The Offering Read online

  I do not like him. I can think of nothing to say, except ‘Fine—’ rather hotly.

  And then I see he is flicking through photocopies he has made of my journal, and when I see this, I forget my questions anyway. ‘When did you do that?’ I say.

  ‘The xeroxes? Oh, a long time ago,’ he says. ‘Now what are we to make of this?’

  And he begins to read aloud.

  29 August

  Dear God,

  I have made a discovery: I can make You come to me. You came to me in the river. You filled me with Your spirit and I was wiped out. Now I can make You come back.

  I have not told anyone. I was going to tell my mother but I like it that it is a secret between You and me. Perhaps You wouldn’t come any more if other people knew.

  I was afraid the first time You entered me because it was so sweet. It is pain and ointment, and while it lasts I am not here and I am no one.

  I was afraid to begin with but I’m not any more. I wish when You come You would stay longer. I wish You would stay for ever. But perhaps I couldn’t live if You did. God, when You come it is so sweet! It is so sweet I think I am going to die of it.

  ‘Very mysterious; you’ve marked the entry with a cross.’

  ‘Have I?’ I look steadily at my knees.

  ‘Yes. Don’t you remember what that was about?’

  ‘No,’ I say, and I hold his gaze, then look away towards the window. ‘It’s a long time ago, you know.’ I too can be inscrutable.

  He flicks through the rest. ‘The crosses become more plentiful towards the end of the journal, then almost cease altogether in the last two months. What does that indicate?’

  ‘Perhaps they were good days,’ I say. I put on my most helpful face, and I am pleased with myself, because this is my agenda and it is called: ‘Appearing to be Cooperative’.

  ‘They must be epiphanic from the terms you use to describe this one.’

  ‘Perhaps they were,’ I say. ‘Children get excited about all sorts of things.’

  ‘Do you have these experiences of God any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just this one year at the farm?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  He flicks on. ‘But the crosses seem to coincide with events taking a turn for the worse. In the next entry your father loses his job again; that wouldn’t make sense, God appearing to you and then punishing you. Rather a confused deity, I think.’ He raises a dark eyebrow.

  I shrug and once more hold his gaze, and presently I see I have won because he sighs loudly, taps the photocopies and says: ‘Are you reading this?’

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him.

  ‘Good. Keep it up. I’ll expect you to have read to the end of September by next Friday. Now, hop onto the couch.’

  ‘I have some questions I want to ask—’ I say.

  ‘We have only an hour, Madeline. I really don’t want to cut short our facilitated recall time. It’s by far the most important part of your recovery. Let’s address these questions next time, all right?’

  ‘But—’

  I stare at him. He looks at me enquiringly. And just like that, he has won once again, and I must submit.

  Black

  I settle myself by the window and take out the journal. It is best not to think about it. Just begin. After I have read my quota, after I have taken myself back, gone as deep as I am able, I will go into the lounge and drink a draught of institutionalized oblivion from the waters of Lethe. This place, at least, is good for something.

  10 September

  Dear God,

  Something has happened. It doesn’t make sense. I thought You were helping us. Tonight when he came home Dad said he had no more work. It was horrible at dinner and afterwards he said Elijah had to sleep in the kennel from now on. (I put extra dog food in his supper when they weren’t looking.) The blackness is back. I’m sure of it. Dad is trying to hide it but I can tell.

  I close my eyes. I try to remember that evening but can see only parts and the parts that I see I may have imagined. I need help. I need someone to intercede. I ask the girl whose journal it is to come to me now and stand in my place, to go back and relay the narrative for me. As it was – as it still is, for her, at this moment; which is the same moment I occupy, I suppose, just a different version of it. There is no one else to ask.

  ‘Help me,’ I say, ‘because what I am doing, I am doing for both of us.’

  She is silent. I give up talking to her and go over and over the words on the page, trying to feel my way back. I don’t know how much time passes. I know I want more than anything to close the journal and sleep. But giving up is not an option. Nor is sleeping. Not any more. The way out is through.

