Free The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs Page B

they’ve never seen anything of the world.’
    ‘Nor had I, at their age.’
    His answer surprised her. It almost seemed as if he wished to impose his own childhood experience onto his sons. If that was the only thing stopping him from letting his children venture out, she really had to try to talk him out of such a silly idea. But it did make her wonder: why had the doctor not been permitted out of the house when he was little? But staring at his face, and - she couldn’t help it - at his scar, a startling answer occurred to her. She did not push the thought away; she wanted to know if she was right.
    ‘Are you afraid someone will see them?’ she asked. ‘Are you ashamed of your own children? Is that it?’
    His reaction was almost imperceptible - for a split second he seemed to wince, as if he were biting down on something hard - but it was enough for her to know that she had touched a sore spot.
    ‘Is that what you think? Is that really what you think?’
    ‘I’m not the only one,’ she bluffed. ‘Everyone thinks so.’
    He was quiet for a moment as he digested her words.
    ‘I am not ashamed of them,’ he then said. ‘What makes you think that? Why should I be ashamed?’
    Because of the way they look. It was on the very tip of her tongue.
    But what she said was, ‘In that case, there’s no reason to keep them indoors, is there?’
    ‘I don’t want anything to happen to them. It is absolutely essential that nothing happens to them.’
    Overprotective. Was that it? Was that why he was so strict? She had had to deal with this kind of parent before: parents who lived around the corner from the school but still felt obliged to drive their child right up to the school gate, for example, or who would not allow their child to go on a class outing, or sent in a note listing the activities their daughter was not allowed to take part in during break. But she didn’t know any parents who kept their children at home all the time. Maybe the reason the doctor was so fearful was that he had already lost his wife.
    She did not pose the question. It really wouldn’t have mattered one way or another, at that point. What she said was, ‘Then just let me take them out into the garden. Surely there’s very little that can happen to them there? And I’ll watch them like a hawk. I’ll be with them every second.’ Take it step by step, she thought.
    ‘Well, perhaps, but only if the weather’s good,’ the doctor said, probably because he didn’t want to give in to too much at once.
    But to Charlotte, it was a victory of sorts.
     
    Just as a fire will die out from lack of oxygen, so did the rumour epidemic that had kept the village abuzz for several weeks gradually peter out. There were still a few mothers who tried to keep at least a pilot light of gossip going, but even they were silenced when, on the first pleasant spring day of 1987, it was reported that the triplets had been spotted in the garden. Freddy Machon had discovered they were there when, walking his dog in the village square, he had suddenly heard children’s voices on the other side of the high hawthorn hedge that enclosed the doctor’s garden. He had crept closer and followed the hedge round until he found a gap through which he could peek into the garden. To prove it, he later showed the patrons of the Café Terminus the scratches on his hands made by the hawthorn’s nasty barbs. He reported that the three boys had been sitting at a little table in the shade of the old walnut tree. Charlotte Maenhout had been with them, peeling potatoes. The brothers were playing a card game. After placing the cards face down, in columns and rows, on the table, they had taken turns turning the cards up two at a time, in search of pairs.
    ‘Memory!’ cried René Moresnet, as if it were a quiz. ‘That’s the memory game.’
    ‘Could you tell if they were bald?’ Jacques Meekers wanted to know.
    Freddy shook his head and said that all three had been wearing hats,