How to Be Both

by Ali Smith

  No. Because her mother would never have lied like that about what she was writing. Lying and equivocating are what George, not her mother, would do if she’d been caught writing some word on a window above someone important’s head.

  Not that her mother was caught.

  Though George probably would have been.

  Her mother, instead, would have said something simple and true like, yes your honour I cannot tell a lie, I believe him to be a liar which is precisely why I was writing the word.

  I cannot tell a lie. It was me who chopped down the cherry tree. Now that I’ve been so honest, make me a precedent. No, not president. I said precedent.

  That’d maybe be worth £5 for a Subvert, if her mother were here.

  (But now that she isn’t, does that make it worthless?)

  There are also the possible words LIAS, LIANG, LIARD. A sort of stone, a Chinese weight measure, a greyish colour and a coin worth very little (it is interesting to George that the word liard can mean both money and a colour).

  There is the word LIABLE.

  There is the word LIAISON.

  (I bet its in a cathedral city up in some fancy cathedral ceiling hanging out with the carvings of the angels.

  I bet its

  its)

  Wrong.

  The wrongness of it is infuriating.

  The George from after can still feel the fury at the wrongness of things that beat such huge dents into the chest of the George from before.

  She turns on the chair. H is in the doorway.

  Your dad let me in, she says. I went up to your room but you weren’t there.

  H had decided earlier that day at school that a good way to do revision would be for them to transfer what they needed to remember into song lyrics and learn to sing them to the tune of some song they both know. This, H says, will make information unforgettable. They both have a test next week in biology and George also has a test in Latin.

  So what we can do, H said, is : I’ll make up the biology version and we can learn it off by heart then you can translate it into Latin for double the benefit.

  They’d been standing in the corridor outside history.

  What do you think? H had said.

  What I’m thinking is, George said. When we die.

  Uh huh? H said.

  Do you think we still have memories? George said.

  This was her test question.

  H wasn’t even fazed. She was never fazed by anything. She made a face, but it was a thinking face.

  Hmm, she’d said.

  Then she’d shrugged and said,

  Who knows?

  George had nodded. Good answer.

  Now H is here, turning on one foot and looking at all the piles of books and papers and pictures.

  Wow. What a place, she says. What’s this place?

  What’s this place? George turns on the swivel chair her mother specially bought for this study and catches, at the corner of her eye, the framed and printed-out first-ever Subvert. It’s a list of the names of all the women art students who went to an art college in London over three years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. This list with no explanation attached flashed up for a month on the online pages of anyone who looked up the word Slade (including people who’d chanced to be looking up things about the band with all the old men in it who wrote that Christmas song). It came about because George’s mother had been reading a biography of a quite famous artist from the turn of that century and had become more and more interested in what had happened to his wife, whom he’d met at the same art school. She’d been a student too but had died really young after having more children than her body could handle having (George’s mother is a feminist). (Was.) Before this woman died (well obviously) she had had a friend called Edna who was also a student at the school. In fact Edna’d been one of the most talented artists in the place. Edna had gone on to marry a well-to-do type. One day this well-to-do type had come home to find Edna’s paints and brushes spread out on the dining-room table and had told Edna to put all this rubbish away. It was before Henry was born. George and her mother and father were on holiday in Suffolk staying in a cottage. Her mother had been reading this book. She got to the page where this happened to Edna and she burst into tears in the garden. That’s the story. George has no memory of it but the story goes that her mother raged round the cottage’s garden like a mad person and that the letting agency had sent a bill afterwards for some of the plants she’d wrecked. Your mother is a very passionate person, her father always said whenever the story got told. Anyway Edna’s life hadn’t been so bad after all in the end because the husband had died quite early on and she herself had gone on to live till she was a hundred and to show lots of pictures in galleries and even to be called, by a reputable newspaper, the most imaginative artist in England (though she did have a nervous breakdown at one point, and at another point in history her studio got hit by a bomb and totally destroyed along with lots of her work).

  All of this information flashes through George’s head in that fraction of a second it takes to do the single swivel round towards H in her mother’s chair and say the words:

  It’s my mother’s study.

  Cool, H says.

  She puts a piece of paper with her writing all over it down next to George on the desk. She picks up a picture off the top of a pile of letters. George looks to see what she’s picked up.

  She liked that picture so much, George says, that we went all the way to Italy to see it.

  Who is it? H says.

  I don’t know, George says. Just some man. On a wall. In a kind of blue space.

  Who did it? H says.

  I don’t know that either, George says.

  She looks down at the song she’s meant to translate into Latin. She has no idea what the Latin for DNA will be.

  To The Tune Of Wrecking Ball

  (Verse 1)

  Herr Friedrich Miescher found it in / some pus in 1869 / Crick, Watson and Ros Franklin saw / the two strands intertwined like vine. / Double helix in 1953 / X-Ray photo ’52. / Franklin died before Nobel Prize Award / Life not one strand but two.

