The Rapture

by Claire McGlasson

  She is waiting for me to admit it. A load of old nonsense. That’s what it amounts to. That’s all my life has been.

  ‘All this time,’ I whisper. ‘I’ve been waiting for an answer that was never going to come.’ She brings her free hand up to my back again, but as soon as I feel her touch she snatches it away.

  ‘Emily …’ she says in a voice loud enough to stop me from saying more.

  ‘There you are,’ Emily says, walking towards us with the others following behind. ‘I knew this would be too much for you, Dilys. I tried to tell Octavia.’

  Is she going to say anything about what just happened in there? Are any of them going to say it out loud? She opens her handbag, her cheeks reddening as her fingers fumble with the catch. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ she says under her breath, taking out a bundle of leaflets and turning back to the other five. ‘We’d better give these out quickly, people won’t hang around in this rain for long.’ She turns and starts to walk away. ‘Grace, you keep an eye on Dilys. Keep her out of the way before she makes even more of a spectacle of herself.’

  I move to follow her. To tell her it is wrong. All of this is wrong. But Grace holds my arm. ‘Just go along with it,’ she whispers. ‘We need to sort out what we’re going to do.’ We stand and watch the five of them thrusting leaflets into reluctant hands. Some in the crowd slow down long enough to snatch a page as they pass by, but most don’t see them at all, their heads dipped to shield their faces, hat brims pulled down, hands too busy lifting collars to reach out to receive a piece of paper. One man stops to take a leaflet from Emily, damp and distorted where the falling rain has swollen the print.

  ‘You were that crackpot shouting out in there,’ he says, with evident amusement. ‘When I read about this box in the papers I was hoping you lot would turn up tonight – add to the entertainment.’

  ‘We turned up, sir,’ Emily says, ‘to tell the Truth, to call on the bishops to open Joanna Southcott’s box. The real box. The one in which she sealed the miracle that will save this great nation.’ She’ll be enjoying this, she can go home and tell Octavia she was abused and pilloried, and by a man who is obviously working class.

  ‘Good God,’ he says, shaking his head with a smile. ‘You really do believe it, don’t you? Even after all that in there.’ He looks down at the leaflet. ‘Crime and banditry, distress and perplexity will increase until the bishops open Joanna Southcott’s box. Well, it’s a bit late for that, isn’t it? The cat is out of the bag so to speak.’

  ‘That wasn’t the box.’

  ‘Oh come off it,’ he says. ‘Four sides and a lid? Looked like a box to me!’

  ‘Joanna may well have sealed up several boxes before she died … But the true box – that contains the prophecies – has yet to be opened.’

  Grace leans to me and whispers: ‘So suddenly there’s more than one?’

  I should have known; I should have known that Emily would have an answer. She has an answer for everything. Do not question, do not argue, but only obey.

  The man shrugs and walks away, calling back over his shoulder: ‘You old maids need a man to take your mind off this nonsense. I’d like to give you all something to think about.’ He stops to wink at us as he passes. ‘Madness,’ he says, with a cheerful satisfaction. ‘A bunch of lunatics the lot of you.’

  I hear the words and suddenly I’m running, eyes stinging with cold rain and hot tears. Madness. That’s the truth. It’s a secret I can’t keep any more. I push my way into the crowd and allow myself to be swept along. I don’t care where this tide of people is taking me. I can’t go back to Bedford. Not now.

  I feel a hand grab my arm and I push it away. ‘Dilys,’ Grace says, ‘it’s me. Come on.’ She pulls me behind her, through a doorway into the side of Westminster Abbey.

  ‘You can’t just run off like that,’ she says. ‘Emily will get suspicious.’

  We’re standing in the cloisters. Moonlight falls as fretwork on the stone floor, blue against the warm glow that spills from lamps strung at intervals from the vaulted ceiling. It is dark, and silent. It is beautiful. I just want to stay here for a moment, in silence, but Grace won’t be quiet. ‘Dilys, please, talk to me.’ Her whisper sounds so loud in here, so exposed, as if she is delivering a line on stage; as if the wall will slide back and reveal an audience. I’ll see the row of stone arches is just a painting on a gauzy curtain. And all this is just a show.

