House of the Lost

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Romania, early 1980s

Matthew stood just inside the terrible room, and stared numbly at the gaunt man who was his father.

And then Andrei said, ‘Matthew.’ It came out in a whisper, but with such trust and such love, that the emotion that had held Matthew motionless vanished. He reached for Andrei’s thin rough fingers and clung to them, and thought: if I live to be a hundred I will never forget how I feel at this moment. He was aware of tears stinging his eyes, and he blinked hard, because he would not – he absolutely would not – break down. Not yet. But, oh God, what had they done to him in here? He’s so fragile, so frail.

In as unemotional a tone as he could manage, he said, ‘Explanations later. I’m hoping to get you out, but it could be dangerous. We might be caught, and—’

‘If we’re caught, I’ll be shot,’ said Andrei. ‘That’s something I’ve faced for almost ten years. But I’m damned if I’ll let you be shot as well.’ Matthew heard, with delight, a flicker of the old fervour and knew that whatever else might have been done to his father, his mind was untouched. As he moved to open the door, Andrei turned back to take the hands of the other men.

‘It’s not goodbye,’ he said. ‘You know if I can come back for you, I will.’

They nodded and murmured good luck, and Matthew peered into the passageway.

‘There’s no one around,’ he said.

‘No, but there will be soon for the evening work shift,’ said Andrei. ‘You have keys?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know how many doors they unlock, and at any minute the guard I knocked out might be found.’

‘I think all we can do,’ he said, ‘is walk out openly as if you’re taking me somewhere.’

‘Where? Where would I be taking you?’

‘You’d better say to the solitary room. It’s on one of the lower levels.’

‘All right.’

‘If we make it to the main doors, pretend I’m being transferred and we’re waiting for transport.’

‘Where would they transfer you?’

‘Cluj or Aiud perhaps. I think they’re still operating as prisons. Either should be safe. Did that guard have any handcuffs on him?’

‘No,’ said Matthew.

‘Pity. If you could handcuff me it would look more authentic. What time did you come in? Don’t bother to tell me the cover story, not now.’

‘After five. It’s nearly seven now.’

‘That means the guard should have changed, so they won’t recognize you from when you came in.’

‘You’re very sharp about details,’ said Matthew.

‘I’ve had a long time to think about such things,’ said Andrei. ‘The main thing to remember about an escape is to behave with panache. Bluff.’

‘I’m not sure I’m very good at that.’

‘You got in here, didn’t you? I think you’re very good.’

It seemed to Matthew that as they went along, the stone walls of the old fortress closed round them, as if Jilava itself was trying to stop them escaping. With every step he expected to hear shouts and running feet, but nothing happened to disturb the brooding silence. They came in sight of the guardroom and the open courtyard.

‘This is the test,’ said Andrei. ‘This is the dangerous part. You’d better hit me, as if I’m resisting.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Matthew, just do it,’ said Andrei sharply. ‘Wait until they can see us properly. I’ll give you the signal.’

They were within ten yards of the guardhouse when Andrei gave a cry, and appeared to flinch from Matthew. Matthew saw a movement within the guardhouse, and feeling slightly sick, raised his hand and dealt his father a blow, managing to land it on Andrei’s shoulder, praying it would look authentic from a distance.

‘Trouble?’ called out the guard. Matthew saw with relief that his father had been right and it was a different man.

He said, ‘Bit of a rebellious one. I’ve got him in hand, though.’

‘It’s Valk, isn’t it?’ said the guard. ‘Trouble-maker, that one. Where’s he going?’

‘Cluj,’ said Matthew, adding, ‘Orders from higher up.’

‘Oh, not far then. Where’s the transport?’ For the first time a questioning note sounded in the guard’s voice.

‘It should be here – isn’t it?’

‘No.’ The guard had stepped nearer and was looking at Matthew more intently.

‘I don’t know you,’ he said, suddenly sounding suspicious, and Matthew saw him reach for his pocket. He did not wait to find out what for. He sprang forward, and drove his clenched fist against the man’s jaw. The guard staggered back, and Matthew dived on top of him, this time managing to knock the man’s head hard against the concrete floor.

As he straightened up, Andrei said, tersely, ‘Drag him into the guardroom. Pray no one comes along, and get the uniform off him.’

‘We go out as two guards?’ said Matthew.

‘Yes.’

As they stripped the uniform from the guard, and his father scrambled into it, Matthew saw light and energy shining in Andrei’s eyes.

‘Keep talking to me,’ said Andrei, as they crossed the courtyard. ‘We need to appear casual.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where do we go?’ he said. ‘They’ll realize I’ve gone before much longer and they’ll have the Securitate out scouring the countryside for miles.’

Matthew had already worked this out. ‘Sister Teresa – you remember her? – is going to get Mara and Mikhail to England, to the sisters’ convent there.’

‘England?’

