The Rapture (11 page)

'There's a bulb inside,' says Frazer Melville, plugging the cord into the socket. The colours light up like the stained glass in a church, but they're more subtle, more mesmerising and otherworldly. Bethany, still silent, gives the sphere a small push and we watch it spin a slow, elegant rotation. The surfaces of the landmasses, corrugated with contours, are tinted brown and shades of green, while the lakes shine a luminous turquoise. The oceans slide from one vivid blue to another according to depth. There are none of the usual demarcations of nations or cities: the only markings which relate in any way to the existence of humans are the Suez and Panama canals, and a thin, discreet tracery of lines indicating latitude, longitude and the Tropics. It's pure geography. An unpeopled Earth.

'If this is some kind of sick joke -' Bethany begins, and then stops. For the first time, her terrible vulnerability is not hidden, and I can see its rawness.

'I do jokes,' says the physicist jovially. 'But it's been a while since I did any sick ones. It's yours to keep.'

How often I've returned to that moment. Or more precisely, to the tentative smile that creeps across Bethany's face as she presses her hands to the sphere, her long thin fingers, nails bitten to the quick, crawling across it like a blind person's. I'm reminded of a vet I once saw, his eyes closed, his head pressed to the flank of a sick horse, prodding with his fingers and listening.

'I'll come and fetch you in twenty minutes and then we'll go over to the art studio,' I tell them. Because I still can't bring myself to say 'Creativity Workshop'. Especially in front of a man who -

A man who.

When I return, the globe is spinning slowly and they are both gazing at it thoughtfully. Lola, the nurse, has been standing near the door: she sends me a look that conveys an unfathomable mix of concern, alarm and pity, and jerks her head in the physicist's direction.

'Everything OK?' I ask. But it's clear from his face that something has gone wrong.

'Cool,' says Bethany. She looks sly - perhaps even ashamed. He says nothing and suddenly I'm aware of his freckles. They are standing out like sprinkles of brown sugar because the skin beneath them has paled. When I make a questioning face, he waves his hand dismissively. Lola again tries to communicate something but I can't interpret her gesture. Bethany, on the other hand, is fired up, in the dangerous no-man's-land where energetic becomes manic.

'Bethany's located the site of a forthcoming volcano, as well as an earthquake in Istanbul,' says the physicist finally, giving a forced smile. But I sense this is not what he's upset about. What has she said to him?

'A volcano?'

'I told you about it, Wheels,' says Bethany, eagerly. The physicist looks shocked at my nickname, and glances at me questioningly, but I shake my head: let it go. 'But I didn't know the name of the island before.'

'I identified it as Samoa,' says the physicist, stopping the globe and indicating a dot in the ultramarine of the Pacific.

'October the fourth,' says Bethany. 'It's in my book. But now I can write down the name.'

We transfer to the art studio, with Lola accompanying us. As Frazer Melville inspects Bethany's drawings, which I have pinned to the walls, he seems to recover slightly, making various 'uh-huh' and 'I'm impressed' and 'what's-this-then' noises, while Bethany paces around the room like a caged creature, picking things up - a clay pot, a handful of brushes, a stub of eraser - and fiddling with them before plonking them down again. Above us, like a striped cocoon, hangs the hot-air balloon that Mesut Farouk has now nearly completed.

'Are you familiar with van Gogh at all, Bethany?' blurts the physicist, after a long silence.

'Sure. The sunflowers, everyone knows them. Sold to the Japanese for, like, squillions. Went nuts and sliced off his ear, right? This place'd be home from home.'

'I have some art books,' I say, pointing at a shelf I can't reach. Frazer Melville pulls down the relevant book and flips through to van Gogh. Irises. Women bent double picking up cut corn.
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
. 'There are three in particular I'm looking for,' he murmurs, then stops and points. 'That's one of them.'
Starry Night
: a hallucinogenic nightscape dotted with luminous orbs of light, each with its own extravagant aura. Instantly, you can see why he has chosen it - not for the huge, white-hot stars themselves, or the cluster of cypress trees in the foreground, or the Provenqal landscape below, but for the wild churns of clouds between. It's as though an entire skyful of vapour has been shoved in a giant washing machine and forced to spin there for all eternity.

