A Song for Issy Bradley (40 page)

He wanted to tell Dad a story in the car but he wasn’t brave enough. The story is true, at least that’s what Sister Anderson said. It’s about one of the apostles who kept rabbits when he was a little boy. One day, when the apostle was seven, his favorite rabbit escaped. He looked for the rabbit but he couldn’t find it. Then he said a prayer and immediately a picture came into his mind and he went to the exact spot he had imagined and found the rabbit. This showed the apostle that Heavenly Father responds to the small, simple prayers of
everyone
.

Jacob thinks about the rabbit story and what Dad said about answers to prayers in the car. There should be stories where the answer is no. There should be stories where children pray for lost rabbits that never turn up and then people might get used to it and know what to do next; he doesn’t know. He has prayed and blessed and waited, he’s done everything you have to do to get a miracle. If
he can’t bring Issy back, the only way to see her again is to be good for his whole, entire life, which means he’s got to fix his lie.

I
T
’
S BUSY IN
the classroom. People are putting their lunch boxes on the cart and chatting as they open their bags to retrieve reading books and spelling lists.

Mrs. Slade hangs her coat and scarf over her chair.

“What a chilly morning! Who can smell winter coming? Let’s get ready. Hurry up, everyone.”

Jacob opens his desk. The Box of the Dead is just Issy’s glasses case now. There’s nothing special or magical about it. He picks it up and peeps inside. The dead things are getting smaller. Their legs are folded tighter. Perhaps they would disappear altogether if he just left them there. But he can’t. He told a lie and he has to repent. He carries the case over to his table and sits down. He feels a bit sick. He knows Mrs. Slade likes him, he can tell by the way she says his name; it sounds like “Jay-cub,” and her voice goes up and down just like it does when she says the word “lovely.” But she won’t like him once she finds out he’s a liar.

“Why’ve you got that out?”

Jacob ignores George. In just a moment Mrs. Slade will write three sums on the board and there’ll be five minutes to answer them before the bell rings for assembly. As soon as everyone is working on their sums he will go over to her desk and explain.

George pokes him in the leg. “What’re you doing?”

“Get off.”

“Give us a look in there.”

“No.”

“Go on.” George slides his hand across the table, wraps it around one end of the glasses case, and yanks.

“Get. Off.”

“Make me.”

Jacob stands, George follows, and they’re suddenly doing a
tug-of-war in front of everyone while Mrs. Slade writes sums on the board. A few people start giggling and Mrs. Slade turns round.

“Sit down please, boys.”

Jacob slides a nail into the lip of the glasses case to get a stronger grip. George pulls harder, and then the case flicks open and a litter of insect skeletons flies to its final resting place beside Jessie Sinkinson.

Mrs. Slade runs. She glances at the insects on the table and bends down to lift the big, umbrella-shaped spider off Jessie’s lap. She puts it with the other dead creatures and that’s when Jessie starts to scream, her mouth so wide that Jacob can see the dangly bit at the back of her throat.

The screams jab fright into his tummy, they remind him of Mum howling at Issy’s funeral, of the coffin sliding into the earth and mud splatting onto its white lid, and of every other sad and disappointing thing that has happened since. He sits down, clutching the open case. Another teacher rushes into the room and tells everyone to stop staring and line up for assembly while Mrs. Slade kneels on the floor next to Jessie and says, “Shush, shush.” Every time Jessie pauses to take a breath, George hisses, “I
knew
Jacob Bradley kept dead things in his desk. I told the
truth
.”

“Go to assembly with the others, George. And, Jacob, please don’t cry. It was just an accident.”

There are splashes on the table. Jacob rubs them with his finger. Jessie’s voice is loud and strong like a burglar alarm and it seems even louder as the classroom empties and there’s more air to fill.

“Shush, shush.” Mrs. Slade slides her hand across the table and brushes the insects away from Jessie and onto the floor. “Jacob, there’s no need for you to cry,” she says.

He can’t stop the tears, it’s like someone’s switched a tap on in his eyes. “Issy’s
never
coming back, my mum won’t get up, and there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”

George pokes him in the shoulder. “You’re a liar, Jacob Bradley, a big, fat liar.”

