The Book of Rapture (7 page)

    So. All those scraps of late-night conversation that he’s caught in Salt Cottage when he should be asleep but he’s been listening from his cupboard under the stairs and his scream is his pen
and you’re being filleted as he writes, everything that is beating and warm within you because childhood, any childhood, is not meant to be this and how does it get to this point.

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

39

They’re all awake. In a line, contemplating a television with legs in the corner. ‘It means it’s really, really old,’ Tidge says solemnly. None of them can get it to work. Your TV junkie can’t understand the cruelty of one blank. ‘Maybe there’s a hidden camera in it.’ Tidge comes up close. ‘Maybe the three of us are in some freaky experiment and Mum and Dad are watching, to see how we cope. You know, a reality TV kind of thing.’ He flashes his smile that melts everyone but his family and holds a hand flat to his heart. ‘I must stop saying I’m hungry all the time. I must be kind to my sister and brother. I must share all my chocolate. I must blow the TV kisses. A lot.’ He gives it a big smooch.

‘I don’t think so,’ Mouse says. He lies in front of the screen staring in. ‘Maybe they’re dead,’ he says softly, and you shut your eyes and hover your love, in the vivid air; imagine lying along the length of their backs, pressing into them calm and strength.

‘The dead help, Dad says so,’ your daughter responds, in that strangely dispassionate way kids sometimes have when talking about death; as if so what.

‘No!’ Tidge cries. ‘They are not, they are
not
. Maybe they’re being tormented by us here. Imagine that? And there’ll be no food ever and they’ll be watching us as we turn on each other
and then get quieter and quieter, and close our eyes, and … stop … finally. Maybe it’s the way to get them to talk.’

Everyone quiet. Thinking of that.

And God will say, ‘Taste ye your own doings.’

40

The doorknob. The rattling. Back.

‘Okay,’ Soli whispers, ‘okay We could face them down but…’

Tidge takes over: ‘we’re kids not super-heroes and this is real life.’

The nerve-rash Mouse gets is claiming his face. ‘The bathroom’s scaring me like crazy, guys,’ he warns. ‘What went on, before, in the bath, it’s got scratches like something was trying to get out and, and …’ He can’t go on.

‘Didn’t,’ Tidge concludes. Neither has been to the loo all morning in fact.

‘The bed,’ Soli commands. They scramble under it. She drags down the duvet to cover the gap between the mattress and floor and Mouse finds his brother’s hand and they wait with trembly breaths.

Footsteps. Hesitating. Changing direction. Heading to the bed. Closer. Closer. They stop. The cover’s grabbed. Tugged. Your daughter yanks back. The boys are now gripping each other so tight Mouse’s fingernails are digging into Tidge’s palms and there is blood in tiny sickles. Tidge can feel its sticky wet—

‘
Why
do you lot always have to make everything so difficult?’

The duvet’s dropped. Three little faces peer out. Burst into laughter.

It’s B.

B! They are safe, they are safe and you sink to your knees
with relief unfurling in your chest. Motl’s protégé, surrogate son, closest friend.

‘Um, sorry, guys,’ says your daughter, ‘love you lots but there’s something I’ve got to do.’

She dashes to the bathroom.

‘Hurry up!’ Mouse wails, then Tidge.

‘La la la,’ she sings back.

Whatever one expects, things turn out otherwise.

41

The family cook, from long ago. When people like that were allowed. When you lived in your sparkly suburb, when Project Indigo consumed your life. But after the servants were long gone B kept bobbing up out of the blue, banging on the door of Salt Cottage and hollering for any grown-up to scat and yes yes, yada yada, the carrots would be mixed in with the bolognese sauce and the kids would be in bed by eight. And you knew he’d be teaching them to turn eyelids inside out and do the alphabet in burps, but Motl and you obeyed for they adored him, his stories and tickles and teasing and jokes, and it was a blessed circuit-break; a release, from the
intensity
of parenthood, for a couple of hours at least. He always outstayed his welcome and never went home when he should, as if he was always trying to slip into your family, as if there was nothing else. His mantra is that there are only three ways to live now: to participate, flee, or transcend. And he chooses to transcend. ‘With kids. Any I can get.’

