Ali Smith

by The First Person (v5)

  You think I’m insignificant and irresponsible! I yell. Don’t you?

  You’re on your feet too now. You’re shouting too. You shout something about a basket case. You shout that you’re not shallow or knowledgeless or wasteful or the kind of person who’d buy an accordion because of its brand name. Then, in a list of smarting adjectives, you tell me what I am.

  What I am is out through the front door.

  What I do is close it behind me with a self-righteous slam.

  All the way across town, alongside the still-resonating slam of the door behind me, I have that maddening song in my head about the girl who loses her yellow basket. When I get back to the flat there’s nobody else in and I sit on the step between the kitchen and the living room and try to think up adjectives for you, adjectives I could fling at you like sharp little stones, but all I can really hear in my head is the argument Ella Fitzgerald is having with the boys in her band:

  Was it green?

  No no no no!

  Was it red?

  No no no no!

  Was it blue?

  No no no no!

  I think I remember Ella Fitzgerald’s voice becoming more and more comically annoyed at the backing singers getting the colour wrong each time, so that by the time she sings the final string of no’s she sounds almost irate.

  Then I start to wonder if I’ve remembered the order of the colours in the argument correctly.

  I go over to the pile of CDs. They’re my CDs; they weren’t hard to take with me, you’re not really one for jazz. I find the right one. I look on the listings for A Tisket, A Tasket. I insert it into the machine and keep the button pressed in until it reaches track eight.

  The song is a piece of blunt charm, the way it courts misery then glances away from it with a loss at the heart of it that’s not really a loss after all, or a loss that’s pretending not to be a loss, and the slight hoarseness of Ella Fitzgerald’s younger, gruffer self as she sings it is so blithe, almost as if unaware of the modulation her voice will soon be capable of when she’s older and she’s wiser. But what is it all about, in the end? What’s the mysterious basket? Who’s the mysterious little girl who steals it? Why will Ella Fitzgerald die if she doesn’t get it back? When it ends I am sitting on the step laughing at you calling me a basket-case; I am laughing so much with my arms round myself and at the same time am so near tears that the next track on the CD, the song’s near-twin, I Found My Yellow Basket, takes me by surprise.

  The boys in the band who sing with Ella Fitzgerald on this second song are very gracious. They offer to cover the cost, for her, of the loss of her original basket in the other song. Oh no, you don’t have to, she tells them, I’ve got good news for you, and I realize, hearing the lightness in her voice as she sings about how now she’s on her way, feeling light and gay, what a total relief it is that there’s a song in the world where Ella Fitzgerald gets to track down that mysterious hidden basket-stealing girl and find the missing yellow basket. She sings about how happy she is. Then she sings the word now for the last time. It sounds so innocent, so like the happy peal of a bell, that I feel ashamed.

  The doorbell goes.

  Outside the door is a large black box. It looks expensive. It looks new. It’s so big it comes up to nearly my waist. The man who’s brought it up all the stairs is red and breathless. I sign for it and drag it inside. It’s very heavy. At first I have no idea what can be in it.

  Then it dawns on me what’s in there, of course it is, with its black and white keys in the dark.

  I know neither of us will have the first idea how to play one, never mind even open and close one properly. It’ll take some learning. I open the note that came with it instead. I presume, as I do, that it’ll tell me that this is one of a pair and that if I’m looking for the other one it’s over at yours.

  This is what the note says:

  You’re something else, you. You really are.

  i know something you don’t know

  The boy had come home from school one lunchtime in May and gone to his bed. He’d been every day in his bed now for nearly four months, all the bad summer. In those early weeks he had still made the effort to sit up in the morning when she went in to open the curtains. For the past couple of weeks all he’d done was open his eyes, not even moving his head on the pillow.