  At last, she comes. I feel a softening somewhere, a layer giving way. Fibres part, the fog thins, and finally I see clearly – too clearly – the kitchen, the woman, the man and the girl I find so hard to believe was once me, I once her.

  My father came in. He said: ‘No more work.’ He filled the kettle and turned the tap off. ‘There’ll be more in a while.’ He plugged the kettle in. His eyes were very bright and very black. I knew what it meant.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘There’s ground to be cleared,’ and he went out.

  My mother smiled. She said: ‘Why don’t you go and help him?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘He’ll get more work.’

  She looked up from wiping the chopping board. ‘I know he will, love.’ She seemed surprised.

  ‘Good. He always finds more work,’ I said.

  She rinsed the chopping board under the tap. I looked at her closely but her face was clear and she seemed to believe what she said. ‘Go out and help him, he likes it when you offer.’

  I looked carefully at her. The flesh above her eyes was tight. Her hair stuck out at odd angles. I leant against her and breathed in its smell. Then I held her arms to her sides and she laughed. ‘I can’t stir like this, and you know how your father hates lumps in his gravy!’

  I took my arms away. ‘It’s not his gravy,’ I said. ‘It’s our gravy. Why is everything his?’

  As she strained the potatoes in the sink a cloud of steam rose, whitening the window as if a giant had breathed on it. It made me nervous, thinking of a giant, like the gods that had lived in this land before, the ones my father said were dead. What if our God was not strong enough to protect us from them?

  ‘Mum, are you okay?’ I said.

  She turned. ‘Yes, my love. Why shouldn’t I be?’ She smiled again, then went back to pouring the potato water and tripped over Elijah who was sniffing hopefully at the frying pan. She said: ‘Take him outside, will you?’

  I called Elijah and we went out. It was hot but there was no sun and the sky had clouded over. We went into the garden. I could hear him before I saw him. There was the silky splice of the spade in the earth, then a gravelly chink, as if the spade had struck china; then an angry metallic bang as the stone landed in the barrow. I felt the noise in my chest. It made me feel feverish and shaky. I began picking up the stones. I didn’t want to say: ‘Shall I help?’

  He pretended not to notice. After a minute he said with a smile that looked tortured: ‘Soon have this cleared.’

  His face was red, his mouth a hole. When he pushed the spade into the earth he made a noise like a roar. I hated him when he was like that. I wished I could make noises; I wished he had to listen to me. So I shouted as I lobbed a stone into the barrow, and he stared at me and said: ‘What are you shouting for?’

  I shrugged but my heart was beating hard. ‘You do,’ I said.

  I smiled quickly but he knew I did not mean the smile. His expression darkened. He bent back over the spade.

  Elijah did not get scraps at dinner that night. He sat on his back legs, watching us, one ear up, one ear down, asking questions with his eyes.

  ‘It won’t hurt him, he’s too fat anyway,’ my father said.

  ‘He’s not fat!’ I said. ‘Since when has he been fat?’


  ‘And I think it’s about time,’ he said loudly before I had finished speaking, ‘that he started sleeping in the kennel. That’s what it’s there for!’

  I stared at him. ‘He always sleeps in the house,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with him sleeping here?’

  He didn’t answer, just carried on spearing his potatoes, then took a swig of tea. Mum didn’t look up.

  I took my dish to the sink because I couldn’t bear to have Elijah gazing at me any more and because I couldn’t bear to sit opposite my father, and because I was feeling hot and tight.

  He said: ‘Ah, excuse me, there are two more people still eating!’ My mother flushed.

  I sat back down. She asked if we wanted more.

  ‘What do we want more for?’ he said. ‘Keep it for tomorrow! There’s another meal there!’

