Ali Smith

by The First Person (v5)

  Ha ha, I said. That’s an old one.

  I took the B roads and drove to the middle of a dense wood. I opened the back door of the car and bundled the beautiful blond child out. I locked the car. I carried the child for half a mile or so until I found a sheltered spot, where I left it in the tartan blanket under the trees.

  I’ve been here before, you know, the child told me. S’not my first time.

  Goodbye, I said. I hope wild animals find you and raise you well.

  I drove home.

  But all that night I couldn’t stop thinking about the helpless child in the woods, in the cold, with nothing to eat and nobody knowing it was there. I got up at 4 a.m. and wandered round in my bedroom. Sick with worry, I drove back out to the wood road, stopped the car in exactly the same place and walked the half-mile back into the trees.

  There was the child, still there, still wrapped in the tartan travel rug.

  You took your time, it said. I’m fine, thanks for asking. I knew you’d be back. You can’t resist me.

  I put it in the back seat of the car again.

  Here we go again. Where to now? the child said.

  Guess, I said.

  Can we go somewhere with broadband or wifi so I can look up some porn? the beautiful child said beautifully.

  I drove to the next city and pulled into the first supermarket car park I passed. It was 6.45a.m. and it was open.

  Ooh, the child said. My first 24-hour Tesco’s. I’ve had an Asda and a Sainsbury’s and a Waitrose but I’ve not been to a Tesco’s before.

  I pulled the brim of my hat down over my eyes to evade being identifiable on the CCTV and carried the tartan bundle in through the exit when two other people were leaving. The supermarket was very quiet but there was a reasonable number of people shopping. I found a trolley, half-full of good things, French butter, Italian olive oil, a folded new copy of the Guardian, left standing in the biscuits aisle, and emptied the child into it out of the blanket, slipped its pretty little legs in through the gaps in the child-seat.

  There you go, I said. Good luck. All the best. I hope you get what you need.

  I know what you need all right, the child whispered after me, but quietly, in case anybody should hear. Psst, it hissed. What do you call a woman with two brain cells? Pregnant! Why were shopping trolleys invented? To teach women to walk on their hind legs!

  Then he laughed his charming peal of a pure childish laugh and I slipped away out of the aisle and out of the doors, past the shopgirls cutting open the plastic binding on the morning’s new tabloids and arranging them on the newspaper shelves, and out of the supermarket, back to my car, and out of the car park, while all over England the bells rang out in the morning churches and the British birdsong welcomed the new day, God in his heaven, and all being right with the world.

  present

  There were only three people in The Inn: a man at the bar, the barmaid and me. The man was chatting up the barmaid. The barmaid was polishing glasses. I was waiting for a pub supper I’d ordered half an hour ago. I was allowing myself one double whisky. It was a present to myself.

  Have you seen them, covered in all the frost? the man was saying to the barmaid. Don’t they look just like magic roofs, don’t they look like winter always looked when you were a little child?

  The barmaid ignored him. She held the glass up to the light to see if it was clean. She polished it some more. She held it up again.

  The man gestured towards the pub’s front window.

  Go out and look at it. Just have a look at it, look at it on the roofs, the man said. Don’t they look exactly like what winter was like when you were small? Like a white came over everything by magic, like a giant magician waved his hand and a white frost came down over everything.

  You don’t half talk a load of wank, the woman behind the bar said.

  Her saying this made me laugh so suddenly that I choked on the drink I was taking. They both looked round. I coughed, turned away slightly towards the fire and went on looking at my paper like I was reading it.

  I heard them shift their attention back towards each other.

  It’s Paula, isn’t it? he said.

  She said nothing.

  It’s definitely Paula, he said. I remember. I asked you before. Remember? I was here, I was in this very pub about six weeks ago. Remember?

  She held another glass up and looked at it.

  Well, I remember you, he said.

  She put it down and picked up another. She held it up between her and the light.

  So if you don’t like Christmas and so on, Paula, he said. If you don’t think it’s a magic time from our childhoods and so on. Well, why’d you bother to decorate the pub, then? Why’d you bother to spray the snowy stuff on the door and the windows? Why’d you make the place look like snow off Christmas cards? It’s only November. It’s not even December.

