The Rapture (16 page)

'When do we start telling people?'

He says, 'Not just when, but what. And who. And how. I mean, I announce to the renowned Dutch meteorologist Cees van Haven, in conjunction with no one, that Bangladesh is in for another flood. I can just hear him laughing. And that India is to expect another cyclone - hey. Unprecedented. And I e-mail Melina to tell her that Hong Kong will be hit by storms leading to fires. She'll think I've gone nuts. Then I tell a Chinese vulcanologist colleague about an eruption in Samoa. Well, Samoa's on the Pacific Rim, where there's regular volcanic activity, so no surprises there either.'

'The difference is that you give precise dates.'

'And the dates come and go, and if Bethany's right, they say it's coincidence, and if she's wrong, I'm stuck with egg on my face. And then just as I'm signing off I say, Oh, PS, the
Tribulation
, otherwise known to religious fanatics as seven years of hell on earth, preceded by a celestial airlift of the faithful known as the Rapture, is due on October the twelfth, but we don't know what it is, let alone where it kicks off.'

'No need for the PS. These are scientists. Leave God right out of it.'

'OK then, scrub God, but mention that this vague but paradoxically cast-iron prediction of a natural disaster emanates from a child psychopath who murdered her own mum and has just stabbed a fellow-inmate in the bollocks with a piece of Scandinavia. But I can't name her for privacy reasons.'

'So leave that out of it too.'

He sighs. 'With no scientific evidence to back it up . . . Look what happened to Joy McConey.' He's doing something origami-like with his notes.

'Are you talking yourself out of this?'

He stops and smiles. The green fish in his eye ignites. 'No, my little sex goddess on wheels. This is my way of talking myself in.'

We sit for a moment in silence.

'When you met Bethany, and I left her alone with you in my office, she said something to you,' I begin. 'Something that made you miserable.'

My remark has an effect more dramatic than anything I could have envisioned. Frazer Melville has leaped to his feet, and suddenly he's offering me coffee, politely, as though we don't know each other, as though we have not been here for two hours, as though we have never made love. 'It's no trouble to make some,' he says, pointing at a toxic-looking percolator in the corner.

'I seem to have hit a nerve,' I say calmly. 'Come back and sit.'

'It was nothing,' he says, returning reluctantly to his chair. But he shifts it slightly away from me as he does so, widening the space between us.

'That's not my feeling. My feeling is she said something you'd rather not face or discuss. But maybe you need to.' He looks at his spread hands. I am getting closer now, and he'd rather I wasn't.

'One day after she'd had ECT, Bethany touched my wrist, like she was feeling my pulse,' I tell him. 'And then she said things about me - about my car accident - that I can't understand her knowing. That I can't explain away.' There. I have raised it.

'No need to tell me,' he says quickly. 'If it's painful.'
So someone died. You had two hearts and one was gone. But you never found out how the two of you would be together.

'Yes, it is. And also very private.'

I look at the splotch of green in Frazer Melville's left iris. A tiny tropical fish that has gatecrashed his eye. It makes me long for him.

'Gabrielle, I would never ask you about anything you'd rather not discuss. I hope you'll trust me with that. We have plenty of time.'

'I know. But the reason I mention it is because I think she did something similar with you: that's my guess. Am I right? That she knew something personal?'

He nods miserably and looks at me in an unfathomable way, his eyes glassy from - what? Is it fear, confusion, guilt? Or something else?

'You don't have to tell me what it was,' I say quickly. 'But I want to establish - she unsettled you, didn't she, by coming out with some personal information.'

'Yes,' he says. 'She did.'

I wait for more. I am patient that way.

'But it wasn't about me,' he mumbles. 'It was about. . . another person. Someone I care about a lot. Who I wouldn't want to hurt for the world.'

