There but for The

by Ali Smith

  That gets her upstairs without too much fuss, where she has a look at her elbow and her knee and they’re not too bad.

  The next day she’s sore all over and the elbow is giving her gyp.

  She walks back along the road and finds the bicycle, in the long grass in the ditch, and it’s fine. She gets back on it. It goes fine, it’s fine.)

  He took me to London once, Frank did.

  Who? the girl said.

  On the Underground trains. The smell of all the dirty wool. I was only small, mind.

  Right, the girl said.

  I’m all washed up, me.

  Seem like you’re doing fine to me, the girl said.

  Dog-tired. Been on the late shift.

  Fair enough, the girl said.

  But it’s nice to be loved. Isn’t it nice to be loved.

  Telling me, the girl said and her face went sad.

  The eyes of the men after war. Like rabbits in headlights. We all were. All them who never came back. All them going up into the air and then not coming down. A line through the name in the morning, Philip told me. And that was that. Well, we came through, Philip and me. And it was behind us, and we got married, got a family, got a new house, brand new. Never a house there before. Even the mud in the garden. Listen! Brand new mud.

  But that girl sitting there in the visitor’s chair wasn’t listening, had a long face on her now. May lifted a hand. An old hand in front of her lifted in the air, wavered, then came down proper hard in a fist on the woollen blanket.

  Cheer up, you!

  (Jennifer comes into the kitchen. She is fourteen. She has the usual sullen face on. It is a summer evening and May is at the machine.

  Jennifer, your shoulders, May says.

  Yeah, because I’ll need a straight back when we all die in a nuclear holocaust, Jennifer says.

  May presses the pedal down on the floor and guides the material through beneath the needle. Now Jennifer has opened the cupboard, taken the top off a Tupperware box and helped herself to a handful of sultanas. At least she is eating something.

  If you’d eaten your tea, May says. I need those for the scones.

  Jennifer used to be so perfectly dressed. She used to be a model child. These days she is pale and thin with a miserable long face on her and wears such terrible old scruffy-looking clothes and leaves her hair a mess. May is forever telling her. Cheer up, you! It is her age. Also, she is hanging around with girls who are too old for her, the too-clever girls in the year above her at school, and spending far too much time with that boy, whose hair is too long and whose parents May and Philip don’t know anything about. She is spending too little time thinking about school. You can’t be a translator in Europe, which is where the jobs will be for people doing languages not science, without proper qualifications. She is always going around the place with that boy, and if she’s not with him then she’s on the phone to him. She is fourteen. She is too young to have a boyfriend.

  He’s not my boyfriend, is what Jennifer says when May or Philip says this. He’s my friend. I don’t want a boyfriend. He doesn’t want a girlfriend. We’re friends.

  She doesn’t say it brightly. She says it darkly. She says everything darkly now, and she used to be so bright when she was a child. Her face has changed, got longer, hollow, as if adulthood has tried her on like a glove that doesn’t quite fit yet, then pulled out of her and left her stretched out of her shape. Her shoulders are round because she never straightens her back. What she doesn’t realize is that she’ll never get on in life walking around with round shoulders.

  Jennifer is behind May at the machine now, leaning with her back to the kitchen counter. She is wearing the terrible denim jacket. She swings herself up on to the counter like she did when she was a child.

  If you scuff that cupboard, Jennifer, May says without turning round.

  She can hear Jennifer’s legs against the doors of the units. She’s after something, that’s for sure. Money? May ignores her. She presses the pedal down and pulls the material through. The cotton reel spins on the top of the machine. She puts the scissors down on the table with a slam and turns the leg of Philip’s new work trousers round under the needle.

  You know my friend, Jennifer says in one of the short silences between May’s foot lifting off the pedal and pressing down on it.

  What friend? May says.

  He said this thing, Jennifer says.

  May sighs.

  He said when he was small, Jennifer says, and his grandfather was still alive, his grandfather would have him to the tunes off the soundtrack record he had at his house of the Mary Poppins film.