  ‘Dilys, what is it? Why did you—?’

  ‘Madness. Lunacy. That’s what he said—’

  ‘Men like that are not worth listening to.’

  ‘Is that what I am, Grace, is that what you think I am? Mad?’

  ‘We both believed in the society,’ she says. ‘I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe we were the answer, that we could solve the world’s problems, end all the suffering. But I can’t – not now. I’m going to leave Bedford. You should come with me. You’ll never get better until you do.’

  Better? I turn away towards a tomb that is set against the wall, a stone coffin with clawed feet like Apollyon. Like the window in the Bunyan Meeting Church. I can feel Grace close behind me, her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘I’ve been worried about you, Dilys – not eating, walking around in the middle of the night. And sometimes when we’re together, I don’t know what you’re thinking – what you want from me.’ She stops and steps closer. ‘And now all this with the Divine Mother? Trials and exorcisms? It’s getting dangerous, Dilys. We have to get out.’

  ‘But what about Octavia?’ I say.

  ‘You mean your mother?’ she says angrily. ‘For goodness’ sake, Dilys, why don’t you say it? Your mother.’

  ‘All right. My mother. I can’t just leave her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Now my breath is snatched away. It feels as though my throat is being crushed, a hand around my neck, squeezing so the words can’t come out. Why can’t you leave her, Dilys? She is no mother to you. She doesn’t care. She never did. I try to say it out loud but all I hear is a low moan that leaks out of my mouth before I can stop it. I’m not sure if it is sorrow or relief.

  Grace wraps her arms around me and my body is no longer my own, no longer under my control; it is shaken by the sobs that stumble out of the deepest parts of me. She is right. Octavia doesn’t care. She has watched me suffer. She made me believe in her wretched religion and it has made me as mad as her.

  ‘I’ve been hearing voices.’ I breathe my secret into Grace’s neck.

  ‘What?’ she says, pulling back to see my face. ‘Voices? What kind of voices? What do they say?’

  ‘I thought it was the Devil come to tempt me.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘No, I think it was my own thoughts all along. I think I wanted to do the things he whispered. It was always me …’ I feel her body tense against mine. ‘I can’t trust myself any more, to know what’s real and what is in my head.’

  I want her to tell me that I haven’t imagined how she feels. Or what we did. But I still can’t bring myself to ask her.

  ‘There were things I should have told you,’ I say, ‘about the others.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Rituals. I saw Octavia and the Four in the Upper Room – I saw her undressing. She was … Peter was lying at her breast.’

  ‘What?’ she says, stepping back from me. Now her body is shaking, I can feel it through the air between us. ‘Everything they did to Edgar – and all along … Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t want you to think that I was going mad.’ There is silence between us and I cannot bear it. I ache for her to speak but she says nothing. ‘Grace, that’s what they said about my mother when they took her away. They said she was mad. They didn’t understand that she was hearing the voice of God. But then Ellen sent her the pamphlet in the hospital, the one about Joanna Southcott. And it all made sense.’

  ‘So when you said she went away, she was in a madhouse? She was—’

&n
bsp; ‘She tried to take her own life.’

  Grace starts to pace, looking down at her own restless feet. ‘And thanks to Ellen it all made sense,’ she says, shaking her head.

  ‘It meant the voices were from God.’

  Her hands are clasped tightly together as if it is a strain to keep them still.

  ‘Who else knows about this?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘A secret even Emily doesn’t know,’ she laughs bitterly. ‘Well, I suppose that’s something.’

  She walks away from me and sits on a stone seat between the pillars; she runs her hands through her hair, scratching her fingers across her scalp, closing her eyes. ‘We’ve got to leave, Dilys. I can get a job somewhere else but I’ve got no money, nowhere else to stay. Is there anyone you know? Anyone who would help us?’

