The Children’s Home (16 page)

Morgan flinched. His hands rose slowly to his face.

“You want me to take it off?” Morgan’s fingers felt for the edge of the mask but it seemed to have disappeared, the surface of skin and wax was unfractured by any seam. Why should he take it off? he thought. Why should he expose himself to his sister?

“It isn’t what I want,” said David. “It’s what you have to do.”

“You don’t need it,” Crane said, resting his hand on Morgan’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. He treats me like a brother, thought Morgan, and yet I resent him for that as well, as though they were all my enemies, not only my long-dead mother and Rebecca, not only the uniformed men and women that protect her from the world as much as I am protected from the world by the walls around the house. But also the children, Engel, Crane. They were right, he knew, but how much it hurt to feel for the seam and ease the face that Morgan had begun to think of as his, as his real face, away from the thing that lay below, which was foreign to him. It had always been foreign. You can’t grow into a face that was never yours, he thought. He thought of his own face as the mask and the mask as the true face that lay beneath it. And then he remembered Goddie, who had never seen the face beneath the mask and would be scared. But David was whispering to the smaller boy. He nodded at Morgan. Now, his mouth said, and Morgan lost sight of them all as the wax passed over his eyes, then, when he was naked and flinching at the air on his own skin, he saw that Goddie was not scared after all, but pitying and sad, and awed. Tears pricked his eyes.

“She’s waiting,” David said. He looked and sounded like a man. He continued, in a softer voice, “Don’t worry. All you have to do is ask for Moira back. Ask her to take us there, where Moira is. See what she says. If she takes us, well and good. If she doesn’t, we’ll wait and see what she does. It doesn’t matter either way. We’ll get Moira back in any case.” He cocked his head. “I think I can hear her. Listen.”

They stood there silent. Morgan heard nothing, but Goddie and the other children nodded. “She’s a long way off,” said Goddie.

Then they heard the voice of a woman from beyond the open door.

in which Morgan and Rebecca talk about power

“M
organ? Is that you?”

“Yes, my dear,” he said. He walked along the final stretch of corridor and into a room that was bare except for a vast white table and, behind it, the seated figure of his sister. She was looking away from them, towards a window, so they saw her profile first. A long nose, high forehead, her chin a little sharper than it should be. She was dressed in black, her blond hair scraped back from her face and twisted into a chignon. Her face was very fine, she had always been beautiful, he thought, and apparently there were no signs of aging, although it was hard to tell at this distance. He walked towards her and watched her, to see what she would do. He wanted to see if she recoiled. She hadn’t seen him, after all, since the clinic. Her memory might have made him worse, there was always that possibility. But she didn’t react at all. She turned her head from the window and looked at him in her level way, which she had learned from their mother, and then glanced at the others. He saw a flicker of distaste on her lips and thought at once that this would not be for his own children but for Goddie, still whimpering a little. She had never liked rough boys, or crybabies. Or perhaps it was Mite, because, so far as he knew, Rebecca had never had a baby, or even a pet. She had hated and feared their mother’s dogs, he remembered that well enough. With a shiver, as though a blanket had been torn away from him, he felt that he and his sister were children again, in the rose garden or hiding among the yew bushes, with their mother bearing down on them, her dogs behind her, and Rebecca ready to cry and blame him for something, and his mother ready to spring to his defense. That was why his mother had tried to kill him, to take him with her. She hadn’t loved Rebecca enough for that, they would know this always, both of them. They would always know, apart from everything else, her power, his pain, that his wounded face was a sign of their mother’s special love.

“You’ve come all this way, Morgan,” she said. “What on earth for?”

“You know why I’ve come,” he said.

“Do I?” She looked behind him. “You aren’t alone, I see.”

“These are my friends.”

“How wonderful to have friends,” she said. “Friends are people who accept you for what you are, isn’t that so? That’s what I’ve been told. Who appreciate you.” She smiled. “I see you surround yourself with children.”

“Rebecca,” Morgan said. This was a word he could say, he realized. How strange that, among the names he could still pronounce, there should be that of his sister. “Some people took a child of mine. A girl child called Moira.”

