by David Almond
She shrugs and smiles.
“Nothing wrong with being crackers, is there?”
“No,” I squeak.
“If you did come back, I’d help you.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Anyway,” she says. She does a couple of jumps on the pavement. “I just wanted to show you my limplessness!”
She jumps and jumps again.
“Limplessness,” I whisper. “Limp-less-ness!”
“Not bad, eh?” says Sophie.
“No. Not bad. Very good.”
“And I just wanted to say hello. And now goodbye.”
Then she’s gone. I say goodbye after her. I want to jump down and run after her and grab her and tell her she’s nice, too, and that I’m very pleased for her, and that … But I don’t. She goes back to her friends. I close my eyes.
“Stupid Mina!” I squeak to myself.
“She wonders about me,” I squawk softly.
“She says I’m nice,” I whisper.
“Limplessness,” I murmur, and I slowly write two lovely words in my book.
There they are, two brand-new words brought into the world by Sophie Smith and written in my book by me. So maybe she is crackers, too, as she says she is.
She’s gone from the street with her friends.
I write again, so shyly, so timidly.
Sophie’s nice. I wish she had stayed a little longer. I wish I had asked her to stay a little longer. Silly silly Mina!
I think about what Sophie said about Mrs. Scullery and this gets me to thinking about Mrs. Scullery and I write again.
A CONFESSION. OK, maybe Scullery wasn’t quite so horrible and screechy as I made her out to be. And maybe THE HEAD TEACHER wasn’t quite so thick. And maybe they both showed a bit more understanding than I said they did. But when you’re writing stories, sometimes you just have to do these things. You have to EXAGGERATE, otherwise there wouldn’t be any DRAMA. It’s just what writers DO!! OK?
Weird, how I can feel so frail and tiny sometimes, and other times so brave and bold and reckless and free, and … Does everybody feel the same? When people get grown-up, do they always feel grown-up and sensible and sorted out and … And do I want to feel grown-up? Do I want to stop feeling … paradoxical, nonsensical? Do I want to stop being crackers? Do I want to be destrangified? O yes, sometimes I want nothing more – but it only lasts a moment, then oh I want to be the strangest and crackerest of everybody, to be … O stop it, Mina! Sometimes I just think too much and ponder too much and … Stop it, I said!
Then there’s no time to squeak or squawk or wish or wonder anything else because a great big white van pulls into the street and stops outside Mr. Myers’s house. Then the blue car pulls up behind it and the family gets out. The mum has the baby all wrapped up in white in her arms.
“Already?” I whisper.
She looks along the street. She holds the baby close like she wants to protect it from the world. The dad moves close and hugs them both. I hear the baby crying. She carries it inside. I imagine them in there, in the still-half-dilapidated house, the brand-new baby, the ancient neglected place.
Then the doors of the van open and the dad and two burly men start carrying furniture into the house.
The boy stays all alone, glaring at the earth, glaring at the sky. He holds a football under his arm.
“What do you wish?” I whisper to him, and of course there’s no way for him to hear.
The new boy looks nice, I tell myself. Will I be brave enough to tell him that? Does he go to school? Of course he does.
He bounces the ball, once, twice. He kicks it against the garden wall, once, twice. He glares at the street as if he hates it. Then he does follow his family and the furniture inside.
I keep on watching. Then Mum’s below me, smiling up at me.
“I see the newcomers have arrived,” she says.
We look along towards Mr. Myers’s house, which is no longer Mr. Myers’s house.
“And the baby,” I say.
“The baby? Already?”
“Yes.”
“Oh dear. I suppose they hoped to be more prepared. But they come when they come.”
“And the eggs have hatched as well,” I say.
“So it’s the right time. It’s a day of chicks and babies!”
She reaches a hand towards me.
“And listen to me, my baby.”
“Yes?”
“I think maybe you’re too much up there in your tree.”
“Too much in the tree?”
“Yes. You should come down into the world a bit more. And you should come down and come for a walk with me.”
“A walk to where?”
“To wherever our feet might take us.”
“OK.”
I drop down, out of the tree. Then I put my finger to my lips.
“Listen,” I whisper.
“To what?”
“Just listen. If we listen closely we’ll maybe hear the chicks cheeping in the nest. Maybe we’ll even hear the baby.”
We listen closely, closely, closely. We stretch upwards, turn our heads towards the nest.
“Hear them?” I say.
She shakes her head.
“Me neither,” I say.
We grin at each other.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I say. “Take us somewhere, feet.”
We walk out of the street into the park. She says this is an educational walk with educational content. Palaver and Trench have asked for a report on what we’ve been up to. So she will tell them about my writing, my research into birds, our artwork etcetera etcetera etcetera etcetera. She will tell them how even walks in the park can be deeply educational.
“So let’s walk,” she says, “and think about a theory about walks by Paul Klee.”
“Who’s he?”
“One of the great artists of the twentieth century. He said that drawing was taking a line for a walk.”
I thought about that, about the way a pencil point moves across paper as you draw.
“So if drawing is like walking,” I say, “then walking is like drawing.”
