Chosen

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘When he’s gone, I’ll go too,’ I said.

  He grabbed my hand and squeezed. ‘Not you, Martha. You’re too young.’

  ‘No, not that,’ I said. ‘Leave. Leave Soul-Life behind.’

  Those words hung in the air between us, simple but momentous, and tears flooded down our cheeks. We stood and cried, staring at each other aghast, as the truth presented itself, cruel and stark and unavoidable.

  †

  The following day Obadiah sought me out to give me an envelope, which he made me promise not to open until after. After what, there was no need for him to say. I couldn’t wait, though, and as soon as I was alone I opened it. It took me a few moments to understand that the document I was looking at represented the transfer of the ownership of a house in Florida from Obadiah to me. Ten years ago, it seemed, he’d bought it for himself. Ten years ago. A house by the ocean.

  And then I understood that I’d not been fooling Obadiah with my innocent questions about how the banking system worked. He’d actually been helping me in my embezzlement of Soul-Life funds, and had been doing the same himself. How many others of us had been doing that?

  A house, though. My own house. I went straight to the admin block where Obadiah was gazing at a screen, the mouse scrolling over columns, aimlessly, it seemed to me.

  ‘I opened it,’ I said, ‘and thank you.’

  His eyes didn’t leave the screen, though the cursor jerked wildly among the columns.

  ‘But why don’t you keep it and go there yourself?’

  ‘At my age?’ he said, and smiled and shrugged his bent old shoulders. ‘You should go soon,’ he added. ‘It’s only a matter of time till the law gets in. And that’ll be the end. We are preparing for the end.’

  ‘Come with me then,’ I said.

  ‘Years ago, if you’d said that . . .’ His eyes lingered for a moment on my face, slid down my body and I shivered as if stroked by a feather. I looked down at the floor, blood throbbing in my face. It had never occurred to me that Obadiah had thought of me like that.

  ‘But still, come,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after you.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ he repeated, with a sad and puckered smile.

  †

  In a coincidence, which confirmed for Adam that the Lord’s will was being done, Rod and Jake arrived at Soul-Life during the Festival of the Lamb. I was busy all day helping Adam and didn’t know until later that they were there. It was the first occasion that Adam had been out of bed for days, and I had to help him walk onto the platform. It was amazing that he found the strength to speak, to slaughter the lamb, to bless the Brethren with the blood. You looked so pale and shaken, Dodie, as he smeared you with the blood. I longed to take you aside and reassure you that everything would be all right, but it was Adam who needed me most then. After the ceremony he was in a state of near collapse. I took him back to our room and helped him from his robes. I washed his hands and feet and got him settled in his bed. I lay beside him, listening to the rasping of his breath.

  Every atom of energy in him had been spent, but Hannah had told him that Jake had arrived and he was happy, he murmured, and Jesus was happy; a lamb for a lamb.

  ‘The sacrifice,’ he said, ‘has brought Jacob to the fold.’ He struggled to find the breath to speak and I was sure he’d die that night. Though I wanted to come and find you, I couldn’t leave him to die alone. Couldn’t bear to leave a vacancy for Hannah to fill. All night I lay and listened to the rattling of his breath; it sounded far away, like marbles rolling down pipes deep under the ground. I got up only to use the bathroom, to moisten his lips with water, to drink water myself.

  Next morning his will once more overcame the weakness of his flesh and once more he struggled back. He indicated that he wished to sit up and I helped him. I freshened him with a flannel, cut up a melon so he could suck the sweet flesh. Now that he was awake, I thought I’d leave him for a short time and come and find you and Rod and Jake. I wanted to be the one to bring Jake to Adam, to see the joy in his face, a final gift for him from me this time; not from Hannah.

  But before I’d even left the room, Hannah came in with Jake in her arms. The fury that struck me was like a bolt of lightning, fusing me to the floor and it was a full minute before I was able to think, to speak, to act.

  ‘Adam,’ she said. ‘Your grandson.’ She spoke with such pride you’d think she’d personally conjured him into existence. You should have seen the gloating expression on her face.

