by Ali Smith
If I’d seen this ridiculous thing that passes for a passport before the referendum, she says, I’d have known to be ready well ahead of time for what was so clearly on its way.
Elisabeth tucks the new passport beside the mirror in the bedroom her mother’s made for her at the back of the house. Then she pulls on her coat to go to the bus stop.
Don’t forget, her mother shouts through. Supper. I need you here by six. Zoe’s coming.
Zoe is the person who was a BBC child actor when her mother was small, whom her mother met filming the episode of The Golden Gavel two weeks ago and with whom her mother is now firm friends. Zoe has been invited over to watch the opening of the Scottish Parliament, which her mother saved on her TV box at the start of the month and has already insisted on showing to Elisabeth. Her mother, who’d seen it several times already herself, was in tears from the start, from when the man doing the voiceover mentioned the words carved on the mace.
Wisdom. Justice. Compassion. Integrity.
It’s the word integrity, her mother said. It does it every time. I hear it and I see in my head the faces of the liars.
Elisabeth grimaced. Every morning she wakes up feeling cheated of something. The next thing she thinks about, when she does, is the number of people waking up feeling cheated of something all over the country, no matter what they voted.
Uh huh, she said.
I’m still looking at properties up there, her mother said. I’m not leaving the EU.
It is all right for her mother. Her mother has had her life.
Rule Britannia, a bunch of thugs had been sing-shouting in the street at the weekend past Elisabeth’s flat. Britannia rules the waves. First we’ll get the Poles. And then we’ll get the Muslims. Then we’ll get the gyppos, then the gays. You lot are on the run and we’re coming after you, a right-wing spokesman had shouted at a female MP on a panel on Radio 4 earlier that same Saturday. The chair of the panel didn’t berate, or comment on, or even acknowledge the threat the man had just made. Instead, he gave the last word to the Tory MP on the panel, who used what was the final thirty seconds of the programme to talk about the real and disturbing cause for concern – not the blatant threat just made on the air by one person to another – of immigration. Elisabeth had been listening to the programme in the bath. She’d switched the radio off after it and wondered if she’d be able to listen to Radio 4 in any innocence ever again. Her ears had undergone a sea-change. Or the world had.
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and –
Rich and what? she thought.
Rich and poor.
She rubbed the condensation off the mirror, stood in the echo of herself just standing in a bathroom. She looked at her blurred reflection.
Hi, Elisabeth had said down the phone to her mother next morning. It’s me. At least, I think it is.
I know exactly what you mean, her mother said.
Can I come and stay at yours for a bit? I want to get some work done and to be a bit closer to, uh, home.
Her mother laughed and told her she could have the back room for as long as she needed.
Meanwhile Zoe, the 1960s child star, was also coming, to have Scotland played to her.
Zoe and I bonded over a silver sovereign holder, her mother’d told her. I don’t know if you know what they are, do you? They look like little fob-watches when they’re closed, I’ve seen one or two on the TV antiques markets. There was one on top of a cabinet and Zoe picked it up and opened it and said oh what a pity, someone’s taken all the clockwork out of it. And I said no, it’s probably a sovereign holder. And she said blimey, is that the size of sovereignty? Old money, after all? Might have known. The original £1 coin. Soon to be worth 60p. We both laughed so loud we spoiled a take in the next room.
I want you to meet her, her mother says again now. She’s cheered me up no end.
I won’t forget, Elisabeth says.
She forgets as soon as she’s through the door.
Time and time again. Even in the increased sleep period, with his head on a pillow and his eyes closed, hardly here, he does it, what he’s always been able to do.
Endlessly charming, Daniel. Charmed life. How does he do it?
She’d brought the chair from the corridor. She’d shut the door to the room. She’d opened the book she bought today. She’d started to read, from the beginning, quite quietly, out loud. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us. The words had acted like a charm. They’d released it all, in seconds. They’d made everything happening stand just far enough away.
It was nothing less than magic.
Who needs a passport?
Who am I? Where am I? What am I?
I’m reading.
Daniel lies there asleep like a person in a fairytale. She holds the opened book at its beginning in her hands. She says nothing at all out loud.
There was a time, she says inside her head, when I was very small and my mother banned me from seeing you, and I did what she’d asked but only for three days. By the morning of the third day I knew for the first time that one day I would die. So I blatantly ignored her. I went against her instructions. There was nothing she could do about it. It was only three days, and I prided myself on your not noticing or knowing about it at the time.
But I want to apologize for not being here these last years. It’s ten years, all in. I’m really sorry. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was hopelessly hurt, about something stupid.
Of course, it’s possible that you didn’t notice that absence either.
Myself, I thought about you the whole time. Even when I wasn’t thinking about you, I thought about you.
Silence from Elisabeth, except for the sound of her breathing.
Silence from Daniel, except for the sound of his.
Not long after this, she falls asleep on the upright chair with her head leaning against the wall. She sits in the whited-out place in her dream.
The whited-out place this time is her flat.