  But we always had second helpings if there was food left. I decided it must be because of there being no work. My mother said nervously: ‘Yes, they were big portions,’ and took the pan back to the stove. I caught his eye. He cleared his throat and began to whistle but it didn’t fool me. The blackness was back. I knew it.

  Elijah watched while we dried up and while we sat by the woodstove, still waiting for his scraps. Finally I couldn’t bear it any longer.

  ‘There’s nothing for you!’ I said. ‘There’re no scraps tonight!’ and I ran up the stairs and along the landing to my room, but he came to the bottom and looked up.

  At supper I added more dog food to the bread and mashed it well, as he liked it. I stood over him till he finished eating so they wouldn’t find out, and I cried when I took him down to the kennel and locked him up.

  17 September

  Dear God,

  He is horrible to me. I hate to be near him. Mum says I have to do lessons in the morning but as soon as I have finished, Elijah and I run over the fields. Anywhere, as long as we are away from him. Anywhere, so long as we can be by ourselves.

  I rest my head in my hands and press my thumbs to my ears and try to remember those early autumn mornings. I suddenly remember that when my mother and I did lessons at the kitchen table, we could hear tractors in the cornfield. The sound was lazy and curdled in the air. What else? I ask the girl. What else is there?

  In the garden there were dry brown weeds, fat dandelions and pink feather grasses that I scattered over Elijah. There were swallows in the barn and blackberries in the hedges. The leaves were tinged with carmine and gold, and the fields were strewn with bales that looked as if a giant knife had carved them from butter.

  The words the grass spoke were jumbled, the ribbon had knotted, it was twisted and tied in great sheaves, already dead. There was quietness amongst the stubble. It was uncomfortable to sit on and ugly to look at. If the grasses had been blades, they had become needles, and try as I might I couldn’t pass through their eyes.

  The kitchen smelt fusty. Flies buzzed above the oilcloth. The bin needed emptying but my mother hadn’t noticed so I did it instead. She was marking my exercise books and wrote ‘Excellent’ in the margin or drew a star. Her stars were fat and looked happy, the points uneven, as if they were dancing on their toes or waving their fingers. Sometimes she drew a face on the star. When she was not marking she stared into the distance. When my father came in she went back to marking.

  I was working out whether two thirds was equivalent to four sixths or ten fifteenths.

  ‘Both,’ a voice said.

  He was looking over my shoulder. I flushed but didn’t immediately write the answer. I pretended I was seeing whether what he said was right.

  ‘How can you work like that?’ he said as he went away. He meant work like that with Elijah’s head on my lap.

  I pushed Elijah away and bent over my book but my heart was beating too hard to think. I put my hands over my ears. He went to the sink to get a drink and my mother gestured for me to pass her my maths book. She made a flourish of ticking the page, then said loudly: ‘Look at that: eight out of ten!’

  I wondered how he could let me know just by the back of his head that he wasn’t impressed. Was it to do with the way his neck was set, the strength in it, how it was somehow compressed? Was it the way his hair curled spitefully, as if it couldn’t bear to be next to itself and hated the world? It was like a child’s hair, the way the curls jostled. He carried on looking out at the fields where the tractor was. There was an oval of sweat on the back of his shirt. I put my sleeve to my nose.

  23 September

  Dear God,

  Today he made Mum look like a fool and she didn’t know what to do or say. There is no limit to my hatred for him.

  I am with the girl again. We are in the garden. The air is full of heat and the smell of dung and hay. The grass is brassy against my legs. It is stiffer than it has been in the summer and rustles when the wind comes. The flowers look heavy, their heads fleshy and browning at the tips. The colours seem to have become even brighter, just before they must fade: the brambles blaze, the sky is bruised and damson, the roofs strawberry, the roses bloody or yolk-yellow. The world seems like a picture from a book from long ago, when the hues glow.

  My father is still clearing the ground. The heap of stones is even bigger. He barrows them to the bottom of the garden then comes back for more.

  ‘We’ll be able to make a rockery soon,’ my mother says.