  It’s not my pub, the woman said. I don’t get to choose when Christmas begins and ends.

  The whisky I’d choked on had gone down the wrong way and had formed a burning gutter along the inside of my windpipe. I ignored it. I read my paper. It was about how the Gulf Stream was being eroded at an almighty rate. Soon it would be as cold as Canada here in the winter. Soon the snow would be six feet high every winter and winters would last from October till April.

  Magic roofs, the woman said. Christ. See the house with the Alfa Romeo outside it?

  The man went to the door and opened it.

  I can’t see an Alfa Romeo from here, he said.

  The third along car from the left, she said without raising her voice.

  I saw some cars, but I’ll take your word for it that one’s an Alfa, he said coming back in.

  They call him the German in the village, she said. His name’s German-sounding. He never comes in here. He hit black ice round the Ranger Bend with his two sons in the car two years ago and the son that was in the front seat died. The car hasn’t moved from outside that house since it came back from the garage with a new side on it. He walks to work, he walks out his gate and past it every day. We all go past it every day. It’s filthy. It needs a good clean, just from sitting there in the weather. He had a German-sounding name and all, the son, I mean. He was eleven or twelve. He never came in here before it, the father I mean, the German, and he never comes in now. And the house next to his. That’s where the girl lives who’s in debt because of the pyramid.

  Egypt? the man said.

  Scheme, the woman said. Not to tell tales or nothing but I was at Asda and I heard her telling someone on her mobile that she had a dream.

  The man leaned on the bar.

  You’re a dream, Paula, he said.

  This is her dream, the woman said. Would you believe it. An angora jumper she’d bought on her credit card, listen to this, upped and left home because it was unhappy living with her. Then the jumper phoned her from the airport but because it couldn’t speak, because jumpers can’t, can they, she didn’t know what it was trying to say.

  An angry jumper? the man said.

  No, an angora jumper, she said. It’s a kind of wool, a warm expensive kind. And the house next to that. His daughter’s a druggie. Whenever she comes back to the village he won’t let her in the front door. First she throws stones at the living room window. Then the old bloke calls the police. The house next to that. Divorced. He had an affair. She got custody. He’s a nice guy. He works in the city. She’s a teacher. She’s got a Cinquecento.

  She held up a glass, examined it against the light.

  The house next to them, she said.

  Uh huh? he said.

  That’s my house, she said.

  You’re not married, are you, Paula? the man said.

  You are, the woman said. I can tell a mile off.

  I’m not married, the man said. I’m as single as the day is long.

  This time of year you’ll be less single, then, she said.

  You what? he said.

  The days being shorter and all
, the woman said.

  What you laughing at? the man said. What you looking at?

  He was talking to me. I pretended I hadn’t heard or understood.

  What’s she think she’s looking at? the man said.

  Won’t be long, the woman called over to me. Sorry to keep you waiting.

  No worries, I said. It’s fine.

  She went through the door at the back. Have you not thawed out the scampi? she was shouting as she went.

  The man stared at me. There was quite a lot of hostility in his stare. I could feel it without me even looking back properly. When the woman came through from the kitchen and put down in front of me, like a firm promise that I would definitely be fed, condiments, and a knife and fork both neatly wrapped in a napkin, he shouted over at me from his place at the bar.

  You agree with me. Don’t you? You think it looks just like magic, he said. Like a magician off a TV programme when we were kids just, you know, waved his hand in the sky over all our home towns and down came the whiteness.

  He started to come over; he looked like he might actually punch me if I said I disagreed. But when he reached the table I could see he was less drunk than he seemed. It was almost as if he was pretending to be more drunk than he was. He sat down on the stool across the table from me. He wasn’t much older than me. His face was crumpled, like a piece of wrapping that someone has tried to squeeze in their fist into as small a ball as possible.

  I looked down at my knife and fork wrapped in the napkin. There were little cartoon sprigs of holly all over the napkin.