And now, and now, it is time to surrender to trust.

Because B is Motl’s unmovable choice in this. The unlikely saviour: ‘Have some faith, Mrs, have some faith.’ But you’re just not sure about this man now embedded in your kids’ life.

Yet in that pale space right now, well, everything is upended, and you can only smile at that. Your children are suddenly in a dear white balloon of a room all hazy with a lemony light and the sun is bursting through clouds like tent ropes from
heaven and life is good, so good, in this place. Certainty has spread through all three of them like parachutes floating them, gently, to the ground. Soli is renewed. Radiant. She hates not knowing, just like you; everything, always, has to be under control and now B is here and he’s a thread to her parents and everything is okay and she can hand over responsibility and her face is ironed out.

Examine everything carefully. Hold fast to that which is good.

42

‘
Why
should I trust him?’ you interrogated Motl once. ‘Give me one reason.’

He propped his fingertips under his chin. ‘Because, Mrs, he’s extremely clever. He’s able to flit between many worlds. And we’re damned lucky he’s on our side.’

‘That’s what you say.’

‘I’m as close to a father as he’ll get. He doesn’t have one. His dad said to him on his eighth birthday that he could no longer touch him, kiss him good night — he was a man now. And twenty years later, when his father was taking his last breaths, B grabbed him and hugged him. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, he told him, and both men wept. We’ve wept together, my love, many times since. You don’t do that with many men.’

‘Right,’ you say slowly.

‘He’s got courage and we need that. He’s a lion of a fighter, an independent thinker. That’s very important in this world. He’s his own man.’

On that point, yes. B always seems more alive than everyone else; a room always seems lit when he’s in it. He’s got a quick, wiry boy-body but everything else about him is big: the energy, enthusiasm, spark. His past is a fist balled shut but Motl doesn’t care: ‘It’s in his face,
look
, it’s incapable of cruelty and there are so few faces in the world like that.’ You’re not so sure. You’ve said more than once that your husband’s an old cashmere sock, too soft, and that people like him could, possibly, be blinded
by B like a camera flash bleeding the world out. Because he now works for the new regime, as a chef, to various people high up, and he shouldn’t be mixing with the likes of you lot. ‘He’s fine, relax,’ is always Motl’s response. ‘He’s the only person in the world I now trust. Well, besides the trouble and strife.’

‘It’s wartime, mate,’ you respond fiercely, ‘and in wartime you don’t know who to trust.’

And so B is the reason behind Motl’s firming of heart on that final, rain-lashed night. Your three precious children are now in this man’s hands. And you have to soften, you have to soften and unclench at the thought of that.

I drew them with bands of love.

43

‘Okay, team. Everything okay here? No shark bites? Knocks?’

Soli shakes her head with sparkly eyes and B ruffles her hair with his familiar dirty grin, one side up, one side down, and something tightens in your heart. Tidge gets a wink.

‘So this is where you work?’ Mouse asks. ‘Cool, the last place anyone would look—’

He stops. Hang on,
no
, you lean in, to the cogs of his thinking, all your anxieties soaked through him too much. Because their supposed family friend is nestled into the heart of the new regime. He works in the most notorious building in the country, a place where people disappear and never come back. A place Mum and Dad talk about deep into the night with no light in their voices. ‘Is this where I think it is?’ Mouse asks.

B nods.

‘Where are Mum and Dad?’ Mouse asks.

B smiles, shakes his head.

Mouse wipes his hand across his mouth, fear now capsizing everything. He steps back. Mind uncurling. Is this a cage? Are they bait? Is
this
how they get the grown-ups to talk?

‘How did we get in here, B?’ Yes, how?

A pink sphere of gum emerges from his lips, is smartly popped and efficiently sucked back. ‘This, my lovelies,’ he replies nonchalantly, ‘is my best story yet. Once upon a time there were three potato crates. Mighty big ones. And a delivery truck for the kitchen that was signed off by the master chef. Oh, and
before that there was a boat. A little one that almost sank.’ He’s all cackly with his cleverness. ‘But it worked, guys, it worked!’

