The Dark Light (13 page)

TWELVE

REBEKAH

Mr Bevins went on a long time tonight. Hours. I have no sense of the time, except I know it’s late when we get back to the farmhouse. We take the boys and put them in their cots. Peter is whining and clingy. I sing him the song of Noah, about the animals, and then tell him the story of Jonah swallowed into the belly of the whale, until eventually he quietens. Alex squats in the doorway and watches. When they are asleep I go into my bedroom, leaving the door ajar so I can hear in case they wake up.

I sit on my bed and Alex sits next to me. She’s so close I could touch her hair. Being so close to her does something strange to my head. Like I’m going too fast or something, and all the nerves in my body tingle and I feel like I must be blushing all the time. We’re quiet for a moment. Then she whispers. ‘You must be so
bored
.’

I draw my knees up to my chin and pull my dress down over my legs. I’m hungry and my bones hurt with cold.

‘You don’t even have music or books.’

‘We do! And anyway, we won’t need them where we’re going.’

‘And where is that, exactly?’

I don’t know how she does it, but she has a way of asking questions that are impossible to answer, and all the things that have always seemed so easy to talk about, fall away from me. I want to her to see that I’m not stupid, that I do know about the world. I prayed hard in church that she would see the light. I want her to go to heaven to be with me. I want her to be with me; I want her to meet my mother.

I show her the encyclopedia Mary gave me. She told me to read from it and study it when I am not reading the Bible.
The Encyclopedia of the World 1973
. It’s old and smells of rotting paper. Everything about the world in one volume. In the margins Mary has written notes, links to Bible verses, comments. There are colour plates to illustrate some of the key features. The nervous system, the chambers of the heart, the countries of the world, even the history of the kings and queens of Britain and Europe. Just opening the book makes me excited.

Alex flicks through it. ‘This is a bloody antique!’ she says. ‘Where are the fossils and dinosaurs?’

I shrug. I don’t know what she’s talking about.

‘And reproduction? Someone’s ripped out the pages,’ she says.

‘Oh.’

I hadn’t noticed this before.

‘Look.’ She throws the book down next to me, pointing to the places in the index where it says:
Dinosaurs
,
Darwin and Evolution
,
Fossils
and
Human Reproduction
.

‘Maybe they fell out,’ I say.

She snorts. ‘Right. Someone
made
them fall out, more like.’ She flicks back through the book until she gets to Ancient Egypt. Here Mary has written:
Worshipped False Idols! Satan’s Lies!
and a list of verses. There is an illustration of Egyptian symbols, and one that is an eye, the same as Alex’s tattoo. She points at it and laughs.

‘Look,’ she says. ‘My tattoo! “The eye of Horus is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, royal power and good health”,’ she reads. ‘See? I told you it was for protection.’

‘“Also known as the eye of Ra”,’ I continue, but then I look at Mary’s margin notes. She has circled the word Ra and in the margin written:
Another word for Satan!

A fear rises in me. Alex has the symbol of Satan on her. ‘Why did you come here?’ I say, my voice a hiss. ‘To torment me?’

‘I’m not tormenting you!’

‘Yes, you are! Why aren’t you listening?’

‘Ha! Like you, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because I’m not
stupid
.’

I flinch from her, then snatch the encyclopedia and bang it shut. Her criticism stings like a slap.

‘I mean, don’t you hate it?’

‘Hate what?’

‘Being told what to think all the time. I couldn’t stand it – no one tells
me
what to think.’

‘I’m not told what to think! I’m here because I’m chosen! Don’t you
want
to go to heaven?’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t believe in it.’

‘You don’t believe in heaven?!’ How can she not? I can’t believe she’s so ignorant.

‘I think we make our own heaven and hell here on earth. I mean, don’t you listen to music or anything?’ she asks.

‘‘No,’ I say, not really knowing what she means. ‘We sing hymns and sometimes Micah Protheroe plays guitar, but we’re not allowed to play the music of the world.’

‘Don’t tell me –’ she shakes her head – ‘it’s the work of the devil?’

I nod. ‘The devil can get in through music,’ I say.

‘How, exactly?’

I don’t know the answer to this, though I assume it must be through the ears.

