There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [54]
Yes to the first and no to the second, Mark said.
Were you at the Observatory all afternoon? the child said.
No, I spent some of it sitting on a bench talking to my mother, Mark said.
On the phone? the child said.
In my head, Mark said. She’s long dead, my mother.
Oh. I knew that, the child said.
Forty-seven years dead last week, Mark said.
That actually happens to be longer than both my parents have even been alive, the child said.
Last Thursday, to be exact, Mark said.
That makes it sound like it was last Thursday that it happened, the child said.
In some ways it was, Mark said. Just last Thursday. Directly before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ever heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis?
No, but it sounds serious, the child said.
Oh, it was, very serious, then, Mark said.
Mark took the folded pieces of paper out of his pocket, made sure the one he was putting back in was Miles’s handwritten note, and held the magazine article out to the child.
Do you think you could slip this under his door for me? he said.
The child nodded, sure.
She ran into the house.
Half a minute later she skimmed out the front door and down the steps again.
They sent me out in case I disrupt the filming, she said. And I tried to just go up anyway but Mrs. Lee is sitting on the stairs and I couldn’t get past.
Oh, Mark said. Well. It doesn’t matter.
But I can give it to someone who can get it in for you later, the child said.
Great, Mark said.
And Mrs. Lee says to tell you they might want to speak to you after all, the child said, because when Celia, who is what is called the producer, found out you were here the night it happened she decided that therefore it would be an interesting angle.
I’ve no wish, Brooke, to speak to anybody about anything right now, Mark said.
Right then Celia the producer appeared at the door and stood there shading her eyes down the street, as if looking for someone. Mark turned his back, made a face at the child. The child nodded, jerked her head to show him which way to go. She ducked down a passageway to their right, into a break between the houses. Mark followed.
As they came round the corner and down the steps through the passageway the noise level rose. There were quite a lot of people standing around at the fence below the backs of the houses, and more people standing and sitting on the grass across by the modern flats. There were so many it resembled a local fête, or an impromptu protest or campsite. There were several different-sized tents pitched on the grass, Mark counted them. Nine.
The child introduced him to a Scottish woman who had, it seemed, been coordinating food deliveries to the window by means of an amateur-looking pulley system slung between some of the windows on the back of the row of houses. She shook his hand. She was very interested to hear that he’d been present at the original dinner party.
They’ve stopped feeding him anything but meat via the house now, she said. It’s cruel. We had to do something. Finally he’s eating fruit again, and fresh vegetables, thank goodness. People are coming here with things they’ve cooked, too, for him, but just in case, because you never know how folk are, we’re only sending up fresh raw stuff or things we know are okay, things we can vouch for the safety of.
Mark looked at the rickety zigzag of the pulley system, and at the huge posters the other people living on the crescent had put up in their windows.
GO AWAY
THIS IS PRIVATE LAND
DON’T YOU HAVE
HOMES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
We tend to send the basket up at the same time every day, she said. You might think there are a lot of people here now, but last weekend at the one o’clock basket we had a hundred and fifty waiting to see the hand come out.
The one o’clock basket? Mark said.
Uh huh, Anna said.
She smiled.
Just the hand? Mark said. You never see his face?
He has the blind down low, see? she said.
She pointed at the window behind which, presumably, Miles was.
And at ten to one every day, Anna said, we get access