by Julia Bell
She looks different; it takes me a moment to realize that her lip ring is gone.
‘What happened to your . . . ?’ I point at my own lip.
She won’t meet my eye. ‘More trouble than it’s worth,’ she says. ‘Anyway, it’s hard to keep it clean.’
‘What did he say to you?’
She sighs. ‘He told me I’ve got to wear a dress and say this prayer for repentance.’ She holds out a piece of paper to me, handwritten in Bevins’s familiar tight handwriting. ‘He said they spent all week praying for guidance not even stopping to eat.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘That I’m some kind of . . . harbinger. I mean, seriously? Fasting, for me? It’s a bit extreme.’
‘No, it’s not!’ I say, more tartly than I want to. ‘Those prayers were a gift to your soul.’
‘Right. You sound just like him! Don’t you ever think for yourself?’
‘Thinking is sinking,’ I say automatically.
‘Oh come on! What’s that supposed to mean?’
But I can’t answer that and I look at the piece of paper. It’s a prayer for repentance like we say in church. I know it by heart.
‘Almighty God, we miserable sinners come to You in penitence and sorrow . . .’
She grabs it from my hands and rips it up. It’s then I realize quite how strong the devil must be in her, so much does she struggle to hear the truth, and I step back from her, afraid.
‘He tried to burn your hand!’
‘No, he didn’t!’ I say. ‘He was teaching me a lesson.’ And at least it wasn’t stripes from the rod, which would have hurt a great deal more.
‘But . . . I mean . . . seriously?’ She shivers. ‘I don’t like him.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say. She just wants to attack; I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. I must be strong, show her the way.
I take the knife, start chopping carrots for soup. I see it before it happens, but I don’t move my finger out of the way fast enough. The knife comes down on my finger instead of the carrot, slicing through skin, almost touching bone. Blood bubbles up to the surface and I stare at it, at the depth of the cut, unable to move until Alex grabs my hand and puts my hand under the tap. I’m faint and I’m trembling, but I won’t cry. I bite my lip and close my eyes, pray to God to help me. Sometimes I wish He would hurry and come with His chariots of fire and chorus of heavenly angels, and then all this confusion and suffering would be over once and for all and I could see my mother, who I miss with all my heart.
Alex wraps my finger in a strip of cloth that she tears from a tea towel. ‘You’ve gone all white,’ she says.
I swallow a feeling of sickness. I’ve still got to prepare food for thirty, then make a pot of soup enough to take to the Solitary and then scrape dishes and wash up, and how will I be able to do that now? The cut throbs violently.
‘You’ll be OK,’ she says, and she winks at me kindly, almost protectively, and I sense the spark in the air between us. The corners of her mouth twitch when she smiles. ‘See? You’re laughing already.’
‘No!’ But I’m smiling at her, I can’t help myself.
‘You know, one time when we got new knives at the home, Clayton cut himself so bad they had to take him to hospital. It wasn’t even like yours – he cut the top of his finger clean off. Now instead of a round finger he’s got a flat fingertip. Everyone called him Flat Top after that. That’s how he got his nickname.’
I stare at her. She sounds as if she’s speaking a foreign language.
‘I don’t know about that,’ I say lamely.
‘Why would you know? You weren’t there!’
And then I want to ask her so many questions about her life, about what she has seen and what has happened to her, but I can’t because Ruth comes in, sent to keep an eye on us, I suspect.
‘Mr Bevins sent me to help you,’ she says, her voice clogged up with hay fever. She has a way of swallowing her words and hunching her shoulders that makes her look as if she is always very sorry about something. Then, she sees my finger – blood has started soaking through the scrap of towel – ‘What have you done?!’
She makes me sit and drink some water and rewraps the cut in a clean bandage.
She came here alone and is troubled in her mind because she lost her baby soon after it was born and then her husband left her. Father says she’s full of sorrow and needs to be kept busy in case of backsliding.
‘More haste, less speed, Rebekah,’ she says briskly, but her eyes are kind.
