The Rapture Read online

  It is exactly thirteen steps from the top of the stairs to my bedroom. Though when I walk along the landing myself I stride out to make it twelve. Sometimes for a change I’ll squeeze in fourteen smaller steps. But not thirteen. Never thirteen.

  Then there are the stairs, eleven of those, each covered in a deep red runner. The best I can do is touch my right foot on the top step twice. I know that doesn’t make it even. Not really.

  But wanting to believe can be enough. Sometimes it has to be.

  Here at the back of the house the ceilings are low and the busy pattern on the wallpaper makes it feel as if the walls themselves are closing in. I have grown to hate the print: watercolour flowers bleeding into a yellow background like ink on blotting paper. It was Octavia’s choice. She thought it would make me feel bright and cheerful but it has precisely the opposite effect. A corner has lifted next to the fireplace. I have the urge to peel it back a little more but I daren’t touch it; if I started I might not be able to stop until I’d clawed the whole lot off the wall. The furniture was Her choice too: a wardrobe with cut-out patterns of flowerheads and an oak dressing table where I keep a photograph of Adrian in his army uniform. There’s a chair in my favourite colour, purple, and a washstand set to match, with waterlilies painted around the rims. In some cultures, Octavia says, they are a symbol of growth, or rebirth. The bud emerges from the murky water and blooms towards the sky. I pray that I may do the same.

  *

  Work has ceased and the typesetters have put down their blocks, leaving sentences unfinished and rules unwritten. I have come to the Printing Room at the back of The Haven, to deliver an article, but all six workers are standing completely still, gathered around Octavia who is giving instructions. I hover in the doorway and decide to wait. It would not do to interrupt Her.

  She is standing in front of the press: an ingenious device that looks for all the world as though it was made for our cause. It does not require brute force to operate so we ladies can turn the mechanism ourselves, and it is beautifully finished. Practical and decorative: just as we all must be. Dragons twist their way around the frame, and on the very top sits an eagle – a gold eagle – just like the lectern my father used to stand behind in church. Every time a page is printed the arm of the press lifts and the bird jumps up as though it is taking flight. Octavia says it symbolises the Truth being carried out into the world. And now that we have a Printing Room the little eagle is hardly ever still. We feed the machine blank sheets of paper and they emerge transformed. Well, the others feed it, I don’t. Octavia doesn’t trust me to concentrate. She thinks I will daydream. And She is probably right.

  It’s a task that requires you to be constantly alert or the Devil will twist Octavia’s words, move the blocks or change the sense of the sentences, so that he can publish his lies. But we all have our part to play, however small. So I type up the articles Octavia writes, from scribbled notes, and I bring them to the Printing Room where they can be checked by someone that She trusts.

  Muriel Gillett was an obvious choice to operate it; she worked in a printing shop before she retired and still wears the uniform of her employment – a heavy tawny workcoat that protects her dresses from the wet ink. She is assisted in the Printing Room by Elizabeth Broadbent, whom Octavia describes as sensible in all but her choice of hairstyle, which she wears coiled most unflatteringly in two buns behind her rather large ears. Both women wear their sleeves rolled up on their stout arms. Working the press is hard work, and not suited to someone of a delicate disposition.

  Octavia is bending over the metal plate, squinting down at the rows of tiny letters that have been slotted into place.

  ‘It won’t do,’ She says. ‘I can’t make it out. Have you no bigger font?’

  ‘But this is the standard size,’ says Muriel, apologetically.

  ‘And just because the wider world decrees it satisfactory, must we concur?’ She hits Her hand on the tabletop, causing the blocks to jump out of place. ‘No. It won’t do.’

  Not everyone has been blessed with the opportunity to live here with Octavia, or hear Her Revelations in person, so we provide them with the next best thing: a monthly subscription of divine insight. She has called it The Panacea, and filled it with interesting articles: How to Prepare for Jesus, How to Administer the Healing Water, Why Confession is Vital and How to Fight Demons. But for Octavia the Devil is also in the detail.

  Never allow the arm to rest on the table … In using pepper do not scatter it so it affects your neighbour … An ‘excuse me’ should always follow a sneeze … Creaking shoes should be apologised for and corrected as soon as possible …

  No doubt I will inspire Her to write more rules before the next edition. I was certainly responsible for number nine:

  Do not make sandwiches of your bread and butter.

  And number fourteen:

  There is no occasion on which it is correct to spread a handkerchief on the lap at tea.

  This month She is preoccupied with a piece about Sir Jack, which I typed up this morning. That’s what I have come to deliver. She wants the non-residents to know that he really is becoming rather clever. He has opened the front of the clock and turned the hands forward by ten minutes, or else he is enjoying a game of hide and seek under the rug. She is certain that he listens attentively to the wireless and is convinced that he will stand and read the Radio Times, though as far as I can see he is only interested in two articles: the two little wires that hold the pages together. He picked them out with his beak and caused the whole lot to fall apart, but Octavia just laughed. She hardly seems to care that he has ruined three pairs of my stockings, or knocked down the Staffordshire shepherdess on the sideboard. He is God’s messenger, so we can’t begrudge him a bit of mischief.

