The Accidental

by Ali Smith

  Amber had flicked what was left of her cigarette out of the window with a degree of violence. Maybe she wasn’t joking. The car was going faster. She seemed to be using the whole of her body to put her foot even more heavily on the accelerator. With each word she said she jerked more speed out of the engine.

  Jesus fucking wept, all these endless endless fucking endless selfish fucking histories, she was saying.

  Please slow down. Please stop swearing, Eve said.

  I ought to punch you in the effing ucking stomach, Amber said. That’d give you a real fucking story to tell.

  She took her hands off the wheel and then hit the wheel with the flats of both palms. The car swerved and jolted.

  Don’t, Eve said.

  The car rattled, swayed far too far over to the right as Amber took the left-hand bend too fast.

  Eve began to fear for her life.

  Eve went to London to see her publisher. After Norfolk, London was unbelievably noisy and busy.

  Amanda, her publisher, took her to Alastair Little in Soho for lunch, now that Jupiter could afford it. On their way, Eve stopped and gave a street-beggar a pound coin. Amanda scrambled in her bag for a coin too, to do the same. Between the publishing house office and the restaurant, Eve stopped and gave away a coin to every person who asked her, just to see if Amanda would.

  Here, Eve said giving one weather-stained man a five-pound note.

  The man looked astonished. Then he looked delighted. Then he shook Eve’s hand. Amanda looked doubtful, then looked in the note compartment of her purse. She took out a ten, nice and new and brown.

  Effing ucking ha ha ha, Eve thought.

  The man did a little jig.

  Thank you, ladies, he said. Have a nice day.

  The restaurant was full of people looking to see who everybody else in the restaurant was.

  Amanda always talked as if she had a list of the things to say to Eve memorized inside her head and she was mentally ticking them off as they spoke, seemingly spontaneously, to each other. Sixty-seven and a half thousand and rising, she was saying now that she’d ticked off the boxes beside family and holiday. Tremendous, she said. Demand for the first five is also utterly fantastic. Naturally, the question that everybody I talk to wants to know the answer for. How’s the new Genuine?

  Getting there, Eve said.

  How does April sound? Amanda said looking in her diary.

  April ought to be fine, Eve said.

  Great, Amanda said.

  I thought this time I might write about a person who dies, Eve said.

  Well, of course, Amanda said.

  No, I mean dies, and that’s it, Eve said. Finished. Done. Kaput. End. No more story.

  Well, yes, it’s an interesting idea, Amanda said. Though the Genuines don’t generally do that, do they? I mean, the Genuines formula is life-affirming, because they affirm life, don’t they?

  A Palestinian boy, I was thinking, like that twelve-year-old the soldiers shot, Eve said.

  When? Amanda said. I mean, which year, roughly?

  She looked confused.

  Last month, Eve said.

  Last month? Amanda said. Well. It cuts down the market appeal drastically.

  For throwing stones at their tank, Eve said. Or what about if I wrote about someone who’s alive right now, but will be dead tomorrow morning, say? In Iraq?

  In…? Amanda said. She looked even more appalled.

  Iraq, Eve said. You know.

  Well, it’s, it’s more overtly contemporaneously political than we’re used to, Amanda said. Though why you’d want to change the historical focus, which is the Genuine premium, in other words which is, if you ask me, and I think if you were to ask the readers too, why they work so well, why they’re so popular, why readers have just cottoned on to the formula, it’s because their particular historical focus–

  I haven’t decided yet, Eve said. I may even decide not to write a book at all.

  Of course if it’s a question of advance, Amanda said.

  I’m beginning to think I’ve maybe written enough books, Eve said.

  But you just said, you just said April would be fine, Amanda Farley-Brown of Jupiter Press said looking miserable, putting down her wine glass.

  It depends on the erosion of the Gulf Stream, of course, and how the relevant weather fronts perform, Eve said.

  What? Amanda said faintly.

  Whether April will be fine, Eve said.

  Amanda looked flushed and lost. It made Eve feel bad. She didn’t know Amanda very well. She didn’t know what kind of life she led, what the pressures were on her life, what her reasons were for being the kind of person she was. What were the pressures on a twenty-seven-year-old with an editor’s job at a small publisher that had just been taken over by a much bigger publisher? Amanda had the look of a person who’s been told she’ll be shot at dawn.

