There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [14]
It isn’t a line; he isn’t being flirtatious. He actually looks pre-occupied.
He is very witty, and definitely clever; he is probably one of the ones on this trip who are going to Oxford or wherever it is they’re all going. But he doesn’t sound rich or like he goes to a posh school. Also, he has already made her really laugh. She wants to ask whether he knows anything about the people who shaved off the boy’s half-moustache. He doesn’t seem like he’d be the kind to do that sort of thing.
He is dark-haired, big-nosed. He’d be good-looking if it wasn’t for his nose. He looks the quiet type. Maybe he looks more the quiet type than he actually is. He looks a bit tired this close up. His hair is longish, not too long. He is wearing a blue vest-top. He’s quite broad-chested. His arms and shoulders come out of the vest-top gangly and pale, like he doesn’t fit himself. But the way he moves just then, to flick a little greenfly or something off the leg of his jeans, is both gentle and exact.
She stops looking at him because he starts looking at her.
What are you doing? he says then.
She shrugs, nods at the Timetable on the top of her Tour folder.
Waiting for whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing next on the list, she says.
No, I mean, what are you doing with that, he says.
He is pointing at her head, at her ear. While they’ve been talking she has unbent the paperclip from the Useful Information sheets in the folder and, without really thinking about it, has been poking its end into her ear piercing.
Oh, she says. Making an earring.
Out of a paperclip? he says.
I only brought one earring with me. I mean from home, she says. I don’t want the hole to close up.
When people do that on TV in dramas, like unravel a hairpin or a paperclip, it’s because they’re going to unpick a lock or something, he says. But then you stuck it into your earlobe. That’s so 1976.
I’m so. Twentieth century, she says.
It’s probably still really new wave, to do that in France, he says. No, I mean, probably still really nouvelle vague. Hey, listen. If your second name was Key—
She looks sideways at him.
You’d be Anna Key in the UK, he says.
He is laughing at her now.
Then she is laughing too, at herself.
Wish I was in the UK right now, she says.
Your earrings really mean that much to you? he says. Wow. No, I like it here. I like places of disrupted history that have managed, all the same, to come out of things looking pretty good. I’m enjoying all the tourifications. But you. You’d rather be there than here.
Anna nods.
You’re not having a good time, he says.
Anna looks away from him, looks at the water.
Well, he says. You could. Just go. Just go home.
Yeah, right, Anna says. Well, I would if I had my passport. I’d like to at least have the choice.
Let’s see it, he says.
What? she says.
Your passport, he says.
They took them, Anna says. They took mine. Did they not take yours?
Come on, he says. Here to help. Show me your passport and I’ll help you cross the border.
He puts on a stern face, points at the french bread sticking out of her packed lunch bag, holds out his hand.
You want this? she says.
Passaporte, he says. I’ve eaten mine.
You’re being such a tube, she says.
But she hands him the bread.
Right, he says. Come on.
He stands up.
Where? Anna says.
Fishing, he says.
They spend the afternoon throwing bits of bread at the water and watching for the mouths of the fish to appear, to open and close as if detached from any actual fish-bodies, at the surface. On the way back to Paris, when everybody crowds scrumming for seats on to the bus, he catches the edge of her jacket in his hand when she passes his table. He moves over into the empty seat next to him. She sits down.
This is Anna Key, he tells the two other people sitting at the table. Anna Key in the UK, and Anna Key when she’s not in the UK too.
This time on the bus when she gets her book out of her bag, it isn’t because she feels bad. Everybody talks round her all the way back to Paris like she belongs, like she’s never not been there.