The Rapture

by Claire McGlasson

  ‘Listen,’ he says, looking up into my face, ‘I need to you to understand where we’re … My God, Dilys, you’re bleeding.’

  So I am. Just like the day the branch cut his head.

  ‘You still have the scar, Adrian.’ I reach out and touch the puckered line above his eye. There are tears on my fingertips; the blood has turned them pink. I remember the day Grace bathed my hand in the healing water. She took the bowl and made me clean.

  ‘Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow …’ I say.

  ‘Dilys?’

  But I don’t have time to explain. We need to go.

  ‘Mother will come and get me,’ I say. ‘She’ll try to stop me.’

  ‘No, Dilys. No one’s coming. No one will stop us. Not now.’ He pulls me down next to him and wraps his arms around me. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘I thought I was hearing voices,’ I whisper. ‘I thought I was going mad. But all the time it was you. It was you, Adrian. You were trying to send word, weren’t you?’

  ‘Hush, dear girl, you’re safe now. Everything will be all right. We’re going to take you away from here. We’ll look after you.’

  He means Grace. He means they’ll look after me together.

  ‘Where is she?’ I try to say it, but the thought of her makes my throat burn, makes my tears fall. Relief flooding out of me. It rises up in waves and my head feels as though it’s expanding. As if I might float away. Just like that first breath of Grace’s cigarette. Just like that night in the churchyard.

  ‘Where’s Grace?’ I say, pulling away from him. ‘She’s the one who helped you, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. She saw me watching the house and she came out, walked past me on the street, whispered there were things she had to tell me. We arranged to meet by the river. She told me what has been going on in there … What Mother did with Peter. It’s disgusting.’ He turns and looks out of the window. ‘She told me that woman, Mrs Goodwin, had been hiding my letters. And she managed to get that doctor to see you, which is more than I could do alone. I’m so sorry, Dilys. She has been a better friend to you than I have been a brother. She obviously cares about you very much.’

  She loves me. That is our truth. I wonder if she told him that herself. Or whether she chose to keep it secret. I wonder whether Adrian would understand.

  ‘Mother’s religion has made you ill. Grace wants you to get better. We both do. Here,’ he says, reaching inside his jacket pocket to pull out an envelope, ‘she asked me to give you this.’ Inside is a note, written in Grace’s hand:

  Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

  (3 John 1:2)

  And suddenly I am starting to unravel; moths gnawing through the threads of hope that have been holding me together.

  ‘Where are we going, Adrian?’

  ‘Far away from all this.’

  ‘But Grace is coming with us, isn’t she?’

  He looks down at our hands again and squeezes his fingers around mine. ‘Dear girl,’ he says. ‘All in good time.’ The slam of the driver’s door makes me jump. ‘We have to get you away from here first—’ Adrian starts to speak but his voice is lost as the engine starts up. It makes the van shake. Or perhaps I am the one shaking. Through the two small windows in the back I watch Albany Road start to move, terraced soldiers on parade, marching into the distance. We drive past the corner, past the streetlamp.

  We’ve come more than seventy-seven steps. Too far for her to get me now.

  ‘Deep breaths,’ Adrian says. ‘Here, have a good old glug of this, it’ll help to calm your nerves. I can’t imagine what it must have been like, in that house.’ I take a sip and taste the bitter fire of alcohol. ‘A nip of brandy,’ he says. ‘That’s it, drink up. It’ll do you good. Now rest your head on my shoulder, Dilly, and try and get some rest. We haven’t got far to go now.’

  But we have. We have a long, long way to go. We’re going all the way to India.

  I close my eyes and imagine we’re already at sea; imagine that every jolt and turn of the van is a wave buffeting a swaying ship. I imagine that it is lulling me to sleep. When I wake up we’ll be there. Grace will be waiting.