  ‘There’s no one.’

  ‘There must be. What about your brother – Adrian?’

  ‘It’s too late. He wants nothing more to do with me.’

  ‘Is that what he said?’

  ‘He said I could go and stay with him in India, but since he wrote to tell me he was getting married I haven’t heard from him.’ I had my chance and I didn’t take it. ‘It’s too late.’

  Something seems to awaken in her. ‘Dilys, are you sure he—’ But she is interrupted by a noise in the dark and we both stop and stay absolutely still.

  ‘Dilys, what if it isn’t too late?’ she whispers. ‘What if there was a way, would you take it?’ It’s a question that’s too big, too deep; a question that could swallow me up like the sea. Like the dark.

  ‘Dilys, do you trust me?’

  We hear another noise, footsteps this time. ‘Ah, there you are,’ says Kate. ‘I thought I saw you two ducking in here. Dilys, are you quite well?’

  ‘She wanted to get away from that dreadful man,’ says Grace, ‘the one who was so rude to Emily.’

  ‘Well, if you are all right, I think we’d better go,’ she says. ‘It’s been quite a night. The arrogance of Mr Price. And those people who came to watch tonight. Not one of them would listen. They refused to hear the Truth.’ She turns and walks to the door. ‘I hardly dare imagine what Octavia will say when we tell Her.’

  Grace stands up and finds my hand.

  ‘Well …?’ she whispers. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  Yes, Grace, I trust you.

  Branches

  As we turn into Albany Road it hits me again. I want to run. I can’t go back into Number 12, I can’t pretend that nothing has happened, that everything is just as it was. If I go back into that house I may never come out again; if I step back into the garden I might be trapped once more, blinded, like I have been all these years. All the way home my body has been aching. I can feel the secret burning beneath the surface of my skin. We could leave, I tell myself silently. Over and over again, in case I lose my grasp on the truth of it.

  In case I lose my nerve.

  ‘You are very quiet, Dilys,’ Emily says as we walk alongside the fence that marks the edge of the garden on Albany Road. I am quiet. I haven’t had the chance to say anything at all, not to Grace. Emily has made sure of that, she has not left my side. I haven’t been able to ask her what she meant, how we would go. And where. She seemed so certain. What if there was a way? But as we turn into the front path of Number 12 it no longer seems possible. We’ve got no money. Nowhere to go.

  ‘Dilys.’ I am startled by the sudden volume of Emily’s voice. ‘Dilys … did you hear me? I said it is best if I am the one to tell Octavia.’

  ‘Tell her what?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake … About Mr Price. I think you had better get straight up to bed.’

  It looks like Octavia has gone up already, as there are no lamps burning in the hallway. At least I won’t have to face her, that’s something, I suppose, because I’m not sure I could hide this secret; the very idea of it is too big, it is crammed into my chest, crushing my heart. At any moment it could come spilling out; words from my mouth or tears from my eyes. And then they would know what we are planning.

  Although I don’t yet know myself.

  I sit on the edge of my bed and listen. Two sets of footsteps on the stairs, then voices on the landing, before I hear the creak of Emily’s door and the sound of Peter climbing the ladder to his attic. Perhaps I should get into bed myself but I need to be ready to leave, ready in case Grace plans to run away tonight. Perhaps I should pack a suitcase. But what if someone found it? Think, Dilys. What would Grace do?

  I need her here. I need her to explain.

  She hasn’t come up yet. Now the others are in bed I will creep down and find her and then I’ll know. I’ll know she really said the things I heard her say. That I didn’t imagine them. I take a lamp from beside my bed and make my way along the landing and down the stairs. Everything is black, no light from the sitting room or dining room. The kitchen is dark too.

  And empty.

  ‘Grace?’ I whisper, stepping out of the backyard into the courtyard. ‘Are you out here?’ but I receive no answer.