  Octavia is standing watching Muriel who has cleared the metal plate and has begun again. I decide to bring the article back when She has gone. I could step in just a little and leave the papers on the side, but they may not find them, and besides, I need to tell them that Octavia wants a drawing of a little black bird above each title. She has trusted me to arrange this so I must not forget. I turn slowly back into the corridor and find myself face to face with Emily.

  ‘Dilys. It is just as well that I have found you. You are obviously short of something useful to do – and we know what the Devil does with idle hands, don’t we?’

  I answer only with silence.

  ‘I need you to type these notes without delay. Octavia asked me to draw up a list for those who seem to be struggling with Overcoming.’

  We both know who she is talking about.

  ‘We stayed up after you had gone to bed last night. This is a gentle reminder of what God expects and we want every member to have a copy.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll do it now.’

  She nods with a smug look that makes me want to take out my pocketbook and make a note against her: Emily, 2.05 p.m., self-satisfied.

  ‘Thank you, Dilys,’ she says. ‘Octavia and I decided you would be the best person to do it.’ She means they think I need to be reminded. When I glance down I see a list of failings, many of them my own.

  ‘There’s no place for personality in the Kingdom of God,’ she says. ‘We must all rid ourselves of the traits that cause discord in the community, or there will be consequences … whoever we are.’

  ON OVERCOMING

  Upon each & all Octavia lays the onus of helping with this great and grave work, by quickly remonstrating with offenders and pointing out their faults at once, instead of allowing the matter room to grow and develop.

  Faults which members should confess in the process of Overcoming include:

  Nervousness, Any kind of Temper,

  Sensitiveness, Sulkiness,

  Shyness, Moroseness,

  Fear, Procrastination,

  Selfishness, Discontent,

  Self-opinion, Love of money,

  Doubt, Fear about money,

  Jealousy, Meanness,

  Pride
, Extravagance,

  Untruthfulness, Untidiness,

  Exaggeration, Carelessness,

  Criticism, &c, &c.

  The Box

  It is Sunday at last. Grace will come. She’ll be here any minute. I am waiting for her in chapel, turning in my seat to watch the door. Emily has offered to stay behind. ‘The young lady, Miss Hardwick,’ she said to Octavia at lunchtime, ‘she will be joining us this evening. Would You like me to greet her? I’ll bring her to the chapel while she still has her coat on. It will be cold out there tonight, I think.’

  ‘Or I could …’ I began to speak but a glance from Octavia told me there was no point.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Emily,’ She said.

  Perhaps She didn’t trust me to meet her at the door. Perhaps She thought I would get distracted. My mind has been so full of what this means, of what God’s plans are for me, that I’m certain She was right.

  *

  The chapel door opens but it is not Grace. It is Edgar with his young protégé Donald Ricketts. I have seen them sometimes, taking a stroll around the Garden, but I have never seen Donald in chapel before. He is tall, his fair hair parted with immaculate care down the centre, and he wears a small moustache just like Adrian grew before he went to fight. As he steps into the room, he ushers in a sudden silence; all heads turn to look, all conversations halt.

  ‘Good evening, ladies,’ says Edgar brightly, lifting his cane in greeting.

  ‘Miss Barltrop,’ he says, walking across to my chair. ‘I don’t think you and Mr Ricketts have been formally introduced. He has come to stay for reading week. I shall need to be in my usual spot at the front this evening. But may Donald sit himself here beside you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I say, wishing I could think of a good reason why he shouldn’t. But it is too late. He is already taking a seat.

  ‘Marvellous,’ says Edgar. ‘Then I’ll leave you to it.’

  Mr Ricketts sits and pats his knees as though anxious for the service to start. The murmur of chatter begins to rise again but he is still the subject of appraising looks from every direction. It is unusual to see a visitor in chapel; rare to see a man in the Garden at all; unheard of to see one younger than fifty years old. I suppose he could be considered handsome too.

  ‘It is an honour to meet you, Miss Barltrop,’ he says, in a voice that’s almost a whisper, ‘to meet someone so close to Octavia.’

  He leans in conspiratorially and suddenly I can think of a very good reason why he shouldn’t be sitting beside me. I know what the others are thinking. Their appraising looks have turned to knowing glances. He made a beeline for the youngest woman in the room. The fact that he sat here on Edgar’s suggestion will be brushed aside. They’ll say I was an obvious target. Different. Very few of the ladies here have brown hair any more, and none wear it in a bob. It caused quite a stir when I first cut it short: a style fit only for radicals and women with loose morals. But when I told Octavia it came from Paris and was inspired by Joan of Arc, She came round to the idea. Then the others could no longer say what they thought. Not out loud anyway. Funny how you can take the same truth but dress it up differently. Besides, I’d already cut it off by then, and even Octavia can’t make hair grow back overnight. It takes time and a good glassful of the Water twice a day. Emily, on the other hand, has never liked it. According to her I already stuck out like a sore thumb. I am tall and gangly. I take up too much space.

  ‘I believe you work as a typist in the society,’ Donald says, ‘copying Octavia’s notes.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ I look back at the door, willing him not to ask any more questions. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I was showing an interest in him. Octavia says men take very little encouragement. Treat them with anything more than polite disdain and they can quite easily become inflamed with desire. No woman is safe. Not even a woman like me.

