Autumn

by Ali Smith

  When her mother gets up she finds Elisabeth watching an advert for a supermarket over and over again on the laptop.

  What’s that burning smell? she says.

  She opens the windows, cleans up round the cooker and throws away the singed dishtowel.

  It begins with a supermarket car park full of cars heaped with snow, snow falling. Then the song and the dance. Then, as the song ends, the summer supermarket from outside.

  Pretty gloomy song for supermarket advertising, her mother says. Then again I can’t listen to anything these days without feeling maudlin.

  Oh, I don’t know, Elisabeth says. You’ve always been maudlin.

  True enough. Over the years I’ve had a substantial career in maudlin, her mother says taking the computer.

  Has her mother been this witty all these years and Elisabeth just hasn’t realized?

  Mike Ray and the Milky Ways, her mother says.

  Never heard of them, Elisabeth says.

  Her mother looks it up.

  One-hit wonders, 1962, Summer Brother Autumn Sister (Gluck/Klein). Number 19, September 1962, her mother says. Well well. Maybe you’re right. Maybe our Mr Gluck did write it after all.

  Verse 1:

  Snow is falling in the summer / Leaves are falling in the spring / Gone the reasons, gone the seasons / Time has gone and taken everything

  Chorus: Summer brother autumn sister / Keeping time through time / Autumn mellow autumn yellow / Give me back a reason to rhyme

  Verse 2:

  I will find her in the autumn / Autumn kissed her. Autumn mist / Summer brother autumn sister / Autumn’s gone so summers don’t exist

  Chorus x 1 Bridge:

  Summer brother autumn sister / Time and time again are gone / Out of season I will find her / With time’s fallen leaves behind her / Every time I sing this song

  Chorus x 2 Ad lib to fade

  (© words & music Gluck/Klein)

  There is almost nothing else online about Gluck songwriter, or Gluck lyricist or Gluck/Klein words & music except links back to this song and to the supermarket advert. There are lots of those links. Twenty five thousand, seven hundred and five people have watched the advert on YouTube.

  Were you just playing the Milky Ways? Zoe says coming through to the living room in Elisabeth’s mother’s bathrobe. What’s that burning smell?

  She goes through to the kitchen whistling the chorus.

  Elisabeth checks for the song on the online charts. It’s doing rather well. She search-engines the contact details for the supermarket’s head office.

  What’s your second name? she says to Zoe.

  Spencer-Barnes, Zoe says. Why?

  Elisabeth calls a number on her phone.

  Hello, she says. This is Elisabeth Demand, I’m calling from the Spencer-Barnes Agency, can you put me through to your marketing department? No, that’s fine, answerphone is fine. Thank you. (Pause.) Hello, I’m calling from the Spencer-Barnes Agency, my name is Elisabeth Demand, that’s D, e, m, a, n and d, and I’m calling on behalf of my client Mr Daniel Gluck whose copyright via your use in your current campaign of Mr Gluck’s 1962 hit song Summer Brother Autumn Sister is being infringed every time your latest television commercial is aired. Obviously if you or your agency partners will be so good as to contact me, which you can do on this number – clearly we’d appreciate your alacrity – and negotiate and then be ready to transfer immediately funds totalling what we agree is legally owed to our client Mr Gluck, then the matter will cease to be problematic for us as far as both our client and the question of infringement law is concerned. I’ll wait to hear from you that the situation has been resolved. If I haven’t heard within twenty four hours we’ll be taking action, and I’d suggest at least blanket suspension of your commercial until this has been taken in hand. Many thanks.

  She left her number at the end of the message.

  Infringement, her mother says. Alacrity. Via.

  Elisabeth shrugs.

  Do you think it’ll work? her mother says.

  Worth a try, Elisabeth says. I bet they think he’s long gone.

  What about the other people? Zoe says. What about Mike Ray? The Milky Ways?

  My only concern is Daniel, Elisabeth says. I mean Mr Gluck.

  Your girl’s a powerhouse, Zoe says.

  Isn’t she. But never underestimate the source, her mother says.

  The source? Elisabeth says.

  Me, her mother says.

  That’ll be the day, Elisabeth says.

