by Gee, Maurice
‘Verity,’ he said to a woman standing close, ‘will you check that Mrs Crowther is all right.’
The woman smiled, invited Ellie with a gesture, and led her through the foyer to a small room at the side.
‘Would you undo your blouse,’ she said.
‘I certainly will not.’
‘Please. We had a woman come here with a tape recorder once. It was hidden inside her jacket. Robert heard it click when the tape ran out. Poor thing.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Oh, nothing. Robert sent her away. She was a journalist.’
‘Did he take her tape recorder?’
‘No. We’re not scared of the world outside or what it might say. But we like to check. Please?’
Ellie pulled her shirt out, undid the buttons, raised her arms. She turned in a circle.
‘Thank you,’ the woman said.
‘Do you all wear the same clothes?’
‘Yes. They’re very comfortable. Two dresses each.’
‘With that expandable panel in front?’
‘Only the married women. Child-bearing women.’
‘How many …?’
‘Me? I’ve got eight. And another one on the way.’
‘Are you …?’
‘I’m Robert’s wife. He has other children by his first wife. She died. Grandchildren too.’
‘Have you always been – I don’t know what to call you.’
‘Earlyites. No. I taught in a girls’ school. German and French. Are you ready, Mrs Crowther?’
‘How old are the girls here when they marry?’
‘Robert will answer your questions. You can ask him what you like.’
They went back to Robert Early in the foyer. He smiled at Ellie, bending his head to reduce his height.
‘Verity explained to you? That’s good. The woman went away and wrote a story full of lies.’
‘I think I read it.’ Not a good story. The reporter was unrelenting in her disapproval, holier in her way than the Earlyites. Later on a television crew had tried to get in but were turned away by young men at the gate and reduced to taking long shots from the road. There were rumours of sexual abuse of children – but Ellie could not believe them, watching Verity walk away. She tried to remember: hadn’t there been a police raid that had turned up nothing sinister?
Robert Early took her through the folding doors into a dining hall, where women pushing trolleys were clearing dirty dishes from the tables.
‘How many people live here?’ she said.
‘Two hundred and seventy. I’ll take you round, Mrs Crowther, and show you how we live.’
She followed him through the hall into a huge kitchen where half a dozen young women, wearing white aprons over their dresses, stacked plates into dishwashing machines, while others – Ellie did not count, but there were ten or fifteen – peeled and chopped vegetables at a long bench, measured flour, tipped it into mixing machines, fed a continuous oven – ‘Built here, it’s our invention,’ Robert Early said – turned baked loaves out on trays to cool. One meal hardly finished and they’re busy with the next, Ellie thought. She wondered if this was how these girls would spend their lives. None of them gave her more than a glance. She would have expected her clothes, if nothing else, to interest them.
‘They all look so contented,’ she said, although she might have chosen ‘lulled, untroubled’.
‘Yes, they are.’
‘Were they born here? Or did they join?’
‘Some were born before we shifted from the Manawatu. Others came from outside, like your brother. But you don’t “join”, Mrs Crowther, you surrender your whole will and life to Christ. “And the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved.” Now, I’ll show you our school and sewing shop and then you can see our family rooms.’
Ellie followed him through the senior schoolroom, where Verity was in charge of two younger teachers; then the infant room, the sewing room, the gardens; huge workshops servicing tractors and trucks and a helicopter – ‘We’ve got some good mechanics so we take on contracts from outside.’ He showed her a plant making methane gas from pig manure. Outside again, she heard machines working downriver and saw a haze of dust rising beyond a shelter belt of squared-off pines; smelled hay, which, familiar, helped her keep steady against a growing bewilderment at what Gethsemane was and who Robert Early was.
He took her up stairs over the dining hall. A corridor ran the length of the building, with doors on each side. A village of cots stood at the far end, watched over by a girl sitting in a chair. She put her finger to her lips.
Robert Early smiled at Ellie. ‘They take turns at minding. They all learn childcare.’
‘Boys too?’
