Sarah Rayne - House of the Lost

Secret. Neither of the men moved, but it was as if something invisible pounced triumphantly on the word.

‘That’s just it,’ said the man. ‘We think there might be secret things your father writes.’

‘What kind of secret things?’

‘Things that might not be printed in the newspapers. Things that aren’t articles.’

‘D’you mean letters? Stuff like that?’

‘It might be letters, yes. Or even diaries. He goes away sometimes, doesn’t he? He’s away now, isn’t he?’

‘It’s just, um, business things he goes to,’ said Matthew. ‘I ’spect it’s about his work.’

‘Don’t you know where he goes? Doesn’t he tell you?’

‘No.’

‘Does he keep a book with appointments written in?’

‘No.’

‘We’d really like to know where he goes, Matthew,’ said the man, ‘on those trips he makes two or three times a year. It’s quite important to us to know.’

‘Why?’ It came out quite bravely, even though Matthew was not feeling in the least bit brave.

The men looked at one another. Then the leader said, ‘Do you know what a traitor is, Matthew?’

A traitor. The word dropped into the quiet room like a stone. Traitors were very bad people indeed. Matthew knew that because they had history at school on Wednesday afternoons, and the lessons told about traitors. Traitors were liars and cheats; they were sly and secretive and everyone hated them.

(‘There are lots of secrets,’ Mara had said. ‘Only it’s better not to talk about it, that’s what they say.’)

In wars, enemies wanted to know where soldiers and armies would be so they could send their own soldiers sneaking in, so traitors were given money for finding this out and telling it to the enemies. But they were dangerous and wicked people and at times they even killed, which was the worst thing anyone could do in the whole world. These things were all very clear in Matthew’s mind, but what was also clear was that terrible things were done to traitors if they were found out. They were put in prison and usually they were shot or had their heads cut off. Matthew sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the two men, who were watching him, and tried to imagine how it would be if his father were to have his head chopped off or if he were propped up against a wall and shot through the heart.

At last he said, ‘My father isn’t a traitor. I know he isn’t.’

‘We don’t think he is either, not really,’ said the man, ‘but some people do think it, that’s the difficulty. Important people think it. So we have to make sure. We have to – to prove his innocence. Do you understand what that means? Yes, I thought you would, you’re such an intelligent boy.’

‘I’m sure you can help us,’ said the second man. ‘Let’s see, you’re nine years old, aren’t you? You recently had a birthday, in fact. So I expect at nine, you can read and write pretty well.’

‘Yes.’

‘You could read what your father writes and tell us about it,’ said the first man. ‘And you could find out when he’s next going to be away. Could you do that?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Matthew, staring at him.

‘I think you could. You’d have to do it without him knowing, of course.’

‘Then once we knew for certain, we’d be able to – what’s called “clear his name”,’ said the man, ‘with the people who suspect him.’

‘Haven’t you asked him?’ said Matthew. ‘I ’spect he’d tell you where he goes. And he’d show you the things he writes. You’d know it was all right, then.’

‘Oh, we’ve done that, of course,’ said the second man at once. ‘But your father is very clever, Matthew. He says he hardly ever goes away, but when he does it’s to see people about his books and articles. But we aren’t sure about it. And we can’t be sure he isn’t posting things off we don’t know about.’

Posting things off. It provides ‘jam to spread on the bread’, his father had said, with the little sideways smile, sealing his articles into envelopes and going off to post them.

‘So you see,’ said the man, ‘you’d be helping your father by doing this.’

A tiny voice was whispering inside Matthew’s head that this was all wrong, these men did not want him to help his father and they did not want to prove his father’s innocence. They wanted to prove that he really was a traitor. They wanted him to be a traitor.

He was trying to find a polite way of saying he could not do any of this and wondering if they would believe him if he said he was not allowed in the study or that it was locked when his father was out of the house, when the first man said, ‘I expect you’ve got a lot of friends, a boy like you. I expect you’re very fond of them, those friends. You’d want to help them all you could.’

‘There are all kinds of ways of helping friends,’ said the other one. ‘One way is to make sure they stay safe.’

Their voices sounded different when they said this, and Matthew began to feel more frightened than ever. He had no idea how to reply, so he hunched a shoulder and stared determinedly through the window so he would not have to look at either of them.

‘Well, Matthew?’ said the leader after a moment, and although his voice was smiley and nice again, Matthew could still hear what he had said earlier: ‘You’d want to help them… to make sure they stay safe.’ Did they mean friends like Mara?

But if these men could say his father was a traitor, he would be taken away and put in prison – perhaps for years. Or he would die because they would shoot him or chop off his head.

‘I won’t do it,’ said Matthew, looking the man straight in the eyes. And then, because his father said he must be polite to everyone no matter who they might be, he said again, ‘I’m very sorry indeed, but I won’t do it.’

He had expected them to return, but they did not, and after a while he began to think he might be safe. Life was ordinary again. Matthew went to school each day and Wilma cooked the meals, and his father worked in the study. Sometimes he went into the town to buy paper or ink, or post one of the large envelopes he said contained an article. If it was a Saturday Matthew could go with him on these trips, which he liked because of seeing shops and people. It was quite a long journey to make, so they nearly always had lunch while they were out. Matthew liked this as well, because it was different and interesting.

It was on one of these trips that his father said, ‘Matthew, I know there’s something troubling you – I can sense there is – and I won’t pry because everyone’s allowed a few secrets. But I hope you know you can always talk to me about things. I’d never be shocked or upset by anything, and I might be able to make things right for you.’ He paused, then said, ‘Your mother could always make things right for people – it was a gift she had. I don’t have her gift, but I can try.’

His father hardly ever mentioned Matthew’s mother, but when he did it always sounded as if the words were being scraped out of some deep hurting place inside him. Matthew could not remember his mother at all, but he could not bear hearing this scraping pain in his father’s voice. He had been drinking lemonade which was served in a frosty glass, and he kept his eyes on the glass so he would not have to see the pain in his father’s eyes. ‘There’s nothing wrong,’ he said in an awkward mumble. ‘Well, only school things, I s’pose.’

‘School things?’ Was there a note of relief in his father’s voice?

Matthew hunched a shoulder. ‘Arithmetic.’ He risked a glance at his father and saw his face break into the rare, sweet smile he loved, but which he sometimes found painful without understanding why.