By profession, Gabriel Virgil Caleigh—Gabe to his wife, colleagues and friends—was a mechanical engineer who had been shipped over to England sixteen years ago, when he was twenty-one, by the American company that employed him, APCU Engineering Corp, because it had a policy of staff exchange with its British subsidiary company. The corporation felt a change of environment and learning experience would be good for him. His reckless insubordination had played a tall part in the decision for, although merely a junior engineer, Gabe could be full of his own ideas and often difficult to handle; he seemed to have an aggressive resentment towards authority. However, he possessed a superb and natural talent for most areas of engineering (although chemical engineering was a discipline that didn't suit him at all) and his potential was clearly recognized. APCU was loath to lose someone of his ability.
In truth, the idea of sending Gabe abroad to a place where civility and mannerly traditions might temper the young employee's fiery disposition came from the corporation's CEO, who not only saw the British through rose-tinted spectacles, but also saw something of his younger self in Gabe and was aware of his background (it was fortunate for Gabe that he had one of those chief executives who took a genuine interest in all the people under him, especially the younger members who showed flair; any other kind of boss might well have fired such a peppery junior after their third warning). And he had been right. It worked.
Initially, Gabe had been almost overwhelmed by his new surroundings and the friendly welcome of his colleagues: he soon warmed to them both and began to lose much of his abrasiveness.
He attended college one day a week and quickly achieved higher-level exams in engineering, after which he applied for and gained membership of the Institute of Structural Engineering. Through this he attained more qualifications, eventually becoming a chartered member, attending interviews and writing papers on various aspects of his profession, such as the latest technology, improved processes and new materials. And as he climbed the ladder of success he met and quickly married Eve Lockley. Their family started with Loren only six months into the marriage.
Gabe glanced around the rough-bricked chamber as he straightened up, taking in the long black cobwebs that hung between the wooden beams, the coal heaped in one corner and a log pile close by. The boiler abruptly stopped its surge and the distant sound of running water came to his ears.
It came from the cavernous cellar next door at whose centre was a circular well, around ten feet in diameter, the shaft driven down to the subterranean river that coursed beneath the house itself. The lip of the old stone wall round it stood no more than a foot and a half high. When, earlier, he had brought his family down to see the well for themselves—his promised 'surprise'—he had repeated to Cally that she was not to come down here alone. Continuing to look around, he flexed his shoulders, then rubbed the back of his neck with a hand, twisting his head as he did so, loosening muscles made stiff by the long drive from the city. Old lumps of metal, broken chairs and discarded machinery parts lay about in the gloom as if the basement room was the repository for anything busted or no longer useable. In a far corner he could just make out an old blade-sharpener with a stone wheel and foot pedal. The air was not only dank, but it was chilled too, much of the coldness creeping in from the well cellar. When showing Gabe over the property months before, Grainger, the estate manager, had said that the underground river—imaginatively called the Low River—ran from the nearby moors down to the sea at Hollow Bay, paralleling and eventually joining with the upper Bay River near the estuary. No wonder the whole house felt so chilled, he thought.
He double-tapped the side of the dormant gen with the flat of his hand.
'Later,' he promised, wiping dust from his fingers on his jeans as he made his way through the sundry litter to the doorless opening that led into the main cellar.
Gabe loved machinery of any kind. He loved tinkering with anything from car engines to broken clocks. Years before, until Eve had made him give it up for his family's sake, he had enjoyed stripping down the old motorbike he had owned, putting it back together perfectly each time. It was something he did for fun rather than repair. Back at their London home, in the spare room he used as a office, there were shelves full of venerable mechanical tin toys—marching soldiers, brightly coloured train engines, tiny vintage motorcars and trucks—and clocks bought mainly from junk shops as well as car boot sales, all of which he'd taken apart, then reassembled. Most of them, broken before, were now in working order. He even enjoyed the smell of heavy machinery—the grease, the oil, the aroma of metal itself. He enjoyed the sound of engines at high and low throttle, the purr of a machine idling, the clunk of turning cogs or clicks of ratchets. In the past he had liked nothing better than on a Saturday morning dragging his children, as young as they were, along to South Kensington's Science Museum to see the giant steam-train engines housed there, climbing up into the cabs with them to explain every wheel and lever it took to get the great machines moving. To his credit, because of his enthusiasm, only Loren had been bored by the fourth visit. Cally, held in her father's arms, was much too young to be impressed, but Cam went rigid with excitement and awe every time he saw the great iron mammoths.
Gabe quickly sidelined the memory: today had to be an 'up' day, a keep-busy day, for Eve's sake as well as his own. It was the first time they'd left their real home, with all its associations since—
He cursed himself, forcing the lachrymose thoughts away. Eve needed his full support, particularly now that the anniversary of Cam's disappearance was so close. She was afraid the police would be unable to contact them with any news of their missing son, any clues to his whereabouts—and, hopefully, word that he was still alive, that his abductors were merciful and merely keeping their little boy for themselves—but Gabe had assured her that the police had their new temporary address and phone and cell numbers. He and Eve could be back in the city within a few hours if necessary. But when she had argued that Cam might just turn up on the doorstep on his own to find the house empty, Gabe had been at a loss for comforting words because a small part of him—a small hopelessly desperate part of him—held out for the same thing.
Before passing through the opening into the main basement area, he paused to examine an unusual contraption standing in the shadows left of the doorway, his thoughts at least distracted for a moment. He peered closer, squinting in the shadowy gloom.
The object had two solid-looking wooden rollers, one on top of the other, the smallest of gaps between, and on one side there was an iron wheel with a handle, presumably for turning them. Gabe smiled in quiet awe as he recognized the device for what it was: it was an old-fashioned mangle, used for wringing out water from freshly laundered clothes, the wet material passed through the tight rollers so that the water was squeezed from them. He'd seen one in a book once, but never in the flesh as it were. In the olden days it seemed every home had to have one standing out in the yard or garden. The modern tumble-dryer had taken its place.
Delighted, he touched the rusty cog wheel, then gripped the iron handle, but when he tried to turn it the wooden wheels refused to budge. He shone his light closer, examining the rusted parts, and for a while he was lost to all else. Scrape away the surface rust, clean up the metal, a liberal oiling of the cogs, followed by a smearing of industrial grease, and the mangle would be fine again. Useless, of course, in this day and age—he couldn't see Eve coming down to wring out their clothes with it—but an interesting part of household history.