  ‘I don’t know how they managed to grow anything here!’ He stands up, straightening his back.

  ‘Maybe it’s just around the house,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t be stupid – it’s the same all over the island!’

  I wonder whether this is true, whether the ground is stony everywhere. I wonder why he has to be unkind to her.

  24 September

  Dear God,

  Today we helped him in the garden with the stones again. The stones were crawling with things and every time I touched one I wanted to retch.

  I hated touching those stones. He says that gods lived here. Sometimes in the garden I think I can feel their bones beneath the grass and hear their voices in the trees. The stones are their eyes – or perhaps they are their hearts. We should leave them where we found them, in the dirt and the dark.

  We were at the table when my father came in. He said: ‘Give me a hand, will you?’ His face was dark red. He was angry at having to ask for our help and angry at us for being there to ask, but it wasn’t a question anyway. We closed the books and went out.

  My mother had the spade with the broken handle and she had to keep stopping to tape it up. Her body juddered as she dug because she was digging so hard. Her hair was slicked over, her mouth open. She grinned and said: ‘All right, love?’ Why does she always look so silly? Are some people just like that?

  When I threw the stones into the barrow Elijah yapped and jumped at them. He knew they were only old stones but he was bored and trying to amuse himself, he was very clever like that, he could pretend the same as I could. I think he was also trying to cheer me up, cheer us all up, but it didn’t work.

  ‘Take that dog away from here!’ he said.

  I hated doing it. I took Elijah up to the courtyard and told him to stay in the house. He put his head on his paws.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. I cupped his nose in my hand. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. He’s just grumpy.’

  He wasn’t any happier with Elijah gone. We worked all afternoon but the stones kept appearing. They were crawling and slithering with things. They were pale and round, almost circular. I thought they looked like the eyes of statues. Once I thought that, I didn’t want to touch them any more, or see them in the pile, or watch them fall thundering onto the grass.

  The next day I didn’t want to be where my father was so I sat with Elijah in the kennel. He was chewing a piece of wood, snuffling and sneezing when bits got up his nose.

  ‘Do you understand what’s happening?’ I said.

  He snuffled and shook his head to clear his nostrils.

  ‘Neither do I,’ I said. ‘I wish G
od would talk to me. I want to ask Him questions.’

  I stroked Elijah and watched tractors in the long field. The engines rippled through the afternoon like slow farts. The sound came towards us, then faded again on the thin breeze. The great arms lifted the bales into the air so that they sailed for a little while in the white sky. Everything seemed pointless. I lay back in the straw and made God come to me. There was still that.

  The sky was white. I didn’t know where the blue had gone. Every day the land lost a little more colour. The orchard smelt of cider and water and old leaves. The ground was soggy and the air filled with wasps and flies. One afternoon my mother and I held bedsheets under the apple trees while he climbed up and shook them.

  The apples were foamy, the flesh fibrous, the skins loose. We washed them and laid them on newspaper in the chests upstairs in the dairy. My father said we had to collect more.

  ‘Leave spaces!’ he said. ‘Or they’ll go bad.’

  He snatched an apple out of my mother’s hand and relaid it, and she seemed to shrink as if she were plastic and a flame had been held up to her. I glared at him; I didn’t care if he saw that I hated him.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  My temples hurt. I went into the yard and swung the rope with the stick at the end for Elijah. I swung it so fast you could hear it slicing the air. I swung it till my shoulder was burning, then swung it some more.

  I decided not to call him ‘Dad’ any more; he was not my father and never had been.

  I get up from the chair and move to the bed. I curl on my side and begin reading the journal again, where I left off.

  27 September

  Dear God,

  Where do You take me when You come? Today I made You come to me in bed and everything went away. But afterwards I felt empty and the world was dark. When I am sad the world seems darker still. Can that be true? I have noticed something else too: when I am sad the ground seems close, as if I am going to bump into it. It has been feeling close for over a week now.