FOLIE À DEUX - Cressida Connolly

When there were four days left to go, Jonathan drew the curtains shut. He wanted to blot out all of the light, but it didn’t work. Even when night had fallen, the Lucozade colour of the street lights shone dimly through the fabric. When the sun came out a radiant sliver appeared round the edges of the velvet material, like a halo. 

“We need to minimise distractions now,” he told Evie. “Focus.”

Jonathan wore his long hair in a knot at the back of his head. He was pale – a dry, chalky paleness – with a prominent Adam’s apple. Evie had loved him for his gentleness, for his sincerity. There was nothing cynical in him. When he played his cello there was such an innocence in his concentration. Evie had wanted his goodness to rub off onto her. She was tired of the late nights, the low smoky rooms, of trying to keep up. She was tired of being with people who never noticed anything.

Since they had received their instructions from Michael, Jonathan had started speaking in a flat monotone, like a voice on a recorded helpline. Evie had heard a lot of this voice lately. He read to her in the afternoons. “Blessed is he that readeth, for the time is at hand,” the book said. There was only one book in the flat now. Jonathan had given the rest away, when he got rid of most of their furniture. They still had a bed, a table, two chairs. It was enough.

It was stuffy in the flat, with the windows and curtains shut. They were uncomfortable in their wool scarves and jumpers. Evie felt stifled, as if she couldn’t breathe. Jonathan had insisted they wear thick clothes, since getting to the part of the book which stated: “I would thou wert hot or cold. Because thou art lukewarm I will spue thee out of my mouth.” They had talked about these words: whether they meant actual, bodily heat and cold, or whether they might refer to an ardour of the heart. Evie was inclined to interpret things in her own way. It was a kind of temptation for her. Jonathan had often had to steer her back towards his own, literal reading. More than once they had had to email Michael for verification.

During Jonathan’s time in Canada, some friends had taken him along to hear Michael speak. His words had such force, yet he spoke so softly. Sometimes it was as if Michael was not speaking at all, as if his words came from inside your own head. Afterwards, you felt that what he has said were things you’d always known. As if Michael had struck a match in the darkness of your mind, illuminating what was already inscribed there, like a torch flickering across ancient cave paintings.

Not long after Jonathan came back to London he met Evie. She was working in the bar at the hall; a tiny wisp of a girl with wary dark-rimmed eyes and hair like spilled ink. In bed, Jonathan had moved over her body in the dark, very slowly, as if he was trying to learn her by heart. Evie had never had the sense that she was precious before.

She had already moved into Jonathan’s flat when Michael announced the week-long workshop in France – his only European engagement. Sixteen of them attended; mostly people from the Netherlands. Jonathan and Evie were the only English ones.

Evie loved Michael straight away. People did. Michael was infinitely patient and kind. He never got angry, but it was a terrible thing to incur his disappointment, as one or two people at the workshop had done, by questioning his word. “You are free to leave,” he told them, sadly. After that they went about looking miserable. But they didn’t go. 

As soon as she knew about the baby, Evie had emailed Michael with the news. “The spirit and the bride say, come,” he replied. It was a line she recognised from the book. Evie was ecstatic. They would go to him, live alongside him while they waited for the baby to born. But before Jonathan had even begun to look into flights, word came from Michael. Soon they would meet again, and be together. Not a union of the flesh, but of the spirit. The time was coming. They were to stay where they were and make preparations over the following months. In the bath, alone, Evie looked down to her nakedness and cried.

As Jonathan became more and more preoccupied with matters of the spirit, Evie could not escape a new awareness of his body. It was as if she had never really looked at him before. She noticed threads of grey in his hair above his ears. The bed of his fingernails seemed unnaturally drained of colour, as if he had been keeping his fingers underwater. There was the voice he put on. And she sensed the fear in him, beneath the certainty. Sometimes she could smell his fear, like the smell of distant onions frying. When he wanted to make love, she turned away.

Eleven weeks passed, then thirteen, then seventeen. Her nipples darkened and expanded, like sea anemones. The child kicking felt like a bird flapping against the bars of her ribcage. She sensed herself retreating. At last word came from Michael that it was time.

“How long?” Jonathan asked.

“Ten days,” came the reply.

They did not go out anymore. A package came containing the kit from Michael. He had handwritten a note: “Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.” Evie woke early in the mornings and lay on her side watching the light seep through the red curtains.

On the final day, Michael sent word. They must have courage and joy in their souls. And he asked a last thing from them, a thing more difficult than anything they had faced before: the Lord had suffered alone, died alone and risen alone. Now Jonathan and Evie must do the same, if they were to be united in Majesty.

The appointed hour was seven o’clock. It was the seventh day of the seventh month. They were naked, as Michael had instructed them to be. Jonathan had filled a glass with water and handed it to Evie, then a second for himself. His body felt inert against hers when they held each other. “It won’t be long. We’ll be together,” he whispered into her hair. “I’ll tap on the wall. I’ll be just there, on the other side.” He shut the door quietly behind him and the bedroom door after that.

Alone in the room with the table and chair, Evie sat on the floor. She looked at the tablets – three were white and one was brown and glossy, like a beetle – and at the bag and the tape. She looked at the water in the glass. Then she lay down and looked through the glass, at the carpet and the blurred legs of the chair. She could see tiny motes moving through the water and she wondered whether they were made of dust or air. Perhaps they were bacteria, alive.

She heard knocking from the wall behind her: four short taps. There was a pathetic gaiety in the rhythm. She rolled over and knocked back. The sounds came again and again she answered. Evie examined the fine hairs on her arms. The empty fridge hummed. Presently there was further tapping and she tapped back in reply. She heard the traffic from the main road, several streets away, and wondered whether it was possible from this distance to discern the noise of a lorry from the sound of a bus. After a time the knocking came again, twice, but the gap between the knocks was faltering. She knocked back, gently.

After that there was no more sound from the other side of the wall.

Evie didn’t move. When she stood up there would be a lot to do. But for now there was no hurry, she could just lie here and let her mind wander. In her solitude there was so much freedom. And she would not be alone for long: the baby would come. She thought of the smell of rain on hot pavements, a smell like Sellotape and the hard icing on a fruit cake. There was so much in the world. Bells and orchards and swallows flitting through the air at dusk; the hunched shadows of trees on lawns, bees, the mournful brightness of a cinema on a street at night. So many beautiful things.

Cressida Connolly is an author and journalist