Authors: Andrew Lovett
‘Where were they going?’
‘Well, I didn’t know. And then another man, a completely different man, just appeared from behind the pole and walked off down the platform. It was the strangest thing. It was as if he’d come out of nowhere. Well, you can imagine. I started pulling at my mother’s coat and saying what I’d seen but she was reading one of those trashy books she always read and she was all: “Kat, stop it! Stop it! Karen Angela Goodwin, I’m talking to you!” ’ And Kat flapped her hands about just like my mum used to do.
‘Anyway,’ Kat went on, ‘at last, and it probably wasn’t even more than a minute or two, the train started to pull out and I could see what was behind the post.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘What was it?’
‘It was the entrance to the gents’ toilets,’ and then she laughed. ‘What I mean, Peter, is that I knew it must be something like that; that there was some kind of explanation like a hidden door or … something. I wasn’t
that
little but,’ she said, ‘for just a minute it was nice to think that maybe the world was a little bit different to what it normally was; a little more magical. Because that’s what magic is, isn’t it? It’s a mystery. It’s just what we call something that we don’t know or understand like I didn’t know what was going on behind the post because I couldn’t see.’
‘Like a secret,’ I said.
Kat shrugged. ‘Yes, I suppose.’ But that didn’t make any sense. I must’ve looked awfully confused because she said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you said magic was like a mystery. Well, a mystery is like a secret and a secret is just another word for the truth so then magic must be true.’
‘Well,’ she said, and her eyes twinkled like Melanie’s birthday candles, ‘I suppose it must be.’
‘I thought it was all pretend.’
Kat was startled. ‘Of course not. Aren’t you alive? How magical is that? Haven’t you ever seen a … a butterfly? Haven’t you seen a sunrise or a sunset? Peter, magic is all around you all the time, every day. Not just you but everybody. And, if you don’t think it’s magic, well, maybe you’re setting your sights too high.’
She shook her head. ‘No, magic’s real enough. Look, think about the name: Everlasting Lane. It’s just a lane, just a road and in some places it’s barely even that, but you make it so much more. You, Peter. That’s not boring or mundane or whatever the opposite of magic is. That’s real. Only children can do that. When you get to my age nothing seems possible any more. You’re stuck. The idea that you can just change your name and … That’s absurd. But you did it. You made me better than I was. Without you nothing would be possible.
‘People don’t just change their names, change their lives. I mean they can try but it’s not going to work unless someone else believes them. Adults never believe—well, hardly any—but you did. I mean I envy you, Peter. I really do. You just close your eyes—and sometimes you don’t even do that—and you’re somewhere else entirely. You’re some
one
else entirely and all that stuff that worries the rest of us, keeps us awake at nights, well, it doesn’t matter to you at all. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
‘Look,’ said Kat, ‘do you remember this?’ and she took two of the tin-foil wrappers that she’d rolled like thin sausages. She wrapped one around a finger on each hand like rings. ‘Daddy used to do it.’
‘I remember,’ I said.
She seemed surprised but said, ‘Okay, now watch carefully,’ and then she did that rhyme. ‘Two little butterflies sitting on a wall,’ and as she sang it she wriggled her butterfly fingers in time, ‘One named Peter, one named Paul. Fly away, Peter,’ and her right hand fluttered up into the air like it was flying before returning to its perch on the table’s edge. ‘Fly away, Paul,’ and her left hand too soared and swooped retaking its place alongside Peter. Both fingers were now naked, their rings gone.
‘It’s just a trick,’ I said. ‘You’ve swapped fingers.’
Slowly, slowly Kat revealed the rest of her hands, placing them out-stretched either side of her tea-cup. The rings were nowhere to be seen.
I felt my eyes grow big. ‘That’s … Is that magic?’
Kat smiled. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘or maybe it’s just a better trick.’
‘People don’t like it though,’ Kat said as she collected the little silver balls and sausages of foil and popped them into her empty tea-cup. ‘They have to give it a name or let somebody else give it a name for them. A name like ‘God’ maybe or ‘Allah’ or whatever but as soon as you give it a name you make it small. That’s what I think. You take away the wonder and the mystery. You’re saying, like, this isn’t so special because some old man with a beard made it. And once you think you’ve solved the mystery it turns to dust anyway. It all depends on where you’re standing.’
‘Like cows,’ I said.