  I looked away. My teeth ground together so hard I felt a corner give, a speck of sharpness on my tongue. I picked it off and pressed it between my fingers, hard and jagged. Let it go, I thought, let it go, and I hummed silently until I regained control enough to turn and look at Jake.

  What a bonny child he is, dark and rosy, and with your blue eyes, wide and round with wonder. Adam was holding out his weak and stringy arms.

  ‘Come to me,’ Adam said and muttered something else. Suffer little children, I think. But Jake was too big, too real and live and kicking for Adam’s arms. And the weight of the child on his abdomen was excruciating, you could see. I quickly snatched Jake up.

  ‘Say hello to Grandad,’ I said. He wriggled to be put down. His legs pedalled in the air; he wanted, as children do, just to run. To be out of the fetid atmosphere, no doubt. He wanted his mum.

  ‘Where’s Dodie?’ I asked.

  ‘Meditating,’ Hannah said.

  I looked at her sharply. ‘Really?’

  ‘Shall I take him?’ she asked Adam, and he nodded his head. Hannah lifted him out of my arms and carried him away. My fingers went to a damp dribbly patch on my shoulder and I smiled. That burst of young life into the room had altered the composition of the air. Adam smiled at me.

  ‘We must have another ceremony,’ he said. ‘We must praise the Lord. He has not forsaken me. He moves in mysterious ways. This is the greatest gift of all.’

  ‘You must rest,’ I said.

  He met my eyes. ‘Another ceremony,’ he insisted. ‘I will speak to Hannah.’

  ‘You can speak to me,’ I said. But he did not.

  †

  Hannah inveigled her way in, of course, whenever I was out of the room, and encouraged Adam in his nonsense. Cruel, I thought it. Together they planned another Festival of the Lamb. It was unheard of to have two so close together. The idea was ridiculous and amateurish. In his right mind, Adam would never have considered it. You only had to look at him to know he’d never stand again, never have the strength to slaughter and to bless. And there were no preparations, no lamb, no word had gone out among the twitchy Brethren, no cakes had been baked. I couldn’t take it seriously.

  I didn’t like to leave Adam for Hannah to get to, so I couldn’t come and find you as I should have done. When Adam was safely asleep I did try to go and see Seth, but the codes to the peace-pods had been changed without my knowledge. It was as if the sand was sliding away under my feet. I’d always known the codes. Of course, it was Hannah’s work. But I didn’t guess that you were also locked up.

  I found Jake being petted by a posse of frustrated grannies – Bethel and Kezia among them. They echoed Hannah, saying you were in a final meditation. Of course, Hannah would have told them that, and why should they have questioned it? But I should have questioned it. I should have thought harder. I should have insisted on seeing you – and Seth. My blood. But with Adam and Hannah and all, my mind was flayed to rags.

  Adam was so weak he could hardly speak now, or the words he said were cloudy and edgeless. When he woke up, I sat on the bed, telling him stories about our past; reminding him of the ferry to Bawdsey, the mud, the herons – and weeping sometimes at the memory of my little sister. I massaged those parts of his body that were not too painful to be touched. He loved to have his feet stroked, his toes pulled, and moaned in pleasure when I did that for him. I lay beside him to sleep, sniffing his skin, from which rose a peculiar smell, mud and undergrowth and something chemical that reminded me of how a
newborn infant smells. I expect it’s the smell of death. I mumbled love into his skin and wished for him to die, now, with only me beside him, but he didn’t die and whenever he emerged into consciousness he talked of sacrifice. They were the ramblings of a dying man and so I humoured him.

  ‘The Lord’s last task for me on earth,’ he said, and mumbled Hannah’s name and I felt myself stiffen.

  ‘Do you think you’re strong enough to stand, to speak, to do the blessing?’ I said sharply.

  ‘Just us,’ he said, ‘a sacrifice here, just us,’ and he looked at me with eyes gone pearly and I felt he was looking not at me, but Hannah, there was no differentiation any more.

  I took a breath and closed my eyes to hum away the whoosh of pain, and he tried to join me but his sound, once so strong, was stuttery. He couldn’t get enough breath to make a prolonged vibration, and my heart softened and I sang to him instead:

  You seem to be a bird

  With feathers and a beak

  You seem to be absurd

  You seem a little freaky

  But though you cannot speak

  You bring the word

  You bring the wordYou bring the word.

