The Dark Light (4 page)

‘Only if they’re with the devil,’ she said.

I stared at her. ‘Are you
serious
?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Mr Bevins forbids it.’

‘I’m not wearing a skirt!’ Skirts made me feel at odds with myself. Cold, mostly, but also unprotected. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn one. Even at school I wore trousers.

‘You have to if you’re in our community.’

‘What if you’re just visiting?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We don’t get many visitors.’

I wriggled in my seat and wondered if there was any way to get out of this. I could just run away. But I already did that once, and I knew what the streets held for girls like me. Across from me, Hannah was standing in the porch arguing with a man who was pointing his finger at her and shouting.

‘But you know the End Times are here?’ she was saying. ‘The days of the Rapture are upon us.’

‘Well, you know what? Hoo-bloody-ray. I can’t wait!’ he said. ‘If you’re going to be in heaven, then I’ll gladly go to hell! And no, I don’t want one of your bloody leaflets!’

I closed my eyes. I was beginning to think this was a very bad idea. Two months. It couldn’t be over soon enough.

FOUR

REBEKAH

The camp bed creaks as I turn over. In the other bed I can hear Alex’s slow breathing, the occasional snuffle. Light from the corridor filters through the porthole window on the door, which is crosshatched with wire and glazed with frosted glass so no one can see through. I can’t sleep.

I’ve never met anyone like her before. She seems like two people, both boy and girl, shy and confident, hard and soft. I think New Canaan will be a good place for her. I’m glad she’s coming with us. Ron and Bridget made a big fuss of praying over her in the meeting, and then afterwards Father said that Mr Bevins had approved the idea that she was to come and live with us for a while and he charged me with looking after her. I have already prayed that she will see the light.

The last new people to come to us were Jonathan and Daniel, who came after Mr Bevins went on a mission to London to speak to a Church there. When Daniel arrived his beard was so thick he looked like a wolf-man, and he kept his hair long and tied it back in a ponytail. Everything about him was dirty, and since he’d stopped taking drugs he’d been seeing visions of devils following him. So they kept him in the Solitary and prayed over him for days and then baptized him in the sea. He cut his hair and shaved his beard and suddenly we could see that he was young. The lines on his face from the dirt had washed away. And Father told the story of how the whole of heaven would be rejoicing because of the one sinner brought to God, and what a miracle-worker Mr Bevins was, gone into ‘the very jaws of darkness itself’ to rescue lost souls.

I wonder if they’ve told her about the Solitary. I wonder if Mr Bevins will make her go there. It’s an old stone house on the other side of the island, about a three-mile walk from the Protheroe farm, turned into a chamber of cells. It has thick stone walls and a heavy earthen roof and was built many thousands of years ago, maybe as a burial chamber, although no one really knows. It was once home to a hermit, the last person living on the island, found crawling around on all fours like a dog when some sailors stopped off to visit years ago. Apparently he barked at them and ran away. The next time the island was visited there was no trace of him, only some rabbit bones and the remains of a fire.

Father and Micah Protheroe divided it into four small cells. Each has enough space for a bed and a chair and the person gets water and soup and a copy of the Bible, but for forty days and nights they must remain in prayer to prepare themselves for our community. There is always one of the community resident there, living in silent contemplation. At the moment it’s Naomi; she’s been there for many years. When she came to the island she said it was her role, that she was a prophet of God and she was watching and praying for signs of wonder. As far as anyone knows, she has not spoken a word in two years.

Sometimes Mr Bevins will go there to listen to God, or he will send those he perceives are in danger of backsliding to go there to watch and pray. When he’s angry Father threatens me with it, usually if I’ve been too talkative or too demanding. I’ve always been afraid of being sent there, locked up all day in the cold with no fire and nothing but the mousy scratching of Naomi and the sea and the gulls for company.

Suddenly there’s a fanfare and a blink of light coming from her bed. There’s a halo around her hair. She’s looking at something, her phone.

‘How did you get that?’

‘Go away,’ she growls.

She turns over so she’s lying on her back and I can see she has her phone held above her face.

‘You’re not supposed to have that.’

She grunts.