  It’s okay, Eve said. I’m just, you know, teasing you.

  You are? Amanda said.

  It’s well under way, Eve said. April is fine.

  Amanda looked visibly relieved.

  Oh, she said. Good. Excellent. Perfect.

  She shook her head, then ticked something in her diary.

  It’s a Scottish one this time, Eve said. I think it’ll be quite popular. Without giving too much away, it’s a land girl. On a farm.

  A land girl, perfect, Amanda said nodding, writing it in her diary.

  On the train out of London Eve watched her own reflection shift and change and revert to herself in the flashing-past scrubland and small towns and trees in the window, and was finally appalled; though if someone, an interviewer sitting opposite, say, or God, maybe, with a tiny dat recorder and microphone, had asked her, she’d have been unable to articulate why.

  She looked away from herself. She tried to imagine that Amber didn’t exist. When I get home, she told herself, it’ll be summer. I’ll be working on the land girl project for the next Genuine. I’ll be halfway through it.

  But it was like trying to imagine that there was no such thing as a question mark, or trying to forget a tune once you knew it off by heart. Or rather, off by brain; new research suggested, Eve had read somewhere, that tunes actually etch themselves, as if with a little blade, into our brains.

  Michael picked Eve up at the station.

  He talked about Petrarch and Sidney, structures and deviations. He was clearly in love with Amber too, and this time it wasn’t the usual water off the back of the duck. Instead, the duck, wounded by a hunter and bewildered because half its head had been shot away, was still tottering about on its webby feet by the side of the pond. From the one side it looked like a duck usually looks. From the other, it was a different story.

  When they got home, she walked straight in on Amber in the lounge with what looked like one hand on Magnus’s crotch. Magnus stood up.

  It’s all right, Amber said. He’s legally of age.

  Amber was just helping me with my zip, Magnus said.

  Astrid came hurtling in from the garden and the first thing she did was throw herself on to Amber on the sofa and give her a bear hug.

  Amber growled.

  Hi, Astrid said to Eve, looking out from the hug. We had a great day. Amber and I went fishing.

  Fishing, Eve said. Great.

  Yep, Amber said.

  We went to the river and we purposefully tried not to catch anything, Astrid said. We threw lines in with no hooks on the end.

  Wasn’t that pointless? Eve said.

  Yes, completely, Astrid said.

  Literally, Amber said.

  She and Amber broke into giggles and Amber, standing up, caught Eve’s daughter in her arms, turned on her heels and swung Astrid round in the air.

  Meanwhile, days passed. They passed irrevocably, and as if a wave of heat had actually thundered down over everything and made it hazy and blurred and submerged, underwater day after night after day.

  What’s it like for you now, when you think about what happened t
o the child? Eve said to Amber quite near the beginning of the end.

  What child? Amber said.

  The child, Eve said. The child. The child you. You know. The accident.

  What child? Amber said. What accident?

  What is it you could possibly want to know about yourself? Dream or reality? War es nun schon alles? Are you really Eve? How’s the new Genuine? What child? What accident?

  Amber, standing so beautiful in the doorframe of the shed, was made dark by the sunlight behind her. She came towards Eve, at her laptop, on the chair by the desk, and stood in front of her with her hands on Eve’s shoulders as if to give her a good shaking.

  Then she kissed Eve on the mouth.

  Eve was moved beyond belief by the kiss. The place beyond belief was terrifying. There, everything was different, as if she had been gifted with a new kind of vision, as if disembodied hands had strapped some kind of headset on to her that revealed all the unnamed, invisible colours beyond the basic human spectrum, and as if the world beyond her eyes had slowed its pace especially to reveal the spaces between what she usually saw and the way that things were tacked temporarily together with thin thread across these spaces.

  Amber was walking back across the garden now. She was whistling. She had her beautiful hands in her pockets making beautiful fists in the dark.

  Eve shut down her laptop and closed its lid.

  Michael was in the kitchen chopping food into equal-sized cubes with a knife. Astrid came running through from the lounge. Magnus had opened his bedroom door and was on his way down the stairs. Eve waited until they were all within earshot. She stopped Amber in the hall.

  Goodbye, she said.

  Eh? Amber said.

  It’s time, Eve said. Goodbye.

