Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

“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.

MIRACLES 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.

A mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, but when it has grown, the birds of heaven lodge in its branches; a grain of sand becomes a pearl; and prayers that begin with very little or nothing at all are spoken, because if there is enough of something it begins to grow, and if there is more than enough a great thing will happen which was there from the start in the smallest of ways.

Which comes first, the prayer or the particles? How can the smallest of things become the biggest of all and the thing that could have been stopped unstoppable, and something you never thought would amount to much amount to it all? Perhaps it’s because miracles work best with ordinary things, the more ordinary the better. Perhaps it’s because they begin with odds and ends—the greater the odds, the bigger the miracle.

THAT AFTERNOON THE sky grew dark with the weight of the snow. It kept spiraling down, wondering which way to go. I sat and watched. I could have watched it forever. I didn’t eat dinner. My hands felt hot or other things felt cold and my skin was prickling all over. Father asked if I had a temperature; I told him I had never felt better.

The next morning it was still snowing. Drifts reached to the sills of windows, cars were small white hillocks, my breath formed clouds, and the floorboards creaked with the cold. Father was rubbing his hands by the Rayburn when I came down. He said he’d had to dig a tunnel to get out the back door.

I decided the time had come to tell him what was happening. I took a deep breath. “You know I was asking about miracles?”

He banged the fire door and said: “Not now, Judith. I’ve got to saw more wood and I have to see if Mrs. Pew is all right. In fact, you could do that for me.”

“But I have to talk to you!” I said. “It’s important.”

“Later,” Father said. He swigged the last of his tea.

I stared at him. “Do I really have to go round to Mrs. Pew?”

“Well, it would help me.”

“What if I don’t come back?”

“Don’t be silly, Judith. There’s nothing wrong with Mrs. Pew.”

“Her head wobbles.”

“So would yours if you had Parkinson’s.”

Snow came over the top of my wellingtons as I waded through the front gate. My legs were wet by the time I got next door to Mrs. Pew’s front door. The bell went on for a while. I shuffled from foot to foot. The little kids in the street say Mrs. Pew invites children into her house and they’re never heard of again; they say that’s what happened to Kenny Evans. Though some people said he went to live with his father. I looked up and down the street to see if there would be any witnesses if Mrs. Pew tried anything.

The door opened a crack and I smelled something strong and musty, heard the latch turn, old hats and gloves from secondhand shops. Then I saw a black dress, a high collar, and a white face with red lips, drawn-on eyebrows, and little black curls that shook and glinted greasily. Spider eyes peered at me. There were lines around her mouth, and the red of her lips ran into them. It looked as though she was bleeding. “Yes?” Mrs. Pew said in her cracked-china voice.

I swallowed and said: “Hello, Mrs. Pew. Father told me to come and see if you needed anything.”

She turned up her hearing aid and leaned closer, and I backed away and said: “Father said: Do you need anything?” I was about to say it a third time when she shook her head, tweaked my sleeve, and pulled me into the hallway. I turned round, as the door shut. My heart began to beat very fast indeed.

Through the doorway, a television was blaring. A woman was standing in front of a lorry on a motorway, saying: “ Yesterday a blast of Arctic weather brought snow and ice to much of the country for the second time this week. The first taste of winter came just two days ago, when a mild October was shattered by an eight-inch fall of snow. The weather is causing problems on the roads and at sea. Four sailors, including a fifteen-year-old boy, had to be rescued yesterday after their yacht capsized off Plymouth. Both falls of snow have confounded weather forecasters…”

Mrs. Pew turned the sound off, then came back and said: “Now, what is it? Speak up, child!”

“Father said: DO YOU NEED ANYTHING?”

“Oh!” she said. “There’s no need to shout! That’s kind of your father. But you can tell him I’m well provided for; I’ve enough tins in my pantry to feed the army.”

“Good,” I said, and turned to undo the door.

“Wait, young lady! Have you seen Oscar?”

“What?”

“Have you seen Oscar?”

“No.”

“He didn’t come in for his cat food last night,” she said. “It’s most unlike him. Usually he doesn’t set foot outside if it so much as spits with rain. He holes himself up somewhere. If you see him, let me know, won’t you?”

My legs were shaky as I went to the gate. I turned back to say goodbye, and then I stopped. Mrs. Pew was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, but her head was wobbling too much to do it properly. She said: “I can’t help thinking something terrible has happened to him.”

I looked down. I said: “I have to go now.”

Father was on top of the wall at the side of the lean-to, raking off snow. “Mrs. Pew has enough tins to feed the army,” I shouted, “but Oscar is missing. Can I talk to you now?”