She’s scrolling through photos. I get flashes of images, the light changing against her face. When one picture comes up she looks at it for a long time.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a computer here with the Internet?’ she asks, her voice muffled by the sleeping bag.

I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe in the office.’

‘Huh. Didn’t think so.’

That makes me cross. ‘The Internet is a gateway to a world of sin,’ I say. ‘It’s not important to us. That’s the point of living off the grid.’

She sighs. ‘I suppose I should have known people like you wouldn’t be on Facebook.’

‘Is that a religious book?’

She snorts. ‘A religious book! Ha!’ Then she looks at me funny, sort of hard, like she’s trying to see inside me. ‘
Seriously?
This place is really freaky—’

‘We’re not freaky!’ I say. ‘It’s the world that’s all wrong! Everyone who doesn’t believe is going to hell!’

‘Yeah, exactly, like I said:
freaky
.’

This just makes me confused. I curl into the blankets. I don’t want her to think I’m freaky. We’re silent for a while.

‘The island’s really nice,’ I try again. ‘It’s beautiful.’ Which is true. On a sunny day the whole place is like heaven itself, the deep blue of the sea, the springy turf, the birds, the cliffs like cathedrals. Mr Bevins says it’s easier to be close to God in such an elemental place. ‘We’re blessed by Him,’ I say.

‘What if God is a woman?’ she says.

‘But He’s not!’

‘But how do you know?’ She has this way of asking nosy, insistent questions.

‘Because it says in the Bible.’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot.
That
. Look, if it’s OK with you, I’m just going to be here for a couple of months to pick up some skills and then I’ll be on my way. I don’t have anything against your religion and stuff, but please don’t expect me to want to
talk
about it, OK?’

‘What do you want to talk about then?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to talk right now. If that’s OK with you.’

‘OK.’

There aren’t many other young people on New Canaan. I’m glad she’s coming with us. I lie in the dark a long time looking at the silhouette of her shoulder, listening as her breathing softens into sleep, my thoughts whirring.

Hannah wakes us early for a prayer meeting, which I doze nearly all the way through. Alex sits next to me, twitching the whole time. Since we got up she’s been sulky and silent, just grunting at me, or pretending to ignore me. I don’t know what to say to her to make it better. I wonder if it’s my fault. I don’t want her to hate me.

Afterwards the pastor drives us down to the harbour in the Church van. The van is full of boxes, right up to the roof; some of the Church members helped us pack it after the prayer meeting. We won’t be getting deliveries again for a while, unless the Church has scheduled a visit, so everything counts. The jars of peanut butter and tins of baked beans will be used up first, then the tubs of sugar and flour will slowly dwindle until there is nothing and we will be on fasting rations again until there’s a delivery or a visit to the mainland in a couple of months. I wonder how everyone is doing with the harvest and if the weather there has been as bad as it is here. I long to see the land again, the greenhouse tomatoes that I have nurtured since they were tiny seedlings. I love this time of year – the harvest is like our reward for all the hard work.

The tide is high at ten and the best time to get out of the harbour smoothly is just as it is on the turn, pulling the boat back out to sea with hardly a need of the engine. It will take six or seven hours to get there, maybe more depending on the swell. It’s why no one ever comes except by appointment or accident. And it’s one of the hardest islands to land a boat on because of the way the tides sweep around the rocks at the mouth of the harbour.

Alex scowls when she sees the boat.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s rusty!’

The
Spirit of the Sea
is an old fishing boat with a closed cabin. I suppose it does look a bit scruffy, but it got us here OK. Terry, a local fisherman who worships at the Church, is making ready, checking his radio and electrics, coiling the ropes that keep the boat secured to the jetty.

‘It’s fine,’ I say.

Alex looks sceptical. ‘What happens if I change my mind?’

Father has overheard, and he puts his arm on Alex’s shoulder. ‘Put your trust in the Lord, Alex. All will be well. You’ll see.’

She grunts as if she doesn’t believe it. ‘Seriously? What if it sinks or something?’

Hannah laughs. ‘Don’t be hysterical. Terry does this journey all the time. Come on, give us a hand.’

Alex gives her a dirty look and mutters to herself.

