Chosen Read online

  Hannah opens a door into a narrow room with beds and lockers like a hospital ward. One of the two lights fails to switch on – it’s dismal and almost cold.

  John has peed himself. They work off the wet trousers and put him into bed. His body is thin, the flesh waxy, the ribs and knobbles of spine showing yellow through the skin. His penis is a poor scrunched acorn lost in a drift of leaves. He lies flat and groans, flutters his eyes open for a moment. His breath is foul.

  ‘He needs a doctor,’ Dodie says.

  ‘Water?’ Rebecca asks him and he nods. There’s water in a jug but it’s dusty and half-evaporated. She goes to the tap and freshens it, wets a cloth and wipes his face.

  ‘Will you phone?’ Dodie asks.

  Hannah’s mask holds still on her face. ‘There’s no medical intervention, don’t you know that?’

  ‘But this is really serious!’

  ‘And Our Lord is really serious. If He wishes John to recover, then he will.’

  ‘But he might –’ Dodie begins, but can’t say die in front of John.

  ‘If it’s God’s will, our Brother will be released from the trials of life. He will let go, finally, the edges. He will be free.’

  ‘We just let him go?’ Dodie says. Hannah stares at her until she looks down. The blood crusts itchily on Dodie’s brow, but she won’t scratch, doesn’t want lamb blood under her nails.

  ‘You and Rebecca stay with him,’ Hannah says. ‘I’ll be back in a moment. Rebecca: remember.’ She blinks at Rebecca and leaves the room, locking the door behind her.

  ‘Remember what?’

  Rebecca concentrates on stroking John’s cheek.

  ‘What?’ Dodie says. ‘What?’

  Rebecca flashes a quick grin. ‘Not to let you – Satan – get to me.’

  ‘Satan,’ Dodie says. ‘Do you really believe in Satan?’

  Rebecca frowns; she looks confused, a struggle going on behind her eyes.

  John shifts and groans. He seems to be trying to say something, gathering himself for some effort.

  ‘What is it?’ Dodie says. ‘What do you want?’ He lifts his head but then it falls, his eyes roll back, the whites a frightening yolky colour.

  ‘We should try and get a doctor,’ Dodie says. ‘Maybe someone here was a doctor?’

  ‘No,’ John says. His voice comes out with surprising strength.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Dodie asks.

  ‘It’s his choice,’ Rebecca says. ‘To come here. We all know there’s no medical interference.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘God’s will,’ Rebecca says.

  ‘It’s God’s will to let someone die when they might be saved?’

  ‘It’s a different meaning of saved.’

  ‘If God didn’t want there to be medicine, why did he let there be doctors?’

  Rebecca won’t meet her eyes; she’s playing with John’s fingers.

  ‘Or are doctors and medicine Satan’s work?’

  Rebecca eyelids are veined like leaves. ‘Remember, these doubts are good,’ she says, and she still won’t look up. ‘It shows the new you is aware of Satan’s tricks.’ She says it like a recitation.

  ‘I don’t believe you believe –’

  ‘Don’t,’ Rebecca says, sharply, a flutter of panic in her voice. ‘Let me believe what I want to believe.’

  ‘What you want to believe?’

  A shadow moves across Rebecca’s face. The blood has dried brown on her smooth white forehead; a flake fallen off and lodged in her pale eyebrow.

  ‘What can we do, Brother, to make you feel better?’ Rebecca leans over John, strokes the side of his face. He’s so sweaty that the blood has smeared all over the place, ghastly red against the grey-yellow of his skin and eyes and lips and even his teeth, which seem coated in mouse fur when he gasps his mouth open for a rattly breath.

  ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ Dodie says, staring at the mess that is John. ‘And that poor lamb.’ She winces, remembering the heavy splattering of blood into bucket.

  ‘The sacrifice is central,’ Rebecca says.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Don’t,’ Rebecca says. She blinks and hums, a high wavery mosquito.

  Dodie sighs and grasps John’s other hand. Runs her finger over the tattoos that mottle the back and crawl bruisily right up his arms under the fair curly hair.

  ‘How did you come to be here?’ she asks him, expecting no answer.

  His breath is rattly and laboured but he has a smile on his face now. ‘Chosen,’ he gets out and then a sharp inhalation and, ‘Man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pain.’

