The Rapture

by Claire McGlasson

  ‘I have seen ladies coming out of their confession looking terrified,’ she says. ‘Last week Elizabeth Broadbent emerged in floods of tears.’

  ‘Octavia approves of tears in confession,’ I say. ‘They show true commitment.’

  She smiles. She thinks I am joking.

  ‘You’ll be fine, Grace. She’ll call you in, ask you to sit opposite Her at the table. You will report on any questionable behaviour you have witnessed in others, then She’ll ask you to admit your own transgressions.’

  ‘What should I say?’

  ‘It’s best to be prepared – times you have been envious or greedy, things you have said about people behind their backs, that sort of thing. She’ll write them all down and then She will ask questions.’

  ‘What kind?’

  I turn away. I mustn’t say, because they are the questions I’ve been desperate to ask her myself. The secrets that I shouldn’t long to know.

  ‘Dilys?’

  ‘She’ll want to know what thoughts you have,’ I say, hoping that she won’t see the colour rising to my cheeks. ‘What you think about, when you are alone … in bed. When you are bathing.’ When you are sitting in chapel trying to quieten the Devil’s voice that whispers in your ear.

  I daren’t look at her but I can hear her breathing; shallow gasps snatched through open lips. Does she know that I ache to hear her confession? To know whether she touches her body in all the ways my hands could never find her.

  ‘Have you told her what you think about?’ she says.

  ‘No. Not the truth.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I feel a rush of something. Heat between my legs. The thrill of shame, and I can’t answer. She turns to face me.

  I mustn’t do the things I long to, the things I think about as I’m falling asleep.

  But is it really a sin to kiss her on the cheek, as friends do?

  To bring my mouth to the very edge of hers?

  Run the tip of my finger just inside where I can feel the damp heat of her breath, my hand making a barrier we cannot cross, so we can share only sighs and unspoken fantasies?

  Pinch her bottom lip. Gently. Slowly. And tug it towards mine?

  ‘Dilys, stop,’ she whispers, pulling away from me. ‘What was that?’ I hear a door closing: someone has come into the chapel. Without saying a word I stub out the cigarette and she turns off the lamp. The sudden darkness is a shock. I can hear Grace’s breath again: the fear and exhilaration.

  Shafts of light slice through the swirl of smoke around the edge of our dust sheet, piercing the gaps between the wooden floorboards and reaching up like the bars of a cage. Someone has turned on a light downstairs. Footsteps in the chapel, the scrape of curtain rings being pulled across the pole. Then nothing until a slight tremor moves through the trapdoor beneath us. Someone has put their foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. I can’t breathe. I’m going to give us away. I’m going to cough and this rising panic in my stomach will surge out. I am not going to be able to hold it in. I reach down and pinch the back of my wrist, twisting the skin until I feel a sting.

  Everything is silent and still. We sit and wait, but there’s nothing until we hear the footsteps again, moving away this time. And we fall back into the darkness.

  ‘I think that was Emily,’ I whisper. Perhaps I imagine it but I can smell lavender water: the perfume she applies so liberally every morning. When I walk into a room I can tell if Emily has been there before me; she leaves a sickly scent behind her. I used to like lavender. It made me think of summers in the Garden. But now it makes me think of bees. Swarming. Stinging.

  ‘What would happen if they found us?’ Grace whispers.

  ‘We’d be in trouble, they’d smell the smoke …’

  ‘No, if they found us, up here, together?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, because that’s the truth.

  Would they guess what we have been doing?

  In my head.

  ‘They wouldn’t understand.’

  I don’t understand it myself.

  ‘You’re Octavia’s daughter,’ she says. ‘But I’m just a servant. She could turn me out onto the street.’

  What makes her think She wouldn’t do the same to me?

  We fall silent again, the dark wrapping around us like a shared blanket. ‘Everything will be all right,’ I whisper. It won’t be long now, then the bishops will come. And whatever is inside the box, I have faith it is the answer: an end to suffering and earthly desires, no more hunger, no more craving. It will take away the agony of this longing we feel.