‘If you like,’ said Kat. ‘Sometimes mysteries are better left unexplained. They’re only interesting because they
are
mysteries.’
‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘it all seems like a dream.’
Kat smiled. ‘Real world, dream world. It’s like I said: sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. You’ve heard the expression, ‘he’s not all there,’ haven’t you?’ I nodded. ‘Well, it’s a bit like that. Those people aren’t mad, they’re just not
all there.
They’re half here and half somewhere else. But they live a life, a complete life, just like you and me, only half of it’s lived here; the other half somewhere else. The mistake so called
sane
people make is to think the part that’s not here isn’t anywhere. It is. And who’s to say that that somewhere isn’t just as important as here.
‘It’s like you, Peter: sometimes I look at you and you’re like … Where do you go when you’re not here, Peter?’
I blinked. I didn’t know what to say.
‘What I meant to say,’ said Kat, ‘was how Christians and people like that are the same: they’re only half here. Of course, they don’t see it. They don’t think
their
reality is any less real than ours. In fact, they probably think theirs is
more
real, and they don’t suffer for a lack of reality any more than a, I don’t know, a badger suffers for the lack of the latest David Cassidy album.’
‘That sounds a bit like Mrs Carpenter,’ I said. ‘She believes in God, but she’s cross all the time.’
‘It’s not enough for some people,’ said Kat nodding, ‘living for living’s sake. They give it a name like “God”. But you have to pity those people not resent them. After all, “God” is just another word for “Help!” He’s a way of hiding the truth, hiding the madness, but it’s a bit like trying to hide World War Two.
‘You see, it’s all random, it’s all chance; beauty, ugliness, pain and suffering, whatever. It’s all chaos, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t revel in beauty and recoil from the rest.’
She stood up and took her cup and my glass to the sink. I was worried that the conversation might be over so I said, ‘What’s your biggest secret?’ I made it sound just a normal question.
Kat sighed. It wasn’t a little sigh either but a sigh like rolling a boulder up a mountain. ‘How much I love you,’ she said, ‘in spite of everything.’
Well, I wasn’t sure about that. I thought about Alice and the
secret room and, well, everything. I didn’t think she was telling me the truth at all.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Kat. ‘Come to the workshop. I’ve got something to show you.’
The workshop was just like it’d been when I’d first seen it: all boxes and junk. The only new thing was a large light on a stand glaring at the object—Kat’s sculpture—beneath its canvas sheet. It looked like a mountain, one side in daylight, the other washed in night time.
‘This is why I was smiling,’ said Kat. ‘I’ve finished it,’ and she gripped the corner of the sheet. ‘Do you want to see?’
Of course I did.
She took the sheet, and my breath, away.
‘It’s … It’s so,’ being a boy, I didn’t want to say, ‘beautiful,’ but once I had I knew that no other word would have done.
It was a wing, a butterfly’s wing, emerging from the heart of the rough, knotted slice of tree trunk as if from a cocoon, or uncurling like a petal beneath the rising sun, so fine you could dry tears with it. I looked at it and felt a thrill in my heart. I couldn’t believe
she
had made this.
‘It’s,’ I didn’t know what to say, ‘really good.’
You know how a television show is sort of 3-D even though the screen is flat? It was like that. Although it wasn’t alive and it didn’t move, although it was carved from a single piece of wood it was like life, movement and colour. It captured a moment of time, a moment of time when magic was possible, like a reflection in a flowing river.
‘Why do you like them so much?’
‘What? Like what?’
‘Butterflies,’ I said. I’d always wanted to ask her.
Kat looked puzzled for a moment but not in a bad way. It was like she was thinking how to answer. And then she said, ‘It’s like I was saying before about when I was a little girl. I always wanted to believe in … something, I suppose. Something magical. And butterflies, well, how could the universe just roll the dice and come up with something so beautiful. I mean, what are the chances, Peter?’
I didn’t know.
‘I think we’re all of us, most of us, like caterpillars. You know, we just eat and crawl along and hope we’re not going to get finished off by the first available sparrow. But, if we’re lucky, we get a second chance. Do you know what I mean? I mean, we can change. If we’re lucky, really lucky, we can be butterflies.’
‘You mean like when we die.’
‘No, no. I mean when we’re alive. It’s—’
‘It’s like laughing your head off,’ I said, ‘but not literally.’
