by Ali Smith
The TV is turned up too high and the news announcers in the studio and out in the world are maundering on too in their usual surreal way. Since Sacha watched that TV show where celebrities dress up in costumes with huge masked heads and sing a song, and a panel and an audience try to guess who’s behind the mask, it has struck Sacha that actually everyone and everything on TV is like someone wearing a mask. After you’ve seen it, you can’t not see it.
Take it off! Take it off! the panel and the audience shout at the celebrity who loses and has to unmask, so that people can see at last who’s been in there all along.
Take it off! Sacha once saw a gang of men shouting it at a girl down near the pier.
Whether I shall turn out to be, her mother says. Heroine of my own life. Whether that station, that station, shall be held by anybody else. Will be held.
Just look it up, Sacha says.
No, her mother says.
I’ll look it up for you, Sacha says.
No. Don’t, her mother says.
The don’t is said with all her mother’s fierceness in it; these days her mother is constantly forgetting things and constantly trying not to look up online the things she’s forgotten. I’m so menopausal. It’s the menopause. Like you can defy the inevitable by shouting its name at it. She is trying to make herself remember things rather than look them up. In real terms, what this means is her mother annoys everybody for half an hour then goes online and looks up whatever it is she can’t remember.
Will be held by anybody else, she says, whether that station will be held by anybody else. For God sake, Sach. Turn that down so I can hear myself think. So I can hear myself not think.
Can’t. He’s put it somewhere, Sacha says.
Robert has already left for school. One of his more recent japes is to turn the TV volume up several notches too high then hide the remote, because the remote is the only way they’ve got of getting the TV to do anything. The on/off button on top doesn’t work any more (this TV is quite old; their father took the new one next door when he went). If you unplug it you risk not getting it to turn on again. So they don’t.
The too-loud thing on the screen right now is a news report about an evangelical rally that has something to do with the American president.
Call him, her mother says. See if he’s with your dad.
Next door dad. Like a TV sitcom from her mother’s generation.
He won’t be, Sacha says.
Just in case, her mother says.
Sacha calls Robert’s mobile. It goes straight to voicemail.
Off, Sacha says.
Course it is, her mother says. I’ll knock on the wall.
He won’t be there, Sacha says.
Ashley won’t let Robert in any more since he 1. stole her little harp thing she plays her welsh tunes on, 2. sold it in Cash Converters then gave her the money for it in an envelope like he was doing her a favour, and 3. told her (even though she’s Welsh which is actually also British) she wasn’t welcome in this country as anything but a tourist now.
And Mercy is taking the bible belt by dollar-storm, the TV reporter says. They’re calling her the great white hope.
It’s true, Sacha can’t see a single person who’s not white in any of the footage of the Mercy Bucks Church of the Spirit.
He told me to tell you. He tells me direct. He’s telling me now. I can hear his holy voice, the holy voice of the great God almighty speaking to me from his own holy mouth, he’s here, he’s saying it right now, mercy, mercy (mercy, mercy! the people in the church are shouting back at her, or maybe Mercy, Mercy, since Mercy’s her name).
Who is that? her mother says as she passes through the room again and stops in front of the TV.
It’s a great white hope, Sacha says. God speaks to her direct in his holy voice from his holy mouth into her earhole.
Mercy Bucks, her mother says. That’s a made-up name. And that’s a terrible accent. She looks really, really like Claire Dunn. If Claire Dunn were thirty years older. Which, let’s face it, she will be now.
You always think people on TV are someone you know, Sacha says.
No, I recognize her. I worked with her. If it’s Claire she’s had a nose job, her mother says. The nose is different.
The nose is different because it’s not anyone you know, Sacha says.
She gives her mother a sidelong look. Usually when her mother brings up her acting past it’s a signal that she’s in a fragile way. Sacha’s mother was in acting once, back before she met their father and before she did something in advertising that she gave up when she had Sacha and her brother. It is all also connected to things that can’t be said out loud by anyone in the family about her mother’s mother, who died when their mother was only Robert’s age, by swallowing too many tablets, which their mother says was by mistake and everybody including her mother knows probably wasn’t really by mistake but never says it. (Not even Robert.)
But her mother doesn’t look fragile. She just looks a bit tired.
The report ends with a camera shot on the back projection behind Mercy Bucks of a clicker showing the amount of money being donated rising hundreds of dollars a second.
The next news item is about the wildfires in Australia.
They’ve had a hot January, her mother says.
The hottest since data began, Sacha says. And it’s February now and those fires are still going.
Get the news up on catch-up for me, her mother says. Let’s get another look at Claire.
Sacha holds her hands up and out.
Can’t, she says.
Her mother feels down the sides of the couch for the remote. She checks behind the things on the shelves. Then she stands in the middle of the room at a loss.
Sacha hates it when her mother is at a loss.
Probably in his room, Sacha says.
Or he’s taken it to school with him, her mother says.
Sacha goes into the hall and pulls her coat on. She checks herself in the mirror.
I can’t get catch-up to work, her mother shouts through from the kitchen.
