House of the Lost

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘When did you find out the truth?’ asked Guff.

  ‘Shortly after Charmery’s first birthday. I confronted Helen with it. She broke down and begged me not to do anything or tell anyone. She sobbed for hours and clung to me and pleaded with me not to take Charmery away. She said she had wanted a child more than anything in the world, and she had been devastated – very nearly suicidal – when Desmond’s infertility was confirmed.’ She spread her hands. ‘What could I do? I couldn’t bring myself to suddenly take a small child from two people she believed were her parents. Helen had registered Charmery’s birth in Switzerland. She had stated she and Desmond were the parents. It would have been exhausting and cruel to Charmery as well as Helen to break it all apart. Charmery was aware of the world around her. So I agreed to let the lie stand. But it was an extraordinary sensation to know the child I’d secretly mourned was alive and growing up, and that I knew her so well,’ said Petra. ‘I’d bought birthday presents for her, and taken her out with Theo. But the really curious thing,’ she said, ‘is that after I knew, I always found it difficult to stay in this house when Charmery was here. Silly, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Theo, leaning forward to take her hand.

  ‘I didn’t want Helen and Desmond to buy Fenn – there were too many memories and they weren’t all good ones. But Helen had come down here with me right at the start and she fell in love with the place. She said she and Desmond would renovate it and extend it for family summers and holidays. She said I wouldn’t recognize it when it was all finished. It would be like a different house. But it never was,’ she said. ‘For me it always meant Andrei and the start of that huge deception over Charmery.’ She looked at Theo. ‘I never really came to grips with my feelings for Charmery,’ she said. ‘I could never equate her with the baby I thought had died in the Swiss clinic.’

  Theo said, ‘All those times you were travelling – when I was at school – were you with Andrei?’

  ‘Most of the time.’

  ‘Helping him look for Elisabeth?’

  Petra turned to look at him. ‘So you know about Elisabeth, do you?’ she said.

  ‘Some. Not all. Not everything.’

  ‘I expect you’ll explain it to me shortly,’ she said. ‘But Elisabeth was the main reason for Andrei’s return to Romania. The need to know what had happened to her – even if he found she had died – absolutely consumed him.’

  ‘Did he find her?’

  ‘In the end he did,’ she said, ‘but it was a long search. Years. By the end of 1989 Romania was a boiling cauldron. Ceauşescu was losing all touch with reality by then. He seemed to have no understanding of the violent hatred and suffering that was all around him.’

  ‘You were there?’ said Theo, incredulously. ‘You were in the revolution?’

  ‘I was there when it started,’ she said. ‘Andrei, Matthew and I had gone to Bucharest to try to locate some prison records. Andrei knew someone who was prepared to let him see the lists of political prisoners – I think there was a bribe involved. It was the eighteenth of December. My last day in Romania, because I was coming home to be with you for Christmas. But when it all began – when the rebels defied the curfew and ran through the streets singing the outlawed national songs, it was impossible not to be swept along by it. The whole city – probably the whole country – was sizzling with violence and anger and defiance. Oh God, they hated Ceauşescu by then, those poor people.’ She stopped, her eyes huge and dark and no one spoke. ‘We went out into the streets,’ said Petra. ‘We knew it was courting danger of the most extreme kind to go out, but it was impossible to stay indoors. We saw the crowds, and we went through the streets, the three of us holding hands so we wouldn’t become separated. Everyone knew, then, that Ceauşescu and his wife would soon be deposed. No one knew how, or who would do it, but it was impossible to be in that seething mass of people and believe anything else. I remember them chanting “Noi suntem poporul” – “We are the people”. Later they were shouting that Ceauşescu would fall. I guessed that if he did, huge numbers of political prisoners would be released. And that meant Andrei might finally find Elisabeth.’

  ‘Did you think it would mean losing him?’ said Theo.