‘I know it’s a long way from here,’ began Matthew.

‘Yes. Yes, it’s an awfully long way. There’ll be so much to leave behind.’ Then Andrei squared his shoulders, and said, ‘But the further away the better. What about papers and passports?’

‘Mikhail’s getting the October Group to sort those out for himself and Mara. If they can get two people to England, I should think they can get four,’ said Matthew. ‘Will you risk it?’

‘Yes,’ said Andrei. ‘I don’t think there’s anything to keep me in this country. Once I believed there was, but all the searching and the enquiries… Yes, I’ll risk it.’

The energy was still in his eyes and his voice as they walked along the road, but when they came within sight of the town, he faltered and Matthew had to grab his arm to prevent him from falling.

‘I’ll recover soon enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll be all right.’

England, early 1980s

He did recover, but Matthew knew he was not really all right. He knew Andrei got through the tense, exhausting, complex journey to England by sheer force of will. When they finally reached the tiny village of Melbray and St Luke’s Convent, he was scarcely able to walk.

Mara and Mikhail were already there. As one of the October Group had pointed out, passports and visas could not be created overnight, and Matthew and his father had had to hide out in the Romanian convent for nearly two weeks before they could leave. That, too, took its toll on Andrei; Matthew saw him start every time he heard footsteps, and at night, in the small room they shared, he heard his father’s agonized dream-ramblings.

When they arrived in Melbray, Mikhail was away attending an interview for what the English called a sixth-form college – a place where he could complete his education and go on to university. Matthew was grateful for the smattering of English he had learned in Budapest, but he could not manage the odd English place names very well.

‘It’s safe here,’ Mara said, almost at once when she met them. ‘We can’t be found here.’

They were given a room overlooking lawns and lanes, and were welcomed at meals in the long refectory. No one fussed, no one asked questions; they were free to do whatever they wanted. ‘We are accustomed to helping people from troubled lands,’ said one of the older sisters.

England was almost exactly like the childhood worlds Matthew had created. Here were the cool green fields and silvery rivers, and the houses with flower gardens. Here were the shops with everything anyone could want to buy all arranged on the shelves. He thought Melbray beautiful, even in the midst of a frozen December. It was a strong, stark beauty, made up of blacks and whites and greys. Matthew wanted to paint everything. He had no paints with him, and did not think he had enough money to buy any. The October Group had managed to arrange for the exchange into English currency of the little he had, but it was still not much. But if he could not have paints, he could sketch the area. He would like to sketch St Luke’s itself and have the results framed for the nuns who were being so kind. There were river views which would make really good subjects as well, twisty lanes, and unexpected houses made of brick, looking as they had been dropped carelessly down in their gardens. Along one of the twisty lanes, only a short distance from St Luke’s, was a house called Fenn House. Matthew liked it; he liked its Englishness and its air of having been here for a long time.

‘It’s usually rented to people for the summer,’ said one of the nuns, when Matthew asked about Fenn House in his halting English. ‘So it tends to be a different set of people each year and there’s no – do you know the word continuity?’

Matthew repeated it carefully, and understood the gist. He said he had admired the house and seen lights in the windows. Did people take holidays in December?

‘No, but we heard there’s a young widow there at the moment, recovering from her husband’s death. Very sad. Her small son is with her. Her name is something rather unusual, something a bit foreign – a name we don’t often get in this country, I’ll remember it in a minute… Petra, that’s it. Petra Kendal.’

Matthew liked walking to Melbray and trying out his English in the little shops. Occasionally Mara came with him, but she seemed nervous outside the confines of St Luke’s. When Andrei was stronger, Matthew persuaded him to accompany him. It took a bit of doing because Andrei was still deeply hesitant about venturing far from the convent. There was also a degree of agoraphobia. Matthew had noticed this and been unsure how to handle it, but one day Andrei said, quite openly, ‘Matthew, I know you’re aware that I don’t like going outside. It’s a hangover from Jilava and I think it will eventually fade. But all those years of living in a confined space – those small cells…’

‘I understand,’ said Matthew, with the familiar twist of pain. ‘Take your own pace.’

‘He’ll probably beat it in his own way,’ said Mikhail, when Matthew reported this. ‘Don’t force anything. Don’t fuss or crowd him.’

Matthew did not, and when Andrei occasionally spoke about Jilava and some of the brutalities he and the other prisoners had endured, he listened carefully. When once Andrei said, ‘I’m not telling you all of it, Matthew, because you’ll never get rid of the images.’

‘I understand that. But I’ll listen to whatever you want to tell me.’

He was pleased when his father finally accompanied him to the village. Andrei was nervous and hesitant on the brief walk, but when they reached the little main street with its cluster of shops, his scholar’s curiosity kicked in, and he became interested. ‘We’ll do this again,’ he said as they walked back.