  ‘Where?’ Dodie says, but he lays down his head and his eyes slide under his lids. ‘Just rest,’ she soothes, ‘take it easy.’

  ‘Let go,’ Rebecca says, and the corners of his mouth lift. ‘That’s it, let it all go.’ They sit and watch the breath struggle in and out of his bluish lips. His nostrils pinch open and shut with the effort.

  ‘Will you do prostitution?’ Dodie whispers.

  Rebecca shrugs. ‘Maybe.’ She massages John’s fingers, squeezing the tips between her own.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Dodie says. ‘I just couldn’t stand it.’

  Rebecca gives a little shrug. ‘We have to, like, do something. And there’s teaching in it. That this body is nothing really, just a fleshmobile. Moving towards the loss of identity. It doesn’t matter, you see.’

  But it sounds phoney, as if she’s kidding herself.

  ‘You know what, Rebecca, I like your identity,’ Dodie says. ‘If we were out of here we’d have a lot of fun.’

  Rebecca flattens the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Yeah,’ Dodie says. ‘Hannah’s slipped up leaving us alone. I’ll soon lead you astray.’

  Rebecca loses her struggle with her expression and grins. There’s a weak smile on John’s face, or maybe a grimace.

  ‘OK, John?’ Rebecca says, but he doesn’t answer. They sit for a moment, gazing at him.

  ‘Don’t you think . . .’ Dodie picks her way carefully through the words. ‘Don’t you think it’s kind of exploitative?’

  Rebecca gives a scrape of her fantastic donkey laugh. ‘Whores for Our Lord?’ she says. ‘That has a pretty good ring to it.’

  Dodie stares at Rebecca, trying to read the smoothness of her face. The pale lashes are lowered, the sickly artificial light casts elderly shadows on her cheeks spinning her years into the future when the fair will be grey and the freshness will have faded. Dodie realizes she’s been crushing John’s hand in her own; she scrubs the brothy sweat on the leg of her trousers. She wets the cloth and wipes John’s hands and squeezes a little water onto his dry lips.

  ‘So, no sex among the Chosen but you can go and fuck any old pervert who’s got a few dollars going spare?’

  ‘Guess so,’ Rebecca says evenly. ‘But it must be a sacrifice. If it was nice it wouldn’t be, would it?’

  ‘It might be nice sometimes,’ Dodie says. ‘What if a gorgeous hunk walked in, would you turn him down?’

  Rebecca guffaws again. ‘Shut up!’

  Dodie goes to speak, but then she feels a shiver go up her arm as if something has travelled, evaporating, through her veins. The hand she holds has lost all tone. She and Rebecca feel it at the same instant and their eyes meet. He’s gone. No question. The smeary lamb’s blood on his brow looks almost fluorescent against his dead skin, sunken eyes, sickly smile. She lets his dead hand drop. A tattooed mermaid has her tail wrapped round his wrist. The hairs are crisp and light, the message not got through to them yet. The pupils are flared in the muddy hazel of his widened eyes. Rebecca swallows audibly. Tentatively, she puts her finger on the lids to press them down. Dodie gets a sudden shocking urge to giggle. She turns away and frowns at the wall, a dispenser of pocked blue paper towels. A Sprite can on a shelf. Her throat aches with the outrageous banality of death.

  When she turns back, Rebecca has her head against John’s chest. ‘We let hi
m die,’ she murmurs.

  ‘Yes,’ Dodie comes close and looks. Rebecca’s skin seems so buoyantly alive besides John’s. Pale, but with a glitter in it. The blood is flaking off. Dodie scrubs at her own forehead with her sleeve. Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.

  ‘It’s what he wanted,’ Rebecca whispers. She lifts her head from John’s chest. Her lips are white. Her eyes pale and luminous green, the tea-leaf fleck standing out as if in relief. She puts her hand to her mouth, looks round wildly and makes for a basin and vomits.

  ‘I’m leaving.’ Though Dodie’s voice clogs, she will not cry. But she will leave. And she will make Seth come with her. This is not acceptable. ‘Rebecca, we just let a man die.’ She looks uneasily at John, not John, just the body of John.

  Rebecca cups her hands for a slurp of water, wipes her mouth on one of the paper towels. ‘I know but –’

  ‘No buts,’ Dodie says. ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Shh,’ Rebecca hisses.

