First Fruits (23 page)

It's the reason I don't tell him the
truth about the chocolates, or the book, or the wine even. Because I know what
the answer would be then. I know what he is bound to say. And wouldn't it be a
shame, knowing there's no hope for her? Even if she doesn't deserve it.

IT’S
strange, but our house seems darker when I walk through the door tonight, our
walls damper, our curtains skimpier. And colder. It's cold everywhere. Except
the kitchen of course where it's too hot and the steam seems to cling to my
hair and the backs of my hands.

But never mind, because there's still a
little chink of light, a brightness you can touch. All I have to do is run
upstairs, close my eyes and put a hand under my pillow, fingers tingling. And
feel. Feel all over. Open my eyes. Remove the pillow altogether. Throw it
across the floor, throw it out of the window if I only could, because
underneath there's nothing there.

You see, it's gone, the tiny horse,
shining in its tiny box, looking as if someone had taken a portion of pure
light, mixed it with sugar crystals and spun it into glass. Just for me.

It's gone.

But why? I broke it. It was broken.
No-one could say I had allowed myself to take something without flaw and keep
it. A person is
allowed
to keep what isn't perfect. You can't accuse her
of anything. She can't take pride in an object that is broken, or get above
herself, or boast that she holds perfection in her grasp. I broke it.

I broke it. But it's gone. There's
nothing there, not any more.  And now I have to go downstairs and remember to
smile when it matters.

In other words,  smile and smile until I
see the approving look come into his face, and know it's safe to come to bed.
Smile to make sure there are no more lessons tonight since obviously I've
learnt this one so very well already.

****

BUT
I had the dream again. Or something like it. I mean, the new-old dream where
there's only me. No heat or streaming light, or arms carrying me aloft. No Dad.
And it's funny because I thought dreams were nothing but a distraction, or
something to make a person feel uncomfortable. I didn't know they could make
you feel better. That a dream could be the strangest of comforts - at least
until you wake up.

I am in his room. Everything is where it
should be - the desk, the warmth in the carpet and, of course, the picture on
the wall. Those girls with their trays of fruit and smoky burned offerings. I
can see their faces, see their pretty deluded smiles. I can see their bare feet
and little toes, perfect, just like mine.

And something else besides. Something
I've never noticed before. The handles on the desk drawers glowing, shiny as if
someone has spent all the day polishing them, shiny as new pins. So bright they
make me want to touch them. They remind me of something, something that has yet
to happen, but not here, not in this dream.

But listen, there's no time to stare.
Because here's the sound of footsteps, coming closer, footsteps stopping
outside the door, the sound of a promise being kept. The reason I've been
waiting. Smiling now as the door begins to open and....

...And I wake up, before I have a chance
to see who it is behind the door, the one I've been waiting for. The room has
gone, the comfort of the dream has gone. There's nothing here but dark and the
shape of my pillow.

My pillow. Before it knows what it is doing,
my hand moves under the pillow - as I expect it will for weeks now, until it
gets used to it, and learns to remember in time. It's my hand that finds
there's nothing there. The horse is gone, and there's nothing under the pillow
except the sheet, musty and damp from Gran's washing.

All of me remembers now. It's gone. The
horse is gone.

GO
to sleep Kate.

Or if you can't sleep, count your
blessings, the way other people count sheep.

For example, there are no secrets in
this house. In this house, there is a place for everything and everything in
its place. Our house is like the whole wide world as it should be. I am lucky
to be here. That is a blessing. Birds in the air, pebbles on the beach, me in
my bed - and every thing that is precious where it belongs. In his room.

(Even with its broken leg, my horse was
precious. Anything she gave me would have been precious. Why didn't I realise
that?)

Go to sleep Kate. Otherwise in the
morning they'll look at you and know you stayed awake. And why. Or if you won't
sleep, keep counting. Remember that Pride is the worst of the sins. Sins keep a
person from God. Pride is what my father has to fight against, wherever he
finds it. He takes the source of pride away and saves me from the sin. That is
a blessing.

(Yet if I close my eyes, something
gleams behind the lids. Not the horse, but something else. It's the gleam I saw
in my dream, belonging to the handles on my father's desk. Shiny as a new pin.)

Go to sleep, Kate. The only true gifts
are those we get from God. No other gift is real. This is what Dad has done for
me. He's taken away the gift that was never really a gift and saved me from
myself. Count this also as a blessing.

(But what is real anyway? If she had
really
believed a crystal horse was too precious, she wouldn't have given it to me.
But she did. She gave it to me. She wanted me to have it.)

That's what is real. She wanted me to
have it, the crystal horse.

There are no secrets in this house. In
my dream the handles of his desk had flashed and winked like a signal. Like a
reminder. His desk is where all the precious things end up. It's where you
could find them even now.

No-one need ever know. I only want to
see it again. Hold it again, feel its hooves prick my hand, and its sides grow
warm against my face. Just for a minute, before I put it back where it belongs.
Then I will go to sleep.

OUT
on the landing, on the other side of a door, I can hear someone snoring and the
sound is like a person tearing bedsheets into strips, as if for bandages. It's
Gran of course, dreaming of things you wouldn't even dare think about.

But nothing from his room, not a sound.
My father is sleeping the sleep of the righteous,  the only time when he is
quiet.

But still not as quiet as me, making so
little noise, I could almost believe I was dreaming, even now. Except nothing
could make a person shiver like this, not if it was just a dream. The cold
comes up through the floor, old lino, damp, sticking to the soles of my feet,
but more than anything, cold, sending an chill  right through to the bone.
Making me wish I'd remembered shoes.

