by Ali Smith
A good useful year for you, she says. Something like one in five of all the millions alive in the world in 1922 belong to?
She raises an eyebrow, waits to see what Richard will say. He says nothing. He has no idea what he’s supposed to say.
British Empire, she says. And thinking my way round the world, doesn’t Mussolini start muscling up around now? Is any of this in that novel?
You know me, he says. I might’ve missed it. I’m not the world’s most attentive reader.
And closer to home, 1922, the killing of Michael Collins, she says.
Of course, Richard says trying to remember who Michael Collins is.
Think about it, Paddy says. Ireland in uproar. Brand new union. Brand new border. Brand new ancient Irish civil unrest. Don’t tell me this isn’t relevant all over again in its brand new same old way.
She closes her eyes.
And maybe also remind Terp about Wilson, she says. That’d please him, even more assassination. I mean Henry Wilson, you know who he was?
Uh, Richard says.
Light Brigade-ist, Boer War commander, First World War Chief of Imperial General Staff, staunch Irish Unionist, and when the Republicans kill him outside his house it pours the petrol on the already lit fuse, the fuse on the Irish Civil War. But you knew all that, no? What else? (Paddy is off, she’s flying.) 1922. Year when everything that was anything in literature fractured. Fell to pieces. On Margate Sands.
Absolutely, he says blankly.
What I’m saying is, she says. All this on a plate, and a gift of a story. Real people in the same place by chance, and not knowing, not meeting. Passing each other so close. Inches. That’s brilliant in itself. But one’s lost a brother to the war machine, the other’s nearly lost his mind to it. And what they write, it changes everything. They break the mould. They’re the modern. The likes of Zola and Dickens pass the baton to the likes of Mansfield and Rilke, the two great homeless writers, the great outliers. She was New Zealand, he was, what was he, Austrian? Czech? Bohemian?
He sounded pretty bohemian in the book, Richard says.
Not that kind of bohemian, she says. Listen. British Empire, German Empire, grinding round against each other like two giant millstones, all the millions already dead, and they’re about to grind the millions down all over again in the next war. It could be something, Doubledick. It could be really something. Tell Terp. Nostalgia for the empire’s back big-time. You could use that.
I hear you, he says. Yes.
And behind it all, Paddy says. Everything that a mountain can mean.
How do you mean, what a mountain can mean? Richard says.
God help them there in their Swiss village, she says, and those great jagged shark teeth of God all round them like they’re already on the tongue of a giant mouth. In Switzerland, the so-called neutral zone, and there in the air too, as airborne as Spanish flu, the spores of the next dose of imperial fascism.
Yes, Richard says. Right.
(Christ, he is thinking as he says it.
What’ll the world do without her?
What am I going to do without her?)
And that’s just the start, she is saying. There’ll be more. There’s much, much more. I’ll have a think. I’ll make some notes, shall I, Doubledick?
Richard fills with relief as physically as if someone has just turned on a warm showerhead somewhere inside him. He may well be leaking with relief. He looks down at his clothes to check he isn’t. He isn’t. He looks back up.
Thank you, he says. Paddy. You’re the best.
But I can’t do it all for you, she says.
No, no, I wouldn’t expect you to, he says.
He winks at her. She stays impassive, grave-faced.
You and your wants, she says. You’d have me sending you story research from beyond the grave, afterlife essays, Rilke this, Mansfield that, and even then you’d complain about the handwriting.
Paddy, he says.
You’ll need to do the thinking yourself, she says.
I’m useless, Pad, he says. You know that.
No, you’ve always been talented at the seeing of voice, she says.
Ha, he says.
(No wonder he loves her so much.)
But you’ll need to get tough, she says. Tougher than you are. You’ll need to be ready to tell Terp where to get off.
Make me those notes, Pad, he says.
You can always refer back to your old note pad, she says.
Old joke between them. They laugh like schoolchildren. The twin who let him in the front door earlier appears under the hall arch.