  OCTAVIA’S DIARY: 1915

  I followed a nurse through a very handsomely furnished corridor. I noticed that she locked and unlocked many doors, but I did not worry about this, as I thought I was being taken to the house of rest.

  I suddenly, however, found myself in a corridor, where obviously insane persons were wandering aimlessly about. One came up and made hideous snatchings at me; others surrounded me with curiosity. I said to the nurse: ‘This is not the place I want to come to … this is a terrible mistake. I have not been sent here as a lunatic.’ She replied: ‘Oh I have heard that kind of tale before,’ and remembrance of novels I had read rose up before me. A hard, cruel look came into her face, which warned me that it was wiser to conform amiably for the moment lest I should be subjected to personal force.

  The door was open of a padded room in which, as far as I can remember, I saw a naked lunatic. I was put into a small bedroom next to it, with a window which would only open about six inches and had heavy wooden shutters. There came distressing sounds from a distance. At the end of the corridor was the nurses’ mess room where, at intervals, noisy meals were in progress. Just across the garden was the great kitchen where washing-up for five-hundred patients was done. Everybody knows the power to irritate of the sound of washing up! Each door in the building had to be slammed shut to make it lock, and could only be opened by a noisy key.

  I ask, is not all this enough to make a perfectly sound person nervous? I ask again, is not all this enough to make a slightly nervous person insane?

  The Crossing

  I haven’t seen the sea, or the sky. There is no window. It must mean I am below the water-level. But I’m safe here. I’m not drowning. Not any more.

  The cut on my head is healing, a nurse washed away the blood when I arrived. ‘Try not to touch it,’ she said, rather officiously. But sometimes I knock the scab, and once I start picking, I can’t seem to stop. Perhaps I’ll have a scar like Adrian’s. I have no mirror to check. The cabin is so sparse. In fact there isn’t much of anything; just a metal bed and a scratchy blanket. And I’m finding it hard to sleep at night, there’s too much noise: the metal doors slam and locks turn, trolleys rattle by, delivering meals further down the corridor, and sometimes I can hear screams. I imagine they must come from excited children playing hopscotch up on deck.

  There is so much humanity packed into a confined space. It makes me think of Edgar who spent his last days at sea, trying to stay standing as the ground was moving beneath his feet. Sometimes the ship lists so violently that I struggle to get out of bed. Everything is always moving. Nothing is still.

  *

  We set sail three days ago. I think it’s three. I’ve lost track of the passing hours. I have no watch, no clock, the meals that arrive on trays are the only way to gauge the time of day. A surly woman passes them through a hatch in the door, like letters through a letterbox. I can only see her eyes.

  ‘When will we be there?’ I ask.

  She doesn’t answer.

  But I know it won’t be long before we begin a new life in India. Adrian told me that, when we arrived on board. I didn’t wake until the back doors of the van creaked open, and even then I didn’t want to move, I wanted to sleep. He helped me out and walked me up a flight of steps into the ship. Inside it looked just like a grand house, waiters in white suits were waiting to greet me.

  ‘They’ll look after you, Dilys,’ Adrian said, giving one of them my arm. ‘You’re safe now. Get better and then we can start a new life together, in India. I promise.’

  ‘You, me and Grace,’ I said.

  He embraced me and I felt as if he would never let me go. ‘All this,’ he said, ‘it’s not forever, and it’s for the best – I had to get you away from her.’ Then he turned away and
left. He must have gone to his own cabin to make arrangements.

  We’ll arrive just in time for the best weather, the monsoon season will have passed and cloudless skies will give the sun free rein to shine. It will take me time to get used to the climate – every day is hotter than a Bedford heatwave, that’s what Adrian once said in one of his letters months ago – but I long to see the sun, to feel its warmth on my face, just like I did the day I met her. The day I went to the Bunyan Meeting Church.

  ‘Grace, do you remember?’ I whisper, and she makes that noise – somewhere between a laugh and a sigh; somewhere between longing and contentment. She is standing behind me, resting her chin on my shoulder. I knew she would come.