  (Chorus)

  G - A - T - C and D - NA / Deoxyribonu-cleic / Guanine-adenine-thymine cytosine / Supercoil can be both / Po - o - si tive / Yeah and /Ne - e - g a tive.

  (Verse 2)

  Plants fungi animals make up / The eukaryotes / Bacteria and archaea / The prokaryotes / It’s A&T or it’s G&C that’s the / Only way it will do / Two long chromosomes, codons three letters long / I will always want you.

  H is still standing looking at the picture of the man in rags.

  That last line’s just there for scansion, she says. While I decide what else to use.

  She holds up the picture of the man.

  When in history is this from? she says.

  It’s from a palace, George says. If you look up the words Ferrara Palazzo in Images, Ferrara’s the place we saw it, you’ll probably find it.

  She looks at the song again.

  I don’t think I can translate much more than three or four lines of this into Latin, she says. A lot of it also already looks pretty Greek.

  Do the last line first, H says.

  She is sort of grinning. She is looking away, still looking at the picture of the ragged man.

  The one line we’re not going to need or use and that’s the one you want first in Latin? George says.

  I’d just quite like to hear it in Latin, H says.

  She is grinning broadly now and still looking away. She sits down on the floor.

  She’s waiting.

  Okay, George says. But can I ask you something first?

  Yep, H says.

  It’s a hypothetical, George says.

  I’m not much good with them, H says. I’ve been known to faint whenever I see a needle.

  George gets off her mother’s chair and comes and sits opposite H cross-legged on the floor too.

  If I we
re to say to you that while my mother was alive she was being monitored, she says.

  For health, or? H says. For diet, or what?

  George speaks a little more quietly because her father doesn’t like her saying this stuff, she made it up to distract herself from her life and how do you think that makes me feel, George? And you’re making it up to distract yourself from her death. She was being adolescent. So are you. Get a grip. Interpol and MI5 and MI6 and MI7 were not interested in your mother. He has specifically instructed her to stop it, and has been known to lose his head about it if George does mention it, even though he’s being generally self-consciously gentle at most other times, what with everything being so post-death.

  By people in, you know. Like on TV, George says. Except not like on TV, there weren’t bombs or guns or torture or anything, there was just this person. Sort of keeping an eye on her.

  Oh, H says. That kind of monitored.

  If I were to say it, George says. Would you think words like deluded and paranoid and needs to be put on some kind of medication?

  H thinks about it. Then she nods.

  You would? George says.

  Not living in the real world, H says.

  Something inside George’s chest falls. It is a relief, after all, the kind of relief where everything feels both bruised and released.

  H is still speaking.

  More likely that your mother was being minotaured, she is saying.

  It isn’t a joke, George says.

  I’m not joking, H says. I mean, it’s not like we live in mythical times. It’s not like we live in a world where the police, say, would ever minotaur the people whose son’s murder they were supposed to be investigating, or the press would minotaur famous people or even dead people to make money out of them.

  Ha, George says.

  It’s not like the government would minotaur us, H says. I mean, not our government. Obviously all the undemocratic and less good and less civilized ones would do it to their citizens. But our own one. I mean, they might minotaur the people they needed to know about. But they’d never do it to ordinary people, say through their emails or mobiles, or through the games they play on their mobiles. And it’s not like the shops we buy things from do it to us either, is it, every time we buy something. You’re deluded and insane. There’s no such thing as a minotaur. It’s mythical. And your mother was, what? Quite a political person? Someone who published stuff about money in the papers? And did disruptive stuff on the net? Why would anyone want to monitor her? I think your imaginings are dangerous. Someone should monitor you.

  She looks up.

  I’d do it, she says. I’d have done it, if it was you.

  If it had been you, George says inside her head.

  I’d have minotaured you for free, H says.

  She looks George laughingly and seriously right in the eye.

  Or maybe, if it were you, George thinks.

  She lies down flat on her back on her mother’s carpet. Her mother got this carpet at an antique shop off Mill Road. Well, antique. Junk shop, really.

  H lies down next to her so that their heads are level.

  Both girls stare at the ceiling.

  The thing is, doctor, H says.

  George hears her from the miles away where she’s thinking about what the differences might be, and what her mother would have said they were, between antiques and just old junk.

  I have this need, H is saying.

  What need? George says.

  To be more, H says.

  More what? George says.

  Well, H says and her voice sounds strangely altered. More.

  Oh, George says.

  I think I might be, by nature, H says, a bit more hands-on than hypothetical.

  Then one of her hands reaches and takes one of George’s hands.

  The hand doesn’t just take George’s hand, it interlaces its fingers with it.

  This is the point at which all the words drain out of the part of George’s brain where words are kept.

  H’s hand holds her hand for a moment, then H’s hand lets go of her hand.

  Yes? she says. No?

