The Rapture Read online

  ‘I am quite capable of doing it myself,’ Peter says, with obvious irritation. ‘It was a task Octavia gave specifically to me.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  They turn from Peter as I pass: Edgar touching his top hat, Donald his trilby. ‘Good day to you, Miss Barltrop,’ Edgar says, stepping forward. ‘Not at Castleside today?’

  Now I’ll have to stop and talk. If not, he’ll think me rude and will no doubt take out his pocketbook to make a note against me.

  ‘No, not today. It’s Wednesday – my turn to prepare the linen.’

  Besides, I want to stay away until the window has been mended. Kate knew nothing of the broken pane but promised to let me know as soon as it was done. Until then I can’t risk being alone in the house with workmen around.

  ‘Miss Barltrop, what have you done to your hand?’ It is Donald who speaks now, in a tone that suggests genuine concern. I look down at the bandage that Grace used to bind the tips of two of my fingers.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I say, putting it into my pocket, ‘just a cut. Some broken glass in Castleside.’

  ‘I hope you have bathed it in the Water,’ he says, glancing at Edgar who is studying the gold handle of his cane.

  ‘Yes. It will be healed in no time, I’m sure. Now, I really must get on.’

  ‘Of course. Good day, Miss Barltrop,’ he says. And as I walk away I hear him say something to Edgar about the need to be careful. They think of me as a child, unable to look after myself. But Octavia has put me in charge at Castleside. Me. Not Edgar.

  *

  I manage to haul the fabric onto the dressmaker’s table in the Cutting Room. There’s a metal measuring tape fixed along its edge. It makes it easier for me to cut the pieces. One inch square: that’s the standard size for a miracle.

  Octavia appears in the doorway.

  ‘You look flustered,’ She says. ‘Our outward appearance must reflect our soul within.’ Perhaps that’s why my hair will never lie still. It always looks frazzled. I take my cue, and take my leave. She has come to administer the healing, so I leave Her to communicate with God. Alone.

  None of the members has ever seen Her perform this miracle, She cannot summon Her powers before an audience, only behind closed doors, attended by mystery and ritual. I imagine Her, eyes closed, arms raised: an antenna for God’s power. I am receiving You loud and clear. I wonder if it is like tuning in the wireless; crackling and whirring until she can lock on to His frequency. Her body stiffens and She rocks backwards and forwards, Her breathing quickening, Her pulse racing. Faster and faster. She gasps and then falls slackly against the table. A long exhalation. The linen is imbued, impregnated with the divine, which is trapped in the spaces between the fibres of the fabric.

  Well, that’s how I imagine it works.

  I am not allowed to find out. I wait instead in the windowless room next door where we keep the archives, shelves piled high with records of our lives. One day we will be recognised as discoverers of the Truth; one day scholars will study us, so anything that is written down is catalogued and kept. When Octavia sits down to receive the Lord’s instructions at 5.30 every evening, Her scripts are brought here to be filed. And sealed inside these brown-paper packages are our confessions. Twice a month resident members are required to commit their sins to paper and present them to Octavia in person, but hundreds more send them by post. Every transgression is stored, along with every bill from the greengrocer and baker, every leaflet we print, every rule. Our shopping habits alongside our darkest fantasies: a pound of sugar, a dozen rashers of bacon, greed, envy, vanity. All human life is here.

  I hear the door of the Cutting Room and return to find Octavia gone, the air heavy with Her influence.

  The linen can be spread out on the table now. It is off-white like bandages; it makes me think of hospitals, and Christ’s shroud and the jackets that bind your arms across your chest to stop you hurting yourself. Those who write to us for healing receive one small square, cut with pinking shears which gives each edge the appearance of teeth. I like the way the scissors chew their way across the fabric. I stroke it flat to take out the creases where it has been wrapped around the bolt. It rises up behind my touch, and I roll back another layer to reveal a little more. Soon Grace will come to bring me lunch. Octavia relented: She usually insists that we gather at the dining table, but it is easier if She doesn’t have to see me eat or, rather, see that I do not eat. So I will take my lunch in here, being careful not to get crumbs on the linen.

