The Land of Decoration (30 page)

I swallowed and looked at my shoes. I said: “Then can I see him?”

“If you’re quick.”

I went to the door. I meant to go quickly, but my body was moving as if its battery had run down.

At the door, I put my hand on the handle. “God,” I said, “can I really save him?”

“Yes,” God said, “you can.”

I
CLOSED THE
bedroom door and went along the landing and none of it was real. I went down the stairs step by step, holding on to the banister, and they weren’t very real either. At the bottom, light was coming through the panels in the kitchen door. I went along the hall and turned the handle.

Father was sitting with his back to me at the table. He was the only thing that looked real. I closed the door.

I could see his shirt rise and fall. I could see the hairs on his head catch the light. I could smell him and hear him breathing. I stood there for ever so long, just looking and listening to him.

Suddenly he turned. He put his hand on his chest and said: “You frightened the life out of me.”

“Sorry.”

“I thought you were asleep.”

His voice wasn’t thick anymore and his eyes weren’t glassy, and his face was gray now instead of red. He said: “I came back up and put a blanket over you to keep you warm. I didn’t want to wake you.…” He looked very sad.

He stopped talking and I was glad, because I had a lot to say to him and not much time to say it in. I took a deep breath and said: “Father, I’m sorry I got you into trouble with the elders and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you about the miracles.”

He shook his head and passed his hand over it. “Oh, Judith, it’s not your fault. You really didn’t help things, but there would have been trouble anyway, what with the strike and everything.”

“No!” I said, and my heart beat hard. “It was me! If you knew half the things I’ve done!”

Father said: “All right; let’s not get into that now.”

I hung my head and said: “I did it all.”

Then Father said: “Judith!” so I was quiet.

He put his finger and thumb in the corners of his eyes as if they hurt him. When he took them away, his face looked grayer than before and his eyes were red and more tired than I had ever seen them. He said: “I’m sorry about your room.”

“It’s all right.”

He put his head in his hands. “It’s not all right, but it’s done now. I was drunk.” Then he took his head out of his hands and said: “You know I love you very much, don’t you?”

The words were so strange. They rolled into the middle of the room and rocked there between us, and we listened till they settled, and afterward there was such silence.

I was trying to think quickly, I was trying to think what to say, but there was a pain in my heart and breathing was difficult. Father turned back to the table. He said: “I love you more than you know.”

Then my heart hurt more than it had ever hurt before in my life, and I thought it might have broken, but I knew what to say. I said: “I do know.” And suddenly I did.

I remembered how he had looked after me all this time even though I had made Mother die, how he had taken me to the doctor when I was little and read the Bible to me to help me talk, how he had warned me about the miracles only to protect me, hadn’t told me about the strike so it wouldn’t worry me, had chased the boys away to protect me, taken my hand so I wouldn’t be afraid when we walked through the bikes, forgiven me for lying, built the fence to keep me safe, pretended the note through the door wasn’t about me, sat on my bed after the accident and told me everything was going to be all right, offered to take me to the meeting though he couldn’t come in, bought me fish and chips and walked hand in hand with me that day for eleven miles, and was going to take me on a hot-air balloon.

He was saying: “I haven’t been much of a father to you, but I tried. There are things I’ve never been able to say to you, things about the time after your mum died, how you were suddenly there, asking for attention, asking to be taken care of, asking so much, and I had nothing—heck, I could hardly take care of myself; sometimes I couldn’t even look at you because you reminded me so much of her.” He sighed. “This probably isn’t making much sense.…”

He was saying other things as well, but he was going too fast and I was still thinking of the first thing he had said, the thing about loving me. What he said after that didn’t matter much. He stopped talking in the end and didn’t look at me again, and I was glad because he didn’t like seeing people cry. He said: “Well. We have to look to the future now,” and I said: “Yes,” but I couldn’t think properly.

