by Ali Smith
His mother says the rhymes out loud in the street, in the rain, to the rhythm of her walk. It is because she loves songs. She does, she loves them. The bedtime stories she tells him, after David’s been settled and she comes for the marvellous twilight time to his room, are all song-stories. She comes into the room and she sits on the bed and she says something like, are you ready? Then I’ll begin. Once a baby boy was born with no fingers on his left hand, imagine, just a stump for a hand. And when the baby had grown into a boy, the boy’s mother encouraged him to learn piano even though he hadn’t any fingers on that hand. And he got so good on the piano that when he grew up and was a man, he found he was a musician, and he wrote songs, and what’s more, having a stump was an asset when people got drunk if he was playing piano in a bar. He not only played piano, he landed some great knock-out punches with it. The end.
Then, sitting on the end of the bed, she sings When The Red Red Robin, which is a song this man who only had half his fingers really did write. She sings it slow and lullaby-like even though it’s meant to be fast, and then she turns out the light and leans over him with a kiss, and turns to go. One more, please, Mark says, please, when she’s at the door. So she comes back and sits on the edge of his bed in the half-dark and she sings another song by the man with one hand. Side. By. Side.
But the Gershwins! she shouts now as she dashes along past the shops, pulling him in her wake, rain all over their faces and his bare knees numb with the rain, her hand holding his all paint and the smell of the stuff she uses to try and wash it off. In the rain, in the middle of dull Holborn, with the people and the cabs and the buses going past and the shabby weather round them, she is singing above his head and the words are about how they’re writing songs of love, but not for her. A lucky star’s above, but not for her.
What, if anything, did Mark remember of all this, more than fifty years after it happened?
He remembered the blur of a grey London day and his hand in his mother’s hand.
He remembered she was wearing a coat whose cuff was folded back.
He remembered the feel of the cuff of this coat as they moved, as it rubbed against his wrist.
Say that the line we walk is very fine
Mark sat on the park bench, way in the future. Last week he’d read in the paper about the twenty-fourth copycat suicide in a French telecom company, where suicide was now being treated as a contagion.
What about that, then, Faye?
Say that the concept’s part of our design
On the one hand, nothingness; on the other, birds that sang in their sleep.
On the one hand, nothing; on the other, a feeble attempt at it, rhyme.
On the one hand, nothing; on the other, but here’s something, Faye, I read it in a book and I knew you’d like it. It’s about the song called For Me and My Gal. It took three grown men to write that song. And one of the three was Jewish, well, maybe more than one was, I can’t remember, but this one definitely was. And he fell in love with a girl and wanted to marry her, and she wanted to marry him too. So he takes her to the rabbi, to get married in the synagogue, this was in New York, and the rabbi says to her, are you a good Jewish girl, my child? and she says o yes, your worship, I am that, and he says to her, what was your mother’s full name, my child? And she says, my mother’s name was Emma Cathleen Bridget Hannigan Flaherty O’Brien, your worship. And the rabbi sent them away with a flea in their ear. So they went and got married at City Hall instead. Anyway, the girl’s name was Grace, and Grace’s favourite song all her life was this one her husband had helped write, and when she died he had the title of it engraved on her headstone. For Me and My Gal.
The end.
Nice one, Faye, what do you say?
Say that your own heart’s keeping time for mine
He sat forward on the bench. He stood up. Half past four.
He left the park.
He walked past a pub, caught sight of his reflection in the glass of its window.
Old man.
The front door of the Lees’ house was wide open. A girl with a clipboard and a man carrying a camera rig were standing in the doorway. The cameraman was gesticulating at a man in a van parked at the kerb. The girl with the clipboard was speaking to Jen Lee, who was also in the doorway and who, just at that moment, caught sight of Mark at the foot of the steps and looked away as if either she had no idea who Mark was or she was making it clear she didn’t want to have to deal with him now.
Hello!
Mark looked down.
It was the child, the Bayoude child.
Oh, hello, he said.
I remember you, she said.
I remember you too, Mark said. Something happening?
It’s Channel 4, she said.
Right, Mark said. How’s your dad and mum?
They’re very well, thank you, the child said. They got your nice card saying thank you for the book and everything. We have it up all the time, on the mantelpiece, in the front. It is an honour kept only for very special cards.
That’s lovely, Mark said. I’m honoured.
Yes, you are, the child said.
Oh, hello Mark, Jen called down now. How are you?
She was free; the clipboard girl had come down the steps to the van and was unloading a heavy-looking tripod. The cameraman had disappeared, probably inside.
I don’t think they’ll need to speak to you, she said. I think we’re pretty much giving them what they’re after.
Good, Mark said. Well. I was just passing. I was just up at the park for the afternoon, and was just, you know, passing.
Right, Jen said. Well, if you’ll excuse me. Lovely to see you. You do look well.
