‘Going home,’ said Perry after he’d thought for a while.
Mr Davis had even more than forty years experience with children. He had three daughters who were now grown up and had children of their own and, long ago, Mr Davis had been a boy himself. He would have understood completely if Perry had told him about not being able to concentrate on numbers because it seemed so long since he’d said goodbye to Nell and Annie and Blue. But even though Perry only said, ‘going home’, Mr Davis still had an idea about why Perry was waiting for the bus when he should have still been in class. He took Perry by the hand and started to walk back towards the school. But Perry didn’t want to go. He dragged his feet along the footpath.
‘Come on, Buddy,’ said Mr Davis.
‘Not Buddy!’ shouted Perry, shaking his head. He was confused. He had expected Mr Davis to drive him home, but instead he was taking him back to school. And now he’d got him mixed up with some other boy. Mr Davis was wrong; he wasn’t Buddy, he was Perry.
‘Not Buddy!’ He shouted again and flung himself down on the ground. ‘Going home!’
That evening Miss Cherry came to dinner at the Kingdom of Silk. She sat next to Perry and helped him spread butter on his bread roll and passed him the salad bowl, and he was glad because that meant she was still his friend. Annie said a friend is someone who loves you even when you do something wrong. Going on a bus when you haven’t told your teacher is wrong. Climbing over the fence when it isn’t home time is wrong. Shouting at the bus driver is wrong. Mr Davis wanted to be his friend, too. Miss Cherry said buddy is another word for friend. A friend is somebody who loves you. There is a time for loving and a time for hating. It is written in the painted poem. Dinner time with friends is a time for love and love is like chocolate, melting in the quiet dark inside you.
There were many things Perry had yet to learn, but he had friends who wanted to help him. They stayed up until the stars shone, talking about how they would do it.
6. A Little Bit of Sweetness
On Tuesday Perry wore his Superman costume. Then he caught the bus again. This time Annie went with him. The first lesson of the day was buying a ticket. The fare was one shiny dollar coin. For one dollar you got two tickets and a ride to the Colour Patch Café.
The bus went past number 5 stop and past number 6 stop. Annie and Perry got off at number 7. Annie showed Perry the number on the sign. Perry liked seven. He liked how tall it was and how it had a tiny veranda at the top to keep it dry when the rain fell. They walked down the two silver steps, first Annie and then Perry.
When Perry got to the footpath he turned around and waved and said, ‘See you later, Buddy!’
Mr Davis smiled so wide that Perry could see his gold tooth at the side.
‘See you later, Buddy!’ he said, and Perry got a feeling like the sun was shining somewhere inside him.
The first time Perry went to the Colour Patch Café was the day he had arrived at the Kingdom of Silk. All the Silk family had come to meet him when he stepped off the train with Melody. Layla was there too. She had her wings on and glitter on her toenails and her hair was as black as a crow’s wing and her eyes as blue as forget-me-nots. Perry thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He still did. Layla was kind too. On that first day she gave him a red balloon on a string and a sticky piece of toffee. Now she was making Perry a pair of wings just like hers. It was just a matter of waiting until she had collected enough feathers from Nell’s chickens. Layla was different to Perry Angel. She was quick and brave and talked a lot. But she was also good at reading hearts.
Sometimes Perry wished he was like Layla, even though she had told him it would be boring if everyone was the same. She said it didn’t matter if his words sounded a bit smudged or that he sometimes talked with his hands. She pointed out that the Silk family was different from most other families. They didn’t own a television, they ate only the bread they had made themselves and drank only the milk which had come from their goats, and they had seven children, counting Perry. Ben didn’t have a regular job in a bank or an office. He wore his hair in a ponytail and made beautiful furniture from things other people threw away. Annie painted pictures instead of working at the Cameron’s Creek Smallgoods factory like a lot of other ladies did. And Nell lived with them and looked after them and loved them all even though she wasn’t related to them by birth, only by heart. Layla told Perry that her daddy said the Silks were an uncommon sort of family and uncommon was just another way of saying different.