The third time Matthew took him into the small inn, which the English called a pub. They drank a glass of cider each, which Andrei enjoyed, and exchanged a few halting words with some of the people in the pub who were friendly and casual.

‘That reminded me a bit of home,’ said Matthew as they walked back. ‘D’you remember? We used to go into the little town and I always had lemonade at a teashop and we talked about the arithmetic cartoons.’

‘Of course I remember. Did you ever do anything about those cartoons?’

‘No. One day I might.’

They fell into the way of walking to the village two or three times a week, looking at the shops which even in this small place seemed to them to have a bewildering variety of goods, generally going into the pub for their glass of cider. Matthew tried the beer which the English always seemed so enthusiastic about, and thought it tasted peculiar.

The lanes were starting to become familiar, and they shared newly acquired English expressions as they walked back, liking the quirkiness of the English speech and the casual companionship of the people in the pub. It’s going to be all right, thought Matthew. He’s starting to put Jilava behind him.

River mist drifted into the lanes, like wisps of thin gauze as they walked. It clung to the skeletal trees, turning the landscape monochrome, and Matthew was entranced. He had already made several rough studies of the area and had begun a detailed sketch of St Luke’s. There was a small general-purpose shop in Melbray that could provide a framing service, and Matthew was hoping to present the finished sketch to the nuns on Christmas Day.

They were on their way home on one of these afternoons, nearing Fenn House, when a young woman with dark hair came walking out of the mist towards them.

Matthew thought, afterwards, that it was about as romantic an appearance as you could get. She seemed simply to materialize out of the mist and for a moment all the old legends – the tales Mara’s grandmother used to tell of wood sprites and forest naiads – rushed into his mind. Then he saw she was not a wood sprite, at all, she was an ordinary human being, wearing a long woollen coat with a deep hood framing her face, and a scarf wrapped round her throat. A small boy was at her side – he had her dark hair and eyes – and Matthew remembered the sisters mentioning a young widow being at Fenn House.

The English were notoriously reserved, but the lane was narrow and the mist created its own intimacy. Matthew smiled at the woman and said, ‘Good afternoon.’

She returned the smile. Her cheekbones and her eyes slanted when she smiled.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it a frightful day. So cold, I’ll be glad to get indoors.’

This remarking on the weather was something the English did a lot. It was extraordinary how it broke the ice.

Andrei said, ‘A day for a warm fire and a hot drink.’

They were about to continue along the lane but the woman said, ‘You’re the two gentlemen from St Luke’s, am I right?’

‘We are staying there for a few weeks. The nuns are very kind,’ said Matthew.

‘Your English is very good,’ she said, and Matthew felt absurdly pleased.

‘We find it difficult, but we think we are learning,’ said Andrei.

‘It’s a hybrid language,’ she said. ‘We’re a mongrel lot in this country. We speak a mixture of odds and ends of a dozen different tongues.’ She made to walk on again, then turned back. ‘I’m at Fenn House, just along the drive there. It gets awfully lonely there for Theo and me. If you feel like calling some afternoon for that warm fire and hot drink, you’d be very welcome.’

Matthew looked at her with delight, because a drink by a fire with a wood sprite was not something to pass up. He glanced at his father questioningly, expecting him to frame a polite refusal.

Andrei was staring at the woman with an expression in his eyes Matthew had never seen before. He said, ‘We should like that very much.’

It was astonishing how the light came back into Andrei’s eyes during those visits to Fenn House. It was a slightly shabby place but Matthew liked it, he thought it had something of the quality of the house they had left in their own village. Then he thought it was not the house, it was the woman living in it who created the warm atmosphere. Petra Kendal had been at Fenn House for nearly a month. ‘It’s very quiet,’ she said. ‘Peaceful. I’m supposed to be in need of quiet and peace because I’m meant to be sunk in grief and misery.’

‘Aren’t you sunk in it?’ said Andrei, and Matthew was aware of faint surprise because his father was not usually so direct or so intimate with people. Petra did not seem to mind.

‘My husband died in a car crash eight weeks ago,’ she said. ‘He was charming and clever and fun to be married to. But he wasn’t very reliable – in a number of ways he wasn’t reliable.’ She looked at Andrei who nodded slightly and Matthew had the impression that some silent understanding passed between them.

‘His family thought I would like to be on my own. They think it’s what people do after a bereavement. And it was easier to do what they expected – they’re trying to be kind – so I agreed to rent a house for a couple of months.’

‘And you found this one.’

‘Yes.’ She looked about her. ‘I quite like it, but I’d like to think that one day someone will buy it to live in. Not just to let out for holidays, but to be a real home. It needs people – children.’