  I walk on, turning out into the garden. ‘Grace?’

  She can’t have gone. She wouldn’t.

  Not without me.

  She must be waiting for me in the clock tower. We’ll be able to talk there. She’ll be able to explain.

  Stepping into the chapel I call her name again, louder this time. I shake the bottom of the ladder. ‘Grace, are you up there?’ But she is not.

  Oh God. Oh, dear God.

  I shouldn’t have told her about the voices.

  About Octavia.

  I think of the letter hidden beneath the others in my wardrobe, the one Mother wrote to us after she was sent away. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe she hadn’t left by choice or weakness. So I watched her build this chapel; watched the followers come and take their seats on either side of this aisle. I listened to her stand and preach at this altar. Folded on top is the priest’s stole that she wears, the one that was my father’s. Her beliefs have grown so very far from his. Like the branches of a tree. In the beginning you couldn’t see the split, but as time went on Octavia bent further and further from the truth we had been taught. And then she broke away. Broke down.

  I think of Yggdrasil. I think of the bough that fell on Adrian’s head when we were children. I think of the blood that trickled into his eye.

  I pick up the stole and bury my face into the fabric.

  I kneel and pray to the God of my childhood. The God of my father. The God who sent Grace to me. I pray for Him to show me which branch to follow.

  I pray for strength.

  Mabel Barltrop

  St Andrew’s Hospital

  Northampton

  11th August 1915

  My Dear Children,

  Try, my dearest ones, to stand up for Mother through thick and thin & know that God has been leading her Himself to do a difficult bit of work which needed doing and needed more courage than to face a cannon! Great joys are coming to us all I know.

  I want to be very open with you. I had been shown that I have – (and I hardly like to write it, but I think I must) – great mental activity & that my quick perceptions are of use to God in some way.

  God mercifully took from me conceit, in as far as it might lead me to desire to be known in the world & all I do will be anonymous as Pride has spoilt so many.

  To make a long story short, as I don’t wish to bore you, – my sufferings have been most dreadful, for when God gives Spiritual Vision, unless it be sanctified by suffering it would be dangerous. Little by little he is healing me, no one else, no doctor, no nurse, could heal me.

  The Devil has tried to destroy me several times, to drive me out of my mind, so I could not do what I had to, and of course the absolute dearth of sympathy and understanding on the part of everyone at home has made it very serious. I suppose it was ‘in the plan’ that I should be ‘alone’ & have none to help.

  Dear children, do try and
rise to all the teachings, & comfort your Mother who has suffered agonies untold and has only done her duty to you all & to her country in following God’s leadings. You see, dears, God is drawing very near to the Earth, at least Christ is, & we are all going to be spiritualised and made perfectly happy and lovely things will happen. Kneel down at night and thank God for helping Mother to do this work and for helping her get happy again and also ask Him to guide you to get ready in simple ways. Ask Him to give you the gift of Faith, also I beg and entreat you to write to me, just a few words, saying ‘Mother, we trust you & we will do as you say’.

  Your loving Mother

  The End

  There is pain in my knees and when I try to stand my legs won’t hold my weight.

  ‘Dilys, how long have you been in here? I’ve been looking everywhere.’ Grace helps me to my feet. ‘It was lucky I saw your lamp. When you weren’t in your room I … You have to come with me.’

  But I still don’t know where we will go. She hasn’t explained.

  ‘Now, Dilys.’

  Has the time come so soon? So quickly that I don’t have time to change my mind.

  She leads me out of the door and across the lawn away from Number 12.

  ‘I thought you had gone,’ I whisper. ‘Without me …’

  ‘Octavia left a note asking us to come to Ellen’s as soon as we got home. I didn’t see it until everyone had gone to bed.’

  It’s Ellen’s house we are crossing to now; there’s light shining from every window, a figure in silhouette in the back doorway. Now the storm has passed, the night has grown heavy, sodden with gloom.