  And weakly he tapped his fingers on the sheet. We dozed together for a while, his thumbless hand in mine.

  There was the sound of a helicopter overhead. They had been circling for a few days, that stuttering sound, swooping low, with cameras maybe. People tried to get in, but we didn’t let them. The phones had been unplugged in the office. The end was coming for us all. There was a sense of bustle, of movement through all the place, of bewilderment, but I was so taken up with Adam, with planning what I’d do as soon as he had gone, that I hardly registered the larger situation.

  ‘It’s me,’ I whispered to Adam, ‘it’s me, Martha. It’s your wife.’ He opened his eyes once more to look at me, and this time he knew me. A sliver of him was waving to me from somewhere very far away, and then he closed his eyes again.

  I stayed there for a while, watching the painful rise and fall of his chest, then I stood up and stretched. I wanted to move and fill my lungs with fresh air, to feel the energy in my body. I already looked forward to more life after this – and after all, I had a family now. A family I must support. I was full of restless energy but didn’t want to leave the room. What if he died alone, or worse, what if Hannah snuck in and he took his last breath with her instead of me?

  I walked around the room that had been ours for more than thirty years. Knowing I was soon to leave, I saw it as a stranger would. Our robes on the clothes rack, the stupid blankness of the masks gathering shadows of dust. A spider had nested in the eye of one of them, a clot of cottony thread with something dark inside it, moving. The curtains, once white and floaty, were yellowed and brittle. It was early afternoon and the sky was the colour of cream; condensation streamed down the inside of the glass. Adam’s breath struggled from his mouth and he groaned painfully in his sleep.

  In the closet was my bag, and in the bag were Obadiah’s house deeds and keys, my old driving licence and my passport, both in the name of Melanie (a name that sent a sparkle through me, the memory of youth), and my bank details. Nothing else. When my husband died there would be nothing for me there. Neither the house nor the money would save me from grief, but they would provide what I needed to exist.

  I indulged in the dream: you, me, Seth and Jake together in Obadiah’s ocean-side house in Florida. Seth could go to school and you could work, if you wished, go back to teaching, or anything else you liked, and I’d be there to babysit. We’d be happy. We’d be a proper family.

  I opened the door of Adam’s closet. On the floor was the lacquered box in which we kept the sacrificial knife, razor sharp so as not to cause the lambs more suffering than necessary. The box rested slantwise on the galvanized bucket used to catch the sacred blood. I was about to shut the door when I caught sight of something else there, hidden in the bucket, just a little poking corner. I kneeled to explore and pulled out a plastic bag containing something small and soft. Inside the bag there was folded tissue and inside the tissue a small, white cotton gown, like a christening gown. In the bucket, by the knife. My heart began to rush.

  A final sacrifice, Adam had said.

  No.

  Surely, a symbolic sacrifice? Surely that was all that was meant: to sacrifice Jake’s life on earth to the Lord, rather than his life itself. A baptism, no more than that. Hannah had said nothing to me and Adam had only mentioned it in his confused ramblings. The small and private ceremony was planned by Hannah, and I wasn’t included. Surely he could not, my Adam could not, contemplate a human sacrifice. His own grandson. And yet, he wasn’t in his right mind. He wasn’t my Adam any more. The disease was in his brain – and so was Hannah.

  But surely even Hannah could not?

  I don’t know. I don’t think so, now. No, no, she could not. But in my panic, at the time, that’s what I thought.

  Sweat from my hands dampened the gown. Hands trembling, I refolded and replaced it. I took my bag, a plan forming. I would find you, Seth and Jake, and together we’d leave. I had to get your baby out of there. I went to Adam and gave him a last kiss on his slack mouth. He murmured something and I couldn’t tell if it was my name or another. I didn’t stay to listen to any more.

  Within the corridors of Soul-Life there was movement, unrest. The police would be in soon, Obadiah said; they were getting warrants to impound the computers and he’d been working night and day to try and straighten out, or wipe, the records. But most of the Brethren didn’t know how near the end we were.

