A Painted Window

One coat of blue paint wasn't enough. Mila brushed over the corner of the cardboard window again. Part of a printed letter still showed through. The cardboard had once been a fridge box.

‘Keep putting more on and it'll bubble,’ Grandma said.

‘You can still see the writing.’

‘From this side. The audience will be on the other side.’

Mila walked round the table. Grandma was right. From there it was a blue window frame, a little crooked, as though a great wave had shoved against it. Actually, that was just right for the fisherman.

She held it in front of her. ‘Like this?’

Grandma peered over the edge. ‘I can only see the top of your head.’

Mila bent her knees. Now she couldn't see anything herself. She lowered the window and bumped a chair. Grandma caught it before it fell.

‘We'll need something underneath,’ she said. ‘You're not crouching for thirty-five minutes.’

‘The bit with this window's much shorter.’

‘Not for five minutes either.’

Aron had eaten a roll and left for the football pitch. His drawing lay on the table beside the rain tin he'd left behind. In the picture, the fisherman stood at a window with rain on one side and sunshine on the other. Mila had thought the sun was just there to look nice. Now she noticed a small, angry cloud peeping out from behind it.

Ilyas came in from the hall with two low wooden stands. He set them in front of the table and rested the cardboard window on them. Ordinary clamps would hold it in place. The clamps went at the back, well away from the large cloth on its broad roller against the opposite wall.

‘There,’ he said. ‘And we don't have to take the paint back to the shop tonight.’

Mila looked at her blue thumb. ‘I'd have to go with it.’

Grandma gave her a cloth to wipe the paint off.

In the hall, the stage lamp was working again. The technician had arrived that afternoon and laid his tools neatly on a mat. Mila had wanted to see inside the open casing, but he'd asked her to wait by the table. Now the casing was shut and Ilyas could use the switch again.

He turned off the ceiling lights and aimed the stage lamp at the painted window. Grandma stood beside the door. Mila slid an ordinary chair behind the window and sat down. If she raised her hand, the fisherman could look out just above the bottom edge.

Ilyas handed her the puppet.

‘What does he say?’ she asked.

‘Ask him.’

She made the fisherman turn towards the empty space beside her. ‘Where's the kitchen?’ she asked in her own voice.

‘No idea,’ Ilyas answered as the octopus. ‘But I've got a very nice house here.’

He lifted the boot with its paper flowers above the window. One flower quivered on its wire stem. The smallest still had only three petals.

‘That's a shoe,’ Mila said.

‘My corridors are short.’

Grandma laughed from the doorway. Mila made the fisherman bend forward to look inside. His nose tapped the boot.

‘Much too small,’ she said.

‘For you. Luckily, I fold up.’ Ilyas wriggled the octopus forwards, two tentacles first. The rest caught behind the paper leaves.

Mila held the boot while he freed the trailing tentacle. Automatically, she looked at the rolled-up cloth. Safely out of reach. Here, a tentacle could catch on a flower without anyone having to worry about morning.

Ilyas put the octopus beside him. ‘That's our change of scene. Off to somewhere else. Without five minutes explaining everything that used to be there first.’

Mila looked at the fisherman in her hand.

‘Mine won't be five minutes.’

‘Mine was. I had a captain telling everyone where the whole village had moved to. With a map.’ He pointed to a folded sheet on the chair. ‘Every harbour on it. I thought it was wonderful.’

‘Are you cutting that bit?’ Grandma asked.

‘It's sitting over there feeling sorry for itself.’

Mila picked up the map. There were so many blue arrows she didn't know where to start. One island was shaped like a sock. She felt sorry for Ilyas. She liked that he could laugh about it himself, too.

They practised the change. Mila lowered the boot behind the edge and Ilyas brought the octopus down. Grandma released both clamps and gave the painted window a half-turn. On the back was a yellow border with a low, red letterbox underneath. She fastened the clamps again. Another street, another house. The wooden stands stayed where they were. Nobody had to carry a big panel across the hall in the dark.

On that first turn, the paint was still sticky. Mila let go at once.

‘Careful for now,’ Grandma said. ‘It'll dry.’

They took a break. Ilyas put the lunchbox on the windowsill, away from the paint. Mila sat beside Grandma in the empty front row.

‘We can do this without using the cloth,’ Grandma said.

‘Yes.’

‘I like the red letterbox.’

Mila tugged a loose thread on her sleeve. At Grandma's new flat, the letterbox was downstairs by the front door. The real table wouldn't even turn into the hall beside it. None of that was a problem in the borrowed kitchen.

Aron came back late that afternoon with sand on his knees and an apple in his hand. His team had practised without a goalkeeper. He'd saved one ball, and then they'd asked him to play out on the pitch instead.

He went straight to the window. ‘It turns round!’

Mila got up to show him. The paint was dry enough now. She turned it to the yellow side, and Aron hurriedly put his apple on the table.

‘Wait. I've got an idea.’

He picked up the rain tin and made the fisherman shelter by the blue side. Mila turned the window. Aron stopped moving the tin and made the puppet look from one side to the other.

‘Oh,’ he grumbled. ‘My sandwich is still dry over here.’

The octopus wanted to know if he could dry his socks on the other side too. Instead of answering, Aron made the fisherman try to open the letterbox. It was glued shut. The fisherman stared at it, looking so offended that Grandma had to hold the paint cloth over her mouth as she laughed.

Mila laughed too. When Aron pointed at her, she rustled the newspaper for a short gust of wind. On time, this time.

They played the whole bit again, with the boot before it and the flowers afterwards. Nobody had to wait for a room to be ready. At the end, Ilyas pointed to the stands. They could do exactly that on Friday. And if they did use the real rooms, this version would be ready anyway.

Mila helped pack the puppets neatly into the case. Her cardboard template stuck out from under her coat. She pushed it back beneath a sleeve.

The painted window had turned out well. The colours had dried nicely. Yet as she left, she looked once more at the broad roller against the wall. The real kitchen was there, all of it held in a piece of cloth. They only needed to show it the right way.