  It was a condition which didn’t show up on tests. It was most likely a post-viral condition. Three different doctors had seen him: the GP, a consultant paediatrician at the hospital and, last month, a different, private, top consultant paediatrician who held clinics in one of the big houses in the rich part of the city, did all the same tests on the boy’s feet and hands, looked into his eyes and ears, took blood. The results had been inconclusive and had cost £800. Now it was August. When she had gone into his room to open the curtains this morning he’d kept his eyes shut and in a small voice from the bed had said: please don’t.

  The boy’s mother went into the kitchen and got out the Yellow Pages.

  Under Healers it said See Complementary Therapies.

  Complementary Therapies was between Compensation Claims and Composts, Peats and Mulches. Only two of the therapists listed were local. One was called Heavenly Health Analysis Ltd. Complimentary health care treatment, holistic health screening. Inner journey Indian head massage. Stress, worries. Hopi candle ear wax removal. Herbal advice line, health problems etc. Outstanding accurate understanding from qualified registered therapist Karen Pretty.

  The other advertising box had only three words in it and a number.

  Nicole. Trust me. 260223.

  The boy’s mother dialled the first number. It was a machine. There was stringy music. A calm voice over the top of the music said Hello caller. You are welcome. Leave your details, including the important information of how you found this contact number for Heavenly Health Analysis Limited, after the tone.

  Hello, she said. I found your number in the Yellow Pages. I would be very much obliged if you could ring me back regarding a serious health matter.

  She dialed the second number. She let the phone ring in case an answerphone had to be activated. It rang thirty times. When she took it away from her ear and held it up in front of her to press the end of calls button, a tiny distant word shot out of the plastic in her hand.

  What?

  Eh, hello? the boy’s mother said.

  Yes, what? the voice said in her ear.

  I’m trying to get in touch with a person called Nicole, the boy’s mother said. I found the number in –

  Come on, for Christ’s sake, what? the voice said.

  It’s my son, she said.

  I charge £50 a visit, the voice said.

  Yes, the boy’s mother said.

  Where do you live? the voice said. Hurry up. I really need to go to the toilet.

  The boy’s mother told the voice the address and where to turn right at the roundabout if coming by car but somewhere in the list of directions, she couldn’t tell when, the voice had hung up or been cut off and she was left saying hello? into the phone, to nobody.

  Before she’d had to stay at home all day because of the boy, she had been an assistant clerk in the office of a company which made a lot of money installing digital phone networks all over the Third World. The Third World was still open territory for phones. The company also set up cheap mobile deals with Eastern European countries, using secondhand mobiles people traded in for updated phones here in the West. Voices all over Eastern Europe were talking right now on old UK phones; this was something she’d liked thinking about, before. It was a funny and interesting thought that someone with a different life and a totally incomprehensible (to her) language might be talking to someone, arguing with someone, whispering secrets or sorting everyday things about shopping or family down what might be her old phone.

  But it wasn’t amusing to think any more, not in the same way, now that what she talked about down the phone to her mother or to the people from work were things she didn’t real
ly want to hear come out of her mouth, about what the boy wasn’t doing, like eating much today. Or wanting to watch TV, even the cartoons. Or letting himself be got up without a fuss so he could be carried through to go to the bathroom. Or even responding at all any more when she sat on his bed and asked him questions: do you want to watch the cartoons? Will I put the football DVD in? Is it sore in your eyes? Where in your head? Too bright? Too dark? Do you want the light on? Off?

  The phone in her hand rang. Caller unknown. She watched it ring. She let it click into answerphone then waited for it to tell her that it had received a new voicemail message. She played the message back. It was the voice of Karen Pretty from Heavenly. It offered three initial consultation times. The boy’s mother phoned straight back and left her choice on Heavenly’s answerphone.

  The doorbell rang. It was after lunch, after the boy had shrunk back into the sheets away from the plate saying he was too cold, and after she’d sat at the dining room table downstairs and eaten, herself, the two fish fingers and the microwave chips she’d put on the plate for him.

