The Children’s Home (5 page)

Then that came to an end as well, when he died in a traffic accident on the way back from town one Friday evening, and I knew that I was the man after all, I had no other choice; I was the man of the house, as the lawyer told me in his vacuous way, although my mother would still have control of the estate for another eighteen months, until I had come of age. She behaved herself with great dignity that day, when the will was read; no one seemed to think it strange that a madwoman should be left to hold the reins of a great fortune. Perhaps I should have said something. But I was nineteen and a half and convinced of my abilities; besides, I was sure my mother had become too crippled to do herself or anyone else serious damage. Her words of anger had come true. Despite what the lawyer had said, she was my responsibility.

In one sense, of course, she was utterly in control, though it wasn’t clear to me then. I had the run—and the running—of the household, my mother opposed me in nothing; my father’s business I left in the hands of my father’s deputy, who managed everything, to the best of my knowledge, with perfect competence until my sister took over. I have never had money problems, which also marks me out, I suppose. On my twentieth birthday I had no notion of any life outside the walls of this house, the walls of this garden; within these inner and outer walls, I thought, I had perfect knowledge. Yet I had no idea that my mother was also possessed of knowledge, as perfect in its way as mine. She had acquired an electric wheelchair and moved her bedroom down to the ground floor, a room that opened onto the garden; a ramp was installed and the French window fitted with handles her fingers could manage. This freedom put her in high spirits. She would drive herself around the garden with the wolfhounds running one on each side of the chair, their great tongues hanging out; a twisted woman in bright clothes with an eye patch and two dogs as tall as the back of the chair. After my father’s death, she had become more generous to herself, it seemed to me, less keen to do herself harm.

That was when she took up orchids, corresponding with other growers throughout the world. She’d wait for the morning post with fervor. A greenhouse and potting shed had been built for the new plants, near the boathouse; she would spend whole days there. Often, walking from one room to the next, I would hear the buzz of the motor that drove her chair and, crossing to the window, would see her bouncing along a path to some distant corner of the garden with the dogs. New paths of carefully cut and sectioned stone were being laid all the time, to reduce the chance of her being thrown from the chair. She watched while the stones were laid, waving her otherwise useless stick at the workmen, telling them vulgar and complicated jokes; I think they dreaded her.

One of them, a boy called Norman, she would tease until his neck was crimson. Sometimes, I would go to the garden to find her and she would be with this Norman, instructing him in some gardening task, and they would both pretend not to have seen me until I coughed or spoke or shuffled my feet; at which point they would look up at me as though I had intruded. Norman is a good boy, she would say, the implication being that I wasn’t; Norman does what I tell him. Briefly, I entertained the idea that she was using him to satisfy her sexual needs, because surely a woman like my mother would have had no qualms about doing that. But I didn’t really think so. What I think now is that she may have flattered him in that way, though he didn’t deserve it; he was short, round-shouldered though strong, with a pasty skin and a lolling fat bottom lip. She may have used words to arouse him, the filthy words she used with me, and enjoyed his discomfort. In which case, her sexual needs were being met in the way that suited her best. She had always been excited by the humiliation of others.

She liked scaring people too. That was one of the reasons she loved her dogs, for the effect they had on others. She scared me many times as a child. She used to hold my wrist too tightly when she cut my nails. Once she twisted her fingers around it in a sort of bracelet, as hard and fast as she could, until I yelped with pain. That’s what children call a Chinese burn, she said. It’s only fair you should know. I was making a face once, the way children do, and she said, Be careful, Morgan, one day the wind will change and you’ll be stuck like that forever and no one will love you. And she made the same face at me, but worse because she was an adult, until I began to cry and begged her to stop. This was before the other signs of her illness had become apparent. Perhaps she wasn’t ill at all in the end, but simply more revealed.

Norman must have helped her get hold of what she needed, though he always denied it, to the police, to everyone; it wouldn’t have been that difficult in any case, not with orchids in the greenhouse. Who knows what she gave him to make him do what she wanted? Perhaps she simply withdrew her disapproval. Perhaps she was simply nice to him. Whatever she did, he helped her prepare what she must have known to be her final act.

