by Ali Smith
Words are coming out of me like someone turned me on like a tap. It’s Paul. He – turns me on!
But as soon as he gets the chance, Paul cuts in.
Imogen. Listen. It’s your sister, he says.
My heart in me. Nothing else. Everything else blank.
What about my sister? What’s happened to my sister? I say.
*
*
*
Paul is waiting for me at the station when the train pulls in.
Why aren’t you at work? I say.
Because I’m here instead, he says.
He slings my bag into the boot of his car then locks the car with his key fob.
We’ll walk, he says. You’ll see it better that way. The first one is on the wall of the Eastgate Centre, I think because of the traffic coming into town, the people in cars get long enough to read it when they stop at the traffic lights. God knows how anybody got up that high and stayed up there without being disturbed long enough to do it.
He walks me past Marks and Spencers, about fifteen yards down the road. Sure enough, the people in the cars stopped at the traffic lights are peering at something above my head, even leaning out of their car windows to see it more clearly.
I turn round.
Behind me and above me on the wall the words are bright, red, huge. They’re in the same writing as was on the Pure sign before they replaced it. They’ve been framed in a beautiful, baroque-looking, trompe l’œil picture-frame in gold. They say: ACROSS THE WORLD, TWO MILLION GIRLS, KILLED BEFORE BIRTH OR AT BIRTH BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T BOYS. THAT’S ON RECORD. ADD TO THAT THE OFF-RECORD ESTIMATE OF FIFTY-EIGHT MILLION MORE GIRLS, KILLED BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T BOYS. THAT’S SIXTY MILLION GIRLS. Underneath this, in a handwriting I recognise, even though it’s a lot bigger than usual: THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message girls 2007.
Dear God, I say.
I know, Paul says.
So many girls, I say in case Paul isn’t understanding me.
Yes, Paul says.
Sixty million. I say. How? How can that happen in this day and age? How do we not know about that?
We do now, he says. Pretty much the whole of Inverness knows about it now, if they want to. And more. Much more.
What else? I say.
He walks me back past the shops and up the pedestrian precinct into town, to the Town House. A small group of people is watching two men in overalls scouring the red off the front wall with a spray gun. IN NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW ARE WOMEN’S WAGES EQUAL TO MEN’S WAGES. THIS MUST CHA
Half the frame and the bit with the names and the date have been sprayed nearly away but are still visible. It’s all still legible.
That’ll take some shifting, I say.
Paul leads me round the Town House, where a whole side wall is bright red words inside gold. ALL ACROSS THE WORLD, WHERE WOMEN ARE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME WORK AS MEN, THEY’RE BEING PAID BETWEEN THIRTY TO FORTY PERCENT LESS. THAT’S NOT FAIR. THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message boys 2007.
Probably Catholics, a woman says. It’s disgusting.
Aye, it’ll fair ruin the tourism, another says. Who’d be wanting to come and see the town if the town’s covered in this kind of thing? Nobody.
And we can say goodbye to winning that Britain in Bloom this year now, her friend says.
And to Antiques Roadshow ever coming back to Inverness and all, another says.
It’s a scandal! another is saying. Thirty to forty percent!
Aye well, a man next to her says. It’s no fair, right enough, if that’s true, what it says there.
Aye, but why would boys write that kind of thing on a building? a woman is saying. It’s not natural.
Too right they should, the scandal-woman says. And would you not have thought we were equal now, here, after all that stravaiging in the seventies and the eighties?
Aye, but we’re equal here, in Inverness, the first woman says.
In your dreams we’re equal, the scandal-woman says.
Nevertheless, equal or no, it’s no reason to paint it all over the Town House, the woman’s friend says.
The scandal-woman is arguing back as we walk up round the side of the Castle. In gilted red on the front wall above the Castle door it says in a jolly arc, like the name of a house painted right above its threshold, that only one percent of the world’s assets are held by women. Iphis and Ianthe the message girls 2007.