There was a child with them, of course: Petra’s son, Theo. He was small and rather silent and appeared perfectly accepting of the two visitors who came to see his mother. He was a self-contained child, apparently happy to amuse himself with books and pictures for hours on end. If they called in the afternoon Matthew always sought Theo out. He liked the boy’s quick intelligence and the way he listened when Matthew tried to describe his own home. He was not sure how much Theo understood – often Matthew had to search for an English word to convey a meaning and often he did not know the right word – but he thought they coped pretty well. If he and his father walked along the lane after supper at St Luke’s Theo would be in bed, and Petra would brew coffee and give them smoky Irish whisky, which neither of them had ever tasted.

‘We learn the customs of your country,’ said Andrei.

It was during those comfortable evenings that Andrei began to talk about Romania and Jilava. His English was more reliable now, and some of his former trick of making a subject interesting to a listener, was coming back. Petra listened with the absorption that was one of her attractions, curled in a deep old armchair with the curtains drawn against the night and the fire crackling in the hearth. Quite soon Matthew was going to ask if he could draw her like this, with the firelight painting fingers of colour in her hair, her eyes serious and sympathetic.

‘How did you survive?’ she asked once.

‘People do survive,’ said Andrei. ‘There are some remarkable accounts – some of the prisoners kept diaries in Jilava and Pitesti. A friend of Matthew’s did that.’ Matthew noticed he did not specify Mara’s name or say she, too, was at St Luke’s.

Petra said, ‘I’m glad you did, Andrei,’ and somehow she had put out a hand to him at the exact same moment he had put out a hand to her. Matthew saw the expression on his father’s face: love, warmth, gratitude. He looked at Petra, and knew he would not draw her in that earlier, serious mood; he would draw her like this, looking at his father with light in her eyes and longing in the curve of her lips.

There had to be a good twenty years between them – Matthew guessed Petra to be about twenty-eight; his father was nearing fifty. But seeing them together, he knew it would not have mattered if there had been thirty or fifty years. The spark, once ignited, flared up like a skyrocket, and realizing this, he stopped accompanying his father on most of the walks to Fenn House. He was working on a series of sketches, he said. Or he had promised to help Mara with some cataloguing – she was becoming interested in St Luke’s small library – or he was going somewhere with Michael. He and his father were becoming used to calling Mikhail by the anglicized version of his name by this time, although he noticed that if Mara was ever with them, she stuck stubbornly to Mikhail, almost as if it made a private bond with her brother.

Occasionally, though, Matthew went with his father to Fenn House, and saw how healing it was for Andrei to be with Petra Kendal. Several times Michael joined them, and Petra cooked supper for them – huge English meals. It was still a delight to be able to see all the good food available in the shops, and to enjoy eating it after the years of deprivation. Petra introduced them to English dishes – wonderful casseroles and roast meats, and once Andrei cooked fish ciorba for them all, which had been one of Wilma’s favourite dishes.

Michael talked a bit about Mara – once or twice he read out the letters she had written from Debreczen, translating as he went, Petra eagerly suggesting English words when he was stuck. Occasionally they went into Norwich to see the city, travelling in Petra’s car, the small Theo wedged on the back seat, fascinatedly watching Matthew make quick light sketches of the countryside they passed through.

‘Am I being very wicked?’ said Andrei to Matthew one day, shortly after Christmas. ‘Is this such a terrible sin I’m committing?’ They were in the small bedroom they shared at the convent, ready for the evening meal.

‘No, of course it isn’t wicked,’ said Matthew, surprised. ‘She’s bringing you back to life.’

‘Your mother…’ began Andrei, then turned away, staring through the window at the dark gardens.

‘Is dead,’ said Matthew, wishing this did not sound quite so hard. ‘She’d want you to find happiness, wouldn’t she? After so many years… she’d be pleased for you.’

Andrei remained where he was, not looking at Matthew. After a moment, he said, ‘I don’t think Elisabeth is dead. She was a member of the October Group, and was arrested for plotting against the social order – what was called a category three prisoner. That usually carried a sentence of anything up to fifteen years, under a severe regime. Matthew, I did absolutely everything I could to find her, and everything I could think of to draw attention to the plight of people like her, but I never succeeded. She’s still somewhere in one of those prisons – one of the houses of the lost.’

Matthew felt as if he had been picked up and flung over the edge of a cliff. There was a rushing in his ears, like a cataract of water, and he felt as if the room was spinning round him. After a moment, he heard himself say, ‘But you told me—’

‘I told you what I thought was the easiest thing for you to accept,’ said Andrei. He turned to face Matthew and Matthew saw that all the old ghosts – the ghosts he had been daring to hope Petra had vanquished – were back in his father’s eyes.

‘And you never found her?’

‘No. I spent ten years trying to find her – all those years when you were growing up I tried to get inside the prisons, to find a lead. In the end – Well, in the end, I attracted too much attention, and you know what happened.’ He stopped, and then said, ‘She might really be dead now.’

‘But she might not.’

‘No. That’s why one day soon I’ll have to go back to find out.’