The Offering Read online

  For some time I feel nothing but intense heat. I hear nothing but thudding in my ears. The vibration is so powerful my body seems to be moving backwards and forwards. Then it fades, I become cooler and I hear the voice again.

  ‘There’s nothing on your hands, Madeline. They’re perfectly clean. You are being very brave, but we need to stay here a little longer, we can’t come back yet. What can you see?’

  ‘The head and body look like they did a minute ago. Except now one is there and one is here. I have made a space between them. This is not an animal any more. It is an object.’

  I can hear wind in the trees overhead. I can smell vomit and soil.

  The voice says: ‘You can come back now. I’m going to begin counting and when I reach the number one you will regain consciousness.’

  The numbers descend, the dark grows thinner, a prick of light appears.

  I ascend and feel the waters part.

  NUMBERS

  *

  Lethem Park Mental Infirmary

  May 2010

  Episode, 2.30 p.m.

  Memory is a skating around or across, according to Emily Dickinson. If that is true, then last night I fell through. I sank. I have had an episode, the first for over a year. The whole thing took no more than fifteen minutes, but by the time it was over my clothes were clinging to me, and I could smell excrement. By that time Margaret and Steve were here but I didn’t hear them come in and wasn’t aware I was making any noise. They sedated me, bathed me and put me to bed.

  Apparently I was violent, biting Steve and giving Margaret a nasty green bruise on her shin. She is in my room with me now and for the last three hours I have been slipping in and out of a treacle-ish stupor. I want to wake up because I keep dreaming, always the same dream. I am walking along the beach road. This time it is night. My clothes stick to me and my hands smell of blood. In waking moments I am nauseous and my muscles ache as if I have been beaten.

  When I wake it is dark. I hear Margaret saying: ‘I’m here, Madeline.’ I want to ask her to help me sit up, but I keep falling back into a slumber. Then I am running through a land lit by moonlight that is rolling itself up behind me like a scroll, with something running beside me, making a shadow on the road, and I cannot outrun it, no matter how hard I try.

  The next time I wake it is morning and I know I will be able to stay awake for at least a few hours and I will not need to be admitted to the sanatorium because I have stabilized. I can remain here in my room but will be under close surveillance for some days.

  ‘How d’you feel?’ Margaret says.

  ‘A bit better.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that.’ Margaret smiles at me but her face is grey.

  My tongue is sluggish with drugs, but I manage to say, ‘I’m sorry about your shin.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had worse than that,’ she says. Then she looks at me apologetically. ‘I have to go now, Madeline. Sue will be taking care of you … I’ll see you Thursday. All right?’ She closes her hand around my own, though Lucas has said the nurses aren’t to touch us, and I look away so she won’t see me cry.

  As I listen to the sound of the door closing and her footsteps retreating down the corridor, I try not to think about the scroll or the road or the shadow; most of all, that shadow.

  Holy Darts

  It is raining at Lethem Park. We have heard the rushing all day in the horse-chestnut trees. It is like heavenly electricity, sparks from an anvil. I lie on my bed beneath the window and imagine the raindrops are darts, striking me over and over. Beyond the Platnauer Room are the sounds of the evening: a burble of voices, a wail that rises and ends abruptly, the banging of saucepans from the kitchens and hum of the hot-air vents. I hear a trolley passing through the double swing doors at the end of the corridor and the blow they deal the air as they swing to again. Behind all these things is the sound of the rain amongst the newly green trees and shady walkways, finding its way into each creased leaf, each crevice of bark, into the dark, open-mouthed soil. There is something intimate about rainfall. It is as if an invitation has been extended to experience the earth on more intimate terms, to descend into the bowels of a ship, be shown the workings. ‘Step into my parlour,’ says the rain.

  The window of the Platnauer Room is open a little this evening when I visit Lucas and I can smell the rain, and with it earth and bark and leaves. I am glad, it makes me feel calmer. Nevertheless, my voice still shakes with anger.

  ‘It was too much,’ I say to Lucas. ‘Whatever we did or didn’t do last time.’

  ‘I think you did extremely well, Madeline,’ he says.

  He looks at me darkly, his expression somewhere between deepest sympathy and deepest cunning, and a wave of blood sweeps along my jaw and scalp.

  ‘Therapy must be challenging, Madeline, or there is no point undertaking it. I want to assure you again that though what we’re doing feels extremely difficult to you, it’s just such difficult experiences that make me certain we are on the right track; when things are going smoothly it means we are stationary. What we must not do now is slow the pace; the way out is through. But you’re right: we need to talk about what happened yesterday; despite what you think, I am concerned. This hasn’t happened for over a year, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think our last session was what triggered it?’

  ‘Yes.’ My heart is beating so hard that I swallow, pulling my collar away from my neck.

  ‘How much of it do you remember?’

  ‘I remember blood, on my hands. I remember the woods and the rock.’

  ‘It was without doubt the most illuminating session yet.’

  I close my eyes. I cannot stomach the suit today, the aftershave, the lustrous hair, this creature exuding health, wealth and impregnability.

  ‘What are your feelings about what we uncovered, Madeline?’

