The Dark Light (2 page)

‘Only one more day, eh?’ Hannah says, as if she can read my mind.

Hannah joined our Church when her fiancé abandoned her, the very day before her wedding. She met Mr Bevins on a Mission Week and was touched by his words of truth and fell in love with the island. In her testimonies she talks about how God led her. ‘I was lucky! If he hadn’t left me I would still be living in ignorance! I would never have been chosen!’ At her first repentance meeting she burned pictures of a man in a blue suit with oily dark hair. She said she was dedicating everything to God from now on. She even built her own cabin.

I rub my arms against the cold. It’s our job to stay cheerful even if it’s raining set to drown us and the leaflets have all got wet.

‘You’ll be missing your mother,’ Hannah says, looking at me kindly.

‘Not really,’ I say. ‘Live for the Victory, remember?’

I hate it when people talk about her like they’re expecting me to be sad. Sadness shows weakness. It means you don’t have enough faith. We live for the life after life. That’s what Mr Bevins says. What’s the point of being sad when we know that heaven is only just round the corner? When we spoke to him yesterday on the satellite phone he warned us about exactly this, the backsliding that comes when you are in the world of the Antichrist. I dig my nails into my palms. ‘In such a flower of the Lord, a doubt is a disappointment to him.’ Isn’t that what he said? I’ve taught myself not to be sad. I know I’ll see her in heaven really soon.

By the time Father comes in the van I’m freezing, flapping my arms up and down to keep my blood up, and Hannah is humming hymns to keep us cheerful. The van belongs to the Church of New Canaan, who are our mainland offshoot and who host us during Mission Week. It has a painting of angels blowing trumpets on it and a verse from the Psalms, except whoever painted it ran out of space for the letters so it’s a bit messed up on one end. If you look at it from the wrong angle it reads:
Praise Him with a Joyful Trump
. I have pretended not to notice, because the Church collects for us and gives us donations. Clothes and canned stuff, sugar, coffee, tea. A box of shoes this year. I hope there are some my size. My boots are worn at the soles; they won’t last another winter.

‘Hello, Father.’

Recently he seems to have got very skinny, although he’s always been thin, and sometimes his head seems too big for his body, especially as he grows his beard thick and bushy, like all the men on the island do.

‘I think we’ll call it a day,’ he says, lifting up one of the crates of honey.

As he walks back to the van, three figures appear on the promenade, rounding the corner past the kiosk, walking quickly towards us against the weather. A man and a woman and a boy with curly dark hair and pale skin, with leather tied around his wrist, who kind of swaggers. As they approach he laughs and points at our van, raising his mobile phone to take a photo.

I look at the van and cringe. I wish I could stand in front of it to stop him.

As he gets closer I can see he has a ring in his lip. People like that give me a weird feeling. I say a quick prayer for protection and wish Mission Week was over so that we could go home. Being on the mainland is precarious, like being on a narrow path on a high cliff that I could slip and fall off at any moment.

When Thomas Bragg came on Mission Week he disappeared with a woman from the Church for two nights. He said he was witnessing to her, but Father and Mr Bevins sent him to the Solitary when he got back and Hannah and Margaret remarked darkly that he’d been up to ‘desperate acts’. This year he stayed on New Canaan with Mr Bevins. Father says it will be a long time before Thomas can be trusted again, that he’s still too immature to be in the world without being tainted by it. But I’m not weak like that. There’s nothing here that I want. Mr Bevins says I’m kind of like an angel, that I burn bright with the light, that I am a daughter of the Lord. I bite my lip until I taste blood.

I think they’re going to pass us by when the man pauses and squints at us through the rain.

‘Are you the people from New Canaan?’

‘Yes!’ Hannah says, holding out a crumpled leaflet.

‘Praise God!’ His face lights up. ‘We’ve been looking for you all over town!’

They tell us that they are called Bridget and Ron and that they have travelled all the way from Essex. Ron is a member of a Church that is much like ours. It’s taken them nine hours in their camper van and they’ve brought with them their
daughter
, Alex.