'See what I mean?' The similarity with Bethany's storm arabesques is striking. I feel unobservant for not having seen it before. 'Van Gogh liked turbulence too,' says the physicist, eyeing Bethany.

'Yeah, well. Great minds think alike,' she says dismissively. There is still something odd about her - a guilt, an uneasiness.

'He captured it in an almost scientific way, without even realising it himself. People think of turbulence as being random but in fact it obeys very particular rules, which can be applied to liquids and gases.'

I wonder what he's getting at. He seems to be expecting Bethany to make a comment - to add to what he has said, or know something about it, but she doesn't.

'Can I take these?' he asks. 'I'd like to make copies.'

'Sure,' Bethany says. She's trying to sound blase. but the enthusiasm with which she tears the first one off the wall and shoves it at him tells another story.

'Can you sell them to the Japanese?'

His smile is tight and it fades fast. It's clear she has unnerved him in a way I have yet to fathom. And now he's is a hurry to leave. I'm ready to go, too. It's nearly three and I have a session with a new kid who arrived yesterday, an arsonist fresh from police custody. Taking his leave of Bethany with another awkward handshake, Frazer Melville says he would like her to do some more drawings for him. Of anything she likes, anything at all.

'Gabrielle showed me your sketch of Christ the Redeemer falling in Rio,' he says, hesitantly. 'I was impressed by it. Were you aware, when you drew it, what it was?'

She shrugs. 'I can't remember. I see lots of stuff, I don't always know what it means.'

'I remember you mentioned the fall of Christ,' I tell her.

'Whatever,' she says, dismissively.

I look from Bethany to the physicist and back again. There's something awry.

'She shouldn't call you Wheels,' says Frazer Melville firmly as I am signing him out at Reception. 'Why do you let her?'

'Because, believe it or not, it's a sign of affection. And it beats Spaz. Now let me ask you a question. What was it that she said to you?'

'When?'

'When I left you alone. She said something that got to you.'

'No,' he says, pretending to look puzzled. 'Apart from the earthquake, and this volcano in Samoa, she didn't say anything specific.'

I don't call him on it. But I note, for future reference, that the physicist is an appalling liar.

I am in the art studio with Newton, a schizophrenic sixteen-year-old with gender identity issues. He likes art. For the past hour he has been working in clay, producing squat crocodilian figures with gaping jaws and sharp teeth. Like most of the kids, he has a history of violence. His entry-ticket to Oxsmith last month was his confession to the sexual torture of his two young cousins. He's on a wide panoply of drugs, some of which cause his hands to shake. Pale-faced, he dyes his hair white-blond and wears badly applied make-up - today, a gash of red lipstick. Giant fluffy slippers engulf his feet, and he sweats monstrously, malodorously and with what almost seems like gusto. It's ten in the morning, and Newton is idly spinning Bethany's globe.

'You get the fuck away from that.' I haven't been expecting her to come in. Rafik is escorting her, and it's clear from the glow on her face that she's recently received a fresh surge of electricity to the brain.

'Show us your cunt first, girl,' he says conversationally. In the youth culture of Oxsmith Adolescent Secure Psychiatric Hospital, it's a mundane enough demand. But Newton's too new here to know about Bethany. No one's warned him that tiny does not mean harmless. Casually, Newton dips his hand in a pot of milky wet clay and pulls it out, dripping. 'Nice and wet,' he murmurs. If you could stop time, could you stop disasters, or would terrible things happen anyway, in a parallel world that had no respect for your mental flow charts? 'Go on, babes, show us your gash.' He holds up his hand and the pale slurry slides down and drips to the floor. 'Then I'll stick this up you. Give you a good fist-fuck.'

Rafik and I exchange a look of agreement that one of them has to go. I silently vote for Bethany. The art studio isn't big enough for her and anyone else. When Newton smiles, the lipstick smears his teeth so he looks like a carnivore after an orgy of raw meat. Before I can intervene, he has slapped Bethany's globe with his clay-whitened hand, smearing it with a wet trail that loops around it like a filthy halo, smudging the equator. Then: 'Show us your cunt. Go on. Let's see what you got, girl.'

And now it's escalating. 'Get the fuck off it,' Bethany says. Her voice has become flat and expressionless and for that reason I'm alarmed.

