My father left the room, and I heard him cross the hall. There was the sound of a door opening somewhere with a slow creak, although I had no idea which door it was. I stayed where I was, huddled into the chair, wrapping my arms around my body, watching the wet footprints gradually fade, as if Stephen was fading out of my reach. Or was he? Father had seemed so sure he was in the house. And the memory of Stephen’s hand closing around mine was still vivid. It’s vivid now as I write this.
At last I went out into the hall. It looked different, as if something had been altered. I looked round, trying to see what it could be. It was a large hall, nearly always dark because of the panelling and the narrow windows on each side of the door which did not let in much light. Then I saw that a small section of the panelling seemed to have come away from the wall, but when I went closer, it was a small door, set so deeply and so cleverly into the surrounding oak that unless you knew it was there you would never have noticed it. I certainly had never done so. It was slightly ajar. Was it the door I had heard being opened earlier? Was Father in there?
Mother was in the small sitting room at the back of the house – I could hear the faint murmur of a wireless and I knew she would be there for the rest of the evening. She always pretends to despise the wireless, but she listens to it avidly.
I walked towards the panelled door and pushed it wider open. It gave a faint groan, and stale air gusted into my face. Beyond was a flight of stone steps leading down. I glanced behind me, then went down the steps.
To describe what I saw at the foot of those steps is easy enough. A low-ceilinged room, with floors and walls of thick old stone. There was a wavering light from an oil lamp placed on the ground, and there were a few pieces of furniture – a small table, one or two broken kitchen chairs, a jumble of household rubbish in one corner.
But there was one other object in that room, and although I can describe it, I don’t think I can put into words how it affected me. It was a massive oak chest, carved and elaborate, a little like those stone structures you see in paintings of Egyptian tombs. To me it was exactly like a deep old coffin. It was repulsive and frightening, but somehow it was also sad.
My father was kneeling in front of the chest, but he turned at the sound of my footsteps, his eyes wild and strange – wilder and stranger than I had ever seen them.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I’m going to save him. I’ve found a hiding place for him.’ He was unwinding a thick length of chain that had been around the chest.
‘Father, what’s happening? Please tell me. I’m scared.’
He lifted a finger in the traditional hushing gesture. ‘You must never tell anyone about this,’ he said. ‘Never. Niemeyer’s butchers are nearby. I can hear them whispering to one another, creeping towards the house. But even if they get in, they can ransack the entire house and they’ll never find him down here.’
He terrified me. I saw that he believed himself to be back in Stephen’s time – the time when the German soldiers had come here to kill him. It was all in the letters he had found in Belgium. And after all the years, my father could still hear those men … But if I listened intently, couldn’t I hear them as well? As for Stephen— The logical part of my mind knew Stephen was just an echo of the past, a fragment of an old memory blown forwards to the 1950s, like a dry leaf.
And yet … And yet I could still feel the pressure of his hand against my palm. I could still see his eyes looking imploringly into mine. ‘You must let me in …’
‘I’m going to open this and let him get inside,’ my father was saying. ‘Then I’ll chain it and lock it – you see there’s a padlock, Luisa? Then I’ll lock the door upstairs and they’ll never know this room is here. You didn’t even know it was here, did you, Luisa?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘All I’ve got to do is wait for him,’ he said, looking back at the chained chest. ‘Then he’ll be safe.’ He was nodding to himself, murmuring the word ‘safe’ over and over again. But the dreadful thing was that he didn’t just nod once or twice, he went on and on nodding, as if he had forgotten what he was doing or how to stop. I moved towards him, and that was when I saw the Holzminden sketch propped up against the wall behind him. In the flickering lamplight it looked different – the eyes of the people seemed to have come alive.
I reached for my father’s arm, intending to take him back up the stone steps, and that was when the strangeness in his eyes erupted into something far worse, something that reared up and came towards me, hands clenched and curved into claws. I backed away and made for the stone steps, but my father came towards me.
‘You must never let anyone know about this room,’ he said. ‘I can’t let you go until I have your absolute promise, Luisa.’
‘I promise,’ I said, in a gasping sob. ‘I truly promise.’
‘Good.’ He stepped back. ‘I have to stay here, though. I must wait for him, you see. I must be here, ready to help him. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes, I understand.’
This time I managed to get away, and I scrabbled to get up the stairs, tumbling through the door in the hall. I was gasping and sobbing, and I had no idea what to do. Then I heard him come up the stairs behind me. He closed the door, and I heard a key turn from within.
The mind is a curious thing. At times it works at levels that we don’t understand. I didn’t understand my mind that night. I waited in the hall until I could be sure I had stopped shaking and I thought my voice would be firm, then I went along to the little sitting-room and called to Mother that I was going to bed early to finish my book.
‘Don’t lie reading too long. It’s bad for your eyes. Is your father still working?’
In a perfectly ordinary voice, I said, ‘Yes. He’s in the library. He said he might be there until late, and we aren’t to disturb him.’