Despite my belief that it's absurd to be jealous of someone's past, I redden. Frazer Melville hasn't told me a great deal about Melina. I know that when she left him for Agnesca, they didn't speak for two years. I also know that later on, when he was working on a paper about marine landslides, and wanted her opinion as a geologist, he contacted her professionally, and they began an e-mail correspondence which has continued, sporadically, ever since. He speaks of her healthily, in the same affectionate way one speaks of a social misstep one has long since forgiven oneself.

'Don't tell me any more if you'd rather not,' I say, taking his hand. 'It's just Bethany's way of feeling powerful. I know how her mind works.' We sit in silence for a moment, but then my curiosity - no, my jealousy - gets the better of me. 'Was it something about you and Melina?'

He looks troubled. 'No, it wasn't.'

'Oh.' I am more relieved than I should be. And then puzzled. If not Melina, then who?

'I don't know how to say this.' I sense exhaustion. Or something beyond it, in another dimension. 'Gabrielle. Can't you guess? It was about you.' Suddenly I can't find any words. And something's lodged in my throat so I can't tell him to stop, to shut up. Which I want and need him to. Now. Very urgently. 'Gabrielle. I'm sorry. Bethany told me that when you had the accident, you were . . .' He stops. He's looking at me in a way that glitters. It's agonising. For a light moment, I feel nothing except a swelling in my throat. 'I'm sorry. You put me in such a difficult -Oh darling.'

A fleeting, almost hallucinatory relief. Then more pain, an exquisitely precise movement inside my ribcage, like the tightening of a ratchet.

I say, 'Oh.' And then my mouth shuts and I know it won't open again, so there's no point trying. When something has been said, even if the words are spoken silently, it can't be unsaid.

'Gabrielle? Are you OK?'

I nod. He takes both my hands. I know he's looking at my eyes but I can't meet his. I look at our hands instead - his freckled, mine olive - and remember my first meeting with Bethany. Something she said drifts up.
Did you know that blood has its own memory? It's like rock, and water, and air.

'Is it true?' he asks, finally. With effort, I shift my gaze to the wall. There's a brown splotch on it. The shape is reminiscent of France or Spain. I wonder how it got there. Perhaps someone threw a cup of coffee. Decaf. Or perhaps tea. If there was sugar in it, there might be tiny crystals, clinging on. 'Sweetheart. Speak to me.'

But I still can't look at him. I stare at the French I Spanish splotch, wondering about the sugar, imagining the crystals, until its edges blur. He stands up. He lifts me out of the chair. He holds me to his chest, squeezing me. I can feel his heart banging, a steady hard hurting thump. My legs dangle like a puppet's. Then he sits in his chair and takes me on to his lap, his arms straitjacketing me. There's clearly no escape, either from him or from myself, so I lean my head back. His body is hot, comforting. I feel a weird kind of shame creep over me, like a sick desire.

'She had no right to tell you.'

'I'm so sorry.'

We don't speak for a moment. Outside, a car alarm sets up. Around it, you can sense the night's dark yawn, the brush of birds' wings against hot pine needles, the delicate exhalations of tarmac.

I say, 'I was going to call him Max.'

'HOW -'

'Twenty-eight weeks. They can be born alive at that stage. But he wasn't.'

If I allow myself to cry, I will never stop.

So I don't, and we sit like that for a while, I don't know how long, and then he carries me down the stairs and drives us back to my home through the warm night, windows open to the hot, scent-laden air. In his arms, in bed, I give in to it. Frazer Melville knows there's nothing to say, so he doesn't try. But he holds me all night. And that is something.

Chapter Seven

In the morning we watch the news. The pall of dust is clearing to reveal a choked wasteland, desolate as a hundred thousand Ground Zeros, dwarfing anything I have seen or could have imagined, a smoking, smouldering bleakness that stretches for kilometre upon kilometre, with odd pockets of normality on which the sun shines: a playing field, a rind of park, a sparkling lake sprinkled with painted pedalos. Mosques, their domes popped open like puffballs, gape up at the sky. Thousands of people are entombed in rubble. Soldiers in masks search for survivors, picking their way through jagged promontories of reinforced cement with heat detectors and sniffer dogs.

