The Dark Light

by Julia Bell

  We were quiet for a bit. I picked my nails, aware that she was watching me, like properly staring at me. I deliberately didn’t look. ‘What’s that?’ she said eventually, pointing at the tattoo on my thumb.

  ‘The moon,’ I said, turning my thumb to show her. ‘Did it myself.’

  ‘Your parents let you do that?’

  ‘Ron and Bridget? They’re OK.’

  ‘Why do you call them Ron and Bridget? Aren’t they your parents? What happened to your parents?’

  God, she was nosy. I shifted in my seat. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to tell her. Though I supposed Ron and Bridget were off somewhere telling one of the pastors anyway, so she might as well hear it from me.

  ‘My real mother died of an overdose,’ I said, swallowing a familiar sense of shame. ‘Heroin.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  I looked at her. She seriously didn’t know. ‘Drugs.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘Wasn’t your fault. I was only little. I don’t really remember her. They found me two days later still trying to wake her up.’

  These things were in my case notes, the fat file that Sue the Social Worker used to carry around with her to meetings, stained with mug rings and drips of grease from her desk lunches, then on her iPad with the cracked screen.

  Early years chaotic, mother drug abuser, father unknown . . . Alex is a lively child who loves playing with her toys and lots of cuddles! . . . Wary of strangers, would be best placed in an environment where she is the only child . . . Has difficulty relating to others, presents as detached and unresponsive . . . tendency towards living in a fantasy world . . . self harm is an issue.

  She let me read it once. ‘It’s only fair you should know what has been written about you.’

  Fair, maybe, but I’d rather I hadn’t. It made me angry, all the things other people had said about me as if I wasn’t an actual person, but a specimen to be dissected and studied. And no matter how many people told me it wasn’t my fault, I still wondered if maybe, if I’d been a different, better, nicer person, she might have lived. She might have fought for me, for us.

  Rebekah blinked at me. ‘Quite a few of our number have had drug problems or been possessed by alcohol. All who repent are welcome at the Lord’s table. We don’t judge.’ She said this like she was offering me a favour.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said sarcastically.

  What was it with the God botherers that they couldn’t open their faces without sounding like they were patronizing you? I wondered what she’d say if I told her I was gay. Although I doubted she’d have a clue what the word meant.

  I’d known since I was about twelve, ever since I had seen Carrie Matthews winning the 800 metres on sports day. Her legs were the colour of smooth peanut butter and I wanted to touch them in wonder. And I knew too, without anyone telling me, that these feelings weren’t something I was supposed to share with anyone. Especially at Ron and Bridget’s where no one spoke about sex, ever, and in the Church where they only talked about it as a sin.

  Other girls, normal girls, liked boys. They obsessed about whether they were friends with them. About who was crushing on who. They were like Kaitlin Watts, bitchy, territorial. I didn’t know what my territory was, if I even had a territory. Mostly I just felt bad. Bad about being different, bad about being the one with the tragic story that everyone felt sorry for, bad that I didn’t want to dress girly, bad that I was even on the planet at all. I touched the white scars on my arms. Sue the Social Worker had been getting me help with that, but I still wanted to do it all the time.

  Being gay was the worst thing some of the Church people could think of. The way they went on about it you’d think it was worse than murdering someone or being a paedophile. But if God was supposed to be all about love, how could He hate people for feeling it? It wasn’t God who hated; it was people. People like Ron and Bridget and Dick the Pig and that other woman, Hannah, who kept staring at me. Her disapproval was like a force field. I got it all the time; I knew I looked a bit like a boy. I always got mistaken for one. I glared at her until she looked away.

  ‘Is that your mother?’ I nodded at Hannah.

  ‘No!’ Rebekah said this like she was shocked. ‘My mother’s dead. Like yours.’

  I looked at her properly then, and smiled, and a current of understanding passed between us.

  ‘She got sick.’ She turned away from me like she didn’t really want to talk about it and her eyes shone like she was holding on to tears, and I wanted to be nice to her and tell her I knew how she felt. That whatever anyone said about it being OK, nothing was ever going to make up for that emptiness.

