A Song for Issy Bradley (2 page)

As she walks farther she can hear birds calling. It’s rockier underfoot and the track is strewn with debris that the sea has spat out. The sand grows muddy and it sucks at her feet, slowing her pace. A dog barks and she glances back. In the far distance, she can see the hill summit of Rivington Pike. She remembers stories where people
built towers and climbed mountains in order to talk to God. Rivington must be more than twenty-five miles away, and apart from several railway bridges the town is flat. She could have walked to a railway bridge and she has imagined doing so several times in recent weeks, but this morning’s dream has made things clear. When she woke she knew where her exchange with God should take place.

The dog starts to run toward her, shaggy hair streaming in its wake like wings. It’s only a puppy, an animal that’s bursting with mindless affection. It jumps up and wipes sandy paws on her coat.

“I’m so sorry. Down, Bingley, down!” The man squelches through the last patch of marshy track. He tries to grab the dog by its collar while it licks the rubber of his wellies.

“Who’s a bad dog? You are, aren’t you? Yes, you are! Oh God. He’s got mud all over your coat.” He ruffles the dog’s floppy ears and attaches a lead to its collar.

“Don’t worry.” Claire’s voice sounds rough and discordant. Her tongue is thick and the roof of her mouth is sticky.

“You’d better get it in the wash, or it’ll stain. You turning back now?”

“I’m heading on.”

“You want to be careful out here. Got a mobile?”

She hasn’t, but she nods.

“Keep looking around. Make sure the sea’s not snuck in behind you; the tide’s a bastard!”

She raises her hand slightly to indicate goodbye and the man does the same. She watches him and the dog walk away for a moment. He seems to sense her gaze and he stops and turns.

“Lovely day for it,” he calls.

She heads on, unbuttoning her coat as she walks. Her nightie has slipped out of one side of her sweatpants, so she untucks it and lets it fall to her knees. Ian would say the beautiful weather is a Tender Mercy, a manifestation of the Lord’s capacity for reassurance and comfort. She hopes so, but it’s hard to know. Ian believes the good things are heaven-sent and the bad are arbitrary. She isn’t sure what
she believes anymore. She keeps walking in the direction of the sea and suddenly, in the squinting distance, beyond the endless corrugations of sand, she thinks she can see its shimmer. She increases her pace, forbids herself from looking left, or right, or behind, and it soon begins to feel as if she is all alone in the world.

Jacob wakes up early. He isn’t sure why at first and then he remembers it’s his birthday, which makes his stomach tip like a Slinky. It’s still dark, the thick kind that hides your hands from you. He lies quietly for a few moments, willing morning to get nearer.

“Issy, are you awake?”

He listens for a reply. The sound of his heartbeat pulses in his ears and he gives them a hard rub. The bunk bed creaks as he sits up to lean over the side.

“Issy. Issy.”

Issy makes a little noise and the bed creaks. Not him this time; she must have turned over.

“It’s my birthday, Issy!”

“I’m asleep.”

“You’re not, you’re awake now. Go on, say ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“I’m the birthday boy!”

“Shush.”

“Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to me!” He waits for Issy to wish him “Happy Birthday” and rubs his ears again—they are thrumming with the darkness. “I’m going to get up. Want to sneak downstairs with me?”

He climbs down the ladder and stands next to the bottom bunk. Issy’s silence suggests she has slipped back to sleep, so he opens the bedroom door and creeps out onto the landing. He sneaks along the
corridor and peeps his head around Al’s half-closed door. There’s no sign of life, so he sneaks a little farther. Mum and Dad have shut their door, and the stairs up to Zippy’s room are too squeaky to risk. He turns back and tiptoes down the stairs, remembering to stand in the quiet places. He goes into the living room and switches on the television. He turns the volume down to number eight and flicks from channel to channel. It’s too early for children’s programs, so he finds the news. There’s a clock in the corner of the screen: ten past five. He decides to watch a DVD.