‘No, not boys. This one is empty, I think.’ He opened a door. ‘Each family has a room like this. You see, parents and children together. Nothing is hidden or shameful in family life. But this is mainly for sleeping. The whole community is a family too.’
A king-sized bed with a coverlet of sky-blue flowers on a pink background stood under the window, and two sets of bunks against the walls. There were three chairs, a tallboy, a set of drawers, a narrow desk. Nothing else. The partitions stopped two feet from the ceiling. There were similar rooms on either side, Ellie supposed. She looked for pictures. None. Plastic flowers, pink and white, stood in glass vases. Bows made of ribbons perched like butterflies on the walls. Ellie had never seen a room so barren.
‘Nice,’ she whispered as Robert Early waited. ‘But …’
‘Yes?’
‘Where do you go to be by yourself?’
He smiled at her. ‘When a couple needs to be alone they go to one of the houses for a few nights. It rarely happens. There’s no sin in procreation. Or did you mean singly? No, Mrs Crowther, there’s no need for that sort of privacy. Christ must be shared not hoarded away. And the devil can worm his way in when you’re solitary. Now –’ he led her into the corridor and beckoned the girl – ‘I’ll get you some tea. This is my daughter, Harmony. There are sixty people along here –’ he waved at the corridor – ‘and all of them are descended from me. Tell them in the kitchen Mrs Crowther would like some tea.’
The girl hurried away.
‘She doesn’t like leaving the babies long. I’ve got a son and two grandsons and a great granddaughter in those cots.’
‘Amazing,’ Ellie said. She could not think of any other comment. Queen bee, she might have said, but that was a sneer, short of the understanding she strained after. What was the reason for this place and this behaviour? A pleasant strain of normalcy ran over something deeply abnormal and possibly dangerous. Yet she liked Robert Early – in a way, in a way. A handsome man, gifted with easy speech.
He took her downstairs and sat her at a table in the kitchen, where the women worked with economy – economy in their faces too. She drank tea and ate a shop biscuit – was she not fit to share food baked at Gethsemane? – listening as he talked, watching his face and friendly eyes. His head was round, almost perfectly, and massy if that was a word, furred with grey close-cropped hair and deeply scored with lines in the forehead and cheeks – like a chopping board, she thought. When he smiled he showed elderly teeth, like stained porcelain, each one a slab. His nose had been broken at some time and badly set. It was a high-specific-gravity head, set on a body that seemed too light for it. She was sure that he had lived through a crisis, remade himself, and his weightiness came from there.
‘Gethsemane seems a strange name,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Wasn’t it where Jesus was betrayed?’
He looked at her with more than his professional friendliness: with interest. ‘He’s betrayed daily, every minute, out in the world. And he’s known betrayal in here. We have had a Judas or two.’
‘He asked God – take this cup away from me.’
Robert Early smiled, pleased with her. ‘Do you remember what he said after that? “Nevertheless not what I will but what thou w
ilt.” God’s will, Mrs Crowther. He left the cup for him to drink. That is why we are here in Gethsemane, joined by Christ into his church.’
‘Yes, I see.’ She did not want any more of this. ‘I saw some violins and cellos. Do all the children play?’
‘They do. And sing. We have an orchestra and a choir.’
‘What would happen if one of them got very good and needed teachers better than you’ve got?’
‘We’ve got good teachers.’
‘But if one was really gifted? Would you let her go outside and learn out there? Play professionally, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘That would be to lust after the world.’
‘I don’t know. Isn’t it like sharing a gift?’
‘Nothing can be shared except in Christ. The wide gate leads to destruction and the narrow pathway to eternal life. You’ve heard the word “ecclesia”? It means the called-out ones. The world outside is Satan’s world. Here we love and obey God. Our children play their instruments in praise of him, not for applause. It’s really very simple, Mrs Crowther.’ He watched her steadily for a moment. ‘Entertainments dishonour God.’ Then as suddenly as he had become interested he was bored, which she took as recognition: an unintended compliment to her. ‘I’ve sent someone for Derek. He’ll be waiting for you out by your car. Try not to keep him too long. We’ve got a lot of hay to get in.’