To be truthful, it isn’t her flat and she knows this in the dream; she’s got used to the idea now that she’ll probably never be able to buy a house. It’s no big deal, no one can these days except people who’re loaded, or whose parents die, or whose parents are loaded. But never mind. She has a lease. She has a lease on a white-walled flat in a dream. She can hear the people next door’s TV through the wall. It is one of the ways you know you’ve got neighbours.
Someone knocks at the door. It’ll be Daniel.
But it isn’t. It’s a girl. She has a face as blank as a piece of paper, blank as a blank screen. Elisabeth begins to panic. A blank screen means the computer is failing and all the knowledge is disappearing. There’ll be no way she’ll be able to access her workfiles. There’ll be no way of knowing what’s going on in the world right now. There’ll be no way of getting in contact with anyone. There’ll be no way she’ll be able to do anything ever again.
The girl ignores Elisabeth. She sits down in the doorway so that Elisabeth can’t shut the door. She gets out a book. She must be Miranda, from The Tempest. Miranda from The Tempest is reading Brave New World.
She looks up from her book as if she’s just realized Elisabeth is there too.
I’ve come to bring you news of our father, she says.
Earlier today their father, according to the blank-faced girl, had gone to buy a new laptop.
A present for you, the girl (Elisabeth’s sister) says. But then this happened.
Then Elisabeth sees, like she’s watching a film, what happened next.
On the way to John Lewis a man (her father?) stops at the window of Cash Converters to look in and see if anything there is cheaper. A woman stops and looks i
n the window too. Are you looking at the laptops? she says. Yes, Elisabeth’s father says. The thing is, the woman says, I’m about to go into that shop and sell them my new laptop, and as I say, it’s brand new. I’ve got a new job in America and I now don’t need this new laptop. But if you’re looking to buy a laptop, I can sell it to you instead of to Cash Converters and at a very good price for a brand new laptop.
Elisabeth’s father goes with the woman to a car park where she opens the boot of a car and unzips a holdall in the boot. She takes out a brand new laptop. Elisabeth, in the dream, can smell how new it is.
£600 cash, the woman says, does that sound fair? Yes, Elisabeth’s father says. That sounds very fair. I’ll go and get the money from a cash machine.
I’ll come with you, the woman says putting the laptop back into the holdall and shutting the boot.
They go to a cash machine. He gets the money out. They go back to the car. He gives the woman the money. The woman opens the boot, takes the holdall out and hands it to him. She shuts the boot of the car and she drives away.
Then our father opened the bag, the girl with the blank face says. And there was nothing in that bag but onions. Onions and potatoes. Here.
She hands Elisabeth a holdall. Elisabeth opens it. It’s full of potatoes and onions.
Thank you, Elisabeth says. Thank him for me.
She looks over to where the cooker should be. But there’s nothing at all in the white-painted room.
Never mind, she thinks. When Daniel comes, he’ll know a way of making something with these.
That’s where she wakes up.
She remembers the dream for a fraction of a second, then she remembers where she is and she forgets the dream.
She stretches on the chair, her arms and shoulders, her legs.
So this is what sleeping with Daniel is like.
She smiles to herself.
(She’s often wondered.)
It was a standard sort of Wednesday in April in 1996. Elisabeth was eleven. She was wearing new rollerblades. When you put your weight on them coloured lights lit up and flashed at the heels. You couldn’t see this yourself unless it was dark outside and you put all the lights out in your bedroom or drew the blind and pressed down on them with your hands.
Daniel was at the front gate.
I’m going to the theatre, he said. The outdoor theatre. Want to come too?
He told her it was a play about civilization, colonization and imperialism.
It sounds a bit boring, she said.
Trust me, Daniel said.
So she went, and it wasn’t boring, it was really good, about a father and a daughter. It was also about fairness and unfairness, and people getting hypnotized on an island and hatching plots against each other to see who could take control of the island, and some characters were meant to be the slaves and other characters got to be freed. But mostly it was about a girl whose father, a magician, was sorting out her future for her. In the end the daughter could have been in it a bit more than she was, but all the same it was still really good; in the end Elisabeth was nearly crying when the grown-old father stepped forward without his magic cloak and stick and asked the people in the audience to clap because if they didn’t he’d be trapped forever in the play on the fake island with its cardboard scenery. If they hadn’t, it was really very much as if he might still be stuck there in the open air theatre standing in the dark all night.
It was also quite exciting to be able, just by clapping your hands, to free someone from something.
She rollerbladed home in front of Daniel so Daniel would be able to see the lights light up.
When she was in bed that night she remembered her feet and the pavement passing so fast beneath them and thought how strange it was that she could remember totally useless details about things like cracks in a pavement more clearly than she could recall anything about her own father.
The next day at breakfast she said to her mother,
I couldn’t sleep last night.
Oh dear, her mother said. Well, you’ll sleep tonight instead.
I couldn’t sleep for a reason, Elisabeth said.
Uh huh? her mother said.
Her mother was reading the paper.
I couldn’t sleep, Elisabeth said, because I realized I can’t remember a single thing about what my father’s face looks like.
Well, you’re lucky, her mother said from behind the paper.
