The Accidental

by Ali Smith

  She had what? She had physically shaken Eve and then she had stepped back, opened the front door, said a cheerful goodnight, shut the door behind her and gone out to sleep under the stars (well, actually under the roof of a Volvo parked in the drive, to be more measured about it).

  She had shaken Eve? Yes. Outrageous.

  Why had she shaken Eve like that? For no reason at all. For no reason Eve could think of. Eve had absolutely no idea.

  Who was the girl? She was something to do with Michael.

  How was Eve right now? She was very very awake.

  Was it a little bit too dark in this holiday house? Yes. It was unnaturally dark for summer. The windows of this house were far too small. The curtains were far too thick.

  In what way was the girl ‘something to do with Michael’? She was clearly his latest ‘student’.

  Was Michael pretending she wasn’t? Naturally he was:

  Michael: (already in bed, to Eve, as she takes off her clothes and gets ready for bed too) How did it all go?

  Eve: How did all what go?

  Michael: What kind of questions did she ask you? Eve: Did who ask me?

  Michael: What’s her name. Amber. Were they good ones?

  Eve: (deciding not to mention the humiliation of being shaken half an hour ago in the hall) How do you mean, exactly?

  Michael: You know. Genuine. Was she good? Is she clever? She seems quite clever.

  Eve: Well you should know.

  Michael: How do you mean?

  Eve: Well, she’s one of yours.

  Michael: One of my what?

  Eve: Your students.

  Michael: No she isn’t.

  Eve: Ah. Right.

  Michael: (turning over) She’s here to do some kind of Genuine interview, isn’t she?

  What is the latest publication sensation to take the literary world by storm? It’s the Genuine Article Series from Jupiter Press, a series of ‘autobiotruefictinterviews’ created by Eve Smart (42), who hit upon the original concept eight years ago when she published Genuine Article 1: The Story of Clara Skinner, a profile of real-life London barmaid Clara Skinner killed in the Blitz at the age of 38. (Other Genuine Articles feature an Italian POW, a cinema usherette, a fighter pilot and an infant evacuee.) Excitement over her most recent Genuine Article, The Story of Ilse Silber, has galvanized the former independent Jupiter Press, whose usual print-runs average five thousand and who have sold nearly forty thousand this spring alone of Silber and seen demand for the previous volumes rocket (one of the reasons for the spotlight purchase earlier this year of small press Jupiter by multi-conglomerate HarperCollins). ‘It certainly caught us out,’ says Amanda Farley-Brown, at only twenty-seven currently chief commissioning editor at Jupiter Press. ‘We are still reeling. We can’t believe our luck. We are crossing our fingers that Richard and Judy will feature a Genuine.’

  What are these books about? Each takes the ordinary life of a living person who died before his or her time in the Second World War and gives him or her a voice–but a voice that tells his or her story as if he or she had lived on. ‘I let them tell the story of an alternative aftermath–the story of how things could have been,’ says Smart.

  What’s so new about these books? Each of the slim volumes is written in Question & Answer format. The ‘speaker’ in The Story of Ilse Silber, a German-born woman, secretly Jewish but outwardly a good Nazi mother even awarded the special Mother’s Iron Cross by Hitler for giving birth to seven children (all of whom subsequently perished in allied bombing raids), is asked to describe the moment of her real-life death when her clothes caught fire in heavy shelling and she threw herself into the Wuppertal river. With the help of Smart’s questions she goes on posthumously to describe what happened when she dragged herself out of the river, dried herself off, healed her burns with the help of a local farmer and carried on with life for another thirty years.

  Why the Q&A gimmick? ‘It’s not a gimmick. Every question has an answer,’ says Smart.

  Don’t living relatives have something to say about Smart digging up their dead? ‘Usually relatives are delighted. They feel it is very positive attention,’ says Smart. ‘I always make it clear that the Genuine Articles are first and foremost fictionalization. But fiction has the unique power of revealing something true.’

  Have the critics finally caught on to Smart’s smartness? ‘Ingenious and moving’ (Times). ‘A book which makes the metaphysical as much part of the everyday as a teacup on a saucer on a scullery table in the year 1957’ (Telegraph). ‘Brilliant, profoundly atoning. A deeply assuaging read’ (Guardian).

