House of the Lost (12 page)

Matthew felt sick, but he managed to say, ‘I ’spect it’s just people making things up. I ’spect she’ll be at school like always.’

He prayed that Mara would be waiting for him in the usual place, but she was not and her brother was not there either. Matthew walked to school by himself, thinking all the time that Mara would be there ahead of him, or there would be some news at school about her. But there was not. Even when her small brother came to school by himself the next day, white-faced and silent, Matthew could not find the words to ask him about Mara. He noticed, though, that the others kept away from the boy, as if they were afraid of catching something from him. Matthew was ashamed to realize he was doing the same thing.

On Friday afternoon, when he came out of school at four o’clock, one of the men was waiting for him at the entrance to the lane leading to his house. It was the man he had thought of as the leader, and he walked a little way along the lane with Matthew. He had brought a little book for Matthew about a school where people could go to learn how to draw and paint. Matthew turned the pages over while they walked along. The book was made from thick satiny paper, and the pictures showed huge light-filled studios and people a bit older than Matthew doing nothing but drawing and painting all day.

‘We saw your drawings when we were in your bedroom,’ said the man, ‘and we thought how very good they were. I’d say you like drawing and painting better than anything.’

‘Yes, I do.’ There seemed no reason not to admit to this, anyway they apparently knew already.

‘Well then, this is what we thought,’ said the man, ‘if you help us, Matthew, we could arrange for you to attend a proper art school in a few years. Perhaps even the very one in this leaflet – or one like it. It couldn’t be for five or six years, and you’d have to work hard at school in that time. But we could arrange it for you. But in return you would have to help us.’

‘Find out where my father goes and tell you?’ said Matthew, looking at the man.

‘Yes. There might be notes about the times of trains or something of that kind. An address where he stays. And we’d also like to see any articles he writes – any copies of articles. A bargain, that’s what it will be. Well?’

Matthew did not answer immediately, but his whole body ached with longing. An art school – a place that taught you how to draw and paint properly, where you would do nothing else all day. The chance to go away from this bleak dull village which his father sometimes said was the end of nowhere, and perhaps live in a city – a big exciting city with people and shops. It’s one of those worlds you want to escape to, he said to himself, and it would be the best world of them all because you’d be drawing and painting the whole time.

‘But you want me to spy on my father,’ he said. ‘I can’t do that. I told you I couldn’t.’

‘It wouldn’t be spying,’ said the man at once. ‘It would be helping to prove his innocence.’ He looked thoughtfully at Matthew. ‘Let’s suppose he goes out this weekend,’ he said, ‘just into the town to buy things. That’s possible, isn’t it?’ He waited, and when Matthew did not answer went on, ‘You could go into his study while he’s out, and look for copies of the articles. Notes about his journeys.’

‘He always locks the study when he goes out,’ said Matthew.

‘But you could find the key, surely. And wouldn’t it be better to know once and for all? Then we could forget the whole thing. You can understand that, can’t you?’ The man paused, then said very deliberately, ‘I think, Matthew, that your friend Mara would be very disappointed if you didn’t help us.’

The sick feeling came rushing back and Matthew stared at the man and thought: So they really have got her! ‘Where is Mara? What’s happening to her? Please tell me.’

‘One of us will be in the lane you call Three Lanes Corner each day at half past four,’ said the man, ignoring the question. ‘We’ll wait there for a quarter of an hour so you can bring us anything you find. Do you understand that? Can you tell the time?’

‘Yes, of course.’ The dreadful thing was that half of Matthew wanted very much to do this, to make everything safe, to have Mara back home and prove to the men that his father was not a traitor. To go to that marvellous school where people drew and painted all day, and learned how to do it properly. But he did not trust the men, and so he said, ‘I can’t do it. I’m very sorry indeed.’

‘Your friend Mara would be very disappointed if you didn’t help us.’ The words kept repeating themselves in Matthew’s head and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to do what the men had asked: to search the study and find something that would prove his father’s innocence. If he could do that everyone would be safe and Mara would come home.

He waited until his father went into the nearby town – he had suggested Matthew go with him, but Matthew, hating himself, said he had horrid homework. By three o’clock the house was quiet, but at least it was its own ordinary quiet, not the frozen frightened stillness that meant the men were around. Wilma was snoozing in the kitchen at this hour, and his father was not likely to be home until at least five.

