by Lulu Taylor
‘So,’ I say, ‘you saw my application?’
‘Of course. I saw them all. We thought it would be a good way to get some fresh blood in. And the place wasn’t ready for any of us. I wasn’t going to send them in here without knowing a bit about it. We had the usual geeks and students applying. But then we had you. Supposedly an artist. So I looked you up. I couldn’t find a Rachel Capshaw who matched you. I even sent you to our techie boys to track down and they couldn’t. Most unusual.’ He grins at me again. ‘You tickled my fancy. I guessed you must be on the run from something, looking for a tribe and a new start maybe. And I liked this.’ He reaches out a hand and ruffles my white hair. Then he leans over and says seriously, ‘You mustn’t be offended if I don’t sleep with you every night. I couldn’t even if I wanted to – and of course I do want to,’ he adds hurriedly. ‘But I’ve got a lot of love to share. I need to make sure there are no favourites; it’s part of the creed we live by. You understand, right?’
I nod, staring at him. Part of my brain is thinking about boring practicalities like numbers of sexual partners and safe sex and all the rest of it. Another part is listening with an incredulity that is almost amused.
‘But the whole point here is that you’re not alone. Never. There’ll always be someone to love. I saw that Fisher likes you – he was really keen to share with you last night. And Sophia is a big fan of yours. We’re fine with sharing between three, four, as many as you like – if you’re open to that. It might take a while to get accustomed to the idea if you’re not used to it, but honestly, soon it’s as natural as breathing.’
‘Okay,’ I say, feeling as though I’m teetering slightly on the edge of hysteria. ‘I understand.’
He puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Honestly, we prize older women here. They have a lot to teach us, and you have less likelihood of getting pregnant. I hope you’ll see your way to showing the younger guys how to be mature lovers.’
I start to laugh. I can’t help it. It sounds too funny, and besides, it deflates me with an unintended yet perfect precision.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asks, bewildered.
‘Oh, nothing. Nothing. I can’t explain. Let’s talk about it another time. You should get up and get some breakfast. I’ll see you later.’
I shower off all traces of the night before, feeling like an adult who has made the mistake of going to a teenage party and getting carried away into believing they are still young, and that the sight of them bopping on the dance floor, pulling some shapes and singing to the music, isn’t inherently ridiculous to all who see them. But the comfort is that afterwards, the adult laughs it off and goes back to knowing that at least all the teenage angst and heartbreak lies far in the past.
‘I’ve been so stupid,’ I tell myself, but I can’t beat myself up. I forgot I wasn’t really a part of this crowd. I thought for a moment I was like them: young, gorgeous, carefree; a true believer in a creed that is dubious to say the least. But my illusions have been thoroughly shattered. Now I know I’m the token older woman, with a brief to be a kind of geisha to the inexperienced youth.
Though, going by what I saw last night, it’s more probable that they could teach me a few things.
As I get dressed, I feel an emotion I haven’t felt for a while: a longing for home. For so long, that yearning has been accompanied by a pain like a knife in the gut, bringing with it the knowledge of what happened to our home and to Heather. Now the pain is still there, but there’s a deep hunger for what was inside our home, its true heart. There is another presence I need to think about. The other person at the table . . . But . . . I shake my head.
No. I can’t go there. It’s too much. It’s too awful.
Still, the thoughts of home are floating around my head, nagging at me, refusing to let me go. I go to my bag and rummage down until I find the mobile phone that I stuffed inside a sock. I take it out and try to switch it on, but it’s completely flat. I plug it in and in a few moments, it’s come back to life, the screen bright and packed with missed messages, all from Caz as far as I can see. I go to the messages screen and start to read them. They’re all as I expected: asking repeatedly if I’m safe, where I am, could I please get in touch, have I seen the police are searching for me . . .
I’ll think about that later.
It’s too tiring right now.
I notice that one message is from my email provider and I open it up.
This message is to alert you to unauthorised use of your account. To verify your identity please text the verification code you were sent in a previous message. A temporary reset password will then be sent to you.