We pass the boxes into the hold. The wind has dropped since yesterday, but it’s still grey and gloomy with a thin cloak of cold drizzle. The hull is rusting in places, bubbling through the paintwork and scarring it. The boat dips and sways as I step from the jetty to the deck, which smells really strongly of fish. My feet slip in the wet and I nearly drop a box.

‘Careful!’ Father shouts. He seems really angry about something, I’m not sure what. In the prayer meeting this morning one of the congregation had a prophecy. A passage from the Book of Samuel about David and Goliath, in which David hurls a stone at the giant and kills him. There was lots of discussion about its meaning, but then we had to go. The pastor said he would pray for it to be revealed, but it seems to have made Father nervous and anxious to get back to the island.

When the hold and half of the small cabin are packed with our stuff, we stand on the harbour road pulling on our waterproof clothes.

‘The time is soon at hand, Brother,’ the pastor says to Father as he shakes his hand. ‘I’ll be seeing you in the glory before I see you here again.’

Father nods, but he doesn’t seem too happy about it. ‘Well, I hope so.’

‘Come on. Let’s not be pessimistic.’

I wonder what’s happened, but when Father catches me watching he shoos me away. ‘Go on, Rebekah, get ready.’

We wear bright red trousers and coats that smell of mildew from the boatshed. I have to roll the skirt of my dress up into a bunch around my middle in order to get the trousers on. There was some discussion about us being allowed to wear trousers at all, but they decided in the end that there was no alternative, although Hannah did suggest that they had solutions for these things in the Middle East, but as that would have meant buying clothes from the Internet it was decided that waterproofs would be allowed just for the length of the boat journey. Gulls circle above us, and rigging clangs as the boats in the harbour bob on the rising tide.

The pastor drives off in the van and we all jump onboard, Terry unhitches the rope from its moorings and the boat slips quickly into the tide and out of the harbour to the open sea. I huddle in the cabin with Hannah on top of some of the catering tins of sugar and flour that Terry has lashed to the sides to stop them falling over. Alex won’t sit with us; she insists on standing outside with Father and Terry.

‘I want to see where I’m going,’ she says, pulling up the hood of her windcheater and zipping it so I can see only her eyes. ‘How long does it take?’ she asks.

I shrug. ‘Six hours,’ I say.

Immediately the boat is in the open sea it starts to dip and roll in the swell. It’s much choppier than on the way over, in the calm, when the water was so smooth and clear it was almost a lake. The tins shift underneath me and I have to grab on to the ropes to stop myself from slipping off.

Before long we are out of sight of the mainland; the cliffs and the mountains disappear into the murk behind us, and ahead nothing but the folds of the sea. The engine drones against the hiss and roar of the ocean as it slams against the boat. The waves are tipped with white foam, which after a while become hypnotic as we lurch in between the peaks and troughs, and I don’t notice that Alex is sick until she’s bending over the side of the boat, hurling into the spray.

I go out to her, the full force of the wind a shock after the shelter of the cabin.

‘Come inside,’ I shout, grabbing on to her arm. But she shrugs me off.

‘Please make it stop,’ she says. Her face is pale as milk; she turns away from me and heaves again. ‘Haven’t you got any tablets or anything?’

Terry clambers around the edge towards us holding a yellow plastic bucket. ‘You need to sit inside,
cariad
.’

When we finally get her inside the cabin, she sits on the floor with the bucket between her knees. When I offer her a drink of water she just shakes her head and tells me to go away.

Fine then, I think, be like that. I go back outside.

All there is to look at is the sea: white foam churning under the mist that makes the horizon close in around us. Sometimes in the angles of the waves I’m sure I can see other things: the dark shapes of whales, other boats, shadows that fill me with dread. There is a sudden flutter as we cut through a group of kittiwakes rising and turning on the air ahead of us, then settling back into the water. The engine drones on and on, and in spite of all my waterproofs I am getting cold and damp and the constant cycle of tensing and relaxing is making my stomach churn too.

Minutes later I’m sat next to Alex on the floor of the boat, heaving into the bucket. Mostly water, but my stomach has finally given in. Alex is lying down, groaning.