The Land of Decoration (6 page)

Father’s face was flushed and his eyes were very black. He said: “Judith, you’re always imagining this or that. You live in a complete fantasy world.”

“Well, this is real,” I said.

Father looked at me for a moment. Then he said in a low voice: “I don’t want to hear any more about this, d’you understand?” and he went into the kitchen and the door shut behind him. I looked at the door for a long time. Then I went upstairs and sat on the floor in my room and I looked at the Land of Decoration.

And though I was sad to begin with because Father didn’t believe me, after a while I was glad I hadn’t said any more, because it would be best to wait until I had more proof and for that I would do a test, to find out whether the snow was a coincidence. “And then we shall see,” I said to no one in particular.

“We certainly shall,” no one said back.

P
EOPLE DON
’
T BELIEVE
in very much. They don’t believe politicians and they don’t believe ads and they don’t believe things written on packets of food in the grocery store. Lots of them don’t believe in God either. Father says it’s because science has explained so many things that people think they should be able to know how everything happens before they believe it, but I think there is another reason.

I think people don’t believe things because they are afraid. Believing something means you could be wrong, and if you’re wrong you can get hurt. For instance, I thought I could climb the whole way round my room without touching the floor, and it hurt when I fell down. All the important things, like whether someone loves you or something will turn out right, aren’t certain, so we try to believe them, whereas all the things you don’t have to wonder about, like gravity and magnetism and the fact that women are different from men, you can bet your life on but you don’t have to.

I used to worry when Father said we shouldn’t believe in God blindly because the type of evidence for God is either too much (the apostle Paul says it is “inexcusable”) or not enough (Richard Dawkins, a scientist the Brothers like to argue with, says it is “superstitious bosh”). I used to worry it meant that I was thinking for myself. But believing isn’t just about evidence, and here’s why.

People take the same bit of evidence and jump to different conclusions. Mr. Williams, the headmaster, said I was “extremely bright” for my age, which is why I am a year younger than everyone else in my class and Mr. Davies says I have the best grasp of language he has ever seen in a ten-year-old. But Neil Lewis says I am a “spastic.” Mr. Davies told us about fossils and he said: “This is how living things evolved,” but Father says: “Mutations never survive.” Mr. Davies thinks religion is a mirage. He and Father had a debate at the last parents’ evening. Mr. Davies said I should be taught the facts about how the world came to be, and Father said those were only the facts as Mr. Davies sees them.

There are mirages in space, crosses and arcs and circles that are the reflections of galaxies that existed billions of years ago and that show us what happened in the past, and Father says that scientists want to see things as much as religious people, he says they make leaps all the time. The fossil record for evolution isn’t that good, but the scientists had already decided creation wasn’t an option so they made fake fossils and covered them up. And you would think, being scientists, they wouldn’t. But scientists make leaps of faith all the time, because there’s a lot of guessing and waiting, and some of the best discoveries, like Albert Einstein’s, were made that way. Father says the only people who don’t leap at all are agnostics.

Scientists say miracles couldn’t happen because they are miraculous, but that doesn’t make sense, because they believe in plenty of “miraculous” things, like the universe coming from nothing, and the odds for that are mathematically impossible. Years ago people thought an eclipse of the sun meant God was angry with them, but it isn’t a miracle now because we understand it, and neither is radioactivity or an airplane or germs, though things like bees are, because we still don’t understand how they are able to fly. One day someone will explain it, and then bees won’t be a miracle either.

It makes you think lots of things are miraculous, like the chances of me hitting exactly the same bit in my mouth with the toothbrush that I did a few seconds before, or of my tomato squirting Father on the nose at dinner, or the chance of me being me instead of millions of other people. But they are very small chances, and a bee isn’t a miracle either, only a wonderful thing, because miracles are
made
to happen.

Evidence isn’t all there is to believing, and neither is being able to explain it. Even if people can’t explain something—like seeing a ghost or being healed—once they have experienced it, they believe it, though they might have spent their whole life saying it was nonsense. Which means that people who say something is impossible have probably just never experienced it.

