thewhitelily

Title: The World Was All Before Them
Fandom: RPF
Characters: My parents
Challenge: Paper (Also Family and Choices)
Rating: PG
Length: 2K
Content Notes: Religious content
A/N: Another true story; historical fiction, I guess you’d call it. This is a dramatisation of a rather important piece of my family history: the couple are my parents.
Summary: The ignorance of Eden isn't necessarily bliss.  A man and a woman make a choice, and take a stand.

They came home from the Meeting in silence and settled the children to bed.

The girls were always sleepy after the Meeting—the dullness of sitting at the outer circle with the rest of the Sisters: staying still, staying silent—that close to bedtime, it was soporific for a child. The effect was the same, even at this Meeting, when the tension had been unbearable for everyone; Muriel had sat silent on the edge of her seat, her husband sat forward with the Brothers, speaking for them both.

Speaking openly and unrepentantly of the 'evil' they had done together.

After the confession and the explanation came the relief which was no relief: the forgiveness they were been granted once Kevin had promised to burn the book.

As though that helped.

It had been so strange, so awful; their family’s blind happiness at not losing them, not yet—exuberantly hugging and kissing them in the desperate pretence that their reprieve would last—when it was obvious to them all that it couldn’t.

And yet, the children needed to go to bed, as they did every night.

When they were alone, she looked at him. He looked at her.

“What shall we do?” she asked.

“We burn the book,” he said, as though she didn’t know, and rose to stoke the fire in the little kitchen stove. “They’ll ask me at tomorrow’s Meeting. I can’t lie, that would be wrong.”

“This is wrong,” she said, but it wasn’t a disagreement.

She extracted the book from its hiding place; vigilantes had been extracting them from mailboxes in some places, knocking on doors to ensure the thing had been burned unread.

They’d had news it was coming. Clear instructions to burn it unread, unopened. Muriel had watched the mailbox for it, and she’d called Kevin home from work as soon as it arrived. They hadn’t burned it. They’d read it together, cover to cover. She’d never expected they’d make it through more than a few pages without interruption.

A book of unabridged Meeting notes—or so it claimed—from the incident at Aberdeen. Stories of drunkenness, lewd speech and worse behaviour. Stories of Brothers, walking their wives down a corridor in the middle of the night to where the Man of God stayed as a guest in their home. Of him being discovered in bed with one of them, naked. Stories that included large swathes of leading Brothers in Scotland and England and America withdrawing from the Man of God himself. That others, including the leading Brothers in Australia, had stood with him, insisting that adultery done ‘in a pure way’ was justified. All things were pure to the pure, and who could be more pure than the Man of God?

A book of… filth, yes, definitely.

Lies, so they’d been told.

It didn’t feel like lies. It felt like it made sense of everything. The changing edicts on dress and behaviour: the Sisters, even to their smallest baby girl, were to cover their heads, first with hats—then never with hats but only scarves, as a token of their submission to men. Brothers to stop wearing hats, or ties, that had previously been compulsory. Sisters who had spent a lifetime told to bind their hair in Christian modesty, now told that the only pure way to wear it was loose. The tightening strictures to break all ties with non-Brethren; first not to eat with them; then not to work for them nor employ them; then to cast out wives or children or abandon parents; not to speak to them at all, for only by shunning the impure would they understand their wrong. Most recently, the fashion that had spread for imitating the Man of God’s spewed obscenities and dirty jokes as a proof of purity. All things were pure to the pure, and thus any who were pure among the Brethren should speak as the Man of God did. Only the impure could think it wrong.

“He’s sick,” he said, with the certainty of truth.

“He’s dead,” she said, and that was true, too, but it didn’t make the other truth any less. He had been mad, at the end; it was the only explanation. It didn’t make it any better that at the last he’d died of his madness.

The Man of God, succombing to the frailty of man. If the others could only admit that, it wouldn’t be so bad.

They didn’t want to burn the book. They didn’t want to stay, any longer. This was hardly the first sign that things were wrong, very wrong. It had merely been the final straw.

But the world was a big place. A worldly place.

“The Three Day Meeting starts on Friday,” she said. “We can’t send the girls to my sister.”

“No,” he agreed.

“Kevin,” she said, intently. “We can’t send them to Isabelle. We might never get them back.”

The girls were young. Three, four, and five. Muriel hadn’t heard of any so young being kidnapped and kept from their parents, but she wouldn’t wish her family to be the first.

“No, I know,” he agreed, again. “We won’t last until then in any case. We read the book. Frank will have to act. He’s Leading Brother, not just my brother. But I promised him we would burn it. If we don’t burn it—if that’s why, if it’s because we’re not trying….”

“I know,” she said.