  And all we will have is love: pure, uncomplicated, divine.

  A Calling

  See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. The three wise monkeys sit and watch me from the shelf above my desk. Well, two of them do, one is covering his eyes of course. I was thirteen when Octavia bought that ornament for me and I immediately had the feeling they were spies. Before I did anything I shouldn’t, I would turn it to the wall to hide their faces; but now I know that it would make no difference. Only God can see our secrets; He could whisper mine to Octavia anytime He wanted. But He hasn’t.

  Besides, She has more pressing concerns than me. Her nightly audience with Him is taking longer than before. We sit in the chapel and wait for Her to arrive and share His lessons, but sometimes the words have flowed so quickly She cannot decipher Her own writing. And since She can’t remember anything more than sitting down and lifting Her pen, it can take a while to piece together. Lately She has delegated the task to Peter, who often sits up late into the night poring over Her scripts. He says he is an interpreter, a translator of the Word of God. ‘I’ve got it!’ he’ll exclaim over breakfast the next morning, as if he’s cracked a cryptic crossword clue. ‘The phrase was “Bride of the Lamb”.’

  This week there has been only one subject: Harry Price and his plans to open the box. The Lord has assured us that the true prophecies are safely hidden but that we must use this opportunity to spread His Word. Octavia says that, first, She has a duty to try to save Mr Price from himself. She has written to warn him that She cannot guarantee that the opening of this bogus box will not unleash the wrath of the Almighty. ‘Think very carefully, Mr Price, for your eternal soul is in peril.’ I know that’s what She said because I typed it up from Her notes first thing this morning.

  At eleven, Emily knocked with another two sheets for my attention ‘about the unpleasantness at dinner last night’. It really was a most awkward scene. We arrived at the table to find five places set. When Octavia announced that She had invited Edgar to join us, Peter was quite suddenly taken ill and, after making a long apology to Octavia, retreated to his bedroom. It hardly got the evening off to the best start. From the moment Edgar arrived, Octavia could barely contain Her irritation: the way he talks, the way he eats, the way he coughs. Especially the way he coughs. He really is sure of himself, but last night it was clear that Octavia is starting to have doubts.

  ‘But what of the role of man, of Adam?’ he asked Her, stabbing a curl of butter with his fork, as his butter knife lay idly on the side of his plate.

  ‘The Lord has been clear,’ said Octavia. ‘Salvation is born from the Mother, from the Daughter, from the female—’

  ‘But man was made in His image,’ he said. And here he made two mistakes: interrupting Octavia was bad enough but he did so before he’d swallowed his mouthful of mashed potato. ‘Do You not see, Octavia? It is men who hold the power in the end. It is the bishops who must open Joanna Southcott’s box. Without the bishops You have no power to fulfil her prophecies.’ He sat up higher in his chair. ‘The Lord Himself sent me from America to bring His Word to You. He speaks to me. He tells me that I have a part to play. Do You refuse to see it? Do You refuse to recognise my place at His table?’

  A knife flew across the room and struck the wall. Octavia looked as shocked as the rest of us at the realisation that She had been the one to throw it. Sir Jack, who had been sleeping with his head under h
is wing, leapt off his perch on top of the sideboard and hopped down to inspect a smear of gravy on the floor. Octavia, meanwhile, looked down at Her empty right hand, then at Her left, which was still holding a fork.

  Emily stood up. ‘Edgar, you have gone too far,’ she said. ‘Octavia will not recognise your calling because it does not come from God.’ Taking his time to wipe his mouth on his napkin, he left the table and bowed before he left the room. ‘Excuse me, ladies.’

  Seconds later, we heard the front door shut behind him, and I saw a fleeting smile dance across Emily’s lips as she walked to Octavia and took the fork from Her hand. ‘I wish You could have been spared that, Octavia,’ she said. ‘Why don’t You have a lie-down?’

  Still staring at Her hands, now empty of both knife and fork, Octavia seemed to wake from Her thoughts. ‘Yes, thank you, Emily. I feel a headache coming on.’

