Ali Smith - Girl Meets Boy

Listen. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night, because —, he says.

Yeah, well, if it’s about the print-outs, I say, there’s no point. The print-outs were irrelevant. I wasn’t phoning you about print-outs anyway. I was just trying to get your attention in the only way I could think of without actually telling you I fancied you out loud. And they really don’t matter any more, not to me, as I’m no longer a Puree.

It’s not the print-outs, Paul says.

And maybe you don’t like me, maybe you’re embarrassed that I said what I felt, well, never mind, I won’t mind, I’m a grown-up, I’ll be okay, but I needed to say it out loud, to tell you anyway, and I’m tired of feeling things I never get to express, things that I always have to hold inside, I’m fed up not knowing whether I’m saying the right thing when I do speak, anyway I thought I’d be brave, I thought it was worth it, and I hope you don’t mind me saying.

Words are coming out of me like someone turned me on like a tap. It’s Paul. He — turns me on!

But as soon as he gets the chance, Paul cuts in.

Imogen. Listen. It’s your sister, he says.

My heart in me. Nothing else. Everything else blank.

What about my sister? What’s happened to my sister? I say.

* * *

Paul is waiting for me at the station when the train pulls in.

Why aren’t you at work? I say.

Because I’m here instead, he says.

He slings my bag into the boot of his car then locks the car with his key fob.

We’ll walk, he says. You’ll see it better that way. The first one is on the wall of the Eastgate Centre, I think because of the traffic coming into town, the people in cars get long enough to read it when they stop at the traffic lights. God knows how anybody got up that high and stayed up there without being disturbed long enough to do it.

He walks me past Marks and Spencers, about fifteen yards down the road. Sure enough, the people in the cars stopped at the traffic lights are peering at something above my head, even leaning out of their car windows to see it more clearly.

I turn round.

Behind me and above me on the wall the words are bright, red, huge. They’re in the same writing as was on the Pure sign before they replaced it. They’ve been framed in a beautiful, baroque-looking, trompe l’œil picture-frame in gold. They say: ACROSS THE WORLD, TWO MILLION GIRLS, KILLED BEFORE BIRTH OR AT BIRTH BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T BOYS. THAT’S ON RECORD. ADD TO THAT THE OFF-RECORD ESTIMATE OF FIFTY-EIGHT MILLION MORE GIRLS, KILLED BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T BOYS. THAT’S SIXTY MILLION GIRLS. Underneath this, in a handwriting I recognise, even though it’s a lot bigger than usual: THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message girls 2007.

Dear God, I say.

I know, Paul says.

So many girls, I say in case Paul isn’t understanding me.

Yes, Paul says.

Sixty million. I say. How? How can that happen in this day and age? How do we not know about that?

We do now, he says. Pretty much the whole of Inverness knows about it now, if they want to. And more. Much more.

What else? I say.

He walks me back past the shops and up the pedestrian precinct into town, to the Town House. A small group of people is watching two men in overalls scouring the red off the front wall with a spray gun. IN NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW ARE WOMEN’S WAGES EQUAL TO MEN’S WAGES. THIS MUST CHA

Half the frame and the bit with the names and the date have been sprayed nearly away but are still visible. It’s all still legible.

That’ll take some shifting, I say.

Paul leads me round the Town House, where a whole side wall is bright red words inside gold. ALL ACROSS THE WORLD, WHERE WOMEN ARE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME WORK AS MEN, THEY’RE BEING PAID BETWEEN THIRTY TO FORTY PERCENT LESS. THAT’S NOT FAIR. THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message boys 2007.

Probably Catholics, a woman says. It’s disgusting.

Aye, it’ll fair ruin the tourism, another says. Who’d be wanting to come and see the town if the town’s covered in this kind of thing? Nobody.

And we can say goodbye to winning that Britain in Bloom this year now, her friend says.

And to Antiques Roadshow ever coming back to Inverness and all, another says.

It’s a scandal! another is saying. Thirty to forty percent!

Aye well, a man next to her says. It’s no fair, right enough, if that’s true, what it says there.

Aye, but why would boys write that kind of thing on a building? a woman is saying. It’s not natural.

Too right they should, the scandal-woman says. And would you not have thought we were equal now, here, after all that stravaiging in the seventies and the eighties?

Aye, but we’re equal here, in Inverness, the first woman says.

In your dreams we’re equal, the scandal-woman says.

Nevertheless, equal or no, it’s no reason to paint it all over the Town House, the woman’s friend says.

The scandal-woman is arguing back as we walk up round the side of the Castle. In gilted red on the front wall above the Castle door it says in a jolly arc, like the name of a house painted right above its threshold, that only one percent of the world’s assets are held by women. Iphis and Ianthe the message girls 2007.

From here we can see right across the river that there are huge red words on the side of the cathedral too. I can’t see what they say, but I can make out the red.

Two million girls annually forced into marriage worldwide, Paul says seeing me straining to make it out. And on Eden Court Theatre, on the glass doors, it says that sexual or domestic violence affects one out of every three women and girls worldwide and that this is the world’s leading cause of injury and death for women.

I can make out the this must change from here, I say.

We lean on the Castle railing and Paul lists the other places that have been written on, what the writing says, and about how the police phoned Pure for me.

Your sister and her friend are both in custody up at Raigmore, he says.

Robin’s not her friend, I say. Robin’s her other half.

Right, Paul says. I’ll run you up there now. You’ll need to arrange bail. I did try. My bank wouldn’t let me.

Hang on, I say. I bet you anything –

What? he says.

I bet you their double bail there’s a message somewhere on Flora too, I say.

I can’t afford it, he shouts behind me.

I run down to the statue of Flora MacDonald shielding her eyes, watching for Bonnie Prince Charlie, still dressed in the girls’ clothes she lent him for his escape from the English forces, to come sailing back to her all the way up the River Ness.

I walk round the statue three times reading the words ringing the base of her. Tiny, clear, red, a couple of centimetres high: WOMEN OCCUPY TWO PERCENT OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT POSITIONS IN BUSINESS WORLDWIDE. THREE AND A HALF PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S TOTAL NUMBER OF CABINET MINISTERS ARE WOMEN. WOMEN HAVE NO MINISTERIAL POSITIONS IN NINETY-THREE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message boys 2007.

Good old Flora. I pat her base.

Paul catches me up.

I’ll nip down and get the car and pick you up here, he says, and we’ll head up the hill –

Take me home first, I say. I need a bath. I need some breakfast. Then maybe you and me can have a talk. Then I’ll take us up to the police station on my Rebel.

On your what? But we should really go up to the station right now, Imogen, he says. It’s been all night.

Are you not wanting to talk to me, then? I say.

Well, I do, actually, he says, I’ve got a lot to say, but do you not think we should –

I shake my head.

I think the message boy-girls’ll be proud to be in there, I say.