‘From Salt Cottage?’ Mouse. Cold, incredulous. ‘But boats can’t get to it. It’s too rough.’

‘Trust — your — B.’ The man smiles. ‘There’s an awful lot you don’t know about him, mate.’

And as he talks there’s a fragment, déjà vu, from when, you don’t know, you’re so tired, can’t work it out; but a last glance, to the beach, to three imprints of tiny bodies pressed into the sand, in a row; three joyous angels like snow angels and children’s footprints leading down to them
but not back
. As if three little bodies had been magicked from your land by the sky or the sea but of course, the high tide mark, yes, that would work and you shake your head trying to shake sense from it but no, how, can’t, too tired, everything hurts.

For they are removed from hearing the discourse of angels.

44

‘Why were we put to sleep?’ Mouse is not letting up.

‘Because we couldn’t risk you being awake.’

‘Why?’

B sweeps up his twin brother and locks his arms around his legs. ‘Because your dad knew you’d never get into the boat, you’d never accept an escape by sea. Without them. You were far too terrified of all the stories you’d heard and your dad said your little hearts might just stop, with fright. And he also thought that back on land, if any of you woke up in the boxes, you’d be all bouncy and snuffly like a bunch of kittens and you’d give the game away. I had to go through several roadblocks and if any of you so much as sneezed they weren’t too sure you’d be able to talk your way out. For me, you were much better off asleep.’ He glares playfully at Tidge, your boy who has a need to be loved, by everyone, which means he’s never wily enough with his talk. He’s far too innocent for this world, his heart’s too wide open; people like him always get crushed. He squirms in embarrassment.

‘Why weren’t we told where we were going, B?’ Mouse is not finished yet.

‘Because perhaps if you knew,
some
of you might not have come. Some of you might have chosen to remain at Salt Cottage … which wasn’t for the best.’

‘Why aren’t they with us?’

‘They’re extremely busy right now. They’ll be back.’

‘Put my brother down.’

His little mind going like a windmill in a hurricane and the ends of your fingers tingling as if all the blood is draining from them and pooling in a panic in your heart because B’s face is suddenly set; in an instant the atmosphere is changed, like sun snatched by cloud.

Tidge’s now struggling in his arms to get down, get out, and B’s blowing another bubble right in his face and there’s no smile, no warmth and Tidge doesn’t blink.
‘Please
put me down,’ he pleads.

‘That’s what I was waiting for, Mr.’ He’s floated gently to the ground. B looks closely at all your children. Stripped, suddenly, of any silliness.

‘There was nowhere else to go,’ he says in another voice entirely. ‘No safe house left. This room was the only choice. I wasn’t able to tell your father that.’

The room hushes like a blanket has dropped over it.

Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us?

45

You gaze at them and gaze at them like a curiosity-crazed tourist from a glass-bottomed boat, willing them on and holding out trembling palms; holding them strong and calming on the blades of their pale, fragile backs.

Keep on sculpting light.

46

But B. He looks different. Shinier. Scrubbed. The leather jacket is gone, and the biker boots he’s worn his entire adult life, and the struggle of a beard always light on his chin that shouts of the little boy who’s never grown up. He used to look tether-less, a wild pony, but now he looks tamed and it’s wrong. He’s in uniform. His hair’s severely combed. He doesn’t look any more like the family friend who loudly magicked sweets from ears and theme tunes from pianos; he looks like someone else.

The new lot.

As if the old B’s been stolen and replaced.

Mouse clamps his hand at his mouth as if he’s going to be sick. ‘When are we getting out? What are those noises in the night? Where are Mum and Dad? What’s happening,
what?’

But the man Motl trusts with his life — and his children’s — is ignoring all the talk, he’s backing out fast, singing cheerily that he’ll be returning soon with some food and not to worry, just wait.

But leaving a tumble of questions churning, churning in his wake.

Rough is the road.