She gets her phone out of her pocket. ‘I’ve got some amazing hip hop on here.’ She switches it on, but then has to hide it right away at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. I stand up. It’s Mary. She comes into the room and, seeing Alex sitting on my bed, flinches.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘Where’s the camp bed?’

‘I was just showing her the encyclopedia,’ I say, holding up the book.

‘Well, that’s nice, but I need you to get some rest now.’

Suddenly I feel really awkward. I jump up and help Mary put the bed together, threading the poles through the canvas, shaking out the spare sleeping bag. When I’m done, Mary waits by the door with her hands on her hips for us to get into our own beds.

‘Come on, chop-chop.’

She stands there watching while we both get under the covers. She takes the candles away and pulls the door to, although I can hear her breathing outside for a long time. When I finally hear her feet on the stairs, I sit up.

‘You asleep?’ I whisper.

But Alex doesn’t answer. I lie on my side and nuzzle into my pillow. I wish she would wake up and talk to me, because even though I’m exhausted, being alone in the dark with her makes me wide awake. I lie there not sleepy at all and wonder if Mother can see me, and if she thinks about me if she can, or if she is so busy with her business in heaven that she has forgotten all about me. I’m sure she would like Alex if she met her.

In the middle of the night something wakes me. It’s Alex, sitting bolt upright, shouting, gasping for air.

‘You OK?’

‘I had a nightmare,’ she says groggily. ‘That I was still here, and then I realized I was.’

‘Come here,’ I say, and she gets out of her bed and comes and lies next to me. Her body trembles. ‘Don’t let anything bad happen to me,’ she mutters. ‘
Please
.’

‘It’s OK,’ I say, putting my arm around her. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you. I promise.’ But even as I say it, doubt creeps around the edges of my mind. Even in the warm hollow of the bed, in my heart there is the cold glitter of fear. When her breathing has calmed and she’s asleep I get out of my bed and into the camp bed. Something tells me that Mary wouldn’t be OK with us sharing again.

Mary wakes us before the light has even had a chance to colour the sky. I can only have had a few hours’ sleep. I feel sick and groggy.

‘What is this?’ she asks, pulling the covers off me. ‘Why aren’t you in your own bed?’

‘Wha’ time is it?’ I say blearily. I’m sure I’ve only been properly asleep for about five minutes.

‘You had your lie-in yesterday. There’s too much to do to be lazing around all day. And I don’t know why you’re not in your own bed.’

Alex puts her head over the covers. ‘It hurt my back. So we swapped.’

‘Hmph.’ She looks unconvinced. ‘We’ll have to sort out something more permanent for you – I think probably you should be sharing with Ruth.’

No! She can’t do that.
I’m
supposed to be looking after Alex.
Me
, not Ruth.

‘You heard Bevins yesterday. We have to be constantly vigilant and help each other keep to the path. Now hurry up.’

We get dressed and fumble our way downstairs. I don’t say anything to Alex, but I can’t quite work out what we’re supposed to have done wrong. I can still feel the bony tremble of her body in my arms. She likes to act all tough, but actually she’s small and scared; I can see that in her. She catches me staring and pulls a dumb face, and then an even dumber one, which makes me laugh. I don’t think I’ve met anyone, ever, who made me laugh like she does.

After prayers, Mary gives us bowls with a smudge of porridge and a cup of weak, milkless tea. Bevins says that being hungry is good for us, it keeps us sharp and spiritual, makes us consider our souls and not the corruption of our physical flesh. Sometimes after a service or prayer meeting or something I am so full of light that I’m not hungry at all. But this morning my stomach growls and clenches.

The men have already eaten and gone to their appointed tasks. Alex complains loudly about the fact that it is the women who are expected to clean up the piles of dishes that Hannah brings in from the dining room.

‘It’s not fair! Why can’t the men help?’

‘They have their appointed role, just as we have ours,’ says Hannah. ‘
Blessed is the woman who follows the directions of a man.
’

Alex looks sceptical. ‘But what if that man’s a wanker?’

Mary blinks. Margaret crosses herself.

‘Alex, we’re daughters of Eve. We carry her wayward genes. We’re the ones who threw away paradise. Don’t forget that,’ she says.

‘I don’t believe this shit,’ Alex mutters.

