‘She does,’ Emily cuts in. ‘But we are quite delighted to find out the enemies. At the present moment we are like Red Indians collecting scalps.’
Ellen has started to sway in her chair.
‘It has been a shock,’ says Octavia, looking down at Her plate. ‘The great strife between woman and the powers of evil are coming to a head. I must be the one to face it.’
‘How?’ Ellen manages to ask.
‘That is the question. Edgar is too wicked to keep but too wicked to keep out – if he leaves the society goodness knows how he may slander us.’
Ellen pauses, pretending to give the matter some thought, but I see her push back, tensed against the pain that looks like it is trying to drag her off her seat.
‘Emily, would you be kind enough to pass a boiled egg?’ Octavia says. ‘Emily …’
There’s a crash: the sound of a fork dropping down onto china. Emily’s plate has cracked in two. She is sitting perfectly still, eyes rolled back into their sockets, one hand motionless in front of her, the other still gripping her knife.
‘Emily …’ Octavia says, in a whisper now. ‘Emily, can you hear me?’
She says nothing, does not blink, does not give the slightest twitch.
‘Who are you?’ Octavia says. ‘In the name of the Lord I command you to reveal yourself.’
‘I am the Divine Mother,’ a voice says, a deep voice that is not Emily’s own. ‘My Daughter … I have come to Your help … You shall not suffer this alone. I have come to establish the kingdom of My Son. Send the man to New York. He will die.’
‘The Divine Mother,’ Octavia says. ‘The Holy Spirit sent to me in female form.’ She brings Her head onto Her hands as though She is fainting. I jump up and rush to revive Her, but Her hunched body starts to shake and gasp. I can’t remember the last time I saw Octavia cry but I realise that’s what She is doing. I hear Her sobs. Great gulping sobs.
‘Octavia, are you all right?’ I say and She lifts her head to meet my eyes.
‘He has heard me, Dilys. God has heard me and answered my prayer. He has sent help. Don’t you see?’ But all I see is the twitch of a smile on the very corner of Emily’s lips.
‘The Lord has heard me,’ Octavia says to Herself. ‘I am not alone any more.’
But She was never alone. I was here.
Eve’s Shame
There’s a question lodged in my throat. Words scratching like fish bones: Why. Why now. Why Emily. I sink down beneath the bathwater and hold my breath. It struggles inside me, kicking against my ribs, fighting to be free. It scolds like steam. Then up it rises, surging into my cheeks and out into the water. Doubt rushing up and breaking as bubbles on the surface.
Why would the Spirit come to Emily after all these years?
I take another lungful of air. Hold my breath. Repeat. With my head in the water I can hardly hear them: Octavia, Emily and Peter in the dining room below me. Their joyful sobs and praise-be-to-Gods sound very far away, as though their awe and exhilaration have been subdued. That’s how I feel: muffled, distant, hollow. I should be downstairs celebrating with them. I should be elated. The Lord has sent the Holy Spirit to us; He has sent the Divine Mother, that’s what Octavia believes. She heard the prophecy from Emily’s lips. Send the man to New York. He will die. And in Her mind it’s as good as happened. Right now they are planning Edgar’s banishment. Imagining his death. Breathing a sigh of relief that he will no longer be their problem.
They barely noticed when I made my excuses and slipped away for my bath. Fridays are always my turn. Every week I come up and fill the enamel tub before supper, while Grace feeds the boiler in the kitchen. Missing it would have meant waiting for another week; missing it would have meant sitting in the dining room and pretending. So instead I scrub my body clean, use a brush to slough off the dry skin, lather up my hair with olive oil shampoo. I will have to be quick. My arms are turning to gooseflesh. The bath is getting cold but I can’t top it up. I’ll need to use the last of the hot water to wash my napkins in the sink. I thought my bleeds had stopped, that perhaps I really had reached middle-age prematurely; or that my body had realised the futility of its monthly chore. I thought that irregularity had finally given way to complete absence. But yesterday I felt the familiar stab of Eve’s shame.
