Liz Jensen - The Rapture

I look. There are certainly plenty of listings. ‘An amateur geologist from Whitstable,’ murmurs Sheldon-Gray, now determined to enjoy himself. ‘A woman called Mitzi in Prague quoting the Book of Revelation: " There was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair and the moon became as blood and every mountain and island were moved out of their places ." We have entered the seven-year Tribulation, she says, when the raptured shall ascend to Heaven and the sinners burn in hellfire. Well, we’re all aware of Pentecostalism being the new European craze… here’s another one: someone in Utah who works with crystals, calling herself Daughter of the Planet,’ he reads. ‘Crystals are also very a la mode nowadays too, I understand, we mustn’t underestimate them, must we.’ He scrolls down. ‘I am sure that if we were to investigate Nostradamus, we would find a reference there too.’ I close my eyes and open them again. He is still there. ‘You’ve been in this business long enough to know the pitfalls, Gabrielle. We all find ourselves vulnerable around some of these very, er, intense young people. The professional thing is to recognise that vulnerability and take the appropriate steps to counter these, er, unhelpful impulses and reactions.’ Bibble babble , says Bethany in my head, and I squash a panic impulse to laugh aloud.

‘Are you saying I’ve mishandled Bethany’s case?’ I say, trying to keep my voice even. But I don’t manage it, and my boss’s shockingly blue eyes adjust themselves accordingly. Perhaps they are multi-functional, and he will now use them to X-ray the contents of my skull in search of proof that I have a screw loose.

‘Well, what do you think?’ he asks with a weary sigh. I don’t know his age, but suddenly he looks it. A man with a pension plan and a set of discreet escape routes. ‘Look,’ he says, gesturing at his screen. ‘You can see from this that the world is full of people like Bethany Krall. Our job is to free them of their fantasies, not collude in them.’ He smooths down his pink-and-grey tie and picks up the phone, indicating that our meeting is over, and begins to dial. I feel instantly uneasy. Who is he going to call, and what is he going to ask them?

‘And if we can’t manage that, Gabrielle,’ he says, almost as an afterthought, receiver cocked to his ear, ‘well. The fact is, if we can’t manage that, we do not have a job.’

When I drop in on Bethany later that day, it seems that she has heard about the earthquake, despite being in seclusion.

‘Jackpot, Wheels,’ she greets me. Her eyes are woozed, as though she’s seeing oncoming headlights, and welcoming them.

‘How do you know?’

‘It woke me up. I can still feel it,’ she says, pressing her palm to her almost breastless ribcage. ‘In here. And all over my skin. Now are you going to tell me I’m wrong?’

‘No. It happened.’

‘And are you going to tell me it’s a coincidence?’

Nothing in my training has prepared me for something like this. But it has taught me ‘solutions’ — what Bethany might call babble responses — to certain situations. Like now. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m going to tell you I think it’s a coincidence. So would Dr Ehmet, who has family in Istanbul.’

‘Of course he’ll say that. Because it’s the only thing he can say, because he didn’t listen to me when he should’ve.’ She lowers her head so it’s level with mine. ‘You’ve got to get me out of here,’ she whispers urgently. ‘Can’t you see that, you dumb cow?’

‘I can see that’s what you want, Bethany,’ I say. ‘But you’re in here for your own safety. And other people’s. You’re here to get well.’

‘You know that’s fucking bullshit,’ says Bethany. Her eyes are darker than usual. ‘I need to get out of here. This earthquake’s, like, nothing . There’s way worse coming. I can feel it, yeah. Seriously. It’s fuckingmega. On October the twelfth. The big one. I don’t want to die in here. I need to get out. You’ve got to help me.’

I feel phantom pins and needles in my legs. Anxiety. ‘What’s happening on October the twelfth?’

Bethany kicks at the floor with her scuffed black trainer. Her face is like the faint jazz of an oncoming storm. ‘It’s something new. No one’s seen it before. It starts in one place and it spreads everywhere. Too fast for anyone to do anything about it. Just help me get out of this place, Wheels. I don’t want to fucking drown. Not here.’

‘Is it a flood you’re talking about then? A flood in the UK?’

‘It’s more than that. But I don’t know what.’ Her eyes flicker warily and her voice becomes urgent. She seems scared. ‘It’s your job to help me, right? So help me.’

As I make my way to the lift, Frazer Melville calls.

‘What time do you finish work?’

‘Five-thirty.’

‘Can you come to my office at the university? Bring Bethany’s notebooks — all of them. Can you get here by six?’

When is an appropriate moment to tell a man that his existence weakens you? When is an appropriate time to admit that you can no longer control your heart? Not now. Not ever.

‘I’ll see you there,’ I tell him casually.

When carrying a body up two flights of stairs, there is only one convenient method, which is that favoured by firemen when they rescue people from burning buildings. Hence the ignominious position I find myself in now, slung over Frazer Melville’s broad shoulder like a sack, while he puffs his way doggedly up the steps, the bag containing Bethany’s notebooks — which I sneaked out of Oxsmith under my gel cushion — swinging off his other arm. If there was any residual coolness between us after this morning, the comedy implicit in this indignity has put an end to it. We stop on each landing, so that he can regain his breath and I can laugh — because it’s either that or cry, and when there’s a choice between humiliation and amusement, I know which response is best in buildings with no decent access. The university’s physics department is housed in an ancient block that is undergoing some kind of elaborate reconstruction involving multi-layered scaffolding and the removal of asbestos. As soon as I saw the entrance, I recognised it as unfriendly. Not to say actively hostile. ‘I’m sorry,’ Frazer Melville apologises again, still puffing. ‘I should have thought about it. It’s just that I keep forgetting you’re disabled.’

‘I’m not disabled.’ The words bump out with each step he takes. ‘And nor am I handicapped, or challenged, or differently abled, or a cripple. My legs don’t work. So I’m just paralysed, OK?’

‘OK, Mrs Paralysed,’ he pants. ‘Let’s get your non-working legs in here.’ And he bashes his way through a door.

He settles me on a beaten-up sofa, then straightens his back with a series of shucking movements while I look around. I’d imagined clean lines, a certain cerebral minimalism. Instead, there are desks cluttered with cables, computers, compass-like machines with multiple dials, walls plastered with contour maps, computer printouts. And all set in a miniature indoor jungle: tree-ferns, orchids, palms, succulents, and even climbers that tangle their feelers around desk-legs and lamp-stands. I think of my own suffering spider plant, Joy McConey’s legacy, and feel a stab of remorse. I can’t even look after a thing in a pot.

When Frazer Melville closes the door, another wall-space is revealed, on which are tacked three van Gogh prints, which I recognise at once as paintings from the most disturbed phase of the artist’s life, when he was living in Arles. There is Starry Night , the painting Frazer Melville showed Bethany at Oxsmith, writhing with weather and constellations and a fierce crescent moon. I remember he expected a reaction from her, some form of recognition, as though the mental disturbance she shared with van Gogh should make them kindred spirits. He was disappointed by her lack of interest. Below it is Road with Cypress and Star , which van Gogh painted before he left the asylum where he spent his last months. A towering tree forms the central image. There’s a road to the right, with two figures walking towards the viewer, and to the left a wheatfield under a sky in which hang both sun and moon. The third is Wheatfield with Crows , executed shortly before van Gogh’s suicide. Because of this, much has been made of the three roads offering different routes through a yellow field, and of the brooding sky, speckled with crows whose buckled forms are echoed by the menacing black clouds pressing down from above.