“There’ll be plenty of things to do. I’ll find you some,” stated Matilda.
“I’m glad we have to look after the place,” said Jalli, “because that means we really belong. But won’t you miss your home in Persham, Mum?”
Nice to be called Mum by Jalli, thought Matilda. “No. It was always hard work. And to tell you the truth I was rarely happy there.”
“And I have three people instead of one in my family now, and I’m not going to miss Wanulka that much,” added Momori.
“What about your friends?” asked Jalli.
“I will miss them, but I belong where my Jalli is.”
*
The following week Jalli and Jack parted to help sort out their moves. “We need take very little,” concluded Momori. “We have everything we need there. I shall pack a few personal things.” Jalli packed her books. She would need these – eventually, she hoped.
She was determined to pursue her biology. Momori called in to the solicitors’ and made over everything to the worship centre. “They can house someone who needs a place to live,” she declared, “there is never enough accommodation around here.”
Matilda arranged for the furniture in Persham to be collected by a furniture recycling group. “It’s nothing special, but it might as well go to someone who hasn’t got much. After all, I was helped with some stuff when we first came.” She and Jack were packing up stuff to take round to the church for their next sale, when Mr. Evans came round. “That’ll take you an age,” he declared. “You just put to one side the things you are keeping and we’ll come round and help.” Matilda and Jack stuffed a few things they felt they wanted to keep in a few cardboard boxes. The next day an enthusiastic party from the church appeared, really grateful for the gifts. They had things and charities they were raising money for, and they were all curious about where Jack and Matilda were going.
Mostly, though, they were so pleased to see them both so happy about it, and kept asking Jack about his “extra-planetary” young lady. Matilda handed the keys of the house to the landlord, and was delighted to be given back her deposit that had been such a challenge for her to find fifteen years before.
*
A fortnight later, they all gathered in the cottage, exhausted but happy to be together again. The following day it began to rain. A gentle rain that refreshed the garden world. They had never known it rain before but they had concluded the garden must get watered somehow. After the rain they emerged into the garden and Jalli spotted another white gate. No peace for the wicked, thought Jalli.
“Another white gate Jack. No holiday it seems,” announced Jalli.
They walked over to it. “I don’t think it’s for me. I’m getting no vibes like last time,” said Jack. Jalli laid his hand on it. He felt it sure enough but it was different. It was not shiny in the same way as the others.
“Jack,” declared Jalli, “the hedge is not so thick here.” Indeed it wasn’t. There was no little alley way through into another world. As they stood there, a couple of people walked by and stopped, looked over the gate and said, “Welcome to Woodglade! So you are the new people who have just moved into ‘White Gates Cottage’? My name is Giroonan, Callan Giroonan and this is my Hatta. We live next door in ‘Greenlawns Cottage’.” He pointed down the lane in the direction they were headed. Hearing voices, Momori and Matilda approached. Quickly sizing up the situation, Momori reached her hand over the gate.
“Momori Rarga and this is my granddaughter, Jalli,” said Momori.
“And Matilda Smith and my son Jack.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Jack and Jalli together.
“Do come over for tea tomorrow,” invited Hatta, “what about four o’clock?”
“We would love too,” said Jalli. “Thanks.”
“Seem like nice people,” said Callen to Hatta as they walked to their garden gate.
“Funny names they have!”
“Foreign I expect,” she replied.
Jack, Jalli, Momori and Matilda stepped out of the gate into the lane. The cottage was visible over the whole length of the hedge. On their gate was written in black paint, “White Gates Cottage”.
“This is not like the other white gates,” observed Jalli, holding Jack’s hand. “It’s a ‘normal’ gate. We are not in another world. We are in the same world. This is the cot-tage’s world.”
“Yes, it smells the same, and the air tastes the same,” agreed Jack. They explored up and down the lane, and then returned into the garden. Momori noticed it first, then Jalli. They stopped and stood in silence.
“The other gates! They’ve gone, haven’t they?” said Jack.
“Yes,”said Jalli.
“I guessed that might happen. We’ve done with those places from which we’ve come. This is a new life in a new place, together. We shall soon have to be working not only to look after the cottage and the garden, but to live with these people in this new world. I feel it.”
*
Jack was right. Communicating with their new neighbours after the first introduction was difficult.
“You must learn our language,” said one, as a large group of villagers gathered outside their gate one day and were invited into the garden. They were given lessons by someone with a special gift of teaching. There had been new people in the cottage before, it seemed, that had also come from abroad, and this same teacher had taught them how to speak and read. Jack, however, would need to have finger reading training.
Jalli explained that she had wanted to go to university, and study biology before they moved. That was good, the teacher had said, because their village was the location for an agricultural college where she could pursue her interests and live within walking distance. But perhaps she already knew that, it was probably one of the reasons they had chosen to move into Woodglade, the teacher ventured. Jalli didn’t argue with her. If she hadn’t known, the Owner of “White Gates Cottage” had!
*
As for Jack, he attended a course for the finger reading in the local town each day. There were a number of people there who had become blind in recent months. He met one young boy of about ten years old who was frightened and upset.
“I’ll never be happy again,” he moaned.
“Have you got a Mummy?” inquired Jack.
“Yes, of course.”
“Does she love you?”
“Yes.”
“And have you got a Daddy, too?”
“Yes.”
“And does he love you too?”
“Yes. He used to play ball with me when I could see. All the time.”
“You are a very lucky boy. So if you have got people to love you, you will be happy again. And it won’t take so long.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve got people who love me.”