I had a show of old blood, brown like rusted iron, a slurry of mud. It made me think of the neatly tended beds in the Garden. It made me wonder if that’s what women are. Whether that’s the ache they feel each month: the space inside them heavy with the weight of soil and possibility. Octavia talks about girls being deflowered. Girls Out There. Like roses being dead-headed or daisies being wrenched from the ground. It always seemed so violent, but perhaps that’s the way it has to be: a new generation fed by the decay of the one that came before. The sacrifice of nature.
But not in here. Not for me.
*
I hear a shriek downstairs. I’m not sure whether it is an exclamation of ecstasy or alarm. When I left them Emily was still insisting she couldn’t remember a thing about what she said at Ellen’s dining table. ‘Tell me the words again, Octavia,’ she said, bringing her hands up to the back of her own neck, perhaps to calm the hairs that might be standing on their ends. ‘I said that Edgar will die – is that right?’
Octavia had not realised She was expected to answer. Her eyes moved slowly around the room, Her body swaying slightly in Her chair. She looked as though She’d had rather too much to drink but I know She had not. It was Emily who’d had a small glass of sherry pressed into her hand once she ‘came round’.
‘Yes, Octavia, tell us again,’ said Peter, rushing to the sideboard to get a pencil and sheet of paper. ‘I shall write this down. We need to make a record of everything that passed.’
‘The wages of sin is death,’ Octavia whispered to Herself, but Peter didn’t hear. He had already turned his attention back to Emily, staring at her wide-eyed and alert as if he was seeing her for the first time. ‘I am only sorry I wasn’t there to witness this miracle for myself,’ he said, touching the pencil to his tongue and starting to write. Betty had been sent to fetch him straight away, but by the time he arrived at Ellen’s back door, Emily was wearing a self-satisfied grin that told me she was feeling quite ‘herself’ again and was no longer imbued with the divine.
‘Dear Lord,’ he said, kneeling beside her as he rushed into the room. ‘Well I never. It has happened. It has really happened!’ He kissed the hem of her dress, then sat cross-legged at her feet, his hair seeming to spring up off his head in excitement. ‘Our Heavenly Father has sent the spirit of the Mother to protect us all. Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘It is,’ I said. ‘It is.’ But the words made no impression on me, gave me no joy, left me no feeling.
*
I stand and step out of the bath, drops of cold water running down my neck. I reach out for the towel that is hanging on the stand beside the door, and wrap it around my shoulders but it does nothing to warm me. When I take out the plug they’ll hear the water gurgling through the pipes above their heads: the thoughts I whispered silently beneath the surface.
Why Emily? Why now?
The Trial
Edgar’s time has come; he has been called to trial. Emily said it was best to keep the matter private; Octavia will tell the congregation once he has been dealt with. But Peter and I have been called as witnesses to his wickedness.
Octavia is standing at the chapel altar. ‘He has revealed His Daughter to the World, through me, and now He has sent the Holy Spirit in the form of the Mother. He is sending reinforcements for the battle that is about to play out in this room.’ She laughs at how wrong the church of men has been. How blind to the Truth. ‘Look upon Emily’s window,’ She says, ‘a prophecy in stained glass. Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. And now the Mother is among us.’
Everything is just as Emily wants it, and everyone just where she wants them to be. Edgar had no choice. He had to com
e if he didn’t want to be turned out onto the streets: the society has all his money. He is sitting alone next to a small table; a black box, a Bible and the Jerusalem knife arranged neatly on top. His pocket watch and cane have been taken from him. And all that remains are rounded shoulders in a faded suit. He is already defeated. Peter and I are standing level with him, our backs against the chapel wall.
‘This is the Divine Court of Jerusalem,’ Emily says. ‘Here we shall bring Satan to trial.’ She is filling time, keeping him guessing, keeping him here. He has no idea that at this very moment Grace is at his lodgings, packing up his things. Octavia has bought his ticket for the Aquitania, which leaves for New York in ten days’ time. There was no question that She would let him stay in a society house until then, so Emily has organised a room for him near the station. Grace will go ahead to arrange his books and hang his clothes in the wardrobe. It will be as though he has been living there all along; as though none of this ever happened.