  May presses the pedal down. The machine whirs. She takes her foot off again.

  You mean, May says in the loud absence after the whirring noise, that his grandfather would have him over to listen to the tunes off the soundtrack record he had at his house of the Mary Poppins film.

  She presses the pedal. The machine whirs.

  When she takes her foot off again Jennifer speaks behind her.

  Yeah, but that’s not what he said, Jennifer says.

  There is a silence for a moment.

  He said it always started when the tune about I Love To Laugh came on, Jennifer says.

  May presses the pedal. The little reel of thread on top of the machine spins like a mad thing. Jennifer slides off the counter and leaves the kitchen, swings out through the door with her hands in her pockets, whistling a tune. The kitchen door shuts behind her by itself.

  May sits at the machine with her foot off the pedal and her head has something like a storm wind roaring through it.

  When she next looks at the clock several minutes have passed.

  She gets up from the machine and goes to the sink. She turns the hot tap on and she puts her hands under it. She leaves them under it until the water is too hot to keep doing it. She pats her reddened hands dry on a clean tea towel.

  She goes to the back door and calls her husband out of the garage. Philip stands at the back door in the light summer dark. He sees her face and a look of alarm crosses his own. What? he says.

  When Jennifer gets back in later that night from God and all the angels only know where, she is whistling the same tune she went out whistling earlier.

  They see her through the window coming up the garden path, her hands in the pockets of the awful jacket, and they hear her come through the front door and make to go straight up the stairs.

  Her father gets up and switches the television off. He calls her, asks her to come into the front room for a bit. She stops halfway up the stairs, then she turns and comes back down and does as they ask. Her father asks her to sit on the sofa. She does.

  Why is the TV off? she says.

  Is this about me whistling? she says.

  Come on, what? she says.

  They forbid her from seeing the boy again. Her mouth falls open. Then she says they can’t forbid her because she and the boy are in all the same classes at school.

  They forbid her from seeing him in the out of school hours. She shakes her head.

  They forbid her from speaking to him on the phone. She says they can’t do that, it isn’t fair. They explain to her about troublemaking, attention-getting and lying. She crosses her arms and looks them both in the face and says they are being unfair. They tell her they are saying it for her own good, that people who tell manipulative troublemaking lies to cause a drama are not decent. She goes to say something but she decides against it. She stops herself. She stands up. She leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

  May and Philip exchange glances. Philip gets up and switches the television back on.

  May and Philip watch TV. Then they go to bed, when it’s time to.

  What happens next is that there is no talking to Jennifer for days. In fact, what happens is, Jennifer stops speaking. Jennifer won’t speak. Morning, dinnertime, night, if she’s in their company at all she sits insolent and silent.<
br />
  Mealtimes are particularly difficult.

  Then thankfully it all settles down a bit. Eventually it is like nothing ever happened. Nobody ever mentions it again.)

  Nothing but shame, now.

  What’s a shame? the girl said.

  What’s a shame? May can’t remember. All she can see in her head is a butterfly, but in the winter too, so no hope there, a butterfly out and about in winter’s good as dead. What was a shame? She tried to remember. It must have been in the war, whatever it was.

  A periscope on a torpedoed sub. It got dredged up, oh, forty years later it was. Covered in, in, that stuff that covers things under the water. Barnacles, you know, and the, the coloured stuff.

  Like you mean coral? the girl said.

  On the TV.

  Wow, the girl said.

  Oh the artfulness the sinfulness the wickedness of men. You’ll fall and break your neck off the height of them boots, girl.

  You’re worse than my mother, the girl said, telling me what to do. And I don’t even know you.

  You’ve come for me. Eh?

  I’m just here for the day, the girl said. You took some finding, but we found you.

  The girl showed her a piece of paper with writing on it, but May hadn’t her glasses and couldn’t read the writing.

  Uno Hoo.

