There but for The

by Ali Smith

  She looks close to tears. Miles jogs her elbow gently.

  The next time you have that dream, he says, and you’re sitting in front of that exam paper, tell yourself in your head that you do know. Sit at the desk and look at the paper and tell yourself about, uh, tell yourself you know—

  A song, the child says.

  Yes, a song, Miles says.

  But I’m not musical, Hannah says crossing her arms and shaking her head. I haven’t a musical bone—

  Yes, but you’ll know a song, there must be a song you like, Miles says.

  I don’t know any, Hannah says.

  What’s a song everybody knows? Miles says to Terence.

  Everybody knows Somewhere Over The Rainbow, the child says.

  Oh yeah, I know that one, Hannah says, from the film and everything.

  Right, Miles says. When you’re in that exam room the next time, say to yourself, I’m all right, I know Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

  But I don’t know anything about it, Hannah says. And if I look down at the exam paper, it’ll say, like, who wrote the rainbow song, and tell us everything you know about the rainbow song, and all I know is that it was from a film and I still won’t be able to answer anything right.

  This is what we’ll do, Miles says. Terence is going to tell you three facts about that song. And the next time you have that dream, you’ll know three things about it and you’ll be able to instruct your subconscious to write them down.

  Hannah sniffs, blows her nose.

  I probably don’t even have a subconscious, she says.

  Okay, Terence says. Three things about Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Uh. Right. It was written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, Arlen did the music and Harburg the lyric. There’s two things.

  There’s no way I’ll be able to remember that when I’m asleep, I can hardly remember it right now when I’m wide awake! Hannah says.

  Okay, Terence says. Okay—I know. The first two notes form an octave leap.

  He sings them.

  Fucking pansy, Richard says under his breath.

  And the way they do that, Terence says, makes the word somewhere leap right into the sky, out of hopelessness to hope.

  Hannah’s face fills with panic. She turns to Miles and shakes her head.

  Something more anecdotal, Miles says to Terence.

  Anecdotal, Terence says.

  He widens his eyes.

  What’s anecdotal? the child says.

  Like when you tell a story, Terence says.

  There’s that really good story about it, about the little dog that always runs away, the child says.

  Yes, Terence says. Yes. Good one, Brooke. So. Listen. You know the middle bit of the song? The bit about some day I’ll wish upon a star?

  He hums it. De da de da de da de da.

  Hannah nods.

  Terence tells her that Harold Arlen, the man who wrote the tune, had written the first part, the over the rainbow part, but couldn’t think of a melody to link each verse, or to act like a bridge between them.

  And Arlen had this little dog, Terence says, like a fox terrier or that kind of dog, who was quite badly behaved and kept running away and getting lost.

  His name was Pan, the child says.

  So, there was Harold Arlen, Terence says, standing there and rubbing his forehead, worried, one minute saying, I can’t think what to do with this tune, then the next minute whistling for that little dog to come back—

  Terence whistles the tune of the some-day-I’ll-wish-upon-a-star part of the tune exactly like he is whistling for a little dog to come back.

  Everybody at the table laughs out loud, even Richard.

  I won’t ever forget that! Hannah says. That’s brilliant! Tell me another one like that.

  Okay, Terence says. Brooksie. What else? Something else.

  The man who, when they were boys, sat next to the other boy in school because of the alphabet, the child says.

  Yep, Terence says. Yip.

  Yep yip! the child says. Yip yip yooray!

  She claps her hands above her head. Bernice laughs.

  Yip Harburg, Terence says. The man who wrote the words. He wrote the words to so many songs we all just know, just like that. He was born a poor Jewish kid in New York, his parents were sweatshop workers, and he grew up in a house where he and his sister slept on chairs pushed together at night, they were so poor.

  Snore, Richard says.

  No, listen, Hannah says. And his parents made sweatshirts, go on, Terence.

  He lit the gas lamps on Broadway as a boy, Terence says, it was his first job. And in the school he went to, they sat their kids in alphabetical order. One day he took out some poems he loved—

  Could this be, sorry Mark and, eh, your friend, the gayest conversation I’ve ever heard in this house, or possibly any house? Richard says.

  Don’t, Hannah says. It’s for my dream.

  One day, Terence says, he had a book of poems with him in school and he was reading them, and the kid sitting next to him said, they’re not just poems, you know. They’re more than poems. And this kid took Harburg home with him, and played him some 78s on a gramophone, because the poems he’d been reading were the lyrics for Gilbert and Sullivan songs. H for Harburg. G for Gershwin. He was twelve years old and he’d been sitting next to the twelve-year-old Ira Gershwin, right there, next to him, at school. And they both grew up to be …

  To be what? Hannah said.

  So is Ira Gershwin something to do with the more famous George Gershwin? Caroline says.

  She was his wife, wasn’t she? Jen says coming in with plates balanced on her arm.

  He was his younger brother, Mark says.

  It comes into his head how much Faye loved songs. He had quite forgotten how much.

  It does sound like a girl’s name, though, doesn’t it, Ira? Caroline is saying.

  There’s no way I’d ever call a daughter that, Hannah says.

