The Offering Page 7

  Beside the front door of the house, as if in some sort of welcome, stood a thick stone wheel that glinted, with a hole bored into its centre, from which ran a long red line. I thought it was some sort of altar and the suspicion was confirmed when I touched the line and smelt my finger. It smelt like iron.

  ‘A millstone,’ my father said.

  ‘What’s this?’ I said, pointing to the red.

  ‘Rust. Where the spoke went through.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  My father struggled with the front door, then it budged suddenly and with an odorous gush of damp we found ourselves in the hall. Inside the house the inscriptions continued: ivy had made its way in at the top of the door and bindweed at the bottom. A trail of ants was marching across the tiles; the door frames were full of tiny round holes; mould had made delicate patterns on the walls; and something had left a stain where the light could not reach it, a strange shape, like a star. To the right, in the linoleum-floored kitchen, damp made the walls bubble and bulge, and the hot sills were mottled with spider dung.

  In an alcove at the side of a woodstove was a statue of the Virgin.

  ‘That’ll have to go,’ my father said.

  So he had decided already; the house would be ours. He strode around those rooms as if someone were timing him; he had seen all he needed to see of the kitchen and utility room while my mother and I were still exploring the hall. We heard him shout: ‘Look at this!’ and arrived in the doorway of a large room in time to see him stagger backwards from the window in a shower of wood flakes. His face was rapturous.

  ‘They’ve got the old shutters!’ he said. He tried to put back the shutter but had to settle for propping it against the wall. ‘Nothing that a few screws won’t fix!’

  My mother stood at the window, looking into the garden. She was rosy-cheeked, as though she had just woken to a wonderful surprise.

  ‘Can you imagine yourself here?’ my father said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She inhaled deeply and then let her breath go, giving him a look intended only for the two of them.

  Beside the fireplace there were wall cupboards and, inside, many old books.

  ‘Ready-made library!’ my father said to me. I think he expected that to sell the place to me.

  We went back into the kitchen. In one corner, stairs led upwards. I went last, trailing my hand over the banister that had been painted so many times it was both sticky and slippery. A corridor ran along the back of the house and we went into each of the bedrooms leading off it, Elijah’s claws clattering on the floor, his tail swinging this way and that like a flag moving ahead of troops.

  My father bent down to look out of the windows, saying: ‘Look at that view!’

  Festoons of wrinkled paper hung from the walls. The wood beneath our feet, the door frames and the window frames were rotten. He didn’t seem to notice. Nor did my mother, who whispered: ‘They’ve got the old floorboards!’

  The door at the end of the landing was closed but I could see light streaming out through the chinks around it. I lifted the latch and knew as I stepped inside that if the house became ours this room would be mine. From the windows I could see the country all around, right to some blue mountains. The window creaked as I opened it, a graduated creak, like the chug of a tiny engine. Elijah jumped up and put his front paws on the sill so that they rested beside my elbows, and I put my arm around him and hugged him tight.

  When we went outside again the sun was a weight on our heads and shoulders. Elijah bounded through the gate beneath the arch covered with ivy and we followed. The trees crowded around, each vista giving onto another, and I felt peculiar again, not myself, as if I had been here before. It was then I remembered; I turned and there was the tall tree – a pine this time – no angels nor sword. I don’t know why I did not tell them then about the picture in the front of the big bible, but for the first time the island did not seem new to me but old: old land we had known a long time ago that had just been restored to us.

  We explored, the grass up to our waists, the ground hummocky underfoot. It was like walking in a graveyard, and again I thought of those dead gods. There was an orchard, the remains of a herb garden and box hedges.

  My mother said: ‘Look at the trees!’

  My father said: ‘Look at the view!’

  There were flowers I did not know all the names of then: lupins, pinks, red-hot pokers, rhododendrons, broom and, beneath the apple trees, odd, flesh-coloured orchids that smelt putrid.

