Читать книгу The Book of Rapture - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 27

The soldiers came the afternoon the letter arrived. An aching bright day of air so scrubbed it hurt. There was so little time. Behind mirrored sunglasses you couldn’t read their faces. Not even Tidge could fillet something from them and he’s the heart-lifter of the family and his smile usually works. But these men didn’t seem properly human any more, with proper hearts; their faces were set. They went straight to the study with Motl and you. The kids sat on the sofa. Found hands when the quiet became too much. Your husband asked you to leave at one point. You joined the children and quietly found two palms. Only your trembling spoke. You had just been told the other members of your research team had disappeared. ‘Been disappeared, or vanished?’ you’d foolishly joked, in shock. No response. You were the only scientist left, that’s all you knew; you, alone, could activate it.

The door finally opened and the soldiers walked out. Their sunglasses were gone.

‘What’s happening?’ the kids asked. ‘What’s going on?’

The soldiers said nothing. They left. You rushed back to Motl. Finally came out with your arms around each other and you never do that.

‘You both look smaller,’ Tidge said, stepping back, ‘like you’ve been shrunk.’

‘What’s going on?’ Soli asked with a new maturity, a brother in each hand.

Your knuckles were little snow-capped mountains as you gripped your husband tight. Dread in your stomach like sickness. What to tell them? Yes, you were being recalled. A matter of national urgency. And the kids, the kids were to be ‘relocated’ whatever that meant. What not to tell them? That you knew these people in command. Men who had lost their light hearts. Knew the cruellest thing they could do to a woman, to get her to talk, was to hurt the children in some way and have the mother witness it. The shredded state of your country now felt like an offence against the natural order of things and by God you would not give these people the chance, you would not.

And then the extraordinary part, and you can still scarcely believe it. Motl had wheedled one last night at home. Alone, with just the family. Because he had once tutored the soldier-in-command and had made him laugh and had given him an extension on his final paper when his mother was dying of cancer and had even written a condolence note and it was all remembered, that. His gentleness was trusted. He’s that kind of person. He shines goodness and people are drawn to it.

But so little time. A night, one night to reconfigure your life. What to tell the kids? What not? That their wind-licked little house would now be someone else’s. A start, yes, they would have to face it, this was how your country now worked. ‘Pardon?’ Mouse yelled in disbelief. An enormous rage at the unfairness of it all took over him and he slid down a wall, and became a howl. Roared great choking sobs. As abandoned as a toddler in a crowd.

‘This is the magic house. We’re safe here, we’re safe. You said.’

You looked wildly around at your family and put your hands over your ears and ran outside, couldn’t bear it any more, the news or the noise, ran down to the beach, to the kelp-heavy waves heaving their load, to a gull that didn’t move on the sand as the water rushed hungrily around its legs and didn’t move as you stood there breathing deep, didn’t move as you sucked in the sharpness of the air as if you were filling up your body. This land was your cathedral. Its yowling hurting ringing light. It held your heart hostage; you dreamed of being slipped into its soil like a sacrament upon death. And now you were being ripped from it. And every one of your little family. Because of your past catching up.

God’s beauty has split me wide open.