Ali Smith: There But For The

I/we have absolutely no idea whatsoever why Mr. Garth has chosen to barricade himself into our house, it is certainly nothing to do with me and it is nothing to do with my husband or my daughter. As you can imagine ten days is a long time at the end of the day. We have tried his work associates but nothing has worked.

We do not however wish to be unpleasant. We are at present using a softly-softly approach, also on the advice of the police advisers.

This is why I/we are contacting you as one of the few Significant others we can trace for Mr. Garth. We were fortunate to find this email for you in the address book in his phone which he did not take into our spare room with him but left with his jacket and his car keys in our lounge.

We have moved his car temporarily to the driveway of a friend but it cannot stay there indefinately (it was originally left I’m afraid illegally in a Residents Permit Space.).

If you can help my husband and myself at all in any way I/we would be very grateful. Our telephone number is at the bottom of this email. I would be very much obliged if you would contact us as soon as possible even if it is only to let me know that you have received this message even if you can’t actually help in this instance.

Very many thanks indeed and I/we look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Gen Lee

(Genevieve and Eric Lee)

Who was Miles Garth, again?

Miles.

Yes.

When we went to Europe.

Anna read it through again.

He is refusing to speak to a singe soul.

Later that evening she found that instead of thinking (as she did every night as the dark came down and every morning as the light came up) about work, and about the faces, one after the other, of the people she had failed, she was preoccupied with this notion, a lightly burnt soul, its scent of singed wool.

Before she went to bed she tapped out the following, and sent it.

Dear Mrs. Lee,

Thank you for your email. What a strange predicament. I’m afraid though that you might be on to a wild goose chase with me, since I don’t really know Miles Garth or anything about him, having met him only very briefly and quite a long time ago now, back in the 1980s. I am not at all sure I can help you. But if you think I can, I’m willing to give it a try. What would you like me to do?

All my best,

Anna Hardie.

Now it was two days later.

Miles, she said to whoever was behind the door. Are you there?

Where exactly was Anna, then, who had travelled in on the packed train that morning next to a man in a Gore-Tex jacket who was watching porn on the screen of his phone? She’d crossed the capital past the posters on the tube station walls advertising This Season’s Atonement and under the ads in the tube carriage with the picture of the kitchen bin with the speech bubble coming out of its mouth saying It’s My Right To Eat Tin Cans and the words beneath which said Deny Your Bin Its Rights. She’d gone for a walk between stations and seen St. Paul’s rise to the surface on the riverbank like a piece of old cartilage. She’d ridden a train through a place that looked like the future had looked when she was a child. Now she was walking up a hot summer street of beautiful buildings and shabby-chic houses trying to remember what Greenwich meant again, which was something to do with time. When she got to the right address, a child wearing a bright yellow dress over the top of a pair of jeans was sitting on its top step picking little stones out of a fancy border of pebbles at each side of the door. She was whistling a repetitive strip of tune a bit like the Judy Garland song from The Wizard of Oz and throwing the stones at a drain in the road, presumably trying to get them down the grate of it. The drain cover and the road around it were dotted with little white stones.

Hello, Anna said.

I’m broke, the child said.

Me too, Anna said.

Really? the child said.

Yes, Anna said. Almost totally. What a coincidence. Aren’t you hot in all those clothes?

Nope, the child said reaching up to the doorbell. Because I feel that I am not doing myself full justice if I don’t wear them all.

But it was a white woman, dressed in summer whites and beiges, who answered the door. She pushed the child to one side and held her hand out to shake Anna’s hand.

Genevieve Lee, she said. Call me Gen. Thank you so much for coming.

She led Anna into the lounge, still holding her by the hand. When she let go Anna folded her jacket and put it on the arm of the couch, but Genevieve Lee stared at the jacket there for an unnaturally long time.

I’m sorry. It makes me afraid, Genevieve Lee said.

My jacket does? Anna said.

I now have a horrible fear that people who take their coats off in my house might never leave my house, Genevieve Lee said.

Anna picked her jacket up at once.

I’m so sorry, she said.

No, it’s fine, you can leave it there for now, Genevieve Lee said. But as you can tell. We really are at the end of our tether with your friend Miles.

Yes, well, as I said, he’s not really my friend, Anna said.

I promise you, we can’t take much more of our oh you tea, Genevieve Lee said.

Sorry? Anna said.

Our Unwanted Tenant, she said.

Oh, I see, Anna said.

No. Oh you tea, Genevieve Lee said.

No, I meant—, Anna said.

Also, oh you tea spells out, Genevieve Lee said, which makes it what Eric, my husband, and I call a positive thinking exercise.

Genevieve Lee was currently a freelance Personnel Welfare Coordinator for people who worked in Canary Wharf. When they had problems, financial, emotional or practical, their companies could contact her and she’d tell them what kind of help was available in both the public and the private sectors.

As you can imagine, work’s been off the scale recently, she said. What are you currently doing yourself?

I’m currently unemployed, Anna said.

I can help you with that, Genevieve Lee said. The main thing is, it’s very, very important to talk about it. Here’s my card. What’s your field?

Senior Liaison, Anna said. But I’ve just given it up.

Gosh, given it up, Genevieve Lee said. Presumably something better on the horizon.

There’d better be, Anna said, or I may kill myself.

Genevieve Lee laughed a knowing laugh.

She told Anna that Eric worked at the Institute for Measurement and Control and that he’d be back at three.

The child, who’d followed them in, was sitting in the retro-modern armchair at the window, batting her bare heels off the front of the chair.

Stop kicking that, Brooke, Genevieve Lee said. It’s Robin Day.

Robin day? the child said. Today?

Brooke, we’re busy, Genevieve Lee said.

You would think robin day would be a day that it would make more sense to be nearer in time to Christmas, the child said. It is a very good idea for a day and everything. But the fact is, it’s the summer not the winter now, which is therefore probably why robin day hasn’t caught on yet and nobody knows about it like we know about Valentine’s day and father’s day and mother’s day and Christmas day.

Anna noticed again how surprisingly polite and old-fashioned the child sounded.

I’m sure your mother’s calling you, Genevieve Lee said.

I can hear nothing that resembles what you suggest, Mrs. Lee, the child said.

Let me put it another way, Brooke. I think you’re wanted elsewhere, Genevieve Lee said.

You mean I’m not wanted here. Words words words, the child said.

She jumped up and down. Then she did a handstand by the side of the couch, next to Anna.

That’s from Hamlet, she said upside down from underneath her dress. A play by William Shakespeare, but you probably already know that. Words words words. Words words words. Words words words.