  ‘Look at this!’ I heard my father cry. He was standing below a wild bees’ nest. ‘The land of milk and honey!’ he said, grabbed my mother by the hand and swung her around in an arc. She gave a cry, ungainly with embarrassment and delight, and Elijah bounced around them, barking. ‘I think we’ve found it,’ he said to her. She nodded. They joined hands and walked back to the house.

  But Elijah and I ran to the bottom of the garden through the grass, me lifting my knees high like a pony, he bouncing as if there were springs in his paws, and when we came to a bank of brambles, wild roses, strawberries, elderflower, a birch wood and a stream, I pushed through a gap next to a sign that read: ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’. I was unsure whether it pointed within or without. Elijah scrambled through after me and we stood panting in the long meadow beyond: cows staring with rheumy eyes through thick lashes, my pulse beating low in my body. There was a river at the bottom of the field.

  On the way back up through the garden I stood at the foot of the tall pine, gazing up through the ivy. I was trying to see how things would go here. I wanted some sort of indicator. I remembered the woman in the picture in the front of the large bible, the woman with the white face; the creeper that coiled in a poisonous embrace around her wrist; the other that shackled her partner’s ankle. I remembered the dog howling silently and the chimpanzee covering its mouth as if at some unutterable horror. But the creepers around this tree were warm, dry and still, and the tree smelt good. Elijah looked at me happily, his tongue rippling in his open mouth, his eyes wild. I left the tree and trailed him back to the house.

  My parents were having tea from a flask in the herb garden, leaning their backs against the end wall of the house surrounded by the box hedges. It was then that we heard a voice from the courtyard.

  ‘Where are y’ hiding?’ it bellowed.

  Elijah began to bark and tore through the ivy-covered gateway. We followed. A man was standing on the stroke of three in the courtyard. String held his coat around his waist, corduroy trousers with baggy knees ended too far above his socks, and the soles on his trainers were coming away. His cheeks were windburnt but his eyes were very pale, as if they had been blanched by the sun and rain. Elijah was barking incessantly. I told him to stop, to come to me.

  Then I ran to Elijah but he skirted me, his hackles high, still barking. I tried to catch hold of his collar and couldn’t, and it was only when my father yelled at him that he turned reluctantly and slunk to my side.

  The man grinned, his eyes wide and vacant. ‘Good little guard dog, isn’t he?’ he cackled. ‘You might need him here!’ He coughed after he laughed and couldn’t stop, then spat on the cobbles.

  ‘Who are you?’ my father said.

  ‘Who are you?’ the man replied, and his milky gaze passed over all three of us.

  ‘We’re just looking around,’ my father said, after a moment.

  ‘Ah, you’re the new folk moving in,’ said the fellow. ‘He’ll not like it, I can tell you. He won’t like it a bit!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ my father said.

  ‘Him who was here before!’

  I caught a whiff of urine on the afternoon breeze, sweet, acrid, animal.

  ‘The place hasn’t been occupied for years,’ my father said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘But he’s still here; he’ll never leave!’

  Elijah began to bark again. My father raised his hand to him and he ducked and went quiet.

  The man grinned
, revealing yellow, pointed teeth. ‘Are ye going to buy it then?’

  My father said firmly: ‘We’re just looking.’

  ‘It’s not been lived in since they took him away – I was there when it happened!’ The pale eyes slid towards my mother, who looked frightened.

  My father said: ‘I think it’d be better if you went.’

  The man laughed. ‘Aye, I’ll go – but he’ll not!’ He shambled away. ‘Ye’ll see!’ he called. ‘Good luck! Good luck to ye!’

  Elijah twisted away from me and began barking again. The stranger waved. He waved again as he went through the gate, and once more as he disappeared around the corner of the drive. We did not seem to be able to move from the spot.

  ‘Who was that?’ my mother said. She was laughing half-heartedly but her eyes were frightened.

  My father was glowering at us as if it was our fault. ‘Some local nutcase, by the looks of it. Off his head. Oh, you get them around these parts, you get them all right!’