  Yet another good old song, Zoe says.

  She starts singing it.

  It is like magic has happened in my life, Elisabeth’s mother whispers to Elisabeth when Zoe’s left the room.

  Unnatural, Elisabeth says.

  Who’d have known, who’d have guessed, it’d be love, at this late stage, that’d see me through? Elisabeth’s mother says.

  Unhealthy, Elisabeth says. I forbid it. You’re not to.

  She gives her mother a hug and a kiss.

  That’s enough, her mother says.

  What’s this book? Zoe says.

  She comes through from the hall.

  Who’s this artist? she says. These are wonderful.

  She sits down at the kitchen table with the old Pauline Boty catalogue open at the painting called 5 4 3 2 1.

  One of the people my erudite daughter educates people about, Elisabeth’s mother says.

  Artist from the 1960s, Elisabeth says. The only British female Pop artist.

  Ah, Zoe says. I didn’t know there were any.

  There were, Elisabeth says.

  Victim of abuse, I expect, Zoe says.

  She winks at Elisabeth. Elisabeth laughs.

  Just the usual humdrum contemporary misogynies, she says.

  Committed suicide, Zoe says.

  Nope, Elisabeth says.

  Went mad, then, Zoe says.

  Nope. Just the usual humdrum completely sane occasional depressions, Elisabeth says.

  Ah. Died tragically, then, Zoe says.

  Well, that’s one reading of it, Elisabeth says. My own preferred reading is: free spirit arrives on earth equipped with the skill and the vision capable of blasting the tragic stuff that happens to us all into space, where it dissolves away to nothing whenever you pay any attention to the lifeforce in her pictures.

  Oh, that’s good, Zoe says. That’s very good. All the same. I bet she was ignored.

  She was after she died, Elisabeth says.

  I bet it goes like this, Zoe says. Ignored. Lost. Rediscovered years later. Then ignored. Lost. Rediscovered again years later. Then ignored. Lost. Rediscovered ad infinitum. Am I right?

  Elisabeth laughs out loud.

  Have you actually done one of my daughter’s courses? her mother says.

  What’s her story, then, this girl? Zoe says.

  She’s looking at the photograph of Boty young and laughing, not yet twenty, on the inside fold of the catalogue cover.

  Her story? Elisabeth says. Got ten minutes?

  Autumn. 1963. Scandal 63. Up till last night the most prominent Keeler was right here, centre canvas, shouldering her way into the upper balcony, poised at the midpoint of the upper echelon between Ward and Profumo – at least, one of the Christine images was. Till last night there’d been several Christine images at different points on the canvas. One Christine image was striding along, another was naked, smiling prettily at the foot of the frame, another was in ecstasy down below the feet of the central Christine walking above swinging her handbag. But then last night at the Establishment Lewis was there, he was at the bar.

  Lewis took the press photo that had spread like Spanish flu. Iconic. He’d seen what Pauline was working on, he photographed it actually. He’d come to the studio and photographed her holding Scandal 63 on one side, Ready Steady Go on the other, kind of equivalents, and he saw her come in and he said, want to come up and see my Keelers? and Pauline said I say, what can you possibly mean, I’m a married woman you kno
w, yes please. So they’d gone upstairs to his place above the club and he showed her and Clive the shots under the magnifiers, and she’d looked up close at the original, the image. Keeler with her arms up, chin on both her fists, it was splendid.

  Then she’d noticed along from it on the contact sheet the slightly different version of the same.

  So she said to Lewis, can you maybe make me that one up, please?

  It was a good one, looked less coy, more self-protecting. One arm was down. You could see what Keeler looks like when she’s thinking.

  I’ll do Keeler thinking, she thought. Keeler the Thinker.

  Then she pointed at the marks on Keeler’s leg, quite visible the bruising in the magnification.

  Gosh, she said.

  Can’t see it in the money shot, Lewis said. Papers, too grainy.

  So now she was repainting the commission. It would be full of questions now, not statements. It would still look like the image everyone thought they knew, but at the same time not be it. Keeler trompe l’oeil. And even an eye that didn’t at first notice, even an eye that took the pose for granted, would still know, unconsciously – something not quite as you expect, as you remember, as it’s meant to be, can’t quite put your finger.

