Ali Smith - Girl Meets Boy

There is a pile of homework jotters on the table. Denise is going through them, reading out people’s names. We say out loud at each name whether we pass or fail the person, like the game Anthea and I play at home at the countdown of the chart on Top of the Pops. Hurray for someone we like. Boo for someone we don’t.

Denise finds Robin Goodman’s jotter.

For some reason Denise MacCall really dislikes Robin Goodman from Beauly, with her short curly dark hair thick on top of her head, her darkish skin, her long hands that the music teacher is always going on about when she plays her clarinet, her serious, studious, far-too-clever face. I dislike her too, though I hardly know her. She is in two or three of my classes, that’s all I know about her, apart from that she plays the clarinet. But it makes me feel happy to dislike her right now, because this is proof that I am Denise’s friend. Though I am not so sure that I like Denise all that much either, or that Denise wouldn’t boo me if she got to a jotter with my name on it and I wasn’t here in the room with her.

Denise and I write the letters L, E and Z, on the front of Robin Goodman’s jotter, with the black Pentel I have in my pencil case. Or, to be more exact, I write the letters and she draws the arrow pointing at them.

Then we slide the jotter back into the middle of the pile.

When geography class starts, and Horny Geog, which is what we call Miss Horne, the old lady teacher who teaches us it, gives out the jotters, we watch to see Robin Goodman’s response. I am sitting a couple of rows behind her. I see her shoulders tense, then droop.

When I go past her at the end of the period and glance down at the book on her desk I can see that she’s made Denise’s arrow into the trunk of a tree and she’s drawn hundreds of little flowerheads, all around the letters L, E and Z, like the letters are the branches of the tree and they’ve all just come into bloom.)

The same Robin Goodman, ten years later, with her long dark hair and her dark, serious, studious face, is

(oh my God)

right here in my house when I get home. She is sitting on the couch with a cup of tea in front of her. She is reading a book. I am too drunk and dizzy to make out the cover of the book she is reading. I stand in the doorway and hold on to the doorframe.

Hi, she says.

(Oh my God and also my sister is a)

What have you done with my sister? I say.

Your sister’s in the bath, she says.

I sit down. I lean my head back. I feel sick.

(I am sitting in the same room as a)

Robin Goodman leaves the room. When she comes back, she puts something into my hand. It’s a glass. It’s one of my glasses from the cupboard.

Drink that, she says, and I’ll get you another one.

You haven’t changed much, since school, I say. You look exactly the same.

So do you, she says. But some things have changed, thank God. We’re not schoolgirls any more.

Apart from. Your hair. Got longer, I say.

Well, ten years, she says. Something’s got to give.

I went away to unversity, I say. Did you go?

If you mean university, yes, I did, she says.

And you came back, I say.

Just like you, she says.

Do you still play the clarnet? I say.

No, she says.

There’s a silence. I look down. There’s a glass in my hand.

Drink it, she says.

I drink it. It tastes beautiful, of clearness.

That’ll be better, she says.

She takes the empty glass and leaves the room. I hear her in my kitchen. I look down at myself and am surprised to see I’m still wearing the tracksuit I put on after work. I’m not completely sure where I’ve just been. I begin to wonder if I made up the whole evening, if I invented the pub, the curryhouse, the whole thing.

That’s my kitchen you were just in, I say when she comes back through.

I know, she says and sits down in my sitting room.

This is my sitting room, I say.

Yep, she says.

(I am sitting in the same room as a)

She is the kind of person who does not really care what she is wearing or what it looks like. At least she is wearing normal clothes. At least she is not wearing that embarrassing Scottish get-up.

Not wearing your kilt tonight? I say.

Only for special occasions, she says.

My company that I work for, you know, Pure Incorported, is going to take you to court, I say.

They’ll drop the charges, she says.

She doesn’t even look up from her book. I have to look at my hand because it’s covered in the water I’ve spilled on myself. I hold the glass up and look through it. I look at the room through the bit with water in it. Then I look at the same room through the bit with no water in it. Then I drink the water.

Eau Caledonia, I say.

Need another? she says.

(I am sitting in the same room as a)

A lass and a lack, I say.

This pun makes me laugh. It is unlike me to be witty. It is my sister who is the really witty one. I am the one who knows the correct words, the right words for things.

I lean forward.

Tell me what it is, I say.

It’s water, Robin Goodman says.

No, I say. I mean, what’s the correct word for it, I mean, for you? I need to know it. I need to know the proper word.

She looks at me for a long time. I can feel her looking right through my drunkness. Then, when she speaks, it is as if the whole look of her speaks.

The proper word for me, Robin Goodman says, is me.

Because of us, things came together. Everything was possible.

I had not known, before us, that every vein in my body was capable of carrying light, like a river seen from a train makes a channel of sky etch itself deep into a landscape. I had not really known I could be so much more than myself. I had not known another body could do this to mine.

Now I’d become a walking fuse, like in that poem about the flower, and the force, and the green fuse the force drives through it; the force that blasts the roots of trees was blasting the roots of me, I was like a species that hadn’t even realised it lived in a near-desert till one day its taproot hit water. Now I had taken a whole new shape. No, I had taken the shape I was always supposed to, the shape that let me hold my head high. Me, Anthea Gunn, head turned towards the sun.

Your name, Robin had said on our first underwater night together deep in each other’s arms. It means flowers, did you know that?

No it doesn’t, I’d said. Gunn means war. The clan motto is Either Peace or War. Midge and I did a clan project at school when I was small.

No, I mean your first name, she said.

I was named after someone off the tv, I said.

It means flowers, or a coming-up of flowers, a blooming of flowers, she said. I looked you up.

She was behind me in the bed, she was speaking into my shoulder.

You, she was saying. You’re a walking peace protest. You’re the flower in the Gunn.

And what about you? I said. I tried looking you up too. I did it before we’d even met. What does the weird name mean?

What weird name? she said.

It isn’t in the dictionary, I said. I looked. I Googled you. It doesn’t mean anything.

Everything means something, she said.

Iphisol, I said.

Iff is sol? she said. Iffisol? I don’t know. I’ve no idea. It sounds like aerosol. Or Anusol.

She was holding me loosely, her arms were round me and one leg over my legs keeping me warm, I could feel the smooth new skin of her from my shoulders down to my calves. Then the bed was shaking; she was laughing.

Not Iffisol. Eye fizz ol, she said. Iphis is said like eye fizz. And it’s not ol, it’s 07. Like, the name, Iphis, but with the year, the oh and the seven of two thousand and seven.

Oh. Iphis oh seven. Oh, I said.