  ‘I don’t have any,’ I say.

  ‘But you had an episode.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘You have described the sensation during your last episode as like being engulfed in a white cloud,’ he says; ‘at least, that is what is written in the notes here. Does it still feel like that?’

  ‘It feels like being wiped out,’ I say quietly.

  He watches me. ‘Eliminated?’

  ‘No. Erased.’

  ‘I see …’

  He doesn’t.

  ‘You used the same expression when you were writing eulogistically about the first few months at the farm, do you remember? I think you used the word in reference to sunlight, then later to describe how it felt when God “came” to you.’

  He looks at me for a long time but, since there is nothing forthcoming, returns to his notes.

  ‘There is only one other picture in the journal: the dead bird. Am I to take it this was an “offering” too?’

  The word sounds patronizing on his tongue: archaic, foolish.

  I do not answer. I listen to the rain.

  ‘What happened in the months leading up to this entry?’

  When I feel calm enough I open my eyes. ‘My father couldn’t find work.’

  ‘What was the reason this time?’

  ‘The same as before: the islanders excluded him.’

  ‘I thought I read that he did find work?’

  ‘For a short time,’ I say, ‘but it didn’t last. He came home drained. My mother said he had been having a hard time with the men. One told him to do something one way, another told him something different. We were very poor.’ I listen to the rain. ‘It rained a lot too. It was the wettest year on record. It rained for two hundred and thirty-one days,’ I say. ‘And there were other things. There was the chimney.’

  ‘What happened to that?’

  ‘Lightning struck it.’ I look at him. ‘And there was the fire.’

  ‘Fire?’

  ‘In the roof. And the flood because the plumber fused the electrics.’

  ‘A whole catalogue of disasters.’

 
‘And there was no end to the stones in the ground. Nothing could be done with it. But the worst thing was the rain.’

  ‘Would you tell me about that?’

  I inhale and breathe out very slowly. ‘It rained at the island for two hundred and thirty-one days,’ I say. ‘My father made notches on the dairy wall. The stream became a cataract, the garden was full of the sound of water. All day mist and cloud hid the mountains; when you entered a room it was like going into an underwater cave. My mother said it was like Doomsday.’

  ‘Your father took the opportunity to make alterations to the house,’ he says. ‘You’ve written for 10 February:

  All day rain wraps us in grey blankets. The house is filled with rubble and the sharp tang of dust. They took the rotten skirting board off the walls and burnt it in the courtyard. He ripped out the cupboards around the fire with a crowbar and a sledgehammer and it echoed in the fields. When I came out he was hacking plaster from the kitchen walls and began brushing the cracks. Mum swept up. As often as she had made a clean space he dislodged more chunks. Then he ripped the sweeping brush from her and pounded the walls with it. Avalanches of grey powder fell to the ground.

  I went and sat with Elijah in the kennel. Rain was coming down so fast it looked as if there were sparks coming off the cobbles. When I came back he was repointing the walls, sweat running down his face. The trowel made a sound like broken glass. He lunged at the wall again and again. Mum was bagging rubble and the skin of her face was taut.

  He looks up. ‘The pen presses so hard in one place, you’ve gone through to the next page.’

  He looks at me, then begins to read the next entry.

  11 February

  When he came home from town today he started ripping the lino up. Mum was cooking dinner. She said: ‘Can’t it wait?’ but he said: ‘No time like the present!’ and wrenched even harder. The lino was stuck to the tiles with something sticky, it looked like tar.

  They made a fire of it when the rain stopped. The yard was full of black smoke. The lino wouldn’t burn …

  He goes on: ‘You’ve copied out a verse from the bible.’

  When you come into the land of Ca’naan, which I am giving you as a possession, and I do put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession … they must clear out the house before the priest may come in … and they must tear out the stones in which the plague is.

  ‘There’s another verse on the’ – he turns back – ‘17th.’

  And if the plague has spread in the house, it is malignant leprosy in the house. It is unclean. And he must have the house pulled down with its stones and its timbers and all the clay mortar of the house and must have it carried forth outside the city to an unclean place.

  He looks up. ‘Did you see the work your parents were doing as cleansing in some way?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’ I hate the sound of my words on his tongue.

  ‘Your mother is worrying you.’

  Mum was sitting close to the woodstove with her eyes closed. Her face was grey and her hair was powdery and stiff. She looked like a little bird puffed up against the cold. She was holding a hot-water bottle that had gone cold. I made her tea and refilled the bottle. She said: ‘Thank you, my love.’

  He raises his eyebrows. ‘And God keeps coming to you: “When God comes everything goes away. I need Him now. I did not need Him before.” How did you make God “come” to you, Madeline? Were you imagining Him? Was this some sort of meditation?’

  The rain falls more heavily suddenly, like a handful of chippings.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It was such a long time ago.’

  ‘“It is pain and ointment”,’ he reads, ‘“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.” There’s a whole literature written about just such experiences –Teresa of Ávila, for instance, pierced with the holy dart; Dame Julian of Norwich – have you read them?’

