to see books treated in such a way. They’re too young for this, he thought, all at once. And then, as though this had never occurred to him before, because it remained unanswered and so was always new, there were the usual questions in his head: Who
are
they? What do they want? Today, something curious was going on, that was clear. David and Melissa, normally so equable, so
adult
in their dealings with the world, even inscrutably so, seemed angry, as much with the smaller ones as with themselves, while Daisy, seated a little apart from the others on a footstool near his armchair, crooned to one of the babies, her face turned away.

“What’s wrong?” said the Doctor.

“It isn’t here,” said David in a rage that bordered on tantrum, beating the book on his lap with his small tight fist. “That’s what. We can’t find it. We’ve looked and looked in all these books and it isn’t anywhere to be found.” He stared up at the Doctor, his face contorted by fury. The Doctor had seen nothing like it in any of the children. “But it must be. It must be here somewhere,” the boy said, throwing the book down and picking up another. “Or what’s the point?”

“But what?” said the Doctor. “What are you looking for that’s so important?”

“What we were looking for,” insisted Melissa when David didn’t answer. “That’s what’s important.”

“But what is it, this thing that’s so important?” the Doctor said, all at once exasperated. “Perhaps if you tell me I can help you look for it. I might even know where it is.”

“They won’t know till they find it,” said Daisy in a voice that was both petulant and resigned. “No one will. That’s what they say. But they make me look all the same. I think it’s silly.”

“
We
won’t know,” said David, glancing at Daisy with fury, as though she had blabbed some secret. “
You
won’t know, you mean.
None
of us will know. You’re not so special that you don’t have work to do just like the rest of us. That’s why we’re here.”

Melissa stood up and walked across to the other little girl.

“We’ve got it wrong, I think,” she said. “We must have made a mistake somehow. It must be our fault.” She touched Daisy’s hair. “Don’t worry. We’ll find it, I know we will. And then we can all go home.”

“I’m not worried,” said Daisy, turning her head, and the Doctor saw that she had been crying. Daisy was his favorite among the children, perhaps because she had been the first to need him. But more than that, what appealed to him most—what made him feel safe with her was the truth of it, although he didn’t know this or wouldn’t admit it to himself, because why should he, of all people, feel insecure?—was her normality. She seemed like any other child. She seemed to know nothing more than she should. But what was it that Melissa had said?
Go home
?

“What on earth do you mean?” he said.

She stared up at him, her expression almost hostile, as though she had been surprised in the middle of something shameful and refused to be ashamed, as though it were the Doctor, not she, who should feel shame for having been overcurious or indiscreet. Appalled, he felt the urge to step back, to get away from this child with her soft blond curls and green eyes and lips set accusingly in a line.
Who are these children?
he asked himself.
What do they want?

Then David stood up as well and took the Doctor’s hand. “Doctor Crane, come with me now, I have found something,” he said, and his face broke into a smile that made the Doctor more uneasy than ever. “Please,” the boy insisted in an uncharacteristic wheedling tone. The Doctor looked questioningly at Melissa as David pulled him towards the door. “Come on!” the boy insisted, tugging at the Doctor’s hand with both of his, and there was something in his voice that reminded the Doctor of his own voice, of when he had also said these words a week or so before. He wondered as they walked together from the room and down the corridor to where the stairs led up to the attic, the boy leading the man, the others following, how much of what the children said had not been said to them, how much of what they did was not the simulacrum of what had been done around them. Their perfection, it seemed to the Doctor, because they were all undeniably quite perfect, was like the perfection of the woman made of wax.

David took them from the room in which the woman remained in her upright trunk and through another series of rooms until they were at the center of the house. There were boxes and dust and more boxes; empty clothes rails had been stacked against the farthest wall, and covered in sheets. There was no light apart from a thin stream that came in where a tile or two had been dislodged; beneath it, in correspondence, was a patch of damp. Light and water. Water and light.

David had found a large black torch from somewhere. He turned it on and balanced it on a box, then crossed the room and hauled out an ancient pram from behind one of the clothes rails. The Doctor shivered as David reached into the pram and gathered something in his arms. The children sighed with pleasure and the Doctor gave a short, involuntary cry, like a bark, which sounded to him as though it had come from someone else, from somewhere close by.

David was clutching a severed head to his chest. The head was natural size and larger than David’s own, because it had belonged to a fully grown man. The face was pressed against David’s body; all that could be seen was the carefully arranged coal-black hair, curling into the nape, and the intricate pattern of vein and artery and bone in the neck, like a slice of polished marble as it glinted in the light of the torch. There was a sheen to it, it looked almost wet; it might have been freshly cut, the Doctor thought, bending down to see better. It might have been the head of a victim of some terror from the past, the head of an innocent or guilty man from a time when innocence and guilt were meaningless and the blade fell where it fell. Then David turned the head round and the Doctor saw the face of a man that might have been the brother of the pregnant woman, so strong was the resemblance, and understood at once that this was the work of the same creator, the wax artist, the surgeon.

“You found this here?” he said. David nodded. He put the head down beside the torch, but the Doctor touched his shoulder.

“We can see it better if we take it to another room, where there’s more light,” he said. David picked up the head and nodded a second time.

The Doctor led the way through the attic rooms until they were in a space with skylights. He could have taken them all downstairs to his own room, but felt, suspiciously he knew, that the head belonged up here, with the pregnant woman, returned to her trunk until Morgan had decided what he would do with her. Morgan was fascinated and disturbed by her in equal measure. When she was closed and whole, he wanted her open; when she was open and exposed, he could barely look at her without reaching forward to touch the fetus, the glistening wave of placenta. Then, with a shudder, he would swing the flap of belly shut and turn away, the color drained from his face. “Let’s leave it where we found it,” Crane had said and Morgan, in an angry whisper, had insisted: “Her.”