  Is this ecstatic reception unanimous? ‘When will writers and readers finally stop hanging around mendacious glorified stories of a war which may as well by now have happened planets away from this one? Smart’s Genuine Articles are a prime example of our shameful attraction to anything that lets us feel both fake-guilty and morally justified. No more of this murky self-indulgence. We need stories about now, not more peddled old nonsense about then’ (Independent).

  What’s next? Speculations about whether Smart will seek a more lucrative publishing deal are rife; meanwhile, is she tucked away working on Genuine Article number 7? Who will she resurrect this time? Only Smart knows.

  What does Eve Smart (42) know? God only knows.

  Where was Eve Smart (42) right now? Lying next to Michael in bed in an insalubrious holiday house in Norfolk.

  No, I mean where was she with her next project? Please don’t ask.

  Why? She was as useless as a blunt pencil on the floor of the ‘elegant summerhouse with internet connection-point’ in the ‘mature garden’ of this ‘Tudor Farmhouse next to picturesque village on the Norfolk Broads’. The advert should have read ‘1930s swindle of a summer let off the Norfolk B roads, next to a near-slum full of houses that look like the kind on old council estates’. Someone had stuck slices of old railway sleeper across the ceilings throughout this house. Mock Tudor all right. Eve laughed, but to herself, so as not to wake him.

  Why? Partly because she genuinely didn’t want to disturb him and partly because she didn’t want to have to have sex again. He was asleep with one of the pillows he’d brought from home over his head.

  Why did he bring pillows? He was often allergic to pillows that weren’t his own. Other than that he didn’t find sleeping difficult. He didn’t find beginning anything new difficult either. He was always ‘beginning’ something else, something new.

  Why those little ironic ‘ ’? Eve chose not to answer that question.

  What was wrong with the village? Eve had imagined a picturesque place of big comfortable houses with recording studios in their barns, people summering on decking overlooking Norfolk’s legendary big open skies. Norfolk did have very nice skies. But one of the village’s two shops had a skull in its window with a plastic rat stuck in its eyehole.

  Why didn’t they leave? Eve had paid up front.

  Why were they here, exactly? Break from routine. Change of scene.

  Why else? To get away from 1. dead people’s relations phoning and emailing all the time to agree or disagree or demand attention or money; 2. all the pitiful letters, calls and emails from people all over the country desperate for her to choose their dead relations to be brought back to life in her next book and 3. people from Jupiter phoning several times a week asking her how and where the book was.

  How and where was the book? Please don’t ask this.

  Wasn’t she working on it? Every night at six she came out of the shed, went back into the main house and changed, and ate as if a day’s work had been done and everybody’s summer wasn’t being wasted in a Norfolk hell-hole. Today Astrid had come over the grass rather than up the gravel so Eve hadn’t heard her, had only just seen the shadow cross the window and only just managed to get up off the floor and on to the old chair at the desk to make a noise at the keyboards of the off laptop. After Astrid had gone Eve had stared at the blank screen. Calm. Measured.

  Was
Eve Smart a fraud? She had lain back down on the dirty floor after Astrid had gone.

  Was Eve, for instance, tired of making up afterlives for people who were in reality dead and gone? Eve chose not to answer this question. Was she fazed by the popularity of the last volume, which really she should have known to expect given the distasteful rise in public interest in all things Nazi and WWII generally over the past few years and especially now that the UK was back at war again? Eve chose not to answer this question. Was it anything to do with that ‘mendacious glorified peddled’ review just quoted? Eve chose not to answer this question. Did Eve really remember the whole of that review off by heart, verbatim? Eve chose not was it anything to do with the fact that thirty-eight thousand wasn’t actually all that many after all, not in bestselling terms, and now that the big time had arrived, it was disappointingly not that big a time? No! of course not! Absolutely not. Did Eve have a subject for her new unbegun book yet? No. Why was the very thought of starting a new book, which would bring in relative money and fame, enough to make her spend all day lying on her back on the floor of the mock summerhouse unable to do anything? Good question. See if you can answer it from the answers already given. She had watched a woodlouse climb out of a crack in the floor and then back down into it again. She had wanted with all her heart at that moment to be a woodlouse with a woodlouse’s responsibilities, a woodlouse’s talents.

