The Land of Decoration (12 page)

She said: “Don’t you go to assembly, Judith?”

“No. I have to stay separate from the World.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Pierce. She blinked. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s a Den of Iniquity,” I said.

Mrs. Pierce looked at me more closely, then she sniffed and said: “Well, you’re not missing much.” She banged the desk again and the drawer shot out and caught her elbow. She closed her eyes and said something under her breath. Out loud she said: “This will take some getting used to.” At that moment the door opened and everyone came in.

They stared at Mrs. Pierce. She sat on top of Mr. Davies’s desk and crossed her legs. “Good morning, class eight,” she said. “My name is Mrs. Pierce. I’ll be looking after you for a while.”

“Where’s Mr. Davies?” said Anna.

“He’s not well,” said Mrs. Pierce. “But I’m sure he’ll be better soon. In the meantime we’re going to have to get used to one another. I have my own way of doing things, so there’ll be a few changes around here.”

There was scuffling at the back of the room. A second paper airplane hit my head. On it was written
LOSER.
Mrs. Pierce sniffed and reached for the attendance book. “For a start,” she said, “we’ll have you three boys—yes, you—sitting at the front. Would you mind telling me your names please?”

“Matthew, James, and Stephen, Miss,” said Neil.

Mrs. Pierce smiled. “Fortunately, Mr. Williams has drawn me a seating plan; it wouldn’t be Gareth, Lee, and Neil, would it?”

“Yes, Miss,” said Matthew. “I’m Matthew, and that’s James, and that’s Stephen.”

Mrs. Pierce jumped off the desk. “Come on, boys.” She began to move two tables together. “On your feet!”

“I can’t, Miss,” said Neil.

“Why is that?”

“I can’t find my bag, Miss.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Pierce. “When did you lose it?”

“Don’t know, Miss,” said Neil. A smile slunk across his face. There was laughter.

“Well, you can still come and sit here,” said Mrs. Pierce.

Neil pretended to be caught on the chair and tugged this way and that at his coat. “Oh dear,” said Mrs. Pierce. “It is difficult standing up, isn’t it? Can someone give Neil a hand?” Everyone laughed again but this time with Mrs. Pierce.

Neil freed himself from the table and swaggered to the front. Mrs. Pierce held out a chair and he sat down backward, looking at the class. Everyone laughed again.

Mrs. Pierce smiled. “You’re quite a comedian, aren’t you, Mr. Lewis? There’s just one problem. You’re in my class now and I don’t have time for jokes. Now, would you get your books out? You see, we are waiting for you to begin.”

Neil rubbed his head. “I can’t, Miss.”

“Why is that?”

“Lost them, Miss.”

“Your books?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“What, all of them?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Do you often lose things, Neil?”

“Don’t know, Miss.”

There was more laughter.

Mrs. Pierce walked to the back of the room and pulled a bag out of the corner. “They wouldn’t be in your bag, would they?”

“No, Miss. That’s not my bag.” Neil turned to Lee and grinned.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Pierce. “Well, in that case, I shall keep this bag and its contents until the owner claims it. In the meantime, I will expect you to replace the books and equipment you need by the end of the week.” She threw Neil’s bag into the art cupboard, slammed the door, turned the key, and pocketed it.

Neil said: “Hey!”

“Yes?”

Neil scowled and turned to the front again. He shoved the desk. “I don’t want to sit in this crappy seat!”

“Cheer up, Neil,” Mrs. Pierce said. “This way you can see the blackboard more easily.”

I laughed out loud. I put my hand over my mouth, but it was too late. Neil turned round and his eyes flashed. But for some reason, instead of looking away I looked right back.

“Well, now that’s sorted out,” Mrs. Pierce said, “let’s get on with our lessons. We’re going to be reading poetry today.”

“Poetry?”
Gemma said.

“That’s right, Gemma,” Mrs. Pierce said. “Nothing wakes you up like a good poem. That’s because poets never say exactly what they mean—or not the best ones. Instead they find other ways of saying it. They paint a picture or they talk about it as if it were something else. We use pictures in everyday speech too—for instance, we say ‘the leg of a table,’ ‘a sunny disposition,’ ‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ ‘an icy stare,’ ‘boiling hot.’”