We think it’d be best if you maybe went, Richard, he says. Our mum’s looking a bit tired.
Working title? Paddy says.
She says it as if the twin’s not there. Richard ignores him too.
Same as the novel, he says. To persuade people it’s an adaptation of something a lot of people bought so it must be good.
And what’s the novel called? she says.
April, Richard says.
Ah, Paddy says. Of course. What a name for a book. April.
She closes her eyes. She suddenly does look very tired.
He pulls on one still-wet sock. He stands up without his shoes on, picks them up off the radiator and holds them by their backs.
She clenches a fist on the table.
The simple flowers of our spring are what I want to see again, she says.
Richard pulls one sodden shoe on. The cold against his foot makes him wince.
So this is what they mean when they say someone’s got cold feet, he says.
Stay as long as you like, she says with her eyes still shut. Make yourself some lunch. Plenty in the fridge.
Will I make you something? Richard says.
Oh God no, she says. I can’t eat anything.
We’ve already got it covered, thanks, Richard, the twin says.
She keeps her eyes shut. She waves her arm in the air above the table.
As long as you like, she says. And take those books with you when you go. Take all the volumes of the letters. There’s more, under M. On the shelves.
I’m not taking your books, Paddy, he says. There’s no way I’m taking your books.
It’s not like I’ll be needing them, she says. Take them.
Still 11.29.
Richard breathes in. It hurts.
That’s Katherine Mansfield’s fault.
He is just a little fearful that he’ll also start to somatize the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s leukaemia.
The story goes that Rilke went out into the rose garden he’d cultivated round the turret and picked some roses, because a beautiful woman from Egypt had arrived to visit him there and he wanted to welcome her with them. But a thorn on one of the stems got him in the hand or the arm. The little wound it made didn’t heal. His arm got infected. His other arm got swollen too. Then he died.
And he was a man who wrote a great many poems about roses – there’s an irony in that, even Richard can see that, though Rilke’s actually not a poet Richard has much read, not one he’d heard of till this year. Now that he’s perused a bit of Rilke online he’d have to say, if he was talking to Paddy, that he doesn’t really get it. How can a tree grow inside an ear? There isn’t room.
Rilke the man, though, sounds quite a charming little chancer, at least from the novel and the sites that Richard’s perused, in that whenever a lady came to visit him, he would ceremoniously stand in front of that lady at some point in the visit and read her a poem, and then he’d equally ceremoniously present her before she left with the poem he’d read to her, copied out in his handwriting and dedicated to her, and she’d go away from that tower thinking he’d written the poem especially for her. In reality the poems had maybe been written years before, and after Rilke died several ladies were very disappointed to find he’d recycled old poems on them, sometimes the same poem to several women.
But charm certainly opened a lot of doors for him, and Rilke apparent
ly wasn’t rich by any means but, being a poet, needed a lot of looking-after by patrons and matrons (could you also say matrons, or was that unfeminist? Would women be offended?). He particularly liked staying as a guest of rich people in grand palazzos and castles. Who wouldn’t?
But the rose thorn. The poems given to the ladies. The charm.
The story goes, etc.
It’s this kind of thing that Richard’s running away from, isn’t it?
Richard feels suddenly nauseous.
He might well be sick.
(Is that a symptom of leukaemia?)
He looks around him for a bin. He doesn’t want to throw up on such a well-kept platform.
In which case, his imaginary daughter says in his ear. You’re probably not going to throw up. You can’t think about whether it’s okay or not to be sick in a place if you’re really going to be it. And an ear is plenty big enough for a tree. A tree in the ear. A rose in the blood. Look where I live myself.
He checks the time again.
11.29.
Is that clock broken?
Is a single minute really this long?
Is the clock that’s broken the one inside him?
He goes out of the station and walks around the space at the front of it looking for something real to take his mind off some of the other realities.
There’s a tall stone structure over there, a war memorial maybe. He’ll go over and read the names of the dead on its sides.
But there are no names of the dead on it.