  The door opens and Hannah comes in, maskless. Rebecca touches her lips with her finger, eyes hard on Dodie. Hannah glares at them both, grasps Rebecca by the upper arms and stares into her eyes. ‘Dodie has been sent by Satan to try your faith,’ she says. ‘You must be strong. Let it go, Sister.’ Rebecca’s eyes close in a prolonged blink and together she and Hannah hum, a two-tone vibration that rattles Dodie’s teeth.

  Hannah leaves Rebecca and walks across to John. She picks up his wrist, feels for a pulse, drops it. The hand falls open on the sheet like a blown blossom. She sees the way Dodie and Rebecca stare at her, and turns back to the body. ‘God bless you,’ she says. She brushes a perfunctory kiss on his forehead and dabs her mouth.

  ‘I’m leaving now,’ Dodie says, suddenly absolutely clear and resolved. ‘Just give me my stuff, and let me out. I’m sorry, Rebecca,’ she says. ‘Come too?’

  ‘So, Satan speaks,’ Hannah says with a narrow smile. ‘Come, Rebecca.’

  ‘No.’ Dodie shakes her head. ‘Rebecca. It’s not Satan. It’s me.’

  ‘Shut your ears, Sister,’ Hannah says. ‘Come.’ She takes Rebecca’s arm and yanks her out of the room. There is the click of the locking door.

  Dodie stands exactly where she is. John’s eyelids have lifted. A fly buzzes. How did it get in? It hums wearily around the light fitting and Dodie sees that there are other flies caught inside it, dead. There’s no air in the room and she’s forced to inhale the smell of vomit and the smell of death. It’s only John, she tells herself. The air around her is thick but it seems to stir and ripple. Gooseflesh rises on her arms as she feels a sudden chill. She backs up against the wall, staring at the body. It’s only John. It’s only John. She likes him, liked him. A sort of growl comes from him and she screams, crouches, heart thundering against her thighs. Please God, please God, she finds herself saying, and even though she believes nothing she promises she will believe if only this could be over. She just has to get out of here then she’ll leave. Somehow she’ll get Seth and they’ll run, sod the clothes, the watch, she’ll find the police or the British Embassy or whatever and they’ll run out in their pyjamas and run and run. And Jake, Jake, Jake, she will be home.

  The door opens and Hannah stands framed. ‘Scared?’ she says.

  ‘There was a noise,’ Dodie says. She straightens up and flattens herself back against the wall.

  ‘Wind in the guts,’ Hannah says, ‘or air in the lungs. He’s gone. Can’t hurt you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s not John you should be frightened of,’ Hannah says. ‘Satan has really got to you. How have you let him in?’

  ‘I want Seth and I want to leave. Now. Don’t try and fob me off or –’

  ‘Don’t you want to see Rod, and Jake?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rod and Jake.’

  Dodie’s mouth falls open.‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They’re here.’

  ‘They’re here?’

  Hannah smiles smugly. ‘Come along.’ She grasps Dodie’s arm and pulls her out into the corridor. The door bangs shut on John.

  ‘But –’ Dodie starts.

  Hannah swings her round and holds her by the tops of her arms; she leans in, her eyes so close they seem to blur into one. ‘Let it go,’ she says, ‘blink and hum, come on, with me, hum.’ And they stand by the shut door and hum, but even the hum will not drive away the turmoil of grief and anger and excitement and disbelief and Dodie’s heart hammers painfully against the pitch of the humming and Hannah’s hands are pincers on her arms.

  15

  Hannah takes her to the parlour. ‘Wait there,’ she says, and leaves Dodie alone in all the flounce and floral fakery, the sickly sweetness of air freshener. Feels like years since she was here. The fussy smell of material, pelmets, valances, silky flowers. Dodie paces, frowns. Jake? Rod? Really? Her heart hammers and the hum sticks in her head like interference and she can’t make her mind go in a straight line and John is dead. She rubs her arm, shivery with the sensation of his life shimmying away, a wild man, dangerous once . . . but now he’s dead.

  Rod and Jake, Jake: is this some sort of trick? She looks down at the ridiculous lilac clothes and runs her fingers through her wildly tangled hair. She must look a sight. This is a trick, she’s sure of it, don’t get too excited, all the times they said Seth would see her. Maybe Seth isn’t even here at all? What would Rod be doing here? What, what? Mind too jittery to think. Body too jittery to sit, she paces, paces round the coffee table and the sofa into the room with the deep soft bed, round the coffee table where she ate the carrot cake, pacing, pacing.