“Yes, and if you think of it like that, it allows you to wander and to roam and to explore.”
I smile at the loveliness of that. I imagine our feet leaving a drawing behind us. I swerve and skip to add curves and interest to our drawing.
“People said that Klee’s paintings looked like they could have been done by a child,” she says. “Some people hated them. The Nazis, for instance. Burn the lot! they said.”
I listen, and I think some more.
“Maybe writing’s like walking as well,” I say. “You set off writing like you set off walking and you don’t really need to know where you’re going till you get there, and you don’t know what you’ll pass along the way.”
She smiles.
“So writing’s like taking some words for a walk,” she says.
“It is.”
We walk on, close together, our feet moving in rhythm with each other’s. I imagine each step as a syllable, and I breathe the words as I step along.
Each word is a step a-long the way to I don’t know where
“Picasso loved Klee’s work,” Mum says. “He said it took years to learn how to paint like a master, and a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.”
It’s so strange: grown-ups trying to become young, young ones trying to grow up and all the time, whatever people want, time moves forwards, forwards.
I walk the words.
A life-time to learn to paint like a child
A life-time to learn to paint like a child
“Wordsworth used to write as he walked,” she says.
“Did he?”
“Yes. He said that the rhythm of walking. helped him to find the rhythms of his poetry.”
“Makes sense.”
“It does.”
To write is to take some words for a walk
The words foll-ow the rhy-thm of the feet<
br />
The feet foll-ow the rhy-thm of the words
To write is to take some words for a walk
“And walking’s also a kind of meditation,” she says.
“Is it?”
“Yes. Meditation’s often about sitting very still and keeping the mind very still.”
“Like I do in the tree sometimes?”
“Yes. But there is also walking meditation. You concentrate on every step. You think of nothing else. You do nothing but walk. You hope to become clear and calm.”
We try it. We walk side by side along the pathway through the park. Now I don’t think about words or lines. I try to think of nothing but taking one step then another step then another step. We breathe slowly and regularly.
“Now think about nothing,” she says. “Just walk while you walk.”
But as we walk through the park, I suddenly can’t help thinking of the tunnel underneath and I get agitated instead of calm. Mum knows somehow. She stops. She looks at me. She waits. I find myself telling her about the day that I ran out of school and went down there all alone and saw the man and the dog. I tell her I thought I’d be able to go down there and bring Dad back, that I was trying to do what Orpheus was trying to do. I manage to laugh about it as I tell her.
“I must have been so stupid,” I tell her. “I must have been so young.”
I keep on trying to laugh, but I’m nearly crying now.
She holds me tight.
“You should have told me at the time,” she says.
“I’m telling you now.”
“And you really saw a dog?” she asks me.
“Yes. A man and a dog. I thought the dog was Cerberus. I thought the man was some kind of guardian of the Underworld. I thought I was going down to Hades!”
“Oh, Mina!”
I manage to laugh again.
“He was probably just one of the workmen,” I say. “The dog was probably just a stray.”
I even manage to giggle now.
“Take me further, feet,” I say, and we keep on walking in the light as I remember walking in the dark.
“I thought if I kept on walking and walking,” I tell her, “I’d see Pluto and Persephone!”
“Oh, Mina! What a girl!”
“I had it all planned in my mind, I think,” I say.
“And what would you have said to Pluto and Persephone?”
I laugh.
“Give him back! Give him back!”
She shakes her head.
“Give him back!” she murmurs.
We keep on walking. We’re silent for a while. We listen to the birds and the city all around us.
She asks if I’m OK, if I’m really OK.
“Yes.”
I want to shut up but I find myself telling her about Sophie’s visit as we walk.
“That was nice of her,” says Mum. “Maybe she’ll come again.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe she could be your friend again.”
I shrug.
“Maybe.”
And I want to be clear and calm but I find myself thinking about the boy from the family standing in the street, and I find myself telling her about him, too.
“And does he look interesting?” she says.
I shrug.
“Maybe.”
She smiles and seems about to say something more, but then she just takes my hand and squeezes it and says, “I’m sure he is.”
I turn my mind away from the underworld and from Sophie and the boy. I concentrate on the calming rhythm of walking.
My feet will take me where they wish to go
My feet will take me where they wish to go
My feet will take me where they wish to go
As I breathe the syllables at every step, the rhythm turns the words into a kind of music. The walking turns into a kind of walking dance.
We don’t ask each other where we should walk, but we walk upwards, on the pathway by the stream that runs through the park. It rushes and gurgles at our side. A road bridge carries noisy traffic over us. We pass a little field where boys are playing football and yelling wildly at each other. “Cross it! To him! To me! On me head! Yesss! Oh, no!” We come to the little petting zoo where there are little goats with little horns and potbellied pigs and beautiful glistening noisy peacocks. There are tiny children sitting in buggies, and toddlers holding their mums’ hands. They lean down and whisper to the goats and pigs, just like I once did, and I watch, and it’s like looking back through time. I think of the new baby in the street. I think of the baby as “she.” She will come here, before too long, to lean down and whisper at the goats and pigs. Maybe I will bring her here. Maybe I will hold her hand and walk with her through the park and take her home again. I catch my breath at the joy of the thought of that. A little girl in our street. A little girl to be my friend!
