Ali Smith - Girl Meets Boy

Good, Keith said, good, good! Keep it coming –

— and how we’re all actually about seventy-five per cent water. We need to suggest that water IS us. We need to suggest that water can unite us. No matter what our political or national differences.

That’s very, very good, Keith said. Well done, Paul. Run with it.

The whole room turned and bristled with jealousy at Paul.

Of the first water, the one who was maybe called Brian said. Still waters run deep, a shavey called Dominic shouted from across the room. Soon the room was running pretty deep in thesaurus clichés. In deep water. Won’t hold water. Get into hot water. Head above water. Throw cold water.

Water is about well-being, Midge said. About being well.

Nobody heard her.

It’s all about well-being, an unfamiliar Creative said on the other side of the room.

I like that, Keith said. Very good point, Norm.

I saw Midge look down, disheartened, and in that moment I saw what it was that was different about my sister now. I saw it in the turn of her head and the movement of her too-thin wrist. How had I not seen it? She was far too thin. She was really thin.

And product package will dwell on how water makes you healthy, keeps you healthy, Dominic said.

Maybe marketed with health-conscious products or a healthy make-yourself-over or let-yourself-relax package specifically aimed at women stroke families, Norm said. Water keeps your kids healthy.

Good point, Norm, Keith said.

I’d had enough.

You could call it Och Well, I said.

Call it —? Keith said.

He stared at me.

The whole room turned and stared at me.

I’m dead, I thought. Och well.

You could call it Affluent, I said. That pretty much sums it up. Or maybe that sounds too like Effluent. I know. You could call it Main Stream. On the lid it could say You’re Always Safer Sticking With The Main Stream.

The whole room was silent, and not in a good way.

You could call it Scottish Tap, I said into the hush. That’d be good and honest. Whatever good means.

Keith raised his eyebrows. He jutted out his chin.

Transparency, Midge said quick. It’s not a bad route, Keith. It could be a really, really good route, no?

A we-won’t-mess-with-you route, Paul said nodding. It’s mindset all right. And it combines honesty and nationality in the same throw. Honest Scottishness. Honest-to-goodness goodness in a bottle.

It takes and makes a stand, Midge said. Doesn’t it? And that’s half the bottle, I mean battle.

Where you stand lets you know what really matters. If we suggest our bottled water takes and makes a stand, it’ll become bottled idealism, Paul said.

Bottled identity, Midge said.

Bottled politics, Paul said.

I went to stand by the window where the water cooler was. I pressed the button and water bubbled out of the big plastic container into the little plastic cup. It tasted of plastic. I’m dead, I thought. That’s that. It was a relief. The only thing I was sorry about was troubling Midge. She had been sweet there, trying to save me.

I watched a tiny bird fling itself through the air off the guttering above the Boardroom window and land on its feet on a branch of the tree over the huge Pure corporation sign at the front gate of the building. The bird’s casual expertise pleased me. I wondered if that group of people outside, gathered at the front gate under the Pure sign, had seen it land.

They were standing there as if they were watching a play. Some were laughing. Some were gesticulating.

It was a lad, dressed for a wedding. He was up a ladder doing some kind of maintenance on the sign. The work experience girls from the school were watching him. So was Becky from Reception, some people who looked like passers-by, and one or two other people I recognised, people Midge had introduced me to, from Pure Press and Pure Personnel.

The nice shavey called Paul was standing beside me now at the water cooler. He nodded to me, apologetic, as he took a plastic cone and held it under the plastic tap. He looked grave. I was clearly going to be shot at dawn. Then he looked out of the window.

Something unorthodox seems to be happening at the Pure sign, he said.

When everybody in the Boardroom was round the window I slipped off to get my coat. I switched my computer off. I’d not yet put anything in the drawers of my desk so there was very little to take with me. I went past the empty reception, all the lights flashing like mad on the phones, and ran down the stairs and out into the sun.

It was a beautiful day.

The boy up the ladder at the gate was in a kilt and sporran. The kilt was a bright red tartan; the boy was black-waistcoated and had frilly cuffs, I could see the frills at his wrists as I came closer. I could see the glint of the knife in his sock. I could see the glint of the little diamond spangles on the waistcoat and the glint that came off the chain that held the sporran on. He had long dark hair winged with ringlets, like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, but cleaner. He was spray-painting, in beautiful red calligraphy, right under the Pure insignia, these words:

DON’T BE STUPID. WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT. SELLING IT IN ANY WAY IS MORALLY WRO

The work experience girls were applauding and laughing. One of them was singing. Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low. Through the streets in my kilt I’ll go. All the lassies say hello. They saw me and waved at me. I waved back. A Press person was on a mobile. The rest of Press and Personnel were crowded round looking concerned. Two security men stood listlessly at the foot of the ladder. One of them pointed towards the building; I looked up, but its windows, including the window I had myself been staring through a minute ago, were the kind you can’t see into.

I wondered if my sister was watching me from up there. I had an urge to wave.

NG., the boy wrote.

The security men shook their heads at each other.

Becky from Reception winked at me then nodded, serious-faced, at the security men. We watched the long-limbed boy sign off, with a series of arrogant and expert slants and curlicues, the final word at the bottom of his handiwork:

IPHISOL.

He shook the paintcan, listened to the rattle it made, thought about whether to keep it or to chuck it away, then tucked it into the pocket of his waistcoat. He took hold of the sides of the ladder, lifted his feet off the rung in one move, put them on the outsides of the downstruts and slid himself neatly to the ground. He landed on his feet and he turned round.

My head, something happened to its insides. It was as if a storm at sea happened, but only for a moment, and only on the inside of my head. My ribcage, something definitely happened there. It was as if it unknotted itself from itself, like the hull of a ship hitting rock, giving way, and the ship that I was opened wide inside me and in came the ocean.

He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life.

But he looked really like a girl.

She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life.

(Oh my God my sister is A GAY.)

(I am not upset. I am not upset. I am not upset. I am not upset.)

I am putting on my Stella McCartney Adidas tracksuit bottoms. I am lacing up my Nike runners. I am zipping up my Stella McCartney Adidas tracksuit top. I am going out the front door like I am a (normal) person just going out of a (normal) front door on a (normal) early summer day in the month of May and I am going for a run which is the kind of (normal) thing (normal) people do all the time.

There. I’m running. That feels better. I can feel the road beneath my feet. There. There. There.

(It is our mother’s fault for splitting up with our father.)