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‘This’ll make you feel better,’ said Taio, now advancing on her. ‘Much better.’
He reached for her, but Robin threw out a hand, holding him at arm’s length with as much force as she’d used to prevent herself falling into the baptismal pool. He tried to push past it, but when she continued to resist he took half a step backwards. Evidently some wariness of the law beyond Chapman Farm lingered in him, and Robin, still determined to remain at the centre if she could, said,
‘It isn’t right. I’m not worthy.’
‘I’m a Principal. I decide who’s worthy and who isn’t.’
‘I shouldn’t be here!’ said Robin, allowing herself to start crying again and adding a hysterical note to her voice. ‘You heard me, in the temple. It’s all true, all of it. I’m bad, I’m rotten, I’m impure—’
‘Spirit bonding purifies,’ said Taio, again trying to push past her resisting hands. ‘You’ll feel much better for this. Come—’
He attempted to take her in his arms.
‘No,’ gasped Robin, wriggling free of him to stand with her back to the glass doors. ‘You can’t want to be with me now you’ve heard what I’m like.’
‘You need this,’ said Taio insistently. ‘Here.’
He sat down on the grubby bed and patted the space beside him. Robin exaggerated her distress, crying still more loudly, her wails echoing off the wooden walls, her nose running freely, taking deep gasps of air as though she might be on the verge of a panic attack.
‘Control yourself!’ commanded Taio.
‘I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, I’m being punished and I don’t know why, I can’t get any of it right, I’ve got to go—’
‘Come here,’ said Taio more insistently, again patting the bed.
‘I wanted to do this, I really believed, but I’m not what you’re looking for, I realise that now—’
‘That’s your false self talking!’
‘It isn’t, it’s my honest self—’
‘You’re currently demonstrating high levels of egomotivity,’ said Taio harshly. ‘You think you know better than I do. You don’t. This is why you drove away your fiancé, because you couldn’t subsume your ego. You learned all this in lectures: there is no self, only fragments of the whole. You must surrender to the group, to union… sit down,’ he added forcefully, but Robin remained standing.
‘I want to leave. I want to go.’
She was gambling on the fact that Taio Wace wouldn’t want to be responsible for her leaving. She was supposed to be rich and was definitely articulate and educated, which meant she might be taken seriously if she talked about her negative experiences of the church. Most importantly, she’d just witnessed a well-known writer leaving a Retreat Room with a girl who looked barely over-age.
The naked light falling from the overhead bulb highlighted Taio’s rat-like nose and dirty hair. After a moment or two’s silence he said coldly,
‘You underwent spiritual demarcation because you’ve fallen behind the other recruits.’
‘How?’ said Robin, injecting a note of desperation into her voice and still failing to wipe her nose, because she wanted to repel Taio as much as possible. ‘I’ve tried—’
‘You make disruptive statements, like that comment about Mazu’s hair. You haven’t fully integrated, you’ve failed in simple duties to the church—’
‘Like what?’ said Robin in genuine anger, every inch of her body sore after long days of manual labour.
‘Relinquishment of materialist values.’
‘But I—’
‘Step three to pure spirit: divestment.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Everyone else who joined with you has made donations to the church.’
‘I wanted to,’ lied Robin, ‘but I didn’t know how!’