  ‘I hope to move here permanently when my course ends in the summer,’ says Mr Ricketts. ‘Though, of course, that decision doesn’t rest with me.’

  I do not answer, but he carries on regardless. ‘There’s a lot of debate about your society back in Cambridge. I wanted to make up my own mind, come and see for myself. And Edgar has explained so many things to me. So much that I could not make sense of …’

  I risk another glance over my shoulder. ‘Miss Barltrop, are you …’

  Listening?

  ‘… waiting for someone?’ he says. ‘A friend of yours?’

  ‘Yes.’ I speak without thinking whether that is the right answer. A friend. I hope she is. At least, I hope she will be. But she hasn’t come. She should be here by now. ‘Perhaps she isn’t coming.’

  It is not until he answers that I realise that I have spoken the words out loud.

  Sitting so close to him I can see his hair has been styled with rather too much pomade. If I could, I would slip out of the chapel and go back to my room, but I can’t. Everyone would notice. Everyone would talk.

  ‘Let us sing while we wait for Octavia,’ says a voice from the back. Emily walks down the aisle between the chairs. ‘A rousing chorus or two should keep us all warm.’ I swing round in my chair. And Grace is there. In the back row.

  She has come. Just as she said she would. And she is smiling at me: that smile that makes me feel that God Himself has finally noticed I am here.

  We stand. There is no organ or piano in our little chapel, so we wait for Emily to set the pitch, and as usual it is too high for most of us to reach.

  And did those feet in ancient time …

  Our voices join hers. Half of the congregation strains to reach the top notes; the others, like me, opt to dip a full octave below it, conflicting tones clamouring to find their place.

  …Walk upon England’s mountains green?

  I can tell that Mr Ricketts is holding back. He sings quietly, almost apologetically, keen perhaps to avoid the attention that the full force of a baritone would attract. But as the hymn continues, his voice seems to grow out of him with a warmth that radiates into the thickening air. And our voices, which were reedy and uncertain, are bolstered by the power in his. I can feel the music in my body, vibrations filling up my chest. The same feeling I had when Grace came to visit. In the fleeting spaces between our words I hear the voice of God. And for the first time I feel like I am truly part of this. Like the congregation at the Bunyan Meeting Church, we need no hymn sheet, this is our battle cry. ‘William Blake must have known the Truth,’ Octavia always says. ‘The Garden of Eden here in Bedford all along.’

  I will not cease from mental fight,

  Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

  Till we have built Jerusalem,

  In England’s green and pleasant land.

  As we sing the final line, Octavia arrives. She nods at Donald and perhaps I imagine it but I think She glances at me too. She looks tired tonight. And old. She has been in bed for much of the afternoon, one of Her headaches again. The role of saviour is not an easy cross to bear.

  ‘Panaceans, I am being tested,’ She says, taking Her place in front of the altar. ‘Though I am ashamed to admit it, I have questioned my Father’s love for me. Like Jesus in the wilderness, I have feared that I have been forsaken. I have railed against Him and begged Him to ease my suffering.’

  I glance at Donald, who looks completely transfixed by Her. Sometimes I forget how impressive Octavia is. She has grown middle-aged and dumpy. Her face, which one might expect to have softened with the passing of time, has become more severe. But divine confidence and authority shine out of Her. Some would call it charisma I suppose. She wears self-belief like a priest’s robe, and sometimes I almost think I can see it, gently swaying, diaphanous. God has clothed Her in His Holy Spirit and She enthrals us; we are in thrall.

  ‘You know, dear children, that when you sin I am the one to suffer. When you put your own desires before the needs of the community, when you bicker and backbite, when you are loud and untidy and inconsiderate and common …’ She puts
a hand on the altar to steady Herself. ‘Yet still … I must bear it. Tonight when I sat down to receive the Lord’s Word He shared His plan with me. Through my pen He spelt it out.’

  She looks to Emily who nods for Her to continue.

  ‘We know His son was crucified in body, but in His Daughter’s case … in my case …’ She pauses and smooths Her skirt, ‘… it is my soul that is being crucified.’ I wonder if this speaks of the difference between the sexes: She always says men are predisposed to be much more concerned with the flesh.

  ‘Stigmata scar my thoughts. And I wear a crown of thorns not on my head but in my heart.’ I imagine Octavia is enjoying the poetry of this analogy. ‘And so I ask you again to work harder to rid yourselves of the faults that torture me. I say again: God needs you to be colourless, faultless, zero.’

  There is muttering in the chapel as members start to voice their support. Promises of ‘I will, Octavia’ and ‘if only the Lord would let us share Your burden’. The guilt is palpable and suddenly Octavia doesn’t look so tired. She is fortified by our shame and guilt.

  ‘You must all commit again to the Overcoming. And I am trusting every one of you to help our visitors do the same.’ Her eyes find Donald in the congregation. ‘Mr Ricketts has been writing to me for some time now. Some of you may have met him already. He has been a regular visitor to Bedford during the last few months. Tonight he is joining us for the first time in chapel.’