The rapture, p.23
The Rapture, page 23
‘How would you propose to change his mind?’
‘You’re the psychologist,’ he says, undoing his seat belt.
‘Is that the other reason I’m here?’
He flashes me a boyish, winning smile. Even in a foul mood, with my worm wreaking havoc, I can’t dislike him.
He opens the car door. ‘I’ll get your chair.’
The interior of the house exudes the nostalgic, grandmotherly smell of wood-polish. Low ceilings. Darkness, after the blaze of the sun, giving way slowly to a dull ivory gloom as the eyes recalibrate. Thick ceiling beams. From upstairs, the sound of a running shower which abruptly stops.
‘That’ll be Bethany,’ says Ned. ‘Glad to say she’s discovered hygiene. She’ll be down in a minute. This way.’
I follow him along a corridor past an impressive if haphazard collection of art: dark woodcuts, limpid watercolour landscapes, heavier oils, and lavishly detailed diagrams of insects, fish and molluscs. Sometimes you don’t realise how hungry your eyes have been. Perhaps it’s a displacement urge. But I want to gorge.
Ned Rappaport pushes open a dark door to reveal a cavernous living-room-cum-study fetid with age. The blinds are drawn, but through the gloom I can make out a clutter of old sofas and armchairs, a coffee table, a computer desk and a collection of glass cabinets packed with specimens of dried fish, fossils, pickled worms and seashells, all carefully labelled according to genus and era. Someone methodical has been at work in this fusty space, diligently categorising. On two of the walls are shelves full of jars which glow with a pale, ectoplasmic light. Entering the room and drawing closer, I see they’re filled with small green-blue shrimp-like crustaceans with delicate claws, trapped in a liquid suspension.
‘What are they?’ I ask, pulled towards their luminosity like a moth.
With an enormous hand, Ned pulls down a jar and passes it to me. It’s heavy and cool. Clasping it between my palms, I peer in at the pickled, tentacled shape. Around it, small light-filled fragments rise from the bottom and swirl in the cloudy light that emanates from the centre of its body, fading at the delicate extremities.
‘Myodocopia. Ostracod. They’re chemi-luminescent. They release a dye as a mating signal. It can go on emitting light-waves even after the animal has died. Collective name, Luxifer gigans. Japanese soldiers used them in World War Two. They’d collect them on the beaches, then crush them up and smear the stuff on their hands. As an instant light source.’ He takes the jar back and replaces it on the shelf. ‘Now, according to my research, you won’t co-operate fully with anything until you’ve had coffee. I’ll get some in the works.’ He tosses the Haribos on to an overstuffed green sofa, its upholstery burst at one end, and heads for the door.
‘Ned. Wait.’
But it has closed behind him.
After driving for so long I’m aware of the need to shift the weight off my pelvis, so I wheel further into the room, negotiating my way around the cabinets. Near a fireplace stuffed with pine cones and dried birch branches, there’s a tattered, red-striped chaise-longue on whose padded upholstery I can imagine myself getting comfortable. Next to it, a walnut coffee table studded with cup-rings, and opposite, the green sofa and a couple of sagging leather armchairs of the kind favoured by old men’s clubs. I manoeuvre out of my wheelchair and on to the chaise-longue, take off my shoes, heave my legs up, and settle lengthways. Thin stripes of light filter through the slats of the blinds, dancing with dust-motes. My eyes are still adjusting, so I don’t see her come in.
Or hear her. Until—
‘BOO!’
I jump, and stifle a scream.
‘Scared you there, Wheels.’
Wet from the shower, her T-shirt blotched with damp, her scalp speckled with a thin growth of stubble, Bethany Krall resembles a manic voodoo doll. The thermal burn-marks streaking her arms are a virulent purple leached with yellow, her hands a mess of tattered, blistered skin. Spreading her arms wide, she waggles them at me in a vaudeville gesture. They look like terrible, ravaged starfish.
‘Bethany. I’m glad to see you.’
‘Watch out, we’ll be lesbian lovers next.’
She comes towards me, too fast, her arms held aloft, as though wielding huge mechanical pincers. Stranded without my chair, I shift to an upright position.
‘How have you been?’ I ask. I need more space between us. But within seconds, I have it: catching sight of the Haribo packet on the sofa, she leaps over, snatches it up and starts tearing it open with her teeth. I curse myself for not hiding it.