Very quickly she turns the pile of carrots and onions and herbs and some potatoes and few scraggy pieces of mutton into soup, then she kneads out the dough. I sit with the twins and Alex and we make a model of the lion from Daniel and the Lion’s Den, except it starts to look more like an elephant and then Alex changes it into a dragon instead. When the soup has risen to a soft boil Ruth pours it into a flask and wraps one of the fresh loaves in a tea towel.
‘Here,’ she says, gently handing the parcel to me. ‘Do you both good to get some fresh air.’
Then, seeing Alex’s face, she ladles some soup into a cup and slices off the end of one of the loaves.
‘Mary never makes enough for breakfast,’ she says.
‘Thanks!’ Alex says, grabbing it from her. ‘I’m fucking starving.’
Ruth flinches and I yelp.
‘Sorry,’ she says, her mouth full. ‘Old habits.’
TEN
REBEKAH
The moment we’re outside of the door, she wants to know when she can get the phone.
‘Not now,’ I say. ‘We’ll be seen. We can’t just go breaking into Mr Bevins’s cabin.’
‘Well, when?’
‘Soon,’ I say, though really I don’t have a clue. I know he keeps the phone in his cabin, but I don’t know where or how we might be able to get at it. ‘We’ll have to wait until everyone’s at church.’
The moment we climb the bank up towards the fields the air whips around my ears, piercing through the layers of my clothes. The clouds are rising and not rainy, but the shrill wind makes the grass in the fields quiver. It’s never completely warm here. Occasionally we get a calm day where the sea seems like glass, but mostly the wind blows in from the Atlantic, harsh and persistent.
The quickest way to get to the Solitary is across the bridge at the top of the lake, over the rocks we call the Devil’s Seat – and down the other side. The longer way around means going back to the harbour, then around the cliffs, as the path at the bottom of the hill is too boggy. The Devil’s Seat is the highest point on the island, an outcrop of crags and boulders that form the shape of a seat if you look at it from the western side. Sometimes the peak gets shrouded by low cloud so it can’t be seen. According to Gideon, the people who lived here before us took that as a sign that the devil was on his seat and no one should go up to the peak, in case they met him in person. It has become our superstition too, and common sense as well, because going up there in the cloud would be dangerous. There are sheer drops and scrambles of scree, places where it would be easy to fall and die.
On the other side the hill slopes more gently into heath where the goats are allowed to roam to chew the gorse and heather. It’s a distance of about three miles and when the weather is good takes maybe an hour to walk there, though the uphill part is hard. But the ground around the lake is heavy and boggy and full of mud, even by the bridge, which Micah and Jonathan widened. I try to pick my way between the puddles and tread only on the tufts of grass, but in places the path is so heavy and marshy it’s impossible to walk without slipping and a few times my feet sink up to the ankles in the mud. By the time I get to the hard rocks my feet are soaking wet.
‘Shit. I’m fucking freezing,’ Alex says, half laughing. She’s not wearing enough clothes.
‘D’you want my coat?’ I offer. But she just looks at me funny.
‘Then you’ll be cold.’
‘Only for a bit. Then you can give it me back.’ It’s a blue p
added jacket the same as all the women on the island wear. Mine is old and scruffy now, with the padding escaping out of a rip in the seam. Mary was supposed to mend it while I was away, but I suppose that was something else they didn’t get round to doing. The men wear mostly black trousers and waistcoats, and in the winter thick waxed coats. The women have black dresses that cover our bodies like a robe, and headscarves. Mr Bevins says we need to live as simply as possible, like people in the old days.
‘No, you’re OK.’ She tucks her hands under her arms.
From the lake the path climbs up the hill, a sheep track that zigzags until it reaches a small plateau where there are flat rocks. Sometimes on sunny days I’d come here with Mother and lie on a slab, warm from the sun, and pick the lichen off the stones, watching as the bees buzzed in the heather, listening to the distant sound of the ocean, the high calling of the gulls. Or we would lie on our stomachs, our faces in the grass, and watch all the tiny insects going about their business, the ants and the worms and the crickets. Or put an ear to the earth and listen to the booming thunder of the wind against the ground, the distant roar of the sea. Mother said that was the best thing about living here, being so close to the elements, almost as if we lived inside the wind and the sea and they in turn inside us. How lucky we were to be in such a beautiful place, where we were safe from all the pollution, where the air tasted of honey.
