Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

Sometimes I see them, her sitting opposite him in the evening in the armchair, her long hair on her shoulder, embroidering lupines and hollyhocks, wrapping silk around the needle and drawing it clean through the middle. Then I think they would be side by side and she would be mending something. Then I think, no, she would be at his feet while he read the Bible aloud. The woman is pregnant. The man is young. Every so often they smile at each other.

Then I stop imagining, because I don’t want to see what comes next. But often, because I don’t want to, I see precisely that.

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, Mrs. Pierce was reading Charlotte’s Web to us when the classroom door burst open and Doug Lewis appeared. A smell came into the room with him like rotten fruit, like the smell of Father’s old wine bottles he keeps, for the bottle-recycling bank. Mrs. Pierce lowered her glasses. She said: “Can I help you?”

Doug said: “You can do more than that. I want my son! You kept him here every afternoon last fucking week!”

Everyone sat back as if they had been doused in cold water.

Mrs. Pierce said: “Would you like to come outside?”

Doug said: “No, I would not!” His voice was loud, and it was blurred as if his tongue or his lips weren’t working properly.

Mrs. Pierce said: “I don’t know how you got into the school in this state, Mr. Lewis, but no doubt someone is on their way to escort you out again.” She went to the door and tried to take his elbow, but he shrugged her off.

I looked at Neil. Something strange seemed to have happened to him. The Neil I knew had vanished and in his place was a boy who seemed to be smaller, his face white and shut up, as if it had been wiped out. It was like one of those octopuses that change color even as you watch them so you can never be sure where they are.

“You’re persecuting my son!” Doug shouted.

Mrs. Pierce said: “Two things, Mr. Lewis: Firstly, it is your son who has been persecuting other children in this school for God knows how long. Secondly, I don’t like being threatened. I never have and I don’t intend to get used to it now. Now, if you don’t mind, you’re disturbing my class, of which there’s still another fifteen minutes; if you want your son, feel free to take him. I’d be only too happy for you to. He’s nothing but a nuisance.”

Doug Lewis came close to Mrs. Pierce. He said: “You stuck-up little bitch. I’ll have you up before the authorities. You won’t get a job anywhere!” Mrs. Pierce turned her face away. Doug seemed to consider something—we could hear him panting—then he decided whatever it was wasn’t worth it and lunged at Neil. The chair fell over. Doug pushed him toward the door and Neil stumbled forward, pulling his sweater straight. His face was still very white.

Doug Lewis glared around as if he was looking for someone, then turned back to Mrs. Pierce, but she wouldn’t look at him. Doug pushed Neil into the corridor, then followed, slamming the door so hard that the windows rattled.

Mrs. Pierce’s shoulders drooped a little. After a moment she said: “Get on with your work quietly, class eight. I’ll be right back.” Then she went out too, and we were left in silence.

I THOUGHT ABOUT Doug Lewis the rest of the day and how Neil had changed before my eyes. I thought how strange the classroom felt after they had gone, as if some shameful thing had happened to all of us, as if we had seen ourselves with no clothes on and couldn’t look at one another. The strangest thing of all was that I had wanted this to happen but now that it had I didn’t feel how I expected to. In fact, I felt quite the opposite.

THAT EVENING AFTER we had finished dinner, Father said: “I want to have a talk with you, Judith.”

“Oh,” I said. Suddenly I needed to go to the toilet.

Father folded his hands on the table and looked at me sternly. “I expect you’re worried about what’s been happening at the house. Well, don’t be. Sometimes God’s servants become subjects of attack through no fault of our own. We shouldn’t think that God has stopped helping us. It’s a test of our faith, d’you see?” I nodded.

“It’s never very pleasant being tested, but it’s part of being a Christian. The harder the test, the more worthwhile it is.” He frowned. “The point is, faith helps us to rise above these things. They don’t seem so big anymore; we see them for what they really are. Only then can we see them as they really are: stepping-stones bringing us closer to God. Of course, it also helps to know the real reason behind the recent events.”

My stomach felt as if I had gone over a humpbacked bridge. I said: “The real reason…”

Father said: “The real reason for things isn’t always obvious; those boys aren’t acting independently, although they think that they are; the unrest in the town isn’t really caused by the factory; they are all pawns of larger forces. Someone is behind all of this.”

“Oh,” I said. The room had become terribly still.

“These things are signs of the end,” Father said. “And we know who is roving about, like a lion seeking to devour someone.”

“Oh,” I said, and the room came back to life again. “You mean the Devil.”

“He’s our real enemy,” Father said. “He’s every Christian’s real enemy.”

“But don’t you think those boys are bad, then?”

“Do bad people exist, or are there just bad actions?”

I thought. “Bad people,” I said.

“That’s not what Jesus said,” said Father, and I could see he was pleased to correct me. “Jesus said it was the evil that proceeded out of a person that condemned them.”

And then I saw what Father meant, because I couldn’t have imagined feeling sorry for Neil before, but since I’d found out what Doug was like I wasn’t sure what I felt about Neil; now I felt angry with Doug . But what if Doug had a bad father? Would I feel sorry for him too? And what about Doug’s father—what about his mother ? A long line of figures suddenly appeared, like paper cutouts. I said: “Then who’s to blame?”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

“The Devil.”

“What if he was a cutout too?” I said quickly: “I mean—what if something made him that way too?”

“No,” Father said. “The Devil had the same chance to be good as all the other angels.”

“So we are supposed to feel angry with the Devil?”

Father said: “There’s no need to feel angry with anyone. Jesus didn’t feel angry. He said: ‘Forgive them; they know not what they do.’”

“But God said: ‘An eye for an eye,’” I said. “‘A life for a life.’” I sat up straighter. “It’s the Fundamental Law.”

Father said: “Which would you prefer was applied to you?”

I didn’t say anything.

LATER THAT NIGHT, after Father had gone to bed, I woke and heard voices below my window. Neil Lewis and Gareth and Lee and the other boys were underneath the streetlight on bikes and leaning up against the railings. Neil was riding on another boy’s back. They were drinking from cans and crushing them and sticking them on the branches of Mother’s cherry tree. The sound of their laughing was like donkeys braying and pigs snorting. Two of the boys came against our garden fence and undid their trousers. I saw two bright arcs of water catch the light, and a cold wave passed through my body. I sat down on the bed. I said: “We must rise above.”

I said: “They know not what they do.”

I said: “I forgive you.”

It wasn’t working.