The Rapture Read online

  ‘I don’t believe we have been introduced …’ she says, surveying Grace.

  ‘Grace Hardwick. Pleased to meet you. And you must be …?’ She knows very well who Rachel is. I pointed her out from the window soon after Grace arrived, and drew a caricature with words. I’ve always thought Rachel’s eyes are rather too small for her face. Octavia says she is prone to wearing ugly hats, and of course She has told her so. Grace smiled when I told her that. Which is what I was hoping for all along.

  ‘Me? Oh, I am Rachel Fox, Miss Rachel Fox. Rather old to be a Miss, I know, but that is what I am.’ She arches an eyebrow. Just one. ‘Ah yes, now I think of it, Octavia introduced you in chapel, didn’t she? I had no idea you had become a member of our little society. Which street have you bought in?’

  She knows Grace has not bought a house. She knows she could not afford to. But Grace greets her contempt with a warmth that almost fools me.

  ‘I’m afraid you are mistaken, Miss Fox,’ she says, her confidence unfaltering. ‘Octavia has kindly given me lodging and I am helping in Her household.’

  Rachel looks at her in amusement: a tom cat toying with a mouse. ‘You could come and work for me,’ she says. ‘I am always looking out for pious young ladies to help me around the house … But no, what am I saying? You wouldn’t want to stoop so low. You are handmaid to the Daughter of God.’ She puts her hand on my arm. ‘And to Her daughter too. Dilys, I’ve always meant to ask – does that make you the Granddaughter of God? I suppose it must …’

  I step back to avoid her touch and feel colour staining my cheeks. I want to slap Rachel across her face and call her a liar. I want to twist her arm until she tells Grace it was a joke, until she says that I’m not really Octavia’s daughter. But it is not a joke, and now Grace knows the truth.

  I should have told her. I should have told her myself.

  ‘Well, an honour to meet you, Miss Hardwick,’ says Rachel. ‘I do hope I’ll have the pleasure again soon.’ She leaves the room, victorious. Satisfied that she has succeeded in embarrassing Grace, unaware that I am the one she has shamed.

  ‘Grace …’ I say, standing up beside her near the open doorway, but she doesn’t turn to look at me. We stand in silence and watch Rachel disappear into the darkness. ‘Grace,’ I whisper, but she doesn’t acknowledge that she has heard, stepping out into the Garden without bidding me goodnight.

  ‘Wait. Can we …’

  She doesn’t stop.

  ‘Dilys, are you quite all right?’ says a voice behind me. Ellen’s voice. I had forgotten there was anyone else here. ‘You look rather flushed,’ she says. ‘Perhaps you should get a breath of fresh air. Miss Tweedie will keep me company.’

  ‘I’m fine, Ellen.’

  ‘You go.’

  Perhaps she is right. If I am quick I can catch up with Grace before she gets back to the house. But after I shut the door behind me I can’t see her. I can’t see much of anything at all. The moon and the stars have fled.

  ‘Grace,’ I whisper. ‘Grace?’ But I hear nothing in reply. I feel my way along the wall, testing the ground with each foot before I step forward.

  ‘Grace. Are you there?’

  There’s movement in the clouds: the sweep of a sable cloak revealing a moonlight lining. And I see her, stepping out from around the corner of the chapel.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She is looking straight at me, but I can’t bring myself to meet her eyes. I focus instead on her mouth. Her lips are slightly open, her breathing quick. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Dilys?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Octavia’s daughter? That is something to be proud of, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Then why?’

  Right now I can’t think of a good reason, a good excuse. So I tell her the truth.

  ‘Because that’s all I am,’ I say. ‘To the others. I’m Octavia’s daughter … When you met me I was just Dilys.’

  ‘Did you think I wouldn’t find out?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hoped we would become friends. We did … didn’t we? Time went on and it was too late.’

  I am not going to cry. I stopped doing that long ago. It doesn’t do any good and Octavia can’t bear it. The sound of snivelling drives Her to distraction.

