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!”
“Ah, she’s a lovely girl!” said May, hugging me.
“She’s a blessing, that’s what she is!” said Elsie, kissing my cheek.
May said: “Auntie Nel was just telling us about the time she and the priest had a dustup.”
“Grape?” Nel said. Her chin wobbled as she chewed, because she doesn’t have teeth. Her top lip was whiskery. Her bottom lip was spitty.
“No thanks, Auntie Nel,” I said. I was too worried to eat, and even if I hadn’t been I wouldn’t have fancied one, because Auntie Nel smells of wee.
Uncle Stan came up. Uncle Stan is the Presiding Overseer. He drinks milk because of his ulcer and he’s from “Beemeengoomb.” Apparently Beemeengoomb is an even bigger Den of Iniquity than our town. It’s where he got his stomach ulcer, though some people say he got it because of Auntie Margaret. Stan put his arm round Auntie Nel and said: “How’s my favorite Sister?”
Nel said: “That carpet looks like it could do with Hoovering.”
Uncle Stan stopped smiling. He looked at the carpet. He said: “Right.”
Stan went to find the Hoover and I went to find Father. He was in the book room, sorting out last month’s surplus magazines with Brian. There are small white flakes on the shoulders of Brian’s jacket and in his hair. “H-h- h-how are y-y-y-you, J-J-Judith?” Brian said.
“Fine thanks,” I said. But I wasn’t. The pain in my stomach was coming back. I’d stopped thinking about Neil for a minute, only to remember again.
Alf came up. His tongue was flicking in and out at the corners of his mouth like a lizard. He said to Father: “Report cards in?” Father nodded. Alf is what Father calls “Second in Command.” He’s not much taller than me but wears little boots with heels. He is almost bald, but his hair is combed over and sprayed in a lid. I saw it lift once in the wind when we were preaching, and he jumped into the car and said: “Run and buy me some hairspray, kid!” and wouldn’t get out until I had.
Uncle Stan appeared, lugging the Hoover. He looked gray. “The speaker’s not here,” he said. “I don’t feel like giving the talk if he doesn’t turn up.”
“He will,” said Father.
“I don’t know,” said Alf. He hoisted his trousers. “The last speaker we were supposed to have got lost.” Suddenly he saw me and stopped frowning. “Josie’s got something for you.”
I didn’t like the way he was grinning. “What is it?” I said.
Father said: “It’s polite to say, ‘Thank you,’ Judith.” He frowned at me as if he was disappointed, and I flushed and looked down.
But Alf said: “I couldn’t tell you what it is, could I? That would spoil the surprise.”
Josie is Alf’s wife. She is very short and very wide, has a long white ponytail and a mouth like a slit, where creamy saliva collects in the corners and stretches like a concertina when she talks. She wears funny clothes and likes to make them for other people. So far she has made me: a crocheted dress with blue and peach roses, which she asked about until it shrank in the wash, a turquoise skirt with ribbon around the edge, which reached to the ground, a crocheted Cinderella-doll toilet-roll holder, which Father refused to have in the bathroom so I made it into a hill for the Land of Decoration, a toilet-seat cover, which now keeps drafts out at the foot of the back door, bright blue leg warmers, an orange bodysuit, two cardigans, and a balaclava. Josie must think either that we are very poor, that I am much bigger than I am, or that I am very cold. One day I will tell her that she is wrong: that we aren’t rich but we have enough money to buy clothes, that though I may appear to be older because I read the Bible well and talk to the grown-ups I am ten, and four foot four, and that most of the time I am just the right temperature.
I scanned the crowd but couldn’t see any sign of her. To be on the safe side, I went to stand behind the sound equipment with Gordon. There isn’t anyone my age in our congregation, so although Gordon is a lot older than me, I chat to him. Gordon was testing the microphones, making a
I looked at the clock. There were now exactly twenty-three hours until Neil Lewis put my head down the toilet. There was nothing for it. Gordon was setting up the microphones. I said to him: “Have you got a mint?” Gordon rummaged in his pocket. He unrolled the top of a packet and dropped a dusty white tablet into my hand. “Thanks,” I said. I only ask for Gordon’s mints in emergencies. Gordon took two and went back to untangling cables.
Gordon has not long come off heroin; he got hooked on heroin because he Got In with the Wrong Crowd. He Battles Depression, so he does very well coming to meetings. It was really serious for a While. It looked like Gordon might have to be Removed. He was marked as a bad influence. They say that God shone His light into Gordon’s heart, but I think his recovery is to do with the extra-strong mints. Father said heroin makes people happy because it takes away pain; the mints make you happy because when you have finished eating one you realize you’re not in pain anymore. It comes down to the same thing. The trouble is, Gordon is getting used to them. He can already knock back four in a row. I don’t know what he will do when he manages to get through a whole packet, because they don’t make them any stronger.
There were a lot of people in the hall now, or a lot for our congregation anyway—nearly thirty, I would say. There were even some faces we don’t usually see. Pauline, the woman who had the poltergeist Uncle Stan exorcised last spring, and Sheila from the women’s refuge. Geena from the mental home, with scars on her arms, and Wild Charlie Powell, who lives up the Tump in a wooden house among the fir trees. It felt as if something special was going to happen but I couldn’t think what.
On the platform, Alf tapped the microphone. “Brothers and Sisters,” he said, “if you’d like to take your seats, the meeting’s about to start.”
So the speaker hadn’t made it. I imagined his car tumbling down the mountain, his cries getting fainter and fainter till the battered hunk of metal disappeared into the mist. “See you later,” I said to Gordon, and went to my seat.
Father and I sit right at the front, so our knees are almost touching the platform. My neck gets a crick looking up. Father says it is better than being Distracted. Distraction leads to Destruction. But the front row has distractions of its own. The smell of Auntie Nel being one of them. I was glad of my extra-strong mint.
We stood to sing “The Joys of Kingdom Service.” Father sang loudly, bringing the sound deep from within his chest, but I couldn’t sing, partly because thinking about Neil and partly because the extra-strong mint had vacuumed all the spit out of my mouth. Father nudged me and frowned, so I stuck the mint into my cheek and shouted as loudly as he did.
We had to do the magazine study first because there was no speaker. It was called “Illuminators of the