‘You must give evidence against Satan,’ Octavia says. ‘You are his accuser. Every sin you have committed must be laid at his feet, for you are under his control. What was the nature of your relationship with Donald Ricketts?’
‘I can explain,’ he says. ‘If I may be permitted to speak. I can explain it all.’ He keeps his eyes fixed on Octavia, but I can see from the slight tilt of his head that he senses Emily’s presence behind him; that he is wondering what she might be doing, might be planning.
‘The Bible speaks of the secret male combination,’ Octavia says. ‘The combination that Cain tried to force on Abel—’
‘But this is all a misunderstanding,’ he says. ‘Really there is no need for—’ He flinches as Emily puts her hands on his shoulders.
‘You will get your chance, Edgar,’ she says, leaning down to speak into his ear. ‘But this is a trial, we need to present our evidence first. Donald Ricketts gave a full account of what passed between you.’
‘He was a sensitive young man,’ he says, turning round to face her now. ‘Perhaps he mistook my kindness for something else …’
‘But do you expect us to believe that he misunderstood the sentiments you wrote to him?’ says Octavia. He swings back round to Her as She takes the lid off the box beside him. ‘I have read your correspondence with Donald,’ She says, lifting out a bundle of papers. ‘You look surprised to see them, Edgar.’
He stares at the letters, which She holds in front of his face, and starts to pray in a whisper. ‘Oh God,’ he says. ‘Oh God. Oh God.’
‘I should think you are surprised,’ She says. ‘You tore them up. But Peter found the pieces in your waste paper bin and put the jigsaw back together with parcel tape.’
Edgar is moving now, twitching as though he is struggling to sit still in his seat. Octavia steps back and begins to walk around the room, quite casually.
‘Love letters,’ She says. ‘This is the most deceptive point in the whole thing: you thought that what you felt was so extraordinary that it must be of God!’
Love. Is that what Edgar thought it was? How could it be? Octavia says men do not have the capacity to love as women do.
Edgar drops his head, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, trying to stop the tears from spilling out between his lashes, but he can’t stem the silent tide. Is it the memory of what has passed that he cries for, or the fear of what is to come?
Still walking, Octavia holds out a letter at arm’s length and narrows Her eyes to read from it. ‘Here you write: “My dear Donald, a feeling ran all over my interior as though you were alive within me!”’ I can feel heat rise to my face. My thoughts turn to buttons being undone, fingers intertwining, lips brushing skin. Then all I can think of is the taste of cotton nightdress on my lips. His words describe the way I feel when Grace’s skin touches mine.
And suddenly I pity him. Has he suffered as I do, torn between torment and rapture?
For love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
(1 John 4:7)
Octavia brings the back of Her other hand up to Her mouth, to contain an affected laugh. ‘“How greatly our souls or seed are knitted as one man!” you write here. “There exists in us one life that can never be broken again!” Oh Edgar, how you were both deceived!’
He jumps to his feet, snatching the letters from Her hand. ‘There was no deception. As it is written in the Bible, Octavia, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’ He takes another step. ‘And David said: Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.’
‘Homosexuality is the gravest of sins because it denies woman: the saviour,’ Octavia says. ‘In exchanging seed with man you deny the need for womanhood.’ She looks past him, and nods to Emily. By the time he turns to the table the knife is gone, and Emily is behind him pushing him down onto his seat.
‘What are you going to do?’ he cries out. ‘Octavia, what are you going to let her do?’
‘Sit quietly,’ Emily says slowly, savouring every syllable. ‘Sit still and you shall be delivered from your sin. Remember Lot’s wife and do not turn back.’
Without warning she falls down onto the floor, her body folding then stretching out, every limb rigid, every muscle taut. She is shaking violently, her head thrashing from side to side, fighting an attacker only she can see.