  What? the girl said.

  Philip had bought May a camera for her Christmas once. It was the latest thing, a Kodak Disc, like a normal camera but a little round thing inside it instead of a spool. It didn’t catch on; it wasn’t long before it was hard to get the round things to take the photos on in the shops any more. But May still had it in its box in the top cupboard above the wardrobe. Keep it alive. Keep it with Kodak. Because it was a Christmas gift, it had a place on its cardboard box where you could write who it was to and who it was from. Next to To was May’s name, in Philip’s handwriting. Next to From he’d written UNO WHO, then crossed out with the pen the word WHO and written, under it, HOO.

  UNO HOO in ballpoint now meant more to May than any camera.

  Well, he went, and now it’s me.

  The door opened. The sharp-eyed nurse came in. This nurse was the one who cleaned May too roughly. May slumped down just a touch too late, but this nurse wasn’t a noticer, didn’t notice a thing.

  Visiting’s not till two thirty, the nurse said to the girl. You’re far too early. You’ll definitely have to leave while we do the lunches in any case.

  Okay, the girl said.

  I’ll show you where the day room is, the nurse said. It’s at the end of the corridor, I’ll show you in a minute once I’ve checked her over.

  May winced.

  Right, the girl said. No worries. Thanks.

  The girl came forward with the box of Kleenex. She stood between May and the nurse and she took a tissue out. She wiped at the side of May’s mouth with it, soft.

  She speaking yet? the nurse said over the top of May’s head.

  Not a squeak, the girl said. She’s pretty out of it.

  After she said this she winked down at May like a pro.

  Then the nurse went out into the corridor with the girl and the door swung shut.

  Well, it’s just what happens in a life.

  Well, if I went to Harbour House, would Uno Hoo be what they call a small memento?

  Them and their Harbour House.

  Well, if they can’t dispatch me to Harbour House, well, they’d not have cocked a snook at death then, would they? And then they’d be next. It’d mean they were next. Them next up. Next in line to the throne.

  Well, they are.

  Well, I won’t slight them for their lack of kind.

  Well, I wish them luck.

  Well, truth’s like the sun. Look right at it and that’s your eyes ruined for life.

  Well, it’s time. It’s time. It’s time I upped and went.

  When the girl came back in and no nurse with her, May sat up, ready.

  Shoes.

  What? the girl said.

  Shoes.

  You want your shoes? the girl said.

  She bent down and picked them up from under the bed. May stretched out her arms. Two old arms stretched out in front of her. The girl put the shoes in the old hands. The old hands held them in May’s lap, ready.

  Come on.

  Where? the girl said.

  Come on.

  You can’t go anywhere like that, the girl said.

  Where we going?

  I’m only supposed to sit with you, the girl said. Nobody said nothing about going nowhere.

  You’ve to take me.

  Take you where? the girl said.

  Not the Harbour.

  Okay, the girl said. We won’t go there.

  Come on then. Where we going?

  I don’t know, the girl said.

  You know.

  I can’t, the girl said. I can’t do that. And what about your lunch? They’re just doing the ward. It smells nice.

  Well, after lunch then.

  May was pleased about that. It was mince, it smelled like, today. The mince was good here.

  After lunch then.

  The girl went to take the shoes out of her hands. The old hands held on to the shoes as if the shoes were everything. May gave the girl a look so direct that the girl’s face crumpled and changed.

  Oh God. Okay, the girl said. We’ll try. We’ll give it a go.

  After lunch. We’re off.

  Where, though? the girl said again. Where do you want me to take you? Home?

  Where you come from.

  Me? the girl said. Are you sure?

  Never more sure in all my life.

  The girl looked blank.

  Then she got her phone thing out and fiddled about with it.