Perry liked it when Layla took the trouble to try to explain things to him. Although he didn’t understand everything she said, it made him feel important. So he made his mind up that even if he couldn’t be exactly like Layla, at least he could be kind.
Annie had brought a big black folder with her to the Colour Patch Café. It had tiny wheels on the bottom, a handle on the top and a shiny silver button to keep the folder closed. Perry followed her as she wheeled it through the curtain of coloured plastic strips. They trailed like fettuccine through his fingers. A welcoming voice rang out.
‘May good fortune be yours this glorious morning, Mrs Silk.’ It was Mr Kadri, the shopkeeper, whose words tumbled in a joyful jumble from his lips, with ups and downs in unexpected places that caught your ears by surprise.
‘I see you have brought Superiorman with you. Ah, you see, I am familiar with the villains and heroes from all the movies. But I must tell you, Superiorman is my favourite of them all! Blessings upon you, Superiorman. I am indeed a fortunate man to have you in my shop. Permit me to offer you a pot of mint tea, Mrs Silk, and perhaps a Raspberry Spider for Superiorman. And how are Mr Silk and his good mother and also the lovely children?’
‘They are all well, thank you, Mr Kadri, and yes, a pot of tea would be lovely. Would you like a Spider, Perry?’ Perry nodded, but Annie was waiting.
‘Yes, please,’ said Perry and Mr Kadri and Annie both smiled.
‘I am hoping you have brought some new pictures in your wheeling bag, Mrs Silk,’ said Mr Kadri. ‘I am wanting many more to decorate my walls. I have seven empty places upon my wall where seven pictures used to hang.’
‘Yes, I have brought you some more, Mr Kadri,’ said Annie.
‘Excellent. I beg you sit down while I make tea. Then we will look at your pictures.’
Perry and Annie sat at the table near the window. While they were waiting for Mr Kadri to prepare the drinks, Perry noticed a poster taped to the window. It was facing the footpath for passers-by to read.
When Mr Kadri arrived with the drinks he said, ‘Ah, I see you have noticed my poster for the St Benedict’s fair. You must be reading it from the outside when you are passing by on the footpath. But I will tell you.’ He put a huge silver tray down on the table and passed the Raspberry Spider to Perry. A red and white striped straw bobbed up and down in the foaming pink ice-cream. Then Mr Kadri set down a tiny glass dish with several chocolates in it. ‘For you, Superiorman. Rose-flavoured Turkish Delight and chocolate-coated apricots, because no child should grow up without a little sweetness in his life.’
Perry’s eyes shone. He looked at the sweets and he looked at Annie and then he looked at Mr Kadri. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You are most welcome, small one,’ said Mr Kadri, then he poured Annie’s tea from a tall silver pot engraved with more curls and flourishes than the gates of the cemetery.
‘Now I must be telling you about the poster,’ he said. ‘The committee has once again honoured me with the duty of conducting the annual art exhibition. But this year we will be having a new category. It will be open to anyone who wishes to exhibit for the first time. I am calling it the Window of Opportunity category.’
Mr Kadri could not choose between Annie’s pictures and took them all.
After lunch at the Kingdom of Silk, Annie left Perry and Blue with Nell and went down to her studio. Perry Angel stirred blueberries into Nell’s muffin batter and licked the leftover mixture from the wooden spoon. Then
he and Blue sat down in front of the oven and Nell turned the light on so they could see inside where the muffins were growing. When they were cooked Perry helped Nell to count them out loud. There were twelve, so they danced the Spanish Fandango around the kitchen table twelve times.
When the muffins were cool Nell said, ‘Here you are, Perry, one for you and one for Annie. You can take them down to the studio if you like.’