Trying not to shake with fear, Matthew walked across the hall, not tiptoeing or creeping which would look suspicious if Wilma woke up and came out, but walking naturally and ordinarily. The study was locked as it usually was, but a key was kept inside the big ginger jar on the hall table. Matthew took the lid off, and reached inside for the key. So far so good. Hardly daring to breathe he slid the key into the lock, turned it, and went inside, shutting the door after him.

The familiar scents of old leather from the bindings of the books on the shelves closed round him. The desk stood near the window so Matthew’s father could look at the garden when he was working. On one side of the desk was a photograph of Matthew’s mother in a silver frame. Matthew could not remember her, but he liked the photo. He liked the dark hair, which was slightly untidy, a bit like smoke, and he liked the way she looked as if she was about to laugh at whoever was taking the photo. Her name had been Elisabeth, and looking at the photograph, the enormity of what he was doing almost overpowered Matthew, but he remembered about proving his father’s innocence and about saving Mara.

The desk’s surface was covered with sheaves of typed manuscript and notebooks filled with notes for plots and ideas and characters, all in his father’s squiggly writing. The men had talked about articles and diaries, although Matthew did not think his father kept a diary, except for the kitchen calendar, on which they wrote down dates that had to be remembered. He began to search, opening desk drawers, trying not to catch the eyes of the photograph.

His father kept typed copies of the books he wrote: smudgy carbon sheets which he stored inside large envelopes or cardboard folders, burning them when the book was published, but Matthew did not know if he kept copies of his newspaper articles. He did not know if there would be lists of train times or addresses, although presumably his father would stay somewhere when he went away. Matthew had never thought much about that. He knew there were places called hotels where people could book a room with a bed. It was said to cost a great deal of money, though.

The clock on the mantel ticked away a whole thirty minutes while he searched, but although he looked in all the drawers and cupboards, and crawled behind the desk, there did not seem to be any articles or any details about the journeys. There were some letters, but they were mostly to his father’s bank arranging for money to be put into a savings account or asking for a quarterly statement. Matthew was not very sure about the value of money; he wondered if the amounts were large and if his father was well off. Not many people were well off these days, everyone said that. It was something to do with communism.

There was one small cupboard by the side of the window, half built into the wall, that he had not tried. Matthew eyed it doubtfully, but it was important to look everywhere, so he climbed carefully onto a chair and reached up. The cupboard was locked. Matthew looked worriedly at the clock because it could not be long before his father got home. Where would the cupboard key be?

He found it taped to the back of his mother’s photograph, under a square of thick brown paper. It was only lightly stuck down – it would easily re-stick. With trembling fingers he unlocked the door and it swung open with a little creaking sigh that seemed to say,
secrets
. . .

There was not much inside: a cheque book and a small box of cash and in one corner was a large envelope, and when Matthew opened it he found several sheets covered in his father’s writing. His heart racing, he drew them out still standing on the chair, with his mother’s eyes on him.

His father’s writing was not very clear, but he managed to make out most of it. At the top of the page, in block capitals, it said, PRISONS WITHOUT NAMES: PRISONERS WITHOUT IDENTITIES. This did not make very much sense, but Matthew began to read.

The present

Theo sat back, staring at the computer screen, his mind whirling. Nicolae Ceau
escu. Everything was falling into place like the pieces of a child’s kaleidoscope. The actual driving force behind the writing of his book was still a mystery but Matthew’s setting had finally become real. The place Theo was writing about was a dark, dramatic country, a ravaged beautiful land, resonating with violent history that stretched back a thousand years and as close as 1989.

Romania. Sometimes written Roumania or Rumania. Its very name was akin to the word romance. Bordered by the old principalities of Wallachia and Transylvania, the vaguely sinister Carpathian mountains as its spine and dozens of wild legends and rhapsodic fairytales within its soul. A country that for a large part of the twentieth century had virtually been a police state, ruled by a draconian authority. Whose people had endured crippling poverty, deprivation, cruelty, repression and the overweening ambition of two people who ruled with the iron hand of dictators: Nicolae and Elena Ceau
escu.