  ‘It didn’t feel like a lie, Grace. She is not my mother, not any more. My mother was called Mabel. She went away when I was a child. And then again when I was seventeen. She went away. And Octavia came back in her place.’

  ‘What do you mean? You aren’t making any sense.’

  ‘My mother wasn’t well,’ I say. ‘She was in hospital.’

  ‘The headaches?’

  ‘Yes … partly.’ I still can’t bring myself to look straight at her. ‘She was away a while. It changed Her, changed things between us.’

  She sighs. ‘I just feel you’ve been conspiring somehow.’

  ‘Conspiring?’

  ‘Not one of you said – not Octavia, not Emily. We’re all told we must confess, tell the truth about ourselves, about other people. What else haven’t you told me?’

  Only the things that are forbidden. The past that Octavia says is best forgotten.

  ‘Dilys?’ She dips down, finding my eyes with hers. ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. But that is not true. ‘There’s nothing else.’ I concentrate on believing it so I don’t give myself away.

  ‘Finding out like that, it made me look foolish,’ she says. ‘I thought we were close—’

  ‘We are—’

  ‘But all this time I would never have guessed. She doesn’t acknowledge you’re—You never call Her mother.’

  ‘No. I call Her Octavia. The Eighth Prophet. Just like everyone else. Because to Her I am just like everyone else. Or perhaps She wishes I was. But I’m a disappointment.’

  I have to turn away now. I look across the Garden towards Yggdrasil but its branches have been swallowed up by the night.

  ‘A disappointment?’ she whispers in the darkness. ‘Is that what you …? You are not a disappointment, Dilys, you could never be.’

  I want to believe her. Perhaps she believes it herself, but she doesn’t know the truth about me. I have never had the gifts the others do. Or the faith. I try, every day I try to be better. But I always fail.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I say.

  ‘No, not if you don’t let me. You should have told me the truth.’ It is no longer anger I hear in her voice. The moon has disappeared again, the chimneypots of Castleside barely visible against the great wave of cloud that looms above it.

  ‘Grace, did you see that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Up in the window.’ I reach out for her arm. ‘In Castleside.’ I see a flash of light blink from the room at the very top. But just as quickly it goes dark again, as if the house has drawn its eyelids tightly shut.

  ‘You’re changing the subject,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not. I saw something.’ I think I did but now I am not so sure. ‘I saw a light.’

  She looks across to Castleside and shakes her head. ‘Dilys, there’s nothing there. I’m sorry but I can’t … Finding out like this. There’s so much to take in. I need to get to bed.’ She lifts my hand from her arm and walks away. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight.’

  I should go after her but I am too much of a coward. I don’t want to talk about the past. She might start to wonder if I am like Octavia. And I am not. She hears the voice of God but only the Devil takes the time to whisper in my ear.

  Instead I stand and watch the top window of Castleside. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I was just trying to change the subject. Perhaps I didn’t see a flash of light at all.

  *

  ‘Pull up a chair beside me,’ Ellen says when I return to the Wireless Room. ‘You look like you need to sit down.’ With the rest I can pretend, but not with her. ‘You really don’t look well,’ she says, and I wonder whether she has seen herself in a mirror lately
, whether she can see what the rest of us can: the pale skin, the thinning hair. The blanket has been tucked so tightly around her knees that I doubt she’d have the strength to free herself from it.

  ‘Thank you for looking after me but Dilys will take over now,’ she says, smiling kindly at Miss Tweedie who puts down the copy of the Radio Times she is reading and bids us goodnight.

  Ellen waits a moment after she leaves, busying herself by tucking the blanket even more tightly around her legs. ‘Now, just the two of us,’ she says, looking appraisingly at the furniture around us as if it is her first visit to the room. ‘Tell me, how is Miss Hardwick settling in?’

  I do not answer.

  ‘It must be quite a tonic for you to have someone your own age to speak to,’ she says. ‘Us old-timers can’t be much company.’

  I should speak. My silence is giving me away, but I don’t want to share Grace with anyone. Not even Ellen.