The knowledge my mother possessed was that she would sooner be dead than alive; this was sustained by her courage and certitude, which may both in themselves be forms of madness. I thought I would always know what to do with her, what steps to take to prevent her from harm, self-inflicted or otherwise, and I was utterly wrong. Yet even she hadn’t known everything, as it turned out.

The last day, we couldn’t find her anywhere. We searched in the house, the ground floor first and then, knowing this was foolish, the other floors of the house. Outside, it had been raining heavily for thirty, maybe forty hours, the garden was gray and sodden and smelt of the earth. Nobody thought she would have gone out in it, she hated bad weather. I called the dogs’ names, in vain, which worried me more than anything. Then it occurred to me that Norman might know where she was. I had the head gardener sent to my study. I watched a girl run down the path to his house with a large black golfing umbrella, then return moments later with herself and the man beneath it, a dripping canopy with four swift feet. The man stood at the door, I beckoned him in. I’m looking for my mother, I said. I thought Norman might know where she was. I waited. I said, Perhaps you can tell me where Norman is. The man looked ashamed, he shook his head. I wouldn’t rightly know, he said, I think he’s in the boathouse. By rights, that’s where he is. Then why do you say you wouldn’t know? I asked him, and he gave a helpless shrug, almost as though I had no right to ask these questions. What on earth’s he doing in the boathouse? I said. I expect he’ll be working on the boats, the man said painfully, moving his wet boots on the tiles. That’s when I knew that he was lying and that I was surrounded by liars, that my mother had been scheming for who knows how long and I had had no idea, she had played me, letting me feel that I was the master. As of course I was. I was always referred to as Master. Master Morgan, the child of the house.

I took the umbrella from the girl and hurried down through the rain to the boathouse. The head gardener was following me, even without the plaintive cries he was making that I should wait, I shouldn’t go alone, but I waved him away without turning round, I didn’t want witnesses, I didn’t want or need assistants; I wanted to be entirely in charge.

The door to the boathouse was closed but not locked. I pushed it open and saw my mother’s back crouched over a bench at the far end. The dogs were lying on the floor beside her. There was no sign of Norman. She must have heard me come in, but she didn’t turn round or acknowledge my presence; even when I whispered
Mother
. I don’t know why I whispered, perhaps because I thought she might be asleep, or dead, and I didn’t want to wake the dead. She didn’t turn or speak, but I saw her shoulders move slightly, as though she were adjusting her clothes, so I knew she was alive. The rain was beating on the roof, the part of the lake that lay within the boathouse was still and smooth and dark where the rain didn’t strike it, puckered and speckled with light where it did. There was an odd smell in the boathouse, sickly sweet but with something pungent underneath. If I had only recognized it, I thought much later, when I was ready for thoughts of this kind; yet how could I have recognized it? I’d never smelt so much blood before. I walked across to her, my wet shoes slipping on the wood, and I had the sensation that when I touched her shoulder she would simply dissolve and I would be left with a handful of empty clothes and this cloying smell, which grew stronger and stronger as I approached. And then I
did
see Norman, behind her, crouched in the shadows and shaking his head as he stared at me, too afraid to speak. He murmured, not looking at me now but at her,
please ma’am
, not once but twice, three times, until the second word no longer sounded like
ma’am
but seemed to be
mum
and I thought, with a jolt of relief,
yes, you’re her child
. That was when I saw that both the dogs were dead, their throats slashed open, and I knew that the stink in the place was their blood. I felt it pull on the soles of my shoes as I walked across it and she turned round finally, so that what she had in her hand became visible, yet made no sense, because what I had expected was not a glass jar but a knife.
You can’t stop me
, she said and she lifted the jar towards her lips and I remember thinking, before I reached out to stop her, that it was a pickles jar without the lid and I wondered what it had held, as though the mind would do anything rather than know. And then she had thrown it into my face and I began to scream, because I had never imagined such pain. I heard my scream as distant, the work of someone else’s throat. I don’t know what my mother felt those last few moments, when she had finally freed herself from us all. Norman must have guided me towards the water, where the first bright wave of pain was put out, then dragged me out when I had fainted. By which time she had drunk the rest and was as good as dead.