She wrote the phrases up on the blackboard. “See if you can spot how many pictures this poem uses to describe the sun: It’s by Robert Louis Stevenson and it’s called ‘Winter-Time’:

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed

A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;

Blinks but an hour or two; and then,

A blood-red orange, sets again.…

“So,” said Mrs. Pierce when she had finished reading, “did anyone spot the pictures?”

“Yes,” said Anna. “The sun in bed.”

“Good. And how does that help us understand what the poet is trying to say?”

“Because the sun gets up later in the winter,” said Anna.

“Good,” said Mrs. Pierce. “Yes. There’s less daylight. Anything else?”

“The sun is a blood orange,” said Matthew.

“Great,” said Mrs. Pierce. “And why is that applicable?”

“Because of the color.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pierce. “Have you noticed how much redder the sun can be in the winter? There are brighter sunsets too. Anything else?”

“The wind like pepper,” said Rhian.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pierce. “Now, that’s strange. Why do you think the poet wrote that?”

“Because it hurts your nose in the cold?” Rhian said.

“Yes. Excellent,” said Mrs. Pierce. “I can see this class is full of budding poets! The wind also tickles sometimes too, have you noticed that? And I suppose the poet could even be referring to hail. Now do you see how the pictures make the poem richer, more interesting?”

“There’s the picture of his breath like frost,” said Stephen.

“Yes, the patterns his breath makes in the air are like the patterns the frost leaves.” Mrs. Pierce smiled. “There’s one more picture the poet uses to help us see more clearly.”

“The land frosted like a wedding cake,” said Luke.

“Excellent,” said Mrs. Pierce. “And how does that help us see more clearly what the poet is saying?”

“Because the snow is like icing sugar,” said Luke.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pierce. “Or it could be frost. Sometimes frost is very heavy and as thick as snow.” She turned to the blackboard and wrote up each phrase. “Now”—she turned back to us—“does anyone know what those pictures the poet uses are called?”

She waited, then picked up a piece of chalk and turned back to the words on the board.

“Metaphor,” said Gemma. She looked at me and smiled.

“Well done!” said Mrs. Pierce. “Yes. Metaphor is when we talk about something as if it was something else. Can anyone give me another example of a metaphor?”

“A leap of faith,” I said. I looked at Gemma.

“Excellent!” said Mrs. Pierce. “Though that might be a little bit difficult to explain: Faith is believing in something. To say faith is like a leap is to say it’s like stepping into thin air, to leap from one place to another without getting hurt. Is that how you would describe it, Judith?”

I nodded.

“OK,” she said. “But in fact, going back to our poem, only four of the five ‘pictures’ Robert Louis Stevenson uses are metaphors; the last picture, the one where the poet compares the wintry landscape to an iced cake, is in fact a ‘simile.’” She wrote the word “simile” on the blackboard. “Can anyone see the difference between the metaphors and the simile?” said Mrs. Pierce.

I stared at the poem. I didn’t see what Mrs. Pierce was getting at. And then suddenly I did. I put up my hand.

“Yes, Judith.”

“The land is
like
a wedding cake,” I said. “It isn’t one.”

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Pierce. “Can you explain that to us, Judith?”

“The sun is in bed; it
is
a blood orange; the wind is pepper. But the land is only
like
a wedding cake.”

I felt Gemma’s eyes on me.

Mrs. Pierce’s cheeks were quite pink. “Did everyone get that?” she said. “A simile says something is ‘like’ something else. But a metaphor says something really ‘is’ the thing you are comparing it to. So, we have similes and metaphors, both pictures, both interesting ways of saying things. But”—and now her voice became quieter—“one is stronger than the other; one is much more powerful. Which one do you think it is?” She raised her eyebrows encouragingly. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t expect you to know this.”

Was one more powerful? I wondered. The similes and the metaphors seemed to be the same. But I looked again and there was something about the line that said the sun was a blood orange that was missing from the line that said it was like a wedding cake. And then I knew why: It didn’t sound as good.

Mrs. Pierce beamed when she saw my hand. She said: “Yes, Judith.”

“The metaphor is stronger,” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

I flushed. Now I looked stupid, as if I had guessed. I hadn’t; I just couldn’t explain why I knew for certain.