  †

  I couldn’t find you, Dodie. I looked into all the rooms but couldn’t see you. Again I tried the peace-pods. I had to get Seth out. I had to find you. And I had to find Jake.

  At first I couldn’t find any of you. It was all slipping away from me; in all the long white corridors I was the one who was lost, turning corners, trying doors, losing my breath amid the hammering of my heart. But at last I opened the door of a small and seldom-used communing room to find Jake with Daniel. My ears were ringing with the tension. I blinked and held my thumb.

  ‘Where is Dodie?’ I asked.

  ‘Not sure,’ he said, refusing to meet my eyes. ‘I just babysit.’

  Jake was playing with some plastic beakers.

  ‘Ask Hannah,’ he added, with a flick of slyness. ‘Here, Jake, put it on top.’

  They were building a tower. Jake held the beaker carefully in his chubby fingers, sticking his tongue out as he concentrated on the balance.

  ‘That’s right!’ Daniel said and clapped his hands. Jake laughed and clapped his own.

  ‘I’ll take the child now,’ I said. ‘You can go to medi tation.’

  ‘Oh, but Hannah told me –’ he began, but I ignored him and stooped to pick Jake up. I settled him on my hip, a proper fleshy hip, unlike Hannah’s scrawn. Jake waved his hands in frustration at the tower, and his bottom lip turned down.

  ‘I must speak to Hannah,’ Daniel said, defiant now.

  ‘Come along,’ I said, and it seemed I still had enough authority that he must obey. We walked together down into the central corridor – and then he bolted.

  ‘Daniel!’ I called.

  ‘I’ll find Hannah,’ he said, over his shoulder.

  ‘Daniel!’ I shouted, but he was gone.

  I had to think fast. He would go to Hannah and she would come and take Jake and lock me up. That’s what fled through my mind then. She knew the numbers and I didn’t. That’s when I guessed you were in a peace-pod too.

  I went to the office to ask Obadiah for help, but even he didn’t know the codes. He wasn’t in on the plan and didn’t believe me when I told him about the sacrifice. Little Jake was fascinated by his beard and kept trying to snatch at it.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said, trying to flatten the panic out of my voice. ‘Now, I have to go.’

  He looked at me with a gentle, weary expression and then he nodded. ‘It’s all
over here.’ He ruffled Jake’s hair. ‘Take him somewhere safe.’

  ‘The house in Florida,’ I said. ‘Please send Dodie and Seth.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘And give them money.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  He looked so sad, so done in. I hesitated. ‘Why don’t you come?’ I asked, but he shook his head.

  ‘God bless.’ He pulled me towards him to print a hairy kiss on my forehead. And then he reached for the phone to call a cab.

  I had to go like that, without you, without Seth. You see that, Dodie? I didn’t dare to stay a moment longer. I said a last goodbye to Obadiah and then, clutching Jake, I ran.

  DODIE

  1

  The air fizzes with particles in the light that’s always on. There’s no change in it, no fluctuation, no dark, no day, no night. The particles are all there is to watch; they dance in the commotion caused by her breath.

  The feeling of hunger is interesting. Actually, she’s hardly hungry any more. There’s a tap and she can drink as much as she likes. Every time she thinks it’s time for breakfast or lunch or dinner she clamps her mouth round the tap and glugs until her stomach is full. It must be at least two days and nights she’s been here, she calculates, but not as many as five.

  She sleeps, she wakes, she sleeps. In sleep the dreams are more vivid than anything that happens when she’s awake. Mostly it’s a half-sleep, a doze, which is almost cosy. For some reason, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ goes round in her head, looping and rising and falling to a whisper of Be-elzebub and how did that get there? And it won’t stop; the particles in her brain must be stuck in a loop or a holding pattern. Nothing really matters, nothing really matters.

  There’s no sound outside: no footsteps or voices or birdsong or drainpipes. Only the sounds from inside and they are deafening. Easy come, easy go. And then the door opens and Seth seems to be there.

  Seth?

  He’s as vivid as a dream and as interesting: thick eyebrows, deep blue eyes, a smattering of dark young whiskers. And the darling straightness of his nose. He fidgets about in the way he’s always had, never able to keep still for five minutes. It used to drive Stella crazy.