Does she actually believe it? She has lost herself in her own pretence, so determined to be like Octavia that she’ll do anything to prove it. She brings her hands to her throat, gripping tightly until she can hardly snatch a rasping breath.
‘Oh God,’ Edgar says, keeping his eyes fixed forward. ‘What is it? What is she going to do?’ I hear a low grunt and Emily stops suddenly, lying absolutely still and looking at the ceiling.
‘Who are you?’ Octavia shouts to her.
‘I am the Divine Mother. I command that this son be delivered from the control of Satan.’
She pushes herself onto her knees and brings her hands together, the palm of one curled round the other which is grasping the knife. ‘I answer only to the Lord,’ she says, in a jagged whisper. ‘The Lord alone.’
Emily tries to stand but falls back, scrabbling to her feet then staggering forward to his chair. Still he does not turn to face her. So when the knife appears at his throat he jumps. ‘Sit still,’ she shouts. And then she whips the knife away, walking round to face him and slashing at the air between them.
Nobody steps forward.
Nobody tries to stop her.
Not even me.
Octavia is standing completely still in the corner, one hand on the altar, the other on Her forehead. There is no life in Her eyes, no colour in Her face. How far will She let this go? ‘Get out of him!’ Emily shouts. ‘Demons be gone! Repent, Edgar, denounce your feelings – unnatural, abhorrent – they have no place in the Lord’s Garden.’
A feeling ran all over my interior as though you were alive within me.
Give something a name and that is what it becomes. But unnatural, abhorrent: that’s not what this is. Because that would make what I feel for Grace wrong. And it isn’t. It can’t be.
I have to get out. If she turns to me she’ll see, she’ll know. With every heartbeat my chest tightens its grip and leaves me gasping. My stomach heaves, the tang of sickness burns my throat and my body lurches towards the door.
‘All who sin must repent!’ Emily shouts into the air as I stumble into the Garden.
But what if I don’t want to be forgiven? What if I’m not sorry for what I feel? And for the things we have done, in my dreams, in the dark? How will I be saved?
*
No one came after me. All eyes were on Emily. Except Edgar’s: by then he had covered his face with his hands. I wanted to run away but I could hear it all, the sound of splintering wood and the cries of an animal: snarling, wild. I couldn’t help myself, I had to look. Through the prism of the stained glass all I could make out were shapes; a figure twirling and whirling as if she was
dancing. Then everything was still. Everything fell silent and I hid behind the Wireless Room and watched them come out. Emily and Peter linking Edgar’s arms and marching him back to Number 12. Octavia walking behind.
The door of the chapel had been left ajar, and as I entered, the last of the daylight seemed to hurry out behind me, shafts of gold stepping aside for dusk’s shadows to take their place. Edgar’s chair was lying on its side by the wall; a mess of scattered papers on the floor. In the struggle Peter’s packing tape had not held up and the sheets were a series of torn pieces once more. But the table was still standing, and the Bible was on the floor beside it, the corners of the leather cover dented, the gold stripe of the fore-edge looking cracked and torn. Perhaps Emily threw it down to hit a spirit only she could see. I imagine she rubbed her hands together with the satisfaction of someone who’d just swatted a fly.
I climbed up here into the clock tower and shut the hatch behind me. It’s a place where only Grace will think to look. I didn’t want to go home, I didn’t want to face them. But they’ll wonder why I wasn’t at dinner. I’ll have to stay up here all night with the spiders and their webs. It is too dark to make my way down the ladder now, I could fall and break my neck. I wouldn’t want Grace to find me like that.
‘Dilys?’ It’s just a whisper but I can hear her voice, coming to me in the spokes of light that are seeping between the floorboards. ‘Are you up there?’
I feel my way across the floor and find the ring on top of the hatch.
‘Yes. Can you help me down?’
She climbs, wrapping one arm around the rung at the top and using her other to reach out for my ankle. When my foot finds the ladder I feel like jumping. I can’t wait to get out of the darkness, as if there is something up here, as if there was something waiting all along.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ she says. ‘What are you doing? Octavia said you were taken ill.’
The Rapture Page 20