  ‘Yes, but it no longer mattered. I had known, almost from the first meeting, that for Andrei, Elisabeth was more important than anything I could ever give him. Finding her was his driving passion.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Romania, mid-1980s

  Matthew had always known his father would never be content until he found Elisabeth. He had tried to think of the cloudy-haired woman in the photo as his mother, but he could not, because he had no memory of her.

  ‘Your father had nightmares in those first years after your mother was taken away,’ Wilma said when they returned to Romania, and made a brief stay at their old house. ‘He used to call out for her in his sleep. He believed she was being held in one of the old gaols. I used to hear him. It was as if he could see the stone cells and the bars at the windows. I’d go along to his bedroom to wake him up, and make him hot milk with brandy in it. But if I’d guessed you were hearing all those nightmares…’

  ‘Only occasionally,’ said Matthew, and because it was dear, loyal Wilma, he added a careful lie, ‘I don’t remember much of it.’

  They left the house after one day.

  ‘We daren’t stay any longer,’ Andrei’s said. ‘The Securitate could be watching; they’ll know it’s a place I’d come to.’

  Matthew had no idea if the Securitate would also be watching the convent. He wondered how long they would look for an escaped prisoner. He and Andrei had been in England for almost three months, but perhaps three months was not very long to the cold-eyed men of the Securitate.

  They stayed at the convent for several weeks, at first not daring to go out or draw attention to themselves, grateful to Sister Teresa who brought news of what was going on in the outside world.

  ‘It’s very little different from when you left,’ she said. ‘Although when I go into town, I have the feeling that people are becoming restless, that something might gradually be building up under the surface. We’ll pray for a peaceful outcome, for better times.’

  Petra came to visit them the following year. Matthew saw that the attraction between her and his father was still very strong, but he thought it was not quite as strong as it had been in England. She’s letting go, he thought. She understands he’ll spend his whole life trying to find my mother if he has to, and she knows she can’t be part of that.

  Even so, when Petra left, she clung to Andrei for a long time.

  ‘You’ll come back, won’t you?’ said Andrei.

  ‘If you want me to.’

  ‘Yes. Oh God, yes, of course I do.’

  ‘Then I will.’

  She had returned each year, spending several weeks with Andrei in spring when Theo was at school, and often in October and November as well. Matthew had left art school by then, and taught at various schools, obtaining posts as near to Andrei as he could. But travelling was difficult – petrol was so strictly rationed it was almost impossible to obtain, and a Sunday curfew was in place. Even electricity was rationed in order to divert the supply to heavy industry, and television – for those who had a set – was reduced to two hours each day. It was whispered that phones were bugged and that one in three Romanians was an informant for the Securitate. A police state, said people, glancing nervously around to make sure they were not overheard.

  Matthew managed to stay in work – education seemed to be the one thing Ceauşescu did not restrict – and he hoarded all his earnings so he could one day open his own gallery. It was his dream and his goal, but as the years went by, he wondered if it would ever become a reality.

  ‘It could become a reality,’ said Petra, when Matthew talked to her about it. ‘You mustn’t lose sight of it, not ever. There’s a line from one of our poets – Tennyson: ‘Follow the gleam.’ Always do that. And something’s starting to happen
in this country – can’t you feel it? As if the contents of a huge angry cauldron are simmering just under the surface.’

  Matthew had known this for a long time. He sometimes thought it was as if something just out of sight was beating a tattoo on an invisible drum, and the sound was gradually becoming louder and more insistent. He said, ‘What d’you think will happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But if I’m right, everything will change. There’s another line from Tennyson, as well. “The old order changeth, giving way to the new”. I don’t know when it will happen, that change, but I hope it’s soon.’

  But it was to be another two years before the bubbling cauldron of hatred and discontent finally erupted, and when it did, Petra was back in England.

