The Children’s Home (8 page)

David closed his book and grinned. The Doctor was startled. David was generally such a solemn boy.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It will be in any case.” Placing the book he was holding back on the shelf, he ran from the room. The Doctor heard him calling to the others, wherever they were. It was true that they seemed to disappear, as Morgan had said, only to reappear when summoned. This time it was David who had done the summoning.

He didn’t teach them all, of course; the babies were far too young and some of the others seemed to show no interest. He chose the two girls nearest to him in age, Daisy and Melissa. It was odd and wonderful to watch the three of them as they sat together in a row on a sofa beneath the window; the Doctor’s room was gradually being filled with furniture. David would sit in the middle and trace the word with his finger, his voice so low that Crane could hardly hear him, while the voices of the girls, less certain, picked up and repeated what he said. At times, David took one of their fingers in his hand and held it to a word, and it seemed to the Doctor that the girl, who was usually Daisy, could see the word more clearly once she had touched the letters, repeating it in a stronger voice and with greater confidence than before. It was odd because they were all so young, but once that sense of oddness had passed, there was nothing more natural than for the three small heads to be bent together over a book of medicine written a hundred years before. Crane watched the way David treated the girls. With Daisy, he was cautious, gentle, eager to help when she was discouraged. Melissa, though, he treated as an equal and Crane observed that within a week she was reading as easily as David. Watching them together, he saw a likeness between them grow, or his awareness of it did, until they looked like twins. He said this to Morgan one day.

“It’s interesting that you should say that. She seemed to know him when she arrived,” Morgan said. “Come to that, she seemed to know us all. She ran to me, I remember, I picked her up and she kissed my cheek.” And he lifted his hand to touch where the kiss had been. “There are times I think they were all together before they came here, wherever they were, wherever that was. Some other place.”

“They’re learning to read, you know.”

Morgan was surprised.

“Really? Was that your idea?”

The Doctor shook his head. “Not at all. It was David’s. Now he’s teaching the girls. Melissa and Daisy. And some of the smaller ones too. Jules, I think, the little dark-eyed one. The two who are always holding hands and won’t be separated. I find it impossible to believe, yet it’s also the most natural thing in the world. You should see them; I’d take you there now, except that I think they’d be annoyed with me for having told you. They want it to be a surprise, I think, though I’m not sure that I’ve understood correctly.” He smiled. “David’s a mystery, as you know.”

“Where do they do it?” Morgan asked.

“Wherever they happen to be,” said the Doctor. “Sometimes they sit in a circle in my room with me, while I work. I’ve seen them in the garden too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t go to the kitchen sometimes; I don’t know if Engel has seen them or not, I haven’t asked her; but I wouldn’t be surprised. These days, David’s never without a book. It’s as though he were always ready. I think their favorite place is the stairs going up to the first floor. They sit on the top steps, just below the landing, in rows, like mice. You can almost imagine their tails curling behind them.” The Doctor was amused by this picture he had made.

“Do you think I should pretend not to know?” Morgan said.

“I don’t see why you should. Perhaps you could stumble on them one morning. It shouldn’t be that difficult. I’m surprised you haven’t caught them at it yourself.”

“Because I should like them to have a special place to go to do these things,” Morgan said thoughtfully. “They could use the room that used to be my schoolroom if they wanted. It would be nice to think that it might finally serve some purpose.”

What Morgan imagined was a vision of the great house like a constellation, with each of the special rooms like a star. There was his book room, where he would read and play backgammon with the Doctor; there was the room of the Doctor himself, from which you could see the distant hills of his childhood; perhaps at the heart of the constellation was Engel’s kitchen, which smelt of coffee and rising dough; now, and this seemed more right to him the more he considered it, there would be the schoolroom, his schoolroom.