  Call that working? Eve took a deep breath. It is very very hard work indeed, she answered, to be a woman and alive in this hemisphere in this day and age. It asks a lot, to be able to do all the things we’re supposed to do the way we’re expected to do them. Talent. Sex. Money. Family. The correct modest intelligence. The correct thinness. The correct presence.

  Isn’t that a bit feeble? Any more questions like this and Eve would terminate the interview.

  Well, what kinds of question are acceptable? Good questions. Conceptual questions. Not the personal kind. What did it matter what colour Eve’s eyes were? Or what gender she happened to be? Or what was happening in her private life or her family?

  What was happening in her family? Well, Astrid, for one, was acting very adolescently.

  And Magnus? Eve didn’t know what to do about Magnus. The way he was acting was very worrying.

  And her husband? Michael was fine. Really, he was fine. But these are personal questions. They’re the wrong kind of question. The point was: Eve was an artist, and something was blocking her.

  Okay, so, what did Eve believe in?

  It’s a straightforward enough question; what did Eve believe? What do you mean exactly, what did Eve believe?

  What did Eve believe?

  What credo did she live by?

  Well?

  What made her think?

  What made her write?

  What kept her motivated? Eve was motivated by Quantum.

  As in physics? Theory? Mechanics? Leap? Quantum was the name of the make of running machine she used.

  Running machine? Yes.

  She ‘believed in’ her Quantum running machine? Yes.

  Like other people believe in God, or chaos theory, or reincarnation, or unicorns? The Quantum running machine definitely existed. At home, when she couldn’t sleep, Eve used the Quantum. On the Quantum she exercised both body and mind while everyone else was asleep, asking herself questions and answering them as she walked or ran in rhythm. (It’s actually how she first came up with the Genuine Article concept.)

  But there was no Quantum in Norfolk? No. It was at home, in Eve’s study.

  Why didn’t Eve just go for a run, then, during the day, rather than lying about all day on the floor of the shed? Don’t be ridiculous. Eve never ‘went for a run’, anywhere, any time. What a terribly public thing to do. It wouldn’t be the same at all.

  Why didn’t she try it, go for a run, right now, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, where no one would have seen her? Eve sat up in the bed. She folded her arms.

  Okay, okay. Where were we, again? We were on the floor of the shed. Woodlouse.

  And what happened then, after the woodlouse? After the woodlouse moment of revelation she had fallen asleep on the floor.

  Was it any wonder Eve couldn’t sleep now, with all that sleeping during the day? Listen. Eve was lying in this too-hot bed in this too-hot room in this too-hot too-dark part of the world. At home, when she was awake like this, at least there were streetlights.

  Why had that girl shaken Eve? Jealousy? Intimidation? Malevolence?

  Had it felt malevolent? Well, no. Not really. It had felt as if–

  As if what? Well, curiously as if, when she took her by the arms, the girl was going to, well, strange as it sounds, kiss her.

  But she didn’t? No. She shook her.

  If Eve got up and went to the window would she be able to look down and see the car there? The girl would be asleep on its back seat. No, the back seats would probably fold down into a reasonable-sized sleeping space. Or she might be stretched across both front seats. Or in the passenger seat, reclined. Eve lifted the sheet, slipped out of the bed, made her way across to the ow f***

  What was that? That was the dressing-table edge.

  No, what was that supposed word, f***? Can’t Eve say the word fuck? Not out loud.

  Why not? Have you never had children? Eve rubbed at her thigh. She hauled back the curtain, holding her breath. Dust. These curtains were probably from before the war, and that was probably the last time they’d been laundered. When they left this house Eve intended to send Mrs Beth Orris a list of what had been unsatisfactory and a demand for some restitution.

  Was the car still there? Yes, parked next to their own.

  How did someone sleep in a car? How did someone do it every night? Did she do this in the winter as well as the summer? It would ruin your muscles and joints. Wouldn’t you like to sleep in the house, Amber? Eve had said when it came to the time to leave and she got up to go. Eve was hospitable. There’s plenty of room, she’d said. There’s a spare room, nobody in it, I think the bed’s even made up, it’s absolutely no trouble, you’d be welcome to. No, she said, I like to sleep in the car, and she came forward in the hall as if to give Eve a perfectly mannerly goodnight and thank you for dinner embrace, or kiss, whatever, and instead she took Eve firmly by the shoulders, so firm it was on the verge of painful, Eve could still feel the hold now, and before she had had time even to realize what had happened never mind say anything or be outraged at the intimacy of it, the girl had shaken Eve, hard, twice, for no reason, as if she had every right to.