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nearly sixteen,’ she said.

  I sat up. ‘Seriously?’ She was lying, had to be. She didn’t look a day older than twelve.

  ‘Why, how old did you think I was?’

  ‘Maybe thirteen or something.’

  ‘Thirteen?’ She sounded offended. ‘How old are you then?’

  ‘Sixteen in two months.’

  ‘Then we’re nearly the same age,’ she said impatiently. ‘Anyway, if I don’t look my age, then you don’t look like a girl. I thought you were a boy back there on the prom. You even sound like one a bit.’ She said this like she was telling me off.

  ‘So? What do you think a girl should look like?’ I said this more cockily than I felt.

  ‘Well, you wear trousers. In New Canaan women must always wear skirts, and cover their arms for modesty.’

  ‘But we’re not Victorians! Girls can wear trousers too.’

  ‘Only if they’re with the devil,’ she said.

  I stared at her. ‘Are you serious?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Mr Bevins forbids it.’

  ‘I’m not wearing a skirt!’ Skirts made me feel at odds with myself. Cold, mostly, but also unprotected. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn one. Even at school I wore trousers.

  ‘You have to if you’re in our community.’

  ‘What if you’re just visiting?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We don’t get many visitors.’

  I wriggled in my seat and wondered if there was any way to get out of this. I could just run away. But I already did that once, and I knew what the streets held for girls like me. Across from me, Hannah was standing in the porch arguing with a man who was pointing his finger at her and shouting.

  ‘But you know the End Times are here?’ she was saying. ‘The days of the Rapture are upon us.’

  ‘Well, you know what? Hoo-bloody-ray. I can’t wait!’ he said. ‘If you’re going to be in heaven, then I’ll gladly go to hell! And no, I don’t want one of your bloody leaflets!’

  I closed my eyes. I was beginning to think this was a very bad idea. Two months. It couldn’t be over soon enough.

  FOUR

  REBEKAH

  The camp bed creaks as I turn over. In the other bed I can hear Alex’s slow breathing, the occasional snuffle. Light from the corridor filters through the porthole window on the door, which is crosshatched with wire and glazed with frosted glass so no one can see through. I can’t sleep.

  I’ve never met anyone like her before. She seems like two people, both boy and girl, shy and confident, hard and soft. I think New Canaan will be a good place for her. I’m glad she’s coming with us. Ron and Bridget made a big fuss of praying over her in the meeting, and then afterwards Father said that Mr Bevins had approved the idea that she was to come and live with us for a while and he charged me with looking after her. I have already prayed that she will see the light.

  The last new people to come to us were Jonathan and Daniel, who came after Mr Bevins went on a mission to London to speak to a Church there. When Daniel arrived his beard was so thick he looked like a wolf-man, and he kept his hair long and tied it back in a ponytail. Everything about him was dirty, and since he’d stopped taking drugs he’d been seeing visions of devils following him. So they kept him in the Solitary and pray
ed over him for days and then baptized him in the sea. He cut his hair and shaved his beard and suddenly we could see that he was young. The lines on his face from the dirt had washed away. And Father told the story of how the whole of heaven would be rejoicing because of the one sinner brought to God, and what a miracle-worker Mr Bevins was, gone into ‘the very jaws of darkness itself’ to rescue lost souls.

  I wonder if they’ve told her about the Solitary. I wonder if Mr Bevins will make her go there. It’s an old stone house on the other side of the island, about a three-mile walk from the Protheroe farm, turned into a chamber of cells. It has thick stone walls and a heavy earthen roof and was built many thousands of years ago, maybe as a burial chamber, although no one really knows. It was once home to a hermit, the last person living on the island, found crawling around on all fours like a dog when some sailors stopped off to visit years ago. Apparently he barked at them and ran away. The next time the island was visited there was no trace of him, only some rabbit bones and the remains of a fire.