in which a box reveals its secret and Morgan is moved

T
he Doctor was searching through boxes in the dusty attics one day for any more books that might serve his purpose, when he came across a large chest placed vertically against the back wall of one of the many rooms. It was made of finely embossed leather, the color of dried blood, with brass hoops circling it and a brace of large brass padlocks and other attachments the purpose of which wasn’t clear. He tried to open the first padlock and found that, though closed, it had not been locked. He slipped off both this padlock and the next and opened the lid, which—given the upright position of the chest—was more like a door, then stepped back with a startled cry. Inside the chest was a human figure. Overcoming his surprise, he approached the chest a second time and saw that the figure’s two sides, being hinged, could be folded back to reveal the incomplete form of a pregnant woman, naked, with an elaborate hairstyle and carefully painted face. The figure was cut off at the lower thighs, so that the woman’s face was barely above the level of his navel. It was hard to see what she was made of, primarily because the effect was so convincing; his instinct told him she had been fashioned from living flesh. There was perhaps a gleam to her which suggested the use of polish, yet her skin gave the impression of being warm to the touch, to such a degree that Crane was seized by an odd reluctance to let his hand rest on the woman’s head. Her hair had been twisted into a rope and braided with ribbons before being bound around her head in a style that was both prim and ornate. Her lips were vermilion, her eyes dark brown, her face a pallid olive. The skin on the rest of her body was milk-white; it was an antique body in that it had never been exposed to the sun. Her hands were fine and covered with jewels set in rings, which seemed to be real. She had an amber at her neck, set in an intricate web of gold, which emphasized her nakedness. Inside the amber was the hollowed-out carcass of a bee. Aware that he was behaving foolishly, he summoned his nerve and touched the woman’s cheek with the tips of his fingers.

“She’s beautiful,” said David. The Doctor froze, then whipped his hand away.

“How long have you been there?” he said, spinning round, his tone harsher than he would have liked. He felt that he had been caught in some wrongdoing. But David didn’t seem to have noticed Crane’s embarrassment. He was standing with Melissa and one of the babies, the Doctor wasn’t sure which one, beneath the lowest point of the roof that allowed him not to crouch. Melissa had the baby against her breast.

“Oh, ages,” David said. He took the Doctor’s hand in his, guiding it back towards the woman. They touched the face together as Melissa and the baby joined them. It was smooth and cool, quite unlike flesh as it turned out; more like porcelain, thought the Doctor. The baby made a low chortling noise.

“Where is she from?” David said.

“I don’t know.”

“She’s beautiful,” David said again. “Isn’t she, Melissa?”

“Yes,” said Melissa, whispering this word into the baby’s ear.

“And she’s got no clothes on at all,” said David, to the Doctor this time. “Why’s that?”

“I think she’s a model someone must have made so that people can see her body and the baby inside it,” the Doctor said. “Look here, at her tummy, do you see? She’s going to have a baby at any minute,” he said. He examined her body more closely and saw that the nipples had been modeled as finely as the rest, the dark brown areolae stippled with tiny bumps, the painted trace of a hair. But it was only when he ran his hand down her massively distended belly, startled by the unexpected
warmth
of it, that he felt what he might never have seen with the naked eye.

“Well I never,” he said. “There’s a join here. Look at this, David. Just look at this. There’s a kind of seam.” As he spoke he pressed the palm of his hand against the surface of the woman’s belly. There was a faint click from deep within the figure and the belly opened like a split fruit to reveal, on one side, what would have been the flesh of the fruit beneath the peel and, on the other side, what would have been the kernel. The flesh was a cushion of fat and veins. The kernel was a curled fetus, the head pressed low against the neck of the womb, the fetus almost, but not quite, an actual child. Part of the placenta had been left across a section of the fetus, like a meaty veil. The Doctor reached down between the woman’s legs and found the vagina dilated. Melissa had put the living baby down on the floor so that she could kneel to see better. Before anyone could stop her, she had crawled as near to the woman as she could get and touched the spot the Doctor’s hand had touched. He saw the baby’s tiny fingers enter and reappear beside the head of the fetus, the baby’s wrist encircled by the vagina of the woman. The baby caressed the head of the fetus with the tips of her fingers and then withdrew her hand and turned to Melissa, who smiled and nodded.