  George doesn’t speak

  I can slow down, H says. I can wait. I can wait till it’s right. I can do that.

  Then she says,

  Or maybe you don’t –.

  George doesn’t speak.

  Maybe I’m not –, H says.

  Then George’s father is at the door of the room, he’s been there for God knows how long. George sits up.

  Girls, he says. George. You know I don’t want you in there. Nothing’s sorted. There’s a lot of important stuff, I don’t want anything messed with in there. And I thought you were organizing supper tonight, George.

  I am, George says. I will. I’m just about to.

  Is your friend staying for supper? her father says.

  No, Mr Cook, I’ve got to be home, H says.

  She is still lying on her back on the floor.

  You’re very welcome to stay, Helena, her father says. There’ll be plenty.

  Thanks, Mr Cook, H says. It’s really nice of you. I’m expected at home.

  You can stay for supper, George says.

  No I can’t, H says.

  She gets up.

  See you, she says.

  A minute later she is not in the room any more.

  A moment after that George hears the front door of the house closing.

  George lies back down flat on the carpet again.

  She is not a girl. She is a block of stone.

  She is a piece of wall.

  She is something against which other things impact without her permission or understanding.

  It is last May in Italy. George and her mother and Henry are sitting after supper at a table outside a restaurant under some arches near the castle. Her mother has been going on and on to them (well, to George, because Henry is on a computer game) about fresco structure, about how when some frescoes in a different Italian city were damaged in the 1960s in bad flooding and the authorities and restorers removed them to mend them as best they could, they found, underneath them, the underdrawing their artists had made for them, and sometimes the underdrawings were significantly different from their surfaces, which is something they’d never have discovered if there hadn’t been the damage in the first place.

  George is only half listening because the game Henry is looking at on the iPad is called Injustice and George thinks Henry is far too young for it.

  What game is it? her mother says.

  It’s the one where all the cartoon superheroes have turned evil, George says. It’s really violent.

  Henry, her mother says.

  She takes an earphone out of one of Henry’s ears.

  What? Henry says.

  Find something less violent to do on there, his mother says.

  Okay, Henry says. If I must.

  You must, his mother says.

  Henry puts the earphone back in and clicks off the game. He clicks on a download of Horrible Histories instead. Pretty soon he is giggling to himself. Not long after that he falls asleep at the table with his head on the iPad.

  But which came first? her mother says. The chicken or the egg? The picture underneath or the picture on the surface?

  The picture below came first, George says. Because it was done first.

  But the first thing we see, her mother said, and most times the only thing we see, is the one on the surface. So does that mean it comes first after all? And does that mean the other picture, if we don’t know about it, may as well not exist?

  George sighs heavily. Her mother points across the way, to the castle wall. A bus goes past. Its whole back is an advert for something in which there’s a Madonna and child picture as if from the past, except the mother is showing the baby Jesus how to look something up on an iPad.

  We’re sitting here having our supper, her mother is saying, and looking at everything that’s round us. And over there. Right there in fro
nt of us. If this was a night seventy years ago –

  – yeah, but it isn’t, George says. It’s now.

  – we’d be sitting here watching people being lined up and shot against that wall. Along from where those seats for the café bar are.

  Uch. God, George says. Mum. How do you even know that?

  Would it be better, or worse, or truer, or falser, if I didn’t? her mother says.

  George scowls. History is horrible. It is a mound of bodies pressing down into the ground below cities and towns in the unending wars and the famines and the diseases, and all the people starved or done away with or rounded up and shot or tortured and left to die or put up against the walls near castles or stood in front of ditches and shot into them. George is appalled by history, its only redeeming feature being that it tends to be well and truly over.

  And which comes first? her unbearable mother is saying. What we see or how we see?

  Yeah, but that thing happening. With the shooting. It was aeons ago, George says.

  Only twenty years before me, and here I am sitting here right now, her mother says.

  Ancient history, George says.

  That’s me, her mother says. And yet here I am. Still happening.

  But it isn’t, George says. Because that was then. This is now. That’s what time is.

  Do things just go away? her mother says. Do things that happened not exist, or stop existing, just because we can’t see them happening in front of us?

  They do when they’re over, George says.

  And what about the things we watch happening right in front of us and still can’t really see? her mother says.

  George rolls her eyes.

  Totally pointless discussion, she says.

  Why? her mother says.

  Okay. That castle, George says. It’s right in front of us, yes?

  So I see, her mother says.

  I mean, you can’t not, George says. Unless your eyes don’t work. And even if your eyes didn’t work, you’d still be able to go up to it and touch it, you’d be able to register it being there one way or another.

  Absolutely, her mother says.

  But though it’s the same castle as it was when it was built way back when, and it has its history, George says, and all the things have happened to it and in it and round it and so on ad infinitum, that’s nothing to do with us sitting here looking at it right now. Apart from it being scenery because we’re tourists.