She went back through the door into the hall.
What did you do in the park? the child said. Did you go to the Observatory? Did you go to the Planetarium?
Yes to the first and no to the second, Mark said.
Were you at the Observatory all afternoon? the child said.
No, I spent some of it sitting on a bench talking to my mother, Mark said.
On the phone? the child said.
In my head, Mark said. She’s long dead, my mother.
Oh. I knew that, the child said.
Forty-seven years dead last week, Mark said.
That actually happens to be longer than both my parents have even been alive, the child said.
Last Thursday, to be exact, Mark said.
That makes it sound like it was last Thursday that it happened, the child said.
In some ways it was, Mark said. Just last Thursday. Directly before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ever heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis?
No, but it sounds serious, the child said.
Oh, it was, very serious, then, Mark said.
Mark took the folded pieces of paper out of his pocket, made sure the one he was putting back in was Miles’s handwritten note, and held the magazine article out to the child.
Do you think you could slip this under his door for me? he said.
The child nodded, sure.
She ran into the house.
Half a minute later she skimmed out the front door and down the steps again.
They sent me out in case I disrupt the filming, she said. And I tried to just go up anyway but Mrs. Lee is sitting on the stairs and I couldn’t get past.
Oh, Mark said. Well. It doesn’t matter.
But I can give it to someone who can get it in for you later, the child said.
Great, Mark said.
And Mrs. Lee says to tell you they might want to speak to you after all, the child said, because when Celia, who is what is called the producer, found out you were here the night it happened she decided that therefore it would be an interesting angle.
I’ve no wish, Brooke, to speak to anybody about anything right now, Mark said.
Right then Celia the producer appeared at the door and stood there shading her eyes down the stree
t, as if looking for someone. Mark turned his back, made a face at the child. The child nodded, jerked her head to show him which way to go. She ducked down a passageway to their right, into a break between the houses. Mark followed.
As they came round the corner and down the steps through the passageway the noise level rose. There were quite a lot of people standing around at the fence below the backs of the houses, and more people standing and sitting on the grass across by the modern flats. There were so many it resembled a local fête, or an impromptu protest or campsite. There were several different-sized tents pitched on the grass, Mark counted them. Nine.
The child introduced him to a Scottish woman who had, it seemed, been coordinating food deliveries to the window by means of an amateur-looking pulley system slung between some of the windows on the back of the row of houses. She shook his hand. She was very interested to hear that he’d been present at the original dinner party.
They’ve stopped feeding him anything but meat via the house now, she said. It’s cruel. We had to do something. Finally he’s eating fruit again, and fresh vegetables, thank goodness. People are coming here with things they’ve cooked, too, for him, but just in case, because you never know how folk are, we’re only sending up fresh raw stuff or things we know are okay, things we can vouch for the safety of.
Mark looked at the rickety zigzag of the pulley system, and at the huge posters the other people living on the crescent had put up in their windows.
GO AWAY
THIS IS PRIVATE LAND
DON’T YOU HAVE
HOMES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
We tend to send the basket up at the same time every day, she said. You might think there are a lot of people here now, but last weekend at the one o’clock basket we had a hundred and fifty waiting to see the hand come out.
The one o’clock basket? Mark said.
Uh huh, Anna said.
She smiled.
Just the hand? Mark said. You never see his face?
He has the blind down low, see? she said.
She pointed at the window behind which, presumably, Miles was.
And at ten to one every day, Anna said, we get access to the upper flat next door, the people are very kind, the Gispens, there’s Mrs. Gispen over there, look—
She waved, and a middle-aged woman leaning on the bonnet of a car waved back.
—and at one o’clock exactly we activate the pulley and swing the basket down and over, and he opens the window and puts his hand, his arm, out and takes what he wants out of the basket, Anna said.
Wow, Mark said. Who’s paying for the provisions and everything?
When she saw him getting his wallet out she sent him over with Brooke to a teenage girl and a thin and beautiful older woman, both sitting on a rug on the grass outside one of the tents. Someone had pinned a piece of paper above the door of the tent with the words Smokers’ Area on it; they were both smoking. They were interested to hear that Mark had been one of the original guests—even the morose teenage girl, who looked as if a state of being interested in things might constitute a severe life-change.
The girl’s name was Josie, Brooke told him. She had constant access to the house. She’d deliver the note under the door.
Would you? Mark said.
Yeah. No sweat, she said.
The woman sounded very upper class. She introduced herself as the acting camp treasurer.
I’ve only £30 on me in cash right now, Mark said, but I can nip to a machine and get a little more, if that’d be a help.
The treasurer told him they’d had so many offers of donations recently that they were joking about getting a PED.
What’s a PED? Mark asked.
Pin Entry Device, the posh woman said.
Chip & Pin thing, the teenage girl said flicking at the ashy end of her cigarette with a finger.