Something in me wants to laugh hysterically because everything is so tense and prickly. Hannah and Margaret won’t even look at her. They are behaving like she’s infectious. Every time she speaks they freeze and raise their eyebrows.

‘But don’t you miss
stuff
? Like a dishwasher and a washing machine?’ she asks. We have to wait for the pot of water on the stove to heat up before we can wash the dishes.

‘We came here for a simpler life. To get away from the temptations of laziness. Keeping busy is good for the soul – even small tasks like cleaning can be meaningful if done for the glory of God,’ Mary says.

‘
A good woman looks well to the ways of her household
,’ Hannah says.

‘
She girds herself with strength
,’ Mrs Bragg replies.

It’s a prayer that we say sometimes in church, when Mr Bevins wants to lift up the spirits of the women.

Alex sucks her teeth and scowls. ‘Whatever floats your boat.’

Mary gives her one of her cold, steady stares. ‘You may come to see in time, Alex, that you are more like us than you think.’

When we’re finished with the washing-up the dawn has started to streak the sky red and purple and Mary tells us that today we are to work in the kitchen garden.

‘What if I don’t want to?’ Alex says, but there isn’t much fight in her voice.

We go to the tack room to get ready. Alex is still wearing the same clothes that she came in; her trousers are filthy with mud all around the bottom and her shoes are soaking. Mary says she will give her a new pair of shoes only if she agrees to wear a dress.

‘Fu– get lost,’ she says.

There is a tense silence, then Mary laughs. ‘The Lord certainly moved in mysterious ways when he sent us
you
.’ And she goes back into the kitchen without pushing her point.

Alex laces up her shoes getting mud all over her hands. Her feet squelch when she walks.

‘But you can’t wear those the whole time. You’ll stink,’ I say.

‘Like you, you mean?’ She points at my headscarf. ‘Don’t you ever take that off?’

I put my hand up to my head. I can’t remember the last time I shook out my hair from its braids. When Mother was alive she would undo it all and boil up water on the stove once a month and rub sweet-smelling shampoo into it, or when there wasn’t shampoo she would mix an egg and then rub it into my scalp. Then she would dry it very slowly before the fire, brushing and brushing until the hair was fine and soft, and then she would braid it into fine plaits and then tuck it all up again inside my scarf. Now I just tie a headscarf over it every day and don’t think about it.

‘No.’

‘Well, that smells.’

‘Fu–’ I stop myself. But I can’t believe what I nearly said.

‘What did you just say?’ she says, nudging me.

‘Nothing.’

The day is high and cloudless. It’s going to be hot, a late summer present after all the rain and wind. We follow Mrs Bragg and Hannah and Margaret past the cabins and the church to the kitchen garden. It’s supposed to be protected from the sheep and the goats by a fence that Micah dug into the earth to stop the rabbits. But they still manage to get in. They’ve been here in the night – almost a whole row of carrots has been dug up, and they’ve messed up the earth around the gate.

Mrs Bragg wails when she sees this. ‘I
told
Daniel to come down here with the gun last night!’ She starts to cry.

‘Now, now, Anne. Live for the Victory!’ Hannah says.

‘I’m just so tired . . . If only Brian was more reliable . . .’

She turns away from us and I can see her shoulders are trembling and she makes a little snuffling sound and everyone’s pretending not to notice because Mr Bragg is backsliding and that means she is looked on with suspicion too.

The Braggs came with Thomas in the second year. They were family friends of the pastor on the mainland, and in the early days they often gave testimony. Mr Bragg said he was like the man who found that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven and it wasn’t until the bank took everything that he realized how poor he had been all along.

‘The moment I became poor was the moment we became rich!’

He’d been running a property business and couldn’t pay his debts, and then the bank came and repossessed everything. When they came to New Canaan it took Mrs Bragg a while to adjust. Hannah calls her ‘Lady Muck’ sometimes because she has a tendency to complain, and we have prayed over her many times in church because she often struggles with her thoughts. But it’s Mr Bragg who is now in the Solitary for backsliding.

‘You two –’ Hannah turns to us – ‘go and help Gideon in the polytunnel. There’s lots of weeding that needs doing. And you –’ she points at Margaret and Ruth.