The Land of Decoration (14 page)

Uncle Stan frowned. “Your dad hasn’t said anything about that. Nothing serious, is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s what I was trying to tell you, about what I did to the—”

And then God said: “STOP!” so loudly that I jumped.

“What’s the matter?” said Stan.

And then I jumped again, because another voice said: “All right?” and I looked up and there was Father.

He and Stan began to talk and I slipped away. When I looked back, Uncle Stan had his hand on Father’s back. I hoped he didn’t tell Father I’d been talking about miracles. Then I jumped a third time, because two fat arms grabbed me and a voice said:
“Gotcha!”

A whiskery face with a mouth like a slash and creamy bits of spit in the corners was grinning. “You’ve been avoiding me!”

“No, Josie! Honest!”

“Hmm.” She eyed me suspiciously, then shoved a parcel into my arms. “Present!”

“Thank you.”

“Well: Open it!”

“A poncho,” I said.

There were more shells, there were more tassels, it was more orange than I could have imagined.

Josie’s body shook with laughter. “Well, I know how you like these little things. I’m so busy making things for this one and that one, but I always find time to make you something extra special. Try it on! It should fit, but I made it a bit big to be on the safe side.”

The fringe brushed my ankles. “Just right,” I said.

“Why are you taking it off?”

“Keeping it for best.”

I looked back to where Father and Uncle Stan were talking. Uncle Stan was talking and Father was looking serious.

“I want to see you wearing it next Sunday,” she said.

“OK.”

“Come on, cheer up!” she said. “Don’t you like it?”

I looked back to Father and Uncle Stan and they were laughing. Suddenly the world was brighter. “Yes,” I said, “I do. Thanks, Josie, I like it a lot.”

T
HAT NIGHT THE
letter box crashed again. I know that’s what it was because as I woke I heard the boys laughing and the gate spring shut. I got up and stood by the side of the window and looked through the curtains. I couldn’t see much without moving them, so I slipped into the other front bedroom.

Neil and Lee and Gareth were down below, with Neil’s brother Tom, who I sometimes saw at the school gates, and some older boys I had never seen before. When Father opened the door, they rode away. But they came back about five minutes later. One of the older boys was swigging from a can; the others were doing wheelies on their bikes and spitting on the ground. The phone rang in the hall, and I heard Father come out of the kitchen and the door slam behind him. The phone stopped, and then I heard him say: “Mrs. Pew!”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you. I’m dealing with it.”

He said: “Everything is being taken care of, Mrs. Pew. Please don’t worry.”

I was cold then, so I went to bed.

When the boys came back they shouted: “Where’s the witch?” through the letter-box slot and threw chippings at the upstairs windows. I felt the noise in my chest like a shower of red-hot pellets, and I wondered if this is what it felt like to be shot. I couldn’t lie there, because my body was on fire and I was shaking, so I got out my journal and wrote. But the noise went on so I put the journal away and sat against the wall. I sat there for a long time, until it was quiet in the street, until the hall clock struck twelve. Then I got up and opened the curtains.

It was very still and very bright. The full moon cast long black shadows from the houses and trees in the Land of Decoration. The shadows stretched right across the floor. I wondered what they reminded me of, and then I remembered that the graveyard in town looked like that when shadows fell from the headstones.

“God,” I said quietly, “why is this happening?”

“Well,” said God, “to Neil it looks like you’re the cause of all his problems at the moment.”

“I can’t help it if Mrs. Pierce doesn’t like him,” I said. “What should I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re God!” I said.

“But you got yourself into this.”

“
You
did,” I said.

“No,” said God. “It was you.”

“But I’ve only done what You told me to do.”

“You’ve done what you
wanted
to do.”

“It’s the same thing,” I said.

“What?” said God.

“I don’t know!” I said. I began to feel hot. “I don’t know why I said that.”