  We went back to the garden but it was different and we left shortly after. First the house, then the barns were hidden in the curve of the track and then the track too was lost in the lane.

  My parents forgot about the stranger as they neared the town and began to talk about the farm again, about how perfect it was.

  We parked on the quay and they went shopping. The shops still would not cash my father’s cheques and we had to buy groceries in the garage on the way home but that day my father didn’t complain.

  On the straight stretch near the bungalow he took his hands off the steering wheel and when my mother cried out and grabbed it, he pulled her towards him and kissed her head.

  ‘I’ll make an offer first thing tomorrow,’ my father said.

  At dinner he thanked God, not for helping us find a house but for bringing us home.

  The Tree and the Root

  All right: so I am an inmate in an asylum for the mentally insane, but what is sanity anyway? Galileo they imprisoned, Socrates they poisoned, Jesus they crucified. ‘The Word was in the world, and … the world knew him not. He came unto his own, but his own received him not.’ Paul says that God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak to confound the mighty. And I know Lucas is the doctor here, and I am the lunatic, but I believe his treatment programme is crazy. Even Margaret has doubts.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she said.

  Each day this week I have tried to walk for half a minute longer, I have tried to do three more stretches, I have graded each exercise and challenged each negative thought, and noted whether I succeeded; I have not. Getting up is now by far the worst part of the day. The exhaustion and nausea render me so useless that by the second round of stretches I have to go back to bed.

  ‘Three more,’ Margaret says.

  She is holding my feet while I raise my arms above my head. Then, arms outstretched, I try to sit up. I try to focus on other things – anything: it is misty; though it has gone nine, it is as dark as evening outside the high window, which makes the fluorescent light even more nightmarish; I can hear the breakfast trolley rattling down the corridor and the door of the dining room open and close; Robyn is wailing; she has not been allowed any more jam. It is no use. I lie back and close my eyes.

  ‘Two more,’ Margaret says.

  I clench my teeth and stretch my arms out again, the muscles juddering, but this time the nausea is so strong I retch and double up. Determined as I am not to let Lucas win, it is no use. My muscles feel as though they have been soaked in acid, my whole body is awash with heat. I feel a surge of rage at its uselessness and turn my face away so Margaret won’t see me cry.

  She says: ‘Let’s get you into bed.’ Then she goes to the graph on the wall; I don’t know what she writes there. This is how it begins. My body and I are divided and never the twain shall meet.

  I believe that my illness is nothing more than an expression of disgust. This disgust is twofold: disgust at the place in which I find myself, and disgust at myself for being here. I am toxic, loaded with residue that must continually surface. The symptoms are messages of some kind but doctors cannot read them. They mark me down as a lost cause. I make no sense, a non-signifier, a non sequitur. I too once looked for patterns, messages, signs, before giving up and learning to live with the mystery. All ailments bespeak corruption at some level. If the tree bears rotten fruit, badness won’t be far from the roots. The corruption may be conscious or unconscious but it is there all the same. Sin lives on in bones and blood; what is reaped is what is sowed. On the farm there was an apple tree that smelt like rotting flesh though no defect was outwardly visible. Only when the trunk snapped in a high wind did we see that inside it was red and gory, teeming with glistening nodules soft enough to squeeze between finger and thumb. The smell of it burning filled the house and the garden for days.

  I inspect my body daily, but it is only for a few days each month I can expunge all trace of decay. Only then do I have the means to inflict punishment unnoticed. First there is pleasure, then there is pain. Laxatives, sharp implements and disinfectants are kept out of my reach but I manage to purify myself in my own way. A dry flannel can scour, paper can cut, radiators can burn, salt can strip. Blood is the most important thing; there must be blood. And I have a way to manage it without detection, the wounds I inflict lost in the larger wound of womankind. I plan meticulously, I take precautions. Clean instruments are a must. All absolution takes is ingenuity, determination and a little patience.