I could feel Gemma looking at me. Neil too. But it was no use; I couldn’t explain. Mrs. Pierce turned back to the board.

“There’s a clue in the word. ‘Metaphor’ is made up of two Greek words:
meta,
which means ‘between,’ and
phero,
meaning ‘to carry.’ So metaphors
carry
meaning from one word to another.”

And then I remembered something someone had said: that it wasn’t enough to imagine what the new world would be like, we had to be there. It was Brother Michaels. He said faith could do that for us. “Because we’re there,” I said suddenly, without putting my hand up. Everyone turned to look at me. I flushed. “I mean,
it’s
there. I mean—it’s not side by side.” My cheeks were hot. “Metaphor isn’t imagining, it’s the thing itself.”

Mrs. Pierce’s eyes were so sharp they should have hurt, but they didn’t. They were like a current of electricity passing from her to me, and the current flared and warmed me.

“Yes,” she said at last. “The words aren’t talking
about
something; they become the thing itself.” She put down the chalk, and we looked at each other for a moment, and it was as if I was flying. Then the moment passed and she dusted off her hands and said: “Right, class, I’d like you to write poems using metaphor.”

*   *   *

L
ATER THAT MORNING
, while Mrs. Pierce was organizing the stationery cupboard, a ball of paper landed beside Gemma’s elbow. I didn’t know how the paper had got there, but I saw Gemma’s hand close over it. She kept the paper underneath her hand for a minute, then unrolled it. She giggled and drew something, rolled it up again, and flicked it to Neil Lewis. Neil opened it and grinned. He passed the paper to Lee, and Lee’s shoulders shook. Lee passed it to Gareth.

Mrs. Pierce looked up. She said: “Is something funny? If there is, I am sure the whole class would like to hear it.”

Everything was quiet for a minute or two, then the paper shot back to our table. This time Gemma squeaked she was trying so hard not to laugh. She wrote something, rolled it up, and flicked it back to Neil. Neil then wrote something and flicked it back. Gemma slapped her hand down on the paper too loudly and Mrs. Pierce put her hands on her hips. She said: “Whatever is going on over there had better stop!”

Nothing happened for four whole minutes. Then Neil flicked the paper to Gemma. The paper shot wide and landed by my feet.

Mrs. Pierce put down the tubes of paint she was holding. She said: “Pick up that piece of paper. Yes, you, Judith! Read it out please.”

I picked up the paper and unrolled it. What I saw didn’t make sense. At the top was the word “METAPHOR.” Beneath it was a picture of a girl kneeling in front of a man. Something was coming out of the man’s trousers. It looked like a snake. A wave of heat passed over me and after the wave sickness. At the bottom of the picture there were four words. One of them was my name.

“Go on,” Mrs. Pierce said. “Read it out.”

I looked at her.

“Read it, Judith!” she said. “I won’t have any secrets in my class!”

“Judith gives good head,”
I said.

A breath rippled through the class.

Mrs. Pierce looked like someone had slapped her. She walked up to me and took the paper. “Sit down, Judith,” she said quietly. Then she went to her desk.

“All right,” she said brightly. “Let’s get these fractions marked. Who can start us off with the answer to number one?”

“H
OW WAS SCHOOL?
” Father said when he got in.

“We’ve got a new teacher,” I said. “She read us poetry.”

“Good,” Father said. He filled the kettle.

“She read out a poem about winter.”

“Did she now?” He put the lid on the kettle and switched it on.

“And we talked about metaphor.”

“Good.”

“Then we all wrote poems and Mrs. Pierce liked mine.”

“Good,” said Father. “That’s good.” He placed both hands flat on the worktop and looked at them. Then he said: “Judith, I’ll be coming home later next week. A bus is bringing me and it might take a bit longer.”

“A bus?”

“Yes.” Father took his hands off the worktop. “They’re striking.”

“But you’re still going to go to work?”

“Of course.” He got potatoes from the box under the sink.

“Caesar’s things to Caesar, God’s things to God.”

“But why do you have to be brought home in a bus?”

“All the people who aren’t striking are going to go to work in a bus,” Father said. He ran the tap.

“Why?”

Father turned the tap off the wrong way, and the water came out in a spurt. He began to wash the potatoes. “Well, some people think we shouldn’t be working,” he said. “And they want to stop us.”