I didn’t want to talk to God anymore, I didn’t want to be in my room anymore, I was afraid the cloud would come over me again like it did the day I made the snow, so I went to the door, but when I got there I couldn’t go out, and I sat back down. After a minute I went to the door again and this time I went down the stairs.

Halfway down, I screamed.

A figure was standing in the hall. The figure whirled round and Father’s voice said: “
What the
—”

“You frightened me.”

“What are you doing up?”

“Nothing. I—I didn’t want to be in my room.”

He turned back to the front door. He looked like a boy with the moonlight catching the back of his head.

I couldn’t see any reason for him to be standing in the hall, so I said: “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

I suddenly wanted to say something to him very badly, but I didn’t know what. “Don’t worry about the boys,” I said.

“I’m not worried!” He turned and his eyes flashed.

“Good,” I said. “I was just checking.”

“Everything’s under control!”

“OK.”

“They won’t be back tonight anyway.” He sniffed loudly and put his hands in his pockets as if that settled it, but he continued to stand there.

I said: “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine! You’re the one who’s all bothered! You should be asleep! What are you doing up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, get back to bed.”

“OK.”

*   *   *

A
FTER A WHILE
the boys came back. I heard Father go out. He stood in the street and they rode around him, calling him names and spitting at him.

At last he came back in. I heard him open the front-room curtains and saw the light stream across the road. I heard a creak and knew Father had sat down in one of the wicker chairs. I didn’t understand what he was doing. Then I heard him begin to whistle, and I knew he was thinking good thoughts. The boys hung around for a while and then they went away.

F
ATHER SAYS WE
should never underestimate the power our thoughts have to help us. He says that all we need is One Good Thought to save the day. I have a few good thoughts. These are some of them:

1) that the world is about to end,

2) that everything is actually quite small,

3) that I am in the Land of Decoration, having my perfect day.

The last is the best thought of all.

*   *   *

I
HOPE THAT
there are still things from this world left over in the Land of Decoration, because I am very fond of some of them. If I could have all of my favorite things in one day, that day would be perfect, and this is how it would be.

To begin with, there would be Father and Mother and me. I know Mother will be in the Land of Decoration, because God has promised to bring the dead back to life if they were faithful, and Mother is dead, and she is the most faithful person I know. They still talk about her in the congregation, about what an example she set, about how she died, about how she trusted. Margaret still has a dress Mother made for her, and Josie has a shawl.

I’ve tried so many times to imagine meeting Mother, but all I have are odds and ends. I know, for instance, that she had brown hair and eyes like me. I know she smiled a lot, because she is smiling in most of our photos. I know that she liked making things. But after that I have to use my imagination.

In my perfect day, it would be one of those days when you wake up to sunshine, with nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it in. This day would be like a bubble floating past your window. It would be like opening your hand and it landing right in your palm, the light touching it the way it does, so that only the surface seems to be spinning and the inside of the bubble is perfectly still.

The day would begin with Mother and Father and me having breakfast, and as we ate I would tell Mother all about my life in this world and how I had been looking forward to seeing her, and she would tell me what it was like to be dead and how she had been looking forward to seeing me. Then I would show her the things I have made with the things she left, and she would shake her head as if she couldn’t believe it, she would hug me, and then we would go outside.

It would be one of those days when everything shimmers and the world is made up of jostling pieces of light. The air would be warm and smell of summer and the hedges would be filled with cow parsley and butterflies. There would be dandelion clocks and crane flies and dragonflies darting and stopping quite still in the air. There would be a field leading down to a river with grass long enough to wade through and a few flowers and some trees, and in the distance maybe the sea. Mother would take one of my hands and Father would take the other, and it would be difficult to believe it was really happening, because I had imagined it so often, but I would have to believe it because it would be true.

We would go walking in the field. There would be lots of different sorts of grass, and the grass would get inside our shoes and the cuffs of our trousers and inside our socks. And there would be a shaggy dog with one ear up and one ear down and he would bounce ahead of us. He would race ahead, and on this most perfect of days I would be able to whistle and bring him back.

