Ali Smith - There But For The

But when he’d got to the Lees’ house and knocked on the front door this morning there’d been no one home. Well, presumably Miles was in, but he wasn’t about to open the front door to anyone, was he?

He had the article in his inside jacket pocket now, folded, along with Miles’s note, well, he was assuming it was from Miles, it couldn’t really be from anybody else, though it wasn’t signed. He’d found it in there, a plain piece of foolscap folded twice, when he’d got his wallet out to buy a train ticket the Sunday after the dinner party. The handwriting was new to him. It was intelligent, slightly forward-slanted, neatly spaced down the page rather like a poem might be though it wasn’t one. It was quite clear. Only one word was difficult to decipher.

He stopped on the slope. People went past him; a couple of people speaking French. Mark took both folded pieces of paper out of his pocket.

Below the words REAL LIFE: An Uninvited Stranger Lives In My Spare Room, was the picture of Mrs. Lee in profile, standing beside a door, looking rather tragically down at its handle. The caption read: Genevieve Lee recounts what it’s like living twenty-four-seven with an uninvited stranger.

I had always loved living here

in our gracious old historic

Greenwich town house. From

practically the first day my

husband Eric and I and our

young daughter moved in, it

seemed to me to be asking to

be a really sociable space. I don’t

think it’s an exaggeration to say that

among our friends we’re renowned

for our hospitality. Until June

this year we were forever having

people round for interesting

soirées and sending them

home happy after a meal I’d

have taken great pains to cook

to perfection each time.

We had no way of knowing that

this one dinner party, however,

would turn out so dramatically

differently from the others. That

particular evening in June

I had planned a menu including

a seared scallops with chorizo

starter, a main course of lamb

tagine and a dessert of crème

brûlée with home-made

chilli-vanilla ice cream. One of

our guests brought his own

guest, a man who seemed perfectly

genial and normal and didn’t in

any way arouse our suspicions

or give any clue as to what was

about to happen. He wasn’t

poor, didn’t seem in distress,

and the fact that he was a

vegetarian, though it was a

surprise, was absolutely no

problem.

In the middle of the party this man,

we’ll call him “Milo,” left the

room and went upstairs. While

we merrily continued with our

dinner party downstairs he was

actually barricading himself into

one of the rooms in our house.

The next morning we woke up to

a fact that we have lived with

since that day. A stranger is

living in our house against

our will.

It has now been three months,

and it is simply an experience

unlike any I have hitherto

had. The man has made himself

incommunicado for an

unfathomable reason

in our spare room with my

rowing machine and my husband’s

wine-making kits and DVD

collections of sci-fi classics

of the fifties and sixties,

a room which we were about to

turn into a badly needed study

for our daughter who has

important school exams this

coming year. He never speaks

and only once in the whole time

has sent us a written message,

about the food we provide free for

him; it is one of the little ironies

of the situation that for “Milo”

the dinner party he came

to as our guest has never

ended. Looking back now it is

also ironic to remember

myself hearing the creak of his

footsteps on our stairs as I

prepared the dessert that first

night not knowing what was really

afoot.

It is strange having a stranger

in the house with you all the

time. It makes you strangely

self-aware, strange to yourself.

It is literally like living with

a mystery. Sometimes I stand

in the hall and listen to the

silence. It sounds uncanny

and feels like I imagine

being haunted must feel like.

Sometimes the water flushing

or “Milo” moving about

in the middle of the night

wakes me or Eric and we

have the realization, all over

again, that we are not alone.

Sometimes I sit outside the door

behind which “Milo” is sitting

and just say over and over to myself

the word: Why? Perhaps in

some ways metaphorically we

are all like this man “Milo”—all of

us locked in a room in a house

belonging to strangers.

Except that this is our house

which makes it all seem

unfair and unnecessary.

A friend asked if we aren’t

tempted just to go ahead and

use brute force and break down our

beautiful and authenticated c17th

door and send in the police or

someone who would simply

remove “Milo.” I am a peaceable

person who abhors violence of

any sort so I am uneasy when

I consider we may have to resort

to force. But we do not know

when our home will feel

like home again. Even

though we knew our family

unit to be strong we never

expected it to be so thoroughly

tested. Who knows what the

future holds? Every new day

I wake full of the possibilities of

change. I am determined to

remain philosophical about it,

and keep urging my family

likewise. But all the same,

I for one know that I will

never see dinner parties

in quite the same light again.

Mark folded it up again and put both pieces of paper back in his inside pocket. “Milo.” Miles gloriosus. Sweet mild-mannered Miles in a room five steps wide and seven steps long, and in there now for months.

(Three or four months back, one Saturday in June, Mark goes to a matinee of The Winter’s Tale at the Old Vic. The play has been sold out for weeks but he manages to get a last-minute seat in the back of the stalls. The production is good; Simon Russell Beale believably madder and madder as Leontes, and the young woman, whoever she is, as Hermione, quite captivating, and as the afternoon passes and the story unfolds the play seems actually to be working. He sits up in his seat, excited. It’s a hard one to get right, The Winter’s Tale, but when it’s right, he knows, the coming-to-life of the statue at the end is one of the most moving things theatre can produce.