The Children’s Home (2 page)

Then Engel had come, and he had taken her on and done his best to smile. You may choose your room, he had said, and she had nodded. I’ll have one with the sun then, with the sun in the morning, so that I see it when I wake up. My last job, I lived in a cellar like a rat. They thought I didn’t need the light, being a servant, how stupid they were. She shook her body, the kind of slow shake a heavy dog might use to wake itself, and laughed. You let me choose my room, she said, and I swear to you I’ll never leave.

She spent the first day walking around the house. Morgan could hear her feet on the floorboards, as he waited for her to make up her mind. He heard doors open and close, and words he couldn’t catch, as though she were discussing the merits of each room with another person, in a language he felt he recognized but couldn’t place. Now and again, she laughed at something, or remonstrated.

The room she chose in the end was on the same floor as his, and had not been intended for a servant. It was large and square, with wallpaper of white and yellow vertical stripes, white flowers on the yellow, yellow flowers on the white, a room that looked southeast towards the distant hills. Next to it was a bathroom, with a deep white tub on four clawed feet and gilded taps with porcelain lozenges that bore the words
chaud
and
froid
in italic script. There was a fireplace in both rooms, and a carpet in the bedroom. When he saw this, Morgan remembered his mother shouting at a girl to be more careful or she would burn the carpet, and the girl crying. He’d sworn then that he would never make a servant cry.

Most of the carpets in the house had been sent back by his grandfather, who had traveled the world before settling in Persia. He had lived there for many years and grown rich and then designed this house, which he never saw, with the help of a French architect he knew there. It was typical of him that he had died on the way home, on the boat, of an infection, despite all his medical pretensions. He had lived in his own country for less than a third of his life and, by his own account, had never been happy until he was finally away, an explorer first, a man of business second. It was fitting that he, who had been obsessed by illness, should have been defeated by something as trivial as an ear infection.

When Engel arrived, Morgan had already spent as many years enclosed in this house as his grandfather had spent in his own country, yet even then he was not sure whether he would call it home. He would call parts of it home perhaps. Yet he was sure that Engel would say from that first day that the room she chose was home to her. When she showed him which one she’d chosen, opening the door in her matter-of-fact way and ushering him in, her few belongings already unpacked and laid out on the bed, he saw at once that the room was full of Engel. There was no other way to say it. Even if the walls had been faded gray and the carpet scorched, the room would be bursting with Engel.

in which medical help is required and Morgan is shocked by an image in water

I
t was Engel who called for the doctor the first time, when Daisy began to cough. Despite his anxiety, Morgan was reluctant, knowing how little doctors could do, but Engel insisted. You can’t just have children and then not care for them, you must see that, she said. It’s all very well for you to think that doctors are no use, yet where would you be without them? I would be dead, he said, and let her think about that for a moment. Then, because he could see that she was close to shouting with frustration but also perhaps because his words had been cruel, he relented.

You must find me a doctor who is discreet, he specified. A doctor who can keep his mouth shut, because what we have done here will not be tolerated. There will be someone out there who will make us pay. Engel nodded, then wiped her hands on her apron. Just let them try to take our children away from us, she said, her mouth set. They’ll see what happens if they do. How odd, he thought, that she should presume so much, the unexpectedness of this joint parentage taking his breath away for a moment; yet he was, perhaps more than anything else, flattered. Our children, he thought. Sometimes he wanted to touch her, just brush the perfect skin of her forearm with his hand, but he never did. Boundaries protected them both. Besides, he couldn’t bear the thought that she might feel, at his touch, disgust rise in her craw and be obliged to hide it from him. It was always a wonder to him when the babies reached up and stroked his face with their tiny feeling hands, a wonder they seemed to share. He watched, his breath caught in his throat, as their pale eyes opened wide, their fingertips with nails no bigger than a grain of rice exploring the ragged seams and creases of his cheek and chin and lip, although he himself felt nothing; there was no pain, at least. Not anymore. He let them hold his own finger in their hands and take it to their mouths. He let them chuckle and dribble and suck. He would let no one deprive him of this.