‘How d’you think I’ve been?’ She closes the space again by leaping on to the coffee table where she stands barefoot, like a vicious elf, her green leggings stained with patches of damp where she failed to dry off, a sickly chemical smell seeping out of the sweet-packet in her hand. Fishing inside, she finds a spiral of liquorice, unrolls it clumsily, and dangles the end into her mouth, face tipped back. ‘This place is like a five-star hotel. Want one?’ She is on the cusp of something. Glad to be free. And free to—
‘No thanks. And go easy on the sugar.’ She rolls her eyes.
I shift again. I feel vulnerable without my chair, and regret abandoning it. She’s still standing right over me, flexing her ruined hands.
‘Hey, I’ve got this weird electric feeling in my fingers.’
‘It’s called pain. It’s something normal. Why don’t you take a seat?’
‘Have you felt how close we are to the sea?’ she asks, jumping off the table and moving across to the window. She can’t seem to stay still. ‘It’s breathing at us. Can you feel it? Can you smell it? If you want to survive, you’ve got to go inland.’ She flicks the blinds further open and daylight streams in. Outside, the road, the bright landscape, the greenhouse, the wheeling white blades of the wind turbine. ‘Cabins in the mountains, that’s what we need. I’d go there, except I’d miss the grand finale. I need some volts, Wheels. Can you get me some in this place?’
As she is speaking, a grey car comes into view. With a thudding, forlorn dread, I consider who might be inside it, on his way. Then, from behind the greenhouse, Kristin Jons dottir appears, pocketing her phone and heading for the front door. She is looking worried. Or perhaps simply thoughtful. I wonder how she feels about meeting me. On the doorstep, she stops and turns. She must have heard the car.
‘Here comes loverboy,’ murmurs Bethany, following my gaze. I want to look away. But I can’t. He pulls up, parks and gets out. Kristin Jons dottir runs towards him. There is no mistaking the look on her face. My face used to light up like that once. And my heart used to—
I blink and swallow as they embrace.
‘They’ve been fucking like rabbits,’ comments Bethany matter-of-factly. They have pulled apart and Kristin Jons dottir is speaking to Frazer Melville excitedly, gesturing towards the house. He looks pleased, then anxious. ‘Look at them. He can’t get enough of her.’ Tipping her head back again, she feeds herself another string of liquorice, eyeing me sidelong. ‘She’s a real moaner. She has these orgasms that go on and on.’ Bethany stops and assesses my face. ‘And he’s noisy too. When he comes, he roars. Right, Wheels?’ She grins. ‘He roars like a lion.’
I tear my eyes from the window and shut then, trying not to remember. I am in freefall, hurtling through nothingness.
Not just naked, but skinned.
‘Coffee,’ announces Ned, entering with a small tray. ‘Colombian. Frazer told me it was your favourite so I got some in. And I see you found the Haribos, Bethany. Hey, is everything OK?’
No, I want to tell him. Please, get me out of here before I die.
‘We were just talking about sex,’ says Bethany with enthusiasm. ‘Who’s doing what with who.’ Ned looks at me blankly and I muster a small non-committal shrug. But Bethany is on a roll. ‘You wank a lot, don’t you, Ned?’ His face tightens and a muscle starts working beneath his stubble. She grins. ‘I guess you miss your boyfriend. Or should I say your ex-boyfriend. You might not guess to look at him, Wheels, but Ned here likes cock.’ She throws him a triumphant, jackpot look.
I flush. Of course. Ned’s jaw moves, as though he’s chewing on something, and his Adam’s apple strains. I feel a grievous rush of pity for him. He sets the tray down on the table and begins pouring the coffee.
‘I don’t remember discussing my private life with you, Bethany,’ he says.
‘You didn’t,’ she says. ‘But I picked up the vibe. I do that, don’t I, Wheels? It’s one of my irritating skills.’
Ned looks at me with a question on his face. I shake my head. The only surprise is that she left it this long.
Just outside, beyond the window, I can hear Frazer Melville and Kristin Jons dottir talking in low, urgent voices. I must get away or this will kill me. But Bethany, with her feeling for turbulence, intercepts: with a quick movement, she has re-angled my empty wheelchair and given it a shove. Silently, it rolls across the room and settles by the door, far out of reach.