It says, instead, in gold letters on a plaque set into its stone:
MACKENZIE FOUNTAIN
GIFTED TO HIS NATIVE TOWN
BY
PETER ALEXr CAMERON MACKENZIE
COUNT DE SERRA LARGO
OF TARLOGIE
AND OPENED BY
THE COUNTESS DE SERRA LARGO
21st JULY 1911
It’s an old drinking fountain, one with no water in it.
He circles it a couple of times. He reads the sign again. How strange. Scotland meets Portugal, is it Portugal? or South America? He feels for his phone, to check.
No phone.
So he goes across to the coffee truck in front of the station.
Écossécoffee
Tak a cup o’
kindness yet
There’s no one at the hatch. He knocks on the corrugated metal of the side.
A woman comes through by sliding herself like a caterpillar over the front seats and thumping head first on to the floor. She looks quite annoyed that she’s had to when she stands up and appears at the hatch. She looks sleep-ruffled. She seems to be wearing a sleeping bag; she holds it up against her chest.
Yes? she says.
Busy today, he says.
She looks at him blankly.
Did I wake you? he says.
Are you insinuating I’m sleeping in this van? she says.
He blushes.
No, he says.
So, what can I do you for? she says.
She is not as young as he first thought. She is dark round the eyes, her face more lived-in, more used-looking. Fifty? She sees him placing her and gives him a sarky look.
I was wondering if you could direct me to a public library anywhere near here, he says. I’ll bet you’re relieved that water fountain isn’t working. I bet it eats into your profits. The plaque on the side of it has interested me. I mean, what can Serra Largo ever have had to do with here?
The library’s closed, the woman says.
Richard shakes his head, doleful face.
What a time we’re living through, he says. What kind of a culture is it that wants its people not to know? What kind of a culture wants some people to have less chance to access information and knowledge than the people who can afford to pay for it? It’s like something out of a totalitarian sci-fi. It’d have made a good film back in the 70s, I was a bit of a filmmaker then. For my sins. I still am. But it’s different days, now, oh, very. Nobody would’ve believed these days possible if we’d told them then what would be happening now. I mean, this is Ragnarok.
No. It’s Kingussie, she says.
No, Richard says. I mean it’s the end of the world. I mean the closure of the libraries.
It’s not like closed closed, the woman says. It’s closed on a Tuesday.
Oh, Richard says.
Open tomorrow, the woman says.
Ah, Richard says.
Anything else? the woman says.
No, no, Richard says. No, thank you. Unless –
The woman raises her eyebrows, waiting.
I don’t suppose you’ve got such a thing as a lemon, he says.
A lemonade? the woman says.
No, a lemon, just an ordinary lemon, he says.
No, I’m sorry, we’ve nothing like that, the woman says.
Well, okay, I’ll take that lemonade, then, he says.
No, we don’t actually have any lemonade, the woman says. We don’t stock lemonade.
Oh. Okay. Then I’ll have an espresso, Richard says.
I’m sorry, I’ve no hot water on the van today, the woman says.
Ah. Well. An apple juice, have you got an apple juice? he says.
No, the woman says.
Right, Richard says. Then just a bottle of water, please.
The woman laughs.
Always makes me laugh, people wanting to buy bottled water in Scotland, she says.
Still, Richard says.
Always, the woman says.
Or sparkling if that’s all you’ve got, he says.
Oh. We don’t do water, the woman says.
Well, what’ve you got? he says.
We’ve actually not got any stock on the van today at all, the woman says.
Why are you open, then? he says.
He gestures to the hatch.
Fresh air, the woman says. Help yourself.
She’s about to go.
Sublime, the mountains there, Richard says quick. But sublime on a human scale. Compared to, say, somewhere like Switzerland.
Well, I suppose, the woman says.
It must be nice living among mountains of the less awesomely sublime, more friendly type, he says.
Friendly? the woman says. You’re easy fooled. The friendly Cairngorms. A million and one horrific ways to die up there.
Really? Richard says.