“But you can see!”
“No I can’t. Not with my eyes. I’m like you. But I can see with my heart. And I know that wherever you are, even when you don’t feel it, there is Someone who loves you, and He or She gives you people to love and people to love you.”
“And that makes you happy?”
“Much happier than anything else in the whole world.”
Happier than in the whole galaxy?”
“The whole universe!” Jack assured him.
27
Eight years later
Kakko Jallaxanya took a deep breath and blew out all of her five candles in one go.
Everyone clapped.
“Wow!” exclaimed Jack, “Well done! Happy birthday, little lady.”
“But I’m not little any more, Daddy,” protested Kakko, “I’m five. And I’m big. I’m much bigger than Shaun, he’s only three!”
“Can we eat the cake now?” nagged Shaun.
“Yes, let’s,” urged Jalli, “are you going to cut it yourself, Kakko, or is Mummy going to do it?”
“I will. But you will have to help me. I am going to put the knife right in the middle – I’m going to have the
bit with the sun’s smile because I am Jallaxanya, the same as Mummy.”
Jalli had iced the cake with a smiley sun on it. It was Jack’s idea.
“What about my bit?” asked Jack.
“You can have his nose, the bit with the cherry on it!”
“Wow, thanks!”
At that moment Jack’s pocket burst into song. It was his mobile that they had all bought him for his twenty-sixth birthday a month before. Someone had written a pop song with the same title as what became known as “the family hymn”, “Be not Afraid”, sung at Shaun’s funeral, and then later at Jack and Jalli’s wedding. The song wasn’t like the hymn at all, and after the title, the words were completely different, but the kids at Jack’s school thought it was really cool.
“Mr. Smith, tell us your phone number,” one asked.
“Why? What do you want with my phone number?”
“We want to ring it to play your tune!”
“Be not Afraid” had been a mark of Jack and Jalli’s life. The hymn was, indeed, in many ways, their song. Eight years on, the events of those few weeks when Jack and Jalli first discovered their white gates had been dramatic. They had crossed the universe. They had travelled from euphoria to despair – and finally to resolution, where the good things of love had settled richly upon them. They had started that summer as grown-up children, and finished it as mature young people. They had lived a fairytale, and had then been thrown into the icy-cold waters of a horror story. But the true reality – the really real – they learned, was neither in the euphoria nor in the despair, but in the dependable love that the Creator of the universe never stopped giving them. This love both lived in the whole universe outside, but also inside things and people. Inside it was not just in feelings, in the highs and lows of life. It kind of went on underneath, all the time, gently but powerfully making life good.
*
Another thing that Jack and Jalli noticed, like Momori and Matilda before them, was that He/She mended things. And somehow the things that are mended can be stronger than if they had never been broken.
After the family had left Persham, Mr. Evans had brought along his secateurs to tidy up the “kicking tree”. There was one upright shoot that Jack had missed in his final frenzied assault. The old churchman had carefully trimmed off the remains of the others, and the single shoot, at a height of one and a half metres, stood straight in the sunshine. Over the years that followed, it grew proudly, until, at last, the scars of its abuse faded. Below ground the years of struggle had produced bigger, stronger roots than its undamaged neighbours along the street. Regardless of their untarnished beauty, there was an extra robustness about Jack’s kicking tree that they didn’t share.
The cottage and garden had given up doing things for itself and looking after them as soon as they had moved in and become part of the local community. Jalli’s interest in growing things had helped her plant a fruitful garden. Despite his blindness, Jack had no difficulty in finding lots of practical things to do too. He loved simple things like washing clothes and hanging them out to dry. He enjoyed that because, as he came across each garment in turn, he thought about the person to whom it belonged. When they were dry, he folded them neatly into piles, one pile for each person, and was nearly always right – except when Momori and Matilda began to borrow from each other’s wardrobes. “They do it just to confuse me!” protested Jack.
Jack, who was now a teacher in a school for blind children, had also begun teaching in the Sunday School, and Matilda delighted in seeing him surrounded by children as he read to them from books in blind script, but more often, told them stories in his own words.
*
Jalli sank into bed. She was tired. She had had a busy day at the agricultural college where she did research in entomology – bees in particular, and other insects involved in spreading pollen.
Kakko had eventually settled for the night, but not until she had had two stories and several songs. She had not wanted her birthday to end, and they had allowed her to stay up late. Jack put a cup of Jalli’s favourite chocolate drink on the table beside the bed and bent over and kissed her.
“Thank you, kind sir!” Jack got in beside her.
“Well, what are we going to call number three?” he asked, patting Jalli’s belly. They had known about “number three” for just over a month.
“Well, I was thinking – what do you think about naming him or her after the places we come from? Wanulka Persham!” Jack chuckled. He knew she wasn’t serious. He could sense the smile on Jalli’s face as she spoke the words.
“Only if it’s a girl!” he retaliated. “If it’s a boy I want Michael Owen.”
“Michael who? Oh, football…! You’re teasing me!”
“You started it,” laughed Jack. “… Actually, apart from the football and the cricket, I don’t miss Persham or England at all.”
“I miss Wanulka. It was good to me… I often wonder how Mr. Bandi is.”
“Still turning out biologists for the universe, I expect.”
“I wonder if I shall ever see him again…” mused Jalli.
*
You will probably not be surprised to learn that the third child, a little boy, was called Bandi Jack. And they did see Mr. Bandi again – as well as many of their other friends from across the universe. But that’s a story for another time!
The Kicking Tree Page 31