I go further down my texts and there is indeed a verification code. It’s all too likely that someone has been trying to break into my account, attempting to find out where I am. Well, a new password will sort that out. I text the verification code back to the number, and leave my phone to carry on charging.
In the kitchen I decide not to drink the fuzz-inducing tea, and get myself a cup of coffee. It’s a hive of activity in the house, as usual, and everyone seems very fresh faced after last night. I’m pouring in the milk when I see that one of the other people in the kitchen is Kaia. She turns and sees me, shooting me a look of hatred, and turns her back again.
Okay. So that explains the tears last night. Poor kid. She can’t be the only one. They’re all in love with him in their different ways.
I take my coffee and go out of the front door, sipping the hot liquid in the coolness of the morning air. I wander round to the rhododendron bushes, admiring their glossy dark green leaves and wondering when they will burst into flower, and what colour they will be when they do.
As I’m staring at them, I hear a noise, a rustling and cracking, and then I see a figure in a big brown coat hiding a little further on in the thicket. It emerges from around the trunk of a tree to look at me and beckon hard with a hiss.
‘Matty?’ I say.
‘Come on!’ is the reply and she dashes a little way off before turning to hiss and beckon again. ‘Come over here!’
I follow her with my mug still in my hand, curious. She keeps darting off before I can get close enough to ask what she’s doing and in this way she leads me out of the thicket and all the way to the path that goes to Nursery Cottage.
When Matty arrives at the gate, she stops and allows me to reach her.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘Hiding from someone?’
‘Hush.’ She looks about almost fearfully. ‘Come on, you must come inside.’ She hurries away down the path.
Inside, the cottage is exactly as I remember it: a mishmash of things, crowded furniture and a fug of cosy warmth. In the old kitchen, the beautiful snow rose bonsai sits in its place of honour, its leaves now out and the petals unfurling. As usual, Sissy is in the rocking chair by the range, knitting a perfect piece of work with an intricate pattern inside it.
Blind, my foot. She can see better than I can.
And yet the eyes are staring somewhere else, blinking slowly as her needles clack.
‘She’s here!’ exclaims Matty. ‘I found her. At last.’ She sends me a reproachful look. ‘We’ve been worried about you. We haven’t seen any trace of you since those people arrived. We had no idea what they’d done with you.’
I’m touched by their concern. I sit down at the table. ‘It’s nice of you to worry but I’m okay.’
‘So . . . they’re here then,’ Matty says. She sinks down into one of the chairs opposite me, not bothering to take her coat off. ‘The owners.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Who is it? Who’s the owner?’
I hesitate. I wanted to ask the sisters about the connection between them and the Kendalls, but now I know what’s going on up at the house, I’m not sure how much I should say. But, I reason, they have a right to know. After all, they live right next door, they’re going to notice some of the odder things. And the last thing I want is for one of them to get ambushed in the woods by so
meone practising their combat skills. ‘Well, there is something unusual about the people who’ve arrived.’
‘Yes?’ Sissy’s gone still again, her needles no longer moving. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s not a family or anything like that. It’s more like a community of young people, who all share the same beliefs, and want to live in the same way.’
‘Ahhh.’ The sound comes out of Matty like a sigh. ‘As we thought.’
‘Is that . . . is it like something that’s happened before?’ I ask. ‘With the church in the grounds, and the things that Sissy said to me about your Beloved? Because that’s what they call him.’
‘Do they, now?’ Sissy starts to rock again. ‘And what’s the name of this Beloved?’
‘Archer. Archer Kendall. He says his great-aunt once owned the house.’
The sisters are visibly shocked. Sissy’s mouth drops open, her hands falling to her lap with the knitting pooling on her skirt, her blank gaze turned to me.
‘Kendall!’ exclaims Matty.
Sissy turns towards her sister. ‘Would we have sold the house to him, if we’d known?’