  Then she tells them all the story of the daughter of a woman she knows at her Parent Teachers Association who woke up one day in the middle of a field in Cornwall wearing new clothes. She didn’t remember buying the clothes. She had no idea what she was doing in a field in Cornwall or how she’d got there. The last she remembered was being out for a drink on a Saturday night after work. The next thing it was Tuesday morning. And she was in a field miles from home. And she was dressed in new clothes. And when she looked at her credit card she’d bought them on that. But she didn’t remember any of it.

  Selective memory after shopping spree, Hugo says. Endemic among women. Sorry. Is that a bit sexist?

  Yes, Miles says smiling.

  Think so, do you, Miles? Hugo says.

  He closes his eyes at the same time as he turns his head in Miles’s direction.

  It’s not funny, Hannah says. It’s true. It really happened in really real life.

  Oh my God, Caroline says. Had anything … happened to her? You know, anything (she nods towards the child)—bad?

  That’s the thing. It didn’t seem to have, Hannah said. But she didn’t know. She couldn’t know for sure.

  Had anything good happened to her? the child says.

  Much more interesting, Miles says.

  Ha! Bernice says.

  Easy to go to the bad, Miles says. I’m always much more interested in things going to the good.

  Room’s full of pansies, Richard says not quite under his breath.

  Pansies, the child says, are for thoughts. Rosemary is for remembrance.

  She couldn’t, Hannah says. Remember. Anything. But, the thing is, nothing at all seemed to have happened to her.

  So it’s a pointless story, Richard says.

  Hannah looks crushed.

  No, it’s a philosophical conundrum, Bernice says. How would you ever trust yourself again, or anything about yourself, or the world, or you in the world?

  I know, Hannah says. It’s awf
ul.

  You just would trust yourself, I think, the child says.

  Bernice smiles across the table at her.

  Optimist, Terence says.

  Bet it was her husband’s credit card, Hugo says. Or is that sexist, Miles, and is it offensive, and are any of the women round the table offended by it, or is it just you who can’t take a joke?

  Not very, only mildly, maybe about as sexist as a quite benign 1970s sitcom, Miles says. But yes, I think it definitely is.

  As a what, sorry? Hugo says.

  He narrows his eyes. He is getting quite drunk. Caroline cuts in, suddenly earnest, about the Viewfinder she’s bought on eBay, exactly the same as the one she had when she was a child, which is why she bought it.

  It was lovely to feel the little click of the black lever thing, it felt exactly the same as when I was small, except, of course, smaller, she says. I also got online a set of the Viewfinder pictures of the Eames house for Hugo, they’re like designers—

  They’re not like designers, they are designers, Hugo says.

  Caroline rolls her eyes.

  —and some Womble pictures for me, she says, because that’s what I had when I was that age. And when the package came and I opened it and took it out, the Viewfinder, it felt much smaller in my hands. Funny to think of my own hands, you know, so much smaller. I never thought it would be the Wombles that would reveal that to me. Sometimes we find out in the strangest ways how fragile we are, don’t we? Mark, do you know what I mean?

  Mark has been feeling a steady mental pressure on him coming from Caroline all night. He doesn’t know whether he is creating it or she is. He suspects they both are. He knows Caroline most probably doesn’t really know about Hugo and him; he knows at the same time that her subconscious will know everything there is to know. Now the whole table is waiting to hear from him about fragility.

  He takes a deep breath.

  He starts telling a story about when he was taking a taxi between a couple of small towns, for work, and about how the taxi driver had a picture of the Virgin Mary tucked into his sunshield, and four differently scented Magic Tree air fresheners plus another Glade air freshener, all in the one car. He is about to tell them what the taxi driver said to him, that he’d pick up anyone, anyone at all, he’d pick up gays, blacks, Jews, Asians, Muslims, druggies, he wasn’t judgemental, except there was a pervert he knew about, who dressed in women’s clothes, and there was a paedophile, and he knew where each of them lived in this small town, and he reserved the right not to pick them up because he didn’t want people like that in his cab, and also he refused to take gyppos, the so-called travelling people could find their own means of so-called travel, far as he was concerned. As he said it Mark, belted in in the back seat, had watched the holy water glint inside the plastic bubble next to the Virgin Mary and had wondered if the holy water was selective too, and if that’s what God was these days, and whether everybody now simply had a private god who sanctioned his or her own choices about who he or she would pick up in a cab.

  But here at the dinner table, with everybody listening, he loses confidence halfway through and finishes his story at the fifth air freshener.

  Plus a Glade air freshener. For luck, he says.

  Hugo looks bored. Richard looks furious. The women laugh politely.

  Didn’t like the smell of people, that person, Bernice says.

  Or the smell of himself, maybe, Miles says.

  Both, Bernice says.

  Richard picks up on the detail about the Virgin in the sunshield and he and Hannah take turns telling, all the time giggling like children, the story of their local lady vicar coming round to visit them to talk about something Hannah is doing with her Christian Young Mothers group at the church, and how embarrassing it was when this vicar suddenly just started praying, there in their lounge, in front of the tea and the biscuits, sitting there offering thanks to God.

