The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert Page B

her head, but didn’t speak.
    “Run along now and take my note to Mr. Green, and then come back and tell me what he says,” Morgan said after a moment. He watched the little girl as she ran down the garden, then hurried to the kitchen in an odd mood, needing to talk to Engel. She was mincing horseradish, her round cheeks streaming with tears.
    “Sometimes I wonder whose house this is,” he said.
    “I can’t think why,” said Engel.
    “Yet it’s true, I do wonder. For example, can you think of any reason why I should need to ask David before I do things?” he said in a tone that he had intended to be playful, but that sounded, to his ear and no doubt to Engel’s, peeved.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Engel in an impatient way. “You’re the master here, you know that as well as I do. Needing to ask David!”
    “I certainly believed that to be the case,” Morgan said. “But now I find that David, of all people, has to be informed of my every move.” He laughed, unconvinced, even hurt.
    “I’ve never heard such nonsense,” said Engel.
    Morgan walked to the window and stared out. It had started to rain. There was no sign of anyone outside. Daisy would have found Mr. Green by now and delivered his note. Perhaps the gardener was standing in the garage now, with the damaged car in front of him, wondering where to start. Perhaps he had already begun to kill with his spade the rats that were nesting there. What had possessed him to ask for such a thing, wondered Morgan.
    “Where is he?”
    “David?” Engel sniffed. “He’ll be about.”
    “Where does he go, do you think?”
    Engel put down the ragged horseradish root and stepped back from the mincer, wiping her eyes on her apron.
    “This horseradish makes me cry like no other thing in the world,” she said.
    “Where does he go, though?” Morgan repeated, as though to himself. “Where do they all go, come to that? Just listen. A houseful of children and not a sound.”
    “And you’re complaining, my young man,” she said, as she did when she was annoyed with him, perhaps unaware that he welcomed it. “You should have lived in a whole house the size of this kitchen with children that made themselves heard and seen, as I have done.”
    “No, not that. Not that at all.” He blinked as the pungency of the root reached him. “I’m not complaining. I wonder, that’s all it is.”
    “You listen to the Doctor,” Engel said, with a trace of irritation. “He’ll tell you what’s what.”
    “Why? Have you spoken to the Doctor about this?” asked Morgan sharply. Engel turned her back on him.
    “I’ll not be questioned,” she said coldly. “Not by you or by anyone. Not in that way. You have no right.”
    “Oh, Engel, please,” said Morgan, horrified. Engel had never used this tone with him. “The last thing I would do is question you or do anything, anything, that might upset you. You know that, surely. You know that I depend on you absolutely.”
    “I know what I know,” she said. Then, in a gentler manner, she added, “You just talk to the Doctor, that’s all. He’s the one you should talk to, not me.”
    But I have spoken to the Doctor and the Doctor knows nothing, thought Morgan, or will not tell me what he knows. And I still have no answer. Why should I have spoken to David? With a sense of fear he couldn’t understand, he wondered, And what would David have said? Do I need David’s consent before I do things? Who is he? What does he want from me? It struck him that the language David used had a religious quality to it. You couldn’t get round it, or through it. It blocked you, that’s all. It leaves you no choice. I wonder where they are now, he said to himself, and then the thought came to him that he would have this out with David. He would find him and talk to him, man-to-man. He left the kitchen and crossed the hall, almost running, fired by this idea. At the bottom of the stairs, he paused and