From here we can see right across the river that there are huge red words on the side of the cathedral too. I can’t see what they say, but I can make out the red.
Two million girls annually forced into marriage worldwide, Paul says seeing me straining to make it out. And on Eden Court Theatre, on the glass doors, it says that sexual or domestic violence affects one out of every three women and girls worldwide and that this is the world’s leading cause of injury and death for women.
I can make out the this must change from here, I say.
We lean on the Castle railing and Paul lists the other places that have been written on, what the writing says, and about how the police phoned Pure for me.
Your sister and her friend are both in custody up at Raigmore, he says.
Robin’s not her friend, I say. Robin’s her other half.
Right, Paul says. I’ll run you up there now. You’ll need to arrange bail. I did try. My bank wouldn’t let me.
Hang on, I say. I bet you anything –
What? he says.
I bet you their double bail there’s a message somewhere on Flora too, I say.
I can’t afford it, he shouts behind me.
I run down to the statue of Flora MacDonald shielding her eyes, watching for Bonnie Prince Charlie, still dressed in the girls’ clothes she lent him for his escape from the English forces, to come sailing back to her all the way up the River Ness.
I walk round the statue three times reading the words ringing the base of her. Tiny, clear, red, a couple of centimetres high: WOMEN OCCUPY TWO PERCENT OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT POSITIONS IN BUSINESS WORLDWIDE. THREE AND A HALF PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S TOTAL NUMBER OF CABINET MINISTERS ARE WOMEN. WOMEN HAVE NO MINISTERIAL POSITIONS IN NINETY-THREE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message boys 2007.
Good old Flora. I pat her base.
Paul catches me up.
I’ll nip down and get the car and pick you up here, he says, and we’ll head up the hill –
Take me home first, I say. I need a bath. I need some breakfast. Then maybe you and me can have a talk. Then I’ll take us up to the police station on my Rebel.
On your what? But we should really go up to the station right now, Imogen, he says. It’s been all night.
Are you not wanting to talk to me, then? I say.
Well, I do, actually, he says, I’ve got a lot to say, but do you not think we should –
I shake my head.
I think the message boy-girls’ll be proud to be in there, I say.
Oh, he says. I never thought of it that way.
Let’s leave the police on message until lunchtime, I say. Then we’ll go up and sort the bail. And after that we’ll all go for something to eat.
Paul is very good in bed.
(Thank goodness.)
(Well, I knew he would be.)
(Well, I hoped.)
I feel met by you, he says afterwards. It’s weird.
(That’s exactly what it feels like. I felt met by him the first time I saw him. I felt met by him all the times we weren’t even able to meet each other’s eyes.)
I definitely felt met by you this morning at the station, I say.
Ha, he says. That’s funny.
We both laugh like idiots.
It is the loveliest laughing ever.
(I feel like we should always be meeting each other off trains, I think inside my head. That’s if we’re not actually on the same train, going the same way.)
I say it out loud.
I feel like we should always b
e meeting each other off trains, that’s if we’re not actually on the same train travelling together. Or am I saying too much out loud? I say.
You’re saying it too quietly, he says. I wish you’d shout it.
It’s raining quite heavily when we make love again and afterwards I can hear the rhythmic drip, heavy and steady, from the place above the window where the drainpipe is blocked. The rhythm of it goes against, and at the same time makes a kind of sense of, the randomness of the rain happening all round it.
I never knew how much I liked rain till now.
When Paul goes downstairs to make coffee I remember myself. I go to the bathroom. I catch sight of my own face in the little mirror.
I go through to Anthea’s room where the big mirror is. I sit on the edge of her bed and I make myself look hard at myself.
I am a lot less than an 8 now.
(I can see bones here, here, here, here and here.)
(Is that good?)
Back in my own room I see my clothes on the chair. I remember the empty clothes on that memorial, made to look soft, but made of metal.