“Yes?”

“We think she’s here,” he said. “We think you have her.”

“You’d like her to be here, I know that. How simple everything would be if we could always have what we want. But then, that’s what you’ve always had, isn’t it? Everything you want.”

“How can you say that?” Morgan gestured towards his face.

Rebecca laughed, scornful. “Oh, that,” she said. “There are worse things that can happen in the world than that. You have no idea how wicked the world can be, Morgan.”

Morgan remembered what David had written on the blackboard in the schoolroom, about the world’s wickedness. Before he could speak, he felt David move beside him. The boy took his hand. He spoke in his high clear voice.

“You know she’s here. This is where all the children end up when they’re taken away from their homes and disappear. Where else would she be?”

Behind them, Goddie cried out, “I want to go.”

“Take that brat out of here,” Rebecca snapped.

Morgan walked towards her until his face was only feet from hers. He saw, with an unexpected thrill, his sister shrink back. He lifted a corner of his top lip, knowing full well the effect this had. For a moment, her hand rose, as though she wanted to cover her own mouth or reach out to caress what was left of his, her expression an unresolved conflict of pity and repulsion.

“What took you so long, Morgan?” she said. “I’ve waited for you to come. I’ve wanted to talk to you, often, to see how you were. I’ve driven to the gate, you know that? And looked into the garden and wondered. And driven away.”

“I never drove you away.”

“I sent that woman to you, the one who insisted so much.”

“Engel?”

“Was that her name? She turned up in my office one day, God only knows how. She said you needed her. I thought you would see for yourself if that was true or not. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, I remember that. I thought she might tell me herself what was happening in the house, become a sort of spy, I suppose, but that didn’t happen. I never saw her again.”

“She’s still with me,” Morgan said.

“I did the right thing then?”

“Yes.”

“Why is that child whining?” she said. Morgan turned to see Goddie crouched on the floor, as if he’d been kicked. He said in a low voice to David, “Comfort him.” David knelt beside him, to stroke his hair.

“What are you doing here?” Morgan asked, turning back to his sister.

She looked startled.

“Doing?”

“This place. This factory. What does it do?” He’d told David the factory made power, and David had nodded, but even now he knew nothing of the factory’s purpose. He’d never wanted to know, which is also a sort of knowing.

Rebecca laughed. “What a fool you are, Morgan. You think because you’ve suffered you’re exempt from responsibility, but you’re wrong. What’s made in this factory puts food in your mouth and clothes on your back as much as it does mine. You’re as guilty as I am, if that’s what you imagine me to be. You’d prefer me to be guilty for you perhaps?”

“Rebecca,” Morgan said, “I want my child.”

“Your child? They’re all your children, I suppose, all the poor lost infants of the world. All struggling to find a place under your wing. Somewhere safe and warm and innocent.” She sat up straight in her chair, which rose behind her head like a throne in a tale. “And what do you think we do with children here that’s so awful? So unimaginable? Do you think we torture them, or eat them? The children are our raw material, Morgan. We make them work for their keep. The world is built on work, Morgan, didn’t you know? What do you think the others do, your maids, your gardeners, that woman Engel, you think they work for the love of you, for the love of work? How stupid you are. Isolation has addled your brain.”

She turned her head once again to the window. Morgan felt sick with humiliation as he stood there, because everything she had said was true. He waited for her to continue, as though his final purpose here were to be punished.

But David would have none of it.

“You don’t work any more than he does,” he said, with contempt. “Your strength comes from the strength of others. You sit up here and boss people round, you don’t even see what they do. If you did, you’d be ashamed. You think you’re safe but you aren’t. No one is. Morgan’s a good man, and that’s
his
work, to be good. We’d all be dead without him. You aren’t so special. You’ve no more right to live than anyone else.”

“That’s enough, David,” said Morgan. “My sister knows what she is saying.” He looked at her, the pale set face framed by the leather of the chair back, like the perfect head of a doll on a shelf. “We’ve neither of us had children,” he said. “It isn’t surprising, I know that. But we must still learn how to live.”

