The Land of Decoration (25 page)

His eyes were very bright and very dark. He pulled up a chair and sat down in front of me and put his hands on his knees. He said: “I can see you’re upset, and I’m sorry. I was chasing Neil Lewis and the other boys when Neil ran across a road. I didn’t do anything. The police know that. Neil is being taken care of. He’s going to be all right.”

When I still didn’t look at him, he breathed in and said: “I’m sorry, Judith. I really am. I shouldn’t have gone out. But it’s done now.” He raised his hands and let them drop on his knees. Then he stood up. “Well, I think it’s time for bed.”

He made a hot-water bottle like he used to when I was little and said: “Come on.” He went upstairs with me and put the bottle in my bed and I got in. Then he sat down on the side. I looked out the window and was glad it was dark so that Father couldn’t see my eyes.

Beyond the windowpane there were millions of stars, light spilling out of them as if they were holes cut in fabric and something marvelous beyond. I wanted to speak, but I had to wait because my throat was so tight. I kept waiting. I almost gave up, but in the end my throat let me and I said: “Are we going to be all right?”

“Yes,” Father said, and he, too, waited to speak. It occurred to me that he hadn’t said: “Of course we are,” or “That’s a silly question.”

Neither of us said any more for a minute, and my throat got tighter and my jaw began to ache. “Will you go to jail?” I said.

“No.”

I said: “I was so worried about you,” and my voice was not much more than a whisper.

Father looked down. He said: “I’m sorry, Judith. I shouldn’t have gone.”

I said: “What’s going to happen now?” and my voice was just air.

“Nothing. Nothing is going to happen; what happened was unfortunate, but it’s over now.”

He sat with me a little while longer, then he said: “I have to get up for work tomorrow. Are you going to be all right?”

I nodded because I couldn’t speak anymore.

I thought for a minute he was going to kiss me, but he just brought the blanket up to my chin and said good night.

T
HERE WAS ONE
day when I thought Father loved me. On that day Father and I walked hand in hand for eleven miles.

We had been preaching and it was summertime and the evening was coming. We were a ways from here in a place called the Silent Valley, where there are not many houses and lots of trees. We hardly ever go, because not many people live there, so all the houses can be covered in an afternoon once or twice a year. The Silent Valley is full of fields. They lead down to a river. We walked down there, and sand martins were going into holes in the bank. There was grass long enough to wade through and a few flowers and some trees. It was one of those days when everything shimmers.

My hand was inside Father’s and his hand was inside his trouser pocket. Father’s skin was surprising. I could feel the veins in his hand and the hairs on his knuckles. I felt his leg muscles move. I remember thinking I must remember this moment, the weight of the sun, the feel of his hand. There was a quietness inside my head and between us, and I thought of the scriptures where it says the Men of Old walked with God and thought it must have felt like this.

Cars went by every now and then on the road, and the sound they made in the air, and the way the land seemed to wash around us, the cool grassy smell and the sounds of the earth breathing and the trees and green things swaying, did something to my stomach.

I don’t know how we came to hold hands, but I know if I had spoken or if we had met someone or had to stop or cross over, or get something out of one of our shoes, we might have stopped.

Moths were in the air when we got home. We made tea and ate leftovers, sitting on the back steps and watching the stars appear one by one. There were more stars that night than I had ever seen before, and they were shooting through the sky in some sort of shower. The street was so quiet, I think everyone else must have been watching too, because there were no sounds of dustbins and dinners and people shouting and kids yelling.

Father told me that without stars we wouldn’t be here and that everything in the universe came from them. He told me each star was a fire, and the fire burned out sooner or later and the star died, but before it did it made new ones. He said they collapse to form black holes, where the gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light, so stars go from being the brightest things to the darkest of all. He said all these stars were ending and beginning all the time.

There was fire in me, and in Father, and heat all around us. We were traveling as fast as those stars, though we were sitting quite still. I was holding something enormous and my body was too small for it. I kept my eyes open so fiercely, they burned. I kept so still, my chest got too tight to breathe.