She turned the page, folded it against another page, shook the paper into shape again and put it back up in the air between them.
Elisabeth strapped her rollerblades on, laced them up and went round to Daniel’s house. Daniel was in the back garden. Elisabeth rollerbladed down the path.
Oh hello, Daniel said. It’s you. What you reading?
I couldn’t get to sleep last night, she said.
Wait, Daniel said. First of all, tell me. What are you reading?
Clockwork, she said. It’s really good. I told you about it yesterday. The one about people making up the story but then the story becomes true and starts to happen and is really terrible.
I remember, Daniel said. They stop the bad thing happening by singing a song.
Yes, Elisabeth said.
If only life were so simple, Daniel said.
That’s what I’m saying, Elisabeth said. I couldn’t sleep.
Because of the book? Daniel said.
Elisabeth told him about the pavement, her feet, her father’s face. Daniel looked grave. He sat down on the lawn. He patted the place on the grass next to him.
It’s all right to forget, you know, he said. It’s good to. In fact, we have to forget things sometimes. Forgetting it is important. We do it on purpose. It means we get a bit of a rest. Are you listening? We have to forget. Or we’d never sleep ever again.
Elisabeth was crying now like a much younger child cries. Crying came out of her like weather.
Daniel put his hand flat against her back.
What I do when it distresses me that there’s something I can’t remember, is. Are you listening?
Yes, Elisabeth said through the crying.
I imagine that whatever it is I’ve forgotten is folded close to me, like a sleeping bird.
What kind of bird? Elisabeth said.
A wild bird, Daniel said. Any kind. You’ll know what kind when it happens. Then, what I do is, I just hold it there, without holding it too tight, and I let it sleep. And that’s that.
Then he asked her if it was true that the rollerskates with the lights on the backs of them only worked on roads, and if it was true that the lights in the backs of them didn’t come on at all if you rollerskated on grass.
Elisabeth stopped crying.
They’re called rollerblades, she said.
Rollerblades, Daniel said. Right. Well?
And you can’t rollerblade on grass, she said.
Can’t you? Daniel said. How very disappointing truth is sometimes. Can’t we try?
There’d be no point, she said.
Can’t we try anyway? he said. We might disprove the general consensus.
Okay, Elisabeth said.
She got up. She wiped her face on her sleeve.
Recalled to life, Elisabeth says. Hunger, want and nothing. The whole city’s in a storm at sea and that’s just the beginning. Savagery’s coming. Heads are going to roll.
Elisabeth is in the hall hanging her coat up. Her mother has just introduced her to her new friend Zoe and asked Elisabeth how far through A Tale of Two Cities they are today.
Who’s Mr Gluck? her mother’s new friend Zoe says.
Mr Gluck is a jolly old gay man who used to be our neighbour years back, her mother says. She was very fond of him, he befriended her as a child. She was a difficult child. Pity me. A very difficult child to read.
No he isn’t. Yes I was and still am. And no I wasn’t. In that order, Elisabeth says.
See? her mother says.
I like a difficult read myself, Zoe says.
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She smiles at Elisabeth with genuine friendliness. She is in her sixties maybe. She is handsome and unfussily stylish. She is now apparently a pretty well-known psychoanalyst. (Elisabeth had laughed when her mother told her this, at last you’re seeing someone after all the years you’ve needed to, she’d said.) She bears a fleeting ghost of a resemblance to that girl dancing with the phonebox in the film back then; the girl-ghost is a technicolor shimmer somewhere still about her person. Her older self is warm, bright like an apple still high up in a tree after all the others have been picked. Meanwhile Elisabeth’s mother is making an effort, wearing make-up and a set of brand new looking linen clothes like the ones they sell in the expensive shop in the village.
And you’ve kept in touch all these years, Zoe says.
We’d lost touch, actually, her mother says, till a neighbour tracked me down on the net and let me know he’d packed up his house, sold his old Barbara Hepworth piece of holy stone –
Maquette, Elisabeth says.
Oh my goodness, Zoe says. He’s got taste.
– and signed himself into a care home, her mother says. And I happened to tell Elisabeth, who’d been out here to see me a total of, I kid you not, once, in a total of, I kid you not, six years, I told her on the phone, I said oh by the way, old Mr Gluck. He’s in this place called The Maltings apparently not far from here. And I kid you not. She’s been here every week, all this summer. Twice, sometimes. And now she’s living here for a while. Nice having a daughter again. So far, anyway.
Thanks, Elisabeth says.
And now I’m looking forward to a bit of fine-tuned attention myself in my later years, her mother says. All those books I’ve never read, Middlemarch, Moby-Dick, War and Peace. Not that I’ll be able to do my later years quite like Mr Gluck has. He’s a hundred and ten by now.
He’s a what? Zoe says.
She always gets his age completely wrong. He’s only a hundred and one, Elisabeth says.
Zoe shakes her head.
Only, she says. Blimey. Seventy five’ll do. Anything after that, bonus. Well. I’m saying that now. Who knows what I’ll say if I get to seventy five?
