by Ali Smith
Greenness.
Verge and leaf and grass, long seed-headed grasses.
The light gold, dark gold of the fields spreading back away from the sea, and the green of everything, green, dark green, the trees ahead down the road throwing long English shadows, like if you imagine a summer.
The patches of sunlight that come through them in the distance down the road, shining on its surface like a road shines after rain when the sun hits it.
Her inner grammar comes apart. Sentences don’t have to comply. It’s nice.
The swaying fullness of those trees.
Look what’s happened to her in just twenty minutes roaming about under an English summer sun.
She’s come over all thoughtful.
But that’s summer for you. Summer’s like walking down a road just like this one, heading towards both light and dark. Because summer isn’t just a merry tale. Because there’s no merry tale without the darkness.
And summer’s surely really all about an imagined end. We head for it instinctually like it must mean something. We’re always looking for it, looking to it, heading towards it all year, the way a horizon holds the promise of a sunset. We’re always looking for the full open leaf, the open warmth, the promise that we’ll one day soon surely be able to lie back and have summer done to us; one day soon we’ll be treated well by the world. Like there really is a kinder finale and it’s not just possible but assured, there’s a natural harmony that’ll be spread at your feet, unrolled like a sunlit landscape just for you. As if what it was always all about, your time on earth, was the full happy stretch of all the muscles of the body on a warmed patch of grass, one long sweet stem of that grass in the mouth.
Care free.
What a thought.
Summer.
The Summer’s Tale.
There’s no such play, Grace.
Don’t be fooled.
The briefest and slipperiest of the seasons, the one that won’t be held to account – because summer won’t be held at all, except in bits, fragments, moments, flashes of memory of so-called or imagined perfect summers, summers that never existed.
Not even this one she’s in exists. Even though it’s apparently the best summer so far of the century. Not even when she’s quite literally walking down a road as beautiful and archetypal as this through an actual perfect summer afternoon.
So we mourn it while we’re in it.
Look at me walking down a road in summer thinking about the transience of summer.
Even while I’m right at the heart of it I just can’t get to the heart of it.
—
Ten minutes later the road comes to an end in a tree glade with a couple of spaces for cars. To one side there’s an old church, a small stone one with a graveyard settling round it, leafy, its stones skewy under old trees. Its gate is open. Its door is open at the end of its path. Music is coming out of its open door.
Who’s playing Nick Drake in a church? Bryter Layter, pretty flute, very 1970s.
What trendy vicar thinks Nick Drake is good church music?
He’s right. Hymn to timeless melancholy. Hymn to English summer.
The graveyard is overgrown, full of bees and flowers. Grace goes up the path between the flowers’ nodding heads. She stands outside the door.
Someone inside the church is whistling along with the tune. There’s a light scraping noise. The noise stops. It starts again. It stops. That explains the workman’s van in the parking space.
There’s a light coloured stone in the wall above her head. The words carved into it say:
THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT
THE DAY IS AT HAND
LET US THEREFORE CAST OFF
THE WORKS OF DARKNESS
AND LET US PUT ON
THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT
ST PAUL : ROMANS
13 : 12
1 8 7 9
In days of old, she thinks. When knights were bold. And women weren’t invented. They wrapped their arms around a tree. And had to be contented.
That old rhyme. She didn’t even know she still had it in her head. Her mother and father, her father was running the new car in, a Sunday afternoon, she sat on the back seat eight years old and laughed because they were laughing and it was funny and lovely.
You had to think up something that didn’t exist in the times when knights were bold, and then make it rhyme. Her father was very good at thinking up rhymes though mainly the rhymes were about men doing things to women, things Grace didn’t really understand but knew were meant to be funny.
In days of old when knights were bold and bras were not for burning. They took them off the girls at night to help them with the churning.
Laughter.
In days of old when knights were bold and women didn’t work.
Her mother finished that one with the word berserk.
In days of old when knights were bold and girls were never blunt.
Don’t, her mother said laughing. Don’t dare.
What? I was only going to say take a punt, her father said.
Laughter.
Grace had laughed too, in the back. They both turned and looked at her laughing, exchanged a look with each other and laughed again but in a different way.
In days of old when knights were bold and women said don’t dare. They pulled the ones they wanted into bedrooms by the hair.
Laughter, laughter.
Long ago laughter.
Were knights ever bold? Grace, twenty two, feels a chill at her back from the stone church wall she’s leaning against.
A man in the church is bending to one of the long bench seats. He seems to be scraping it. Maybe he’s cleaning it. He hears someone behind him and he stops, looks up, sees her in the doorway reading the stone.
He switches his cassette machine off.
Hi, he says.
Oh hi, she says.
He’s about thirty, quite good-looking, a bit like James Taylor on the front of Sweet Baby James but with his hair tied back in a ponytail.
Don’t let me disturb you, she says.
I was just about to say the same, he says. I’m sorry I was playing music, I didn’t expect anyone to come in. Generally nobody does.
