Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [37]
Up the river it came, then, the astonishing little boat, up the river that no boats ever came up, with its two great fibreglass juts like the horns of a goat or a cow or a goddess held ahead of it, and its sail full and white against the trees and the sky. How it got from the loch through the Islands, how it did the impossible, got under the Infirmary Bridge with that full huge sail up we’ll never know, but it did, it sailed the stretch of Ness Bank and it docked right below us, and there at the wheel was our grandmother, and throwing the rope to be caught was our grandfather. Robert and Helen Gunn, they were back from the sea, in time for the party.
We felt in our water that something was happening! our grandmother called up to us as she put her foot on dry land. We wouldn’t miss this, no, not for the world!
Well, girls, and have you been good, and has the world been good to you? and how was your catch? Have you landed fine fish? that was our grandfather, his old arms round us, him ruffling our hair.
They were younger than the day they left. They were brown and robust, their faces and hands were lined like the trunks of trees. They met Robin. They met Paul. They flung their arms round them like family.
Our grandmother danced the Canadian Barn Dance with Paul.
Our grandfather danced the Gay Gordons with Robin.
The music and the dancing went on late into the night. In fact, there was still dancing going on when the night was over, the light coming back and the new day dawning.
Uh-huh. Okay. I know.
In my dreams.
What I mean is, we stood on the bank of the river under the trees, the pair of us, and we promised the nothing that was there, the nothing that made us, the nothing that was listening, that we truly desired to go beyond our selves.
And that’s the message. That’s it. That’s all.
Rings that widen on the surface of a loch above a thrown-in stone. A drink of water offered to a thirsty traveller on the road. Nothing more than what happens when things come together, when hydrogen, say, meets oxygen, or a story from then meets a story from now, or stone meets water meets girl meets boy meets bird meets hand meets wing meets bone meets light meets dark meets eye meets word meets world meets grain of sand meets thirst meets hunger meets need meets dream meets real meets same meets different meets death meets life meets end meets beginning all over again, the story of nature itself, ever-inventive, making one thing out of another, and one thing into another, and nothing lasts, and nothing’s lost, and nothing ever perishes, and things can always change, because things will always change, and things will always be different, because things can always be different.
And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us be brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.
And there’s always a whole other kittle of fish, our grandfather said in my ear as he reached down and tucked the warm stone into my hand, there it was, ready for me to throw.
Right, Anthea?
Right, Grandad, I said.
Acknowledgements and thanks
I’ve adapted the story of Burning Lily from the account of the early life of Lilian Lenton in Rebel Girls by Jill Liddington (Virago, 2006).
The myth of Iphis originates in Book 9 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. ‘Carry your gifts to the temples, happy pair, and rejoice, confident and unafraid!’ It is one of the cheeriest