Now the rock seems empty and desolate and the wind scrubs my face raw. I hurry past with my head down; I try not to remember.
From there it is another steep climb to the outcrop of the Devil’s Seat. The grass gives way to scree and twice I stumble and nearly fall, have to cling to tufts of grass or cracks in the rock to steady myself. At the top is another flat stone, with one tall rock that has been scraped into a sharp pillar by the wind, and around it are boulders, strewn about as if someone has thrown them in a fit of temper. There are signs that people have been here. There’s a cup and a couple of bowls from the kitchen, a piece of rag, one of the twins’ dropped toys. This is where Bevins had the prayer meeting. It must have been hellishly cold because the wind is suddenly Atlantic, stronger, pushing me on my heels. I rest for breath in the lee of a boulder with Alex, who is panting, mud crusted all the way up her legs.
‘Wow. It’s beautiful,’ she says, and her approval lifts my spirits.
From up here you can see almost the whole island and beyond that the sea that surrounds us, dark blue and tufted with manes of white foam. In the distance are other smaller, uninhabited islands, some no more than a slice of rock that sits in the ocean’s boil, and then beyond that the open water to the mainland, which is a thin bumpy line on the southern horizon. Above all that, huge Atlantic clouds blow towards us, vast and mysterious.
This view fills me with a longing to fly. Instead I turn back towards the path and spread my arms and let the wind flap at the fabric of my coat.
‘Come on.’
The other side of the hill is softer; once we have clambered down from the rock the ground slopes into bumpy moorland where the grass and heather are buffeted and flattened by the wind. I look at the ground beneath my feet, the barbed grass and the gritty soil, the springy clots of turf.
The walking is easier here, and we fall into step and start to march, swinging our arms. We walk side by side, in a companionable silence, our hands almost touching. Rocks lie about us if they have been blown from the top and scattered across the turf, and in the far distance I can see the red tin roof of the Solitary.
‘There it is,’ I say, pointing.
Alex grunts as if she disapproves.
‘All newcomers go there. For forty days and nights of silent contemplation to prove they are worthy.’
She shivers. ‘Well, I’m not going there!’
‘I don’t think you have to.’ Although I’m not sure why not. ‘You’re like a special case.’
‘Good. Because no one said anything about this to me before, and I would never have agreed to come here if I’d known. And anyway, isn’t that against the law?’
I have to consider this for a moment because I know the law of the Solitary is not really written in the Bible but it is one of the laws of our community. ‘No, but it’s our law,’ I say.
‘Well, that’s not like the laws of the country, is it? It’s illegal to keep people locked up unless they’ve done something.’
‘But we don’t live by the laws of man. And the people who go to the Solitary want to go there. Naomi has been there for nearly two years. She prays for prophecies, for revelation.’
‘Why?’ Alex demands.
I don’t know what to say to this. Why would anyone not want to pray for a revelation? A revelation from God is a blessing, something to be wished with all your heart.
‘Because it’s her gift.’
Alex frowns. ‘This place is doing my head in.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. Then, realizing what I’ve said, ‘I mean, you’ll get used to it.’
‘You think? I’m going right back on the next boat. You lot are seriously Upminster.’
‘Upminster?’
‘Two stops from Barking. Mad, bonkers, crazy. Off. Your. Head.’
‘No, we’re not.’ But I have a strange lurch in my stomach like when I stand at the edge of the cliff and look down.
‘First boat to leave here, I’m on it. And I want to find that satellite phone. I mean, you might mean well and all that, but seriously . . . your man Bevins is mad.’