  Romania, December 1989

  ‘Please stay safe both of you,’ Petra said, just before Christmas. ‘I think Romania’s about to reach explosion point. Those people in the streets last night, the fights and the violence…’

  ‘Some of the streets look like the aftermath of a war,’ said Andrei, his eyes dark with anger and bitterness. ‘Destruction, ash from burned cars, even blood on the pavements… Only this isn’t a war.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Petra. ‘Whatever it is, I think you’re about to see the last act of Ceauşescu’s reign, and if I could stay on to see it with you I would, but—’

  ‘But you must be back to spend Christmas with Theo,’ Andrei said. ‘Of course you must. And we’ll be safe. I’m a survivor. Matthew too.’

  ‘So you are,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘I was forgetting that.’ So Petra went back to England, and three days later, the dam that had held in so much anger and defiance for so many years, finally burst. A great tidal wave of rebellion cascaded across the country, sweeping aside everything in the pent-up longing for freedom from a dictator’s iron rule.

  Matthew and his father were in the centre of Bucharest as people from all walks of life poured into the city from outlying districts. Martial law had been announced with a ban on groups larger than five people. But, incredibly, hundreds of thousands of people were gathering spontaneously, apparently prepared to brave the soldiers and tanks drafted in by Ceauşescu’s henchmen.

  ‘And helicopters,’ said Matthew, looking up at the sudden whirr of machinery in the skies. ‘They’re dropping leaflets.’

  ‘And d’you know what the leaflets tell us to do?’ said a man next to him. ‘To go home and enjoy the Christmas feast! Dear God, don’t the devils know we have to queue up for hours to even get a drop of cooking oil!’

  ‘He’s coming out onto the balcony,’ said someone else. ‘Ceauşescu himself. There he is, the cruel greedy bastard!’

  As Nicolae Ceauşescu began an impassioned speech, Matthew’s father said, softly, ‘He’s not reaching them. Look at their faces, Matthew, look at the hatred and the anger. He’s lost them, and the terrible thing is that he doesn’t realize it.’

  ‘A few people near the front are cheering him,’ said Matthew, a bit doubtfully.

  ‘It’s frightened cheering. They’re probably Securitate plants,’ said Andrei, still keeping his voice low, mindful of eavesdroppers.

  As Matthew listened to Ceauşescu reminding his audience of the achievements of the socialist revolution, about the multi-laterally developed society he had created, he knew his father was right. Ceauşescu was grasping at the vanishing remnants of power. His voice was taking on a strained, desperate note and the crowd was becoming restless. This is it, he thought. This is what Petra meant when she talked about the old order changing. It’s changing now, here, in this square. Something new is struggling to be born. It won’t be an easy birth and people will be hurt in the process, but if it can really happen it will be the turning point. It will sweep away the decades of dreary poverty and despair.

  ‘I think,’ said Andrei, suddenly, ‘this is where we step back, Matthew. Some of the crowd are moving towards the building. Over there, look. It’ll turn ugly at any minute. Let’s get into one of the side streets and out of the way. I’ll do a lot for Romania’s freedom – I have done a lot for it – but I’m not getting caught up in mob violence and neither are you.’

  They moved away as unobtrusively as possible, but as they reached the edge of the square, Matthew turned back and scanned the faces. Who were they, these people, who once had bowed their heads to the yoke of a tyrant but today were shouting their defiance of him? He stood very still, letting the extraordinary atmosphere soak into his whole being, trying to print the moment on his memory, so that one day in the future, he could look back and relive it and say, That was the moment when the old order changed, that was the moment when I knew the bad years were over for Romania.

  Zoia had not intended to go to the central committee building that morning, but her rooms overlooked a main thoroughfare, and the shouting and running outside was impossible to ignore. She had lived in Bucharest for two years, and at first she’d liked it. She liked the feeling of being nearer to the centre of things. She tried to continue her work for the Party even though she was no longer sure if she believed in its policies and principles. She tried to ignore the feeling that her former zeal had been because of Annaleise, but it was a feeling that came frequently to the surface of her mind these days. Her work in one of the city libraries was moderately interesting although not especially well paid. She hoped, as most of the staff did, that the promised national library and national museum of history would one day be completed and she could move there.

