by Ali Smith
I answered it as soon as it rang.
Hello? I said.
An automaton asked me if I would accept a reversed charges call from – and then there was a gap and your voice on the automaton tape, recorded wherever it was you were, saying your name.
Yes, I said, loud and firm in the space left for me to speak into, so there could be no mistake.
Hello, you said.
You were fine. There was nothing wrong with you at all. You were phoning from a call box in an all-night supermarket. You had been on a train that kept stopping because of some kind of accident. You were walking home. You reckoned you were still about thirty miles away. You’d walked on the tracks for hours until three railway workers in fluorescent jackets had run after you, given you a row and threatened to prosecute you. Then you’d walked on the grass verge of a back road and you’d seen the lights of the supermarket across a field. You had mud up round your ankles, all over your shoes and even inside your shoes. You smelt of farm.
I held the phone against my ear with one hand and rubbed my eyes with the other. I was still thinking about your voice saying your name, small and accented and guileless, fastened into the air on the phone tape.
It’s surprisingly busy for the middle of the night, you were saying. There are a dozen people, maybe even more, doing their shopping. They’re buying, like, Elastoplast, or orange juice. One woman just went through the checkout, she’d come out here in the middle of the night and she bought a child’s pair of socks. Why would you buy a pair of socks for a child in the middle of the night?
I don’t know, I said.
I really didn’t. At that moment I didn’t know anything except the small noise of your name. It was the fact that it was just your first name; something about it by itself in all that machinery was making something inside me actually hurt.
I wish I’d asked her, you were saying. She’s gone now. I’ll never be able to ask her. There’s a man over there, his basket is piled completely full of biscuits, they’re all the same make, some kind of French biscuit. He told me he drives round all the towns buying this one special kind of biscuit because you can only get them at this chain of supermarket. Amazing what people will do.
Yes, I said. Amazing.
A couple of the people who work here are dancing with each other in the tea and coffee aisle, you said, they’ve got the radio on over the loudspeakers. And there’s boxes of stuff everywhere, they’re unpacking it for tomorrow, I mean today, they’re putting the things on the shelves. While we’re usually asleep someone somewhere is cutting open great big boxes of stuff and arranging them, or cutting bales of new newspapers open for newsagents in supermarkets and shops, and we never even think about it when we buy a paper or whatever.
Uh huh, I said.
It’s really interesting being in a supermarket with no actual money to spend, you said.
Yes, I said, I’ll bet.
You told me about how you’d left your wallet and your jacket on the train, also the books you’d bought, the work you were bringing home, your glasses and your mobile phone.
It was dead anyway, you said. Though I’ll have to try and get the glasses back.
You should cancel your bank cards, I said.
Should I? you said. There’s a twenty-four-hour number in the inside of my chequebook, it’s up the stairs. But listen, did I wake you? I didn’t know what the time was till I got here and saw their clock.
No, it’s okay, no worries, I said. Well, you know. I was kind of dozing on the couch.
Oh, and I heard this bird, you said. I was walking along and it was just singing, like they do in the mornings, except that it was completely dark, and there were no other birds singing. I wonder what kind of bird it was. What kind of bird does that, just sings like that in the middle of the night?
Thing is, I said. You’ll need to cancel your bank cards and I think it has to be you who does it. I don’t think they let other people. If I phone up they maybe won’t let me.
I really don’t care, you said. I don’t care about any of it. Whoever finds them can have them. They can have all the money that’s in the wallet. They’re welcome to it. It’s not as if there’s that much left in either of the accounts anyway. Well, except for the one account. Actually, there’s quite a lot in that account. Actually, maybe you could phone about that one. The goldcard one. Would you mind? But the other one I don’t care about. Oh God. And my credit card. I think my credit card was in there too.
I wrote down the words credit card and said that if they wouldn’t let me cancel them I’d demand that they registered the loss so you couldn’t be charged for anything beyond the time of my calling them up. I looked at the clock. It was ten-past three.
So I’d better go and do that now, I said.
No, wait, you said. Wait a minute.
But that man buying the biscuits. What if he’s buying them on your credit card? I said.
I don’t care, you said. Don’t go. Listen. Can you hear that?
What? I said.
Shh. Listen, you said.
I heard a muffled regular thudding at the back of you like an industrial heartbeat. Possibly this was the sound of my own heart. Certainly something was thudding inside me so hard that I was swaying while I stood in the hall holding the phone.
Can you hear it? you said.
Kind of, I said.
You had started singing along with it. The moment I wake up, you sang. Before I put on my make-up, make-up.
I could hear someone else behind you singing it too.
That’s Kerry singing, you said.
Who? I said.
Kerry. She works on the checkout, you said. She’s nineteen and has three kids already, all under five, and it’s really terrible because she and her husband have to work day and night just to keep their heads above water.
It was quarter-past three on the kitchen clock. You were singing down the phone. I run for the bus, dear. While running I think of us, dear. I realized it was possible that you weren’t on the phone at all, that I was just hallucinating that you were. Now you were telling me about Dave, Kerry’s husband, who was an apprentice painter and decorator, and how work for painters and decorators was quite hard to come by at the moment because of the boom in DIY.