Of course, they might still want to explain it away and look for a rational explanation. But they are doing what Father is doing and missing the point. Which is that miracles are what you see when you
stop
thinking, and they happen because someone made them and because someone, somewhere, had faith.

W
HEN
I
WOKE
on Tuesday, the sky was blue and empty and the sun was winking in the windows. Already the snow piles by the front doors and along the sides of the road were softening. I said: “Now for my test.”

I went to the trunk and I got out my materials. I rolled up the sky in the Land of Decoration and in its place I hung gauze. I unhooked the clouds and in their place put a blizzard funnel of wire mesh and tiny polystyrene balls. I removed the cotton fabric and laid cotton wool over houses and steeples, railway lines, mountains, and viaducts.

“Colder!” said a voice, and again I felt as if I had caught light.

I put the tiny people inside their houses. I bundled them in blankets and coats. I put hot cups of cocoa in their hands. I lit hurricane lamps. I sprayed frost on windows and made ice for the roads with sheets of Plexiglas.

“Colder!” said the voice.

I tore the paper lighthouse beam and on top of the waves laid shards of floating plastic ice. I glued icicles to the masts of the ships, turned on the fan, and flurries of paper hail stung sailors’ hands and faces. Snowmen sneezed. Polar bears shivered. Penguins danced to keep warm.

Then I said: “Snow,” just like before. And I saw the town and the steelworks and the mountain sewn up in it, heaps of snow, more than anyone had ever seen here or ever would again.

I said: “Now I must wait.”

I waited through breakfast. I waited through lunch. I waited as Father and I brought in the last of the wood to dry in the lean-to and we pondered Jesus dying to save the world. I waited as we sat by the fire that evening and Father listened to Nigel Ogden playing his organ. I waited all night, checking and looking out at the stars and the white waste of the moon. I ran to the window next morning, but the sun was shining so brightly it hurt my eyes and a steady dripping was coming from above my window.

I felt sick and sat on the bed. I said: “What did I do differently?” I said: “Perhaps I just have to be patient.”

*   *   *

T
HAT MORNING WE
went preaching. Father said it was the ideal time for it. What he meant was that people would be in. Getting people in is a problem for us, because though we are trying to save people, they will do almost anything to avoid it. They don’t answer the door, they tell lies (“My grandmother just died,” “I’ve got a war wound and can’t stand up for long,” “I’m on my way to church”), they get nasty (shouting, letting the dog out, threatening to call the police), they run away (this is a last resort, but it does happen; once someone took off running when he saw us at his door and dropped some of his shopping in the road). These are all what Father calls Tactics of Evasion. We have tactics of our own, which include asking thought-provoking questions, turning Conversation Stoppers into Conversation Starters, and knocking twice the same morning (though once someone threw a bucket of water over Father’s head when we did this, so perhaps that was not such an effective tactic after all).

We met the group at the corner of King Street. There were small hills of snow on either side of the road. Elsie and May were there, Alf and Josie. Stan, Margaret, and Gordon. Josie was wearing a fur hat and a cape and a knitted all-in-one suit that came down to her shins. She said: “I looked for you on Sunday. I brought you something.”

I went round to the other side of Father. “We must have missed each other,” I said.

“What do you think of this snow?” said Uncle Stan. “Beats everything, doesn’t it?”

“The Tribulation is on the way!” said Alf.

Elsie said: “My joints don’t like it.” She offered me a Ricola Locket.

“Nor my chilblains,” said May. She offered me a Werther’s Original.

“Well,” said Father, “we’ve got a good show of spirit in any case.”

Uncle Stan said the prayer and we started. Elsie worked with Margaret, Stan worked with Gordon, Josie worked with May, Alf worked alone, and I worked with Father. It was cold. Our steps rang on the pavement. Father said hello to passersby. Some of them nodded. Some said hello. Most ducked their heads and kept walking. Despite the ideal circumstances, not many answered. Sometimes a curtain moved. Sometimes a child came and said: “No one’s at home,” and when that happened there was laughter.