Then again, you could say it serves me
right, being cold. A place for everything and everything in its place. My place
is in bed, isn't it, not stirring until he wakes me. If I turn back now, it wouldn't
be too late. I wouldn't have done a thing wrong.

If I turn back now, I will never see it
again. My horse. The one she gave to me and no-one else.

Then it really is too late. Because a
moment later I'm standing in his room, and you know what I've done. I've
crossed the threshold, gone from being good to being bad in a single step. And
it's the worst thing I've ever done. I have fallen away from perfect before
today, and kept on falling. But that was always a mistake, the fruit of
ignorance. I have never done anything like this in the full knowledge. It's no
wonder I need something to hold onto, the door knob, the back of a chair,
anything.

Then I see the picture, and below it his
desk and, suddenly, falling is the last thing on my mind. Because there are the
handles on his desk, gleaming, shiny as new pins. And it's like the dream
again, standing here, gazing at the picture, at the silly girls - and the
gleaming handles on his drawers.

Then I look down and see my feet, both
of them. One good foot, one bad. Not like the dream after all.

Only tell that to the desk. Those
handles just keep on winking and gleaming at me as if there was no difference
at all. I could be awake or asleep, it's just the same to them, and they only
seem to want to tell me the one thing. What I want is in the desk. A place for
everything and everything in its place. That way he can look after every
precious object, keep it from falling into the wrong hands. My hands

Suddenly it's my hands that are at work
now, moving of their own accord, as if they had a mind of their own. Starting
with the topmost drawer, the one that would be closest to him as he sits,
writing sermons, working for all our sakes. Inside the drawer is a box of
chocolates. Unopened. But then, I've been away. I haven't been here for him to
teach me anything.

I wouldn't dream of taking one, though,
not even with the scents of sugar and cocoa seeping through the cover with its
picture of kittens with bows around their necks. They aren't mine. I'm only
here to find something that belongs to me. Or used to. Still, I have to take
them out of the drawer, just so that I can see to what's underneath.

But it's as I stand here, box of
chocolates in hand, that something happens. I hear a sound. And with the sound,
something goes astray, gets lost in the dark behind me. And why? Because this
is the very sound I have been waiting for, the sound of footsteps, coming
closer, the sound of a promise about to be kept. It's the reason I can't move,
not even to put the chocolates back in the drawer. Suddenly, I can't even remember
why I'm holding them. I'm in my dream again. I never was awake.

The footsteps have stopped. Someone is
behind the door. This time, I am going to see who it was, the person I've been
waiting for.

The door opens.

And I don't wake up. Of course not, why
should I, when I am awake already? Even so it seems to take a few seconds, with
both of us staring, to recognise each other, as if for all the world we had
been expecting someone different.

It's Gran. Only Gran.

The long nightdress she is wearing has a
frill around her neck that makes it look just like a shroud. You might think
you were seeing a ghost - the nasty kind, the kind that hates the living and
can't find a moment's rest for thinking about it.

But she doesn't cross the threshold.
This is his study. Even she doesn't come in without an invitation. Which only
makes it worse, what I've done, standing here with a drawer open and a box of
chocolates in my hands. Instead she lifts up her head, and screams out his
name. Tells him to come down and see what she has found.

Odd what you remember, though, in times
of trouble. In the silence between his waking and the slow beat of his feet
upon the stairs, I find myself thinking of just one thing: the look on Gran's
face when she opened the door. As if she had been expecting to find someone
else completely. It took several whole seconds for her to make the switch, and
realise it was only me. Then you should have seen the relief. As if she was the
one who thought she had seen a ghost.

But there's no time to think about it
now. Dad is here, wanting to know what's happened, and why he's been called
from the sleep of the just. Wanting to know what has gone wrong. And what needs
to be put right.

Next day, Hilary catches me
unawares.

'I've got something here you'll like,'
she whispers. And pushes a bar of Cadbury's right under my nose.

I should have seen it coming, been alive
to the rustle of silver paper. But I didn't. Now it's too late. The scent of
chocolate catches the back of my throat, and I can't help myself. Before I know
what I'm doing, I've slapped the entire bar out of her hand, sent it flying
like a missile across the room.

It falls with a thud on the floor -
right at the feet of Moira MacMurray. Hilary, naturally a little shocked, yet
never missing a beat when it comes to food, screams at her:

 'Moira MacMurray, just you give me back
my chocolate.'

Slowly, Moira bends and picks it up,
weighs it in her hand. Hilary opens her mouth to bawl at her once more, then
closes it because now Moira has started to do what she's told, is bringing it
back to her. But instead of simply passing it under my nose, she is lumbering
round the far side of the desks, right away from me. It's as if she's knows, as
if somehow she realises what chocolate would do to me today. Even the smell of
it.

Last night Gran was all set to tell him
the whole story. But really there was no need. All he had to do was look at me,
standing in my bare feet by his desk, holding the box of chocolates. Take one
look and sigh.

Now I don't think the taste of chocolate
will ever go away. It's still there, coating my tongue, clogging up my throat.
Every breath feels heavy with it. So you see, even the scent of it now, the
faintest suggestion...

Only the one cure for gluttony, that's
what he said. And with Gran's help, he set about to administer the cure.

But how could Moira MacMurray know any
of that? How did she know to come the long way round with Hilary's chocolate?
Just so I didn't have to catch the smell of it, not again, not today.