I sat still all the time those stars were flying, and we watched them cross the heavens and eventually they were gone, and after a while I could swallow again, and then I could blink, and then I could breathe.

Father and I sat on the steps a while longer and then we went inside. And that day was the best day of my life.

I
HAVE NEVER
liked the dark. I think if Mother were alive she would have sat with me or left a night-light on or something, but Father doesn’t believe in things like that; he believes in Common Sense and Saving Electricity.

People say they are scared of the dark, but they’re not actually scared of the dark itself; they’re scared of the things in the dark, like monsters and ghosts. But I am afraid of the darkness itself, because in the dark there is Nothing.

The night of Neil’s accident, after Father left, darkness pressed around me. It filled up my nose and my ears and my mouth. I struggled to breathe. I turned this way and that. I said to myself, I wouldn’t talk to God. I was afraid of what I would say. But the dark kept pressing, and in the end I sat up and threw back the covers and said: “I undid it!”

There was silence. I started to cry. Then God said: “You can’t undo things. I’ve told you before.”

“
Why
did You let it happen, God?” I said. I wiped my face. “I should tell Father it was my fault,” I said. “He should know.”

“Don’t,” God said. “He’ll hate you even more. Trust Me.”

I thought for a bit. “Don’t You ever get tired of it?” I said at last.

“What?”

“Being right.”

“One thing I never get tired of,” God said, “is being right.”

J
UST BEFORE DAWN
I dreamed I was in the Land of Decoration: It was dark and I was running for my life, and I could hear footsteps and every so often a shout: “Over here!”

I didn’t understand how people knew where I was, because I wasn’t leaving any footprints and I wasn’t making a noise. Then I saw there was a trail of bright dust shining in the dark, and it was coming from my pocket, the one I had put the stone in that the old man had given me, but when I put my hand in the pocket there was only a hole and, trickling from the hole, glittering dust.

I tore off my jacket and threw it away and ran faster, but still the trail continued. I stumbled and fell and got up again, and then I was running at different speeds, fast one minute—and the hills and fields around me jumping this way and that, the way they do when you are thrown around on the back of a horse or in a very old film of cowboys and Indians—and slow the next, as if everything was flowing like treacle or honey, and that was worse because I couldn’t make my legs go fast enough.

However I ran, the dust kept trickling, and I thought this stone must be enormous, bigger than the universe, and I hadn’t known it. I ran and ran, trying to remember where the land gave way to the floorboards, but where the sand dunes should have ended there were more dunes and where the hills should have stopped there were more hills. The Land of Decoration went on and on, as I used to imagine it did, only now I wanted it to end and just come to the door or the radiator or the edge of the ring.

I had to stop to get my breath back and as I bent down I saw that the reason the dust wasn’t stopping was that I was full of it, I was made of it, and there were holes in me everywhere. And as I began to run again, I knew that soon there would be nothing left of me except pipe cleaners, cotton, and a little bit of felt.

“N
EIL
L
EWIS HAS
had an accident and won’t be at school for a while.” Mrs. Pierce was standing in front of her desk.

“What happened, Miss? What happened?”

“He was involved in a car accident. Mr. Williams has told me they’re taking good care of him in the hospital.”

“When did it happen?” said Gemma.

“Last night,” said Mrs. Pierce.

“When will he be back?” said Luke.

“We’re not sure,” said Mrs. Pierce. “It’s just as well it’s nearly Christmas; it will give him a chance to get better before school starts again.”

For the rest of the day I tried to see if Mrs. Pierce was looking at me. I don’t think she was, but I couldn’t be sure.

There were Christmas lights on every one of the trees in the front-room windows as I turned in to our street that evening. The rooms looked warm. I was aching and pulled my scarf higher. I wasn’t sure if it was because I had cried so much last night or because I was coming down with something.

“How was school?” Father asked when he got home.

“Fine.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Mrs. Pierce said Neil had had a car accident. That he would be off till after Christmas.”

“Right,” he said.

“Was work all right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Absolutely” is a word Father never uses.