But Father doesn’t approve of dogs because he says they carry germs, so we would keep the dog away from him.

Then my mother would point and over the way there would be a Ferris wheel and music. But Father doesn’t approve of Ferris wheels and fairgrounds, because they are dangerous and they are a Waste of Money, so Mother and I would go alone.

We would ride on the dodgems and shoot down the slide. And when we came home, there would be fish and chips for tea, and the chips would be fluffy and squidgy, and the fish would fall apart in moist flakes, and the batter would crunch when you bit it and then it would ooze, and Mother and I would eat with our fingers. But Father doesn’t approve of fish and chips, so for him I guess there would be bitter greens or something.

And there would be television. This might seem a strange thing to have in paradise, but I like television. Father says television is softening to the brain, but he needn’t watch it, Mother and I could, when the stars came out, in a gypsy caravan which would be our home now, with blankets pulled over us and a fire crackling outside and sausages on sticks and black-currant punch. And I have forgotten the main thing! Which would happen earlier: There would be a hot-air balloon.

One summer day when Father and I were in the back garden, a balloon came over. It was like a creature from the deep sea. I saw the shadow pass over, I heard the flaring, and I wanted to go where those people were going so much.

Yes, there would definitely be a hot-air balloon and we would take a ride. Or perhaps just Mother and I would, because Father doesn’t approve of hot-air balloons either. He says they’re dangerous and if anything happened to you in one of them there would be No Chance. He means if it exploded in the air, you would get fried or plunge to your death. But I think the feeling of flying would be worth the risk.

*   *   *

I
DON
’
T KNOW
what Father’s perfect day would be like. I expect it would be full of Necessary Things like Bible study and preaching and pondering and Saving Electricity and Being Quiet and Wasting Not Wanting. In which case he has his perfect day all the time.

Or perhaps his idea of a perfect day vanished a long time ago and he has forgotten how to imagine a new one.

O
N
M
ONDAY
N
EIL
looked at me and whispered a word which sounded like “blunt.” Mrs. Pierce looked up as he turned round. She said: “Neil, if you would like Judith to help you with your arithmetic, you can ask her. You don’t need to whisper.” Then Neil looked as if he would like to murder someone. He bent his head over his desk.

Mrs. Pierce said: “
Do
you need help, Neil?”

Neil’s fist tightened on his pen.

Mrs. Pierce said: “I’m sorry, Neil. I didn’t hear you. Was that a ‘yes’?”

Neil flung down the pen.

“Don’t be embarrassed, Neil,” said Mrs. Pierce. “No one is going to laugh if you are struggling. Would you like some help?”

Neil sat up so suddenly, the chair screeched on the floor.

“All right,” said Mrs. Pierce. “Then you’ve no need to bother Judith, have you?” She raised an eyebrow at me, then went back to her marking.

Everything was quiet for about fifteen minutes, then something whizzed past my head and clattered to the floor.

Mrs. Pierce looked up. “What was that?”

“A ruler, Miss,” said Anna.

“Whose is it?” Mrs. Pierce said.

Lee spluttered: “Neil lost it, Miss!”

“Judith took it!” Gareth said.

Lee said: “She can do magic, Miss.” There were guffaws and giggling.

Mrs. Pierce turned to me. “Judith, did you take Neil’s ruler?”

“No, Miss.”

“What is your ruler doing by Judith’s desk, Neil?”

“I don’t know, Miss,” said Neil.

“You can’t remember why you left your ruler there?”

Neil scratched his head and looked round. Everyone laughed.

Mrs. Pierce said: “Really, Neil, I’m getting quite worried about you. On Monday you lost your bag. On Tuesday you told me you had lost your shoes. This morning you can’t remember where you left the ruler you were using a few seconds ago. If this goes on, you should think about seeing a doctor.”