Summer

by Ali Smith

  My small medical abilities help a little if people get sick. One man to the hospital and died. But now everybody here at the house is well. I also help keep neat and flourishing the flowers in the summer garden. I am a good gardener. I did not know it about me! I am a new man. The garden is very beautiful here. In one place in it they are hundreds of older roses. They make me very happy.

  Your letters make me very happy. Thank you for the bird messages. Bird of all nations. It looks like something created with only the ash after a fire, like a delicate gesture of ash. But truly it is as strong as the anchor that holds a boat in the sea.

  I hope with my heart you and your family are well at this time.

  I agree there is more summer to come and there will be more weeks of your bird in my sky. This makes me very happy.

  The bird that I see in the sky, the bird of your kindness in your letters to me, will fly to you in your sky in the shape of members of its family. They will bring with them my very best and warmest good wishes. Health and luck for you and your family and your friends and your loved ones,

  —

  to my friend Sacha Greenlaw

  —

  from your friend and brother

  —

  ANH KIET / Hero

  Acknowledgements and thanks

  A number of online and textual resources concerning

  World War 1 and World War 2 internment in the UK

  have helped in the writing of this book,

  especially texts by Ronald Stent

  and by the great Fred Uhlman.

  The book that Robert Greenlaw refers to throughout

  is Einstein on the Run by Andrew Robinson (Yale).

  Of the many resources I went to for swift life,

  by far the most inspiring was Swifts in a Tower

  by David Lack (Unicorn).

  Thank you, Simon.

  Thank you, Anna.

  thank you, Hannah, Lesley L, Lesley B, Sarah,

  Richard, Emma, Alice, and everyone

  at Hamish Hamilton and Penguin.

  Thank you, Andrew,

  thank you, Tracy,

  and everyone at Wylie’s.

  Thank you to my anonymous friend who

  tells me about everyday life in this country’s

  Immigration Removal Centres.

  Huge thank you to Brighid Lowe and Henry Miller –

  an especially emphatic thank you to Brighid,

  and to Robert Osborne at Zidane Press.

  thank you to Robin Baker at the BFI,

  Gaby Smith, Olivia Smith and

  Donald Smith at the SFI,

  thank you, Jeremy Spandler and the Feminist Library,

  and to the Word and Image Department at the V&A.

  Thank you, Kate Thomson,

  thank you, Lizzie, Dan, Nel and Béa.

  Special thank you to Isla Casson

  and to Anna-Maria Hartmann.

  Very special thank you

  to Batia Nathan and Idit Elia Nathan

  and to the memory of Rachel Rosner

  for the kind of family life story

  that puts the life into everything

  and to Gillian Beer

  for her immortal Winter’s Tale tale.

  Thank you, Mary.

  Thank you, Xandra.

  Thank you, Sarah.

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