  The man picked the HP sauce bottle up out of the arrangement of salt and pepper and mustard and vinegar sachets and sauce bottles in front of me.

  You know what the H and the P stand for on a bottle of HP? he said.

  Houses of Parliament, I said.

  His face fell. He looked truly disappointed that I knew. I pointed to the picture on the bottle’s label. I shrugged.

  You’re not from round here, he said. Didn’t think so, he said. Something about your shape of face. Don’t get me wrong, he said. It’s a nice shape of face. I’m from fifty miles from here, he said. Originally, I mean. What you drinking, then? he said.

  He said it all very loudly, as if he was saying it not really to me but for the barmaid back behind the bar to hear.

  How about I tell you, he said putting his foot up on the low stool nearest me, about what Christmas means to me? Shall I tell you two girls what a really happy Christmas is?

  I looked at his foot in its scuffed shoe on the plush of the bar stool. I could see the colour of his socks. They were light brown. Someone had bought him these socks as a present, maybe, or maybe someone had bought them because he was lucky enough to have someone routinely care about his socks. Or, if not, he had gone into a shop and bought them himself. But this was the last thing I wanted to care about, a detail like where someone else’s socks had come from. I had been out driving around since about half past four this morning. I had driven into the car park of this pub tonight precisely because I believed there would be nobody here I knew, nobody here who would bother me, nobody here who would ask anything of me, nobody here who would want to speak to me about anything, anything at all.

  I looked at the man’s foot again with the thin line of human skin there between the top of the sock and where the edge of his trouser leg began. I stood up. I got my car keys out of my pocket.

  Going somewhere? the man said.

  The barmaid was taking packets of peanuts off little hooks above the till, dusting them and putting them back. She turned as I went past.

  Won’t be much longer, five minutes at the most, she called after me.

  I pushed the door open regardless and went out of The Inn.

  But I was two new whiskys down, I realized as I slid into the driver’s seat. I couldn’t drive anywhere, not for a good while. I sat in the car in the lit car park and watched the sign that said The Inn hang motionless beyond the windscreen, which had immediately steamed up with the warmth coming off me. There was no wind tonight. That was why it was so frosty. It was cold out, bitterly cold. It would soon be bleak midwinter.

  I put the key in the ignition and pushed the button which turns the seat-heating on. Cars are great. They are full of things that simply, mechanically, meet people’s needs. Inside seat-heating. Adjustable seat levers. Little vanity mirrors in the windscreen shades. Roof that slides right back if you want it to.

  I began to try to guess what story the man would have told two virtual strangers in a pub to prove what made a good Christmas. The best Christmas lunch he’d ever eaten. The best present anyone ever gave him. It would be something about his childhood since that was all he’d really wanted to talk about in there, childhood and lost magic, and the coming back of magic at the coldest of times in the back of beyond in the form of a simple frost that catches the light in the dark.

  Imagine if we had all been friends in that bar, had been people who really had something to say, had wanted to talk to each other.

  Now you, I imagined the barmaid saying to me, perched on one of those too-high stools above me and him, so that leaning down and forking up one of my scampi pieces for herself is a little precarious, but she wavers perfectly, balances perfectly, tucks the scampi into her mouth and we all laugh together at her expertise, including herself.

  Your turn, she says. A really happy one, come on.

  Well, okay, though happy’s not the word I’d have used at the time, I say. I’m about twelve.

  I don’t mean this to sound rude but you look a bit older than twelve, the man says.

  Not now. Obviously. In the story, I say.

  Okay, the man says.

  Okay, the barmaid says.

  And in my neighbourhood there’s this new couple that’s moved in a couple of streets down, and everybody knows them, everyone knows who they are, I mean, because they’re a husband and wife teaching couple, they both teach modern languages at the school the local kids go to, the school I go to.

  Not very Christmassy so far, the barmaid (Paula) says.

  Give her a chance, the man says. She’ll get to it. Some time in the near future.

  Christmas past, Christmas present, Christmas near-future, Paula says.

  Anyway, the Fenimores, Mr and Mrs Fenimore, I say. Mr Fenimore is really pioneering. He’s small and slim, but always looks as if he’s setting out on an adventure with an imaginary hiking stick in his hand.