Engel did what was required with skill and discretion. Morgan never troubled to ask her how or where she had found Doctor Crane. There seemed no point. He knew that it would be all right the instant he saw the Doctor take Daisy in his arms and lift her until their noses were almost touching, and whisper something that made Daisy laugh and turn her head away. Doctor Crane was tall and thin, big-boned, with large white teeth and fairish hair brushed back, though it would not stay back. He was too young to be a doctor, thought Morgan, though this could not have been the case; he was perhaps Morgan’s age. But he looked and behaved like someone too young to be serious all the time, as doctors had to be. His trousers were short on him, as though he hadn’t finished growing. His wrists stuck out bare and bony from the sleeves of his ill-fitting jacket. He had a large impetuous voice, large and urgent though incapable of harshness, that seemed to have just broken. He blushed when Engel said he was a figure of a man.

Morgan saw the Doctor but the Doctor didn’t see Morgan. Engel had taken the Doctor into the green drawing room off the hall, a small room with symmetrical alcoves designed for statues, two sofas covered in olive-green silk, and a fireplace made of dark pink basalt brought from Egypt. Morgan was concealed in one of the alcoves by a curtain of heavy brocade, into which he had cut a spyhole. He had a view of the center of the room, between the pair of sofas. Engel made sure Daisy was examined where he could see them, guiding the Doctor to a preestablished point on the carpet, also from Egypt. He watched as the Doctor listened through his stethoscope to Daisy’s chest and back and examined her throat, holding her tongue down with what appeared to be (and was, as Engel confirmed later) a silver apostle’s spoon. He heard, with relief, the words of the Doctor as he turned to Engel and said, It’s nothing of importance, nothing to worry about, a touch of cold, only natural in this frigid weather, and prescribed a cough tincture and a few days’ rest. That was when Engel offered him coffee and he rubbed his hands together like a boy, and Morgan knew they’d be safe with him. They left the room and Morgan waited for a moment before coming out from behind the curtain and smiling at Daisy in his own way. She giggled and raised her arms to be lifted. There are children who are only happy when their faces are buried in the neck of adults, Morgan had learned. Daisy was one of these. She gave a little sigh, like a hiccup. He put one arm beneath her bottom and held her to him as he crept across the hall, an intruder in his own home, and let himself into the scullery. From there, through a small glass vent in the wall, he could see into the kitchen. The house lent itself so completely to his need for secrecy it seemed as though his grandfather had foreseen it all, his grandson’s disfigurement and withdrawal, his shame for what he was and could not change.

They were sitting together, Engel and Doctor Crane, at the table. They each had a mug of steaming coffee, freshly made, and Engel had cut some slices of fruit cake and put them on the table. She was asking him if he was married. The Doctor’s mouth was full of cake, but he shook his head, and she laughed and said he was a proper catch for a woman, he should look out.

David walked into the kitchen and halted; he hadn’t expected a visitor. He was old enough to know that visitors were not encouraged at the house; perhaps he was old enough to know why. Sometimes, David would look at Morgan with other, older, eyes and Morgan would think it was only a matter of time before he turned away and looked no more.

Doctor Crane stood up and held out his hand. Morgan was proud to see David take the man’s hand and introduce himself. He said that he was David and that he had no mother or father and that it was of no importance because Engel looked after him like a mother. And Daisy is your sister, the Doctor said, not as a question, but as a statement of fact. Morgan still held Daisy in his arms; she wriggled to be put down and he was afraid they would be discovered. But she grew calm again when David said, in his formal way, Yes, Daisy is my sister. I have other sisters and brothers. Perhaps you would like to meet them?

When they left the kitchen, Morgan couldn’t follow them any further without being seen. He put Daisy down and together they were walking through the scullery when he heard what sounded like Engel and David approaching. In a panic, he swept Daisy into his arms and carried her out to the garden and down the nearest path, which led to the boathouse by the lake.

