Girl A(75)

The Lifehouse had been populated, for the most part, by my siblings and me. In his efforts to convert the people of Hollowfield, I recognized that Father’s charm had faded. His old devotees – restless mothers, and bored girls hoping for an adventure in salvation – no longer glanced up when he passed by. His body was taut and restless, his veins closer to the skin. His sullenness, which had once been seductive, had become frightening: mothers shifted their children politely out of his path. He had a gut, and holes in his clothes. He didn’t look like somebody who could save you.

I had hoped the new baby might placate Father. A little reminder of his vitality. The truth is, our new brother was difficult and sickly. He was born a month early, and was jaundiced; at first, he had to stay in hospital, beneath artificial light. For two weeks, Mother was missing, and Father sulked at the kitchen table, criticizing our writing, our attitude, our posture. We ate little, and I was relieved when the child came home. Evie presented Mother with a card, with a drawing of Jesus, still and serene in the manger, and Mother parted the blankets so that we could see the baby’s face. He was raw and scrawny, writhing to escape her arms. Evie took back the card.

‘Maybe he’ll look like this when he’s older,’ she said.

I noticed that Mother tried to keep the baby from Father. She zipped him into a coat and took him for long walks on the moor, even though she was still stooped from the birth. During our lessons, they sat in the garden, bundled in blankets in the thin winter sunlight, the baby’s cries subdued by the kitchen door. One night, collecting glasses of water, I found them there past midnight, a hunched creature with two clouds of breath. It was March, and there was snow on the ground.

Father believed that there was something wrong with the baby. ‘The crying,’ he said. ‘What child cries like this?’ He constructed strange theories about the fortnight at the hospital. ‘Did you keep an eye on him?’ he asked Mother. ‘All of the time?’ And, when the crying was loudest: ‘Are you sure that he’s ours?’

First the books had gone, then the luxuries: colourful clothes; shampoo; our old birthday presents. Father sealed the windows with cardboard, so that the authorities wouldn’t be able to see in. It wasn’t that we were forbidden from going outside – not at first – but that we didn’t want to. I had three T-shirts on rotation, which smelt warm and rotten, and tracksuit pants with holes in the crotch. I contemplated meeting Cara and Annie on the high street. I directed whole scenes of my own humiliation: this time they would run from me, shrieking; this time they would feign politeness, and exchange a long, incredulous look, just before I turned away. Only Gabriel accompanied Father to the supermarket, and he returned snuffling or bruised. He had seen things that he wanted, and forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to ask for them.

The area beyond the house began to soften, then to blur. I could recall the direction of Moor Woods Road – the slope downwards, which started gently and steepened to the junction – but not the appearance of the houses, and not the details of Hollowfield. I dreamt of walking between the shops on the high street. They came to me in order: the bookshop; Bit by Bit; the charity shops; the Co-operative; the doctor. The shutters where the Lifehouse had been. I purchased paper bags full of food, taking my time, talking to the shopkeepers. Dreams ordinary enough to be true.

We were expected to learn together. Father taught us little that I didn’t already know, so instead I observed my siblings. Delilah sighed, perpetually and dramatically; sometimes she swooned face-first into her journal, exhausted. Gabriel held books a few inches from his face and stared at the words in frustration, imploring them to share their secrets. Evie was serious and studious, noting each word that Father imparted.

Once or twice a week, Ethan offered to take me off Father’s hands for a few hours. He did so begrudgingly, with feigned exasperation, and only when he had thought of something which he wanted to discuss. He had managed to retain more of his belongings than the rest of us, and in his room, he would settle himself on the bed, with his back against the wall, and open Mathematics for Economists, or The Canterbury Tales. ‘Come here,’ he would say, without looking up, and when I was seated next to him, he would begin to talk, in quick, concise sentences, waiting for the dot of my full stop before he started on the next.

I longed for the evening. After the tedium of our lessons, and our exercises, and Father’s dinnertime games. Evie and I had been left with three books: an atlas; an illustrated dictionary; and the myths beneath the mattress. When the house was still, Evie tiptoed across the detritus of our bedroom floor and lifted my duvet. First the cold of the room, then the warmth of her body, taking its place. ‘What tonight?’ I asked. It seemed important to ration the books, so that we didn’t become bored of them.

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Come on. Choose.’

‘But really. I like them all.’

I could sense her smile in the darkness. I thought that I could hear it. She switched on the bedside light.

Her favourite word was Car, which was accompanied by a photograph of a Mustang on an ocean road. My favourite word was Defenestration. Our favourite country was Greece, of course. We had found the routes of our heroes in the atlas, tracing them with our fingers, planning a journey of our own.

On the first warm day in spring, we sat in a half-moon in the garden, facing Father. That day, he was soft and charismatic. Mother was inside with the baby, and the afternoon was quiet. Father changed the syllabus, and we learnt about discipleship. ‘Obey your leaders and submit to them,’ Father said, ‘for they are keeping watch over your souls.’ He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sun. ‘There are no Judases,’ he said, ‘at my table.’ It seemed obvious to me that Judas was the most interesting character in the Bible. I liked his sad attempt to return the silver paid for betrayal. Like that would do any good. Ethan and I had discussed the disparate accounts of his death, which we agreed was evidence enough that you couldn’t take the Bible as historical truth. If you were a real person, you only died once.