  Father and Micah Protheroe divided it into four small cells. Each has enough space for a bed and a chair and the person gets water and soup and a copy of the Bible, but for forty days and nights they must remain in prayer to prepare themselves for our community. There is always one of the community resident there, living in silent contemplation. At the moment it’s Naomi; she’s been there for many years. When she came to the island she said it was her role, that she was a prophet of God and she was watching and praying for signs of wonder. As far as anyone knows, she has not spoken a word in two years.

  Sometimes Mr Bevins will go there to listen to God, or he will send those he perceives are in danger of backsliding to go there to watch and pray. When he’s angry Father threatens me with it, usually if I’ve been too talkative or too demanding. I’ve always been afraid of being sent there, locked up all day in the cold with no fire and nothing but the mousy scratching of Naomi and the sea and the gulls for company.

  Suddenly there’s a fanfare and a blink of light coming from her bed. There’s a halo around her hair. She’s looking at something, her phone.

  ‘How did you get that?’

  ‘Go away,’ she growls.

  She turns over so she’s lying on her back and I can see she has her phone held above her face.

  ‘You’re not supposed to have that.’

  She grunts.

  She’s scrolling through photos. I get flashes of images, the light changing against her face. When one picture comes up she looks at it for a long time.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a computer here with the Internet?’ she asks, her voice muffled by the sleeping bag.

  I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe in the office.’

  ‘Huh. Didn’t think so.’

  That makes me cross. ‘The Internet is a gateway to a world of sin,’ I say. ‘It’s not important to us. That’s the point of living off the grid.’

  She sighs. ‘I suppose I should have known people like you wouldn’t be on Facebook.’

  ‘Is that a religious book?’

  She snorts. ‘A religious book! Ha!’ Then she looks at me funny, sort of hard, like she’s trying to see inside me. ‘Seriously? This place is really freaky—’

  ‘We’re not freaky!’ I say. ‘It’s the world that’s all wrong! Everyone who doesn’t believe is going to hell!’

  ‘Yeah, exactly, like I said: freaky.’

  This just makes me confused. I curl into the blankets. I don’t want her to think I’m freaky. We’re silent for a while.

  ‘The island’s really nice,’ I try again. ‘It’s beautiful.’ Which is true. On a sunny day the whole place is like heaven itself, the deep blue of the sea, the springy turf, the birds, the cliffs like cathedrals. Mr Bevins says it’s easier to be close to God in such an elemental place. ‘We’re blessed by Him,’ I say.

  ‘What if God is a woman?’ she says.

  ‘But He’s not!’

  ‘But how do you know?’ She has this way of asking nosy, insistent questions.

  ‘Because it says in the Bible.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. That. Look, if it’s OK with you, I’m just going to be here for a couple of months to pick up some skills and then I’ll be on my way. I don’t have anything against your religion and stuff, but please don’t expect me to want to talk about it, OK?’

  ‘What do you want to talk about then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to talk right now. If that’s OK with you.’

  ‘OK.’

  There aren’t many other young people on New Canaan. I’m glad she’s coming with us. I lie in the dark a long time looking at the silhouette of her shoulder, listening as her breathing softens into sleep, my thoughts whirring.

  Hannah wakes us early for a prayer meeting, which I doze nearly all the way through. Alex sits next to me, twitching the whole time. Since we got up she’s been sulky and silent, just grunting at me, or pretending to ignore me. I don’t know what to say to her to make it better. I wonder if it’s my fault. I don’t want her to hate me.

  Afterwards the pastor drives us down to the harbour in the Church van. The van is full of boxes, right up to the roof; some of the Church members helped us pack it after the prayer meeting. We won’t be getting deliveries again for a while, unless the Church has scheduled a visit, so everything counts. The jars of peanut butter and tins of baked beans will be used up first, then the tubs of sugar and flour will slowly dwindle until there is nothing and we will be on fasting rations again until there’s a delivery or a visit to the mainland in a couple of months. I wonder how everyone is doing with the harvest and if the weather there has been as bad as it is here. I long to see the land again, the greenhouse tomatoes that I have nurtured since they were tiny seedlings. I love this time of year – the harvest is like our reward for all the hard work.