I wonder what goes through Bethany Krall's mind when she watches the aftermath of a horror she so clinically predicted. Does she feel powerful, proud, omniscient, invincible? Or in a corner of her psyche, is she scared out of her wits? And Dr Ehmet, scouring name-lists, tent encampments, home-made posters and Red Cross centres for his family, one of millions? I do not imagine this man, with his bad haircut and his brave 'heh' and his Hegel quotations, being well equipped for the task he has set himself, but he will do it anyway. And his broken heart will join all the other hearts smashed in seconds, for no reason that makes any sense to anyone.

In a few days, there will be stories of freak survivals. A child will crawl unscathed from an impossibly narrow fissure in the ground. An old lady will recount the tale of a jar of mulberry jam which saved her life when she lay with her broken legs trapped under a beam. Then fast-forward to the time, not so far from now, when the bereaved have trudged away with the objects they hold dear - a photograph, a toy, a cactus, a teapot, a copy of the Koran - leaving the husk of Istanbul to stand and then fall: a ghost city, a modern Angkor Wat. Before long, nature will stake its claim. Insects, pigeons, squirrels, lizards, snakes and blown sand will overtake the ruins of flats and travel agents' offices and schools and department stores. Morning glory, cyclamen and all shades of bougainvillaea will writhe their way through the remains of tower blocks and climb up the rusted steel reinforcements of hospitals to bloom in bright carpets; poppies and bindweed and rosemary and lemongrass will deck splintered wood and smashed concrete with verdure; acacia trees and chinaberries will colonise the cracks, splitting tarmac to conjure the worst kind of beauty: the kind that celebrates human collapse.

When something has been tortured it can never be itself again. Be it a spine or a heart. Nerve-endings and longings have died, impulses have changed, sensitivities have found new routes of expression, specific muscle movements and emotional urges have calcified. So although I am beginning to diagnose in myself the rapid growth of a mental symptom, triggered by my recent closeness to the freckled physicist, I do not succumb to the comforts it could offer me. I recognise it for what it is: a false sensation. Like the neurological swarming in my legs, this symptom - some would call it love - is phantom evidence of an emotional indulgence my circumstances deny me.

In my lunch break I surf the net, following links and refining searches, backtracking and lateral-jumping, switching trains of thought on the lightest whim. I skim stories about the Planetarians' latest call to indict the American ex-president for 'Earth crimes'. About the Siberian tundra defrosting faster than even the most pessimistic models have predicted, about the outer edges of the Amazon basin being reduced to giant puddles of mud, full of choking fish, about how one day soon, the remaining forest will burn and become savannah: one lung gone. About the Gulf Stream absorbing the huge Arctic melt, slowing down, bringing less heat to the Atlantic, and playing havoc with shorelines. 'If the warming process cannot be reversed in time, then the near-extinction of the human race is inevitable in the long-term,' wrote Modak in his
Washington Post
article. But when Bethany refers to 'the Tribulation', the cataclysm she cannot name, is she simply speaking of the climatological point of no return, the tipping point that Modak believes has already passed - or some other, unidentified catastrophe?

How can you prevent something you can't even name?

I click and click, and end up nowhere.

Feniton Acres is one of the eco-towns that sprung up before the housing crisis. I arrive there later than I had planned, sometime after six. The destination I have programmed into my satnav is part of a mall with a central car park. There is a jacuzzi franchise, a fishing-gear supplier, a vet's, a cinema, a few upmarket clothes stores sporting mannequins in discreet leisurewear. Behind it all, there's a golf course. The church itself, vast and pink, is low-slung, with a crab-like shell and a Scandinavian architecture-kit feel: a militantly uncombative building in a manufactured community. Amid the carefully spaced rowan trees and Japanese maple, I note with amusement that here, at least, the halt and the lame are welcome: In addition to several disabled parking bays, there is wheelchair access in the form of a cement ramp leading up to the main entrance.