Perry shared his muffin with Blue. When they got to the studio Annie was working and singing. Perry didn’t want her to stop, so he put her muffin on the bench and sat down on the floor to wait until Annie was ready to take a break. While he was waiting, he looked at the painting of Tishkin, which would never hang on the wall at the Colour Patch Café. It was Annie’s to keep forever and for always because it had come from inside her, just like the baby had. Annie did not give any of her babies away. She wanted to keep them all. Only she couldn’t keep Tishkin because Tishkin died. Dying is like going to sleep, only sleeping is till tomorrow and dying is forever. Dying didn’t hurt Tishkin, but dying makes other people sad and forever is a long time. Perry hummed softly to Annie’s singing and wondered if she had ever sung that song to Tishkin. Then he wondered if anyone had ever sung a song to him. He didn’t notice his body swaying to the music of Annie’s voice. He didn’t notice Annie watching him across the top of her easel and he didn’t see her put down her brush. But he felt her near and warm and when she gathered him into her softness he closed his eyes and listened to her singing, clear as a silver bell.
On Tuesday evening, Perry Angel still wasn’t sure what a window of opportunity was. But he had tasted the sweetness of life, had learned that one shiny dollar buys two bus rides to the Colour Patch Café, that Annie had the gift of reading hearts and that no-one is ever too big or too small to be held in someone else’s arms. Shortly before bath time, Perry put his pad of clean white paper on the kitchen table and opened his tin of pencils. He still hadn’t learned to read their golden names, but he knew which colour he wanted. He took the pencil from the tin and held it loosely between the end of his middle finger and his thumb, the way he’d seen Annie hold her pencils. He listened to the smooth swishing strokes and watched the paper fill with colour. When he had finished he put the pencil back in the tin and smiled at what he’d drawn. It was a picture of being held in someone else’s arms.
7. Christmas Hams and Pearls of Hope
Not everyone would have known what being held in someone else’s arms looked like, but Mr Kadri would. Mr Kadri knew what it was like not to be able to find the right words and he knew what it was like to be different. These are two reasons why Mr Kadri would have understood if he had seen Perry Angel’s picture of the large purple blanket.
Mr Kadri didn’t know about the poem that was painted on the door of the house at the Kingdom of Silk. He had never used words to keep his boat steady in the storms of life. Instead, Mr Kadri used pictures.
Long ago Mr Kadri left the faraway land where he was born and set out to make a new home in a place where everyone spoke a language he didn’t understand. He went to work in a factory, wrapping hams for Christmas. No-one talked to Mr Kadri because he looked different to them and they thought he wouldn’t understand. There was a picture of a pig on the Christmas ham wrapper, so Mr Kadri guessed what was in the package without being able to read. But he wanted to be more like the other people in his new home, so gradually, letter-by-letter, word-by-word, minuteafter-minute, hour-after-hour and day-after-day, Mr Kadri learned the words printed on the wrappers and repeated them over and over to himself as he sent the Christmas hams whizzing around on the conveyor belt. After a few months, Mr Kadri knew all the words on the Christmas hams and the turkeys and the chickens and the ducks. Then he took a night job as a cleaner at a kindergarten.
Mr Kadri was a man to be relied upon. He cleaned thoroughly and did all his tasks in the same order so he wouldn’t forget a thing. By the time he had scrubbed the wash basins and polished the mirrors in the cloak room, the children and their teachers had arrived. Then Mr Kadri sat quietly at the back of the room on a tiny wooden chair and he looked at the pictures and listened to the words as the teachers read and the children sang. He admired the pictures the children had painted and thought of his own curly-haired babies far away in the land of their birth where there was no money for paper or pencils or paint.
There was only time to eat and to sleep for a few hours between his two jobs. But on weekends, to keep his boat steady, Mr Kadri made pictures. He painted things he had no words for, like this; my heart weighs heavier than a necklace made from the moons of Jupiter. Into the seas between us I have wept diamonds of grief and gathered pearls of hope. But while the stars shine I will sleep in hope of waking to your smiles.
That was a picture Mr Kadri painted for his brown-eyed wife and their three children who still lived in the faraway land in the house where they were born. And these are more reasons why Perry’s drawing of being held in someone’s arms would have made perfect sense to Mr Kadri.
When he had saved enough money and learned enough words, Mr Kadri bought a small empty shop. He painted the walls all the colours of Paradise and called it the Colour Patch Café, then sent for his wife and children. By then he knew three languages. The first was the tongue his mother had taught him, the second was English and the third was the language of pictures. As the walls of his café filled with pictures and the rooms above filled with his family, so Mr Kadri’s heart filled with joy.