  There was a rough-looking woman at the door. She was middle-aged and sloppily dressed in a stained long t-shirt and black leggings.

  Fifty up front cash, the woman said. Where’s the, what’s it again, a boy? Is he in his bed?

  She had her foot in the door. The boy’s mother explained, holding the door, that she’d engaged someone else.

  Yeah, right, the woman said. Karen Pretty, ear wax queen. Can’t even spell complementary medicine right and you’re letting her near something you love. I wouldn’t. Each to their own. Karen Pretty. KP Nuts is what I call her.

  The woman had got into the house. She was standing in the hall now, looking past the boy’s mother up the stairs.

  I’ll take a cheque if it’s made out to cash, she said on her way up.

  Her bulk made the stairwell look small. She held out her hand to keep the boy’s mother at the foot of the stairs. She breathed like a heavy smoker; her breath was audible over the traffic noise through the open door.

  Be down in a minute, she said. Hurry with that cheque, will you?

  It was true; it was only about a minute, maybe even less, before she was wheezing down again and standing in the doorway of the sitting room.

  I’ve no idea what’s wrong with him, she said. He’ll probably be okay. By the way, can I get a glass of water?

  The boy’s mother went to the kitchen and filled a beer glass with tap water. When she came back the front door was shut, the cheque had gone from the arm of the armchair with the chequebook and the bank card, there was no sign of the woman anywhere up or down the street outside the house and it wasn’t till half an hour later when she looked for her handbag that she realized it was gone as well and so were the two Capo Di Monte figurines, gone from the sideboard.

  Seated Lady And Child. Clown Balancing A Ball.

  Karen Pretty from Heavenly Health Analysis Ltd came at the appointed time two days later even though the boy’s mother had cancelled her by answerphone. She was on crutches. She stood precariously on the rug in the middle of the sitting room.

  Do you have a hard upright chair? she said. Like a dining room chair? Thank you very much. I’d just like to make it clear that I don’t intend to charge you for this visit because it is an initial consultation visit. Can you put the chair exactly here?

  She drew a line on the floor with the end of a crutch.

  Bless you, she said.

  She was too young to say bless you. She looked about twenty-five. She had long brown hair held back with a clasp at the nape of her neck. She looked familiar to the boy’s mother.

  Do you not work at the Abbey National? she asked the girl.

  Karen Pretty put her crutches neatly together, held them in the one hand and sat down in the middle of the room.

  You probably know by now that Nicole Campbell of Trust Me is in the process of being prosecuted by the CPS for fraud, she said. I feel for you, Mrs Haig, what’s your first name, please?

  Harriet, the boy’s mother said.

  I can feel you are carrying pain, Harriet, Karen Pretty said. I feel that someone full of sadness lives in this house.

  Karen Pretty, eyes closed, smiled and nodded.

  White, she said or maybe, Quite.

  Are you going to be able to get upstairs? the boy’s mother said. Only, that’s where he is.

  Where who is? Karen Pretty said still with her eyes shut.

  My son. Anthony. He’s the one who’s ill, the boy’s mother said.

  Yes. Somehow I sensed, Karen Pretty said, that I would be doing a tarot reading for a boy who couldn’t get down some stairs today.

  She opened her eyes, looked into her shoulder bag, took something out and held it up.

  I could carry him down, the boy’s mother said.

  Oh no, we don’t actually need him actually bodily in the room with us, Karen Pretty said.

  She unwrapped a little wooden box from inside a swatch of red silk.

  I charge fifty pounds per reading, she said. But I intend not to charge you, Harriet, for today’s session. The guides have asked me not to.

  The Girl Guides? the boy’s mother thought. She imagined them all in the uniforms of her own childhood, standing in a blue line all shaking their heads at Karen Pretty.

  They say you will remember this kindness and repay my kindness amply in the future with your own kindness, Karen Pretty said.

  No, if you don’t mind I’d much prefer to –, the boy’s mother said.