‘Stuck,’ she says. ‘Stranded.’
I glance across at Ned, who obliges me by rolling the chair around the back of the chaise-longue and settling it where I can rest my hand on it. Outside, the talking stops and I hear a single set of footsteps approaching. When the door opens, I can’t look. But I know it’s the physicist. I can feel him standing in the doorway, his height filling the frame.
‘Gabrielle. Thank God you’re here. It all worked out.’ Frazer Melville sounds excited, unaware of the psychic pain washing the room. ‘Hi, Bethany, hi, Ned.’ I take a sip of coffee, blocking him out, savouring the miniature moment of escape.
‘I was just telling Gabrielle about you and Kristin,’ says Bethany. She grins wide, like a gargoyle, revealing a blackened tongue. ‘But now you’re here, you can tell her yourself.’
When she electrocuted herself, why didn’t she just die?
Flushing fiercely, I glance sideways. He’s moving towards me, but when he sees the look on my face — a look I can’t hide — he stops in his tracks and his smile fades. Bethany sucks in her breath theatrically.
‘Ooh, she’s angry, Frazer, I’m warning you! You’d better protect your balls! Catch you later!’
Thrilled with herself, she snatches up her Haribos, runs across to the doorway, ducks under the physicist’s arm and out of the room.
Ned, silently sipping coffee on the sofa opposite me, seems absorbed in his own painful thoughts. The physicist and I look at one another. I see the green shard but I won’t let it pull me in. I long to be back in my wheelchair but if I transferred to it now, I’d reveal my weakness. Bethany is right. I am stuck.
‘Gabrielle,’ he says softly.
He comes forward — to do what, embrace me? Seeing me recoil, he hesitates, sighs and settles himself into the armchair next to my chaise-longue. He is too big and too close. I ache for him and hate myself for it.
‘We kept you in the dark to protect you.’ His voice is gentle but there’s a hint of defiance.
‘Like hell.’ And anyway, I think bleakly. It’s not about that.
‘It’s true,’ says Ned, topping up my coffee. I breathe in sharply and feel the bile shoot through my blood. ‘I can see why you’d be angry but Frazer figured that if you lost your job you’d be in big trouble. Personally and professionally. Seriously, Gabrielle. We thought it through.’
‘I did lose my job.’
‘Oh no,’ says Frazer Melville. ‘God. Oh, Gabrielle, I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ I take a sip. The coffee is good. Strong and dark and fortifying. ‘I’m now officially unemployable.’
‘Actually that won’t matter in the larger scheme of things, if Bethany’s right,’ suggests Ned. Perhaps he believes he is being helpful.
Ignoring him, I address the physicist. ‘I may be restricted, physically. But your behaviour suggests you think I’m mentally incompetent with it.’
‘If you were to stay above suspicion with the police, you couldn’t know what we were planning. Or what we’d done.’ Frazer Melville’s expression is pleading. ‘I hoped I dropped enough clues for you to guess that I was behind it.’
‘Which I did when I covered for you with the police and risked imprisonment for perverting the course of justice.’
From the next room, The Simpsons theme tune blares at unbearable volume.
‘Someone wants some attention,’ Ned sighs, rising. ‘I’ll go and sort her out.’
‘Get those sweets off her,’ I call after him. ‘And if you have some, she needs fresh bandages.’
When the door has fully closed behind him, I take a deep breath. I can feel the physicist looking at me intently.
‘Sweetheart—’ He puts a hand on my arm but I shake him off violently.
‘Don’t touch me and don’t call me that!’
‘Hey, what’s going on with you?’ He sounds offended.
‘Tell me, what else have you been up to with Kristin Jons dottir?’
The physicist’s face switches from concern to bafflement. ‘I haven’t seen her. I’ve been in Thailand and Paris, in case you didn’t know. Why are you so angry?’
Where to begin? But I can’t. It’s too humiliating. Whatever I say will sound bitter and self-pitying. I have my pride. I shut my eyes and take a deep breath. When I open them again he is still there. In the next room, the TV noise stops and Bethany protests. I hear ‘bastard’ and ‘arsehole’ and some quiet remonstrations from Ned.