  Hi, she said. It’s me. All right. Yeah. Yeah, if you do too. Yeah, does that mean you’re off then? Right now? Listen, that’s great, because. D’you think you could do me a favour, can you pick me up? Yeah, ha ha. Brilliant. Yeah, but listen Aidan, not the bike today, can you bring the car? Just because. Uh. Uh huh. No, babe, listen. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll send you the link. Well, whenever, really. Aw thanks, babe. Hour and a half. Right. I’ll wait at, like. No, the door I came in is where the buses go to, it’s where Accident and Emergency goes in, so just turn in there. Thanks. Yeah. No, I will, I’ll be there. Okay. Love you see you wouldn’t want to be you.

  Not supposed to use them things in here.

  Yeah but you won’t grass on me, the girl said. You’ll need a coat. Have you got a coat?

  Anything but pink.

  Do I tell the nurses we’re going? the girl said.

  Don’t tell nobody nothing.

  (Jennifer comes into the kitchen. She is nine years old. May is having a fly cigarette at the kitchen table since Eleanor, who is always going on about how smoking kills you, is out.

  Mum, she says.

  What now? May says.

  No, listen. I need to ask you this question. What are human beings for? Jennifer says.

  For? May says. What do you mean, for?

  Jennifer hangs her weight off the door handle and swings off the door.

  What’s the point of human beings? I mean like what are we for? she says.

  Um, May says. The point of human beings. Well. It’s, it’s for looking after each other. We’re here to look after each other.

  She is about to ask why Jennifer wants to know, but Jennifer is already gone, off through the door, already clattering up the stairs.

  That night when May comes up to make sure the light’s off in the girls’ room, she sees a piece of paper on the top of the chest of drawers. It’s in Jennifer’s writing. She is always getting into trouble at school for her writing not being neat enough. May holds it up under the landing light and has a good look at it. WHAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE FOR. It’s all right, the writing. It’s not as bad as all that. And she gets good reports in all the sub
jects, so it’s not as if neat writing is the be all and end all.

  Then it is seven years later, a blink of the eye later. Jennifer has been dead one year exactly, to the day. May is in the kitchen holding a piece of paper with a child’s handwriting on it. WHAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE FOR.

  For having a good time RICK

  For making the world a better place NOR

  For looking after each other MUM

  For building things that will last DAD

  But because the thing she’s holding in her hand, written in Jennifer’s hand, is just a piece of paper in the end, nothing but a piece of paper, and because Jennifer’s hand is what the word cold now means, and always will mean from now on, she opens the cupboard door. The top of the bin opens by itself when you open the cupboard door. Philip attached the bin to the door in a way that means it does this. He is handy about the house.

  She folds the piece of paper again and she puts it in the bin. She closes the cupboard door and the lid, as she does, closes on top of the bin by itself.

  Knock knock knock.

  Someone is at the front door.

  May answers it. She has to. Nobody else is in. It’s a boy, standing on the doorstep. He doesn’t say anything. Neither does she. They both just stand there. Then he holds something out for her to take and when she takes it he steps back on to the path. She steps back herself, on to the plastic runner over the carpet to keep the carpet good. She shuts the door.

  She looks at what it is that’s in her hands. It is a rectangular blue box wrapped in cellophane, a box of chocolates. Milk Tray.

  She watches through the frosted glass in the front door as the blurred shape of him gets smaller, then disappears.)

  I took her hand. It was cold to the touch. That was the worst, the very worst.

  What’s she saying? the bald man driving the car said.

  She’s just talking, the girl said. Leave her alone.

  The girl was squashed into the back. May was strapped into the front. After Irish-Liverpool got her into the chair the girl had wheeled her down the corridor and they had both waved cheerily back at the nurses. Then the girl wheeled May straight into the lift and pressed down, and when the doors opened they went out past the place where the shops were and the people having the teas and coffees. The girl had taken off her puffy jacket then and had put it round May’s shoulders and had run out through the main doors with almost no clothes on herself in the cold. She spoke on a phone. She lit a cigarette. She stood dancing from foot to foot out there. The cold came in round May every time the doors opened by themselves.