Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [30]
I get myself back to London. I love London! I walk between Euston and King’s Cross like it’s something I do all the time, like I belong among all these other people walking along a London street.
I manage to get a seat in a sitting-up carriage on the last sleeper north.
On the journey I tell the other three people in the carriage about Pure and about the people in India.
English people are just as shy and polite as Scottish people really, under all that pretend confidence, and some of them can be very nice.
But I will also have to find a way of telling the story that doesn’t make people look away, or go and sit somewhere else.
Still, even though I’m sitting here near-shouting about the ways of the world at a few strangers in a near-empty railway carriage, I feel – what is it I feel?
I feel completely sane.
I feel all energised. I feel so energised on this slow-moving train that it’s like I’m travelling faster than the train is. I feel all loaded. A loaded Gunn!
Somewhere in Northumberland, as the train slows up again, I remember the story about the clan I get my name from, the story about the Gunn girl who was wooed by the chief of another clan and who didn’t like him. She refused to marry him.
So he came to the Gunn castle one day and he killed all the Gunns he could find, in fact he killed everybody, family or not, that he happened to meet on his way to her chamber. When he got there he broke the door down. He took her by force.
He drove her miles and miles to his own stronghold where he shut her up at the top of a tower until she’d give in.
But she didn’t give in. She never gave in. She threw herself out of the tower instead, to her death. Ha!
I used to think that story of my far-back ancestor was a morbid story. But tonight, I mean this morning, on this train about to cross the border between there and here, a story like that one becomes all about where we see it from. Where we’re lucky enough
(or unlucky enough)
to see it from.
And listen. Listen, you other two remaining people asleep right now. Listen, world out there, slow-passing beyond the train windows. I’m Imogen Gunn. I come from a family that can’t be had. I come from a country that’s the opposite of a, what was it, dominant narrative. I’m all Highland adrenalin. I’m all teuchter laughter and I’m all teuchter anger. Pure! Ha!
We roll slowly past the Lowland sea, and the sea belongs to all of us. We roll slowly past the rugged banks of lochs and rivers in a kind of clearness of fine early morning summer light, and they’re full of water that belongs to everyone.
Then I think to check my phone.
Seven missed calls – from Paul!
It’s a sign!
(And to think I used to think he wasn’t the right kind of person for me.)
Even though it’s really late, I mean really early morning, I call him straight back without listening to any of the messages.
Paul, I say. It’s me. Did I wake you?
No, it’s fine, he says. Well, I mean, you did. But Imogen –
Listen, Paul, I say. First there’s something I have to say. And it’s this. I really like you. I mean, I really, really like you. I’ve liked you since the very first moment we met. You were at the water cooler. Remember?
Imogen –, he says.
And you know I like you. You know I do. There’s that thing between us. You know the thing I mean. The thing where it doesn’t matter where you are in a room, you still know exactly where the other person is.
Imogen –, Paul says.
And I know I’m not supposed to say, but I think if you like me too, and if you’re not gay or anything, we should do something about it, I say.
Gay? he says.
You know, I say. You never know.
Imogen, have you been drinking? he says.
Just water, I say. And I mean, it’s not the same thing at all, I know, but you seem quite female to me, I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean it in a good way, you have a lot of feminine principle, I know that, I know it instinctually, and it’s unusual in a man, and I really like it. I love it, actually.
Listen. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night, because –, he says.
Yeah, well, if it’s about the