Spring

by Ali Smith

  Intelligent machine, the girl said.

  That’s me, Brit said, sitting down in the seat the girl had kept for her.

  There is a woman sitting at the table across the aisle from them who looked horrified when the girl said that the spill of water on the table was full of life.

  There are people on the train all round them looking at screens, holding screens up to their ears and noses, holding them in their laps.

  Instead, she and the girl have spent the last while playing what the girl calls Lucky 13.

  The game is, I ask thirteen questions, then we both have to answer them. Right? the girl said.

  Right, Brit said.

  What’s your favourite colour, song, food, drink, thing to wear, place, season, day of the week. What animal would you be if you were an animal. What bird. What insect. What one thing are you really good at. How would you most like to die.

  Oh, that last question’s a bloody depressing question, Brit said. Who invented this game?

  I did, the girl said. And that last question’s precisely why the word lucky’s in the title of the game.

  What’s lucky about having a favourite way to die? Brit said.

  If you don’t know how lucky you are to be even discussing the chance of a choice, the girl said, then all I can say is, you’re really really lucky.

  Here are the girl’s answers:

  Favourite colour turquoise.

  Favourite two songs Self by No Name (Brit’s never heard of No Name, but she’s not exactly got time to be up on the music scene these days) and Ooh Child by Nina someone (Brit doesn’t know that one either).

  Favourite food pizza.

  Favourite drink orange juice at breakfast time.

  Favourite thing to wear the jeans embroidered with flowers she got for her birthday this year.

  Favourite place home.

  Favourite season spring.

  Favourite day of the week Friday.

  If she was an animal she’d be a pink fairy armadillo (apparently there is such a thing).

  If she was a bird she’d be one of the robins that sing in the middle of the night in December.

  If she was an insect she’d be a dragonfly because of what she knows about their eyes.

  The penultimate question is a trick question, she says, because most people are good at way more than just the one thing and this is supposed to get them thinking about it.

  And she would most like to die before anybody else that she loves, so she won’t have to miss them.

  The woman opposite them starts clipping her fingernails with a little clipper, like the train is her private bedroom or bathroom.

  Someone else is talking so loud on a phone it’s like the train’s his private office.

  The girl thumbs through the notebook she was reading when Brit sat down. Hot Air, it says in Sharpie in capitals on the cover. A geography project, maybe science. Convection. She is writing something down in it and singing an old folk song to herself. Brit leans back in the seat and she hears, with her eyes closed, the clip of the nails, the voice of the man, and underneath both the girl singing the old song. Fresh are the roses culled from the garden, oh don’t deceive me, oh never leave me. Are they still teaching kids that old song at school? Such a happy sounding song about deception. I suppose it’s because the person singing it isn’t actually the maiden who’s been done over, she thinks.

  But pink fairy armadillo.

  Dragonfly.

  Bird singing in December.

  There is no way this is the same child people were saying walked into – and untouched out of – a really nasty sex house in Woolwich.

  Here’s the first of my Lucky 13 for you, Brit says. Question 1. Tell me about your family.

  No, the girl says. Next question.

  Your mother, Brit says. Tell me something about her. Or your father.

  That’s private, the girl says. But I can tell you something that’s nothing to do with all that.

  What? Brit says.

  When I was on that last train to King’s Cross there was a boy opposite me with his mates and he was reading out emojis off his phone, and he said this:

  Loveheart loveheart loveheart.

  Loveheart loveheart.

  Loveheart.

  Loveheart.

  My next question, then, Brit said. Got a boyfriend?

  Private private private, the girl says. Private private. Private. Private. You?

  Maybe, Brit says. What about your brothers or sisters?

  That’s private, the girl says. You?

  Only child, Brit says. That thing your mother said, about the big and the small, it’s really helpful. It’s really well said. Tell me another good thing your mother says about life.

  Uh-uh, the girl says.

  Yeah, my family life’s private too, Brit says. But how do we get to be friends, or even know each other at all, without you telling me a bit about what your life’s like and me swapping with you what mine is like?

  Making friends with a machine, the girl says. No way. It’s quicksand.

  Wait, I’ve an idea, Brit says. How about: I make up a story about someone, a member of my family. Then you do it too for one of yours. I’ll tell you the story of why my mother called me Brittany.

  Brittany like the place? the girl says.

  Yep, Brit says. But everybody calls me Brit.

  I’m a place too, the girl says. City in Italy. You’re actually almost more than one place. You’re nearly two different places. Britain and Brittany.

  That’s because – uh – my mother, get this, I’m not lying, is a geography textbook, Brit says. Don’t laugh. It’s true. My mother spent a lot of her early life in a school cupboard. She was in there for ages, longing for the cupboard to be opened. She was desperate to be opened herself, too, and read, especially by someone who loved what she’d tell them, someone who’d learn things from all the facts she had in her about the world. She was bursting with maps, with placenames and the coordinates of countries and cities, and things about trees, and cloud formations, she could hardly contain all her facts and figures about rivers, valleys, mountains, plains, seas, erosion, all that.

