Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [32]
Aye well, a man next to her says. It’s no fair, right enough, if that’s true, what it says there.
Aye, but why would boys write that kind of thing on a building? a woman is saying. It’s not natural.
Too right they should, the scandal-woman says. And would you not have thought we were equal now, here, after all that stravaiging in the seventies and the eighties?
Aye, but we’re equal here, in Inverness, the first woman says.
In your dreams we’re equal, the scandal-woman says.
Nevertheless, equal or no, it’s no reason to paint it all over the Town House, the woman’s friend says.
The scandal-woman is arguing back as we walk up round the side of the Castle. In gilted red on the front wall above the Castle door it says in a jolly arc, like the name of a house painted right above its threshold, that only one percent of the world’s assets are held by women. Iphis and Ianthe the message girls 2007.
From here we can see right across the river that there are huge red words on the side of the cathedral too. I can’t see what they say, but I can make out the red.
Two million girls annually forced into marriage worldwide, Paul says seeing me straining to make it out. And on Eden Court Theatre, on the glass doors, it says that sexual or domestic violence affects one out of every three women and girls worldwide and that this is the world’s leading cause of injury and death for women.
I can make out the this must change from here, I say.
We lean on the Castle railing and Paul lists the other places that have been written on, what the writing says, and about how the police phoned Pure for me.
Your sister and her friend are both in custody up at Raigmore, he says.
Robin’s not her friend, I say. Robin’s her other half.
Right, Paul says. I’ll run you up there now. You’ll need to arrange bail. I did try. My bank wouldn’t let me.
Hang on, I say. I bet you anything –
What? he says.
I bet you their double bail there’s a message somewhere on Flora too, I say.
I can’t afford it, he shouts behind me.
I run down to the statue of Flora MacDonald shielding her eyes, watching for Bonnie Prince Charlie, still dressed in the girls’ clothes she lent him for his escape from the English forces, to come sailing back to her all the way up the River Ness.
I walk round the statue three times reading the words ringing the base of her. Tiny, clear, red, a couple of centimetres high: WOMEN OCCUPY TWO PERCENT OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT POSITIONS IN BUSINESS WORLDWIDE. THREE AND A HALF PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S TOTAL NUMBER OF CABINET MINISTERS ARE WOMEN. WOMEN HAVE NO MINISTERIAL POSITIONS IN NINETY-THREE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message boys 2007.
Good old Flora. I pat her base.
Paul catches me up.
I’ll nip down and get the car and pick you up here, he says, and we’ll head up the hill –
Take me home first, I say. I need a bath. I need some breakfast. Then maybe you and me can have a talk. Then I’ll take us up to the police station on my Rebel.
On your what? But we should really go up to the station right now, Imogen, he says. It’s been all night.
Are you not wanting to talk to me, then? I say.
Well, I do, actually, he says, I’ve got a lot to say, but do you not think we should –
I shake my head.
I think the message boy-girls’ll be proud to be in there, I say.
Oh, he says. I never thought of it that way.
Let’s leave the police on message until lunchtime, I say. Then we’ll go up and sort the bail. And after that we’ll all go for something to eat.
Paul is very good in bed.
(Thank goodness.)
(Well, I knew he would be.)
(Well, I hoped.)
I feel met by you, he says afterwards. It’s weird.
(That’s exactly what it feels like. I felt met by him the first time I saw him. I felt met by him all the times we weren’t even able to meet each other’s eyes.)
I definitely felt met by you this morning at the station, I say.
Ha, he says. That’s funny.
We both laugh like idiots.
It is the loveliest laughing ever.
(I feel like we should always be meeting each other off trains, I think inside my head.