  ‘Delivery!’ Grace says, as the door swings open violently. ‘Sorry! I had to kick it, my hands are full.’

  ‘You certainly know how to make an entrance. Here, let me.’ I take a tray from her hands, on it two bowls of soup and two slices of bread.

  ‘It was heavier than I thought,’ she says. ‘I have brought mine … Unless I’m disturbing you?’

  ‘You are a welcome distraction.’

  I arrange two chairs to overlook the Garden. Outside, Peter has made progress with the hoarding, one panel already lying by his feet. He turns to speak to a figure who is bending down to tend the flowerbed nearby. It is Emily, using small shears to trim the box hedges back into shape. Last year she had a go at chess pieces but Octavia said the rooks and pawns looked more like chimneypots, and that the queen was so unkempt that she ought to be beheaded. Since then Emily has limited all topiary to cubes and spheres.

  ‘Did she see you?’ I ask Grace. ‘Emily – did you mention you were coming to me?’

  ‘They were deep in conversation.’

  ‘So she didn’t ask?’ I don’t know why it should bother me. We’re not doing anything wrong. But Emily has been making comments lately. Making a note of how much time we are spending together. I don’t think she likes the thought of me having someone to talk to.

  ‘Eat up before it goes cold,’ Grace says, handing me my bowl as we sit. I take a spoonful and bring it to my mouth, embarrassed at how loudly I draw it off the spoon. I glance up, expecting to find her looking at me in disgust, but she doesn’t seem to have noticed. Either that or she is being polite.

  ‘So this is it?’ she says, looking across at the cutting table, with a look of fascination. ‘The linen for the Water …’ She speaks quietly, as if cowed by the presence Octavia has left behind.

  Relieved to have an excuse to put my soup down, I reach for a pile of letters on the desk behind her. ‘Yes, we send it to anyone who requests it and all we ask in return is that they report faithfully on the results. You can help if you like.’ I begin to read from the one on the top. ‘81 Woodstock Road, Oxford. Dear Madam, my sister has become most dangerously ill with heart trouble and a gangrenous foot. She has been miraculously brought back to life but suffers so much from nerves that mental trouble is feared. Any help would be gratefully received. Yours faithfully, Miss Helen Barr.’

  I pass her the ledger.

  ‘So I make a note of her name and address?’ she asks.

  ‘Exactly. And a brief description … Heart, gangrenous foot … Something like that. And we give each one a GP number. That stands for General Protection.’

  She starts to make a note. ‘This says you are up to 1532 so far.’

  ‘So Miss Barr is 1533. Look at this one: 4 Church Avenue, Bristol. “Will you kindly send me a linen section for divine healing as sent to my sister? My complaint is chilblains, nerves and also my ears discharge. Thank you in anticipation, Yours faithfully, Miss M. Saunders.”’

  We both burst out laughing. ‘Don’t be wicked,’ she says, trying to make her face wear a sterner expression. ‘Poor Miss Saunders. Chilblains are no laughing matter.’

  We carry on together, Grace recording the letters while I go back to cutting the linen.

  ‘What about the method?’ she asks. ‘Are there different doses for different complaints? Surely chilblains would need a different preparation from, say, rheumatism?’

  I walk to the cupboard to get a leaflet. I feel her watching me. ‘We send out instru
ctions,’ I say. ‘Here …’

  DIVINE DELIVERANCE (SLOW BUT SURE) AND HUMAN OBEDIENCE

  Instructions to prepare the Water for all internal complaints. Hold the linen section – which will never lose its virtue – in a wine-glass of water while you count to 12.

  ‘But you must say the words I ask for Divine Healing by Water and the Spirit,’ I explain. ‘It can be drunk, or sponged onto injuries. We’ve found it works best for people with coughs or breathing problems if they inhale it as steam. Or you can bathe in it – for spinal cases or rickets …’

  She takes the leaflet from my hand and studies it. ‘And people write for help from all over the world?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From India?’

  I know what she is getting at. She is talking about my letter. From Adrian. But this time I am ready. I have had a chance to prepare exactly what I will tell her. And what I will not.

  ‘We do send the healing to India, yes. Why do you ask?’