“George, go to assembly. Now.”

“Pants. On. Fire.”

“Now.”

George hurries away. He’ll be in trouble later and that should make Jacob feel better but he just feels tired and old, as if he has been awake for his whole life.

“Why don’t you go and wait in the corridor, until Jessie calms down?” Mrs. Slade says.

He does as he’s told and waits by the door to the classroom, beside the display of Egyptian pictures and drawings. He realizes that all the tears he could have cried but didn’t because he was busy bringing Issy back to life haven’t gone anywhere, they’re still inside him. He tries to swallow them but it’s hard and in the end he thinks “better out than in,” which is what Mum used to say when someone did a burp. Thinking of her makes more tears come and he watches them splash on the corridor floor.

Once Jessie’s screams have settled into an unhappy sort of hum, Mrs. Slade comes out and puts her arm around his shoulder.

“What are we going to do with you, Jacob Bradley?”

She makes him sit on a chair in the corridor, outside the bathroom, right where you have to wait to be picked up if you’ve been sick. Then she goes to the office to telephone Dad’s school. It smells of wee and disinfectant by the bathroom, and when people walk past on their way back from assembly, they leave lots of space because they don’t want to catch sick germs. But he hasn’t been sick; he’s been sad, which is actually much worse.

His eyes are sore and he feels all crackly and dry inside, like a bag of potato chips. He wonders when he will be allowed to come back to school—you have to wait twenty-four hours if you’ve been sick. If he has to wait until he is completely happy again, he might be off for quite a while. He clasps Issy’s glasses case in both hands and rests his head against the corridor wall. As he closes his eyes, it occurs to him that all
this
—the Box of the Dead and George and Jessie and the insects—is an answer to prayer.

Ian is doing percentages with Year Eight when Dave Weir knocks on the door.

“Can I have a word, Mr. Bradley?”

Ian hurries down the aisle between desks and steps out into the corridor.

“Firstly, everything’s OK, mate. Everything’s OK.”

The terror is instantaneous. “What is it?”

“There’s been a call from your son’s school. He’s fine, but they want you to go and pick him up. I’m covering—what’re you doing?”

“Which son? Why do I need to pick him up if everything’s OK? Has he had an accident on his bike?”

“I don’t know, sorry. Swing by the office on your way out, they’ll fill you—”

“Percentages.” Ian feels for his car keys and realizes his things are still on the floor next to the desk.

“Percentages?”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“Oh God.”

“Top number divided by bottom number, times one hundred. It’s all up on the SMART Board—click on MyMaths—I’m sure it’ll all come back to you.” He dashes into the classroom. “I’m needed elsewhere and Mr. Weir’s going to supervise the rest of this lesson.” He grabs his bag and coat. “Thank you, Mr. Weir.”

They tell him it’s Jacob in the office, they say he’s fine but Ian
can’t believe them. He breaks the speed limit and runs two red lights. He’ll repent later.

M
RS
. S
LADE IS
waiting in the foyer. She says perhaps Jacob came back too soon. She suggests a few days off, maybe a week, to give him a chance to
come to terms with things
.

“Mr. Bradley, you should know he thought his sister … he didn’t realize … he thought she was coming back,” she says, and Ian feels horribly ashamed of Jacob, and himself, and the whole family for failing to set a good example. He thinks back to the Family Home Evening he gave after Issy died; he thought he’d covered everything but perhaps he didn’t.

Jacob is sitting on a small plastic chair in the corridor, leaning into the wall, eyes closed, Issy’s glasses case in his lap. Ian resists the urge to pick him up and carry him to the car. Instead, he is jolly.

“Oh dear, never mind, you big silly billy. Come on, let’s go.”

He heads for the cemetery. Jacob doesn’t say anything when he realizes they aren’t going straight home. He just sits quietly, clutching the glasses case.

I
AN PULLS UP
near Issy’s grave. The sun is higher now and it’s not as cold as it was first thing. They cross the grass and stand side by side looking at the ground.

“We’ll have to choose a headstone before too long,” he says. “What do you think Issy would like?”