‘Yes. Thank you for your guided tour.’ She stood up and offered her hand. He took it, seemed surprised at the contact, let it go. She left him by the table, looked back from the door, saw him half-turning, as though uncertain, and thought, He’s the boss, he’s in command, but it’s not enough. She went out through the dining hall and foyer, found Derek by her car and hugged him tight.
‘Hey, don’t crush me.’
‘I’ve just been talking to Mr Early. Do you hate the world, Derek? Do you think I’m evil?’
‘My problem is I don’t hate anything. Which makes it pretty tough around here.’ He stood back and looked at her. ‘They’ve given me ten minutes. Walk back down with me.’
He was sweaty from hay-making, with runnels in the dust on his forearms and smears on his cheeks where he had wiped his palms. He pushed his cloth hat back and grinned at her. Ellie thought, He’s made it, he’s got through. She could not understand what he was doing in this place.
‘You look fit,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I am. It’s doing me good. I like that painting you gave Mum.’
‘Thank you. It’s an early thing. I’m doing better ones now.’
‘You should paint here.’ He jerked his hand at the hills.
‘I did once. I lived here.’ She stopped on the track across the paddock. ‘Almost exactly on this spot. In a railway carriage. There was a bath outside in the rain. Look.’ She ran three steps, prised a piece of orange-coloured brick from the ground. ‘It stood on this. On bricks. Oh God, can I keep it?’
Derek laughed. ‘Pre-Gethsemane. What did you think of Robert?’
‘I’m not sure. I expected someone charismatic and he’s not. But he’s – powerful.’
‘Sure. Charismatic doesn’t go down. It’s almost as bad as popery. The whore of Babylon,’ he grinned.
‘You’re not staying, are you?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Will they let you go?’
‘I might tunnel out. Hey no, relax. Gethsemane isn’t dangerous, not like that. There’s some things here I really like. They have fun. Singing, dancing. All in line. Pretty girls.’ He grinned again, then was serious. ‘Baptisms. Full immersion. I like that.’
‘You don’t mean it?’
‘Sure I do. If I believed in it that’s what I’d want.’
‘But you don’t?’
‘No, I don’t. There’s too much else. Outside, I mean. You just can’t say God’s only here. Come and have a look at the river.’
They went down the paddock and along the broken bank. Only a few trees stood, isolated. Ellie advanced on the flat rock she had used as her private place. After a moment she tossed the piece of brick into the water and saw it sink and lie in the pebbles five metres down; appearing, disappearing as the current moved.
‘No souvenirs, eh?’ Derek said.
‘No.’
‘See the shingle bank?’ He pointed down river. ‘That’s our baptising place.’
‘I’d love to see one.’
‘And over there by the waterfall, that’s where the local hoons come. Two or three carloads of them sometimes.’
‘What do they do?’
‘Mooning. Dropping their jeans. Shouting stuff.’
‘Can’t you get them stopped?’
‘Robert doesn’t want to. It’s not on Gethsemane land. It’s the neighbour’s place.’
‘And it’s the world.’
‘That’s right. It makes us –’ he clenched his fists, tightened his shoulders – ‘even closer. Why would we want to go out there?’
They came off the rock and walked across the paddock to the shelter belt. Two girls swinging empty baskets passed by. Their blue dresses billowed in the grass and their tight headscarves seemed to turn their round faces pink. Bruegel fitted this time – the image and the practices of Gethsemane ran together.
‘I’ve missed afternoon tea,’ Derek said. ‘Listen, Ellie. Seventh day, ten o’clock – sorry, that’s on Sunday but we don’t use pagan names – anyway, ten o’clock, he’s doing three baptisms down there.’
‘Adults?’
‘Oh, sure. You can’t do children.’
‘Because they’re not old enough to understand sin. That’s Anabaptists.’