(I have thought for a long time that the way my clothes hang on me is more important than me inside them.)
I hear Paul moving about in the bathroom. He turns on the shower.
He turns everything in the world on, not just me. Ha ha.
I like the idea of Paul in my shower. The shower, for some reason, has been where I’ve done my thinking and my asking since I was teenage. I’ve been standing those few minutes in the shower every day for God knows how long now, talking to nothing like we used to do when we were small, Anthea and I, and knelt by the sides of our beds.
(Please make me the correct size. The correct shape. The right kind of daughter. The right kind of sister. Someone who isn’t fazed or sad. Someone whose family has held together, not fallen apart. Someone who simply feels better. Please make things better. THIS MUST CHANGE.)
I get up. I call the police station.
The man on the desk is unbelievably informal.
Oh aye, he says. Now, is it one of the message girls or boys or whatever, or one of the seven dwarves that you’re after? Which one would you like? We’ve got Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful, Sleepy, Eye-fist, and another one whose name I’d have to look up for you.
I’d like to talk to my sister, Anthea Gunn, please, I say. And that’s enough flippancy about their tag from you.
About their what, now? he says.
Years from now, I say, you and the Inverness Constabulary will be nothing but a list of dry dusty names locked in an old computer memory stick. But the message girls, the message boys. They’ll be legend.
Uh huh, he says. Well, if you’d like to hang up your phone now, Ms Gunn, I’ll have your wee sister call you back in a jiffy.
(I consider making a formal complaint, while I wait for the phone to go. I am the only person permitted to make fun of my sister.)
Where’ve you been? she says when I answer.
Anthea, do you really think you’ll change the world a single jot by calling yourself by a funny name and doing what you’ve been doing? You really think you’ll make a single bit of difference to all the unfair things and all the suffering and all the injustice and all the hardship with a few words?
Yes, she says.
Okay. Good, I say.
Good? she says. Aren’t you angry? Aren’t you really furious with me?
No, I say.
No? she says. Are you lying?
But I think you’re going to have to get a bit better at dodging the police, I say.
Yeah, she says. Well. We’re working on it.
You and the girl with the little wings coming out of her heels, I say.
Are you being rude about Robin? she says. Because if you are, I’ll make fun of your motorbike again.
Ha ha, I say. You can borrow one of my crash helmets if you want. But you might not want to, since there’s no wings on it like there are on Robin’s helmet.
Eh? she says.
It’s a reference, I say. To a source.
Eh? she says.
Don’t say eh, say pardon or excuse me. I mean like Mercury.
Like what? she says.
Mercury, I say. You know. Original message boy. Wings on his heels. Wait a minute, I’ll go downstairs and get my Dictionary of Mythical –
No, no, Midge, don’t go anywhere. Just listen, she says. I’ve not got long on this phone. I can’t ask Dad. There’s no one Robin can ask. Just help us out this once. Please. I won’t ask again.
I know. You must be desperate to get out of that kilt, I say and I crack up laughing again.
Well, when you stop finding yourself so hilarious, she says, actually, if you could bring me a change of clothes that’d be great.
But you’ve been okay, you’re both okay up there? I say.
We’re good. But if you could, like I say, just, eh, quite urgently, justify half an hour’s absence to Dominorm or whoever, and disengage yourself from the Pure empire long enough to come and bail us out. I’ll pay you back. I promise.
You’ll need to, I say. I’m unemployed now.
Eh? she says.
I’m disengaged, I say. I’m no longer Pure.
No! she says. What happened? What’s wrong?
Nothing and everything is what happened, I say. And at Pure, everything’s wrong. Everything in the world. But you know this already.
Seriously? she says.
Honest to goodness, I say.
Wow, she says. When did it happen?
What? I say.
The miracle. The celestial exchange of my sister for you, whoever you are.
A glass of water given in kindness, that’s what did it, I say.
Eh? she says.