  Where are you going? Amber said.

  I’m not going anywhere, Eve said.

  Mum, Astrid said.

  Astrid stood as if frozen. Magnus froze on the stair. The noise of chopping in the kitchen stopped; Michael was in there with his knife held frozen in mid chop, mid air.

  That’s true, at least. You’re going nowhere, Amber said.

  Meaning? Eve said.

  You’re a dead person, Amber said.

  Get out of my house, Eve said.

  It’s not your house, Amber said. You’re only the tenant.

  Get out of the house I’m renting, Eve said.

  I am born just short of a century after the birth of the Frenchman whose name translates as Mr Light, who, in his thirties, late in the year 1894, has a bad night, can’t sleep, feels unwell, sits up in his bed, gets up, wanders about the house and–eureka! Of course! The ‘intermittent foot’ mechanism! Like a sewing machine uses to shift material along! He commissions his chief engineer at the factory. He sits down himself to punch little holes in his own photographic paper. He and his brother design it: a wooden box with an eye. It records what it sees in shades of black, white and grey for 52 seconds at a time.

  The Paris Express arrives. Audiences in the front rows duck their heads! Workers come out of their factory. Audiences marvel! A boy tricks a gardener with a hosepipe. Audiences fall off their seats laughing! People play a game of cards. Audiences exclaim at the way the leaves on the trees behind the people playing cards move in the wind! Hundreds of trains arrive in hundreds of stations. Hundreds of workers leave hundreds of factories. Hundreds of gardeners are tricked by hundreds of boys with hosepipes. Hundreds of leaves move in hundreds of backgrounds. Special Notice to Workmen and Workwomen. Why stand in the Cold and Rain when you could spend a Pleasant Hour for 1d, between the hours of 12 and 2 p.m. on Saturdays Excepted. Come and See the Events Of The Day portrayed in Living Pictures. Man attacked by lion. A couple, kissing. Victoria’s Funeral Procession, Football Finals, Grand National. Famous Airships of the World, Accompanied by the Famous Warwick’s Cinephone. The Music Hall becomes the Central Hall Picture House, run by the fairground MacKenzies. They hire a woman pianist to make the place respectable. Aladdin and his Marvellous Lamp. What Women Will Do. The Rajah’s Box. A woman rises out of a box in a cave and conjures up dancers all round her. A censor has painted over the bodies in each frame in red ink. Red shudders out of the too-bare necks and legs of the dancers.

  Red means passion, or something on fire. Green means idyllic. Blue means night and dark. Amber means lamps lit in the dark.

  Rescued From An Eagle’s Nest. The Suicidal Poet. Bombastus Shakespeare tries twelve different new kinds to commit suicide. He does not succeed in any but dies anyhow. A screamer from start to finish. A man stands on the stage and tells the audience the story as they watch it. A little girl is kidnapped by gypsies, who take her away in a barrel. The barrel falls into the river. It heads for the rapids. A wheat speculator makes a lucrative deal that means hundreds of his workers stay poor. He falls accidentally into his own wheat shaft and the screen tints into gold as the falling wheat smothers him. The Central Hall changes its name to The Alhambra Picture House. This House has been specially designed, in full compliance with the 1910 Kinematograph Act, for comfort and safety, and will compare favourably with any first-class, up-to-date London or Glasgow Picture House. It adds a tearoom. It has a full orchestra: pianist, cellist, violinist, drummer. It has seating for 1,000. It has a thirty-four-foot stage the sides of which are decorated with oriental figures. Its resident manager, Mr Burnette C. MacDonald, rattles chains in a barrel behind the screen for the chariot race in Ben Hur. Every Thursday night two brothers from the Black Isle come over on the ferry with their dogs to see the pictures and every week they sit in the same seats. One week the men don’t come but one of the dogs, a grey whippet called Hector, is found sitting in his usual seat and stays for the whole show.