‘Yeah, OK. What I’d like – can you drive over and park along by the bridge? You can watch from by the waterfall. There mightn’t be any hoons, they don’t always come. When you see me walking up the bank, go back and wait by the gate.’
‘You’re coming out?’
‘I won’t have much stuff. Just my duffel bag. I know it’s a long way to drive …’
‘I don’t mind that. But can’t you just leave? Any time?’
Machinery burped and chugged beyond the trees.
‘I’ve got to go. Yeah, I can leave. But I want to do it this way. It’s easier for me. I wouldn’t ask, Ellie …’
‘Yes, all right. I’d like to see a baptism anyway. Ten o’clock.’
‘I’ll be at the back. No one will see me, not when Robert’s holding someone under. Ellie, thanks. Thanks for coming.’ He moved away, giving her no chance to hug him. ‘If you’re phoning Mum, tell her I’m OK. Give her my love.’
‘I will.’
‘But don’t tell her about me leaving yet.’
She watched him walk around the end of the shelter belt, moving in his paddle-footed, left-seeking way, but surer than she remembered, much more strong; then went back quickly to her car and drove away. She did not want to meet Robert Early – did not want him looking in her face. He might see Derek’s escape, which elated and frightened her, written there. She suspected him of having the power. And although he was mad – wasn’t he? – and probably dangerous, she felt she might apologise for the young men’s mooning, for their obscenities and ugliness – and wasn’t that saying sorry for the world she loved living in?
Ellie painted another picture using her man made of earth and air, but it didn’t work. No matter how she blackened him, he had no business there. This sudden going wrong alarmed her. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet,’ she said, ‘don’t go away’ – and tried to keep him by dragging her brush between his legs and making a penis, hoping he might gain and they discover a way to go, but all it did was dangle, even when she thickened it. She scrubbed it out – a joke, a schlong – and did no more that day or the two days after.
On Sunday she packed bread and butter and chicken legs and beer in a chillibin and drove over the hill to Golden Bay and down the Aorere valley to Gethsemane. The morning was windless, the sky lacquered, the trees so sti
ll their heads seemed moulded from clay and glazed and baked. Sharp leaves were picked out from the surface. She wanted things softer, and wondered if this hardness were premonitory.
Gethsemane was deserted, without sound. A chaffinch singing on the fence made a counter-silence. She sat by the gate a moment, listening and watching, then re-started the engine and drove down the road half a kilometre and over the new bridge leading into the hills. She parked in yellow grass off the shoulder. There were no other cars. She locked her doors in case hoons should arrive, then opened the passenger one and took her binoculars from the glove box. Images for paintings – an explanation she had never needed before: an apology to Robert Early. She climbed a fence and crossed a paddock empty of stock; took a rutted path towards the sound of the waterfall; broke through gorse and tea tree; came out among jumbled boulders where the creek ran into the river.
The shingle bank was further off than she had expected, but crossing the creek would bring her out on shelves of rock exposed to the Earlyites – who stood in an order that must be hierarchical: older men in front, young behind, women and children in the curve of the bank. They looked brave, Ellie thought, as if no other humans had a place in the world, but as if they must stand close together to survive. She righted herself, smiling at the exclusion she had felt; enjoyed their blue and white and black, their placing in the river bend, their pictorial justness and propriety, and was angry with herself for leaving her sketch pad at home.
She could not make out Robert Early among the men, or Derek among the younger ones at the back, but did not use her binoculars to search. She wanted to preserve the blocks of colour and see the river and its shore in their natural focus: the glossy white and black of shirts and trousers, the blue of dresses against the porous bank. She framed the picture with her hands, then saw Robert Early emerge and walk towards the water.
Ellie scrambled back to the shelter of the trees, sat half-hidden and put her binoculars to her eyes. He halted midway on the shingle bank, turned to face his people and spread his arms as though embracing them. When she had left him in the kitchen, he had seemed not to have enough. Now she felt the fullness he possessed – all these followers, all this land. He was preaching, haranguing, with the black square of his bible in his hand.
