Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [2]
Because of some mud, I say.
Because of the mud we got all up the hems of our skirts, our grandfather says.
Grandad, Midge says. Don’t.
You should’ve heard the mix of accents coming out of us all, it was like a huge flock of all the different birds, all in the sky, all singing at once. Blackbirds and chaffinches and seagulls and thrushes and starlings and swifts and peewits, imagine. From all over the country we came, from Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Huddersfield, Leeds, all the girls that worked in clothing, because that’s what most of us did, textiles I mean, and from Glasgow, from Fife, even from right up here we went. Soon they were so afraid of us marching that they made brand new laws against us. They said we could only march in groups of no more than twelve of us. And each group of twelve girls had to be fifty yards away from any other group of twelve. And what do you think they threw at us for marching, what do you think they threw at us when we spoke in front of the great hordes of listening people?
Eggs and oranges, I say. Mud.
Tomatoes and fishheads, Midge says.
And what did we throw at the Treasury, at the Home Office, at the Houses of Parliament? he says.
Fishheads, I say.
I am finding the idea of throwing fishheads at official historic buildings very funny. Our grandfather tightens his hold round me.
No, he says. Stones, to break the windows.
Not very ladylike, Midge says from the other side of his head.
Actually, Miss Midge –, our grandfather says.
My name’s not Midge, Midge says.
Actually, as it happens, we were very ladylike indeed. We threw the stones in little linen bags that we’d made ourselves with our own hands especially to put the stones in. That’s how ladylike we were. But never mind that. Never mind that. Listen to this. Are you listening? Are you ready?
Here we go, our grandmother says.
Did I never tell you about the time when I was a really important, couldn’t-be-done-without part of the smuggling-out-of-the-country of Burning Lily herself, the famous Building-Burning-Girl of the North East?
No, I say.
No, Midge says.
Well, I will then. Will I? our grandfather says.
Yes, I say.
Okay, Midge says.
Are you sure? he says.
Yes! we say together.
Burning Lily, he says, was famous. She was famous for lots of things. She was a dancer, and she was very very beautiful.
Always the eye for the lasses, our grandmother says with her own eyes on the television.
And one day, our grandfather says, on her twenty-first birthday, the day that the beautiful (though not near as beautiful as your grandmother, obviously) the day that the beautiful Burning Lily became a fully fledged grown-up – which is what’s supposed to happen on the day you’re twenty-one – she looked in the mirror and said to herself, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to change things. So she went straight out and broke a window as a birthday present to herself.
Ridiculous present, Midge says. I’m asking for a Mini Cooper for mine.
But soon she decided that breaking windows, though it was a good start, wasn’t quite enough. So she started setting fire to buildings – buildings that didn’t have any people in them. That worked. That got their attention. She was always being carted off to jail then. And in there, in jail, in her cell, you know what she did?
What? Midge says.
She just stopped eating, he says.
Why? I say and as I say it I taste the toast taste again all through the inside of me.
Because she was like anorexic, Midge says, and had seen too many pictures of herself in magazines.
Because there wasn’t anything else for her to do, our grandfather says to me over the top of Midge’s head. They all did it, to protest, then. We’d all have done it. I’d have done it too. So would you.
Well I wouldn’t, Midge says.
Yes you would. You’d do it too, if it was the only thing you could do. So then they made Burning Lily eat.
How? I said. You can’t make someone eat.
By putting a tube down her throat and by putting food down the tube. Except, they put it down the wrong