He puts the sander down, gestures to the little chapel behind him.
Please. Stay as long as you like, he says.
No, it’s okay, I don’t need to, she says, I’m not here because it’s a church or anything.
Ah, he says. Okay.
I was just walking past, she says, and the door was open and I heard the music, I like Nick Drake.
You’re a person of taste, he says.
What are you making? she says.
I’m restoring this pew, he says.
He tells her he’s been replacing a piece of snapped-off seat and is cleaning and sanding the place where the new piece joins the old. He wipes away some little shreds of sanded wood. There’s a slot in the seat where the wood is a different shade from the rest of the seat.
You can’t even see a join, she says. Except for the colour difference. That’s really good.
Not seeing the join, that’s the whole point, he says.
How do you get it to look the same as the rest of the seat? she says. Or do you just leave it like that and it’ll weather with time?
Little miracle, he says.
He holds up a tin of woodstain.
He puts it down, takes a cigarette from behind his ear and offers it to her.
That’s okay. It’s your only one, she says.
I’ve a tobacconist’s shop right here in my pocket, he says.
He opens a tin, starts rolling another one then and there.
Oh. Okay then. Thanks, she says. What a great thing it must be, to be able to make a seat like that look so goo
d.
The best thing is, it’ll last, he says. Decades. Simple pleasures.
Simple pleasures, she says. I was just walking along thinking about them. Well, about how I tend to wish pleasures were a lot simpler than they end up being.
He laughs.
He licks the cigarette paper along its edge.
Uh huh? he says.
Oh, you know, she says. How even when things are lovely it’s like we can’t help blocking them from ourselves. What a lovely summer it is and how, it’s like, no matter what we do, we can’t get near its loveliness.
He gestures to her to come over to the open door where he lights their roll-ups.
They stand in the cool stone shade.
Summer, he says.
Summer, she says.
You know it’s also what the lintel in a building gets called? he says.
What is? she says.
Summer. The most important beam, structurally, he says. Holds up a floor, a ceiling, both. There’s one, there, look.
He points behind them at a little balcony hanging as if in mid air.
Now that’s what I call a lovely summer, he says.
Usually with such a good-looking man Grace’d just be looking at him and pretending to listen and thinking her own thoughts. But she is surprised to find herself quite interested in what he just said.
I never knew that, she says.
It can take a great weight, a summer, he says. It’s why they also call horses that carry a great weight summers too.
Really? she says.
He raises his eyebrows, shrugs.
Are you making that up? she says. Take the piss out of a townie?
Nope, he says. I’m a townie myself.
Funny, she says leaning against an unexpected warm place in the stone on the threshold of the church and liking the feel of it on her arm. Like, how we overload summer most out of all the seasons, I mean with our expectations of it.
Nah, he says and nips the end of his rollie with a finger and thumb till it’s out. Summers can take it. That’s why they’re called summers.
He tucks his smoke back behind his ear, smiles at her.
Is it out? he says. More than once I’ve set fire to myself.
It’s out, she says. I think.
Want a coffee? he says. There’s Nescaff in the back, and a kettle.
All right, she says.
I’m John, he says.
Grace, she says.
Meet me at the old tomb shaped like a table, Grace. There’s just one like it, can’t miss it, round the back there, he says.
Okay, she says.
It’s got a skull on it, he says, but it’s quite friendly-looking. Just warning you. Case you’re squeamish.
I ain’t fraid of no skull, she says.
See you there, then, he says.
His name’s John Mison. He’s a joiner and specialist carpenter. That’s what it says on the side of the van parked at the gate; she can read it from here. She goes round the corner, walks between the curves in the grass, sits beneath the leaf dapple on the old flat-topped tomb.
He comes out carrying two mugs in one hand. He does have very nice hands. Workman hands. She takes the mug he gives her, turns it in her own hand. It’s a red straw design, a Humphrey mug. Drink it quick. Humphreys are slick. He sees her turning it and reading it.
Gave you the best mug, he says. Hope no sugar’s okay.
No sugar’s fine, she says.
Good, he says.
A butterfly goes past, a white one. Then another.
It’s a very preserve of butterflies out here, she says.
Sorry, a what? he says.
A very preserve of butterflies, she says. They only live a day. At least, that’s what my mum used to say about them.
A very preserve, he says.
That’s a line from a play I’m in, she says.
Pretty clever, that, to be preserved and only live a day both at once, he says.
That’s Charles Dickens for you, she says. His words, not mine. His very preserve of butterflies has preserved the butterflies in his book David Copperfield for, uh, a hundred and forty years or so.
That what you do? he says. Student?
Graduated, she says. I’m a bona fide actress.
Sorry, a what kind? he says.
She tells him she’s touring the region.
By yourself? he says.
She laughs.
I wish, she says. No, in a company. With a company.
He sits down in the grass with his back against the tomb, squints up at her.