Then he said softly: “It’s almost tomorrow. You’d better go up.” And I remembered that it was late, later than he or anyone else realized, that I had only come to say goodbye, but I still couldn’t make myself go.

He said: “We can talk some more tomorrow.”

“OK.”

“Good night, Judith.”

“Good night.”

When I made no move, he turned back around, and I went to the door. “Father?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry about anything! Everything is going to be fine. It’s going to be better than you think.”

He laughed, a dry sound that broke off too soon, and nodded, but he didn’t turn round again.

He said: “Go to bed now, Judith.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say then so I looked at him for the first and last time, then I opened the door. I closed it behind me and wiped my face. Then I went upstairs step by step, holding on to the banister.

A
ND THIS IS
how I learned that everything is possible, at all times and all places and for all sorts of people. If you think it’s not, it’s because you can’t see how close you are, how you only need to do a small thing and everything will come to you. Faith is a leap; you’re here, the thing you want is there; there’s a space between you. You just have to jump. Walking on water and moving mountains and making the dead come to life aren’t difficult; you take the first step and the worst is over, you take another and you’re halfway there.

Miracles don’t have to be big things, and they can happen in the unlikeliest places. They can happen in the sky or on a battlefield or in a kitchen in the middle of the night. You don’t even have to believe miracles are possible for one to happen, but you will know when it does, because something very ordinary you never thought would amount to much has amounted in the end to quite a lot. That’s because miracles work best with ordinary things, the more ordinary the better; the greater the odds, the bigger the miracle.

M
Y ROOM WAS
in darkness. I said: “Are You there?” but no one answered. I went to the window and drew back the curtains and the moon came in. It was silvering the factory and the electricity and making the train tracks gleam like glue left by a snail.

I looked out at the town at the television aerials and chimneys and rooftops, the telegraph wires going up and down the valley, and above it all the dark mountain, darker still against the white of the moon, and it was funny, but for the first time it all looked quite beautiful, like Brother Michaels had said, and in a few minutes it would be gone.

I turned back to the room. I pushed aside masts and forks and garden fences, branches and thatches, strands of rainbow, wires that birds used to sit on, white horses from the top of waves, wisps of cloud. The magic had gone now; the sun looked just like a wire cage, the sea a mirror, the fields like pieces of fabric, the hills papier mâché and bark.

I wondered what Father would do with the Land of Decoration. He would probably put it out in black bags for the garbagemen. The egg-carton hills would be paper, the toffee-barrel house a new toffee barrel or a tin can or cup, the milk-carton houses more milk cartons and other things when they were empty, the feathers and straws might become real birds’ nests again, the wood and heather would become new trees and new heather, the stones would one day become mountains again, the shells become sand, the sand glass, and the glass perhaps a new mirror.

Nearly everything would be changed, but one or two things would remain what I had made them. Perhaps the barrel with the sail—perhaps it really would find its way to sea and the tiny fisherman see real birds overhead, taste real spray on his lips, and real breezes would make his cheeks pink. Perhaps some very small pieces of cloth, some of the glitter, or the smallest of beads, might stay right here in this room under the floorboards, in nooks and crannies with the spiders and mice.

Then I remembered that there wouldn’t be a room, and Father wouldn’t do anything with the Land of Decoration: and the Land of Decoration wouldn’t be anywhere—or, rather, it would be everywhere, because it would be real.

I fetched a chair and put it in the space I had cleared. I got onto the chair. “Thirty-one minutes,” said a voice.

“There You are,” I said. Then I stopped. “It is You, isn’t it?”

God said: “Who else would it be?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You sounded strange for a minute.”

“Strange how?”

“Different,” I said. “Well—sort of like
me
.”

“Don’t be silly,” God said. “You’re you and I’m Me.”

“Yes,” I said. “Sorry. A lot has happened tonight.”

I balanced on tiptoes and unscrewed the lightbulb.

“Twenty-nine and a half minutes,” said God. “And counting.”

