Not My Idea of Heaven. Lindsey Rosa

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СКАЧАТЬ had a lot of playing to do.

      There’s a lot I don’t know about my brother, Victor. He’d spent twelve years finding his feet in the male-dominated world of the Fellowship even before I was born. He was two years old when the Fellowship split into opposing subgroups, Mum and Dad ending up in the more extreme of the two, and my mum’s parents totally cut off from us in the other. Victor lived through all that, growing up in the 1970s. I know it all affected him greatly, but it didn’t stop him loving and treating me like his baby. And those twelve years that separated us might as well have been twelve minutes for all the difference they made to our relationship.

      I really loved my big brother. I followed him everywhere and couldn’t wait for him to wake up in the morning. I listened out for his call for me as soon as his alarm went off and delighted in acting as his slave. On request, I brought him cups of coffee and ferried messages back and forth between him and Mum. She was much too busy to bother about my brother when he was lazing in bed, but that was OK by me.

      I loved it when Victor helped me with projects. One time I designed a set of heart-shaped shelves, which he assisted me in making. Whatever I wanted, he’d find a way of incorporating it into his own woodwork projects during his apprenticeship as a carpenter. As was usual practice in the Fellowship, he left school at sixteen, skipping his A-levels and learning a practical trade.

      Victor was really handy with a can of paint, and sometimes Dad entrusted him with it to touch up the rusty spots on his Fiat Panorama. Dad didn’t believe in spending money on new cars until he had run his current one into the ground. By the time he had finished with it, the bodywork would be more Polyfilla than metal. The Panorama was an estate car, which carted the six of us around, four in the front and two in the luggage compartment, hanging on for dear life. I was rather glad when the law for wearing seat belts in the backs of cars was enforced a few years later.

      Victor may have been handy with a spray can, but he couldn’t really be trusted with one. It always started off all right, then, having finished the job in hand, he looked round for more things to spray. On this particular occasion it was my tricycle that he turned to. I loved that little trike and whizzed around at top speed on it, leaning around the corners with one wheel off the ground. One day I dashed into the garage to grab it and, on seeing it, burst into floods of tears. Across the front of this dear little red trike was a spray mark of blue paint. It wasn’t a big mark, about the size of my four-year-old palm, but to me the blemish was the end of the world. I had no doubt in my mind who was responsible for this horrible stain.

      ‘Victor,’ I howled, ‘look what you’ve done!’

      He popped his head out of the shed, a sheepish look on his face. ‘Sorry, Lindsey,’ he grinned. My anguish drained away at the sight of him, and immediately I forgave him. But I could never ride that tricycle again with quite the same pride. I got used to Victor’s destructiveness, though. I had to. He didn’t think twice about cutting my doll’s hair, and once even found he had crushed some of my toy cars in the vice that lived in the shed. He claimed they had been in a car crash.

      When I was about nine, I asked Victor to take me out. What I really wanted was for him to take me fishing with him. He regarded me with a funny look on his face and said he wasn’t sure. I realized then that he was embarrassed by me. I wore clothes that didn’t fit in with the other girls my age and he clearly minded this detail. I was hurt by his embarrassment, and never asked him again. As I grew older, our relationship changed, and for a time we grew apart, but eventually events would bring us closer together again.

      Chapter Five

       Motherly Love

      In one very particular way, I was a normal child. I was inquisitive, and wanted to know ‘why?’ all the time. Unfortunately, most of my questions, which I put to my mum and dad, were met with the same unsatisfying response: ‘Let the Lord into your heart and have faith,’ they would say. In other words, don’t ask questions. They might as well have been saying, ‘Don’t be Lindsey.’

      One day I was in the kitchen helping Mum bake, when a question popped into my head.

      ‘How is God going to win the war against the Devil if there are more worldly people than Fellowship people?’ I mumbled through a mouthful of cake mixture.

      ‘Trust the Lord, Lindsey, He knows what He’s doing. And it’s very naughty to question Him.’

      With no further questions, I carried on licking the spoon.

      I wasn’t allowed to do sponsored charity events at school, so another time I asked, ‘Mum, how come we don’t give to money to charities that help people?’

      ‘That’s not what God has chosen us to do,’ Mum simply said. ‘There are other people to look after the poor.’

      Being told that God had all the answers and there was no point trying to work anything out for myself was supposed to stop me asking questions. The problem was that it just gave me a great idea. If God had all the answers, I could ask Him. ‘Dear God, what am I getting for my birthday this year?’ I whispered, so Mum couldn’t hear me. She was standing at the foot of the beds making sure we said our prayers properly.

      ‘In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.’ I waited for my answer.

      As far as Mum was concerned, all my questions about the ways of the world were unimportant. The Bible dealt with those completely and that was all there was to it. As I think she probably saw it, my questioning was just a minor diversion from the really important things in life. These were practical everyday things, such as baking and knitting. In a way, she was right. We had a great time together. Mum loved to buy Family Circle, a magazine for mums, full of arts-and-crafts ideas. She’d keep the best ideas in a folder and, when she’d finished all her jobs, we’d get out the paints, glue, glitter and scissors and get to work.

      Mum also kept huge bags containing scraps of material and wool, which we used to make a collage man on one occasion. She drew the outline on a huge piece of paper and I stuck on wool for hair, buttons for eyes and various patches of cloth to make the clothes. She taught me to knit and sew, and we made clothes for my dolls.

      When we weren’t doing arts and crafts we were either playing board games or heading out to the shops. It might not sound exciting, but I really enjoyed shopping with Mum, especially if we passed the post office with the cakes in the window. (It’s amazing how hungry you feel after posting a letter.) Bizarrely, it had a sweet counter at one end and a bakery at the other. I wasn’t so interested in the sweets, but Mum and I would make sure that we never went home without my cream bun and her horseshoe-shaped macaroon.

      Two shops down from cake heaven was the hardware shop. Mum did a lot of practical jobs around the house, so we would often pop in there for one or two items on the way to the post office. One day, while she scoured the shelves for the things on her list, I waited at the front of the shop, watching as the man behind the counter measured out nails and hooks and weighed them on his scales. I was fascinated by the huge cast-iron weighing scales, which put Mum’s home set to shame. It was then that I noticed that the television fixed on the wall was on. I had seen televisions before but I had never had the chance to see one that was switched on. I looked up curiously.

      There were some strange creatures dancing around in front of a row of houses. Popping out of the dustbin next to the steps was a shaggy-looking thing that was clearly neither a human nor an animal. I had no idea what I was seeing. I’d never seen anything like it before, but even so I was far more interested in getting off home with Mum and eating cake. That, not TV, was what was missing from my life at that moment in time.

      I had some really nice times with СКАЧАТЬ