Like many people concerned with the impression they make, I tend to hesitate in doorways - a bad habit which has worsened since my accident. But here, I do not have the luxury of preparing myself. The entrance is of the hospital or hypermarket variety, with sensored glass doors that slide open automatically. It must be well soundproofed because wheeling my way in, I'm hit by an unexpected boom of music. A disco-like hymn is underway. A rush of conditioned air brings an instant chill and gooseflesh to my bare arms. Inside there is a sea of people swaying to the music. They radiate happiness.

A few heads turn and I'm smiled at encouragingly. Among the five hundred or so worshippers, there's a high proportion of black and brown skin in relation to white - much more than you would expect from Feniton Acres's demographic. The hall is a giant carpeted space in a neutral, pale blue. Near the front, beneath a cement cross that rises in bas-relief from the whitewashed wall, there's a band with guitars, some timpani, wind instruments and percussion, all played by men, apart from the saxophone, which is wielded by a teenaged girl in jeans. A few more smiles of welcome as I am ushered by a smart-suited young man to a space near the front of the hall, by an aisle, with a view of the action. He hands me a white envelope and a pen and whispers, 'This is for your tithe. We all give what we can.' On the front of the envelope are boxes to fill in, with name, address and credit-card information.

Near me a young woman is facing the congregation and swaying to the music using elegant arm and hand movements which look vaguely familiar. Several members of the audience, none of whom are singing, watch her intently. Then it dawns on me: they are deaf, and she is translating the hymn into sign-language. Though why she might need to I am not sure, as the words appear on a huge screen at the back of the hall in blue letters.

I'm going to stand right up and let Jesus in
And heal my soul from mortal sin
I'm going to pray to him each and every hour
Because the way is his and so is the power.

In front of me, a woman's blocky body sways to the rhythm.

And then I see him.

In real life Leonard Krall is bulkier, more imposing and somehow more vital - more human - than the suave man in the photos on his website. He's wearing a dove-grey suit, very well-cut, and has a microphone hooked over one ear. He doesn't look like someone whose wife has been stabbed to death with a screwdriver and whose daughter is possessed by Satan. Catching my eye briefly and giving a nod, he rocks his whole body as he sings. A happy man, you'd say. A man who knows who he is and why he is here. A man in his element.

Unsure of the tune, when the chorus starts up again, I mouth the words. Around me, people are exchanging delighted, almost conspiratorial glances, as though they are all in on the same big secret. And perhaps they are. I think:
the mass production of serotonin. Religion is the opiate of the people
. Then, as the pulse of energy amplifies around me, another phrase floats into my head, a phrase from somewhere else, somewhere contradictory:
if the spirit moves you
. I feel a big foolish smile blooming on my face. Acceptance: accept, and you will be accepted. I'm being caught up in it. You can't not be. A man next to me has flung his head back. While the others sing, he has his hands clasped in prayer, and is offering up a fast unbroken babble of words, as though experimenting with the possibilities of his tongue. I envy his freedom. I shut my eyes and sway to the music. With movement denied to my lower half, my upper body craves it. I lift my arms and wave them from side to side as I sing, following the words scrolling across the big screen above the choir. Tears come to my eyes in a Pavlovian reflex. I can't help it. Group singing is like good sex. After the climax, you're exhilarated but winded. I could do this for ever. We sing four more hymns, ending with 'Stand up, stand up for Jesus' - the only one I am familiar with. I am almost disappointed when it's over and the congregation finally sits. Leonard Krall, bulky and energetic, begins pacing the front of the hall.