'Show us your cunt. Then come and suck my big black dick.' Newton is enjoying himself.

'Right, Newton,' I cut in sharply, and motion to Rafik to move in. 'Step back from the table now please,' I say. 'Step right back.'

'She means it,' says Rafik, bracing his torso menacingly. If you're not brutalised and fundamentally darkened before you come to a place like this, you surely are by the time you leave. No matter what your role.

Newton laughs and shakes his head as though this is the funniest thing he's heard in a long time, then thwacks the globe with the flat of his hand. The ball spins at increasing speed, its colours whirring into one another. Another swipe, harder again, and it teeters drunkenly.

Bethany moves so fast I miss it.

With a deep animal shriek, she has catapulted herself at Newton, grabbing him by the hair and wrenching him off the now toppling globe. It crashes to the floor with an inevitability that's almost hilarious, cartoon-like. It bounces once without breaking, then lands a second time with a bright smash, busting into a skitter of shards. Still shrieking, Bethany begins pummelling Newton with her fists. The giant slippers go flying. Rafik flings himself down and tries to wrestle the two kids apart. Quickly, I pull the cap off my alarm and reach for the spray-can under my seat. But events have overtaken me. With a hefty reactive kick, Newton has dislodged the central worktop from its trestle, and a tray of half-finished clay figures crashes to the floor, along with a pot of brushes in white spirit. Bethany, Newton and Rafik are now thrashing around in clay and chemicals and broken plastic. Kicked a second time by Newton's flailing foot, the worktop gives up the fight with gravity and tips heavily towards me. I grab the side but it's a bad move. Its weight forces my chair on to one wheel so that I am half-trapped beneath it, balanced uneasily and askew, while the other wheel spins in thin air. I'm aware of the door bursting open and six male nurses rushing in to overpower Bethany. Trying to break my inevitable fall, I push hard at the table-top - only to collapse with it, sideways, cracking the side of my head on the floor as I'm thrown right out of the chair.

And then blackness.

But my concussion doesn't last long enough. When I come to I am still in the art studio and there's blood everywhere. A wide smear leads to Newton, who has rolled over to the side of the room. He's screaming and clutching his groin, which is blossoming with a red stain of blood. Rafik has Bethany pinned to the floor in an arm-lock. Through half-closed eyes, I watch her get stabbed in the buttock with a syringe. Our therapy session is over. On balance, I would not rate it a success.

* * *

The next morning, having been kept in St Swithin's hospital overnight for supervision, I am taken home in an ambulance. I am lucky not to have been badly injured. There's a wound on the back of my head, and another on my thigh which I can't feel and must therefore take particular care of. Bethany is in isolation. Her hand was cut by the plastic she used to stab Newton with, but the injury was superficial and treated on the spot. Newton was less fortunate. He's still at St Swithin's, on the operating table, having a plastic shard removed from his scrotum. He will probably lose his right testicle.

I wonder how the loss of Bethany's globe has affected her. How she'll manage on 24-hour assessment for the next two days. The part of me that's still professional cares. But the woman who has just come back from hospital with a head injury which required nurses to shave ten square centimetres of hair off her scalp, wants her to stay locked up in solitary confinement for all eternity. And while they're at it, they can throw away the key. Sometimes it's OK to hate mad people.

Frazer Melville arrives to cook us dinner. There were delicate telephone negotiations concerning this, at the end of which it was agreed that if I set the table and promise to wear 'a killer frock', he would do the rest. After I have told him the story of the fight, and the fate of his short-lived gift, and my redefinition of the expression
bad hair day
, we agree that the fact Bethany is being kept in isolation until further notice is advantageous. With no access to television or the internet - not that I've had the impression she is a fan - it's a good way of ensuring she doesn't surf for clues, or tune in to the weather channel, if that's what she has been doing. Which can't be ruled out. There is also a tacit agreement that having discussed her by phone, we will banish her as a topic of conversation for the rest of the evening. I hope we can stick to it.

Are there any sweeter pleasures in life than seeing a man cooking enticing, unusual food in your kitchen, and enjoying himself so much that he says 'oh yes!' and 'magnificent' as he chops carrots and grates nutmeg and squeezes lemon juice? If there are I don't know of them.