There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [50]
Forty-seven years later Mark could, if he’d chosen to, have called to mind the face of the pug, the dark of the lounge, the ebony cigarette-holder so often in the mouth of his aunt at this time in her life. But of this particular day, this moment, in this room with the resolute tick of its clock and the noise of birds outside, what did he remember?
Not a single thing.
Say that there is a heaven up above / say we survive the bumpy road to love Mark sat on the circular bench at the gate of the park. It was his day off. Twenty-seven years ago today, to the day, Mark is on a train coming south. He is thirty-two. His heart is high. In three minutes, according to his watch, the train will pull into Platform 8. Jonathan will be waiting for him at the head of Platform 8. Ten minutes ago, as the train reached the city’s outskirts, Mark shouldered on his stripy cotton jacket, said goodbye to the American nun (!) in mufti sitting opposite him, with whom he’d had a long conversation about many things, including sunlight and Nicaragua, and began walking the length of each carriage all the way to the front. On his way through he carries out a little survey, for fun, of what people are reading on the train. A girl reading Women in Love. A man reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—still (!). A woman reading Death in Venice. A woman reading Heat and Dust. A man reading The White Hotel. A young man, very good-looking, reading a novelization of Chariots of Fire. A girl, looks like a student, reading Slaughterhouse 5. Now he’s past the buffet, now he’s through first class, where nobody is reading anything but the Daily Telegraph (!). Now he’s as near the front of this moving train as he can get, and now he is pushing the window in the door down in the smell of diesel, watching the sun glancing off the deep blue of the moving side of the train as it pulls out of the tunnel into the light before the station, and now his hand is on the handle and pushing the handle down, and now the heavy door is swinging open and the train still moving and he sees him there and he jumps, hits the ground running.
Twenty-seven years later, this journey was lost to Mark. It was just one of so many mundane journeys they made, over time, towards and away from each other. He couldn’t have remembered the details of this particular one, lovely though it was, even if he’d tried.
Time came and took your love away and now / say it’s only a paper moon—and how / the ground beneath us melts away like snow / tell every little star I told you so Mark sat on the bench by the gate of the park and looked at his watch. But then again, this is what happens when, one Saturday night, he goes for a drink in the pub opposite the Turkish restaurant after a play, with a nice chap he’s just met.
Mark: I’ve been invited to this dinner party next week.
Miles: But?
Mark: But, well, I don’t want to go.
Miles: But?
Mark: But what?
Miles: Just but.
Mark: What do you mean, but?
Miles: Exactly what I say. Those sentences all sound like they have a but attached.
Mark: But?
Miles: Yes.
Mark: And would that but have one t or two?
[Miles smiles at him, shakes his head.]
Mark: Shame. Ah well. Right. Got that straight, then. So to speak. Ha.
Miles: So. You’ve been invited to this dinner party next week, but you don’t want to go. You don’t want to go, but—but what comes next? See?
Mark: I get it. You mean like a game.
Miles: I mean more than a game, I mean, like actuality, like how things happen. Like … I was going home, but, this man asked me to go for a drink, so here I am.
Mark: Is it always but? Can it be and?
Miles: Yeah, but the thing I particularly like about the word but, now that I think about it, is that it always takes you off to the side, and where it takes you is always interesting.
Mark: Like … this thing happened at the end of the play which threatened to spoil the whole thing—but …
Miles: See?
Mark: Ah. I see. You’re kind of … amazing.
Miles: Ha-ha. But?