  The image and the life: well, she was used to that. There was Pauline and there was the image – feather boa flung about, winking at the camera, it was fun. High in confidence. Low in confidence. Dressed as Marilyn in the college revues, I wanna be loved by you. Playing Doris Day, every body loves my body. Little-girl song in a grown-woman voice, daddy wouldn’t buy me a bauhaus, I’ve got a little cat (gasps at how she made sure they knew cat meant cunt). Diamonds are a girl’s, my armpits are charmpits (gasps at the word armpits, not a word ever heard out loud). At the Royal College, where girls were so rare they made you stare, where the architects hadn’t bothered putting women’s toilets in the blueprint, she walked the corridors hearing the whispers as she went by, rumour is, that one there’s actually read Proust, she put her arm round the boy and said it’s true darling and Genet and de Beauvoir and Rimbaud and Colette, I’ve read all the men and the women of French letters, oh and Gertrude Stein as well, don’t you know about women and their tender buttons?

  The bomb was going to drop. They’d maybe only a few years to live.

  A boy asked her, why do you wear so much bright red lipstick, all the better to kiss you with she said and jumped out of her chair and came after him, he ran away, he was actually sort of terrified, she chased him out of the college and across the grass and up the pavement till he leapt on the back of a passing bus and she stood holding herself, she was laughing so much. A man, quite an old one, a very nice one, had made her laugh like that too by crawling towards her on his hands and knees across the room kissing the floor between him and her as he did; he was the songwriter, came to the flat, she called him Gershwin for fun. He asked her, looking at her Belmondo with the hat, who’s he? Film star, French, she said, that picture’s all heart-throb versus cunt-throb don’t you think? and poor old Gershwin blushed all the way to his tips – ears, toes, everywhere he had a tip blushing, sweet older chap he couldn’t help it, he was from another time. Well, they almost all were. Even the people meant to be from now were really from then. He was in the studio the other day, looked at 5 4 3 2 1, what does it say? he’d said and he’d read it out loud. Oh for a fu–. Oh. Ah. I see. How very, ah, Shakespearianly put. Well, if you’re Gershwin, she said, I’m the Wimbledon Bard-o. Get it? Oh yes, he said, Bard, Bardot. How apt.

  He liked her a lot.

  Oh well.

  Couldn’t be helped.

  Imagine if pictures in a gallery weren’t just pictures but were actually sort of alive.

  Imagine if time could be kind of suspended, rather than us be suspended in it.

  She had no idea sometimes, to be honest, what she was trying to do. To be vital, she supposed.

  Low in confidence, only sixteen, when a tutor suggested to her stained glass isn’t just for churches, it can be for anywhere. It doesn’t have to be for holy things, it can be for anything. High in confidence leaving the little corner on The Only Blonde In The World just the bare canvas like a corner of the painting had come away by itself, trompe l’oeil like you could peel them off and know that’s what they were, images. Marilyn all dazzling, hurrying by in Some Like It Hot, cutting through abstraction with her brightness. Could you paint the female orgasm? It was Marilyn. It was coloured circles, lovely, lovely, and everything was exciting, TV was exciting, radio was exciting, London was exciting, full of exciting people from all over the world, and theatre was exciting, an empty fairground was exciting, cigarette packets were exciting, milk bottle tops were exciting, Greece was exciting, Rome was exciting, a clever woman in a hostel’s shower room wearing a man’s shirt to sleep in was exciting, Paris – exciting (I am alone in Paris!! wherever I go I am followed or asked to take coffee etc. etc. otherwise Paris is marvellous, the painting – no words possible). High in confidence, art could be anything, beer cans were a new kind of folk art, film stars a new mythology, nostalgia of NOW. It was exciting when she worked out the photographers taking the photos of her couldn’t cut her art out of their pictures if she posed as part of her art.

  (Wrong.

  Blast.

  They still managed to cut round her and slice the art out and away, leaving the breast and the thigh bits, of course.)

  Get my paintbrushes into the shot, will you, Mike?

