Jan sees that they are pen and ink drawings. He couldn’t have drawn them — they are too cheerful. Laughing mice swimming in a pool, elephants smoking great big pipes, walruses playing tennis.
It feels as if the animals are in the wrong place down here.
‘Here we are,’ Marie-Louise says all of a sudden. ‘We’ve arrived, Leo!’
They have walked some fifty metres and are deep underground now, presumably beneath the hospital itself. To the right there is a white-painted lift door with a narrow pane of glass. But the corridor does not end here; it continues straight on for another eight or ten metres, then turns sharply to the right.
Marie-Louise opens the door of the lift for Leo, and he toddles inside.
Jan also takes a step forward, but she shakes her head. ‘Leo wants to go up on his own,’ she says. ‘The children are allowed to do that if they want to.’
Jan nods. He feels tense, but he had hoped to get as far as the visitors’ room. ‘But we do go up with the children sometimes?’
‘Oh yes,’ says Marie-Louise. ‘You and the child make that decision together.’
When the door is open Jan catches a brief glimpse of the lift. He sees a small metal chamber with two buttons marked UP and DOWN, next to another card reader and a red panic button. CCTV cameras? He can’t see any on the walls or ceiling.
Marie-Louise steps into the lift, swipes her magnetic card and presses the button marked UP. ‘Bye then, Leo!’ she shouts as she closes the door. ‘See you soon!’ Her voice sounds even more exuberant than usual, as if she is trying to chase away a sudden twinge of unease.
Jan catches sight of Leo’s little face looking out of the narrow window. Then the lift makes a clicking sound and begins to move upwards.
‘OK, that’s it, we can head back,’ says Marie-Louise. Her voice sounds calmer now, and she goes on: ‘Someone needs to collect Leo in an hour — perhaps you could do that on your own, Jan?’
‘No problem.’
‘Good.’ Marie-Louise smiles at him. ‘I’ll set the little alarm clock in the kitchen to remind you when it’s time. They send the children down from the visitors’ room on their own dead on the hour, so it’s important that we’re here.’
They go back up the staircase, open the door and they are in the cloakroom once more.
Marie-Louise cups her hand around her mouth and shouts, ‘Time for our fruit, everyone!’
Some of the children pull a face at the word fruit, but most come running, some of them pushing and shoving to get there first. Always a battle.
Everything is just the way it usually is in a pre-school.
But Jan looks at the moving hand on the wall clock several times. He can’t help thinking about little Leo, all alone with his locked-up daddy.
8
There are no CCTV cameras at the Dell, which is a good thing of course. But Jan can’t see a television either.
‘A TV? No, we only have a radio in here,’ Marie-Louise says seriously. ‘If we had a TV we’d soon end up with a whole pile of cartoons the children would want to watch, and a passive child is an unhappy child.’
The children are having great fun in the playroom; they have laid out the thick crash mats on the floor and are pretending to be shipwrecked sailors drifting along on rafts. Jan joins in the game; it feels good after his subterranean trip.
He spots a notice in Marie-Louise’s neat handwriting up on the wall. The children can’t read yet, of course, but it appears to be meant for them:
Here at the Dell
... we always tell an adult where we’re going
... everyone is allowed to join in when we are talking or playing
... we never say anything bad about anyone else
... we never fight or quarrel
... we never play with weapons.
Lilian is also playing with the children; they leap from mat to mat in order to escape from the sharks swimming in the sea. Just like Jan she joins in the game wholeheartedly, but from time to time he sees a shadow of sorrow pass across her face when she looks at the children.
After a while they sit down on one of the crash mats to recover; he wants to ask her if something is wrong, but Lilian gets in first: ‘Are you settling in OK, Jan?’
It sounds as if she really cares.
‘In Valla, you mean?’ Jan needs to think about what he’s going to say. ‘Yes, although of course I’ve only just moved here. But it seems like a good place... Lovely surroundings.’
‘What do you do in the evenings?’
‘Not much... I listen to some music.’
‘Haven’t you got any friends here?’
‘No... not yet.’
‘Well, why don’t you come down to Bill’s Bar?’ says Lilian. ‘It’s by the harbour, there’s a good house band...’
‘Bill’s Bar?’
‘I hang out there all the time,’ says Lilian. ‘There are usually a few people from St Patricia’s there too. You’ll get to know plenty of new people at Bill’s.’
Should Jan start going to the pub and being sociable? He’s never done it before, but why not? ‘Maybe,’ he says.
They carry on playing with the shipwrecked children until Jan hears the shrill sound of the alarm clock in the kitchen. Good, he has been waiting for it.
He collects the magnetic card, opens the basement door and heads down the stairs and along the corridor alone.
Nothing is moving down there. The pictures on the wall are still there, hanging in straight lines.
It is five to twelve and the window in the door of the lift is still in darkness; Leo has not been sent down yet.
Jan stops. Go up in the lift, he thinks. Go up and have a look around inside St Psycho’s.
But he stays where he is, waiting for the lift for a minute or so, then he looks over towards the other end of the corridor. Over towards that sharp bend to the right. He is a little curious about what there might be around that corner. Another way into the hospital?
The lift has still not appeared, so Jan walks away slowly. He’s just going to have a quick look to see where the corridor goes.
Around the corner the corridor continues for a little distance, and ends at a massive steel door. It is firmly closed, and has a long iron handle. Jan reads the words SAFE ROOM on a white sign next to the door. And underneath it says: This door must be kept locked at all times!
A safe room — Jan knows what that is. It’s like an underground bunker.
A picture of little William comes into his mind, but he pushes it away and reaches for the iron handle.
It moves. It seems possible to open the door.
But at that moment there is a clicking sound in the corridor behind him. The lift door. Jan quickly lets go of the handle and hurries back.
Leo has been sent down via the sally port. He is trying to push open the heavy door, but can’t quite manage it.
Jan helps him. ‘Have you had a nice time, Leo?’
Leo nods without speaking; Jan takes his hand and they set off back towards the Dell.
‘I think it’ll be sing-along time soon. Do you like singing, Leo?’
‘Mm.’
Perhaps it is Jan’s imagination, but Leo seems a little more subdued than he was before his visit to see his father. Otherwise he looks exactly the same. No bleeding scratches on his face, no ripped clothes. Of course not — why shouldn’t he look the same?