There is that famous painting, Doctor Crane, of the death of Sardanapalus. Perhaps you’ve seen it? The dying king is lying on a bed with his wealth around him, the jewels and the jugs and the bowls, his wonderful horses already dead, his concubines being slaughtered by slaves, who will also be killed in their turn. He lounges with one arm supporting his head, surrounded by the carnage his imminent death has triggered, and it is a quiet picture despite its subject, because Sardanapalus is quiet, apparently detached from the scene, soothed to see the destruction of everything he has owned before he also dies, believing that he will find it all around him when he wakes again on the other side of his death, the fragments of porcelain miraculously reunited, the wounds of the women and horses and slaves miraculously healed. I think my mother may have felt like that, in the end. I think her eye was calm as she flung the acid into my face and onto the one hand that flew up to protect it, because the other was clutching at her sleeve, so that now I have one ruined hand and one ruined eye. I think she knew what she was doing and yet felt no responsibility for it, it was her due. And I think she was happy in the end, before she drank what was left in the jar, with her usual greed, because she could never have enough.

in which Morgan and Doctor Crane decide to play backgammon

M
organ stopped and lowered his good eye from those of the Doctor. He looked down at their hands, together, on the table, and then looked up again, and smiled and the Doctor understood it as a smile, and returned it. And that, said Morgan, is what happened.

Only Engel had noticed David come into the kitchen and listen to every word, from the point at which Morgan had said that he was beautiful. David sat with his eyes wide open and his mouth tight shut. He took Engel’s hand in both of his small hands; it rested like a sleeping puppy while his fingers played with it. Then, when Morgan had finished speaking, Engel gently took her hand away and the two men turned from each other’s eyes to see the child. David walked to Morgan and climbed into his lap. As soon as he was seated, he looked at Doctor Crane, or at least that was Morgan’s impression; all he could see was the back of the small boy’s head and, beyond it, the face of the Doctor. When the Doctor smiled and nodded, he understood that David must have spoken in some way and been understood, although he had heard not a single word.

“I shall come on Friday, after lunch,” Doctor Crane said in a cautious but determined voice, as though he would not be discouraged. He had made up his mind. “Each Friday afternoon, after lunch, for an hour or two, if I may. You do play backgammon, I hope?”

Morgan nodded. He had no feeling, other than the tremulous vacancy that follows fever. “Yes,” he said slowly, unsure of his voice after so much talking. “My mother taught me. She played very well, as ruthlessly as you might imagine. We have a very fine set, from Syria, I believe, with pieces carved from ivory and teak. It will be my pleasure to show it to you.”

Crane stood up in his loose ungainly way and smiled, a broad delighted grin that startled Morgan, then looked at Engel. “Perhaps a place might also be laid for me at the dinner table?” he said, almost shyly. “I mean, naturally, on Fridays, after we have played and I have been soundly beaten?” Engel glanced at Morgan, who nodded a second time and smiled and then stood up, lifting David gently to the floor and holding out his good hand to the Doctor.

“Until Friday, then. I shall look forward to it.” David ran to the door, to open it and show the Doctor out, and Morgan felt once again that some kind of speech had passed between them, the boy and this sunlike man that Morgan thought of as young, who was, or appeared to be, more or less his own age.

As soon as they were alone in the kitchen, Engel, to his astonishment, pulled him into her bosom. He found himself wanting to laugh as she rocked him, humming a tune he had never heard before yet seemed to recognize, as though all children were born with the knowledge of it.

in which Doctor Crane describes the world beyond the walls

D
octor Crane was right about being soundly beaten. Morgan turned out to be an imaginative and ruthless backgammon player. He used his good hand to spin the dice onto the board, moving the pieces with a speed that startled and impressed Doctor Crane, for whom the game had never been more than an idle pastime, no more demanding than ludo. When Morgan told him he had played as a child with his mother for entire afternoons, the Doctor was less surprised. After four or five games had been won by Morgan, they would put the board away and talk, or the Doctor would talk and Morgan would listen. Morgan discovered that he was curious once again about the outside world and that Crane could help him satisfy this curiosity. And so they began to talk about the wall.