We walk again. We climb the path towards the exit from the park. The birds are noisy in the hedges and the undergrowth. We step through the park gate. There’s a parade of small shops outside. A hairdresser named Kurl Up ’n’ Dye, a Chinese takeaway named Wok This Way, and Pani’s Pizza & Pasta Place.
We keep on walking. We don’t ask where we should walk to but we both know where we’re going now. We pass the shops. We walk by a busy road.
The traff-ic is so noi-sy at our side
The traff-ic is so noi-sy at our side
The traff-ic is so noi-sy at our side
We arrive at another set of massive gates and we step through into the graveyard. We pause for a moment. So many graves, so many bodies, so many souls, so many people gone. Rows and rows and rows of them. And monuments, and angels, and crosses, and flat tables, and carved names and dates, and pots with flowers in them, and a great big sky above. And people like us, walking slowly by the graves, standing still, leaning down at particular ones, whispering and praying.
We hold each other’s hand and walk again. We come to Dad and stand there side by side.
“Hello, Dad,” I whisper.
“Hello, love,” Mum whispers, too.
I pick up a sweet wrapper that’s blown onto the ground above him. Mum tugs away a little weed. I remember him holding me as he read to me. Mum closes her eyes, clasps her hands, remembering, too, I suppose, or praying, or maybe even telling him about Colin Pope.
I love you, Dad, I whisper.
I do shed a tear. I do know that wherever he is or whatever he is now, there’s no way for him to come back again. There’s no Underworld to go to. There’s no Pluto to go to. But it’s lovely standing there, the two of us, sharing the memory of Dad. I think of his breath in the air around us, the molecules of his water in the drifting clouds, the echo of his words in my memory as he read to me.
The sky’s so huge, so blue. There are blackbirds singing, and a single loud and lovely lark. I try to see it, but it’s so so high and so far away that it can’t possibly be seen. I look down again and a single white feather is tumbling slowly past our feet. Mum stoops down and catches it. She presses it against my shoulder.
“A perfect fit,” she says. “Must be one of yours, Mina.”
“Must be.”
She hands it to me. I spread my arms and pretend to fly, holding the feather out with my fingertips. Then I let the feather go. It falls slowly towards the earth and drifts away again across the pathways and graves.
“Now the breeze is taking the feather for a walk,” I say. “And it won’t know where it’s going till it gets there.”
We stay a little longer. We murmur more words, then we whisper goodbye and we walk away.
Time’s passing fast. The sky’s already reddening as it heads to dusk. I feel so light, so loose, just like a feather on a breeze, like a word wandering without any definite rhythms, like a weaving wandering line. The air’s so gentle. It feels like Persephone’s really on her way.
“Let’s treat ourselves,” says Mum. “Pizza? Or a Chinese to carry home?”
She looks at the menu of Wok This Way
.
“Fried King Prawns in Kung Po Sauce!” she says. “Spring Rolls! Pork Cha Sui!”
I look at Pani’s.
“Spaghetti Pomodoro! Pizza Quattro Stagione!”
She laughs and guides me to the door of Pani’s Pizza & Pasta Place. A waiter greets us like we’re long-lost friends. He calls us two fine ladies. He gives us both a red rose. We sit at the back of the restaurant, the only ones at first, then other little families and couples start coming in. Music’s playing, someone singing “O Sole Mio.”
She sings quietly along for a line or two.
I order a pizza margherita with anchovies and olives and garlic.
Mum orders angel-hair pasta with clams and shrimps.
We grin at each other. She drinks white wine. I drink lemonade.
The food comes and is delicious.
“Fantastico!” she sighs.
“Marvelloso!” I say.
“O sole mio!” she quietly sings.
The day continues to darken outside.
I have pistachio and strawberry and vanilla ice cream. Mum has Panna Cotta con Caramello.
“For the sound of it as much as the taste of it,” she says. “Say the words: Panna Cotta con Caramello.”
We say the words together. With two long-handled spoons we eat the sweets together. We sigh at such deliciousness.
Mum drinks coffee, then we go out into the gathering night. We retrace our steps towards home, go down into the park again. We follow the stream. We hear birds settling down in the hedges and the undergrowth. A couple of cats, black beasts, are prowling, hunting.
We sit on a bench by the stream in the dark.
“That was lovely, wasn’t it?” says Mum.
“Delicioso!”
“And the walk? And the visit to Dad?”
“Fantastico!”
“You are OK, aren’t you?”
“Yes, mostly.”
“Mostly’s pretty good.”
She puts her arm around me. We watch the stars intensify. We stand up and slowly walk on. We follow the footpath.
“When you grow up,” I said, “do you ever stop feeling little and weak?”
“No,” she says. “There’s always a little frail and tiny thing inside, no matter how grown-up you are.”
“Like a baby?” I say.
“Yes. Or like a tiny bird, right at the heart of you,” she says. “It’s not really weak at all. If we forget it’s there, we’re in deep trouble.”