A small girl was kicking a football against a sign that said No Ball Games. A group of women of all ages were sitting in a circle, knitting round a camping stove. A good-looking man was cooking what looked and smelled like paella in a huge pan over another stove. Three dogs sat nearby, watching. A man came over with a tray of cups of milky tea and offered Mark one.
They’re good as gold, the dogs, he said, though nobody seems to own them, and we get all manner of birds and squirrels, all from the park, I’ve never seen so much wildlife, even the odd parrot, and there’s a fox that comes at night and all, pretty tame, and I’ve never seen a fox and dogs that don’t go for each other’s throats, but they haven’t. Some of them, the more hippy ones here, say it’s because Milo attracts animals to him, like St. Francis. But it’s the cooking and the bin bags, I’d say. Beautiful, the fox I saw. A big red. Came right up to the edge of the grass.
Mark asked the man how long he’d been camping here.
Three weeks at the weekend, the man said. I was a day tripper for three before that. Then I thought, well, this is interesting, isn’t it? I wanted to see what was going to happen. I was worried every time I went home that I’d miss something. What if something happened and I wasn’t here to see it? So my son, that’s him there, said, look, Dad, here’s the sleeping bag. Don’t know how much longer we’ll get away with it (he nodded at the signs in the windows). It’s not like we’re noisy or anything. We’re good as gold. They’ve tried to rout us three times regardless, twice with the police. But I’m here till the end.
Just one thing, if I may, Mark said. It’s Miles, his name. Not Milo.
Yeah, I know, Anna’s always going on about that too. But Milo’s better, Milo’s got something about it, hasn’t it? the man said. It’s catchier. It’s catching on round the camp, Milo, where Miles sounds a bit, well, wet. A bit middle class, you know?
But his name’s Miles, Mark said.
When the man heard that Mark had been at the original dinner party he got very excited.
Everybody’ll want to know this, he said. It’s like real contact. It’s the one thing. I mean, we even sent him up a laptop in the basket one day, but he sent it back. Untouched. We’re, like, starved, really. You’re, like, one degree of separation.
He went loping off to gather everybody in the camp together to come and hear Mark tell them what it was like to really know Milo. Mark took his chance and headed back towards the passageway between the houses.
Best if you go the other way, the child at his elbow said, because the TV people are at the front of the house now, filming the parking spaces.
Mark waved goodbye to the man. Forty people waved, shouted happy friendly goodbyes.
He asked the child to take him to a cash machine. He withdrew a hundred pounds.
For the treasurer, he said. Or give it to that nice Scottish lady. Keep it safe. Ten for yourself for being the messenger, what do you say?
No thank you, Mr. Palmer, the child said. I’m not needing any money.
The child waved him down the escalator at the DLR.
Regards to your parents, he called up as he went.
Regards to yours too, the child called back.
But
(my dear Mark)
as promised
is very occasionally a preposition but is mostly a conjunction, and the word conjunction, according to my Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, means:
connection
union
combination
simultaneous occurrence in space and timea word that connects sentences, clauses and words one of the aspects of the planets, when two bodies have the same celestial longitude or the same right ascension
A conjunctiva is a [unreadable word] of the front of the eye, covering the external surface of the cornea and the inner side of the eyelid.
A conjuncture is a combination of circumstances, esp one leading to a crisis.
But but?
And and?
(So simple.)
Conjunctions.
And conjunctions?
(So simple.)
The way things connect.
there was no more talking out loud now, and there wouldn’t be neither, not for any money, not for anybody.
May Young was old. You’ll always be “young” now you’ve married me, Philip had whispered in her ear at the altar, June 7, 1947. But she was no fool, she knew exactly how old she was. She knew it was January. She knew it was Thursday. She knew very well who the prime minister was, thank you very much. She knew plenty, no thanks to them. And here she was, in a bed that wasn’t hers, now don’t go getting ideas, she didn’t mean anything funny by it, ha ha. She looked down and saw the thing, plastic bangle-shape thing round her wrist. 13.12.25. No date for the other yet. So there we are, chum. Proof. Still here.
But oh dear Jesus Mary and Joseph, was that thing there really hers, that old woman’s rough raw wrist there, coming out of the end of the sleeve of a nightie May didn’t know? Well, not intimately she didn’t. Imagine not knowing the very clothes you’re in. Finding yourself in pink when you wouldn’t be seen dead in pink. Finding yourself in a colour you’d never’ve said yes to in a million. Not even if you’d been in the dark. Old age doesn’t come its lone: old saying of her long-gone mother up with the angels since October ’64. Well, no, mother, old age didn’t come its lone, for look at this, it brought a whole other person with it, a stranger whose wrists were old, who wore pink when you’d never have chosen pink and anyone who knew the first thing about you would never have put you in pink.