The Doormat Who Wanted to See the Ceiling
In the tall, thin house at the top of Crumb Street, going to bed took twenty minutes, and that was because of Nia.
Nia was eight, and she said goodnight to everything. Not to everything at once, which anybody can do, but to everything one at a time. Goodnight to her toothbrush. Goodnight to each of the forty-one stairs. Goodnight to the broom in its cupboard, and to the kettle on the old black stove, which wheezed when it boiled instead of whistling, so that Dad always said “Bless you” to it. Goodnight to the heavy old frying pan on its hook, which never seemed glad to be spoken to. Dad timed it once by the kitchen clock. Twenty minutes exactly. Then Nia made him say goodnight to the clock.
The last goodnight was always for the Doormat. It lay inside the front door with WELCOME on top in big bristly letters. All day long it looked at the bottoms of boots. There were Dad’s gardening boots, which were enormous, and Nia’s red ones, which could find the deepest puddle on Crumb Street without trying. Nia was so thorough with her goodnights that she was the only one who had ever noticed the Doormat looked tired. Its bristles lay flat. The W had gone grey.
“Goodnight, Doormat,” she said every night. “You look done in.”
Then there were Saturdays. Every Saturday Dad made pancakes in the heavy old frying pan, and every Saturday they stuck. Dad scraped them off in pieces, held up a handful, said, “Pancake confetti!” and threw it in the air. It was a very cheerful way to eat a disaster, and Nia loved him for it.
But what she wanted, just once, was a whole one. One round, unbroken pancake, the kind in pictures, with the butter sliding off the top of it sideways.
You may be thinking that more butter would do it. Dad had tried more butter. The Pan stuck anyway, because the Pan had been sticking on purpose for forty years, and no amount of butter was going to change its mind.
On Friday it rained, and Dad was in and out of the garden eleven times, and when Nia came at last to the Doormat it looked more tired than ever.
She knelt beside it. “All you ever see is boots,” she said. “You should see the ceiling for a change.”
So she took hold of a corner and turned it over.
On the underside, in much smaller letters, it said OH, IT’S YOU.
Nia laughed so hard she had to sit down on the bottom stair. Nobody had seen that side of the Doormat for years.
“Goodnight, Doormat,” she said, when she could. “Enjoy the ceiling.”
It was a very good ceiling. The house was so tall and so thin that from the front door you could see straight up the middle of it. You could see past every landing to a little round window at the very top where the moon looked in.
Nia went up to bed, but she lay awake wondering whether the Doormat liked the ceiling, or felt silly upside down. In the end she crept back down in her socks and sat on the sixth stair from the bottom to see.
The Doormat liked the ceiling very much. Its four corners had curled up with delight. Then it did a thing Nia had never seen a doormat do.
It got up.
Nia put both hands over her mouth.
It went across the hall in little humps, like a wave going along a bath, and it began to polish the boots. It rubbed Dad’s gardening boots until the mud came off. It rubbed Nia’s red boots until they shone like apples. It rubbed Dad’s Sunday shoes, which were not even dirty, because by then it was enjoying itself.
Then the cupboard door opened and out came the broom, the way it did every night, to sweep up the mud the boots dropped in the hall. It looked at the floor. It looked at the boots. There was nothing to sweep.
“Have the night off,” said the Doormat, and lay back down to look at the moon.
And because somebody had been kind to it, it went and was kind to somebody else.
The broom had never had a night off, and it did not know what to do with one. Then from the kitchen came a wheeze, like an old gentleman trying to whistle through a cold. It was the kettle, sitting under a chimney that nobody had swept in years.
The broom marched into the kitchen, looked up the chimney, and marched straight up it, bristles first. There was a soft whump, and a cloud of soot came down and sat on the kettle like a hat. The broom came down after it, grey all over, and sneezed. Then it swept up the soot, because a broom is a broom, even on its night off.
And because somebody had been kind to it, it went and was kind to somebody else.
The kettle took a long breath through its spout, all the way in and all the way out, for the first time in years. It felt so well that it looked about the kitchen, and it did not have to look far. Up on its hook hung the Pan, black and heavy and sulking.
“What are you looking at?” said the Pan.
“You,” said the kettle. “Why do you stick all the pancakes?”
“Forty years ago,” said the Pan, “somebody scraped me with a fork. Four prongs. The second one bent. A blue handle with a chip out of it, and a bit of egg on the end. I remember that fork exactly, and I shall never let go of a pancake again.”
“Nobody has used a fork on you since,” said the kettle. “Dad uses a wooden spatula. He’s ever so careful with you.”
“I know,” said the Pan, and it sounded cross about that too.
So the kettle did the only thing it could think of. It sang.
It sang the Pan a lullaby, round and warm, a little like a kettle and a little like somebody’s grandmother. It sang about butter and Saturday mornings, and what a fine thing it is to be a pan, good for forty years and forty more. Somewhere in the middle of the night the Pan’s grudge went soft at the edges, and then soft all the way through, the way butter does in a warm pan. The Pan, of all things, should have seen that coming. The kettle sang until morning.
And because somebody had been kind to it, it went and was kind to somebody else.
Nia only heard the first three verses. Then her eyes grew heavy, and she crept back up to bed, and forgot to say goodnight to more than half the stairs.
On Saturday morning Dad put a knob of butter in the Pan, poured in the first pancake, picked up his spatula and said, “Stand back for confetti.”
The pancake went golden at the edges. Before the spatula could get anywhere near it, the pancake slid across the Pan all by itself, sailed out over the edge, and landed on Nia’s plate.
It was whole. It was round. It was the kind in pictures, and when Nia put the butter on, the butter slid off sideways.
Dad stared at the pancake. Then he stared at the Pan. Then he stared at his spatula, as if the spatula might know something.
“Well,” said Dad. “That is the best pancake I have ever made, and I don’t think I made it.”
Nia ate it slowly, round the edge first and the middle last, very pleased with herself indeed.
And because somebody had been kind to it, it went and was kind to somebody else. The somebody else was Nia, so the kindness had gone all the way round the house and come back to where it started.
The rest of the pancakes came out whole too, all but the very last, which the Pan let stick just a little, so that Dad would have a handful of confetti to throw. A Saturday needs confetti, and after forty years the Pan knew that better than anyone. And when Dad boiled water for his tea, the kettle whistled, high and clear, and Dad was so surprised he said “Bless you” anyway.
That night Nia’s goodnights took twenty-one minutes.
She did the toothbrush and all forty-one stairs. She did the broom, which was standing a little straighter, and the kettle, which gave a small whistle, and the Pan, which for the first time ever seemed glad to be spoken to. Then she knelt by the front door and turned the Doormat over, so it could look up the middle of the house at the moon. That was the extra minute.
OH, IT’S YOU, said the underside, in its small letters.
On Friday it had made Nia laugh. Tonight it sounded like a mat that had been waiting all day for one person in particular, and was glad she had come.
“Goodnight, Doormat,” said Nia.
And from then on the tall, thin house at the top of Crumb Street was a good deal friendlier than it had been. It had a doormat that polished the boots, a kettle that whistled and a broom with its evenings free. And every Saturday there was one round pancake for Nia, and one good handful of confetti for Dad.
