There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [8]
Anna told her again about how she hardly knew Miles Garth, that the only reason she knew him at all was fluke, in that they’d both won a place nearly thirty years ago on a European holiday for teenagers from all over the country, a competition organized through secondary schools and sponsored by a bank. She and Miles had spent two weeks in July of 1980 on the same tour bus, along with forty-eight other seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds.
And kept in touch for years afterwards, Genevieve Lee said.
Well, no, Anna said. Not really, hardly at all. I kept in touch with six or seven people from the group for a year or two, then, you know. You lose touch.
But a beautiful memory, one that meant everything to him all those years ago, Genevieve Lee said.
Nope, Anna said.
A painful break-up, the first time his heart broke, and he’s never been able to forget, Genevieve Lee said.
No, Anna said. Honestly. I really don’t think so. I mean, we were vaguely friends. Nothing else. Nothing, you know, meaningful.
Which is why he’s carried your name and address with him all these years, for no meaningful reason at all, then, Genevieve Lee said.
Genevieve Lee was getting red in the face.
If there’s a reason, I don’t know what it is, Anna said. I mean, I can’t imagine where he got my email address from. We haven’t been in touch for, God, it must be well over twenty years. Way before email.
Something very special. On your trip thing. Happened.
Genevieve Lee was shouting now. But Anna’s job had trained her well when it came to other people’s anger.
Sit down, she said. Please. When you sit down, I’ll tell you exactly what I remember.
It worked. Genevieve Lee sat down. Anna spoke soothingly and kept her arms uncrossed.
The first thing I remember, she said, is that I got food poisoning at a medieval banquet they laid on for us in London right at the beginning of the fortnight. And I remember seeing Paris, the Eiffel Tower, Sacré Coeur, for the first time. I remember there was nothing to do in Brussels. We found an old closed fairground and wandered around it. I hated the food in the Heidelberg hotel. There was a wooden bridge in Lucerne. And all I remember about Venice is that we stayed in a very grand hotel that was very dark inside. And that a bomb went off in a railway station somewhere else in Italy, in the north, while we were in Venice and it killed a lot of people, and that there was a small mutiny among some of the boys in the group because the hotel staff were sharp with them after this happening, you know, told them to make less noise. I remember there was quite a row about a beer bottle or a beer can being thrown out of a hotel window. I can’t remember if that was Italy or not.
From France to Germany Genevieve Lee had been passing a pencil she’d picked up off the little table next to her from one hand to the other. By Italy she had started tapping the table with the pencil.
So, Anna said. I had a look through my photos after your message came, but I don’t have many, only twelve, I obviously only took one spool, and there’s only one photo with Miles Garth in it. I mean, I know it’s him, I can look at the photo and be sure it’s him, but you can’t see his face, he’s looking down in it so you can only see the top of his head. There’s a group photo, of all of us, they took one outside the bank before we left. It’s too far away to see anyone very clearly, but he’s there, at the back. He was tall.
I already know he’s tall, Genevieve Lee said. I already know what he looks like.
I remember he tied little bits of french bread on to bits of denim thread he pulled off the frayed ends of his jeans, Anna said, and we used these to try to catch the goldfish in a lake at Versailles. That’s what he’s looking down at in the photo. He’s tying a knot round the bread. And—that’s all.
That’s all? Genevieve Lee said.
Anna shrugged.
Genevieve Lee snapped the pencil she was holding in two. Then she looked down at the pieces of pencil she