Liz Jensen - The Rapture

‘I’m not from Kiddup. I’m Frazer Melville. We met before. You showed me your drawings.’

She is wearing a hospital gown. Her arms are wrapped in bandages to well above the elbow. Her hands are bound more elaborately, the splayed fingers separated from each other with a thinner gauze, like the webbing of a water-bird.

‘He’s got quite a sex drive, hasn’t he?’ she murmurs, nodding to indicate the physicist. ‘You can smell it on people.’ Then she sighs, as though the observation has over-exerted her. I flush to the roots of my hair. Frazer Melville’s eyes meet mine and his mouth twitches in what looks like a small, proud smile, and then he reddens too. The moment is so exquisitely appalling that it could be bottled and sold as a generic life-deterrent. Finally, he breaks the sick spell.

‘Bethany, you made some drawings that interest me.’ He fishes some papers from his briefcase and holds one out in front of her. ‘I’d like to decipher this image. Find out what it signifies.’

But Bethany turns her head away as though unnerved by it. Her bandaged hands twitch and scrabble around on the white hospital sheet as though they have an agenda of their own.

‘This vertical line,’ he says, pointing. ‘Can you tell me what it is?’

Bethany glances at it reluctantly and hesitates. ‘It’s hollow,’ she mumbles.

‘What I need to know is, where does it go to?’ The physicist’s eyes are intense. What is he getting at? What does he know that I don’t?’

‘Underground. All the way in, like right under the skin.’ Her eyes seem to turn inward. ‘It digs its way inside and then explodes and the whole thing cracks open and boom.’ I flinch and picture Leonard Krall: his canine eyes, his energy, his creepy charisma.

‘And if you follow it upwards, instead of down, where does it go to?’

‘Just up,’ says Bethany sulkily. From outside comes the piercing wail of a car alarm, the buzz of traffic, the faint keen of hungry gulls. When I look back at the physicist, I see frustration. He’s trying to hide it, but can’t. I’m torn. I am anxious that this line of questioning is stirring up difficult memories for Bethany. But having come this far, I need to hear something significant: something that will tip the balance back to the rational — and as far from the Joy McConey model of interpretation as can be reached. And I’m aware of the time constraint. The two Oxsmith nurses will return from their break any minute.

‘OK, Bethany, listen to me,’ I say, to break the impasse. ‘Imagine you’re at the point where the vertical line meets the ground and then just follow it.’ She grimaces, as though she is contemplating an open wound. ‘What do you see?’

She looks puzzled, then aghast. ‘Fuck, it’s water! Everywhere!’ Behind her, through the window, the tops of silver birch trees thrash in the breeze, their leaves shimmering like shoals of fish.

‘It’s OK, Bethany,’ I say. I nod at the physicist to continue. We seem to have reached a grudging accord, a temporary modus vivendi that will see us through our joint task but no further.

‘So this whole thing is underwater?’ he asks. ‘Not on land?’

‘I guess it must be. I guess it must be at the bottom of the sea.’

‘What’s the temperature like?’

She shivers and looks scared. ‘It’s freezing. Like there’s ice.’

‘And if you look up?’ asks the physicist, scanning Bethany’s features urgently. ‘If you look up towards the sky?’ Something seems to have excited him. Even though I don’t know what it is, it excites me too and I feel a kind of hope.

‘There’s something like scaffolding. It’s huge.’ She seems to find the image distasteful.

‘What colour is it?’

The question throws her for a second. ‘It’s made of iron. It’s dripping.’

‘What else?’

‘A crane.’

‘What colour’s the crane?’

‘Yellow.’

‘YOU are sure?’

‘For fuck’s sake. I said yellow.’

‘OK. Yellow.’

‘And it stinks. Rotten eggs. Dead jellyfish. It’s gross.’

I associate a rotten-egg smell with sulphur. But the physicist’s face gives nothing away. ‘And did you see anything else?’

‘Just the scaffolding stuff and a crane on it and some, like, buildings on the platform and some kind of… spire. I need some more volts.’ The physicist is blinking.

‘You’re sure? Just the crane and the platform and a spire?’ She nods. ‘And the smell?’ His face has gone as pale and translucent as skimmed milk. We sit in silence for a moment. In the distance, a phone rings. ‘Well, in that case I’ll be leaving you,’ the physicist says abruptly. And he stands up to go. ‘Thank you both. You’ve been a great help.’

‘What about my volts?’ says Bethany.

He shrugs. ‘How long will they keep you in here?’

‘Until the people in white coats come and take me away.’

He looks at her sharply, as if she has read something going on in his head.

I turn to face him full-on. ‘Aren’t you going to tell us what this all means?’

He heads for the door and opens it. ‘I will. But just now, I’m afraid I can’t.’

Does he think I’ll let him walk away that easily?

‘So what now?’ I ask. I have followed him out to the corridor but he doesn’t stop walking.

‘I’m going to south-east Asia. I’ll be out of circulation for a while.’ He glances at me sideways, uneasy. Now that he has got what he wanted, it seems he can’t get away fast enough.

‘South-east Asia? What sort of trip is this? You never mentioned it.’

We reach the double doors to the main ward, where he indicates that this is where we part ways. ‘I’m taking time out. A field trip. Botanical photos. That’s all you know. About anything. Today never happened. None of it. Next time you see me, you’ll understand.’

‘What do you mean, today never happened?’

He looks at me with an odd thoughtfulness. I am lured in by the green shard. ‘Do you trust me?’

A wash of bitterness. I laugh uneasily. When in doubt, joke. ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

‘No. You’re clever, and imaginative, and capable of thinking on your feet. All of which I’m absolutely depending on, Gabrielle.

Now go home, and I’ll see you when I see you.’ He sounds almost flippant — as though he too has the right to approach this thing humorously. He does not. Then, sickeningly, he leans as though to kiss me. I swivel sharply away, out of his reach. What kind of kiss was he planning? A friendly peck on the cheek? Or something more intimate, for old times’ sake, the very morning after he has stuck his tongue down a blonde’s throat?

‘How can you do this to me?’ I whisper. I can feel my whole torso shuddering. The new expression on his face — pity — is as unmistakable as it is appalling.

He says, ‘Because I have to.’

And he pushes his way through the doors and he is gone and my soul shrivels.

No, he doesn’t have to. He has a choice.

‘What were you thinking, when you put that fork in that socket?’ I hurl at Bethany on my return. I am transferring my rage with the physicist on to her and so what. ‘You could have died. Look at you.’

‘I sense negative emotions.’ She flashes me a metallic grin.

‘Swap roles then.’

‘OK, as your therapist, I’d say you need to steady on. But first I need to get out of here. You have to help me escape.’

Izgoy, izgoy . ‘You will leave. But only when it’s time.’

‘To Kiddup, right? come on. Everyone knows about that place. They’ll test anything on you there. It’s a fucking pharmaceuticals laboratory. If I don’t drown first, I’ll die in there, you know that. You can’t let them do it. And it’s happening soon, this thing, I told you. October the twelfth. Maybe sooner. After the thunder comes. It’s building up, I saw it. Nothing can stop it.’