I interrupted. What happened about Death? I asked.
They stopped the train, you said.
Because of that man? I asked.
Was it a man? you said? Was it on the news? What happened?
Well, you saw him, I said. In the white clothes, at the station.
Oh, you said. Oh, that. I forgot all about that. Honestly. Imagine seeing someone and thinking such stuff. Looked like Death.
You were laughing. I better go and call the bank for you, I said.
No, don’t go yet, you said, and your voice was tiny and light in my ear. It’s going to be morning soon. The sun’ll soon be up.
I know, I said. I’ve got work in four and a half hours.
Oh. Right. Okay. Quick then, before you go, you said. Tell me. How was your evening? What did you do tonight?
What did I do tonight, I said. Well. First I was torn off the ground with my legs and arms flailing in the air. Like I was a fish on a hook.
Eh? you said.
Like someone in the sky was reeling me in on a huge rod, I said. Or like my middle was tied to a rope and the other end was tied to a plane. And after that, I watched our house collapse in on itself and I spent some time lying in the rubble. Then I vanished completely. I wasn’t here at all. Then you phoned.
I what? And you what? you said.
I took a deep breath and counted to ten. While I was counting I thought back over my evening.
One. It is early evening. I am lying on the couch watching TV while you come home from London on the train. There’s a programme on about a woman who has sent her mother off for the night to pick up the woman’s husband, her son-in-law, in Dorset, while some people from the BBC come and secretly remake the mother’s ba
ck garden. The garden is huge and as they dig up the long green lawn and start laying the slabs that are going to replace it, the TV people keep shaking their heads at the camera about how difficult it will be to do this week’s episode in such a short amount of time, especially with the weather being so bad. It rains and rains. There are lots of shots of the TV people and the woman whose mother’s garden it is, sheltering under a big old tree. They decide the tree is diseased. In the next shower break they saw through the tree with chainsaws and dig up its roots with a JCB. By the end of the programme the TV people are excited, hiding behind a new pagoda as the woman brings her mother through and shows her the garden, which looks like a modern cemetery. She looks round, bewildered. When the TV people jump out and surprise her she bursts into tears. I can’t believe it’s really you, she says. I can’t believe it’s really them. There’s a montage of shots of before, during and after. Champagne is opened. The TV people affectionately jostle the woman, the husband and the mother. The mother is still shaking her head, wiping her eyes and staring at the TV people.
The programme finishes. I go through to the kitchen to look at the clock in case the time on the video is wrong.
Two. I phone the restaurant. They tell me I owe them £22.50.
Three. I walk round to the restaurant and pay for the food which I take home and put, still in its bag, in the off oven.
Four. I try your mobile. It passes me through to the answering service. A recording tells me I can leave a message. I leave you a message in which I know I sound slightly high-pitched and strange. At the end the recorded voice tells me I can re-record my message if I press three. I press three and delete my message. I switch the television back on and lie down on the couch again. Firefighters are at risk from there being too few firefighters. A commercial for Special K. Snooker. A woman saying to a man, I’m sorry, Luke, I really am. A footballer is appealing against a ban for using steroids. The answer is Gormenghast. An old EastEnders in which everyone looks younger and the clothes look dated. Of one hundred people who were asked to name a kind of animal featured in children’s stories, no one has answered elephant; a man’s family loses a life when he answers elephant. A cartoon. A football match between someone and Brazil. A photograph of a bridge in a village a hundred years ago, a voiceover saying, in those days there were no cars in my grandmother’s village. A boyband. A commercial for Kalms. An old Star Trek. A baseball team wants to change the name of its playing field. The weather tonight (clear). Heart-shaped bakeware for sale. An old Coronation Street in which everyone looks younger and the clothes look dated. Jerry Springer saying to an old man with one leg, so you met her in a convenience store? A commercial for digital TV. A: Morecambe and Wise, B: Mulder and Scully or C: Bonnie and Clyde. A glowing brain and a voiceover saying, I think there really is no inner conscious self. All we are is a machine built by genes. An idea can affect your mind like a germ, a parasite. We are the creations of our genes and our memes. I begin at the beginning of the channels again and it is like watching thrown-away rubbish come bobbing in towards me on a tide, stuff that has floated in from all over the world made of substances that will never decompose.
Five. I switch the television off. I go through to the kitchen and try your mobile. The voice tells me to leave you a message. I leave a steady-sounding message saying I hope you’re all right and asking you to call me.
Six. I go upstairs and look out the front window. I come downstairs and try your mobile again. The voice tells me to leave you a message. I leave one which sounds much less steady than the last and regret not deleting it as soon as I’ve put the phone down. I get my own mobile out and text you. WHR R U? XXX. I press send. Message fails. I press send again. Message fails again. I phone 453 and an automaton tells me I have 6p left on my phonecard.
Seven. I open the front door. I stand in the middle of the road and check. I walk along a little so I can see all the way to the corner. I walk to the corner so I can see down the other road. I go back to the house. Light is blazing out of the open front door. I go straight through to the phone in the kitchen and try your mobile. While I’m listening to the voice telling me to leave you a message I remember: you told me your mobile isn’t working.