‘Of course not!’ replies Matty indignantly. ‘To the traitors? Never! But we didn’t know.’
‘We can’t fight the house,’ Sissy says almost sadly. ‘It seems to draw people to it. There’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘But how are the Kendalls traitors, if you got the house from them originally?’
‘Not from a Kendall,’ Matty says. ‘From the eldest Evans sister. It was the youngest who married the Kendall, and he’s the one who destroyed the Beloved.’
‘As good as,’ Sissy puts in. ‘He was never the same after the siege. He was a broken man, that’s what the old ladies told us. He never left the house again. Many left. Only the most faithful remained.’
‘The Kendall boy wrote inflammatory lies about the Beloved in the paper and the village marched on us. The night of the fire. They said nothing was the same after that. The Beloved’s message began to fall on stony ground.’
‘Who was this Beloved you’re talking about?’
‘A great man,’ Matty says gravely. ‘No matter what the truth of his claims.’
‘Our grandfather,’ Sissy says. ‘Shall we tell her, Matty?’
Matty glances over at Sissy, then says slowly, ‘We find it hard to speak of. We’ve been so accustomed to keeping it to ourselves. We didn’t mix much with outsiders, you see, because of all the scandal. We had everything we needed here. Our mother, the Beloved’s daughter, stayed on all her life, and she told us it was our duty to stay too, and look after the old people until the last believer had gone. After that, it was just us.’
‘What did they believe?’
‘In the Beloved. In the promises he made them. He said the Day of Judgement was at hand, and that they would all be saved, everyone else given over to hellfire. He said there would be no death. But after he died himself, broken, they said, by the ridicule heaped on him by the newspapers and the village, there was no more taking that as gospel. Our mother and grandmother worked to keep the faith alive, and lived in the house, trying to restore its reputation, and stayed true to the memory of those who went before. They didn’t dare go to the village, even after the Beloved was gone, but eventually the bad feeling was all forgotten. They forgave us for the way the Beloved had outraged them all. Of course, we weren’t there then. We were born later.’
‘Here, in Nursery Cottage, where the babies were born,’ puts in Sissy, rocking and knitting. ‘After the Beloved’s second wife died, he married again, and there were three babies from that marriage. Our mother, Glory, was born in 1928. She got married after the war and had our brother David, and then us. The Beloved had passed on by then. She and her husband stayed here to bring us up and look after the believers that remained. Everyone was supposed to stay, and live as one family. Those of us related to the Beloved, we were the holy family.’ Sissy laughs. ‘Imagine that! The holy family. Better than being the Queen!’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘In theory.’
Matty says, ‘It’s all long ago. Far in the past now.’
‘And Archer – Lord Kendall – says it was his great-aunt that gave the house to . . . the Beloved?’ I ask, getting confused.
‘That’s right.’ Matty nods. ‘Miss Arabella Evans. The Beloved’s second wife.’
‘I see. I think. So he’s come back here.’ No wonder he felt a sense of destiny about the place.
Matty says to me, ‘So what are they up to in there? We’ve seen a lot of work going on. They’re certainly busy, aren’t they?’
I tell her a little of what is being prepared, though I don’t go into details about the group marriage ceremony. I explain that they’re getting ready for the near-certain disaster that lies around the corner. Almost excitedly, I tell them the theory that Archer outlined to me: the fertile mixture of climate change, political turmoil, shortages of food and lack of medicine that will lead to the outbreak of chaos and destruction. I explain that Archer is building a shelter for his followers as a sanctuary from the danger, preparing them to face the upheavals of the future.
They listen carefully and when I’ve finished, Matty sighs and says, ‘Nothing changes, does it, Sissy?’
Sissy shakes her head and says, ‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, frowning. ‘This is entirely a new problem. It’s a modern issue.’
‘Maybe. But it’s no different to what the Beloved preached, is it?’ asks Sissy.
Matty says in a booming voice, ‘The end of the world is nigh! The apocalypse is just around the corner! Follow me and you shall live!’
