The Land of Decoration
Page 5
It makes you think lots of things are miraculous, like the chances of me hitting exactly the same bit in my mouth with the toothbrush that I did a few seconds before, or of my tomato squirting Father on the nose at dinner, or the chance of me being me instead of millions of other people. But they are very small chances, and a bee isn’t a miracle either, only a wonderful thing, because miracles are made to happen.
Evidence isn’t all there is to believing, and neither is being able to explain it. Even if people can’t explain something—like seeing a ghost or being healed—once they have experienced it, they believe it, though they might have spent their whole life saying it was nonsense. Which means that people who say something is impossible have probably just never experienced it.
Of course, they might still want to explain it away and look for a rational explanation. But they are doing what Father is doing and missing the point. Which is that miracles are what you see when you stop thinking, and they happen because someone made them and because someone, somewhere, had faith.
The Test
WHEN I WOKE on Tuesday, the sky was blue and empty and the sun was winking in the windows. Already the snow piles by the front doors and along the sides of the road were softening. I said: “Now for my test.”
I went to the trunk and I got out my materials. I rolled up the sky in the Land of Decoration and in its place I hung gauze. I unhooked the clouds and in their place put a blizzard funnel of wire mesh and tiny polystyrene balls. I removed the cotton fabric and laid cotton wool over houses and steeples, railway lines, mountains, and viaducts.
“Colder!” said a voice, and again I felt as if I had caught light.
I put the tiny people inside their houses. I bundled them in blankets and coats. I put hot cups of cocoa in their hands. I lit hurricane lamps. I sprayed frost on windows and made ice for the roads with sheets of Plexiglas.
“Colder!” said the voice.
I tore the paper lighthouse beam and on top of the waves laid shards of floating plastic ice. I glued icicles to the masts of the ships, turned on the fan, and flurries of paper hail stung sailors’ hands and faces. Snowmen sneezed. Polar bears shivered. Penguins danced to keep warm.
Then I said: “Snow,” just like before. And I saw the town and the steelworks and the mountain sewn up in it, heaps of snow, more than anyone had ever seen here or ever would again.
I said: “Now I must wait.”
I waited through breakfast. I waited through lunch. I waited as Father and I brought in the last of the wood to dry in the lean-to and we pondered Jesus dying to save the world. I waited as we sat by the fire that evening and Father listened to Nigel Ogden playing his organ. I waited all night, checking and looking out at the stars and the white waste of the moon. I ran to the window next morning, but the sun was shining so brightly it hurt my eyes and a steady dripping was coming from above my window.
I felt sick and sat on the bed. I said: “What did I do differently?” I said: “Perhaps I just have to be patient.”
* * *
THAT MORNING WE went preaching. Father said it was the ideal time for it. What he meant was that people would be in. Getting people in is a problem for us, because though we are trying to save people, they will do almost anything to avoid it. They don’t answer the door, they tell lies (“My grandmother just died,” “I’ve got a war wound and can’t stand up for long,” “I’m on my way to church”), they get nasty (shouting, letting the dog out, threatening to call the police), they run away (this is a last resort, but it does happen; once someone took off running when he saw us at his door and dropped some of his shopping in the road). These are all what Father calls Tactics of Evasion. We have tactics of our own, which include asking thought-provoking questions, turning Conversation Stoppers into Conversation Starters, and knocking twice the same morning (though once someone threw a bucket of water over Father’s head when we did this, so perhaps that was not such an effective tactic after all).
We met the group at the corner of King Street. There were small hills of snow on either side of the road. Elsie and May were there, Alf and Josie. Stan, Margaret, and Gordon. Josie was wearing a fur hat and a cape and a knitted all-in-one suit that came down to her shins. She said: “I looked for you on Sunday. I brought you something.”
I went round to the other side of Father. “We must have missed each other,” I said.
“What do you think of this snow?” said Uncle Stan. “Beats everything, doesn’t it?”
“The Tribulation is on the way!” said Alf.
Elsie said: “My joints don’t like it.” She offered me a Ricola Locket.
“Nor my chilblains,” said May. She offered me a Werther’s Original.
“Well,” said Father, “we’ve got a good show of spirit in any case.”
Uncle Stan said the prayer and we started. Elsie worked with Margaret, Stan worked with Gordon, Josie worked with May, Alf worked alone, and I worked with Father. It was cold. Our steps rang on the pavement. Father said hello to passersby. Some of them nodded. Some said hello. Most ducked their heads and kept walking. Despite the ideal circumstances, not many answered. Sometimes a curtain moved. Sometimes a child came and said: “No one’s at home,” and when that happened there was laughter.
The sky was incredibly blue. The blueness bothered me. “It could still happen,” I said to myself. “It could still snow.” But two hours later, when we met on the corner, the sky was just as blue as before. “We don’t seem to be having much success,” said Uncle Stan. I couldn’t have agreed with him more.