'Those supermarket loyalty cards. Hands up who doesn't have one?' A ripple of laughter. 'Well, I don't know about you but most of the time I don't give mine a second thought, except when it's time to claim the discounts. But last time when the cashier was swiping my card through the machine I started to wonder about the word loyalty, and about the real transaction that's going on here. As in, who's being loyal to who - and why?' He pauses, and as the nods kick in, he moves on to 'the wider meaning of loyalty in our globalised society'. What kind of loyalty is important: loyalty to a retail provider, or a football team, or to our tribe (he indicates quotation marks), or to all of God's children, whether or not they speak our language and even share our creed? Is it loyalty to a set of Christian principles? He thinks it is. You can see Bethany in him, in the upper part of the face, in the spacing of the eyes. There's a potency. You could find him attractive. 'War, famine, disease, catastrophes. The spread of atheism, climate change, the violence in Jerusalem and Iran. You watch. The political world is going to be shaken and shaken.
Yet once more I shake not the earth only but also Heaven
, Hebrews chapter twelve, verse twenty-six, and verse twenty-seven:
the things that cannot be shaken will remain
. We will remain. Here, steadfast in the Lord. For we can't be shaken, right? But others can.' He raises his voice warningly. 'There is an epidemic of false religion in our world today. Our nation and our capital must turn back to God, the God of today, the God of now!' He is shouting. 'May we be drenched in your grace, 0 Lord! Drench us, drench us in your eternal love!' Then he softens. 'Glory be.'

The woman next to me agrees emphatically, joining the chorus of murmurs and Amens. 'There's no doubt in my mind that evil forces are at work on Planet Earth. That the Devil is gearing up for something. Well, here's God's message: the followers of Christ are gearing up for something too!' He stabs the air with his finger, prompting more murmurs and staccato claps of approval from the audience. 'We're gearing up for the Rapture!' Cheers break out, and he's pacing the hall like a panther, making flashes of eye contact. 'There are signs. I see signs and I feel signs. Signs the Bible has spoken of. What did we all feel when we saw Christ come tumbling down the mountainside? Have you really chosen this hour, Lord, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to rapture us and visit this planet with Ezekiel's War?' Not waiting for an answer, he thumps the air. 'It is written, people! It is written!
Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. Therefore bath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left
. God is presenting a challenge to us terrestrial beings. But don't expect everyone to understand his ways. John chapter three: you must be born again to see the kingdom of the Lord.'

Amen, comes the fervent murmur.

The home life of the Krall family. I want to ask questions. Did Bethany and her parents sit on a leather sofa together and watch inspirational DVDs? Did Karen Krall ensure her daughter consumed five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, as recommended by the Department of Health? Did Bethany come regularly to this church, and listen to Leonard's gospel? What role does forgiveness play when your daughter leaves a screwdriver sticking out of your wife's eye?

'When Istanbul was razed to the ground,' Krall is saying, 'it confirmed a deep knowledge - a knowledge borne on the Faith Wave that we are part of - that the End Times are approaching. People, we have nothing to fear. Fear is the Devil's weapon against us and we shall not allow him to prevail. We know we are safe and that the Lord will protect us. But what of our loved ones, and all those who are not saved, who have not found God's love?'

There's a murmur of assent in the audience. I learned at school, among the nuns, never to underestimate the sheer force of belief. The unshakeability of true faith. Leonard Krall has it.

'We have been chosen to live through these times and to interpret these times,' he is saying. 'So we will stand up to that Devil who is destroying this Earth that God made, and spreading atheism across the globe, and we shall await the return of the Messiah, the great Redeemer. For just as we saw him fall, so shall he rise!' Still pacing the floor energetically, he has slipped seamlessly into song mode: a chord of music erupts from the keyboard in accompaniment.

'So shall he rise, so shall he rise, so shall he rise, rise, rise!'

He lifts his hands and people get to their feet and
sing about the risen one, the chosen one, the holy one.
I clap along in rhythm. Again, that physiological response: my heart lifts and a smile blooms and I am enjoying myself. At the end of the song the congregation remains standing, which means my view is blocked. I shift further into the aisle. Krall's head is now bowed and his fist is in the air, revealing a dark-haired wrist, a silver watch, a white cuff. His energy is intimate, almost sexual. His eyes are closed and his body shivers, indicating a mood shift. When he speaks again, tipping his head back in an almost languid gesture, it is with quiet force.