  And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

  And now she is coming with me to the other side of it. To India.

  ‘I have something of yours,’ I say. ‘Something you lost.’ She can sew it on at last, onto her dark blue coat. I try to reach into my pocket but I can’t. And when I look down I am wearing different clothes: clothes without pockets or buttons; clothes with buckles.

  ‘I’m sorry, Grace. I can’t find it.’

  But she doesn’t seem to mind. I feel her breath on my neck. Her hands move up to find me, her fingers trace my collarbone, across my shoulders, down to my fingertips. And then she takes my hands in hers and draws me close, wraps my arms across my body, tightly, too tightly, so I can’t move at all.

  She is holding me. I am being held.

  Appendix

  CASE BOOK: FEMALES 19

  No. 7586 Name: Barltrop, Mabel

  June 24th, 1915 – CAUSE Predisposing: –

  Exciting: Change of Life

  Number of attacks: 2nd

  Duration: 3 months

  Form of mental disorder:

  Melancholia

  ‘Mabel Barltrop was in bed, her eyes were suffused and bloodshot: the face bruised. She said that the condition of her eyes was caused in the effort to strangle herself and not by any direct injury. She felt all her nerves were springing. She then said that she had committed the unpardonable sin, which was preaching religion to people and not practising it herself, and had better destroy herself.’

  ‘Is very nervous and somewhat hysterical – says she has lost all control of her nerves.’

  ‘States that she has got hold of an evil spirit. That all the powers of darkness are after her and fill her with terror. Makes constant restless movements, picking at the wall and drawing the bedclothes up and thrusting them down.’

  ‘She tells me that occasionally she is inclined to injure other people, and that she also has suicidal thoughts. A short time ago she did attempt to drown herself, but unfortunately she could swim.’

  ‘She says she feels sure she would kill her son (for whom she has a great affection) should he come to see her. Last night she became violent and attempted to strike the other patients. She requires constant supervision; and has been moved to prevent her doing harm.’

  ‘Patient has been writing letters to the King. She apparently imagines she has had a special Revelation from God telling her how the war was caused and the way to stop it. She is somewhat incoherent and strange in her conversation.’

  ‘She writes a considerable amount of nonsense. Her delusions are of such a nature that they warp her judgement of almost everything. She believes that she has been specially chosen by God to improve mankind etc. She exhibits a most compelling ingenuity for “catching up” people when they converse with her.’

  Author’s Note

  In the dining room of a Victorian house on Albany Road in Bedford I sat and waited for an archivist to return with the first box file. On the walls, framed posters warned of ‘Crime and Banditry, Distress and Perplexity’; in a glass cabinet were leather-bound volumes of the nightly messages Octavia believed she had received from God. Inside that first file I found a jumble of sealed envelopes, each marked ‘For the Divine Mother: If unopened please burn’. I took Octavia’s paperknife and I opened them one by one, reading the confessions of members of the real Panacea Society. Just as their leader had commanded, every detail of life had been preserved – room upon room of brown parcels cataloguing every business and spiritual transaction. With the kind permission of the Panacea Charitable Trust, which maintains the archive, I was able to plunder its secrets over a number of months. The sections of the novel printed in bold are quoted from source material, including letters, society instructions and case notes relating to Mabel’s psychiatric treatment.

  Among the many diaries and albums was a photograph of the Panacea ladies taking tea on the lawns of ‘the Garden of Eden’. While those around her chatted, a young woman was looking up, straight into the lens of the camera. It was a photograph of Dilys Barltrop and – already fascinated by the society – I became intrigued to uncover her story, and The Rapture began to take shape.