  Is she not a geography book any more, then? the girl says.

  Brit thinks of her mother at home right now.

  24-hour news channel. Wonder what’ll happen.

  She’s retired now, she says. She’s, uh, a bit outdated, as texts go.

  It seems a shame, the girl says. Your story’s kind of a tragedy.

  It is, Brit says.

  As she says it she realizes she is finding it hard not to be moved to tears herself by her own ridiculous story about her mother.

  She widens her eyes to stop herself.

  She is also feeling a kind of shame. Her mother, a silly story. Her mother with all her complex shifts of colour through her face and neck whenever she feels anything. Her mother with all the maddening habits that Brit knows aren’t maddening at all, are just maddening to Brit because Brit’s her daughter.

  The very thought of her mother as a book open in someone’s hands, held with kindness, makes Brit want to cry.

  How did she get out of the cupboard in the first place? the girl is saying. How does a book give birth? How did a book give birth to you? Why aren’t you a book? What about your father? Was he another geography book? Was he a different kind of book, a history book? Maths? Poetry? What does that make you?

  No, it’s your turn now, Brit says. To tell me a story about someone. How about a mother. I told you about mine. It doesn’t have to be your own mother. Just any mother will do.

  The girl shakes her head.

  My story is lost at sea, she says. The end.

  Your mother? Brit says.

  The girl looks at her dolefully.

  Your father? Brit says.

  The girl looks at her dolefully.

  That’s terrible, Brit says.

  The girl looks at her dolefully.

  Is it true? Brit says.

&nb
sp; True to what you want to hear me say, the girl says. But the real story is, I’m not going to tell you anything. You can sit in the comfy plastic body-moulded armchair with integrated drinking hole for your Coke in the warm multiscreen cineplex of your own preconception for as long as you like, and think what you like while you do.

  Wow, Brit says. You’re off the scale. Where did you learn to talk like that?

  Your turn again, the girl says. Go on. Surprise my preconceptions.

  Yeah, but your story was way too short, Brit says.

  It’s a short story, the girl says.

  Then Brit and the girl move to a two-seater so a couple and their kids can all sit together; the family gets off at Newcastle and the train quietens down again. A ticket inspector comes through the carriage. He tells Brit he won’t fine her this time but not to do it again. He asks her where she got on. He lets her buy a ticket at an unpenalized rate with her card and he gives her a smile as he leaves.

  He doesn’t even look at the girl, never mind ask whether she’s got a ticket or who’s going to pay for it.

  Brit raises her eyebrows at the girl when she hears the door swish shut behind him.

  Smooth move, Florence, she says.

  I didn’t do anything, the girl says.

  Have you actually got a ticket? Brit says.

  Sometimes I am invisible, the girl says. In certain shops or restaurants or ticket queues or supermarkets, or even places when I’m actually speaking out loud, like asking for information in a station or something. People can look right through me. Certain white people in particular can look right through young people and also black and mixed race people like we aren’t here.

  That’d explain how you got into our boss’s office last month, Brit says.

  It is strangely easy to bring it up now that they’re both facing the same way. When the girl was sitting opposite her something had stopped Brit from asking. But now that they’re both not looking directly at each other, both looking ahead, she’s able to say outright,

  it was you, yeah?

  The girl turns away to the window humming an old song again, Ash Grove this time, flicking through her notebook.

  It explains how you got past recep, that’s what we call reception, and through the scans, Brit says. Which is not supposed to be humanly possible. But now I get it. You were invisible.

  The girl looks out the window.

  What I want to know most is this, Brit says. We all want to know this. I mean all of us at work. Because there’s a lot we’d like to say to him, and we never get the chance. What did you say to him?

  The girl keeps her back turned towards Brit. She says nothing.

  Well, I don’t know if you know this, Brit says. But whatever it was you said to him. It meant they really cleaned the place up. They brought cleaners in that evening and they steamcleaned the toilets. It was quite a day, that day, after they cleaned up in there, Brit says. There’s only ever been another day like it in the centre, according to my friend Torquil, when all the people, staff included, were so, uh, I can’t think of the word.

  Clean, the girl says.

  Yeah, Brit says.

  Is that all they did, the girl says without turning round. Clean the toilets up.

  She says it like it’s not a question. But Brit is now 99.99% certain she is on a train with the girl who outwitted the system.

  She plays it calm. She changes the subject. She taps the school notebook in the girl’s hand.

  Hot Air, Brit says. School thing.

  Not directly, the girl says. This is for what my, someone I know, gave me, because I sometimes have ideas and they thought I should write them down.

  The girl shows Brit, but only for a fraction of a second, a flash of the inside front page, at the top of which, under the underlined words Your Hot Air Book, someone has written the words RISE MY DAUGHTER ABOVE, with some lines of handwriting beneath.

  Can I look a bit more slowly at it? Brit says.

  No, the girl says.

  What else is written in it? Brit says.

  Hot air, the girl says. Private hot air.

  A voice announces over the loudspeaker system that they’re soon to arrive in the place called Berwick-upon-Tweed.