  He is carrying pain, Karen Pretty suddenly said. His spirit is very strong. Is he a headstrong kind of a boy?

  Well, no, the boy’s mother said.

  Yes, that’s right, Karen Pretty said.

  Karen Pretty and the boy’s mother sat in silence for half a minute or so. It felt like a very long time. It was long enough to feel embarrassing. Then Karen Pretty put her hand out and presented a worn pack of cards to the boy’s mother.

  Your mother is going to shuffle them for you, Anthony, she said to the fireplace.

  The boy’s mother blushed. She shuffled the cards and handed them back to Karen Pretty who turned one up, then the next, then the next, and laid them beside each other on her knees.

  A struggle for position will end in improvement, she said pointing at the boy on top of a hill with a stick, fighting off a lot of people below him with sticks. A difficult journey to a calmer place, she said pointing at the boat full of swords in the water. A reawakening, she said pointing to the family climbing out of a grave beneath a giant set of wings. I am not going to charge you the usual £50 for this reading, she said gathering the cards and putting the pack together again.

  The boy’s mother insisted. She gave Karen Pretty two folded twenties and a ten. Karen Pretty took the money and put it down on the carpet by the chair leg. She called a taxi firm on her mobile. The two women sat in silence while they waited. Karen Pretty smiled a sweet smile at the boy’s mother and shrugged her eyebrows high into her forehead. She sighed. She hummed a tune. She was patient as if patience was a part of her remit.

  Peace to you, Harriet, she said when the taxi drew up outside the house.

  She leaned on her crutches to get to her feet. The boy’s mother watched her back herself on to the seat of the taxi and watched the taxi drive away. She looked round the room, in which there was more than a trace of Karen Pretty’s perfume. She opened the window. She put the dining room chair back in the dining room. She went to the kitchen and came back with a wet cloth. She wiped the chair down. Then, in the sitting room, she kicked the folded money across the carpet until it disappeared under the sofa.

  She went upstairs to check. He was asleep. His short out-breaths made her own breathing hurt.

  That night, though she’d already undressed and got into bed, she made herself get up again and come downstairs. In the kitchen over the sink, she struck a safety match and set the two twenty pound notes and the ten alight together and held them so they burn
ed all the way to her hand. She flushed the black stuff they left down the sink then wiped the sink clean and dry with the tea-towel. She went back to bed. She realized she had forgotten to check on him like she always did when she got to the top of the stairs. She got up again. She stood at the crack in the door and saw his head on the pillow in the dark.

  She lay in bed with the light off and her eyes wide open because this time, she knew, she’d been robbed.

  The boy was in bed. It had been days and days. It was September. His mother had come in to do the curtains for the morning and he had let her open them.

  He could see from here a whiteness which was really the side of one of the houses opposite. But it looked like snow. It was snow. It was a wide square of snow the size of a house, snow even though it was summer.

  He watched to see if it would melt, because the morning sun was sending a squinted rectangle of yellow through the gaps in the houses on his own side of the street on to the white. But the snow was super-snow, mega-strength multi-snow. No sun could melt it. If you picked it up to mould it into a snowball would it be cold on your hands or warm? A warm snowball. It would be impossible.

  The boy was tired. All this thinking of snow was making him tired. But now he was thinking of how you would make a snowball out of warm snow and your bare hands would stay their usual colour and not get cold or red in the process.

  The bear was at the bottom of the bed. It was the big bear, the one his father had brought back three years ago, when he’d been abroad for work, away for a long time for the first time. The bear had come from an airport. It was huge. It was nearly the same size as the boy.

  He reached out in front of him until it was like his hand was touching the white square he could see through the window. It was snow. He took some of the snow in his hand. Because it was warmed snow it didn’t feel unpleasant to touch. He took his other hand out from under the covers and used both hands to mould the snowball. Then he aimed it at the bear at the bottom of the bed and threw it.