Eight. You are lost. You’ve got lost somewhere. You don’t know where you are.
I stand in the kitchen next to the fridge and pray, which is something I haven’t done for years. It’s so long since I’ve done it that I can’t really remember how to. I am polite and desperate.
You are somewhere I can’t reach or hear you and you are in pain.
I bargain. I promise to become a Catholic again if you will be returned safe.
You are somewhere you don’t want me to know about, with someone you don’t want me to know about.
Nine. I sit on the couch. I look at my fingernails. Then I look at my thumbnails, first one and then the other. I wonder what would happen if I didn’t have a nail on my thumb, or on this first finger, or this little finger. I know it is supposed to be excruciatingly painful, used as a method of torture. We have fingernails, as I probably know from watching something on television once, left over from Neanderthal and animal claws; they protect the nerves in our fingers and are made of protein, keratin. They grow quite fast, quite a lot per week. They even grow for a while after death, and the hair. It keeps growing regardless. Everybody knows this.
I think about how at one point a couple of years ago you tried to stop biting your nails so short by only letting yourself bite one nail a day, the thumb on Monday, the first finger on Tuesday, the next on Wednesday. I try to remember whether you are still doing this or whether these days you just bite any old nail, or whether you don’t bite them at all any more. I can’t remember. I don’t know how long or short your nails are.
Ten.
You were saying my name again down the supermarket phone. Hello? you said. Love? Are you still there?
Yes, I said.
What was it you did tonight? you said.
Oh, the usual, I said. Listen. Do you want me to come and pick you up in the car? It’d only take half an hour.
No, you said. I really want to walk. It’ll be light soon, too.
It would; it was April. After we hung up, I would phone the bank, lock all the doors, clean my teeth and go to bed, set the alarm for four hours away, lie on my back on my side of the bed and try to sleep through what time there was left with your pillow over my eyes to keep the light out.
I’ll go and phone the bank for you, I said.
Don’t go yet, though, you said.
I looked at the clock.
Five more minutes? you said.
Okay, I said.
may
I tell you. I fell in love with a tree. I couldn’t not. It was in blossom.
It was a day like all the other days and I was on my way to work, walking the same way as usual between our house and the town. I wasn’t even very far from home, just round the corner. I was looking at the pavement and wondering as I walked whether the local council paid someone money to go walking around looking at the ground all day for places where people might trip. What would a job like that be advertised as in the paper, under what title? Inspector of Pavements and Roads. Kerb Auditor. Local Walkways Erosion Consultant. I wondered what qualifications you would need to be one. On a TV quiz show the host would say, or at a party a smiling stranger would ask, and what do you do? and whoever it was would reply, actually I’m an Asphalt Observance Manager, it’s very good money, takes a great deal of expertise, a job for life with excellent career prospects.
Or maybe the council didn’t do this job any more. Probably there was a privatized company who sent people out to check on the roads and then report back the findings to a relevant council committee. That was more likely. I walked along like that, I remember, noting to myself in my head all the places I would report which needed sorting, until the moment the ground ahead of me wasn’t there any more. It had disappeared. At my feet the pavement was covered with what lo
oked like blown silk. It was petals. The petals were a beautiful white. I glanced up to see where they’d come from, and saw where they’d come from.
A woman came out of a house. She told me to get out of her garden. She asked was I on drugs. I explained I wasn’t. She said she’d call the police if I wasn’t gone the next time she looked out of her window and she went back inside the house, slamming her door. I hadn’t even realized I was in someone’s garden, never mind that I’d been there for a long enough time for it to be alarming to anybody. I left her garden; I stood by the gate and looked at the tree from the pavement outside it instead. She called the police anyway; a woman and a man came in a patrol car. They were polite but firm. They talked about trespassing and loitering, took my name and address and gave me a warning and a lift home. They waited to see that I did have a key for our house, that I wasn’t just making it up; they waited in their car until I’d unlocked the door and gone inside and shut it behind me; they sat outside the house not moving, with their engine going, for about ten minutes before I heard them rev up and drive away.
I had had no idea that staring up at a tree for more than the allotted proper amount of time could be considered wrong. When the police car stopped outside our house and I tried to get out, I couldn’t – I had never been in a police car before and there are no handles on the insides of the doors in the back – you can’t get out unless someone lets you out. I thought at first I wasn’t able to find the handle because of what had happened to my eyes. They were full of white. All I could see was white. The thing with the woman and the police had taken place to me through a gauze of dazed white with everyone and everything like radio-voice ghosts, a drama happening to someone else somewhere at the back of me. Even while I was standing in the hall listening for them to drive away I still couldn’t see anything except through a kind of shifting, folding, blazing white; and after they’d gone, after quite a while of sitting on the carpet feeling the surprising hugeness of the little bumps and shrugs of its material under my hands, I could only just make out, through the white, the blurs which meant the edges of the pictures on our walls, the pile of junk mail on the hall table and the black curl of the flex of the phone on the floor beside me.