His favorite cartoon at the moment is one from the Book of Mormon collection. It’s the story of Ammon, who goes on a mission to the savage Lamanites. The Lamanites don’t wear many clothes and they’ve got red and blue war paint on their chests and faces. They capture Ammon and take him to their king. The king is called Lamoni and he is fierce, with two long braids, blue earrings, and a feathery hair band. King Lamoni agrees to let Ammon be a servant, and he tells Ammon to look after the sheep. One day some wicked men come and try to steal the king’s sheep. Ammon is completely brave. At first he uses a sling and some stones to shoot at the men like in David and Goliath, but eventually Ammon gets fed up with firing stones and he pulls out his sword and chops the men’s arms off. Chop! Chop! Chop! Jacob slides off the sofa, steps over Issy’s Cinderella beanbag, and rummages in the toy box for Al’s old light saber. Chop! Chop! Chop! He chops along with Ammon and the Lamanites’ arms break off like twigs. Serves them right! The servants take the arms back to the king in a bag, and he opens the bag and says, “Yes, these are arms, all right.” The king thinks Ammon must be the Great Spirit, but Ammon says he is just a messenger. The king is so pleased with the bag of arms that he listens to Ammon’s message about Heavenly Father. In the end, everyone is happy—except for the men with no arms, of course.

The story of Ammon is a true story from the Book of Mormon, which means it tells people something Heavenly Father wants them
to know. Jacob lies down on the sofa and thinks about what he knows as the music plays and the credits roll: Stealing sheep is bad, swords are dangerous, and fighting might be OK if you do it for the right reasons.

Mum comes down just after seven o’clock.

“Hello, birthday boy. What are you doing down here?”

“I woke up and then I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“You daft thing.” Mum wraps her arms around him and gives him a squeezy kiss. “Let’s make breakfast, shall we?”

They make pancakes. What an ace start to his birthday! Mum lets him crack the eggs. She doesn’t get cross when the shells shatter into the mixture, and she does extra tosses before putting the pancakes in a dish in the oven to keep warm.

“Shall we sing a song, Mum? Shall we? I’ll pick—I’m the birthday boy! Let’s sing ‘Here We Are Together.’ ”

Mum laughs. “Not that one, you always pick it! Tell you what, you sing while I finish doing this.” She pours more mixture into the pan and Jacob starts to sing.

Mum opens the oven door and slips the new pancake into the big dish. “Lovely singing,” she says in the way she always does, even when he forgets the words and loses the up and down of the tune.

“Will you tell me a story now?” He climbs onto the kitchen table and sits with his bare feet resting on the seat of one of the chairs. He sniffs the burny smell of hot oil and feels a fizz of birthday happiness in his tummy. “Tell me the story of when I was born.”

“Well, once upon a time, exactly seven years ago today,” Mum begins, and she recites his story while she opens the cupboards to find syrup, chocolate sauce, lemon juice, and sugar.

She jumps when the telephone rings and Jacob climbs off the table and wraps his arms around her waist as she answers it. He billows his face into her pillowy middle, closes his eyes, and squeezes extra tight. He holds his breath and pretends his supersonic strength can stick her to the spot.

“Hello, Sister Anderson. No, of course you’re not a nuisance.”

Jacob knows what’s coming next. If he had a big sword he could chop Sister Anderson’s arms off and then she wouldn’t be able to use the telephone.

“Well, it’s Jacob’s birthday. But … yes, of course, just a moment. I’ll go and get him.”

Jacob doesn’t let go of Mum when she attempts to move. She tucks the phone under her chin and tries to unfasten his arms.

“Jacob.”

He holds on, even though he knows it’s silly, even though he knows he will make her cross. Mum pulls the phone out from under her chin and covers the mouthpiece with her hand.

“Stop it. Let go. Now.”

“But what about my presents? Has Dad
got
to go? He’s already missing my party, he can’t go out now as well! Am I going to have to wait until he gets back before I can open anything?”

“Let go.”