‘Well, if you won’t tell me…’
‘Do I have to spell it out? OK, I’ll spell it out. I know about her. OK? I know.’
‘Get the fuck off me!’ Bethany shrieks from the next room. ‘Cocksucking arsehole! I can do it myself!’ Then Ned’s voice, sharp with alarm: ‘Hey! Look what you’ve done! Jesus!’
The door opens and Kristin Jons dottir walks in, smiling.
She comes towards me, her hand outstretched. She has one of those faces you’d look at twice without quite knowing why. A broad forehead and calm eyes. A serenity. ‘Gabrielle. I’m so pleased to meet you at last.’
In the next room, Bethany has begun a new tirade.
‘Gabrielle,’ says the physicist, ignoring the noise. ‘This is Kristin.’
Reluctantly, I take the hand she offers, but drop it again as swiftly as possible.
‘Kristin Jons dottir with a soft J, pronounced Y,’ she says, smiling. ‘I am Icelandic.’ There’s a catch to her accent that might make you want to hear more, if you were in love with her. It strikes me that she seems to feel no embarrassment about meeting me. She even looks happy. Because — I flush as it dawns on me — the physicist never even told her we were lovers. Just as he never told Ned. I am no threat to her. And never have been.
‘I looked you up,’ I say. ‘But the soft J wasn’t mentioned.’ If she hears the irony in my voice, she ignores it. She is still smiling, taking me in with her calm, friendly eyes. The world of women is divided between those who can be bothered with make-up, those who can’t, and those who don’t need it in the first place. She’s the last: a fresh-air woman who offsets her carbon emissions.
‘I’ve been looking forward to this. Encounters with art therapists aren’t normally on the agenda of someone specialising in the world fifty-five million years ago.’
What about encounters with your lover’s cast-off girlfriends? I flash the physicist a furious look and he replies with a shrug, as though aggrieved. Ned comes in, looking shaken, greets Kristin, and slumps down gratefully on the sofa opposite me.
‘Whew. Jesus.’
‘All sorted?’ I ask.
‘She scratched me.’ He shows his forearm, striped with beads of blood. ‘So, Kristin. What did Harish Modak say?’
She takes a breath. ‘He’s still reluctant.’
‘I’ll go and ring him,’ says the physicist, rising to his feet. He probably can’t leave fast enough. ‘Ned, perhaps you and Kristin can fill Gabrielle in some more?’
‘Sure thing,’ says Ned, lifting a laptop from the floor and booting it up. ‘Just give me a minute and we’ll do a visual.’
‘So, Kristin. Geology,’ I say, when the door has closed behind the physicist. I pull the thunder egg from its pouch under my seat. I feel like hurling it at her, but instead I hold it out. She takes it, and a smile of great beauty illuminates her face. Her eyes are a delicate greyish green. She weighs it in her hand, then shakes it. ‘Solid. You’ve never been tempted to crack it open?’
‘I’m waiting for the right moment. It’s an heirloom.’
She smiles. ‘Where’s it from?’
‘Nevada.’
‘If it’s fromthe Black Rock Desert, it probably has a lovely opal filling. Some of them are agate. Or a mixture.’ So she can identify a piece of rock as fast as I can diagnose a loony. I hate her with a hate that I fear may be deeper than the deepest love. Handing the thunder egg back, she clasps her other hand over mine, enclosing it around the stone. ‘You’re upset with me. And you’re right to be. I owe you an apology.’
I shrink into myself. She is looking me in the eye with a terrible calmness. With a sharp movement, I tug my hand back. The last thing I’ve expected is candour. It might be more than I can bear. I take an inward breath. I too must be candid.
I say, ‘Yes. I think you do.’
Ned is watching us with interest. A spot of red has appeared on each of Kristin Jons dottir’s cheeks.
‘The way I handled things when you rang me out of the blue like that was unforgivable. I’m afraid I panicked. It never crossed my mind that you would find out about me, and then call. It threw me totally.’
‘I bet it did.’
‘You must be quite a detective.’
‘Not really. I just followed up a few clues.’
Ned interjects anxiously. ‘I told you: none of us felt good about keeping you in the dark.’ Heavily, he rises from the sofa and begins hanging a white bed-sheet from some nails above the fireplace. It seems he is constructing a makeshift whiteboard.