  Why did she think she had every right to? Behind her, Eve heard Michael turn over. She watched him shrug the sheet further down his back. Eve had been sure to kiss Michael hard when his ‘student’ was out of the room.

  Why? To let him know.

  What? That it was all all right with her, whatever he was playing at now.

  Wasn’t the girl (well, hardly a girl, only about ten years younger than Eve for God’s sake)

  –wasn’t her general rudeness to Michael this evening yet more proof of her being one of Michael’s conquests? Yes, definitely.

  Wasn’t she a lot older-looking than his usual? Curiously, yes, and more salacious-looking, rougher-looking, with her high-cut shorts and her low-cut shabby shirt, certainly more shabby than Michael usually liked. She didn’t look like a student. She looked vaguely familiar, like someone you recognize but can’t remember where from, maybe someone who’s served you at Dixons or at the chemist, who you see in the street afterwards. She was also one of the brave ones, brave enough or stupid enough to come to the house. Eve almost admired this.

  Were they already sleeping together? Quite possibly, because Amber MacDonald was already nonplussed around Michael. She acted preternaturally coolly around him. She didn’t even flicker when he filled her glass.

  But when was the last time there had been a dinner like tonight’s? with Astrid somehow reduced to sweetness, to red-faced childish hilarity, by whatever the visitor
had been whispering in her ear.

  When was the last time Eve had seen Astrid like that, like someone had tickled her into submission? God knew.

  And how in God’s name had she managed to persuade Magnus? She had gone upstairs and come downstairs again and he had been there behind her, she had him by the hem of his shirt, she led him into the room, I found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself, she said. Everybody round the table laughed. Magnus laughed too and sat down next to the girl. He stayed downstairs. He sat with them for the rest of the evening. He ate chocolate pears off the girl’s plate.

  Where had the strange air of celebration come from? Tonight there had been no yelling about Astrid obsessively filming the various courses of dinner because tonight Astrid’s camera was who knew where and Astrid was acting like a civilized being again.

  What was Astrid? Poised before her own adulthood like a young deer before the head of a rose. (Deer love to eat roses.) Standing there on her too-thin legs, innocent, unsturdy, totally unaware that the future had its gunsight trained directly on her. Dark round the eyes. Kicky and impatient, blind as a kitten stupefied by all the knowing and the not-knowing. The animality of it was repulsive. She didn’t get it from Eve. She got it from God knows where. From Adam. She was so adolescent. Everything about her asked for attention, the way she walked across a room or a shop or across the forecourt of a petrol station, leaning into the air in front of her as if about to lose her balance, mutely demanding that someone–Eve, who else?–put out the flat of her hand and let Astrid push her forehead or her shoulder into it.

  What had Magnus been, just a moment ago? Clear and simple as a glass of water. So certain about simplicity that he sat down (at Astrid’s age, a moment ago? five years ago?) at the Victorian bureau in Eve’s study and wrote to the Queen, Elton John, Anthea Turner, God knew who else, asking them to fight world poverty and help homeless people find somewhere to live. To The Queen, Buckingham Palace, to Elton John, Los Angeles, to Anthea Turner, c/o the British Broadcasting Corporation. The child-Magnus, a sweet pedant. He had had some very pleasant letters back, like the one from a lady-in-waiting somewhere in a palace office who presumably spent all day answering letters like his. Her Majesty the Queen was very touched by and interested to hear of your concern. Magnus: a happy accident, a happy unexpected pregnancy, the happy beginnings of an unexpected family. (Astrid, on the other hand: a meant pregnancy; meant, by Eve, to hold unhappy things together.) That happy child version of Magnus had been stolen, by thieves maybe, and a long, thin, anxious, mysterious, selfrighteous, impertinently polite boy who took a lot of showers (or alternatively, like now, took none at all) had taken his place; a boy so strange and unfamiliar that he even announced himself, one night at the dinner table earlier this year, as pro the Iraq war–a war about which Eve still felt a bit guilty, albeit in a measured way, about not doing more, about not having concentrated on more, what with being so busy worrying about being unable to start the new book.