There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [6]
Anna noticed again how surprisingly polite and old-fashioned the child sounded.
I’m sure your mother’s calling you, Genevieve Lee said.
I can hear nothing that resembles what you suggest, Mrs. Lee, the child said.
Let me put it another way, Brooke. I think you’re wanted elsewhere, Genevieve Lee said.
You mean I’m not wanted here. Words words words, the child said.
She jumped up and down. Then she did a handstand by the side of the couch, next to Anna.
That’s from Hamlet, she said upside down from underneath her dress. A play by William Shakespeare, but you probably already know that. Words words words. Words words words. Words words words.
She kicked her legs in the air. Genevieve Lee got up and stood pointedly at the door. The child upended herself on to her feet and straightened her clothes.
Would you like to walk the tunnel later, right, maybe? the child said to Anna. It was built in 1902 and it goes underneath the river, have you ever walked it?
She told Anna that if she’d been here three years ago she’d have been able to see the actual Cutty Sark.
Because I don’t mean see the station, she said. But you probably already know how the fact is it was originally a ship, not just a station, and before the fire on it, it was still there, therefore if you or if I had come out of the station called Cutty Sark, and we’d turned the right way at the exit, by which I mean turned to our left, we’d have seen the ship called it. The point I’m making being, the thing is, I didn’t actually come to live here till last year. So I can’t see it until it is restored to its former glory. But maybe you saw the real original when you were my age or a bit older, I mean before it burned down.
I missed it, Anna said. I never saw it in real life. I’ve seen it in pictures. And film of it on TV.
It’s not the same, the child said. But it’ll do, it’ll do, it’ll have to do.
She did a wild joyful dance in the doorframe.
Brooke, Genevieve Lee said. Out. Now. And leave my stones alone. They cost money. Scottish river pebbles, she said to Anna.
Very expensive, Anna said.
She winked at the going child.
Bye, she said.
Brooke was nine, apparently, and lived round the corner in the student flats. Her parents were research fellows or postgraduates at the university.
Obviously not ours, Genevieve Lee said. Very cute, though. Quite precocious.
Genevieve Lee poured the coffee and told Anna about the night of their annual alternative dinner party, which was something she and her husband, Eric, usually held at the beginning of the summer before everybody disappeared for the holidays. Once a year they liked to invite people who were a bit different from the people they usually saw, as well as the friends they saw all the time, Hugo and Caroline and Richard and Hannah. It was always interesting to branch out. Last year they had invited a Muslim couple; the year before they had had a Palestinian man and his wife and a Jewish doctor and his partner. That had resulted in a very entertaining evening. This year an acquaintance of Hugo and Caroline’s, a man whose name was Mark Palmer, had brought Miles Garth with him.
Mark is gay, Genevieve Lee explained. He’s an acquaintance of Hugo and Caroline’s. We thought Miles was Mark’s partner, but it seems not. Probably for the best, because if they were partners there’d be an outstanding age difference between them, twenty years, more maybe. They apparently go to a lot of musicals together. Mark Palmer loves musicals. They tend to, don’t they? He’s in his sixties. He’s Hugo and Caroline’s friend.
Genevieve Lee went on to tell her that Brooke’s parents, the Bayoudes, had been invited too, and had also come along, though they’d recently moved here not from anywhere in Africa but from Harrogate.
Anyway, we were all having