  Mark can’t concentrate on it because he has seen Miles do something strange; he has slipped the smaller of the two salt cellars, after using it lightly over his omelette and couscous, down under the table. Nobody else has noticed. Now they’re all talking about the free market.

  A false balance is a bomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight, the child says in a sonorous voice.

  He doesn’t mean Greenwich Market, Brooke, Bernice says. He means the trade market, the global business market.

  The whole world, Richard says. It’s, well, a more or less borderless world. And that’s as it should be.

  Except for the borders where they check your passport for hours, the child’s small voice says from the other end of the table.

  Yes, but everywhere needs some defence against people just coming in and overrunning the place with their terrorisms or their deficiencies, eh, sweetheart, Richard says.

  That’s right, Terence says. Got to keep all those bad refugees out. The ones looking for a better life.

  Couldn’t agree more, Richard says. Humankind has needed fortifications since the start of humankind started.

  And all this time since the start of the start of humankind we’ve needed little helicopters with cameras in, so we can see over our neighbours’ fortifications, Terence says. It’s a triumph of civilization.

  Ha! Hugo says.

  Don’t knock civilization, Richard says. Personally I think it ought to be against the law to knock civilization.

  It probably is, Terence says. I may need a lawyer sooner than I thought.

  Nasty, British and short, Miles says.

  You what, Miles? Richard says.

  Team of solicitors I occasionally work for, Miles says.

  Ha ha! Bernice says.

  I don’t think I get your meaning, Miles, Richard says.

  Who’s been to the theatre recently? Jen says. Anyone? Holidays. Terence! Bernice! Where are you going on holiday this year? Or maybe you’ve been? Where did you—

  Oh, I’m really proud of being British, me, Hugo says. I’m very big on the choice of toothpaste we have these days. That’s what I call global choice. It’s great, living in such a multivalent universe and having so much choice. I am what I listen to on my iPod. And I love it that so many databases can find out at the flick of a button just exactly what my favourite toothpaste or music is, as well as all the other things they can know about me, like my date of birth, how much money I have, how I spend my money, who I phone, where I go, things like that. We’ve really used our talents well as a species, when it comes to freedom.

  It’ll be Iraq, Caroline says, any minute, here we go again.

  She rolls her eyes.

  The fact is, the child says, that there were astrolabes in Baghdad, where the Iraq war was, probably before anywhere else in history, and definitely in 1294.

  What’s an astrolabe, Brooke? Eric says.

  It means an instrument for finding the positions of stars and planets, Mr. Lee, the child says.

  Then she recites the names of the Astronomers Royal out loud. Flamsteed, Halley, Bradley, Bliss, Maskelyne, Pond, Airy …

  Mark leans behind Richard to talk to Terence.

  Is there a book you can recommend to me, maybe, about the Gershwins, or about that man you were talking about who wrote the songs? he says.

  Easiest thing in the world, Terence says. With great pleasure. I can think of about four good ones off the top of my head.

  They’re making a secret assignation, Richard says. Talking arty behind my back.

  Oh no, don’t talk arty, Hannah says. I hate it when it comes round to the talking arty bit. I hate it.

  No, you see, I have to say this, because the thing is, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I like going into the supermarket and seeing all the toothpaste there so new and clean and waiting, Caroline says. And I don’t see why something that gives me pleasure and makes me feel safe has to be a problem, why it has to be a problem that I like the feeling it gives me.

  Warhol,
Hugo says. If you see something duplicated over and over you’ll want it. You won’t be able to forget it. You’ll fall for it. You fell for it. Moronic. That’s what Warhol’s doing. He’s pointing out the moronic.

  I like there being a choice of toothpastes, Caroline says. It makes me feel, well, real. But apparently I’m a moron who doesn’t understand or like modern art. Well, I don’t. I’m coming out, Mark, and I’m telling the whole table. I’m not a snob. I like to see a beautiful thing if I go to an art gallery as much as the next person. But contemporary art, I don’t like it, and most of the time I don’t understand it. Most of the time it’s so pointless.

  There’s some good children’s literature out there, though, isn’t there? Jen says.

  Almost on cue, the child sitting next to her puts her head down on her arm on the table. A moment later she is completely asleep.

  Caroline, meanwhile, won’t be dissuaded, is red in the face, is shaking her head.

  I mean, the songs and films you were talking about, Terence, they have an entertainment value at least, she says.

  Depending what you class as entertainment, Richard says.

  But it doesn’t change anything, Caroline says.

  Actually, that’s debatable—Terence begins, but Hugo and Caroline cut him off.

  Moron, Hugo is saying sweetly.

  And neither does that woman artist’s pointless awful bed and pointless garden shed, Caroline is saying, or the pointless skull encrusted with diamonds, and that pointless artist who had the lights coming on and off in the room. It doesn’t make anything happen.

  Well, Miles says. It does.

  What does it make happen? Caroline says.

  It makes the lights go on and off, Miles says.

  He picks up Hugo’s glass of red, raises it at Eric and then at Jen.

  A toast to our hosts, he says. To the Lees.