  ‘You rest,’ Emily said. ‘With Your permission, I shall make a few additions to the rules. It’s only right that all should have the chance to learn from Edgar’s mistakes.’

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOUSEHOLDERS (APPENDIX 14):

  (a) Men, foreign or English, must not shake hands with gloves on. They should wear dark suits in the evening or apologise for ‘not changing’ or having ‘sports things’ on.

  (b) Some apology for the noises incident upon a cold should be made. (It should be remembered that very much coughing is merely habit.) An apology or remark of some kind disarms criticism and prevents the nerves being fretted by annoyance.

  (c) Cackling laughs, mirthless laughs, merely habitual laughs are to be avoided.

  (d) Never put your knife and fork at right angles to the plate. It is done abroad but not in England.

  Emily made no mention of not interrupting, speaking with your mouth full or raising your voice. These were all outlined in the original draft of Instructions to Householders and were rules that Mr Peissart should have known.

  She also neglected to add anything about throwing knives across the room.

  *

  I can hear a man calling my name downstairs. It’s a voice I don’t recognise. It must be my mind playing tricks again, no man would be calling for me. But as soon as I step onto the landing I know there’s something wrong. Grace is halfway up the stairs, running up towards me and I can hear shouting. A woman’s voice now too. I try to get past Grace to see what is happening.

  ‘It’s all right, Dilys,’ she says.

  ‘What is happening?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s someone at the door, someone trying to get in. Emily is dealing with it.’

  I can hear Emily now. Telling them to leave, to go away. Telling them they are not welcome. ‘We should help her,’ I say, setting off down the stairs again, but Grace continues to climb, blocking my way.

  ‘She told me to come up here out of the way,’ she says. ‘She wants me to stay up here, Dilys. You too. We’ll only make matters worse.’

  I’m too high on the stairs to see the door from this angle but I hear the man’s voice. ‘Is she in there?’ he is shouting. ‘Why won’t you let me speak to her? What have you got to hide?’

  Grace reaches the step below me, turns me back around, and with her hand on the small of my back we climb up to my bedroom. ‘Who was it?’ I ask her as we sit together on the bed. She looks shaken. So am I. The only people who come knocking are believers. Or occasionally the postman.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I didn’t recognise him.’

  Downstairs, I think I hear him shout my name again. I wonder if Grace heard it too. I want to ask her but I’m frightened that the answer might be no; that I might be imagining it.

  ‘Grace, what was he saying when Emily asked you to come up?’

  ‘I didn’t hear. The bell rang, Emily answered it and then I heard a commotion and when I ran out into the hallway she told me to come up here with you.’ She puts her arm around my waist. I want to go and listen at the top of the stairs but when I start to move she squeezes me more tightly.

  ‘Stay,’ she says. ‘Emily wants us to stay up here. And we always do what Emily tells us. Don’t we, Dilys?’ She arches a single eyebrow.

  The front door slams and there’s silence for a minute or two. Then I hear Emily’s footsteps on the stairs. Grace takes her arm away and stands up. ‘I’ll go and find out what’s been going on,’ she says. I follow her out of my bedroom, and find Emily on the landing.

  ‘Who was that?’ I ask her, but she doesn’t reply, she doesn’t even meet my eyes. Grace leads her into my bedroom where she sits down on my bed.

  ‘Would you like some water?’ I say.

  ‘There’s no need to fuss,’ she says, curtly. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Who was that?’ I ask again.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about, Dilys.’

  ‘Well, it sounded pretty worrying to me. I should go and fetch Octavia.’

  ‘No, no,’ she says, firmly. ‘She is out in the Wireless Room. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to cause Her distress.’

  ‘Why, what is going on?’

  She looks across to my bedroom door and studies it for a moment, then with a sigh she drops her head. ‘I’m afraid that man was a newspaper reporter, prowling around for a story. He wanted to interview Octavia about Joanna Southcott’s box and Harry Price’s little stunt. But we all know what happened last time She gave an interview.’