  Scotland any minute, Brit says.

  But I don’t have a passport, the girl says.

  You don’t need one, Brit says. Not for this border. Not yet, anyway.

  How do you mean not yet? the girls says.

  Well, Scotland and England, Brit says. Goes without saying.

  What does? the girl says.

  Different countries, Brit says.

  Will we be able to see it? the girl says.

  Scotland? Brit says.

  The difference, the girl says.

  She jams herself against the window.

  Actually I think we may already be in Scotland, Brit says.

  I didn’t see any border, the girl says. Did you see it? I don’t see anything different.

  There was a time in history, Brit says, when passports didn’t exist at all, for anywhere. People could go anywhere. It’s not actually that long ago.

  Did your father the history book tell you that? the girl says.

  My father, Brit says. A history book. When I tell my mother that. She’ll laugh like a drain.

  The girl turns in her seat and starts to talk.

  If, instead of saying, like, this border divides these places, we said something like – like about your mother being a geography book – what about if we said, my mother is two different countries and my father is a border.

  You’d never get away with that, Brit says. Mothers would really complain they were being blocked off. Fathers would declare they were going to expand till they became the size of both the countries on either side of them. Whole new kinds of divorce proceedings would take place.

  Are your parents divorced? the girl says.

  That’s private, Brit says.

  What if, the girl says. Instead of saying, this border divides these places. We said, this border unites these places. This border holds together these two really interesting different places. What if we declared border crossings places where, listen, when you crossed them, you yourself became doubly possible.

  You’re being naive, Brit says. In so many ways.

  I’m twelve, the girl says. What do you expect? But listen. Just say. Say. Instead of having to prove who you are with a paper booklet or by showing a screen your eye or the print in your finger or the information about your face. Instead, you could prove who you are by what you see with your eyes and by what you make with your hands and –

  And by the faces you can make with your face, Brit says. There’d be all-out war. The Tongue-Roll wars would happen.

  What are the Tongue-Roll wars? the girl says.

  The wars against people who can roll their tongues due to a genetic disposition, Brit says. Attacked by the people who genetically can’t. And/ or vice versa. One way or another there’d be war. Can you roll your tongue?

  The girl tries. Brit laughs, and shows her.

  Yeah, but you being able to do it and me not being able to doesn’t make me want to go to war with you, the girl says.

  Believe me, Brit says. It can come down to something as genetically random as that.

  What can? the girl says.

  Hatred, Brit says.

  The girl sighs.

  Brittany, you are vetoing all my imaginative plans, she says.

  Course I am, Brit says.

  It isn’t fair, the girl says.

  That’s correct, Brit says.

  You are being pessimistic, the girl says.

  I’m being truthful, Brit says.

  Inhuman, the girl says.

  It’s my job, Brit says.

  We can change your job, the girl says.

  Can’t teach an old machine new tricks, Brit says.

  Built-in obsolescence, the girl says. You’ll rust. But don’t worry, because when you do, we’ll oil you and adapt
you and upgrade you to a new way of working.

  We’ll see about that, Brit says.

  We’ll see, we’ll see, with any luck like dragonflies from all the angles, the girl says. We’ll begin again. We’ll revolve.

  You mean we’ll evolve, Brit says.

  No, I mean revolve, the girl says. As in revolution. We’ll roll forward to a new place.

  You mean revolt, Brit says. You’re talking about revolting.

  I mean revolve, the girl says.

  No you don’t, Brit says.

  I do. We’ll turn it round, the girl says. We’ll do it all differently.

  She turns her back on Brit in her seat, turns back to the window and stares out into the dark like she’s trying to make out what some far lights are.

  It’s not long after this that the girl falls asleep, just falls asleep in a moment, like a young cat or young dog might, with a sleep that simply stops her, drops her into it, against Brit, on a train going through the darkness in a whole other country, somewhere Brit knew existed but she’s never been.

  I mean, look at Brittany Hall.

  She literally can’t believe her own life.

  She is clever again.

  She is witty and entertaining.

  She is on the ball, too.

  She should be at work. It’s a Monday.

  Instead, no hedges, no underworld, here she is, and a child – not just any child, but a real child who also happens to be the legendary child – is not just sitting next to her but has fallen so completely asleep against her right arm that Brit feels more protective about somebody she doesn’t know, no relation, some stranger’s child she only met this morning, than she knew she could feel about anyone or anything.

  She reaches round and slides the Hot Air book out from under the girl’s arm. She opens it one-handedly, flicks through it.

  It is full of little written pieces in schoolgirl handwriting, like little stories.

  One is in the voice of lots of websites and social media sites. It is actually really funny and sharp. Brit has to stop herself shaking with laughing and waking the girl.

  One is like a lot of the far right and far left stuff that people say, and the girl has written it all in different sizes of writing, some bits in capitals. Though it’s naive, the kind of stuff a school student would write, it’s witty too, and it makes Brit think.

  Even a twelve-year-old girl can see through a lot of what’s happening in the world right now.