  The tide is high at ten and the best time to get out of the harbour smoothly is just as it is on the turn, pulling the boat back out to sea with hardly a need of the engine. It will take six or seven hours to get there, maybe more depending on the swell. It’s why no one ever comes except by appointment or accident. And it’s one of the hardest islands to land a boat on because of the way the tides sweep around the rocks at the mouth of the harbour.

  Alex scowls when she sees the boat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s rusty!’

  The Spirit of the Sea is an old fishing boat with a closed cabin. I suppose it does look a bit scruffy, but it got us here OK. Terry, a local fisherman who worships at the Church, is making ready, checking his radio and electrics, coiling the ropes that keep the boat secured to the jetty.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say.

  Alex looks sceptical. ‘What happens if I change my mind?’

  Father has overheard, and he puts his arm on Alex’s shoulder. ‘Put your trust in the Lord, Alex. All will be well. You’ll see.’

  She grunts as if she doesn’t believe it. ‘Seriously? What if it sinks or something?’

  Hannah laughs. ‘Don’t be hysterical. Terry does this journey all the time. Come on, give us a hand.’

  Alex gives her a dirty look and mutters to herself.

  We pass the boxes into the hold. The wind has dropped since yesterday, but it’s still grey and gloomy with a thin cloak of cold drizzle. The hull is rusting in places, bubbling through the paintwork and scarring it. The boat dips and sways as I step from the jetty to the deck, which smells really strongly of fish. My feet slip in the wet and I nearly drop a box.

  ‘Careful!’ Father shouts. He seems really angry about something, I’m not sure what. In the prayer meeting this morning one of the congregation had a prophecy. A passage from the Book of Samuel about David and Goliath, in which David hurls a stone at the giant and kills him. There was lots of discussion about its meaning, but then we had to go. The pastor said he would pray for it to be revealed, but it seems to have made Father nervous and anxious to get back to the island.

&
nbsp; When the hold and half of the small cabin are packed with our stuff, we stand on the harbour road pulling on our waterproof clothes.

  ‘The time is soon at hand, Brother,’ the pastor says to Father as he shakes his hand. ‘I’ll be seeing you in the glory before I see you here again.’

  Father nods, but he doesn’t seem too happy about it. ‘Well, I hope so.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s not be pessimistic.’

  I wonder what’s happened, but when Father catches me watching he shoos me away. ‘Go on, Rebekah, get ready.’

  We wear bright red trousers and coats that smell of mildew from the boatshed. I have to roll the skirt of my dress up into a bunch around my middle in order to get the trousers on. There was some discussion about us being allowed to wear trousers at all, but they decided in the end that there was no alternative, although Hannah did suggest that they had solutions for these things in the Middle East, but as that would have meant buying clothes from the Internet it was decided that waterproofs would be allowed just for the length of the boat journey. Gulls circle above us, and rigging clangs as the boats in the harbour bob on the rising tide.

  The pastor drives off in the van and we all jump onboard, Terry unhitches the rope from its moorings and the boat slips quickly into the tide and out of the harbour to the open sea. I huddle in the cabin with Hannah on top of some of the catering tins of sugar and flour that Terry has lashed to the sides to stop them falling over. Alex won’t sit with us; she insists on standing outside with Father and Terry.

  ‘I want to see where I’m going,’ she says, pulling up the hood of her windcheater and zipping it so I can see only her eyes. ‘How long does it take?’ she asks.

  I shrug. ‘Six hours,’ I say.

  Immediately the boat is in the open sea it starts to dip and roll in the swell. It’s much choppier than on the way over, in the calm, when the water was so smooth and clear it was almost a lake. The tins shift underneath me and I have to grab on to the ropes to stop myself from slipping off.

  Before long we are out of sight of the mainland; the cliffs and the mountains disappear into the murk behind us, and ahead nothing but the folds of the sea. The engine drones against the hiss and roar of the ocean as it slams against the boat. The waves are tipped with white foam, which after a while become hypnotic as we lurch in between the peaks and troughs, and I don’t notice that Alex is sick until she’s bending over the side of the boat, hurling into the spray.