Grace McCleen: The Land of Decoration

Darkness was closing the valley up like a book between black covers. It was sifting down over the broken-backed streets, over roofs, and over aerials, back lanes, shops, dustbins and streetlights, the railway, and great chimneys of the factory. Soon the darkness would blot out the lights. For a while they would glow all the more brightly, but eventually they, too, would be eaten up. If you looked into the sky, you would see their glow for a little while. Then nothing. I wondered what it would be like to die. Was it like going to sleep or like waking up? Was there no more time? Or did time go on forever?

Perhaps everything I thought was real would turn out not to have been and everything that wasn’t real was. I don’t know why but I looked for the wood louse. It suddenly seemed very important to find it, but I couldn’t, even though only a few seconds ago it had been there, and there was not enough air in the room and it was like someone had struck a match and it was burning up all the oxygen.

I sat back against the wall and my heart began to beat hard. Something was coming toward me, unfurling like a cloud low down on the horizon. The cloud gathered. It filled my mouth and my eyes and there was roaring and things happening very quickly and all at the same time, and then I was sitting back against the wall and sweat was running down from underneath my hair and I felt stranger than I had ever felt in my life.

And if I had to say how I felt, I would say like a box that had been turned upside down. And the box was surprised by just how empty it was.

I DO NOT expect to live long in this world. This is not because I have an illness or someone is going to kill me (though Neil Lewis might). It is because very soon God will bring Armageddon.

At Armageddon there will be rock faces yawning and buildings buckling and roads splitting. The sea will rise and there will be thunder and lightning and earthquakes and balls of fire rolling down streets. The sun will be dark and the moon won’t give its light. Trees will be uprooted and mountains flattened and houses will crumble to the ground. The stars will be hurled down and the heavens broken and the planets toppled. The stars will be torn down and the sea will crack with a sound like a plate and the air will be full of what was, and in the end there will be nothing left but a heap of rubbish.

We know Armageddon is close because we live in a Den of Iniquity, and Father says there is nowhere for the Righteous Man to put his foot, quite literally sometimes. We also know we are near the end because there are wars and earthquakes and famines and people having “no natural affection,” so they strap explosives to themselves or stab someone because they like the watch they’re wearing or film one another cutting people’s heads off. There are Sheep (Brothers like us) and Goats (unbelievers) and Lost Sheep (Brothers who have been Removed from the congregation or have fallen away). There are Weeds in the Wheat (people who pretend to be Brothers but aren’t), False Prophets (leaders of other religions), the Wild Beast (all world religions), Locusts (us with our stinging message), a rise in Immoral Relations (sex), and signs in the sun, moon, and stars (no one knows what they mean yet).

But in the real Land of Decoration, there won’t be any unbelievers or any war or any famine or any suffering. There won’t be any pollution or any towns either. There will be fields, and those who have died will come back to life and those who are living will never die at all and there will be no more sickness, because God will wipe out every tear from our eyes. We know this because God has promised.

Father says it’s only a matter of time before someone blows the world up anyway or money becomes useless, or a virus wipes us out, or the hole the size of Greenland in the ozone layer becomes the size of Australia. So it’s a good thing Armageddon is coming and nothing of this old world will be left.

And I think it’s good, because polar bears are starving and trees are dying and if you put a plastic bag in the earth it will never go away and the earth has had enough of plastic bags. And because in the new world I will see my mother.

ON SATURDAY MORNING I woke from a dream in which I was swimming in a gigantic toilet bowl and Neil Lewis was reeling me in on a line. As I came through the water, I woke up. The bedside clock said 9:48. In forty-seven hours and twelve minutes I might be dead.

I practiced holding my breath that day and got to twenty-eight seconds. At bedtime I had a stomach pain and had to have Gaviscon and crackers. On Sunday I woke up as if I were coming through water again, and my clothes were sticking to me and the pain was worse. I looked at the clock. There were now twenty-six hours to go.

I couldn’t eat breakfast, but Father didn’t notice. He dropped an armful of wood beside the Rayburn stove and swigged his tea. “Ready?”

I was. I had on my best pinafore and the blouse with the roses on the collar and my black shiny shoes. My hair was in plaits. I’m not sure how even they were. Father grabbed his sheepskin coat and cap and I put on my coat.

Outside, it was very still and very cold. The air was misty and the sky was one block of cloud the color of feathers. No one was about, except the dog from number 29. We went over the roundabout and turned down the hill. I could see the town, the aerials and chimneys and rooftops, the river, and the electricity pylons striding like lonely giants down the valley. And at the bottom of the valley was the factory, a great black thing with funnels and towers and ladders and pipes and above it huge clouds of smoke.

At the foot of the hill we passed the multistory car park, the bingo hall, the Labour Club, the unemployment office, the betting shop, and the pub where bleach mixes with the beer smell. On weekends there are water balloons on the pavement and sometimes nappies stained red. Once I saw a needle and we had to cross over.

In our town nothing seems to be where it should. There are car engines in gardens and plastic bags in bushes and shopping trolleys in the river. There are bottles in the gutter and mice in the bottle bank, walls with words on and signs with words crossed out. There are streetlights with no lights and holes in the road and holes in the pavement and holes in exhaust pipes. There are houses with broken windows and men with broken teeth and swings with broken seats. There are dogs with no ears and cats with one eye and once I saw a bird with not many feathers.

We passed Woolworths, the pound shop, Kwik Save, and the Co-op grocery store. Then we went through the tunnel beneath the bridge where the walls are dark green and trickling, and when we came out we were on a piece of wasteland and there was the Meeting Hall. The Meeting Hall is a black metal shed and has three windows down each side. Inside there are a lot of red seats and on each windowsill bowls of yellow plastic roses with pretend droplets of water stuck onto the petals at regular intervals.

Father and Mother helped to build the Meeting Hall. It isn’t very big but it belongs to the Brothers. There weren’t many people in the congregation then, only four or five. Without Father and Mother, the congregation might have fizzled out, but they kept preaching, and eventually more people got baptized. It was wonderful when they finally had a meeting place of their own. It took three years to build and every penny was donated by the Brothers.

Inside the hall, it was cold because the radiators hadn’t warmed up yet. At the front of the hall, Elsie and May were talking to old Nel Brown in the wheelchair.

May said: “Well, if it isn’t my little treasure!”

Elsie said: “Well, if it isn’t my little love!”