The sky was incredibly blue. The blueness bothered me. “It could still happen,” I said to myself. “It could still snow.” But two hours later, when we met on the corner, the sky was just as blue as before. “We don’t seem to be having much success,” said Uncle Stan. I couldn’t have agreed with him more.

Father and I said goodbye to the group and went on Return Visits. Return Visits are people we always call on; they don’t hide from us. Mrs. Browning sat up bright as a pin with rollers in her hair and invited us in for tea and butter puffs. There were dog hairs and grease on the plate, and the cups were brown inside. Usually I can’t drink the tea, which is made with condensed milk and only just warm, but today I swallowed it without thinking. Then Father asked me to read the scripture and Mrs. Browning said: “Such a bright girl! I bet you’re looking forward to going back to school.”

Father raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t bank on it.”

We left Mrs. Browning and went to see Joe and his dog, Watson. Joe leaned against the porch as he always did, there was a stain on the wall he had done it so long. Watson dragged his bottom across the step.

Father said: “Any day now, Joe.”

And Joe said: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Father said: “You have to believe it or you
won’t
see it.”

Joe laughed, and a chain rattled in his chest. We left some magazines with him, then Father said we’d have to get back or the fire would be out.

I could see my legs going in and out beneath me all the way up the street. There was a lollipop stick lying in the gutter. I usually made garden fences with them but this time I stepped over it. “I won’t make anything ever again,” I said to myself. “It would have been better for me never to have made the snow at all if it was just a coincidence.” Suddenly going back to how things were before was too terrible to think about.

We went up the mountain road in the tracks left by the cars, and the sun was coming through the fir trees in long molten strokes, stammering and jabbering through the branches. Father took long strides. His boots splattered slush sideways in little showers. I listened to the crunching of boots and the flapping of sheepskin and my Bible bag bumping about on my back and I wanted everything to stop. Father said: “Come on! What are you dawdling for?”

“I’m not dawdling,” I said. “I’m tired.”

“Well, the quicker you walk, the sooner we’ll be home.”

The mountain seemed higher than I remembered. We reached a curve in the road and it went up again. We reached another and it went up still further. The higher we climbed, the whiter it got. The whiteness got into my clothes. It pierced the stitching, the buttonholes, the wool of my tights. I shut my eyes, but it pricked through my eyelids and made patterns there.

We reached the top. Father kept going, but I stopped in the road. I listened to his footsteps as they went away, and for a minute I didn’t mind if they never came back. I put my hands over my eyes and stood very still and all I could hear was the emptiness around me and for the longest time I didn’t think anything at all. Then a cold gust buffeted me and I opened my eyes.

The sky wasn’t bright anymore. It was thick and it was whirling. Something was drifting in front of me. Something was lighting on my coat and my nose and my cheeks, touching me then disappearing over and over. I stood very still, and somewhere inside me a bolt slid home.

There were tears in my eyes but not from the cold. And then I was running down the steep mountain road, running and shouting: “Wait for me!”

I ran past him and swung right round, slipping and laughing and just staying up. “It’s snowing!” I shouted.

“I had noticed.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

“It’s a pain in the neck.”

I began running again, blinking, spreading my arms like a bird. Father said: “Watch you don’t fall!” And I ran even faster to show him I wouldn’t.

M
IRACLES DON
’
T HAVE
to be big, and they can happen in the unlikeliest places. Sometimes they are so small people don’t notice. Sometimes miracles are shy. They brush against your sleeve, they settle on your eyelashes. They wait for you to notice, then melt away. Lots of things start by being small. It’s a good way to begin, because no one takes any notice of you. You’re just a little thing beetling along, minding your own business. Then you grow.

High in the heavens snowflakes are born. When they fall to earth they are so light they fall sideways. But flakes find brothers and when they do they stick together. If enough of them stick they begin to roll. If they roll far enough they pick up fence posts, trees, a person, a house.