Nice, to have company, he says.
Sometimes, yeah, she says.
Plays like what? he says.
She tells him about the Copperfield and the Shakespeare.
And in the Shakespeare I’m a queen whose husband goes mad and is convinced I’m having an affair with his childhood friend when I’m not, and because he’s a king he banishes his friend, puts me in prison, throws his baby daughter away, inadvertently kills a son with his bitterness, and then I die too, she says.
God almighty, he says.
And at the end, sixteen years later, I get wheeled out as a statue of myself, and lo and behold I come alive and I’m not dead after all, she says.
What about the dead kids? he says. Do they come back too?
Only one of them, she says. It’s a very uneasy play, really. Pretending to be a comedy.
So, were you alive all along then, and just faking being dead? he says.
That’s not completely clear from the text, she says. It’s possible. But it’s also supposed to be possible that a wonder of wonders is happening and a statue that’s been carved to look like me in later life comes to life, and is me in later life, though I’ve been dead for all those years. More magic than deception.
More magic than deception, he says. I like that.
Me too, she says. It feels pretty fine to act it. It’s powerful.
Like that story about the man who makes clay models, brings them alive, gives them knowledge and art and all that, teaches them how to use law, how to be fair with each other, he says.
I don’t know that story, she says.
Yeah, he’s kind of a flash trickster, he makes humans out of clay, then steals the powers of the powers that be to give to his clay people. Then the powers that be get angry with him giving their powers to his mere creations, so they chain him to a rock and every day he gets pecked by the beak of an eagle, here, he says.
He touches his side.
Or maybe here, he says.
He touches his other side.
Which side’s your liver on? he says.
Not sure, she says.
Both sides, to be safe, he says.
I’m getting pecked on both sides now, she sings. From up and down and still somehow.
They laugh.
Good voice, he says.
Thanks, she says.
I thought the Shakespeare play for the summertime was meant to be the one about fairies. Midsummer dream, he says.
Oh, the fairies, she says. The Winter’s Tale’s all about summer, really. It’s like it says, don’t worry, another world is possible. When you’re stuck in the world at its worst, that’s important. To be able to say that. At least to tend towards comedy.
He opens his arms wide to the leaves and the sky.
Can’t even imagine a winter right now, he says.
I bloody can, she says. Every second night I age years, winter summer winter summer. By the time I’ve finished this tour I’ll be a bloody hundred years old.
My dad swears that if you don’t wear your jacket inside out at midsummer out of respect to the fairies, the fairies’ll cause you mischief all year, he says.
Uh huh, she sa
ys. Right.
He does it every year, says his dad did it and his dad did it, and his dad before them, and that we have to respect the lore, he says.
See, that’s what I don’t get about old customs and the like, she says. Because, why would fairies want anyone to wear a jacket inside out? What’d be the point?
So they can steal your wallet more easily, he says. He’s got a market stall in town, my old dad. Fruit and veg. And if anyone comes to buy from him, and they’ve a bicycle, and they lean their bicycle up against his stall, well, he used to say to me, nip under there John when you see anybody doing it and give the bike a push so it falls over. Then he’d say to the person, now then, that’s the fairies telling you not to lean your bike up against my stall. His mate does it for him now, crawls under the tarp from the back of the boxes and gives the bike a push. Over it goes. The fairies. His mate’s seventy.
An old fairy, she says.
He laughs.
They can have my wallet if they want it, the fairies, he says. I don’t care.
Don’t you? she says.
Everybody’s on about money these days, he says.
He shakes his head.
And all you want from life is to make new wood look like old, she says. You’re a saint. Or a fool.
Neither, he says. Money always comes. Money isn’t what matters.
Very unfashionable, she says. A man out of time.
I know all I need to know about time, me, he says.
He points upwards.
What? she says.
Listen, he says.
Right then the bell in the church tower tolls three times.
How did you do that? she says.
Inner clock, he says.
He starts singing, to an old tune she recognizes:
There will be sunshine. And lots of sunshine. The polar icecaps. Are melting down.
She laughs.
That’s quite good, she says.
Get sun tan lotion, he sings. Here comes the ocean. We won’t have to go to Spain to get brown.
You could join our theatre group, she says.
No thanks, he says. I like being me, me.
He stretches out on the grass next to the old tomb with his head on the humped part.
Hope whoever’s under here won’t mind, he says. Hope they had a few good summers, whoever they are. Too poor for a stone. Or just didn’t need one, maybe. In the old days people didn’t. Because, who’s going to forget where your beloved’s buried? Nobody, not while it matters. You know, back in your, what’s his name, Dickens. Back in his time, there was a summer, middle of the 1800s, that was every bit as lovely as this one. But because it was just after they put the sewage system in, in London town I mean, and people all had toilets in their houses for the first time, water closets they called them, and the system took all the sewage straight into the river, and it poisoned the river, thousands and thousands of people, well, died.