We were reading the Bible later when a dustbin rattled in the back lane. Father jumped. Then he went to the window, looking first to the right and then to the left. When he came back to the table, he smiled and said: “Cat.” He turned a page over, then turned back. “Where were we?”

I looked at him. “Here,” I said.

“Oh yes.”

He began to read. But before we had got ten verses further, he stopped mid-sentence, took off his glasses, and laid them on the table. He said: “I think we’ll leave it there for tonight.”

“We’re halfway through the chapter.”

“What better place to finish?” he said. “We can ponder what’s going to happen next,” and he got up from the table and didn’t come back.

*   *   *

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
I woke to voices. To begin with, I thought they were coming from the street, but then I realized they were coming from downstairs, and I crept onto the landing.

Halfway down the stairs I saw light coming from under the middle-room door. Inside the room I could hear Uncle Stan. He was saying: “Taking things into your own hands like this.”

“What would you have had me do?” Father said. “If I hadn’t heard that window smash, I don’t know what would have happened. There was petrol—did you know that? I didn’t know what to expect next.”

“I understand,” said Uncle Stan. “But—”

“No, you don’t understand,” Father said. “And you won’t until you’re in a similar situation. Yes, I know what it says here, but it’s different when it comes down to it, I don’t care what you quote me.”

“A little boy has been seriously injured because of your actions,” said Alf’s voice.

“I’ve explained all that,” said Father.

“Do you feel any remorse at all?” said Alf.

“That ‘little boy,’” Father said, “is a complete hooligan. He has made my life hell for the past couple of months and—”

“I asked if you felt any remorse,” said Alf.

There was silence for a minute, and I could hear the hall clock and the wind in the gutters and my heart. Then Father’s voice said: “You know, Alf, I don’t,” and my stomach went up and down and I shut my eyes.

There were no sounds then, except for a rustle of paper and the fire crackling, until Uncle Stan said: “I’m very sorry to hear that, John,” and he sounded sorry. “I just don’t think you realize how extreme your reactions have been; you don’t seem to be thinking clearly.”

Alf said: “I think you should be marked, John. I mean, what sort of example are you giving?”

“Why shouldn’t I protect my family?” Father said. “I’ve only done what was natural.”

“But if you had faith, you’d leave things in God’s hands,” said Stan. “Faith means not doubting, not questioning, not asking why.”

It was a minute before anyone spoke. Then Father said something in a low voice that was so quiet I couldn’t hear and Stan said: “Oh, John. Why d’you bring that up?” and he sounded as though Father had hurt him.

Father said: “Well, she did, didn’t she? She didn’t doubt, she didn’t grumble, she didn’t ask why!”

There was another pause, then Alf said: “Sarah had great faith, John. No one’s denying that.” And I shut my eyes and leaned my head against the banister, because “Sarah” was Mother’s name.

“Great
faith
—” Father’s voice rose, then stopped short.

There was silence. Then Uncle Stan said: “Can’t you see we’re trying to help you, John, that we want the best for you?”

Father said: “D’you know, right now, Stan, right now, I’m not sure.” A wave of hot and then cold washed over me. I needed the toilet.

There was another silence. Then Alf said: “We’re going to pray for you.”

Stan said: “You know the procedure. If we haven’t heard from you in twenty days…” and Father said quietly: “Yes, I know.”

The door opened suddenly and light fell across the hall, and I nearly fell over myself trying to get back up the stairs in time. I crouched on the landing and heard footsteps going to the front door. Father went out the door with them and I heard the bolts slide back on the gate, then Father locked it, came inside, locked the front door, and went into the kitchen.

I waited for him to come to bed for over an hour, but he didn’t, so I went halfway down the stairs again. The hall light wasn’t on anymore, but there was a light under the middle-room door. I went down the outside of the stairs where the steps made no sound, and when I got to the bottom I walked over the tiles until I could bend down and peep through the keyhole. Father was sitting in an armchair in front of the fire, holding the silver picture of Mother. He was looking at the fire, not making a noise, and tears were coming down his cheeks. He was letting them come and not wiping them away.