Father and I said goodbye to the group and went on Return Visits. Return Visits are people we always call on; they don’t hide from us. Mrs. Browning sat up bright as a pin with rollers in her hair and invited us in for tea and butter puffs. There were dog hairs and grease on the plate, and the cups were brown inside. Usually I can’t drink the tea, which is made with condensed milk and only just warm, but today I swallowed it without thinking. Then Father asked me to read the scripture and Mrs. Browning said: “Such a bright girl! I bet you’re looking forward to going back to school.”
Father raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t bank on it.”
We left Mrs. Browning and went to see Joe and his dog, Watson. Joe leaned against the porch as he always did, there was a stain on the wall he had done it so long. Watson dragged his bottom across the step.
Father said: “Any day now, Joe.”
And Joe said: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Father said: “You have to believe it or you won’t see it.”
Joe laughed, and a chain rattled in his chest. We left some magazines with him, then Father said we’d have to get back or the fire would be out.
I could see my legs going in and out beneath me all the way up the street. There was a lollipop stick lying in the gutter. I usually made garden fences with them but this time I stepped over it. “I won’t make anything ever again,” I said to myself. “It would have been better for me never to have made the snow at all if it was just a coincidence.” Suddenly going back to how things were before was too terrible to think about.
We went up the mountain road in the tracks left by the cars, and the sun was coming through the fir trees in long molten strokes, stammering and jabbering through the branches. Father took long strides. His boots splattered slush sideways in little showers. I listened to the crunching of boots and the flapping of sheepskin and my Bible bag bumping about on my back and I wanted everything to stop. Father said: “Come on! What are you dawdling for?”
“I’m not dawdling,” I said. “I’m tired.”
“Well, the quicker you walk, the sooner we’ll be home.”
The mountain seemed higher than I remembered. We reached a curve in the road and it went up again. We reached another and it went up still further. The higher we climbed, the whiter it got. The whiteness got into my clothes. It pierced the stitching, the buttonholes, the wool of my tights. I shut my eyes, but it pricked through my eyelids and m
ade patterns there.
We reached the top. Father kept going, but I stopped in the road. I listened to his footsteps as they went away, and for a minute I didn’t mind if they never came back. I put my hands over my eyes and stood very still and all I could hear was the emptiness around me and for the longest time I didn’t think anything at all. Then a cold gust buffeted me and I opened my eyes.
The sky wasn’t bright anymore. It was thick and it was whirling. Something was drifting in front of me. Something was lighting on my coat and my nose and my cheeks, touching me then disappearing over and over. I stood very still, and somewhere inside me a bolt slid home.
There were tears in my eyes but not from the cold. And then I was running down the steep mountain road, running and shouting: “Wait for me!”
I ran past him and swung right round, slipping and laughing and just staying up. “It’s snowing!” I shouted.
“I had noticed.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
“It’s a pain in the neck.”
I began running again, blinking, spreading my arms like a bird. Father said: “Watch you don’t fall!” And I ran even faster to show him I wouldn’t.
Snowflakes and Mustard Seeds
MIRACLES DON’T HAVE to be big, and they can happen in the unlikeliest places. Sometimes they are so small people don’t notice. Sometimes miracles are shy. They brush against your sleeve, they settle on your eyelashes. They wait for you to notice, then melt away. Lots of things start by being small. It’s a good way to begin, because no one takes any notice of you. You’re just a little thing beetling along, minding your own business. Then you grow.
High in the heavens snowflakes are born. When they fall to earth they are so light they fall sideways. But flakes find brothers and when they do they stick together. If enough of them stick they begin to roll. If they roll far enough they pick up fence posts, trees, a person, a house.
A mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, but when it has grown, the birds of heaven lodge in its branches; a grain of sand becomes a pearl; and prayers that begin with very little or nothing at all are spoken, because if there is enough of something it begins to grow, and if there is more than enough a great thing will happen which was there from the start in the smallest of ways.
Which comes first, the prayer or the particles? How can the smallest of things become the biggest of all and the thing that could have been stopped unstoppable, and something you never thought would amount to much amount to it all? Perhaps it’s because miracles work best with ordinary things, the more ordinary the better. Perhaps it’s because they begin with odds and ends—the greater the odds, the bigger the miracle.
A Skeptic
THAT AFTERNOON THE sky grew dark with the weight of the snow. It kept spiraling down, wondering which way to go. I sat and watched. I could have watched it forever. I didn’t eat dinner. My hands felt hot or other things felt cold and my skin was prickling all over. Father asked if I had a temperature; I told him I had never felt better.
The next morning it was still snowing. Drifts reached to the sills of windows, cars were small white hillocks, my breath formed clouds, and the floorboards creaked with the cold. Father was rubbing his hands by the Rayburn when I came down. He said he’d had to dig a tunnel to get out the back door.
I decided the time had come to tell him what was happening. I took a deep breath. “You know I was asking about miracles?”
He banged the fire door and said: “Not now, Judith. I’ve got to saw more wood and I have to see if Mrs. Pew is all right. In fact, you could do that for me.”
“But I have to talk to you!” I said. “It’s important.”
“Later,” Father said. He swigged the last of his tea.