He lets his hands flop to his sides and stands statue-still, pulling his saddest face. But Mum isn’t having it. She shakes her head, then goes upstairs.

It’s suddenly lonely in the kitchen. Jacob hears the low rumble of Dad’s voice through the ceiling. He suspects Dad is going to miss the birthday pancakes and he tries to think of something to make him stay. He knows
“Please”
won’t be enough, because Dad likes to follow the rules. If he is going to stop him, he will have to come up with a bigger, more important rule than the one about helping people,
a rule that will trump the saying Dad always repeats when he has to disappear at important moments:
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Mum has an easier way of saying the almost-same thing:
“Do as you would be done by.”
Jacob thinks about the best way to persuade Dad—
“Inasmuch as you have stayed to eat breakfast with me on my birthday, you have done it unto Jesus.”
But it sounds cheeky. He wishes Dad was the kind of person who would say, “No, I’m sorry I can’t come. If it’s an emergency, you must call the police or the fire brigade because today is Jacob’s birthday.” But he knows Dad isn’t that kind of man because Dad has already said, “Of course I’ll come to a missionary meeting on Saturday. I’ll miss Jacob’s party, but I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Jacob looks at the casserole dish of pancakes through the glass of the oven door and decides that after he has died and gone to live in the Celestial Kingdom, when he is actually in charge of his own world, he will make it a commandment for dads to stay at home on their children’s birthdays. And if they don’t, he will send a prophet to chop their arms off.

I
SSY WAKES UP
with achy arms. When she opens her eyes, they are full of lightning icicles. She tries to get out of bed and discovers that there isn’t much breath in her tummy. She wonders if part of her has popped in the night, like a balloon.

Zippy stares at the textured wallpaper on the ceiling. It’s old and ugly, but Dad won’t strip it in case the plaster comes off too. His voice floats up the stairs along with the smell of something cooking; he’s probably talking to Sister Anderson—no one else would dream of calling at this time on a Saturday. She can’t make out Dad’s words, but she hopes he’s saying no. She rolls onto her side, tucks her knees up to her chest, and shucks the covers past her shoulder. It’s beginning to get cooler in the mornings and the air feels damp. Behind the curtains, the latticed windows are probably streaked with condensation. She slips an arm out of the covers and feels on the floor beside the bed for
Persuasion
. She opens the page with the folded corner:
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope …”
When she reaches the end, she sighs and takes a deep sniff of the soft, yellowed pages. Then she closes the book and places it on the pillow beside her.

The phone is sure to have woken everyone, and it won’t be long before Issy slips into the room and dives under the covers in a tangle of chatter and fierce hugs. Zippy listens for the scamper of her feet on the stairs, but the house is quiet again. She yawns, rubs her eyes, and glances at the poster on the wall—
“Kindness Begins with Me.”
She made it herself, collaging the letters with strips torn out of the free newspaper, a reminder of her goal to be kind to everyone, even Alma. She isn’t supposed to use Blu-tack because it leaves greasy marks, but no one has said anything and the wallpaper isn’t worth protecting—it’s that horrible lumpy stuff that looks like it’s been
spattered with sawdust. Sometimes she asks Mum what the paper is called because whenever Mum mentions woodchip she does a funny dance and sings a song about living in small houses and meeting up in the year 2000 and it’s clear, just for a moment, that before she turned into Mum she was someone else, someone who knew the words to songs, someone who liked to dance.

Zippy sits up in bed and stretches. Last night’s visual aid is dangling from the coat hook on the back of her bedroom door. It’s a hanger, one of those white, lacy, padded ones that old people like. A little piece of heart-shaped card is suspended from the hook and it reads:
“Hang onto your values … Hang onto your goals … Hang onto your testimony … So some day you can hang your wedding dress on me.”
All the girls got a special hanger, and a poster of a bride standing outside the Temple that says,
If This Isn’t Your Castle, You’re Not My Prince
. The boys didn’t get anything.