That wasn’t something that had needed discussion at all. They were resolved. It was only…. They had spent their lives being good Brethren. They'd followed every edict. Eschewed worldly ties. Proudly avoided sports, restaurants, holidays, radio, television, novels, swimming, dancing, boats, medical insurance, voting, memberships of any organisation.  They'd never been on holidays.  Or celebrated Christmas.  They'd shunned those they were told to shun, cut off her grandparents without a word, studied the notes of the Meetings and the words of the Man of God, attended the Meetings every night and all day each Sunday….

It was their life. It was the right way; the only right way. It was the only way they knew. They didn’t want to leave. They would never have chosen to leave.

So why should they have to?

They were right. About the Leader. About the edicts. About what had been happening. About the sickness that had taken the Man of God; the sickness that was still warping the Brethren’s interpretation of the ministry.

The others in their fellowship weren’t too blind to question it. Privately, they’d all spoken of their disgust at the latest edicts. At the filth that had been printed even in the official books of Meeting notes, the filth that was openly filtering down through the Leading Brothers. They knew, they all of them knew that it was wrong.

If they were to be thrown out—and they would be thrown out, no matter that Frank wished it otherwise—they were going to make him throw them out. Not for some quantifiable disobedience or obvious sin, but solely on the basis of admitting to an unconscionable truth that everyone knew was true. If there was to be any chance some of the others to come out too….  They had to do what they could to make them see it.

They had to be blameless before the Lord. Faultless before the Brethren—apart from their conviction in the ungodliness of promoting a lie.

“We put the book in the fire,” he said, and took it from her shaking hands. He went to the wood box and pulled out a newspaper, laying the book on the table and beginning to wrap it tightly: layer after layer of paper binding and surrounding the slim volume. “And we leave it to God whether it burns.”

When the paper was all used, he opened the door and thrust the tightly-wrapped package into the middle of the flames. Immediately, the outside layers smouldered and caught alight. He closed the door and latched it.

Then he closed the flue, blocking off the air to the firebox. The flames still danced merrily inside on the burning paper; perhaps half an hour away from dying away to coals that would keep the house warm throughout the night.

God could certainly burn the book if He wished it. But they wouldn’t do the Devil’s work for him if He didn’t.

They went to bed and held each other against the loneliness, and didn’t look at the stove again for two days.

And in the next Meeting Kevin stood, stating that he had burned the book. They were allowed to remain.

In the Meeting the following day, it didn’t come up at all, even though everyone knew that it was only a matter of time. News was travelling; Leading Brothers across the country were discussing as rumour spread, condemning the fellowship where Brethren had read the book and not been dealt with.

The next day, Muriel received a letter from her sister, saying that because they had read the book, there would be no room for the girls to stay with them during the Three Day Meeting. It was a kindness she had not been expecting, but one which made Isabelle’s intention to remain with the Brethren clear.

In that evening’s Meeting, Frank’s face was pale, set; he’d received instruction, an ultimatum.

Kevin was prompted, and stood. He was asked his opinion of the Leader’s recent actions. He replied that the Leader was sick. That their grandfather had been sick, and no one had despised him for it. When he refused to recant, Frank finally, officially, withdrew from his brother, and demanded he leave the hall.

It was the last time they would ever speak.

Muriel was asked to stand amid the Sisters and withdraw from her husband—the first time she had ever been allowed to stand or speak in a Meeting. She reiterated that the Man of God was sick, and Frank withdrew from her too.  She spent a few minutes awkwardly packing up colouring books and pencils with her three confused daughters, who didn't understand why they were leaving.  They'd never left a Meeting before.  And though she shouldn't have, though she would henceforth pretend they didn't exist, their grandmother gave each untouchable little girl one last pat on the head... and then they were out.

It had been the longest, loneliest, most terrifying three minutes of Kevin’s life, waiting outside wondering what was wrong, why it was taking so long; whether she been convinced to change her mind.  It wouldn’t have been the first marriage the Brethren had broken in such a way, nor the first father who never saw his children again.

Reunited, they brought their shellshocked little family home, and put the children to bed.

It needed doing, as it did every night, and would all the nights to come. Even now everything had changed.

When they were alone, she looked at him. He looked at her.  Then he opened the stove, pulled the package from the cold coals in the bottom and unwrapped the layers of lacy, burned newsprint.

The book was singed. Crisped and browned on the cover in places.  But every page was intact.

Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
  - Paradise Lost, John Milton

A/N: My parents are the bravest people I know, and I was born free of the Exclusive Brethren. Their family who stayed never spoke to them again, and I have never met them, although my maternal grandmother also escaped with three of my uncles. Occasionally, my mother brings out the book they were never supposed to have read. I stroke the browned, crisped cover of the book that came so close to burning but didn’t, and I feel so very grateful to be free.