  She was wearing a hat, a shirt and her underwear, mimicking as closely as she could Celia in the portrait, except she’d taken her jeans off to be sure they’d keep both her and the picture in the picture. But Lewis and Michael were great boys, she kind of liked them immensely. They let her tell them how to set up the shots and mostly they did as she asked. Happy to pose nude. I like nakedness. I mean who doesn’t, to be honest? I’m a person. I’m an intelligent nakedness. An intellectual body. I’m a bodily intelligence. Art’s full of nudes and I’m a thinking, choosing nude. I’m the artist as nude. I’m the nude as artist.

  A great many men don’t understand a woman full of joy, even more don’t understand paintings full of joy by a woman. It’s really all based on sex the whole thing, look, the bananas and fountains and that huge mouth and the hand, well, they’re all phallic symbols. Well, anyway, they say, I’m a man, and being a man is lots better than being a woman.

  She saw the notice pinned to the side of the building, bright yellow, saying in different coloured letters CRAZY COTTAGE then underneath in blue the bigger letters BRIGITTE’S BIKINI then small in faded black COME IN & SEE then a little THE on the side then huge in red SEX KITTEN. Take my photo looking at this, please, Mike, she said. She came right up to the side of the building as if she were coming round its corner and simply sort of reading the sign because that’s what she was, a girl reading the world.

  But love was terribly important. She didn’t mean romantic love. Generalized sort of love. Enjoying oneself was terribly important. Sex could be as varied as being alive could be varied. Passion always sounded to her like something without humour in it. A passionate moment for her –

  I can remember once sitting opposite my brother and feeling so much love for him that it was almost as though I was knitted to him.

  This lovely feeling (she’d say to the writer interviewing her for a book) lasted for, say, half an hour. But she’d married her husband because he liked women, he knew they weren’t things, or something you didn’t quite know about. He accepted me intellectually, which men find very difficult.

  High in confidence. Low in confidence. Her mother was out in her father’s English rose garden pruning the roses; her mother made the dresses and made the meals. Out in the Carshalton garden with the pruning shears her mother said it way before James Brown, it’s a man’s world, moving the mark on the sherry bottle so her father wouldn’t notice, her mother, Veronica, banned back in the day from taking a place at the Slade by her own father, grieving for that place all
her secateur life, working on Pauline’s father to let her, Wimbledon Art School. It was her mother took her to America on the QE2, her mother listening to Maria Callas at full volume (when her father was out), shouting at the radio news (in the kitchen when her father wasn’t in the kitchen), her mother who fell ill, Pauline was eleven, endless X-rays for everyone, scans, her mother who was going to die. The family went to chaos, it was good the chaos, except for the depressions. No, it was formative. Lost a lung, her mother, but she was kind of perfectly all right, she was keeping a scrapbook of the cuttings from the papers. PAULINE PAINTS POPS. And ALL MY OWN WORK. (That was the headline on Pauline hanging an abstract in the London Labour Party Trades Union Congress Headquarters.) Actresses often have tiny brains. Painters often have huge beards. Imagine a brainy actress who is also a painter and also a blonde.

  Imagine.

  Her father was stern. Her father disapproved. Her father had very strong reservations. Desirable? a semi? I daren’t say anything or daddy will be upset. Half Belgian, half Persian, staunch British conservative, he’d seen the Himalayas and Harrogate and had chosen accountancy. His father’d been killed by pirates (true). His mother’s family had been shipbuilders on the Euphrates. So the Norfolk Broads is where he kept his own boat, and the rules of cricket, the making of tea the way it should be made were what to measure life by.

  He didn’t even want me to work when I left school.

  The fights were sort of huge, often before breakfast, the stupidest worst time to fight with him. Her older brothers flinched and shook their heads. Her brothers had it too, men had it too, maybe even worse – the brother who wanted to go to art school, their father made him an accountant. She got to go eventually, well, after all, not a proper job, so it was maybe more okay, for a girl, to.

  But her brothers, when she was little. Shut up, you’re only a girl. Used to want to be a boy. Before, she used to pull at – you know the sort of skin you have – to make it sort of longer. Used to think I had an ugly cunt you see, I don’t now. Free and easy.