  But today, just four days before Christmas, it was as if a huge fire had been ignited at Romania’s heart and was spreading through the whole country, raging its way into small towns and villages, licking its greedy flames inside the houses so that people were forced outside. It forced Zoia outside. She had watched for a while, then grabbed her thick coat, and ran down the stairs to join them. As she entered the square, pushed and jostled on all sides, Ceauşescu’s voice rang out over the heads of the crowds, but she could see almost at once that his words were going for nothing. He’s making futile attempts to regain his authority, she thought. He’s standing up there on the balcony as if he thinks he’s a god, but his subjects aren’t listening. They’re out of his reach.

  With the thought there was the sound of explosions from the outskirts of the square, and people began to run and scream. ‘Bombs!’ cried a woman. ‘No, it’s guns – the bastard’s ordered the army to fire on us!’ shouted a man. ‘Get under cover!’ Someone with a megaphone began shouting that the Securitate was firing on the people. ‘It’s the revolution!’ bellowed the voice. The word span and bounced all round the square: revolution, revolution…

  The crowd jeered and whistled, and more and more people ran into the square, turning it into a rioting, seething mass. Anti-communist chants began. ‘Down with the dictator.’ ‘Death to the murderer.’ ‘Death to Nicolae Ceauşescu and the bitch Elena!’

  There was a flurry of movement on the balcony, and Zoia saw Nicolae Ceauşescu, Elena at his side, scuttle back inside the building. They’re afraid, she thought. They know the speech was futile, and they’re slinking into cover like cowards. And these, thought Zoia, are the people for whom I spied, for whom I dealt out cruelty.

  She fought her way to the side streets, and walked back to her rooms, keeping near the buildings, unnoticed, unchallenged.

  The fighting continued for two more days, but Zoia remained in her rooms, not wanting – not daring – to go out.

  On Christmas night she watched, on the small television she had finally managed to buy, the news that the two Ceauşescus had fled Bucharest in a helicopter. Then there was video footage of the show trial in the army schoolroom, which had been hastily converted to a makeshift courtroom. She listened to the charge of genocide against the Ceauşescu couple: genocide by starvation, lack of heating and lighting, they called it. An extraordinary charge, said the news reader. Elena appeared aloof and arrogant throughout, refusing to answer the questions put to her, refusing, as well, t
o acknowledge the legitimacy of her interrogators. She’s not going to break, thought Zoia, leaning forward, her fists clenched, the nails digging into her palms. She’ll be imperious to the end.

  But Elena Ceauşescu was not imperious quite to the end. As the police made to separate her from Nicolae, intending to perform two separate executions, she rapped out an angry order. ‘Together,’ she said. ‘We die together – together – together…’ When they bound her hands behind her back she cursed and fought, saying they were breaking her arms. The police had to use force to subdue her, and Zoia’s skin prickled with horror at the fury and defiance in Elena’s face, this woman who had caused so much suffering and who was about to be led to her death. The cameras did not follow the two, but in her mind Zoia saw them stand against a wall in a stone yard, she saw the rifles take aim and the bullets rip into their bodies. Exactly as Zoia’s mother must have looked when she stood against a wall all those years ago to be shot for a murder she had not committed – the murder Zoia herself had committed. She shivered and pushed the image away.

  Back at her work in the library, she listened to the avid discussions about the events, contributing the occasional remark. She did not say she had once met Elena – that she had travelled in a car with her and helped arrest a young woman caught making illegal broadcasts. The best thing now was to get on with her work. Life went on; bills had to be paid. You lived with your ghosts as best you could.

  There was one ghost that Zoia had not expected, though.

  On New Year’s Day, she was crossing a street near the university, on her way to the library, when she saw three people walking across one of the squares – a woman and two men. She glanced at them incuriously, then looked again. The older man had a thin face with a small beard. He had a scholarly look about him, as if he might be a don. The younger man resembled him. But it was the woman who walked with them who drew Zoia’s eyes. Once she had looked at her she could not look away.