Stop saying eh, I say. Anyway I thought we’d saunter on up in a wee while –
Eh, can I just stress the word urgent? she says.
Though I thought I might drive out to a garden centre first and buy some seeds and bulbs –
Urgent urgent urgent urgent, she says.
And then I thought I might spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening down on the river bank –
URGENT, she yells down the phone.
– planting a good slogan or two that’ll appear mysteriously in the grass of it next spring. RAIN BELONGS TO EVERYONE. Or THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A SECOND SEX. Or PURE DEAD = BRILLIANT. Something like that.
Oh. That’s such a good idea, she says. Planting in the riverbank. That’s such a fantastic idea.
Also, you’re being too longwinded, I say. All the long sentences. It needs to be simpler. You need sloganeering help. You definitely need some creative help –
Does that creative have a small c or a big C? she says.
– and did you know, by the way, since we’re talking sloganeering, I say –
Midge, just come and help, she says. Like, now. And don’t forget to bring the clothes.
– that the word slogan, I say, comes from the Gaelic? It’s a word with a really interesting history –
No, no, no, she says, please don’t start with all that correct-word-saying-it-properly-the-right-way-not-thewrong-way stuff right now, just come up and get us out of here, Midge, yes? Midge? Are you there?
(Ha-ha!)
What’s the magic word? I say.
all together now
Reader, I married him/her.
It’s the happy ending. Lo and behold.
I don’t mean we had a civil ceremony. I don’t mean we had a civil partnership. I mean we did what’s still impossible after all these centuries. I mean we did the still-miraculous, in this day and age. I mean we got married. I mean we here came the bride. I mean we walked down the aisle. I mean we step we gailied, on we went, we Mendelssohned, we epithalamioned, we raised high the roofbeams, carpenters, for there was no other bride, o bridegroom, like her. We crowned each other with the garlands of flowers. We stamped on the wineglasses wrapped in the linen. We jumped the broomstick. We lit th
e candles. We crossed the sticks. We circled the table. We circled each other. We fed each other the honey and the walnuts from the silver spoons; we fed each other the tea and the sake and we sweetened the tea for each other; we fed each other the borhani beneath the pretty cloth; we fed each other a taste of lemon, vinegar, cayenne and honey, one for each of the four elements. We handfasted, then we asked for the blessing of the air, the fire, the water and the earth; we tied the knot with grass, with ribbon, with silver rope, with a string of shells; we poured water on the ground in the four directions of the wind and we called on the presence of our ancestors as witnesses, so may it be! We gave each other the kola nuts to symbolise commitment, the eggs and the dates and the chestnuts to symbolise righteousness, plenty, fertility, the thirteen gold coins to symbolise constant unselfishness. With these rings we us wedded.
What I mean is. There, under the trees, on a fresh spring day by the banks of the River Ness, that fast black backbone of a Scottish northern town; there, flanked by presbyterian church after presbyterian church, we gave our hands in marriage under the blossom, gave each other and took each other for better, for worse, in sickness or health, to love, comfort, honour, cherish, protect, and to have and to hold each other from that day forward, for as long as we both should live till death us would part.
Ness I said Ness I will Ness.
Into thin air, to the nothing that was there, with the river our witness, we said yes. We said we did. We said we would.
We’d thought we were alone, Robin and I. We’d thought it was just us, under the trees outside the cathedral. But as soon as we’d made our vows there was a great whoop of joy behind us, and when we turned round we saw all the people, there must have been hundreds, they were clapping and cheering, they were throwing confetti, they waved and they roared celebration.
My sister was there at the front with her other half, Paul. She was happy. She smiled. Paul looked happy. He was growing his hair. My sister gestured to me like she couldn’t believe it, at a couple standing not far from her – look! – was it them? – sure enough, it was them, our father and our mother, both, and they were standing together and they weren’t arguing, they were talking to each other very civilly, they clinked their glasses as I watched.