  ‘It’s only natural you want to protect her,’ she says.

  The truth is I want her to protect me but I don’t say that. ‘It was wrong of Rachel to embarrass her like that,’ I say instead. ‘It was on my invitation that she came to join us. I feel responsible for her.’

  Now Ellen is silent. Waiting for me to reveal more.

  ‘I can’t explain exactly, but I think it is important that she stays,’ I say. ‘Important to the society, I mean. I believe she has a part to play.’

  ‘Then you must keep her close. If it is God’s will.’

  I reach for something in my pocket: the button Grace dropped outside the Bunyan Meeting Church. I have started carrying it like a talisman, squeezing it in my hand.

  ‘God has never singled me out before. I am not …’

  ‘You are not Octavia. None of us are.’ Ellen speaks to the empty room rather than to me. ‘It is not easy to live in Her shadow. But we are all part of God’s plan and perhaps, as you believe, Grace is too.’

  I nod.

  ‘I think it is time for me to retire,’ she says, taking the blanket from her knees with some difficulty. I stand up and help her, offering my arm to pull her gently from the seat. She is made only of air, so frail, so fragile. She walks as if there is ice underfoot, one slip and she would shatter into a thousand pieces. But at least we can see our way across the lawn. The moon has emerged again from behind the clouds, painting our path silver. I look across to Castleside again, and the cold air of the Garden rouses the nerves on my skin, sensitive enough to feel the gentlest squeeze of Ellen’s thin fingers on my arm.

  ‘Why don’t you stand up to them, Ellen? It should be your feet that Octavia is washing, not theirs.’ It is what I have been wondering for a long time.

  ‘I am tired, Dilys. Let Emily and the others have their day. I have but one battle – to fight the good fight of faith. Octavia is right, it is nearly time for the Lord to return, that’s what matters. It is the only thing that matters. We just have to bide our time a little longer.’

  We reach her back door and she stops to look at me.

  ‘We are the spinsters, the old maids. We are despised by the world but not by the Lord. In Him we have been glorified, He has promised that we shall not die, we shall live here in the Garden until He returns to us here.’ I can see her eyes shining, light catching on a film of tears.

  ‘It won’t be long now, will it, Dilys? It can’t be long now.’

  ‘No, of course not, Ellen. It is nearly time.’

  ‘We must keep faith,’ she says, ‘and have the courage of our conviction.’

  The word makes me think of criminals and cells. I look towards the high wall of the Garden. Are we imprisoned by our own beliefs? We are convinced. We are convicted.

  There is a figure in silhouette in the doorway. I unhook Ellen’s arm from mine and hand it to Betty, like the father of the bride passing a daughter to her new master.

  ‘Goodnight, Ellen.’

  She puts her arms around me and kisses my cheek softly, an embrace from a ghost.

  ‘Goodnight, Dilys. Soon He will come and these old bones shall be revived. Sleep well, my dear.’

  *

  By the time I get back to Number 12, Octavia’s empty cup has been washed and is standing on its rim, by the kitchen sink. Grace has gone to bed. I pause on the landing, hoping she will hear the floorboard creak, and that I’ll hear her footsteps behind the door. It has become a signal between us, the way we say goodnight. The house is our messenger, whispering things we dare not say out loud, but tonight she does not hear it speak, or she has chosen to ignore it. There is no chink of light seeping out from beneath her door and I imagine her lying in her bed in the dark. Should I turn the handle and let myself in? Sit at the foot of her bed and explain why I didn’t tell her?

  No, I mustn’t do that.

  I creep into my own room instead and climb under the blanket. I concentrate on the cold of the pillow against my cheek and reach my hand beneath it. There’s a note:

  Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion for the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget thee.

  (Isaiah 49:15)

  Talking Pictures

  I have left Number 12 for the evening; left Octavia, and Emily, and the letter that arrived from my brother in the morning post. I left them behind the walls of the Garden.