‘Yes,’ she said. And then she laughed. ‘Something like that. I mean, some people are caterpillars their whole life. They can’t help it: they’re just born that way. But other people, people like your dad, maybe … Whatever he went through in his life—how ever horrible it must’ve been—it changed him. But it changed him for the better.’
‘What about me?’ I said.
‘Oh, you’re like me,’ she said. ‘You’re a caterpillar. But what’ll it be like when you get a second chance? Think what it’ll be like to fly.’
‘Do people get second chances?’
Kat hesitated. And then she said, ‘Have you ever wondered what would have happened if your dad had been killed in the war? Millions were. You wouldn’t be here because he wouldn’t be here. What if
I’d
never been born? You just wouldn’t exist.’
‘But I do exist.’
‘Because dad was lucky. Millions weren’t. You were lucky. You got your chance: your first chance.’
‘But I
do
exist. So, even if I didn’t exist I’d exist somehow, wouldn’t I?’
‘Oh, sweet, I don’t know about that. I don’t see how. Do you have any idea how many people
don’t
exist. If everybody who’d never been born still existed somewhere? How many ways in which the world might be different?’
‘Well, maybe that’s where the people who aren’t all there go the rest of the time.’
Kat smiled. ‘That’s a nice thought. It’s nice to think that they’ve got company. But listen, Peter, we can’t change stuff that’s happened,’ she said, gently touching the wing of her creation. ‘It’s not like writing a story where you can have as many goes as you like to get it right. You can’t just put in the things you want, like in your scrapbook, and leave out the things you don’t want …
‘Imagine you had a jewel,’ she said. ‘Oh, the most precious jewel in the world. And somebody stole it from you; just took it away. Maybe they didn’t even mean to take it. Say, it was a joke or a game, but once the jewel had gone—’
‘But you could go to the person who stole it,’ I interrupted. ‘I mean, if it wasn’t on purpose, then they might give it back.’
‘But it got broken, Peter. Shattered into a billion pieces.’
‘Well, maybe they could stick it back—’
‘Not this jewel, Peter. No.’
‘Well, then,’ I didn’t know what to say, ‘maybe there’s nothing—’
‘But they could say sorry, Peter.’
‘Well, yes, but you still wouldn’t get it back—’
‘No, but I … but you could see that the person was sad too and that they knew how sad they’d made you and that would help, wouldn’t it? But imagine if they didn’t even care. Not
one bit. They couldn’t even be bothered to remember what they’d done. Wouldn’t that make you sad, Peter? Wouldn’t that be the saddest thing in the world?
‘Why would someone do that, Peter? Can you think? Why would someone not explain why they did something?’ She was speaking quickly, her words tumbling into each other like circus clowns. ‘And even if they couldn’t answer or explain or … justify what they’d done,’ she cried, ‘wouldn’t they at least say sorry?’ with fire in her eyes. ‘Wouldn’t they at least admit that they’d been wrong?’ It was like when she was talking about her sculpture. ‘Why wouldn’t they say that, Peter?’
‘Maybe they’re mean,’ I said, ‘or cruel or—’
‘Cruel is only the beginning, Peter. Cruel is only the first word in the dictionary.
‘If you’d done something, Peter, something wrong, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’
I nodded.
‘Anything at all? I mean, even if you thought it’d make me angry,’ she seized my hand, squeezed it tight, ‘if you had to choose between doing the right thing or the wrong thing?’
‘Yes,’ I said, but my voice was kind of squeaky when I said it. Pinky and Perky squeaky. Would it be easy to know what was the right thing and what was wrong?
‘And if it made me very sad, this thing, would you be sorry?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Of course.
‘Well,’ and she hesitated, ‘is there anything you want to tell me about? Right now?’
But I could hardly think where to start: I thought about the vase but that wasn’t really my fault, and I thought about the Beast and the secret room and each of them made my face blaze in shame.
‘No,’ I said.
‘You’re such a tease, do you know that, Peter.’ Her voice
was cracking like that broken mirror. ‘There’s only one thing I ever wanted from you. Just one thing. But you never … You don’t even …’
‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘See? You don’t even remember.’
‘You know, Peter, the greatest loss, the hardest loss to accept, is the loss of something you never had: something that you thought was yours, something so close you could touch it and hold it. And then to have it just ripped away as if it was never there. Do you know what I mean?’