She sprang up from the chair. She was as tall as he was, taller than David. She walked round to the front of the table and Morgan struggled not to fall back to avoid her. When she was close enough to touch him, her hand went up to his cheek, the wounded one. She stroked it once, he felt her fingernails against him, then turned towards the door.

“You can have your Moira, but you must leave me one to replace her. I have to balance my books.” She pointed at Goddie. “That one will do.”

Goddie moaned. A puddle of piss appeared between his feet.

“I’ll stay,” said David.

“Wait,” said Crane. “This woman has no right to dictate conditions.”

Rebecca laughed.

“I see your adult friend also has a voice,” she said to Morgan. “Perhaps he is more than your friend. You have found your consolation there.”

Morgan shook his head.

“Crane is right. This place belongs as much to me as it does to you.”

Rebecca laughed. “Belongs to you? And what have you ever done for this?”

But David insisted. “Let me stay here.” He stepped forward and bent his head before Rebecca. “You can have me. I’m stronger than a baby girl and I’ll work harder. You won’t regret it.” He glanced across at Goddie, his lip curling. “He’s no good, just look at him. He’s weak and scared, he’ll do nothing but cry and wet himself.” He stared up into her eyes. “Take me.”

She swiveled on her heels and walked to a door. It opened as she approached and a woman appeared, dressed as the women in the foyer had been dressed. This woman must have been listening and waiting. When she saw Morgan, she gasped and turned her face away.

“Bring me the child. You know the one they mean.” She beckoned David towards her. He looked at Morgan, who tried to hold his arm, to protect him, and nodded, as if to say, Leave me alone, I know what I’m doing. Morgan stepped back. “And have this boy taken down to the reception area.”

“No,” said David. “I want to see where she’s kept, where they’re all kept. Otherwise I won’t stay.”

Rebecca looked impressed. “You’re quite the little man, you know that, don’t you?” She looked at Morgan, with feigned pity. “How can you bear to lose him?” Morgan paled. “How many have you got? Thirty? Forty. I heard you had forty-four. Surely that can’t be true?”

“Take us to the children,” he said. How did Rebecca know? Was Engel a spy, after all?

She nodded slowly, then waved a hand to dismiss the woman, who hurried from the room.

“Very well,” she said. “If anyone has a right to see them, you do. We’ll go together.”

She led them out of the room and down a second, less opulent, corridor. Everywhere there was silence. It seemed that no one else was alive in the building, no one but this odd group, the striding woman and her disfigured brother in the lead, the children and the Doctor following. The only sound was the click and shuffle of their heels against the tiles and the constant snuffling of Goddie. All the light came from above, there were no windows, and Morgan wondered where they were in relation to the world outside. They must be walking along the spine of the factory, he thought, otherwise they would already have reached an external wall and been forced to turn. How long the building was he could only imagine. Driving alongside it they had passed a mile, perhaps more, of various structures but now, if he was not mistaken, they were pushing further on, into a part that he had not seen. They walked for long minutes, he couldn’t tell how many, before they came to some glass doors, behind which was a flight of stairs. They followed Rebecca down the stairs. They glanced through further sets of doors and saw the life of the building framed beyond them, workers at machines, offices, a kind of showroom. Daisy was dragging her feet by now and began to say that she was tired and what was the point of all this, why couldn’t David have gone by himself and where was Moira anyway? She handed Mite over to the Doctor, who took the baby with relief, as though the presence of that small sleeping body in his arms would reassure him. Morgan’s fingers were fidgeting with the face in his pocket, he wanted to put it on before anyone else could see him as he was. He still felt shaken by the reaction of the woman in Rebecca’s office. It had been so long since someone had gasped with horror at the sight of him; he had forgotten what it was like to be feared. He pulled the thing out and was about to lift it to his face when David saw him. “No, don’t do it,” he said urgently. “Not now. You’ll need it later. You’ll know when. Save it for when it counts.” And Morgan, who had begun to understand the economy of the mask, slipped it back into his pocket.