Liz Jensen - The Rapture

‘Ambulance,’ he says. ‘Child having convulsions. Yes. Mouth-to-mouth, yes, and—’

‘Sit her up,’ I tell Frazer Melville. With a huge movement, he hauls her up and slings her across his chest so that she’s semi-upright in his arms. Kristin jumps back to make way for him as he topples, then regains his balance. I thought I had been through the darkest times of my life. But I had not counted on this moment. ‘What now?’ Kristin asks in a whisper.

‘This,’ I say. And I slam Bethany on the back with all my force.

There’s no reaction. ‘Gabrielle—’ says Frazer Melville quietly, restraining my arm which is poised for another thump. ‘Gabrielle, can’t you see? It’s too late.’

‘She’s gone,’ says Kristin. ‘She’s dead.’ A low sob escapes her and her face crumples. Harish Modak is sitting completely still, as though mummified.

‘No!’ I free my arm and slam her on the back again. ‘Come back, Bethany!’ As though she can be yelled into life. Which she cannot. ‘Come back!’

Ned, who has been talking urgently into the phone, suddenly stops. He’s staring at me. No. Not at me. At Bethany. I can’t see her face from this angle. But he can.

‘Sorry, false alarm,’ he says quietly into the phone, and snaps it shut.

A groan escapes me. But something odd is happening. Ned’s face has broken into a bewildered, ecstatic smile. I look at Harish Modak: the old man’s expression mirrors Ned’s. Kristin’s grey-green eyes widen, then narrow, and I realise that she’s smiling too. They are all deranged. When Harish Modak speaks, his voice is like a creaky wheel.

‘Well, Miss Bethany Krall,’ he whispers. ‘We meet at last.’

Then Bethany coughs, and my heart flips about like a landed fish.

Quickly, Frazer Melville sets Bethany down, and we both see what Ned, Kristin and Harish Modak saw first: her eyes are open and she’s blinking. She’s alive. From deep in her chest, she draws in a raucous breath and coughs again. A huge red chrysanthemum of blood splats on to the floor.

I burst into tears. Harish Modak comes over to me stiffly, as though hampered by pain. My breathing has become awkward: heaving and uncontrollable. I’m on the edge of hysteria. From the corner of my eye I see that Bethany is shuddering.

‘It’s over now, Miss Fox,’ says Harish Modak. ‘You can relax.’ The voice is hoarse, the Indian accent stronger than I had expected. He is old. Frail. Perhaps also very ill. He may be cynical about Homo sapiens’s use to the Earth’s system, but he is kind. I can tell from the gentleness with which he touches my shoulder. ‘Let us go and clean off this blood. I don’t know exactly what went on in here just now and I don’t think I want to. But the young lady will be OK. Now if you will permit me, Miss Fox, I have brought with me a selection of alcohol and foodstuffs. Let us see if we can improve your morale.’ Frazer Melville turns away from Bethany and comes forward, apparently to accompany us, but Harish Modak puts up a hand. ‘Miss Fox and I will be fine, my boy. You see to Miss Krall here and we will all convene shortly.’

And with an old-world flourish, like a servant waiting on a seated monarch, he positions himself behind my chair, spins me round, and wheels me out of the room.

I’m nursing my second whisky and Harish Modak is installing himself in the living-room, emptying a camel-hide briefcase of various packages which he unwraps and arranges on the coffee table. I’ve returned from a visit to the bathroom where I indulged in a fierce, private bout of crying, the most intense since I lost Max. My blood is calming, but my legs still vibrate with pins and needles, like the flickering of a shoal of tiny electric shrimps — an infuriating reminder that although unresponsive to any demands I make on them, my lower limbs have found a way of registering mental disturbance and causing their own, parallel form of havoc.

‘There we are. Disaster relief,’ says Harish Modak, gesturing at the food. I take in the display of odorous French cheeses, the block of pate de foie gras, the tiny samosas, the box of Belgian chocolates, the bars of Swiss Lindt, the bag of lychees, and the Turkish Delights, and readjust my image of Harish Modak as an ascetic. ‘I will be offended if you refuse.’

‘Then I’ll have a cafe cognac truffle,’ I say, helping myself from the box. ‘Followed by another.’ I discover I am starving. A sugar rush would be just the ticket right now.

‘How do you feel?’

I’m wondering whether he heard me crying in the bathroom, and if he did, whether it matters. ‘It’s normally my job to ask that kind of question. Or it was until recently. I feel like asking you how you feel. As Bethany keeps reminding me, it’s what I do. It’s how I get to know people. I know no other way.’

‘Fair enough,’ he says, returning my smile. The chocolate is working, warming and cosseting me from within. ‘Fair enough. I am fond of that expression, aren’t you? So even-handedly British!’

‘So how do you feel?’

‘Now, specifically?’ he asks. I nod. Amused, he applies his mind to the question, his brow furrowing slightly. ‘If we’re discussing the current situation, I would say: alarmed and fascinated. But cautious.’

‘And more generally?’

‘Aha, a larger question. Are we talking about the world?’

‘I can’t think of a more pressing matter right now.’

‘Alarmed and fascinated again. But more than that, I feel cheated not being able to see fifty years ahead,’ he says, settling in a straight-backed armchair. He moves in the manner of those afflicted with chronic rheumatic pain. ‘I would like more than anything to see the future. I would like to see in what way life develops.’

‘That’s quite a claim, coming from a leading proponent of the idea that it isn’t going to,’ I say, taking another gulp of whisky and letting the glow spread through my ribcage.

‘Not for most humans, in all probability. But the collapse of Homo sapiens as a dominant species means the dawn of a new era for a million other life forms. These interest me.’ If this is the man’s small talk, I wonder what his big talk is like. From the breast pocket of his jacket, he reaches for a horn-handled pocket-knife, opens it up and pares himself a inodest wedge of Pyrenean goat’s cheese. ‘We’ve been here a mere instant, in geological terms,’ he says, inspecting it as he might a slice of brain on a slide. ‘My wife was one of the leading experts on the end-Permian. Back then, life on the planet was nearly wiped out altogether. But within an era or two, it had regenerated most efficiently.’ He pours himself a whisky and gives it an amber swirl. ‘Millions of years ago, a reptilian ancestor of the pig, Lystrosaurus , was the king of the hill. A catastrophe species, like fungi. Perfect for the aftermath of a high-stress event because they thrive on decaying organic matter. Two hundred and fifty-one million years ago, fungi had an orgy. So did the hagfish. Arguably the ugliest creature of the sea, but a successful scavenger.’

‘The point being?’

His smile is an unwilling one, as though wrought against his better judgment. The shadowed eyes glint like ancient marbles. ‘That in terms of the life of this planet, blink and you will miss Homo sapiens altogether. We’ll be an irrelevance.’ Having uttered it, the notion seems to please him. He cuts himself a second slice of cheese and slots it into his mouth.

‘We weren’t sure you would come.’

The hooded eyes edge sideways. ‘Nor was I.’

His discomfort suggests that the decision came from an urge born somewhere in the complex substrata of his psyche, an urge he cannot or will not name. I won’t insist. It will emerge on its own or not at all. ‘And now that you’re here?’