It takes me a moment to absorb this information.

She looks like a boy, the square shape of her jaw and the way she wears her jeans slung low and stands with her legs apart. When they mention her name she glances up from her phone and scowls. She catches me looking and stares at me hard, as if she’s saying
So what?
She looks a little bit more like a girl then, but still it’s confusing.

‘What you’re doing, it’s amazing,’ Ron says. He has a round, cheerful face which is bright red as if it’s been scrubbed.

‘Amazing,’ Bridget echoes. ‘So inspiring.’

‘I don’t suppose Mr Bevins is here? We’ve been dying to meet him,’ Ron asks.

Father shakes his head. ‘He doesn’t come on Mission Week any more. There’s too much to do back home.’

‘But we speak to him every evening.’ Hannah says.

‘He is such an amazing example to the faithful,’ Bridget says.

On Mission Weeks we speak to him every day via a satellite phone. He wants to know every detail; who we’ve been with, who we’ve spoken to. He tells us his vision for our mission. He wants us to find some new recruits and he says we must keep vigilant for the influence of Satan who is all around us, remember the blood of Christ and live for the Victory.

Father says Mr Bevins is one of the best scholars of the Book he has ever known. He can quote large sections of it, chapter and verse. I often see him wandering the island, the Bible open in his hands like a map. Before he came to Wales he lived in America, travelling the country, preaching to anyone who would listen. When he arrived in London he lived on the streets, homeless, like Jesus, staying with those who would open their doors to him, and when he came to Wales he brought with him Micah and Mary Protheroe, two disciples whom he had saved. He’s always telling us stories of before, of his life back in America, of his conversion to Jesus. How God hit him with the truth of life ‘like a thunderbolt’ between the eyes. When Father met him for the first time he said the spirit shone through him so brightly that it was impossible to ignore.

‘We would be lost without him,’ Father says neutrally.

Alex raises her eyebrows but says nothing, typing something on her phone. These black tablets are a sign of the end of days: the new world order of the Antichrist, who can see you and spy on you if you use one.

A few years ago a man came to visit, pretending to be from another Church. But Mr Bevins caught him taking photographs with his phone. Mr Bevins threw it in the sea and said we were going to pray over him, which we did, and then the man got sent back on the next boat. Father said afterwards that he was an undercover journalist who wrote an article full of lies about our community. And then for a while everyone was afraid that they would send someone from the mainland to evict us, although no one knew why they would. It’s not as if we’re breaking any laws. The island belongs to us.

‘You set the standard for everyone else,’ Ron says. ‘It’s a privilege to meet you.’ He shakes Father’s hand enthusiastically.

Bridget nods. ‘A real privilege.’

Father smiles guardedly. Since the journalist we’ve learned to be careful of enthusiasm. When new people come and join us, they have to go through the days of the Solitary first to prove they are worthy. Every new member of our community has to go there for forty days and forty nights. Mother said many were put off by this, to which Father said if it was easy to join us in New Canaan then it wouldn’t be a true test of faith. Like it says in the Bible, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Mr Bevins says that it’s quite normal for people on the mainland to be frightened of us because we live a more spiritual life than them.

Father invites them back to the church. ‘You were obviously led,’ he says. ‘We were just packing up.’

‘The weather!’ Ron says. ‘It’s a sign of the Tribulations. I know it.’

‘That’s the truth, brother.’ Father nods. ‘One thing though.’ He points at Alex. ‘We don’t allow phones in the church.’

Alex makes a noise then shakes her head.

There’s silence for a moment. Bridget’s face changes. She looks disappointed, then angry. ‘Alex we’ve
talked
about this,’ she says quietly. ‘Unless you
want
to go back.’

Alex reacts, a ripple through her body like a shock. I think she is about to shout and lose her temper but she doesn’t. She shrugs. She switches the phone off and hands it to Bridget then pushes her hands into her pockets and looks at me like she hates me.