  ‘That letter I found at the foot of the stairs—’

  ‘It was from my brother.’

  She looks up from the leaflet. ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Adrian, yes.’

  ‘I see,’ she says. ‘It’s just you seemed—’

  ‘He used to be part of the society. Like me. But he left. He renounced his faith.’

  ‘Oh.’ Grace moves to touch my arm, but changes her mind. ‘I’m sorry. I understand now why you seemed upset. It must be heartbreaking to see him turn away from the Truth.’

  ‘It is.’

  I wonder now if he was ever a true believer. After the war he said it all made sense – that Octavia would make sure that all that suffering would never happen again. But as time went on he started to question it. To question Her. Why was there still so much pain, so much damage? When he was offered a posting to India he took it. He chose to move far away from all this. Far away from me.

  ‘Do you think he’ll change his mind?’

  ‘Not now. I have stopped writing back to him. There’s nothing more I can do.’

  ‘But Octavia says those who turn away from Her are the worst of sinners …’

  ‘Because they have a choice,’ I say. ‘There are those who have not yet heard the Truth. But on the Day of Judgement, Adrian can’t pretend he didn’t know.’

  He can’t say She didn’t warn him. None of us can say that.

  ‘Perhaps God will show him, help him overcome his doubts.’

  I say nothing, moving back to the table and picking up the shears to cut another strip of linen.

  ‘Because I’ve been thinking about that first day I came to visit. In the chapel. Do you remember?’

  I smile. I can’t help it.

  ‘Sometimes I get the same feeling …’ she says, tidying the crockery onto the tray. ‘As if all this … As if this place has chosen me. I feel I have started down a road and I don’t know where it will take me.’

  Taking up the long strip of linen I have cut, I begin to trim it into smaller pieces. ‘Healing is a power Octavia discovered quite by accident. She was taking a pill for one of Her headaches. It was resting in Her palm and as She said Her usual prayer the tablet was flicked out of Her hand. She knew God meant Her just to drink the water. And She was cured.’ I cut the last square of fabric and lift it to my lips, with barely a touch. ‘Faith is enough,’ I say. That’s what I want to believe. Because it’s all I have. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).

  Grace leaves the room with two soup bowls: hers empty, mine full.

  And a square of linen in the pocket of her apron.

  A gift I had no right to give.

  I wait for Octavia to appear in the doorway and tell me I am no good. I wait for the familiar feeling of guilt and shame to creep across my skin. But it doesn’t come and nor does She. I should be sorry, but I am not. We are sharing something, something the others do not know. We are planting a seed of friendship in the dark soil of a secret, where no eyes can spy, where everyone is blind.

  The Wireless Room

  I shall join the others tonight, out in the Wireless Room where Octavia invites members to sit with Her after supper. Designing it was one of Her projects. She decided we should have a place to meet and mingle in the evenings, a communal sitting room of sorts.

  From the outside it resembles a large storage shed, but She has furnished the inside with every comfort befitting ladies of our station: wicker chairs, pot plants and an air of middle-class judgement. And this evening She is holding court Herself, sitting forward on Her chair while Peter rearranges the cushion at Her back. Rachel Fox is beside Her: an unusually tall woman with an unusually high opinion of herself. Her hair is completely colourless, the bright white of someone who looks as though she must have suffered a shock. One of the newer members, Miss Tweedie, a portly woman with an unfortunate nose, is tuning in the wireless. And tucked into a corner Ellen Oliver sits with a blanket across her knees.

  The group is silent when I step in and Octavia greets me with a look that means She expects the same from me. An irritated wave of Her hand instructs me to hurry up and sit down. Quietly. A wave of the other bids Miss Tweedie to turn up the volume dial on the wireless. At times Octavia resembles a side-show illusionist: She can make objects (in Her case, people) move at will.

  Even the announcer’s voice appears to jump to attention as She leans in towards the lacquered oak cabinet. The BBC News: ‘Negotiations between the mine owners and the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain have failed to reach an agreement about working hours and wages.’

  It is what She has been waiting for.

