‘I just think, I don’t know, we could work it out somehow. I could go on telly. Talk about what I’ve seen, what’s happened to me.’
‘Oh. Yes. Show them the scar. Tell what your brother did to you. There would be no stopping the fury then. The war would begin in earnest.’
‘No. That’s not what I mean. No. Eve. You don’t understand. It’s going to absolute shit up there. I mean, crazy fucking batshit weirdo religious nutcases going around killing kids.’
Eve says, ‘There’s only one way to put it right. The war has to start now. The real war. The war of all against all.’
Gog and Magog, whispers the voice. That’s right.
Roxy sits back a little bit in her chair. She’s told Mother Eve the whole story, every last part of what she saw and what was done to her and what she was made to do.
‘We have to stop the war,’ she says. ‘I still know how to get stuff done, you know. I’ve been thinking. Put me in charge of the army in the North. I’ll keep order, we’ll patrol the border – real borders like a real country – and, you know, we’ll talk to your friends in America. They don’t want fucking Armageddon breaking out here. God knows what weapons Awadi-Atif has.’
Mother Eve says, ‘You want to make peace.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You want to make peace? You want to take charge of the army in the North?’
‘Well, yeah.’
Mother Eve’s head starts to shake as if someone else is shaking it for her.
She gestures to Roxy’s chest.
‘Why would anyone take you seriously now?’
Roxy jerks her whole body away.
She blinks. She says, ‘You want to start Armageddon.’
Mother Eve says, ‘It’s the only way. It’s the only way to win.’
Roxy says, ‘But you know what’s going to happen. We’ll bomb them and they’ll bomb us and it’ll spread out wider and wider, and America will get involved and Russia and the Middle East and … the women will suffer as well as the men, Evie. The women will die just as much as the men will if we bomb ourselves back to the Stone Age.’
‘And then we’ll be in the Stone Age.’
‘Er. Yeah.’
‘And then there will be five thousand years of rebuilding, five thousand years where the only thing that matters is: can you hurt more, can you do more damage, can you instil fear?’
‘Yeah?’
‘And then the women will win.’
A silence spreads through the room and into Roxy’s bones, up through the marrow, a cold, liquid stillness.
‘Bloody hell,’ says Roxy. ‘So many people have told me you’re crazy, you know, and I never believed any of them.’
Mother Eve watches her with great serenity.
‘I was always, like, “No, if you met her you’d know she’s clever, and she’s been through a lot, but she’s not crazy.”’ She sighs, looks at her hands, palms and backs. ‘I went looking for information about you ages ago. I mean, I had to know.’
Mother Eve watches her, as if from very far away.
‘It’s not that hard to find out who you used to be. It’s all over some bits of the internet. Alison Montgomery-Taylor.’ Roxy takes her time with the words.
‘I know,’ says Mother Eve. ‘I know it was you who made it all disappear. And I’m grateful. If that’s what you’re asking, I’m still grateful.’
But Roxy frowns, and in that frown Allie knows she’s made a mistake somewhere along the line, some little minor misalignment in her understanding.
Roxy says, ‘I get it, right? If you killed him, he probably deserved killing. But you should go and look up what his wife’s doing now. She’s called Williams now. Remarried a Lyle Williams, in Jacksonville. She’s still there. You should go and look her up.’
Roxy stands up. ‘Don’t do this,’ she says. ‘Please don’t.’
Mother Eve says, ‘I’ll always love you.’
Roxy says, ‘Yeah. I know.’
Mother Eve says, ‘It’s the only way. If I don’t do it, they will.’
Roxy says, ‘If you really want the women to win, go and look up Lyle Williams in Jacksonville. And his wife.’
Allie lights a cigarette, in the quiet of a stone room in the convent overlooking the lake. She brings it to flame in the old way, with the spark from her fingertips. The paper crackles and blackens into glowing light. She breathes it in to the edges of her lungs; she is full of her old self. She has not smoked for years. Her head swims.
It’s not hard to find Mrs Montgomery-Taylor. One, two, three words typed into a search box and there she is. She runs a children’s home now, under the auspices and with the blessing of the New Church. She was an early member, there in Jacksonville. In a photograph on the website of their children’s home, her husband stands behind her. He looks a great deal like Mr Montgomery-Taylor. A shade taller, perhaps. A little bushier in the moustache, a little rounder in the cheek. Different colouring, a different mouth, but the same broad category of man: a weak man, the kind of man who, before any of this, would still have done what he was told. Or perhaps she’s remembering Mr Montgomery-Taylor. They look sufficiently similar that Allie finds she’s rubbing her jaw in the place where Mr Montgomery-Taylor hit her, as if the blow had landed only moments ago. Lyle Williams and his wife, Eve Williams. And together they care for children. It is Allie’s own church that has made this thing possible. Mrs Montgomery-Taylor did always know how to work a system to best advantage. The website for the children’s home she operates talks about the ‘loving discipline’ and ‘tender respect’ they teach.
She could have looked any time. She cannot think why she has not turned on this old light before.
The voice is saying things. It’s saying: Don’t do it. It’s saying: Turn away. It’s saying: Step away from the tree, Eve, with your hands up.
Allie doesn’t listen.
Allie picks up the handset of the telephone on the desk here in the convent room overlooking the lake. She dials the number. Far away, in a hallway with a side table topped by a crocheted runner, a telephone rings.
‘Hello?’ says Mrs Montgomery-Taylor.
‘Hello,’ says Allie.
‘Oh, Alison,’ says Mrs Montgomery-Taylor. ‘I hoped you’d call.’
Like the first drops of rain. Like the earth saying: I’m ready for it. Come and get me.
Allie says, ‘What have you done?’
Mrs Montgomery-Taylor says, ‘Just what the Spirit has commanded me to do.’
Because she knows what Allie means. Somewhere inside her heart, for all the twisting and turning, she does know. As she’s always known.