As we drive the short distance back to the church, I can’t help but stare at the square line of her shoulders and the way she crosses her leg ankle to knee and fiddles with the leather braids that she has tied around her wrist. There’s something about her. She gives off this fierce energy. I can almost hear it hum.

THREE

ALEX

I was eleven when I realized that God didn’t exist, or that if He did, that he didn’t care about me.

The Church home, the last one before I got adopted, which was actually OK. The best of all the places I’d been. The people were nice, and although we had to go to a Church school and Church meetings, no one was nasty or creepy. It was one of our ‘family days’, where prospective parents came round and met the children, and although we weren’t supposed to know that that was what was going on, everyone did. I offered God every part of my little being that day. Stupid promises, like I’ll be a missionary when I grow up, I promise to look after Dionne and Sharon, I promise to work really,
really
hard at school.
Please
. I knelt by my bed with my hands pressed together so hard I could feel the bones through my palms.

She had to be kind because she was so pretty. She was a model-turned-actress and she shone down on us from the cheap flatscreen in the lounge. Barry found a picture of her on the Internet all dressed up for some awards show in a glamorous evening gown and I started praying then that she would notice me and want to be my mother. My Forever Family, happy ever after. It would be like living inside a golden carriage, I would want for nothing and everything would be perfect. I’d never wanted anything so much.

She’d even been on daytime TV talking about how she was going down the adoption route, and there were sympathetic stories about her in the papers. We weren’t supposed to know about it, but around the house among the older children there was gossip for weeks, about how she had been shown all our profiles and had long meetings with the social workers, that she had chosen us because she had a longstanding relationship with the charity that ran our home. For a few weeks we all felt important, noticed, like we were at the centre of what was going on, not in some rotten corner of Colchester where nothing ever happened.

Adopt them before they’re seven. That’s what everyone says. After seven they’re spoilt, they’ll never really be yours. Or there’s something ‘challenging’ about them: disabilities, learning problems, heart conditions, behavioural issues, which makes them difficult to place.

I was eleven. I was growing, looking awkward.
Please, God,
please, let it be me.

I never stood a chance.

I practised my winning smile in the mirror. Showing off all my white teeth, like the happy children they put on the cover of the magazine they sent out to prospective families –
Children Who Wait
.

The Community Rooms had been done up with balloons and there were cakes and cups of squash. Steve had organized activities and games as if it was a party, but we all knew why we were really there.

She came with three other couples, walked in with her head down, her face half hidden by her glossy hair. You could tell from her clothes, her make-up, the very serious expression on her face, that she knew she was the most important person in the room. She was wearing a beautiful cream coat and she smelled classy, like the perfume counter in Boots.

We all froze and stared at her and I put on my winning smile and held it until my face started to ache.

Dionne nudged me. I hated her, with her braces and stupid half ’fro hair that meant she got to go to a special hairdresser once a week. I heard Steve perving over her once, going on to Sue the Social Worker, about how she was going to be a stunner when she was older, her skin the colour of creamed coffee, like Beyoncé. But I couldn’t see it personally. She was up herself and she thought she was better than me because she got good marks at school. But I remembered my promise to God to be nice to her and kept smiling.

‘What’s wrong with your face?’ she asked.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You’re gurning,’ she giggled.

I made my hand into a fist and hit her, right on the bone of her shoulder where you can give someone a dead arm.

Immediately she scrunched up her face and started overreacting as if I’d tried to kill her.

‘Owwww! Alex!’ She said it really loud so that Steve came over.

‘What’s up with you two?’

‘Alex hit me,’ she whined, which made me hate her even more.

Steve made me go and stand over the other side of the room with Sharon, who had cerebral palsy and dribbled while she ate and had to wear really sad glasses. I watched as my new mother circulated around the room. She took her time, bending down to talk to Finn and help him with his Lego. Her nails were shiny salmon-pink and her skin seemed to glow with the kind of class that meant you’d never be sad or poor or sick ever again. Sharon snuffled loudly next to me. I looked at her and hated her too. I didn’t want her to be chosen instead of me.