I put the bulb on the chair and it rolled back and forth.

“Quietly!” said God. “We don’t want interruptions.”

I unscrewed the hot-air-balloon lamp shade and put it on the chair too, but it fell onto the floor.

“Great,” said God. “That’s just great.”

I tested the light cord. I got down and fetched my school tie. I got back up and tied one end of the tie to the cord above the light fitting and tugged it. I tied a loop in the other end of my tie and loosened it. I put my head through the loop. The material felt soft next to my skin. I expect it wondered where my collar was.

The room looked strange from the ceiling: like a box, smaller than it had ever seemed before. I wondered if I had already stepped off the chair, because my arms and legs felt like they were falling, but they weren’t, and I wasn’t, I said to myself; there was a rushing in my ears, as if the tie was tightening. But it isn’t, I said to myself. Not yet.

I looked at the Land of Decoration. “It was so good in the beginning,” I said. “Now I think it would have been better if I’d never made it at all.”

“We all make mistakes,” said God.

“What did You say?”

“I said: We all make mistakes,” God said.

“We?” I loosened the tie.

“You, Me—everyone.”

I was beginning to feel sick. “Are You sure about this?” I said.

“Oh yes,” said God. “One hundred percent. Twenty-three and a half minutes.”

There was a sound in the room like a creature panting. “What’s that noise?” I said.

“It’s you,” said God. “Can’t you breathe more quietly?”

“No,” I said.

My knees were behaving strangely now, as if they wanted to fall forward, though I was afraid of that more than anything, and my left leg wouldn’t stop tapping the chair.

I took one foot off the chair and held on to the tie. I closed my eyes and lifted the other foot off too. Darkness throbbed and jumped in front of me. Colored lights and whistling sounds filled my head. I put both feet back on the chair and hung on to the tie and my body was wet, as if I had been running, and my teeth were chattering.

“Nineteen minutes, nine seconds,” said God.

My foot slipped. Something hot dribbled down my legs. I swallowed and was trying hard not to cry.

“Nineteen minutes and two seconds,” said God.

Then I said: “You know what I wish?”

God laughed. “I’d think carefully before you make another wish. The last ones haven’t turned out very well.”

“I wish You would go away and never come back.”

“What?” said God.

I hung on to the tie. “I would like,” I said, “to never speak to You again.”

God said: “You don’t mean that.”

“Yes,” I said, “I do.”

“Be careful what you say,” said God.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You can’t do anything to me now.”

God said: “You’ll be sorry.”

“No,” I said, and took my hands away from the tie. “I already am.”

I
T GOT QUIET
in the room. I took a deep breath, but I couldn’t kick away the chair.

I tried to think what Father would do if he were me and I knew he would try to think of a good thought. So I tried. I thought how good it was now that God had gone away, like it was in the beginning. But it wasn’t like it was in the beginning, because now I knew nothing I had made was good after all.

I tried again. I thought how in a few minutes Armageddon really would be here and all the bad things would be washed away and the world would be how it was always intended to be. But then I remembered all the people God would destroy, and pretty soon I couldn’t think about that either.

Then I looked down and caught sight of one of the little people I had made to begin with. An arm had come away from the body, but the face was still the same. And that is when I had the best thought I have ever had in my life. I thought of Father going into the Land of Decoration and meeting my mother again.

Father would see Mother standing a little way from him. Something about her would make him go toward her. Then she would turn round and he would not be able to believe it. But he would have to believe it, because it would be true. They would go walking together, leaving a trail in the grass, sometimes my mother’s hand would be in Father’s and sometimes his arm would be around her shoulders. And all the streets and all the rivers and all the names and places of this world, all the people that were and are and will be, would be nothing to this moment.

I knew it was possible, I knew they really could be together if I could just step forward. But I still couldn’t do it. And then I realized it wasn’t that Father didn’t love me but that I didn’t love Father enough. And when I thought that, the world split apart.