The position of the woman’s hands and arms reminded the Doctor of something. Her right hand was raised, palm facing out; her left hand was extended, the palm turned up and slightly cupped, as if to make an offering. That was it; she looked like a votive statue, the kind that was used in ancient Greece. Yet the detail of the fetus and veins, the blood vessels and the folds of the vagina, the overall accuracy of the modeling made it clear that her function was also to describe the female body, to inform and explain herself to others. She reminded him of something else, something he had seen recently. In one of the books in his room, perhaps. Yes, that was it. Moving the baby away a little, despite her protests, he closed the woman’s belly around the fetus and then, for safety’s sake, the chest around the woman.

The children followed him as he ran downstairs towards his study. He was almost at the door when he noticed Morgan at a window at the far end of the corridor. He must have been waiting, the Doctor thought. “Come here,” he shouted. “I’ve got something to show you.” By the time Morgan was in the room, the Doctor had pulled out half a dozen books and was rifling through them, as though he was scared he might forget what he was looking for before he had found it. Morgan stood with the three children, David, Melissa, and the baby, while the Doctor picked up one book and put it down, then picked up another and did the same, increasingly frustrated. “I know I’ve seen her somewhere,” he muttered to himself. Morgan sank down on his knees until his one good eye was level with David, who did not flinch.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“We’ve found a woman with a baby inside her,” David said. “She was in a box in the attic.”

Morgan stood up smartly. “What do you mean, a woman with a baby inside her? A dead woman? A baby? What kind of story is this?” He glanced at the Doctor with unexpected irritation, as though he had been let down. David looked momentarily hurt.

“No, no,” laughed the Doctor, as though nothing could be less likely. “A model of a woman, made of wax I think although I’m not quite sure, but an absolute cracker. An authentic beauty. Italian, I’d put money on it. Hang on a second until I’ve found what I’m looking for, it must be here somewhere, and I’ll show you.” He darted across to his desk. “I know I’ve seen her recently, in this room, in one of these blessed books,” he said, pulling out a large flat volume, rather like an atlas, from beneath a pile of others, which tottered and fell to the floor. Melissa put the baby down and started to pick them up, while the Doctor flipped the pages of this large book over, balancing it clumsily in the crook of his other arm. “Yes, here she is, I knew it!” he cried. “Here she is, my lovely.” He held the book open to show to the others, as much to David as to Morgan.

They saw an engraving, colored by hand, of the woman in the box upstairs. The belly was closed tight in the picture, but the Doctor turned the page, struggling to hold the book up as he did so, and there she was again, the same calm face and perfect hair, her belly opened like a nut and the fetus visible. The Doctor turned the book back round and glanced at the caption. “It’s the work of an Italian,” he said, “three hundred years ago, in Florence. And I was right, she is made of wax, of dyed and painted wax. But what an artist! And what a man of science!” The Doctor slammed the book shut and ran towards the door. “Don’t just stand there, Morgan! Come on!” he cried, and ran from the room. The others followed him and, as they hurried in single file along the corridor, it seemed to Morgan that all the other children must have been waiting behind doors for them to pass because the stairs that led up to the attic were immediately filled with children, some of them walking on their own, others being carried or pulled by the older ones, in a buzz of excited chatter. By the time they had reached the attic room in which the woman was kept, the entire household, with the exception of Engel, had gathered around the two men, the smallest babies lying on the floor in front of them, the toddlers seated behind. The Doctor opened the door of the chest and then, as though silence could be deeper than itself, the air of the room seemed to empty as the Doctor opened the perfect belly of the waxen woman to reveal the fetus within. Nobody moved a muscle until Morgan passed through the children, who shuffled and edged to one side to make room for him. He touched the woman’s cheek with the back of his hand.

“It must have been my grandfather,” he said. “My grandfather must have found her on his travels and had her shipped here.”

“I was right, you see,” Doctor Crane said behind him. “She is Italian. You can see that from her face, her coloring, the way her hair has been arranged. She’s like a woman from a painting.”