It was little more than a large pond, but it had always been called the lake. When he came here as a child, before he had learned to swim and then to row, it had seemed as large as the sea. The boathouse was also modest, a shed that overhung the water, with a rowing boat housed inside. Morgan hadn’t been here since the accident three years before. He put his finger to his mouth, so that Daisy would know she had to keep quiet, and opened the door. The boat was covered with a tarpaulin. The stains were still on the floor; no one had cleaned them away. He hurried across, not quite sure why. Perhaps he thought they could hide beneath the tarpaulin and pretend this was a game. But Daisy hung back; she was scared, he could see that, and pale as well. How old was she? Four? She had a cough that could settle in her lungs. What was he thinking of, bringing a sick child to this damp, cold place? Engel would be furious with him when she found out.

He turned and stumbled, landing with his knees on the wooden floor. His head was near the surface of the water, which bobbed inside the boathouse, dark and scented. He struggled to rise, dipping towards the water as he did so, and the face of a monster loomed up towards him, a monster with bared white teeth and an eye that never closed. He cried out, a dreadful gasping cry torn from the bottom of his lungs, and crawled away from the edge of the platform. The monstrous face slid back like a blade beneath a piece of skin and disappeared beneath his knees. Daisy was curled behind him on the floor, her arms round her head, shaking with fear or cold. Struggling to his feet, he scooped her up and hurried towards the house.

This was the second time since the accident that he had seen his own face. The first had been in the clinic, when a nurse had left him alone in one of the bathrooms by mistake. The clinic, which specialized in cases like his, was almost entirely bare of mirrors, but this bathroom had a cabinet above the basin, which was known to contain a mirror the size of a postcard. Sometimes, because they had no choice, the other men would joke about it. They ought to put one of those special mirrors there, that you can see through from behind, and charge people entrance, one of them said. Sixpence for the horror show. What he didn’t understand was why, when he had seen their faces, he had supposed that his would be bearable. Despite what his searching fingers had found, dead skin pushed into seams and troughs, and the knowledge of the pain, which did not leave him, he had imagined that he would recognize himself.

The nurse found him on the bathroom floor, weeping, and took him away. No, no, not back to the others, he said. Not like this. Not yet. He felt as though they too would see, for the first time, what he had seen.

Engel was standing at the French window, her hands on her hips. Morgan paused in the middle of the lawn, Daisy’s arms tight round his neck, and tried to reassure himself that the Doctor had gone. But Engel stepped outside. Bring her here at once, she cried, in a voice that was new to Morgan. He flinched and did as he was told. Something quite unforeseen had happened and he had been thrown into a state of loss. He felt confused and, more cuttingly, exposed, as if to ridicule. Exposed to his own ridicule, he thought, since no one else had seen what he had seen, and here in front of him was Engel, bundling the child away from him, where she settled with a little sigh, already half asleep; Engel, who saw Morgan every day and didn’t seem to see his face at all. Perhaps it was not a face she saw but a mask, behind which he was nonetheless, to her at least, perfectly visible.

in which Morgan’s library is described and Moira speaks

I
n the first few months after coming home, for want of anything better to do, Morgan had started what he saw as his long and empty life alone by cataloguing the charts and books in the main library downstairs. The charts, of seas and countries, of coasts and mountain ranges, had been made by his grandfather and followed his early travels. They were laid flat in special drawers and had the scent of the places they had been made; aromas of myrrh and ambergris floated through his head as he lifted each chart carefully onto the table to examine it.

But most of the room was devoted to books. His grandfather had kept a collection of books, most though not all on medical matters, and had also purchased, through an aide, two gentlemen’s libraries at auction, and had them folded into one, which meant that many books on the shelves existed in at least two copies. Morgan began by writing the details of each book on a file card, the kind used in public libraries, and arranging them in deep black trays. He wrote the name of the book and of its author and then, with a wholly unnecessary bibliographic flourish, recorded its date of publication and size. He had found a book on books, so to speak, which helped him to do this, providing the measurements, in inches, of octavo, quarto, duodecimo, and so on. When a card already existed for a book, he would take the volumes and compare them, preferring sometimes the better copy and sometimes the worse. He let his instinct guide him. The preferred copy was taken upstairs to Morgan’s book room, which used to be his father’s study.