‘In Paradise there are no words,’ Mr Kadri would tell his customers, ‘only pictures.’
That was why he had suggested the idea of an art exhibition at St Benedict’s annual fair. And now, five years after the first exhibition, that was why he had suggested the Window of Opportunity category because Mr Kadri wanted everyone to get a glimpse inside Paradise.
8. Windows of Opportunity
On Wednesday morning, Nell was thinking about windows of opportunity. How like small miracles, or Mr Kadri’s ups and downs they were, appearing when least expected. It seemed odd to her, that since Mr Kadri had announced his Window of Opportunity she’d noticed another, entirely different one. She wondered if anyone else in Cameron’s Creek had done the same, particularly Mr Jenkins.
Mr Jenkins had once been the sort of person who took advantage of windows of opportunity. He and Mrs Jenkins had been childhood sweethearts. Mr Jenkins was twenty-one years old and Mrs Jenkins was eighteen when they married on the first day of spring. The bells of Saint Benedict’s Church rang and the birds sang.
Mrs Jenkins, whose name then was Juliette Jones, wore a lace wedding gown with a train as long as the church and carried a bouquet of thirty white tulips. Mr Jenkins wore a navy pin-striped suit with a sprig of lily-of-the-valley and a frond of maidenhair fern in his buttonhole. Mr and Mrs Jenkins both loved children but could have none of their own so they took care of each other instead.
Every morning for fifty years Mr Jenkins got out of bed early and soft-boiled an egg, made buttered toast soldiers and a pot of tea. He put them on a tray with a silver strainer, a jug of milk and a matching china cup and saucer and took them back to Mrs Jenkins in the bedroom.
Then he put silver bicycle clips around his trousers and rode his bicycle to buy the Daily Beacon.
Mr Jenkins had many empty hours when Mrs Jenkins died. It was one morning when he was buying a bunch of white tulips for Mrs Jenkins’ grave that he saw a window of opportunity. It was written on a flyer pinned to the florist’s public noticeboard. A volunteer was needed to help keep the cemetery neat. That was ten years ago and Mr Jenkins was still keeping the cemetery neat. But now they had taken his mower away and he wasn’t thinking about windows of opportunity at all. So it was just as well Nell Silk paid him a visit.
She went on Wednesday after lunch, because she knew from experience that there are times in life when everyone needs help to keep an even keel. Especially when your childhood sweetheart is no longer with you to remind you there is a time f
or everything, including losing your old mower and finding something else to fill in your spare time.
After school on Wednesday afternoon, Miss Cherry read the poster in the Colour Patch Café. She was so excited by Mr Kadri’s invitation to catch a glimpse of Paradise that she wrote the details down on the back of her electricity bill so she wouldn’t forget. When she paid the bill at the post office, she had to explain to Mrs Rasmussen about the art show and ask if she could please have the written-on part of her bill back again. That evening after dinner, Miss Cherry took out the piece of electricity bill with the writing on the back.
In the caretaker’s cottage by the Cameron’s Creek District Cemetery, Mr Jenkins sat by his telephone and dialled Miss Cherry’s number.
It was almost midnight when Miss Cherry and her small and scruffy dog, Cinderella, went to bed. Miss Cherry looked at the badge and the poster she had made and then she switched off her lighthouse lamp and closed her eyes. She thought of Paradise; a beautiful place where only your imagination can take you. Miss Cherry believed music, dance and painting helped the imagination grow strong so it could keep your boat steady in the storms of life or fill your sails and take you to the shores of Paradise.
Just before she went to sleep, Miss Cherry remembered Perry Angel wouldn’t be at school in the morning. She and the Silks had decided that Annie would teach Perry at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She didn’t know about Perry’s visit to the Colour Patch Café and felt slightly disappointed he wouldn’t hear her announcement about Mr Kadri’s Window of Opportunity. But she smiled in the darkness when she thought about Friday when she would tell him her other exciting news.
All the Colours of Paradise Page 3