The Book of Rapture (18 page)
Read The Book of Rapture Online
Authors: Nikki Gemmell
‘Mummy?’ Tidge asks.
It is his voice from late at night when he has just had a nightmare and you come, you always come, and you encase him in your warmth. ‘Mummy?’ he asks again and a hopelessness washes over you and dumps you like a wave in the surf.
Your daughter balls her hand and holds it trembling to her face. You know why. She wants to hit Pin just like she hit her father once, after the soldiers came, wants to wallop into him all her howling at the unfairness of this world.
Mouse throws a bowl of ice cream onto his father’s face. He splutters awake. ‘Soldiers are coming,’ Mouse shouts, ‘get out.’
Motl looks around, shakes sleep from his head. Sees Pin. ‘What the—’
‘We’ll look after him,’ Soli says, ‘just
go!
She pushes her father to the door. ‘Come
on,’
she yells into his resisting weight.
‘I can’t.’ He squats close to her face. Brushes her cheek, slowly, with his thumb; all the world’s tenderness in it. ‘I promised your mother I’d never abandon you.’
She pummels him. ‘Just
go,’
her voice choked.
Tidge grabs the doll, throws it onto the trolley, pushes it against the door and locks the wheels.
‘It’s no use,’ Pin smirks, ‘it’s not keeping anyone out.’ His heart now closed whereas once — at flopping on their bed, at throwing a ball — it was open, full, soft.
‘You’
— your daughter turns on him — ‘what happened to the Getters? To no one gets left behind?’
He bats her away.
‘We weren’t harming anyone. We just want our parents back. You have no idea what it’s like.’ She points at Motl. ‘He’s never hurt anyone, he’s good, he has a
heart.’
She thumps her palm at her chest.
‘I do too,’ Pin yells back. ‘I
trusted
you.’
‘Well, if you do have a heart,’ Motl says evenly, ‘then show it.’
And quick as a flash he’s behind him and whipping off his watch like a Fagin who’s perfected the technique through years of silky theft. It’s thrown onto the bed. Motl then places his hand firmly around the boy’s mouth and kicks the trolley away. Tidge grabs the doll. Mouse the memory box. Unlocks the door.
They’re off. They have a chance.
Guide our feet unto ways of peace.
The small wedge of dark under the stairs. Footsteps above, pounding. One set stops on the step above them, patrolling an escape route, the rest run to the deserted room. ‘What the …’ A frustrated shout. The door is kicked. Pin’s eyes shine a new hardness in the dark. Sweat trickles. Balances on the end of Tidge’s nose. He needs to sneeze. Reaches across to Mouse’s hand and wipes the sweat with it and does not let go as feet, so many, race along corridors and kick in doors. The last pair step out of the abandoned room. Slowly, trying to work them out. The footsteps stop. Silence. Too long. Mouse shuts his eyes and mouths
go away go away
and the footsteps move off with thinking in their steps.
Unfurl the relief! Like a banner pluming into bright air! They are safe, they are safe.
The footsteps brisk up the steps and the noises fade and your little group uncurls except for the hand still firmly around Pin’s mouth. Then Tidge steps back. Hard onto Mouse’s foot. Who swallows a yelp. But drops the memory box.
It crashes to the ground.
They can only watch.
But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.
So. This. The footsteps stopping, turning back. Your little group, your precious little group, cornered. Motl smiling his cheeky smile as the security forces, so many, gather around them. ‘You took your time.’ He checks his watch. ‘Six minutes. What do you reckon, team?’ He looks at the children, grabs Pin warmly by the shoulders. ‘See, it works.’
The soldiers bristle. ‘Leave the boy alone,’ the commander says. ‘Move away’ A face that sinks your heart. Because it is like a fully human man is not there at all, the person inside has been lost.
‘It’s a game.’ Motl chuckles. ‘We wanted to see if that fancy watch of his really works.’
The captain’s eyes peer hard at Pin then hard into the rest of them.