  It is now just after six and I am curled on the bed, moving my foot back and forth. After Margaret left I slept. When I woke I felt anxious so I did the breathing as Lucas instructed: in – two, three, four, five, six; out – two, three, four, five, six. I visualized floating in a warm place. I did stretches every five minutes, varying my position from left side to right, from right side to stomach, from stomach to back, from back to recovery position, and from recovery position to back again.

  I described the situation (alone in room), noted initial thoughts about situation (want to get out), wrote down feelings as a result of initial thoughts (fear), challenges to initial thoughts (I am progressing), feelings after challenges (fear), reassessed the situation (alone in room; fear), second thoughts about the situation (see reassessment of situation), feelings as a result of new thoughts (see second thoughts about situation) and completed a second reassessment (alone in room, substantial fear). I wrote in the ‘What I Did Next’ box: ‘Filled in another CBT form’, and noted that I felt approximately thirty-five per cent more anxious than before. That was when I asked to take a shower.

  ‘How you feeling?’

  My heart skips but I don’t think my voice betrays me. ‘A bit better, thank you, Margaret.’

  She sits on the edge of the bed. ‘Do you feel well enough to come and have some tea?’

  ‘No,’ I say, smiling quickly. ‘Not today …’

  She sees me hold my stomach as I turn, though in fact the pain is in a different place. ‘D’you need some painkillers?’ she says.

  I am trying to concentrate on what she is saying but it is difficult because I have had to stop moving my foot, which is in itself painful at this particular moment.

  ‘It’ll be fine – I’m fine,’ I say.

  She goes out and I curl back on my side. I am throbbing so much that something seems to be radiating from within. A droplet of sweat slips down my back. I feel better than I have done in days, but even now, when I have managed to purge myself, the situation is not ideal. All I have done is attend to the branches. I cannot reach the root. That is impossible and would require complete disassembly.

  The Gift

  I go along to the Platnauer Room today ready to be cooperative. I have taken painkillers. There is no reason why things should not go smoothly. It’s lighter this evening, winter is drawing to a close. Tonight, however, that fact only makes my stomach churn a little more.

  He is in his black leather seat, pencil re
ady. He is always writing, this doctor, a diligent scribe.

  ‘You moved into the farm not long after you first saw it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did your father buy it outright?’

  ‘Yes, he got it cheaply at an auction in a hotel in the town.’

  ‘Did you find out what the vagrant was talking about?’

  ‘Apparently the previous owner had hanged himself from one of the trees in the garden.’

  ‘And this made no difference to your parents?’

  ‘They were too in love with the farm to care.’

  ‘Were there many bidders at the auction?’

  ‘I think my father said the only other bidder was a farmer whose face was hidden beneath his cap.’

  ‘Can you remember moving in?’

  Yes, I remember. The sun was higher that day, the air not yet cooling. We made trips in a van. Going up the track, the exhaust came off and it filled with grass and earth, and we went back through the town, sounding like a racing car. My father told us to keep a lookout for police. It was evening before we finished unloading. We took the Virgin outside and smashed her against the wall. She stayed on the cobbles that night, her porcelain flesh in hundreds of pieces.

  ‘We don’t need idols,’ my father said. ‘We’ve got the real thing.’

  I tell the doctor this, but nothing I say will explain what the first day was really like; the strangeness of running through the grass to the bottom of the garden with Elijah, knowing the earth beneath us was our own; the oddness of our teapot and dresser and toothbrushes in those rooms; my father’s bird-feeder hanging from one of the apple trees in the garden, not from a nail in a yard; the heap of furniture we left that first night in the courtyard; or the meal we ate beneath the apple trees, using whatever cutlery and plates we could find, my father ravenous, his face red; the way he said: ‘We could open the garden to visitors – we could let the dairy and the outbuildings as holiday cottages!’; the way my mother said: ‘We could have a tearoom in the barn and serve afternoon teas!’ and he did not contradict her; my mother’s face glowing like a child’s; how she bent her head and made her movements small to fit his; a thing she did when she was happy, with something affected about it.