“Something with animals on it. And birds. And purple writing.”

“It would be good if we put something on it to let people know about the Church. Something about how families can be together forever. Lots of sad people come here; they could do with hearing about the Church.”

Jacob taps him on the arm.

“Yes?”

“We’re sad, Dad.”

“We are. But not as sad as nonmembers would be.”

The ground seems flatter, as if it’s beginning to settle around Issy’s body. He watches Jacob test the mound with the tip of his shoe and disturb a few clods of soil. “When we die, our spirit leaves our body,” he begins.

“Do you think Issy is a skeleton yet?”

He remembers what Jacob’s teacher said and resists the temptation to say Issy isn’t actually there anymore—one step at a time. “I don’t know.”

Jacob holds his hands up and inspects them. “How does all your skin come off when you die?”

“I don’t know that either.”

He watches as Jacob drops his hands into his pockets and begins to nudge the ground again.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Issy’s going to be dead for my whole, entire life, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sad, isn’t it?”

Ian can’t trust his voice. He nods.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I know I’ll see her again and everything, but I’ll be grown up by then, so it’s not that good, is it? We were going to get grown up together, and now I’ll be getting grown up by myself.”

Perhaps if he was a better Bishop, a better father, he would know what to say.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“What about the presents?”

“Sorry?”

“At Christmas. Do you hide the presents?”

He thinks for a moment. “I’m afraid that’s classified information. If I told you I’d have to …” He realizes too late that the joke is in bad taste.

“You’d have to what?”

“Hug you.”

“Is there anything else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Any more secret stuff? You might as well tell me.”

“Well, don’t tell your mum—I’ll be in enough trouble as it is when she’s all better and she finds out—but the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny …”

“I thought so. But everything else is true?”

“Everything except Santa Claus in the Old Testament. I’ll be having a word with Sister Anderson about that.”

“Are you going to tell her off?”

“No, I—the Bishop shouldn’t … Do you know what? I think I might.”

“But not too much. She got me an ace birthday card. It played a tune and everything.”

“OK, not too much.” He takes Jacob’s hand. “Let’s go home.”

Zippy sits on the floor outside Issy’s room. Once she’s had a chance to organize her thoughts, she’ll go in and talk to Mum and Mum will listen properly and remember she still has a daughter.

When the key turns in the downstairs lock, she jumps and scrambles to her feet. But it’s only Alma. “What are you doing?” she calls as he steps into the hall, and then it’s his turn to jump.

“What are
you
doing?”

He looks up and she notices his mouth. “Are you OK? Who did that to you?”

“I’m spectacularly OK.” He races up the stairs. “This is a game-changer! The tide has turned.” He pushes past her and dives into his room.

“Whoop-de-do,” she mutters. He’s such an idiot but he’s hurt and she’s supposed to be being kind. To everyone. “So what happened?”

“Hang on.”

She can hear him rummaging. It sounds like he’s chucking stuff about, making a mess. He comes out onto the landing holding something.

“It was just these lads, at the field. They gave me a bit of a battering. Back soon,” he says.

“What’re you up to?”

“It’s a secret.”

“First Jacob, now you. Have you been secretly resurrecting stuff too?”

“Something happened this morning—you could say it was a bit of a miracle …”

She rolls her eyes.

“OK, so it probably wasn’t, but have you ever wondered why miracles happen only to weird people or people we don’t know, like the prophet? Why they don’t happen to normal people? You believe in miracles, but you don’t expect them, do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why are you home, anyway?”

“I need to talk to Mum.”

“Good luck with that.”

“I’m not going anywhere until she talks to me.”

“You can’t
make
her.”

“I’ve got all day.”

“Better get started, then.” He reaches for the door.

“Stop.” She puts her arm out in front of him, like a parking barrier. “Just hang on.” She waits, her throat full. “OK.” She gives the door a gentle push and it rolls open.

The bed is empty. Mum is gone.

T
HE FRONT DOOR
is unlocked. Ian hesitates. His guts are watery—he doesn’t think he can stomach any more surprises, but Jacob wriggles past and opens the door to reveal Zipporah and Alma, arguing in the hall.