  The sky is perfectly clear tonight, a legion of stars shining unchallenged on a cloudless sky. A breeze has shattered the black glass of the river, and where the moonlight touches the surface it looks like a host of flapping wings, like flocks of doves. Grace is beside me. We are walking in the warm glare of the streetlights and the dark silences between.

  ‘I thought Octavia was going to say I couldn’t come,’ she says.

  ‘Only if you hadn’t got all your work done. All members are allowed to go, as long as She has approved the film in advance.’

  There are a dozen of us heading out to the Regal tonight. We still have to be careful, we are still being watched, but only by each other. Without Octavia or Emily everyone feels more relaxed, almost giddy. We can pretend we are just an ordinary group of respectable ladies. Octavia thinks it important that we are spotted around town, at least once a week, browsing the shops on the High Street, or buying flowers on the market. Sometimes groups of followers will meet at a café for tea, or take a picnic to the riverbank. That is when we might engage a passer-by in conversation, mention the society, give them a pamphlet. We need to be seen to be approachable and acceptable.

  Though of course, in reality, we are neither.

  ‘I love the talking pictures,’ Grace says, squeezing the top of my arm. Does she feel me twitch when she moves her hand away?

  ‘So does Octavia. Well, She used to. She hasn’t seen a talkie, She hasn’t been to the cinema since … it’s too far. She can’t risk it, not now She knows Apollyon is waiting. But She used to love to go.’

  I told Grace, soon after she came to live with us, why Octavia mustn’t stray from the Garden. That’s when I should have told her that She is my mother. Or used to be. It has been two weeks since she found out, but she has never mentioned it, and nor have I. It is another of our unspoken pacts.

  Tonight we’ll be in a theatre full of people, but we will be together, sharing the story, taken off into another world; where we’ve never heard the name Octavia; where we can live in ignorance of the Truth. The thought of it makes me feel calm and anxious at the same time. There are butterflies in my stomach, a fluttering of vivid colours. And amongst them, the dull wings of moths beating a rhythm of dread.

  ‘Gertrude, do keep up,’ Kate Firth calls back to one of our number who has fallen behind to adjust the ankle-strap on her shoe. Her instruction causes a moment of confusion, since there are two Gertrudes with us tonight. Gertrude Hill is a thin-lipped woman who carries her shoulders so high that her neck quite disappears inside her collars. She is the only Non-Resident Apostle, given special dispensation to live outside the Garden because she has a husband who is
still alive. She’s fond of telling us how busy she is kept as a vicar’s wife, though Octavia has hinted that it is her duties after dark that are proving exhausting. He expects her to perform them nightly, and with vigour.

  The other Gertrude – Searson – needs no excuse to avoid conjugal chores: she is estranged from her husband, and answers to no one now. Except Octavia, of course. She is wearing a large feather on her silk hat tonight, black like Sir Jack’s plumage. And added to the effect of her large teeth it makes her look a little like a funeral horse.

  ‘It’s good to get out, isn’t it?’ Grace says, as we reach the Swan Hotel lit up on the corner. It is. I think of Adrian’s latest letter, folded neatly with the rest, each of them the same: accusations against Octavia, pleas for me to leave. This time he wrote about the months we spent together when Mother was away in hospital, and the day that She came home again. He said that was the moment everything changed and that he could see now how wrong it all was.

  It was bad enough when it was just the Devil whispering in my ear, at least I could drown him out with hymns and prayers and sermons, but doubts are more difficult to ignore when they are written down in black and white. Best that I hide his letter away in the box at the back of my wardrobe. Best that I get out of the house.

  We turn right into the High Street. It looks so different at night; the shops are sleeping, shutters pulled down over empty shelves. A group of men look as though they are on their way to a public house; a lone figure appears to be on his way back from one. A car horn makes him jump back onto the pavement as he staggers into the path of two headlights.

  ‘You must have taken all this for granted before,’ I say. ‘You could come and go as you wished.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I could, but I rarely did. I didn’t have the money really. Or the company.’ She squeezes my arm again.