  I know the type, Paula says.

  He takes over the after-school chess and judo clubs, I say. He starts up an after-school cookery class and he takes a lot of flak for being a man who runs a cookery class. Mrs Fenimore helps. She always helps. She is always there helping, she’s a shy person who smiles a lot, while her husband, whom she looks at with eyes full of a sad, hopeful love, runs the school clubs, and not just those, he forms a neighbourhood wine club where our parents and the other neighbours who don’t have kids go to the Fenimores’ house to taste wine, Mrs Fenimore puts invitations through everybody’s door, smiling shyly if you look out the window and see her on her rounds. JACK AND SHIRLEY FENIMORE INVITE YOU TO A SPECIAL WINE TASTING. Loads of people go, all the neighbours go, my mother and father go, and they never usually go to anything. They’ve never done anything like it before. Then everybody talks about how nice the Fenimores are, how much they like the Fenimores’ house, car, garden, cutlery, design of plates. Then the Fenimores organize a theatre visit. JACK AND SHIRLEY FENIMORE INVITE YOU TO EDUCATING RITA AT THE EMPIRE. Everybody goes. JACK AND SHIRLEY FENIMORE INVITE YOU TO A MULLED WINE EXTRAVAGANZA. JACK AND SHIRLEY FENIMORE INVITE YOU ON A SOLSTICE ASSAULT ON BEN WYVIS.

  Assault on Ben who? the man (I’ll call him Tom) says.

  No, I say. Ben Wyvis is a mountain. Ben is a Scottish word for mountain.

  Yeah, I know, I know that, Tom says.

  You don’t know nothing, Paula says. You didn’t know what angora was a minute ago.

  Anyway, I say. About twenty of us,
who’ve all lived under Ben Wyvis for most of our lives and have never been up it, seven or eight adults and the rest kids my age, some younger, a couple of older ones, get into a minibus the Fenimores hire, because Mr Fenimore’s just got his minibus driving licence, and drive to the foot of Ben Wyvis to see how high up it we can get on the Sunday before Christmas, December 21st, a gloriously sunny Sunday, bright and crisp and blue-skied.

  And then what happens?

  Oh, okay, I get it, it’s a game, Tom says. Okay. You get to the top and you have the most fantastic party and you kiss your first boy up a romantic mountain on the shortest day of the year.

  The minibus breaks down, Paula says. You never even leave the neighbourhood.

  Halfway up the mountain, I say, the sky changes colour from blue to black, and half an hour later it starts to snow. It snows so heavily that seven adults and twelve or thirteen kids get snowed into a space under a crag on Ben Wyvis. It’s before the days of mobile phones. There’s no way of letting anyone know where we are. It’s freezing. We huddle together, then the adults huddle the kids inside a circle of their bodies. It’s afternoon. It gets dark. It doesn’t stop snowing. All there is is snow in the dark, and more snow, and dark at the back of it, snow for miles of empty sky, and a lot of swearing from my father, he’s dead now, and the man from across the road, he’s dead now too, I think, threatening to murder Mr Fenimore, and my mother who’d worn shoes with heels on to go up a mountain in, my mother, she’d never even been on a hike before never mind anywhere near a mountain, cursing herself, and a bit of arguing about who should go for help, and Mrs Fenimore crying, and Mr Fenimore counting heads every five minutes, before he sets off into the white dark to bring help back.

  Oh god, Tom says. Does he die?

  It ends happily, Paula says. Doesn’t it?

  Mr Fenimore is lost on the hill till the next day, when the rescue services pick him up, I say. He’s in hospital for a week. We’re all already home by then. We all get picked up about an hour later by three men in a helicopter. The father of a girl called Jenny McKenzie, in the year above me at school, has picked up the bad forecast on the radio and phoned the rescue services and told them where we went. They keep four of us in hospital overnight, including me. It’s a laugh. We’re all fine. But the thing is, we get back to town, back home, and – there’s no snow anywhere. None. It’s all just like normal, grey pavements and tarmac and roofs, like none of it happened.