Exposure, storms, blizzards, the woman says. Wind tunnel that can blow you head over heels into snowdrift you’ll never get out of. Sudden snowstorms, I mean any month of the year. Even the high summer. White-outs, avalanches. People getting lost when the weather suddenly changes. Mist coming down out of nowhere on days when it can be beautiful weather just a few miles away, I mean, people can be sunbathing at Loch Morlich and it can be frostbite and ice up there, and no shelter for miles mind you, no houses, no roads, the snow can fall very fast indeed, and it’ll tire you out to be just trying to walk through deep snow, and up to your waist it can be. And in the spring, when there’s the thaws, the thin-looking streams that seem like nothing can get very big and powerful, and there’s also the danger of people putting their whole bodyweights on what they think is the ground but is really actually melty ice over very deep water, aye, there’s been more than a few drownings that way, and the kind of wind can be blowing in April and May that actually pulls bushes and little trees up by the roots and flings them at you.
Gosh, Richard says.
The woman looks at him with wryness in her eyes.
Gosh, he says again.
Aye, the woman says. Beautiful, right enough.
Yes. Well. Thanks, he says.
He turns to go.
And it was for the horses, the woman says. For the cows. Local livestock.
I’m sorry? Richard says.
The MacKenzie Water Fountain, the woman says. People say the water used to shoot up out of it to quite a height.
Oh, Richard says. Right.
Right you are, the woman says. Cheers. All the bes
t.
She manoeuvres herself, still in the sleeping bag, back into the front seat compartment of the van.
Richard stands for a bit in the empty car park. Then he goes back into the station.
11.37.
He goes through towards the platforms. He stands on the empty platform again.
He contemplates crossing the bridge and standing on the other side.
A bit of a filmmaker.
The sound of his own voice in his ears saying stuff disgusts him.
For my sins. The stuff he says disgusts him. What does Serra Largo have to do with here?
He breathes in. It hurts.
He breathes out. It hurts.
The next time a train comes through this station and stops here, he will slip down in the gap between it and the platform, place himself across these clean well-kept tracks next to the wheels and let the carriage he’s got himself under put an end to him by the weight of its unstoppable going-forward.
Oh nothing nothing nothing.
The mountains rise like stilled waves above the man at the station and the houses of the town.
An obituary appears in the Guardian about a week after she dies. It’s been written by one of the twins. Patricia Heal née Hardiman 20 September 1932–11 August 2018.
She’d once been called Patricia Hardiman. He had no idea.
They didn’t think to call her Paddy, the name she used in the credits, and they listed only the two most well-known of the seventeen productions they’d made together: Sea of Troubles (1971) and Andy Hoffnung (1972), two critically well-received and influential early experimental dramas shown in the BBC Play for Today TV slot; Sea of Troubles caught the first voicings of what would become the Northern Irish peace movement, and Andy Hoffnung was one of the earliest UK TV drama productions to take the first steps towards articulating what had happened to people three decades earlier in the Holocaust.
Sea of Troubles: from Beatrix Potter to petrol bombs. Up until then there’d been almost nothing about Northern Ireland; Whicker had made a series just a few years before and it’d been almost completely unbroadcast. Too risky. For Sea of Troubles they’d made the camera move as the human eye moves among real people, via fragments of the life of the real places they lived and the everyday things they said, keeping them anonymous and protected by never filming their faces, filming instead the things around them as they talked, catching the ways they used their hands, the smoke rising from their cigarettes, the things there on their kitchen tables or mantelpieces: rosary, picture of a monarch on horseback, pattern on a table’s Formica, illustration of a sailor on a packet of John Player’s, ashtray full or empty, cup, saucer, kettle on a stove, scrubbed-clean ceramic sink, sweetpeas through a window growing up a trellis, hair in a curler under a headscarf, rust on the corrugated iron of a blockade, police truncheon hanging on a hook by a back door, old cloth pennant folded neatly and placed behind a brick in a farm outbuilding.