  She remembers the tiger when they took Jake to the zoo, much too young. He slept through most of the visit and she stood before the enclosure, the precious scrap of meat slumbering in his buggy, and watched the way the tiger paced, muscles rippling under the glossy stripes, tail swishing the dust, eyes focused on the distance continents away – and she’d felt small, had felt like nothing before his trapped magnificence. She snorts at the ludicrous comparison of herself and the tiger, but still she paces.

  And then she hears a shred of a child’s voice from the corridor, and the door opens on Rod with Jake in his arms. Rod fills the door, squared shoulders, brown eyes searching out her own and Jake shrinking back against him. Hannah pulls the door shut behind them.

  ‘Here we are,’ she says, as if they are a gift for her to bestow, but Jake won’t look at Dodie; won’t look out from Rod’s brown leather jacket that he’s worn summer and winter ever since she met him. She knows the feel of that jacket, knows its waxy, animal smell when you bury your nose in it as Jake’s doing now.

  ‘Jake,’ Dodie says. ‘Jake, it’s Mummy.’ But he just screws his face against Rod.

  ‘Hi,’ she says to Rod, and he puts his head down for her to graze her lips against his stubbly cheek. The smell of him – outdoorsy, smoky, leathery – sets up such a turmoil inside her that she has to step backwards.

  ‘Hi,’ he says shortly. She tries to force a smile into his eyes but he jerks his eyes away.

  ‘Sit down, I’ll get some tea.’ Hannah goes out, leaving them alone. Rod undoes Jake’s hands from his jacket and puts him down but Jake clamps himself round his leg, face still hidden. He looks bigger; he has a new coat – puffy, silver – not what she’d choose, maybe Jeannie bought it for him, cold up in Inverness.

  ‘Sit down,’ is all she can think of to say. Her throat tightens. Jake will not even look at her. Give him time; give him time. Rod lowers himself on to the sofa and she sits beside him. Must not waste this time alone.

  ‘God, it’s really weird to see you here!’ She tries to smile, but her teeth are dry and her lip sticks grotesquely.

  ‘Didn’t have much choice, did I?’ Rod glowers at his knees. ‘Not putting off my trip any longer and Martha or, no, the other one, suggested I bring Jake and leave him here.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘I think you’re his mother.’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’
<
br />   Rod raises one eyebrow at her.

  ‘You’re still going then?’

  Though he still clings to Rod, Jake peeps at her – but when she smiles he turns his face away. Give him time. Let him come to you.

  ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ Rod says.

  His harshness is out of place; she’d forgotten that about him. He looks puffy, pouchy around the eyes. And he sounds stupid.

  ‘I’m not playing at anything,’ she says. ‘I was about to leave. I’ll take Jake home.’

  ‘Poor little sod. Didn’t take to intercontinental travel,’ he says, looking at her properly for the first time, frowning at her clothes.

  ‘I know,’ she says, lifting a flap of lilac T-shirt.

  He laughs and she laughs and the tension eases. His forefinger and middle finger are nicotine yellow; has he been smoking in the house, smoking around Jake? But then what can she say? Jake looks at her again, longer this time, allowing a meeting of the eyes.

  ‘Hi, Jakey,’ she says.

  He hides his face, then gives her another shy peep. Looks like his cold’s better.

  ‘What about Seth then?’ Rod says.

  ‘Haven’t seen him.’

  Rod’s eyebrows shoot into a steeple; he starts to speak, then changes his mind, rubs his eyes. ‘Christ almighty,’ is all he says. His fingernails need cutting. There’s a grubby plaster on his middle finger.

  ‘I’ve tried to see him,’ she says. ‘And tried.’

  ‘You can’t have tried very hard.’

  There’s another silence. ‘You finished your chairs?’ she says.

  ‘Martha said –’ he starts.

  ‘Oh yes, so you’ve been talking to Martha about me?’ she breaks in. ‘You told her about my . . . my bad time.’

  ‘Thought she should know. Anyway, you wouldn’t talk to me.’

  ‘Not wouldn’t, I –’

  The door opens and Hannah comes in with a tray of mugs, a teapot and a plastic cup of juice.