  ‘Julian of Norwich,’ I say. ‘“Smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.” “Prepare yourself to wait in this darkness as long as you may.” “It is none other than a sudden stirring … leaping up to God as a spark from the fire,” “it alone destroys sin at its roots”.’

  A nameless woman in a cell in the fourteenth century, the world ravaged by violence, the Black Death wreaking havoc across Europe, dissidents burnt alive. I am tired of his interrogation. I say, suddenly: ‘Where is Brendan?’

  ‘What?’ It is unlike Lucas to say something as undignified as ‘what’; I must have startled him.

  ‘Brendan.’

  ‘Brendan is where he has always been.’ His eyes glitter.

  ‘On our ward?’

  ‘Yes; haven’t you seen him?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I haven’t seen him for weeks.’

  ‘Perhaps you and he have been missing one another.’ There is the faintest suggestion of a smile on his lips.

  I ask myself whether this is possible. I suppose I have not been to the lounge much myself recently. My anger subsides. I feel cold, and then profoundly tired. Does Lucas have an answer for everything, or do I keep overreacting and losing touch with reality?

  ‘Our time is up,’ he says. ‘Keep reading the journal.’

  When I get up, my body is slow and extraordinarily heavy. He returns to his papers and I go back up the corridor to these walls, lie beneath the window and listen to the rain, dissolving the world within and without.

  Rain

  1 March

  It is raining. It has been raining for weeks. Dad is home all the time. Mum is tired. Elijah is bored because it is too wet to go out. God comes to me nearly every day now. I need Him more and more. While God is with me I don’t think at all. I can’t think. It is impossible.

  2 March

  I feel strange, numb. Is numb the right word? As if I am dreaming. To begin with, after I had done it, I felt sick. The sickness hung around like a smell. Then it faded.

  I have been thinking about what is inside our bodies, what makes us up, how we seem to be just the same as an animal. Where does the life go? When we die what happens to us?

  3 March

  There is sticky stuff on the kitchen tiles. All day while Dad plastered the hall, Mum cleaned them in the barn but it won’t come off. They can’t get rid of the stuff of this place, it can’t be chipped or washed or melted off.

  Mum sat hunched over, bundled up in clothes. The cement froze as she worked. I brought her cups of tea and toast. Dad wouldn’t stop and he made her feel guilty when she did. He wouldn’t let me clean the tiles in case I broke any. I sat with Elijah in the kennel and put my face in his fur.

  ‘Next summer we’ll go to the beach,’ I said. ‘We didn’t go this year. Next year, next summer, when it’s nice and hot, we’ll go to the beach, and we’ll forget all of this ever happened.’

  She cooked sausages and beans for dinner. He hates that sort of food. At the table I noticed her hands were still dirty. They were also covered in little cuts. Her hair was flattened and oily. He glared at her. Then he said suddenly: ‘Don’t you have a hairbrush?’ My heart beat so fast then that I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to hurt him a lot.

  After I washed up Elijah and I went running in the dark. Our breath was hard, it tore at the air and our feet beat on the road. I could see the whites of Elijah’s eyes. When we came back my legs were shaking. I didn’t want to go into the house so I went into the garden. There was wind amongst the tall trees and the rhubarb leaves and the cold stink of cabbage.

  God, let him find work again, if not for him for us.

  4 March

  Dear God,

  This morning at breakfast he prayed to You to forgive us our sins and direct him to work, then went into town to look for more work. His shoulders were hunch
ed up when he went off in the car, as if to protect himself. I suddenly saw my father as a child for the first time and I felt sick with sorrow for him. It is confusing when I stop hating him.

  I began hating him all over again when he came home: he pulled down the kitchen ceiling and told Mum to get out of the way. To eat dinner we had to wipe the rubble and dust off the table. When I blew my nose tonight the tissue was black.

  When we went to bed, a sea of rubble was covering the floor. Elijah stood by the front door and just looked. I had to clamber over it to give him his food. He kept licking the empty bowl when he’d finished, pushing it around the cobbles, but I couldn’t give him any more because there was no more to give.

  The kitchen does not look like a room any more. It looks like a hole. I am not sure what my father is doing. He doesn’t seem to want to remake things, just pull them down.

  5 March

  Last night lightning struck the chimney. All day in torrential rain he tried to put it up again but the fire still wouldn’t draw and smoke was coming out of the windows.

  This afternoon we went gathering wood on the mountain. Mum was very tired. We could see the island all around, the towns, the river, the bridge and the long golden beach we had passed last year, fringed with green firs. It didn’t look that far away, perhaps a few miles.

  ‘This summer we’ll go there,’ Mum said. ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  6 March

  Today a man came to do the plumbing. I was in my room reading when the lights went off and I heard my father shout: ‘Hold it!’ When I went down there was water running down the hall walls behind the fuse box and he was standing on a chair, ramming towels against the ceiling. The man came running downstairs, stared, then turned around and ran up again. After a minute the water stopped but the lights didn’t come back on.

  Tonight Dad was silent and sat by the woodstove, looking at his hands. The plastering in the hall is ruined, and the bathroom floor. He’d saved up to pay the plumber, and now the plumber has destroyed the electrics.