There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [100]
MG—Will you remember me in 6 months time.
BB—Yes
MG—Will you remember me in a years time.
BB—Yes
MG—Will you remember me in 2 years time.
BB—Yes
MG—Will you remember me in 3 years time.
BB—Yes
MG—Knock knock
BB—Who’s there
MG—See you’ve forgotten me already.
It is funny sitting here today and wondering where Mr. Garth has gone. He could be anywhere! It is funny thinking of all the people who are watching the window, and of Mrs. Lee going in on Sunday herself to the room and moving the blind a little bit and then jumping away from the window because of the excited noise her just moving the blind a tiny bit made the crowd make. Mrs. Lee had completely stopped crying after that and had come out of the room looking quite happy and making everybody swear all over again on their lives that nobody would tell anybody Mr. Garth was not there any more.
But the fact is it would be amazing if Mr. Garth was, right this minute, standing outside in the crowd himself and looking at the window he is meant to be behind. And imagine if he saw the blind move with everybody else and it was meant to be him moving it!
(What are you doing, Brooksie? her father said on Thursday night. I’m busy, Brooke said. She was on the rug with her back to the radiator. Doing what? her father said. I’m writing a story, Brooke said. What are you doing, Bernie? her father said to her mother. Leave me alone, I’m proofing these exam papers, her mother said. Her father picked a piece of paper up off the table near her mother’s hand. Her mother tried to catch it as he took it. He danced across to the other side of the room. There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so: Discuss, he said. I wish they’d not used that as the Hamlet question, her mother said, it’d be such a good first-year philosophy general question. There’s always next year, her father said. Next year, yes, her mother said, remember to remind me, Brooke, to use that quote next year. Okay, Brooke said. Her father picked up the copy of Hamlet her mother was checking things in and flicked through it. “As the indifferent children of the earth,” he said. Ha—as if there’s any such thing as a single indifferent child of the earth. Who is it says that, again? her mother asked. Rosencrantz says it, Brooke said. Uh … you’re right, it is, her father said. She’s right. How does she know that? She’s a genius. She takes after me. What are you writing about, spawn of Terence Bayoude? It’s about a man in a room who stays in the room and never leaves it but in that room he has, like, a bicycle, and he cycles three thousand miles on it, Brooke said. What a turn-of-the-century-sounding story, her father said. Like Mr. Garth? her mother said. Sounds more Kafkaesque to me than fin de siècle. Fin de cycle! her father said. Is someone making him do it? her mother said, is it, like, that he has to provide electricity for the whole building by going round and round like a rat on a hamster wheel in a cage? No, Brooke said. He quite likes doing it and nobody is really making him do it. And though he doesn’t ever leave the room, all the same he cycles through Greenwich when it is nothing but a forest, and he cycles up a mountain to the summit, where he learns how to breathe even though it is difficult to there, then he cycles through time past the Queen who causes the uprising and burns London down, past all the people building it up again and past the Queen who is sheltering under the tree in the rain, and he gets off his bike and he takes his mac off and puts it over a puddle for her. What a gent! her father said. Then he cycles so close to the cell window in a prison that he can hear the original frogs talking to the original St. Alfege, Brooke said. What are the frogs saying? her father asked. They are talking in their own frog language, about the weather, and how difficult it is to have frogspawn, and what an interesting experience it is to grow legs when you start off without any, and how nice and damp it is in the cell and how glad they are that they’re there, although they