I stared at him. “Do I really have to go round to Mrs. Pew?”
“Well, it would help me.”
“What if I don’t come back?”
“Don’t be silly, Judith. There’s nothing wrong with Mrs. Pew.”
“Her head wobbles.”
“So would yours if you had Parkinson’s.”
* * *
Snow came over the top of my wellingtons as I waded through the front gate. My legs were wet by the time I got next door to Mrs. Pew’s front door. The bell went on for a while. I shuffled from foot to foot. The little kids in the street say Mrs. Pew invites children into her house and they’re never heard of again; they say that’s what happened to Kenny Evans. Though some people said he went to live with his father. I looked up and down the street to see if there would be any witnesses if Mrs. Pew tried anything.
The door opened a crack and I smelled something strong and musty, heard the latch turn, old hats and gloves from secondhand shops. Then I saw a black dress, a high collar, and a white face with red lips, drawn-on eyebrows, and little black curls that shook and glinted greasily. Spider eyes peered at me. There were lines around her mouth, and the red of her lips ran into them. It looked as though she was bleeding. “Yes?” Mrs. Pew said in her cracked-china voice.
I swallowed and said: “Hello, Mrs. Pew. Father told me to come and see if you needed anything.”
She turned up her hearing aid and leaned closer, and I backed away and said: “Father said: Do you need anything?” I was about to say it a third time when she shook her head, tweaked my sleeve, and pulled me into the hallway. I turned round, as the door shut. My heart began to beat very fast indeed.
Through the doorway, a television was blaring. A woman was standing in front of a lorry on a motorway, saying: “Yesterday a blast of Arctic weather brought snow and ice to much of the country for the second time this week. The first taste of winter came just two days ago, when a mild October was shattered by an eight-inch fall of snow. The weather is causing problems on the roads and at sea. Four sailors, including a fifteen-year-old boy, had to be rescued yesterday after their yacht capsized off Plymouth. Both falls of snow have confounded weather forecasters…”
Mrs. Pew turned the sound off, then came back and said: “Now, what is it? Speak up, child!”
“Father said: DO YOU NEED ANYTHING?”
“Oh!” she said. “There’s no need to shout! That’s kind of your father. But you can tell him I’m well provided for; I’ve enough tins in my pantry to feed the army.”
“Good,” I said, and turned to undo the door.
“Wait, young lady! Have you seen Oscar?”
“What?”
“Have you seen Oscar?”
“No.”
“He didn’t come in for his cat food last night,” she said. “It’s most unlike him. Usually he doesn’t set foot outside if it so much as spits with rain. He holes himself up somewhere. If you see him, let me know, won’t you?”
My legs were shaky as I went to the gate. I turned back to say goodbye, and then I stopped. Mrs. Pew was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, but her head was wobbling too much to do it properly. She said: “I can’t help thinking something terrible has happened to him.”
I looked down. I said: “I have to go now.”
Father was on top of the wall at the side of the lean-to, raking off snow. “Mrs. Pew has enough tins to feed the army,” I shouted, “but Oscar is missing. Can I talk to you now?”
“Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Yes.”
“Later!”
* * *
BUT AFTER CLEARING the roof he was busy shoveling snow, and after that he was busy chopping wood, and after that he was busy reading the paper, listening to the forecast, and getting dinner. I played in the garden. I made a snow cat and a snow man and a snow dog, and by then the day was almost over. At dinnertime he was only busy eating, so I laid down my knife and fork and said: “Father, I’ve got to tell you something.” I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t, so I said: “On Sunday I made snow for the Land of Decoration.” I said: “I wanted it to snow.”
He went on chewing. I could see the muscles in his jaw move. He must be playing it cool.
I said: “Father,
I made snow for the Land of Decoration and then it happened. It was a miracle! It happened twice, just as I wanted it to. But you mustn’t tell anyone yet, because it might scare them and I’ve only just found out myself.”
Father looked at me for probably the longest he has ever looked at me. Then he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed. When he had finished laughing he said: “You’re a star turn. So this is what all the miracle business has been about?”
“Yes,” I said. I hoped the laughter was due to shock. “I’ve been wanting to tell you. And I did it a second time, just to make sure—and it happened again! Even though you said that it wouldn’t. Because I had faith!”
Father said: “It’s because you spend too much time in that room.” Then he sighed.
“Judith, whatever you made for your model world has nothing to do with the real one—you’re always making this or that. It’s a coincidence.”
“It’s not!” I said, and I felt strange, as if I was getting a temperature. “It wouldn’t have happened without me.”
Father said: “Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?”
“Yes,” I said. But my head began to feel full again like it did on the day I made the snow, as if there were too many things in it.
Father said: “Judith, ten-year-old girls do not perform miracles.”
I said: “How do you know if you’re not a ten-year-old girl?”
Father pinched his eyes shut with his finger and thumb. When he opened them, he said he’d had enough of this ridiculous conversation. He took my plate, though I hadn’t finished, and put it on top of his own and went to the sink, ran the tap, and began to wash the dishes.