‘They’re all mates,’ Motl goes on. ‘The boy wanted some friends. He ordered them in. Takeout, if you like. ‘I’m with them. We’re just mucking about.’ A bubble of pink emerges from Motl’s mouth and is smartly popped and his eyes do not waver nor the calm in his voice.
‘Back, behind us,’ the leader barks and obediently Pin scuttles to the rear without looking at any of his friends and in his silence all your original suspicions are firmed: that he was going to do this all along, that he’s his father’s son, that the city will be rid of its rats, that they will win this.
And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees.
Your body. Caving in upon itself. Because now they are lined up against the tiles. Spaced too far apart. Not allowed to touch. Your good man and each of your children so small and thin, as pale as bone, too young for this. Their shoulder blades where their angel’s wings once were are pressed hard into the cold and Mouse needs his father’s hand now, so much, he’s drumming his fingers in a nervous shake, reaching across, and now, and now, a gun is at each of them, each, all aimed straight into their huge racing hearts.
So.
It has come to this.
What men do.
To children.
And good men.
Mine hour is not yet come.
Mine hour is not yet come.
Mine hour is not yet come.
Mine hour is not yet come.
‘What’s
really
going on here?’
There is a smallness about the captain, a terrible banality; he could have been an accountant in a former life. But he has a gun. And that, of course, changes everything. Your husband is elegantly calm, even daring another bubble-gum pop.
‘I haven’t a clue what their real names are. They’ve forgotten them. They could be anyone, from any side, any religion, they’re shell-shocked. Your boy’ — he indicates Pin — ‘saw them and snuck them in. They play together. I’ve come to get my lot out, I don’t want them here, I want them back on the streets.’ He sighs. ‘I like kids. I help them. They help me … forget.’
‘Who
are
you all?’
‘I found them on the street. They’ve been living rough. They have names, nicknames, that’s all I know.’ And he gives the secret family names that only the two of you use for them, to comfort, to cherish, to envelop, that are sewn deep into the fabric of this quilt and into your heart. And the captain raises his gun and your Motl grins his easy roguish smile and says, ‘Let them go; as for me, well, you can do what you want,’ and at that, the butt of the pistol is rammed hard at his face.
His beautiful face.
A rag doll, sliding into a stop, eyes rolling, so much blood so much blood so much blood. All the children rush to him but,
‘Don’t!’
the captain barks, whipping the pistol back. ‘Get him out,’ he says to a sidekick and your Motl’s weight is lifted
by two soldiers like a sack of rubbish now and one soldier doesn’t have a proper grip and your man, your darling man, is slipping messily to the floor and is hauled up again and pulled along the corridor, with great effort, as if his entire body has sucked into it some enormous, unearthly weight, his final taunt, and his feet in their old green sneakers are dragged through the sticky wet, so much, smearing it in great red streaky tyre tracks and his rag doll slump follows the black pipes of the ceiling that disappear into the building’s dark humming heart and he raises his head, once, and that gives you hope, there is life, life, life, and then his sneakers bounce like a puppet’s and turn a corner and snag and are yanked free and are gone. Gone.
Everything, suddenly, is very still. As if something has been blown out. A great goodness, a huge force.
‘Daddy!’ Tidge howls, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’
The angels know you well.
So. Now this. Your three children. It is as if they have been suspended on an ocean liner docked by a wharf and have been holding their streamers tight and the crepe paper has been stretching and stretching but suddenly it has broken, fluttered off, and the ship is now pulling away and they are departing on a journey across a dark ocean to goodness knows what. Alone. The captain comes up close. Mouse’s lip shakes. The man tries wrenching the doll from Tidge but Mouse yells no and Soli lunges and they cling like animals possessed. ‘Interesting.’ The man steps back. He turns to the memory box. Mouse holds it tighter. The captain signals a soldier, the man grabs it, Mouse will not let go, the soldier wrenches. Mouse bites him.