  ‘Just as I foretold,’ She says. ‘The poison of Bolshevism is seeping into our great land.’ She speaks into the wireless as if it were a microphone; as though She is addressing the nation Herself. ‘At present the mailed fist still wears the soft glove of humanity, hiding behind the pretence of fairness and justice to miners, but do not be fooled. This is Satan’s fight.’ She prepares profound statements to use at times like these.

  It is just as well that Octavia is so engrossed. Perhaps She will not hear Miss Tweedie, slack-jawed and breathing noisily through her mouth, a habit she will have to change, and quickly, if she intends to stay in the society.

  ‘I had thought of sending word to the Prime Minister,’ Octavia goes on, ‘to warn him this would happen. But as Emily says, I am at the helm of my own vessel, not the ship of state …’ I wonder if Her maritime analogy was inspired by the outfit She is wearing this evening: a navy dress with a white-lace sailor collar and knot. ‘… Peter – that cushion is still not right.’ She casts a brief glance over Her shoulder then continues Her address. ‘Alas, I cannot help these men. They have to help themselves. Though they choose not to.’ She is talking about the bishops. She wrote again to insist that they come and open the box, but the majority didn’t bother to reply, and those who did answered only with a request that She cease all further communication.

  ‘Well, they had their chance.’ She sits back suddenly. Peter, too slow to withdraw his hands from the cushion, finds them momentarily trapped against the chair. Octavia’s irritated tut brings colour to his cheeks.

  ‘The downfall of men’s rule has begun,’ She continues. ‘There is no way, except by letting loose the hordes, that the devils may be seen for what they are. Now the bishops will begin to fear, won’t they?’

  I assume this is a rhetorical question, as Octavia’s so often are, but Emily doesn’t miss the opportunity to agree. ‘It is just a question of time, Octavia. Peter and I were saying as much this morning, weren’t we?’ I see her give him an encouraging nod and mouth the words ‘go on’.

  ‘Indeed we were,’ he says. ‘And when I think of the way the bishops dismiss You, Octavia. Their arrogance—’

  ‘Do not fear they will come round soon enough. I only wish they were all as sensible as you, Peter. If they had a grain of your wisdom they would accept the Truth. But the male of t
he species is predisposed to arrogance. You are the exception rather than the rule.’

  A smile spreads across Peter’s face, which blushes an even deeper shade. I see him glance at Emily, than all eyes are drawn to the sound of the door opening. Grace steps through it carrying a cup, which she sets down next to Octavia.

  ‘Thank you,’ Octavia says, without taking Her eyes from the radio set. ‘You should stay and listen to this. It is a lesson to us all.’ Grace knows by now that this is an instruction, not a suggestion, so she stands beside Her, hands locked politely behind her back, head tilted towards the wireless, but like the rest of us she can’t hear the voice on the radio. Octavia is not giving her a chance.

  ‘Look at Bournville … Port Sunlight,’ Octavia says. ‘So much has been done for the bettering of the conditions of the employees, they should work all the harder to recompense employers. Some must rule and some be ruled … and they should be perfectly happy with that. She lifts Her hand to silence us, though She is the only one who’s talking, and the voice confirms that She was right all along.

  ‘The TUC is threatening to hold a general strike,’ the radio announcer says.

  ‘Inevitable,’ Octavia shrugs. ‘Just as God told me.’ She looks around the room. ‘I shall take my cocoa to bed.’ With that She attempts a dramatic exit but it takes Her several pushes to lift Herself from the Lloyd Loom chair. And by the time She makes it onto Her feet, the effect is rather lost.

  ‘Goodnight all,’ She says. ‘And don’t stay up too late. Several of you are looking rather tired and drawn. Jesus could be back at any moment and He will be gazing upon these faces.’ She waves Her hand to include us all. ‘You may not be able to greet Him with a clear conscience but a clear complexion is certainly achievable.’

  She stands and lifts Her cup, Peter hurrying to the door to open it for Her. ‘I’ll see You back across the Garden, Octavia,’ he says. There’s silence as they step out into the darkness. Miss Tweedie turns off the wireless. Rachel Fox brings a hand up to her face and I see her dab the head of a particularly angry pimple on her cheek.