I’ve got to go, Sacha calls back through.
But she goes through to the kitchen at the note of panic in her mother’s voice.
It’s true; BBC iPlayer isn’t working; it’s not just her mother’s uselessness. But Sacha can save the day for her mother and still get off to school, because Pastor Mercy Bucks has her own YouTube channel.
MERCY BUCKS SAVES
All the titles of Mercy Bucks’s videos have the word white in them.
White on the skin of his body.
Behold a white cloud.
The branches have become white.
Sacha clicks on the most recent video, uploaded yesterday. A great white throne. 44.4k views.
In a high-ceilinged modern church the words Gain From The Gospel are haloed in fluorescent light behind the figure of Mercy Bucks.
Add Kings 21.2 to Matthew 6.33, Mercy says. And I Will Give Thee The Worth Of It In Money plus But Seek First His Kingdom. It’s the only way anything will ever truly add up in life because God is the boss of our corporation. God is the ultimate accountant. And God knows everything. God knows you. God knows what you have and what you have not. Don’t think God the father can’t see into even the most encrypted bank account. God can reckon to the dime, to the cent. Exactly how much you’re willing to shortchange God. Exactly how much you’re willing to sacrifice in God’s name to become a person of spiritual property. Because God smiles on those who sacrifice savings. God rewards those who render unto God what belongs to God. God windfalls those who prove themselves worthy. God showers in benefits those who are benefactors to God’s good church.
Mercy Bucks says it all in her singsong way and the congregation sways and rocks in the broadcast light like they’re at a rock concert, punching the air wi
th their phones, breaking into singing, Mercy Mercy Hallelujah, to the old tune of Glory Glory.
Mercy holds her hand up to quieten them.
And God says that nobody, nobody who truly believes, could ever say anything bad or denigratory or damaging about our president, she says.
Sacha starts laughing.
God says anybody who says such things is speaking evil with tongues, Mercy says. God knows the impeachment trial was evil. God cleared our president’s name with every breath our president takes! I know God. God knows me. Believe me. Believe me. I’m a woman hotlined to God, God’s got me on direct dial and God told me to tell you to support our great great president who’s here on earth to do a great great work, the great great work that God the father and Jesus the saviour have personally entrusted him with –
Sacha is laughing so much now that she nearly topples the chair she’s on. Her mother is shaking her head.
I suppose the fact that we’re all a lot more accustomed to blatancy these days means that blatancy itself has to get even more blatant, her mother says.
Yeah. But what a fraud, Sacha says.
T’was ever so, her mother says. Since summer first was leafy.
Now her mother’s saying lines from when she was an actress. But the only thing her mother was apparently ever really in was a washing-up liquid advert on TV back before everything. Sacha was shown the advert when she was little, there’s a video of it in a cupboard, now unwatchable because there are no video players left alive. In it a young woman, a slim and coiffed stranger, unbelievable but it really is her mother, way back then, bends down in a kitchen to take a dish from a small boy who is wearing a policeman’s hat and explaining to this woman who’s meant to be his mother that in not getting these dishes clean enough she’s committing a crime.
– so donate, donate, donate and do right, to help me prepare me the way of the Lord, because oh dear Lord day by day three things I pray, see me clearly, love me dearly, follow me on social media and donate day by day by day by day –
Now she’s just quoting bits out of Godspell, her mother says.
What’s Godspell? Sacha says.
Old musical, her mother says. We did Godspell together. We did Much Ado. Then we did the Shakespeare / Dickens summer tour of the eastern counties.
Meanwhile the camera is doing close-ups on the people in Mercy’s audience. Some look proud. Some look broken. Some look desperate. Some look lit with hope. They all look poor. Most are holding their phones in the air and waving them. The others are using their phones to donate. The screen soft-focuses close up on Mercy’s face.
Yep, her mother says. Definitely.
Will I sleep it or do you want to keep watching it? Sacha says.
– are you sad? I see you, are you lonely? I see you, are you anxious? are you wired? are you mired in sin? I see you, are you tired? can’t you get hired? has life made you a shadow of yourself? are you more dead than alive? are you a ghost of yourself, a wraith? then listen because, God sayeth through me, it is required, it is required –
Sacha moves the cursor arrow to click the page away.
It is required you do awake your faith, her mother says.
– awake your faith, Mercy Bucks says a split second after her mother does, a split second before Mercy Bucks disappears off the screen.
Her mother nods.
Winter’s Tale, summer 89. I was Hermione. She was Understudy. Sacha, you’re going to be really late. Do you need a lift? Oh no, silly me. Ms Car Embargo 2020. I forgot.
You didn’t forget, Sacha says. You’re just unable to allow for other people’s attempts at heroism.
I don’t know that I’d call a refusal to travel in anything petrol-based an attempt at heroism, her mother says. A principle, maybe. But heroism?
What’s Winter’s Tale Summer 89? Sacha says.
The Winter’s Tale is a Shakespeare play, her mother says.
I know that, Sacha says (though in reality she didn’t or at least wasn’t completely sure).
And summer 89 is long gone. Antediluvian now, her mother says.