A blow. Across his head. He’s all right, okay, he’s trying to right himself, the boxer determined not to drop. A trickle slides like an egg down his head; he holds up his hand: it is blood. But the box he will not let go of and a man is prising his fingers from it and his knuckles are bone-white. A karate chop. The memory box is dropped. He presses his hands hard into his head as if he’s trying to stop bits coming out and his legs give way and from the ground he watches as fevery fingers tear through your box; hands fling earrings and rip apart the manicure set, flick your last spotty teacup at the wall and smash it to bits; all going, everything lost, every last bit of your Salt Cottage life. But you have prepared for this. Nothing can give them away; it is all anonymous.
The captain wheels around, grabs your girl and pulls her roughly to him. Hello hello, he says,
this
is what I was looking for, and holds out her chin in a savage V. Breathes hard into her and yanks back her hair exposing her lovely, pale, vulnerable neck and he stretches out an earlobe and rubs up close.
But her ears.
Of course.
They’ve won.
Suddenly cold, and tired, and extinguished. Because they now have their excuse to disappear the children too.
Soli has pierced ears.
She did it with her best friend when she was nine, with a needle and a potato and an icy pole to numb the pain, because she wanted to be a pop star when she was grown up. But the religion of these people teaches them that to change God’s gift of a body in any way, to prick it or pierce it or colour it, is a sin. Ear piercings always give you away; and tattoos, and face lifts, and dyed hair. It was why the screw-on earrings were the only ones you’d put into the memory box.
The contempt in the man’s face, and something else — as he rubs up close to your beautiful, vivid, enchanting girl — the dirt in it.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
Raw, open to the bitter wind, skinned. You drop to your knees. You shut your eyes.
Who is on my side? Who?
‘The Collection Room. Now.’ The Collection Room. The Collection Room. And what, pray, do they collect in it? Tears, confessions, blood? The shift of his men tells you it is not a place for children. The yell of Mouse’s thinking. He can’t take it any more, it’s too hard; he shivers, it consumes his tiny frame; his lips are shaky like he’s just come out of a freezing pool and there’s no towel and the wind’s hurting and he’s going to cry because it’s the only thing left and he looks across to Soli and sobs, now, it’s all coming out.
‘Wait.’
A tiny voice. Somewhere up the back.
‘You can’t.’
Pin. Stepping strongly through his men. ‘Not the Collection Room. Not that.’
‘Excuse me?’ The captain smiles, incredulous.
Pin takes a deep breath. ‘That man. He was right.’
Everything, suddenly, is very quiet. As if the world has caught its breath.
‘They’re just kids. From the street. I wanted to play. I saw them. I brought them in. This is all my fault.’ He wipes his palms on his trousers. ‘I want it stopped now. Please.’
‘What would your father make of this?’
Pin lifts his chin. ‘My father. Yes. He’ll deal with it.’
A tic in the leader’s eyelid begins to jump. ‘Yes, he will, absolutely.’ He nods.
So, the doctor. You knew it would one day come to this. From the moment that boy stepped into their lives. There is only one conclusion; you can hardly bear to think of it. For you know that man better than his son. For you are an adult.
And after the fire a still small voice.
Now, a room long gone from your country’s life.
The walls jade. The floor jade. The ceiling jade.
Your children bunch back, spooked, then like horses at water hesitantly step in. Disbelieving, wondrous, for it is like walking underwater in a shimmering light. Your elder boy laughs out loud despite himself, at the outrageous beauty before him; he forgets himself and runs to a wall and smooths a hand along it in amazement: such secret gorgeousness, in a city so smashed. How? Enormous jade panels have been peeled away from some palace long lost and meticulously pieced back together, from some time long ago when beauty was seen as the pinnacle of human life and the supreme manifestation of godliness and your poor broken country was so good at that once. Beauty, to soar people’s hearts. But now. A land where gardeners and flower beds have been abolished as frivolous, along with galleries of antiquities and the film industry and multiple channels on television sets.
But this. A room flooded with sunlight. Three tall windows standing like sentinels across from your children. Outside, a beckoning blue. The three of them step further into this room, open-mouthed, closer, closer to out.