  She was pilloried. Mocked. Her words twisted.

  ‘He wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ she says. ‘He put his foot in the door and when I wouldn’t let him in he turned nasty. He said things …’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘All lies.’ She looks up at me and I feel like I am being observed. ‘He is trying to slander Her, Dilys. He said Her ideas are madness. It is nothing that we haven’t heard before. But he has obviously done his research.’ Perhaps I imagine it but the corners of her mouth seem to twitch a little as she says it.

  Madness. He has obviously done his research.

  ‘Are you all right, Dilys?’ Emily says. ‘You are very pale.’

  ‘Yes. You did well to see him off.’

  ‘Anything to protect Octavia.’

  ‘Did he ask about me?’ I say. I have to know whether I really did hear him shout my name. Or whether it was all in my mind.

  ‘You, Dilys?’ She shakes her head and wrinkles her forehead as though struggling to understand. ‘Why would he be interested in you?’ And suddenly she seems amused by the suggestion, glancing at Grace, a smile on her lips. ‘No, Dilys, he didn’t ask about you. But perhaps …’ Her expression is suddenly pensive; she stares at the door again and sits in silence, scratching the back of one hand with the fingers of the other. ‘Now that you mention it, I think we should take this as a warning.’

  ‘A warning?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t want you walking around outside, Dilys. Those vermin will stop at nothing to get to Her, to discredit us. They could try to get to you, and I hate the thought of it making you anxious; wondering if they’ll be waiting down the street when you walk out. It doesn’t bear thinking about—’

  ‘But, that’s not what I meant—’

  ‘We must all do whatever we can to protect Octavia. From now on you should stay within the Garden.’

  ‘I don’t think that is necessary.’

  ‘You may not. But Octavia will be the judge of that. And when I tell Her what that man had to say, I’m sure She will agree with me.’

  Sleepwalking

  I can’t move. Hands are holding me, fingers pressing into my arms. I try to struggle free. I fight. Get off me. I have to get away.

  Dilys, stop. Calm down.

  I have to get away before I’m trapped.

  They are bricking up the wall. They are going to shut me in. Bury me alive. I can hear them singing the requiem. I need to get away but someone has caught me. Dragging me back.

  ‘Dilys, stop. It’s all right. Dilys, please … It’s me.’

  Grace.

&nbs
p; It’s Grace.

  Her face comes into focus now. She is still holding my arms. Too tightly. She is hurting me.

  I’m in the hallway with Grace.

  I turn to the front door but I can’t find the latch. Someone has moved it. Someone has taken the handle away. And there’s no way out.

  ‘Get off me. Let me go.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Dilys, you were dreaming. You were shouting, clawing at the door.’

  I can see the handle now. It must have been there all along, half way down the door, just where it always was. I look down and I see grazes on my fingers. She puts her arms around me.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she whispers. ‘It was just a dream.’

  ‘But I could hear them. They were …’

  ‘Don’t worry. Let’s get you back to bed. Your heart is pounding.’ So is hers, I can feel it. Her arms are around me, pinning my arms to my sides.

  ‘I woke you up. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘What was I doing …?’ My knees start to buckle, she is the only thing that’s stopping me from falling. ‘… Tell me.’

  ‘You were shouting. Trying to get out. Let’s get you back to bed.’ But neither of us moves. There’s the taste of salt on my lips. My face is wet. I’m crying. I bury my head into her neck, just below her ear, and let my tears soak into her skin.

  I’m so sorry, Grace. I haven’t had a dream this vivid since I was a child.

  ‘You’re all right,’ she says. But I know I am not. Our nightdresses are all that separate us. Two layers of cotton keeping my skin from touching hers.

  ‘Come on.’ She puts her arm around my waist and takes my weight, lifting my hand and placing it on the bannister. There’s a lamp at the top of the stairs but I can’t see who is holding it.

  ‘Grace?’ a voice calls down.

  ‘She was sleepwalking again.’