‘But . . .’ I laugh a little. ‘It’s completely different.’
‘Is it?’ She stares at me with those almost-black eyes of hers.
‘Yes, it’s based on fact, not fairy stories.’
‘Is it?’ Matty asks again.
I falter, suddenly not sure of myself.
‘There are strange things in this world,’ Sissy says softly. She has stopped knitting now. ‘You should know that more than most, shouldn’t you?’
‘The facts have a way of changing,’ Matty adds. ‘What one generation believes wholeheartedly, another rejects. It’s the way.’
‘We grew up being told all the time that any day might bring the end of everything,’ says Sissy.
‘But it never did,’ Matty said. ‘And we ended up not really living at all.’
‘And as for fairy stories . . . well . . .’ Sissy turns her blank – or are they? – eyes to me. ‘You know very well that the oddest stories there are can turn out to be true. Can’t they? And we can believe quite easily in the impossible.’
I go still. I know she is about to talk to me about the thing, the one thing, I can’t discuss.
‘So,’ she says. ‘Your little snow rose. How is she?’
Chapter Thirty-Four
The sky is a pale navy with the first flicker of stars in its depths as the procession makes its way out of the church and back towards the house, then down the driveway to where the high wrought-iron gates are firmly closed. The Beloved marches at its head, his faithful following and singing loudly as they go. Letty is half dragged along at the back by her two hostile Angels, who are clearly of the mind that the Beloved will look kindly on ill treatment.
‘Stop pinching, can’t you? I can walk perfectly well if you’ll only let me,’ Letty snaps, and the girls are cowed by her tone, but only for a moment. She realises that it must be after six o’clock. She was supposed to be at the gates to meet Archer, but everything that’s happened has driven it from her mind. As they advance upon the gates, Letty cranes her neck and sees that a makeshift barricade has been built by means of driving the old cart against the gates and surrounding it with bits of old furniture, cart wheels and assorted rubbish. Why a pile of old junk should be any more protecting than stout iron gates, Letty can’t imagine, but the gardener stands ready for action, a rake in one hand and
a shovel in the other, while Dickie the errand boy dances around in a state of high excitement shouting, ‘They’re nearly here!’
Is Arthur there? she wonders. Is he waiting for me? How will I get to him? She longs desperately to see him. If he only spots her, he’ll get her away from here in a moment. But how will he, in this crowd?
Now, above the sound of singing and the toot of the Redeemed’s trumpets, Letty thinks she can hear another sound, a kind of roar that is getting louder and louder. Another procession is heading to meet them, and Letty can see the flicker of torches held high above a snaking mass of bodies.
‘Pray, dear ones!’ yells the Beloved. ‘Pray and sing! We have divine protection, and no one may harm us!’
The faithful sing with more gusto than ever, though one or two faces betray anxiety when they catch a wisp of sound: ferocious chants and angry yells growing in strength every moment.
Letty tries to shake off one of the Angels, who is singing loudly but tunelessly and is clearly losing interest in her charge. ‘Let go, can’t you? I won’t run off.’ Just then, she spots Kitty standing close by, lifting up on tiptoe to gaze anxiously at the gates. ‘Kitty, Kitty! Can you see what’s happening? Tell me what’s going on.’
Kitty turns to look at her with frightened eyes, the trial forgotten for now. ‘Oh miss, can you hear them? What can they be wanting with us?’
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Letty reassures her. ‘It’s the people from the village. We’ve known them all our lives. They won’t hurt us.’
‘But they’re in a frenzy, can’t you hear them? There’s been some terrible lies, terrible! They say we have wild beasts in the grounds to eat intruders, and that there’s a huge revolving table in the church where the Beloved selects a woman to be his bride for the week. They say we do wicked, immoral things. It’s not true! Not a word.’
‘You’re right, it’s not true,’ Letty says grimly. ‘But there’s enough strangeness here to feed rumours like that.’
Kitty shuts her eyes. ‘We must pray for protection.’