  No offence is intended towards any living relatives of Panacea members. Though this is a work of fiction, the majority of the characters and their experiences are inspired by fact, though dates have been changed to condense the story into a year. In the case of Mabel’s medical notes I have combined two reports from two stays in different hospitals. My writing of Dilys, Octavia and Emily was informed by correspondence and diary entries; and details of Edgar and Donald’s relationship were taken from confessions and letters. I know much less about the many members who lived in neighbouring streets but have borrowed their names and circumstances to imagine the wider cast of characters.

  The only wholly invented person in the novel is Grace, who took up one of the positions of unpaid servant offered to those who didn’t have the means to buy or rent a place in ‘the Garden’. There is no evidence that Dilys had any romantic relationship with anyone in the society, though other members confessed to attractions and intrigues, so here I intertwine their stories with hers, and in fiction give her a love affair that reality may never have afforded her.

  The real Adrian Barltrop sent numerous letters to his mother, threatening legal action and accusing Emily Goodwin of keeping his correspondence from her. Research suggests he employed messengers to get help to his sister, who was eventually sent away to recuperate. But despite a period away from the society, the real Dilys chose to return to the society and spent the rest of her life in Bedford.

  I owe many of the facts about the structure and theology of the Panacea Society to research carried out by priest and historian Jane Shaw for Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and Her Followers, her non-fiction book written at the invitation of the last surviving members. Details of the opening of the ‘other’ box were drawn from Exploding the Southcott Myth, Harry Price’s own account in Leaves from a Psychists’s Casebook.

  Parts of this story were written in the homes and gardens in which it is set, where I was able to handle the linen that Octavia had breathed on, climb into the clock tower, and sit and make notes in Dilys’s bedroom. As the ageing members of the Panacea Society began to die, their rooms were sealed up and their belongings kept just as they had left them. Everything was made ready for the day they would return with Jesus by their side. Even after Octavia’s death in 1934 the Panacea Society continued to attract new members, and by 1943, when Emily Goodwin died, there were eighty living in Bedford and nearly two thousand worldwide. Conservative estimates suggest 130,000 applications were received for the healing water, and linen squares were still being posted to believers around the world until the death of the last member, Ruth Klein, in 2012.

  Today Octavia’s house and her Garden of Eden are open to the public. The Panacea Museum still keeps the secret of the location of the ‘real’ box believed to contain Joanna Southcott’s prophecies. That box has yet to be opened.

  Acknowledgements

  So many people are written into the pages of this book – in the fabric of the story and the words that stitch it all together. Perhaps it is only fitting that a novel about a remarkable group of women should be publi
shed by a team that’s almost exclusively female. The Rapture is certainly better for their passion and talent and my experience all the richer for watching them at work.

  I must thank staff at the Panacea Museum in Bedford for sharing their knowledge on my very first visit, and for their continuing patience when I kept coming back. Gemma Papineau and Vicki Manners were an invaluable source of information and support. Of course, this novel would not have been possible without the permission of the Panacea Charitable Trust which looks after the society’s archives – thank you David McLynn and Sean Gillen for the opportunity to explore them. My gratitude also to Leslie Price of the College of Psychic Studies, and to Joy and Vernon White for a gaslight tour behind the scenes at Westminster Abbey.

  To Laura Williams of Greene & Heaton – the first, the best – who believed in this story before I’d even written it. You walked by and wished me luck when I stood up in public and shared my early scribblings. Who knew you’d become my agent? Thank you for being there at every step with calm words and cake. This is our book.

  My editor, Louisa Joyner – your insight and intelligence mean you saw things in this story that even I didn’t know were there. No matter how well I get to know you, I’m still in awe! Thank you, Dr J, for everything.

  May I state here on record that Libby Marshall is not only the hardest working person in publishing, she is also the kindest. Katie Hall in marketing is, quite simply, a genius. Lauren Nicoll, my publicist, has championed this book with passion and care. And I’m so grateful to designer Donna Payne and photographer Jeff Cottenden for such a delicately sinister cover. (I’ll always cherish the memories of the day we spent at the Panacea Museum with a stuffed jackdaw.)