Liz Jensen - The Rapture

‘Excuse me,’ interrupts a man’s voice. Then, ‘Joy.’ He approaches quickly, and I recognise him as the blond, balding man she argued with in the swimming pool car park. He looks firm and angry. But there’s shame in there too. Humiliation. His wife has gone nuts, in public. And he’s picking up the pieces. I wonder how often he has done this. ‘Let’s get you home to the kids now, Joy,’ he says, grabbing her hand and tugging. He is clearly at the end of his tether, beyond embarrassment. ‘Look, I’m SO sorry,’ he says, addressing me. ‘I’ve been trying to prevent this, believe me. Joy’s not herself at the moment.’

She looks at him with contempt. ‘My husband,’ she says with bitterness, ‘is a great believer in women keeping their mouths shut.’

‘It’s OK,’ I tell the man. ‘I’m interested. Please — Joy can stay if she wants. I’d like to hear what she has to say. Joy? What do you think Bethany did to you?’

But he is already steering her off. In the doorway, Joy turns.

‘Can’t you see what she’s doing, Gabrielle?’ she calls across the room. ‘She’s not just predicting things! She’s making them happen!’

The next morning the physicist arrives at Oxsmith wearing a frayed linen jacket and a tie that doesn’t match. He’s bearing a large square box wrapped in plain brown paper and strapped with duct tape, which he now plonks on my lap unceremoniously and without explanation.

‘Sure, just use me as a shopping trolley,’ I smile. ‘I’ll spit a coin back at you when you’re done. But you’ll have to push me because I can’t see zilch.’

He glances around the reception area nervously as I log him in. It’s the first time, he tells me, he’s been inside any kind of secure hospital. I can tell he’s excited at the prospect of meeting Bethany — but he’s wary, too.

‘It’s more hospital than prison, right?’

‘Most days,’ I tell him. ‘But it can flip the other way.’

Bethany is waiting in the interview room, chatting with a female nurse with multiple piercings. When the physicist offers her a handshake, Bethany shoots me a glance of ironic despair: haven’t I warned him she only does rude? I look away. I am not helping her out. Finally, flummoxed by the insistence of Frazer Melville’s huge, proffered hand, she sighs, grasps it and shakes it up and down three times — formally, like a mechanised puppet. Duty done.

‘Frazer Melville is a scientist from the university,’ I tell her.

‘Uh-huh. I’m honoured.’ She certainly does not intend to sound it.

‘Me too,’ he says, lifting the box from my lap. ‘So much so that I brought this gift for you.’

‘It’s not my birthday,’ she says gracelessly, eyeing him sideways, full of mistrust. But I can see curiosity fighting its way through the jaded façade.

He says, ‘In Japan, it’s traditional to bring a present when you visit someone’s house or apartment for the first time. I think it’s very civilised, so I’m trying to get it to catch on here.’

She snorts. ‘Well, welcome to my charming high-security home. As well as the tasteful colour choices, may I point out the bull dyke nurse here, and the bars on the windows, and the total lack of any view of the outside world, and’ — she is unpacking the box as she speaks. But when she glimpses what it contains, she stops dead and opens her mouth in an 0 of shock. She has lifted out a large globe made of light translucent plastic. She places it on the desk. I can see a struggle going on inside her. I know that her instinct is to articulate something positive — perhaps even blurt a thank you. But she can’t allow herself. I see her quelling it. Expressing a positive emotion would be against her principles.

‘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.’