Anti what? Sacha says.
Ante. Before. Diluvian. The deluge, her mother says. Twenty past. You’d best run.
Sacha picks her coat up off the floor, shoulders it back on and kisses her mother on the cheek.
God bless, her mother says.
Did God just tell you to say that by speaking direct into your ear in his holy voice? Sacha says.
He did if you pay me a fiver, her mother says.
—
Car embargo. Like it’s a joke, a fad.
Anti diluvian.
Sacha quite likes words. She doesn’t really get to, though, at home, because Robert’s meant to be the one who likes words.
On her way to school she looks up anti diluvian on her phone.
Spelt slightly differently it means before the Flood capital F.
Yeah. As if the Flood capital F belongs to the past. We’re all antediluvian right now.
Not even when they see the pictures of Australia burning do they admit it. Not even when half a billion dead creatures – meaning 500000000 individual living things dead – is only the death toll from one single area. Not even when they see the photo of Australian people with no summer daylight standing breathing red dust air on a beach under a red sky, sort of hanging like puppets nobody can work the strings of, and a chestnut horse just standing there in the middle of them, bewildered, grave, like proof of blamelessness itself, while the ball of fire spread on the horizon behind them like a melting butter sun.
500000000. Sacha tries to imagine, and to respect, each dead creature individually. She lays out across a blasted plain the dead animals two by two by two by two by two million, further than any eye can see, kangaroo cinder with kangaroo cinder, wallaby ash with wallaby ash, charcoaled koala, charcoaled koala.
Her imagination isn’t big enough.
She already knows she is never going to have children. Why would you bring a child into a catastrophe? It would be like giving birth to a child in a prison cell. And Brighton’s a good place, one of the best in the country for green things, the only place in the whole UK with a green MP, and even so people here too on the local news are saying global warming’s a hoax stop trying to frighten me stop frightening my children with rubbish so they can’t sleep it’s fine I’d actually like some warmer weather the globe could be doing with it summer all year round would be great. Her own mother is one of those cracked people. It is like her mother’s more freaked out by what the menopause is doing to her than she is by real things happening in and to the world.
Menopause is real too, Sacha’s mother says now in Sacha’s head.
Whoa.
But wait.
Is that – what just happened in her head – the same as God speaking into Mercy Bucks’s ear?
Yeah, but Sacha’s mother didn’t actually speak in her ear or her head there. It’s just that Sacha knows what she’d say if she were here. Because she knows her mother so well.
But God isn’t real. Sacha is pretty sure about that.
God is a figment of human need and imagination.
Her mother, though.
Definitely real.
But. Wait.
Because: God is several kinds of real, 1. in being ‘real’ to the people there at those religious shows who believe in God, 2. in being made ‘real’ to them because he apparently physically ‘speaks into someone’s ear’, and 3. in being a ‘real’ figment of Mercy Bucks’s imagination with very real lucrative consequences for Mercy Bucks.
So. What does that make Sacha’s mother?
Or, more precisely, what does that make Sacha’s imagining of her mother?
Imagine you are a flower in water but that your time of taking in water as a plant is over because you’re naturally starting to
dry up, and the water – though you can’t understand it, being a flower and everything – no longer goes up your stem in the same old way.
That’s the kind of thing her mother’s taken to saying. It is driven by a Freudian envy of young people, especially her daughter.
I wonder if flowers feel like this, like I do, when it happens to them. Do flowers feel like they lose their dexterity? do they bump into things all the time? do they forget things constantly? do they think that Simon Cowell’s name is Simon Callow even though they know full well it’s Cowell but they just can’t get to the name through their neural paths for some reason any more?
Sacha blows air through her teeth out of her mouth in disdain.
Getting old is pathetic if you use it as an excuse for no longer being responsible.
Her mother could make more of an effort.
Sacha is never going to be like that.
Given what’s happening planetarily, Sacha is unlikely to get to an age when it’ll happen anyway.
Her mother’s lucky she got to live so long.
You’re the one talking imaginary rubbish, her mother says in her head. It’s all going to be fine.
Her mother, real or ‘real’. Both are deluded.
Still, she feels a bit guilty for feeling irritation at her and for being this rude inside her head about her.
What was that thing, about heroines holding up a station? She will look it up and text her mother what its source is. This will both annoy her mother and please her. Two birds one stone.
Horrible proverb.
The horror images fill her head. Something that had once been a bird in a sky, a wingframe broken and wayward, jutting out of stripped scorched ribcage.
A bird in the hand is worth.
No. A bird in the hand is unnatural unless that bird’s actually chosen unforced to sit on your hand of its own free will.
Bit long for a proverb, though.
Two birds in the hand?
St Francis.
She thinks about the film in Italian they watched back when her parents were still living in the same house and watched the things with the subtitles that her mother didn’t like and her father liked, back when she was Robert’s age. It was about St F. trying to do his morning prayers under the trees but the birds love him so much that they crowd into the branches all round him and sing and cheep their love so loud that he has to ask them to be quiet because he can’t hear himself pray.