  Fights, fires, riots, storms: Beethoven, William Tell, Wagner. Intrigue, burglars etc.: Grieg, Liszt, Beethoven. Love or sentiment: Dear Old Pal of Mine, Sunshine of Your Smile, O Dry Those Tears. Kissing: everyone in the cheap seats whistling at the screen. You know a film is a good one when its surface is covered with scratches like heavy rain. Chaplin is king of a rainy country. His cane has little notches down it like the bony nodes of a spine. He tips his hat to whatever he’s just tripped over on the road. He stops to examine a hole in his shoe. A car drives past and sends him reeling into the dust. Another car going the other way sends him head over heels again. He gets up. He brushes himself down with a little clothes-brush. He sits down under a tree. He buffs his nails before he eats a piece of old black bread. Several cinema managements have reported that after two weeks of Chaplin comedies it has been necessary to tighten the bolts in the Theatre seats since the audience had laughed so hard the vibrations loosened them. Goodnight, Charlie, the boys in the audience shout at the end of the Chaplin short. Then the heroine tied to the conveyor belt heads steadily towards the buzz-saw. Men are but boys grown tall. The past appears right there in the room, the woodland glade, the dead person right there in the room. You coward. You ran away when you knew the truth! Your son will never know you if I can help it. Jesus saves the blind child. Oh–oh yes–I think I can see the light. The Love-Light. Mary Pickford tells the nun she wants the child back. The nun shakes her head. I know, Sister Lucia, you think I’m crazy. But I’m not. The police shoot the striking miners dead. The pagan Chink gets a taste of the result of two thousand years of civilization. Lillian Gish is about to have her head cut off in the French Revolution. When a woman loves, she forgives. Constance Talmadge lives in the mountains and refuses to marry. Blue Blood and Red. The Ten Commandments. The Campbells Are Coming. The Pride of the Clan. A woman takes a bath in a Cecil B. De Mille feature. Bathroom fashions all over the world change overnight. Puritan Passions. Enticement. Playing With Souls. Don Juan. The Adventures of Dorothy Dare, a Daughter of Daring. Ruth of the Rockies. Pearl of the Army. The Archduke gets down from his state car. The Archduke’s chauffeur steps round to the front of it to check the damage from the bomb. A Nation Gone, Borders Wiped Out, A Fertile Land Made a Desert, A King in Exile–and Pathé News Cameramen Are
There. Seven or eight men climb out of a trench. One slips down, slumps dead. The Alhambra Picture House, Luncheon Room, Tearoom and Car Park. If I Had A Talking Picture–Of You. At the end of it the audience sits in stunned silence. The orchestra is out of work. European films stop. American films triple. There are six cinemas. It’s only a small town. The queues at each cinema are two hours long. The Empire the Palace the Playhouse the Queens the Plaza the Alhambra. There are wood-backed cushioned seats. There are art-deco walls. There are pillars. There is A P H in swirling letters round the tops of the pillars in gold. There are gold curtains whose voluptuous curved ruches go up and up in unthinkably sensual repetitions. There are lights so high in the double-domed ceiling that no one but God can change a bulb. A retired Great War sergeant-major sprays a pneumatic chrome-plated Scentinel Germspray canister up and down the aisles to keep the air antiseptically clean and fragrant, session after session, day after day. Give your place a modern air. Have Scentinel freshness everywhere. Scentinel Sales New Hygiene Ltd., 266–268 Holloway Rd, London N7.

  Upstairs costs more money. Downstairs shouts at the screen in American accents. Upstairs and downstairs shout together at the British films with people in evening dress saying strangled-sounding things to each other. Cartoon, short, newsreel, forthcoming attractions, B movie, big picture, God Save the King. People bring their sandwiches. Around the World in Sound and Vision on the Magic Carpet of Movietone. 4d to get in to see The Good Earth, same price as a loaf. The World Changes. I Am A Thief. Lady from Nowhere. Woman Against Woman. Let’s Get Married, showing with A Dangerous Adventure. March of Time. International Settlement. All six cinemas close for a fortnight in case of the invasion. They re-open a week later. All six black out their neons. The Great Dictator. Boy Meets Girl. The manager of the Alhambra, Mr O.H. Campbell, walks onstage in the middle of a Frank Sinatra film. Victory in Europe. Everybody cheers. Victory over Japan. Great Expectations. Gone With the Wind. Crying children are carried out of Bambi in the middle of the forest fire. People buy their own tvs and watch their own coronations. The screen gets three times bigger. Cinerama. Cinemascope. Widescreen. NaturalVision. A lion leaps out at the audience. The Greatest Show On Earth. Ben Hur, again. The Ten Commandments, again.