She says this with a kind of determination and defiance that make me angry. She can’t run away. She’s can’t leave me here. She can’t. If she left, I know I wouldn’t want to stay here any more. This thought slides through my mind so quickly I can hardly hear it, but I feel it, in the way my body begins to tremble and in the black noise that builds inside my head.
The Solitary is half underground, built in a circle. Four triangles of space like the quarters of a cake, built out of stone, with a square tin roof that Father and Micah built to cover it, because it was too difficult to build a round one. What these chambers were originally made for and by whom, no one knows.
We have to stoop to enter, but once inside it’s big enough to stand up, and the clamour of the sea and the wind have gone, replaced by the deep quiet of the earth. Each cell has a heavy wooden door with a hatch through which I can look, and through which I can push food. Inside there is a bed and a desk and a drop hole for a toilet, which is covered up with a plank of wood. A small window high up in the wall lets in the light but it is impossible to see out, even standing on the bed. Naomi has the cell that faces towards the island, away from the prevailing wind. This was the only request she made for comfort.
I knock on the door before I slide the hatch open. I cannot see her anywhere on the bed, nor at her desk. Sometimes when I come with the soup she is kneeling in prayer and only nods to acknowledge me and I am compelled to stand there for ages before she finishes.
‘Naomi. It is Rebekah,’ I say, ‘come with your food.’
But still there’s no sign of her. I push my face closer to the hatch to better see into the room. Maybe she’s lying on the floor, praying; she often prostrates herself, arms spread in the shape of the cross, fully penitent. Suddenly a hand appears close to my face, two gnarled fingers like grey twigs holding a scrap of paper. Startled, I yelp and stagger backwards into Alex.
‘What the hell?!’ Faster than I can react, Alex moves forward and snatches the piece of paper.
‘“Jonah 2.3”. What’s this supposed to mean?’
‘It’s a prophecy.’ I snatch the piece of paper back from her, ball it into my hand.
There’s a scrabbling noise on the other side of the door and Naomi stands up, her face appearing at the hatch. Her eyes are huge, almost as if she never closes them. Her face is as knotted as bark. From under her headscarf emerge wisps of grey hair. She puts her finger to her lips as if to silence us. Then she scribbles something on another piece of paper and holds it up.
‘LIV
E FOR THE VICTORY!’
I step forward and give her the soup and bread, which she takes, but not before pointing at Alex and then at me and frowning. She puts her fingers on her lips again and then touches her ears and shakes her head. I take this to mean that she does not like us to be talking. Then she closes the hatch herself with a bang, dismissing us.
Alex laughs, but not because she’s amused. She looks sort of horrified.
‘She’s just a bit old,’ I whisper, as if that explains everything.
‘No shit,’ she says, looking at me. ‘She’s seriously freaky.’
Outside the sun has come out, low and blinding, but there are clouds now gathering around the Devil’s Seat and rainclouds on the horizon, travelling fast inland.
‘Let’s walk back the other way,’ I say, meaning that we should go the long way round, following the cliff path to the harbour and then back up through the woods.
We follow the goat track towards the cliffs. Here the birds roost: gulls and cormorants fly around the cliffs in a whirlpool of movement. It’s quieter now than it is in the spring when they come in from the sea to nest and it’s as if the whole island is made of birds and the cliffs here become a loud stink of guano. Harsh calls fill the air and at the bottom of the cliffs the sea churns, a constant boom as it breaks against the rocks. A gull hangs in the air just in front of us and we stand for a moment, the wind lifting Alex’s hair, birds diving and swirling around us.
‘You don’t really believe it, do you?’ she asks eventually.
‘Believe what?’
‘That the world is going to end, like, really soon.’ She points back to the Solitary. ‘All that prophecy and stuff. I mean know you’re supposed to respect old people and stuff, but . . .’
I look at the birds and the sea and the whole churn of it. Father and Bevins would say that the world we see is but a mirage compared to the eternity that waits for us.
‘Yes.’
‘What crap! I mean, look at these rocks. They’ve been here for millions of years. Why would it all come to an end now, just because you want it to?’
