I could feel Gemma looking at me. Neil too. But it was no use; I couldn’t explain. Mrs. Pierce turned back to the board.
“There’s a clue in the word. ‘Metaphor’ is made up of two Greek words:
And then I remembered something someone had said: that it wasn’t enough to imagine what the new world would be like, we had to be there. It was Brother Michaels. He said faith could do that for us. “Because we’re there,” I said suddenly, without putting my hand up. Everyone turned to look at me. I flushed. “I mean,
Mrs. Pierce’s eyes were so sharp they should have hurt, but they didn’t. They were like a current of electricity passing from her to me, and the current flared and warmed me.
“Yes,” she said at last. “The words aren’t talking
LATER THAT MORNING, while Mrs. Pierce was organizing the stationery cupboard, a ball of paper landed beside Gemma’s elbow. I didn’t know how the paper had got there, but I saw Gemma’s hand close over it. She kept the paper underneath her hand for a minute, then unrolled it. She giggled and drew something, rolled it up again, and flicked it to Neil Lewis. Neil opened it and grinned. He passed the paper to Lee, and Lee’s shoulders shook. Lee passed it to Gareth.
Mrs. Pierce looked up. She said: “Is something funny? If there is, I am sure the whole class would like to hear it.”
Everything was quiet for a minute or two, then the paper shot back to our table. This time Gemma squeaked she was trying so hard not to laugh. She wrote something, rolled it up, and flicked it back to Neil. Neil then wrote something and flicked it back. Gemma slapped her hand down on the paper too loudly and Mrs. Pierce put her hands on her hips. She said: “Whatever is going on over there had better stop!”
Nothing happened for four whole minutes. Then Neil flicked the paper to Gemma. The paper shot wide and landed by my feet.
Mrs. Pierce put down the tubes of paint she was holding. She said: “Pick up that piece of paper. Yes, you, Judith! Read it out please.”
I picked up the paper and unrolled it. What I saw didn’t make sense. At the top was the word “METAPHOR.” Beneath it was a picture of a girl kneeling in front of a man. Something was coming out of the man’s trousers. It looked like a snake. A wave of heat passed over me and after the wave sickness. At the bottom of the picture there were four words. One of them was my name.
“Go on,” Mrs. Pierce said. “Read it out.”
I looked at her.
“Read it, Judith!” she said. “I won’t have any secrets in my class!”
A breath rippled through the class.
Mrs. Pierce looked like someone had slapped her. She walked up to me and took the paper. “Sit down, Judith,” she said quietly. Then she went to her desk.
“All right,” she said brightly. “Let’s get these fractions marked. Who can start us off with the answer to number one?”
Strike
“HOW WAS SCHOOL?” Father said when he got in.
“We’ve got a new teacher,” I said. “She read us poetry.”
“Good,” Father said. He filled the kettle.
“She read out a poem about winter.”
“Did she now?” He put the lid on the kettle and switched it on.
“And we talked about metaphor.”
“Good.”
“Then we all wrote poems and Mrs. Pierce liked mine.”
“Good,” said Father. “That’s good.” He placed both hands flat on the worktop and looked at them. Then he said: “Judith, I’ll be coming home later next week. A bus is bringing me and it might take a bit longer.”
“A bus?”
“Yes.” Father took his hands off the worktop. “They’re striking.”
“But you’re still going to go to work?”
“Of course.” He got potatoes from the box under the sink.
“Caesar’s things to Caesar, God’s things to God.”
“But why do you have to be brought home in a bus?”
“All the people who aren’t striking are going to go to work in a bus,” Father said. He ran the tap.
“Why?”
Father turned the tap off the wrong way, and the water came out in a spurt. He began to wash the potatoes. “Well, some people think we shouldn’t be working,” he said. “And they want to stop us.”
“Stop you?”
“Yes, Judith! Look, I’m just telling you so you don’t wonder why I may be a bit late.”
I knew he wanted me to stop asking questions but I also knew there was something he was hiding. I said: “What do you mean ‘stop us’?”
Father said: “I just mean—Look, it’s no big deal, OK? It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“OK.” I looked at Father. “Aren’t you afraid?”
Father put down the potato peeler and looked at the taps. He said: “No, Judith. There’s nothing to be afraid of; the strike will be over in a week or two and everything will be back to normal.”
“Is Doug striking?”
Father said quietly: “You’ve got a memory like an elephant,” then more loudly: “Yes, Doug is striking.”
I looked at Father and knew I couldn’t ask any more. I wandered to the windowsill. “Nothing is happening to these mustard seeds,” I said. “Do you think it’s because I don’t believe they will grow?”
“No, Judith,” Father said. “It’s probably because you don’t know how to grow mustard seeds.”
THAT NIGHT, THE Bible reading was about the Harlot sitting on the waters. Father said the waters prefigured rulers and nations and the Harlot was causing civil unrest. “Like the strike?” I said.
“Well,” Father said, “it’s all part of the sign of the end.”
And then the door crashed. Three short bangs like before. Father went out and I heard a shout in the street. He didn’t come back for twenty minutes.
When he did, he was panting and his face was shining as if he’d been laughing. He said it was the same boys as the other night. He had chased them down the hill. He caught the blond boy at the top of the multistory car park. Father said: “He was saying: ‘Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, mister!’ As if I would hurt him! I frightened him though. He lost one of his shoes.”
“What did you do to him?”
“I just told him to clear off,” he said. Father shook his head and laughed. “I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble.”
