Ali Smith: There But For The

She kicked her legs in the air. Genevieve Lee got up and stood pointedly at the door. The child upended herself on to her feet and straightened her clothes.

Would you like to walk the tunnel later, right, maybe? the child said to Anna. It was built in 1902 and it goes underneath the river, have you ever walked it?

She told Anna that if she’d been here three years ago she’d have been able to see the actual Cutty Sark.

Because I don’t mean see the station, she said. But you probably already know how the fact is it was originally a ship, not just a station, and before the fire on it, it was still there, therefore if you or if I had come out of the station called Cutty Sark, and we’d turned the right way at the exit, by which I mean turned to our left, we’d have seen the ship called it. The point I’m making being, the thing is, I didn’t actually come to live here till last year. So I can’t see it until it is restored to its former glory. But maybe you saw the real original when you were my age or a bit older, I mean before it burned down.

I missed it, Anna said. I never saw it in real life. I’ve seen it in pictures. And film of it on TV.

It’s not the same, the child said. But it’ll do, it’ll do, it’ll have to do.

She did a wild joyful dance in the doorframe.

Brooke, Genevieve Lee said. Out. Now. And leave my stones alone. They cost money. Scottish river pebbles, she said to Anna.

Very expensive, Anna said.

She winked at the going child.

Bye, she said.

Brooke was nine, apparently, and lived round the corner in the student flats. Her parents were research fellows or postgraduates at the university.

Obviously not ours, Genevieve Lee said. Very cute, though. Quite precocious.

Genevieve Lee poured the coffee and told Anna about the night of their annual alternative dinner party, which was something she and her husband, Eric, usually held at the beginning of the summer before everybody disappeared for the holidays. Once a year they liked to invite people who were a bit different from the people they usually saw, as well as the friends they saw all the time, Hugo and Caroline and Richard and Hannah. It was always interesting to branch out. Last year they had invited a Muslim couple; the year before they had had a Palestinian man and his wife and a Jewish doctor and his partner. That had resulted in a very entertaining evening. This year an acquaintance of Hugo and Caroline’s, a man whose name was Mark Palmer, had brought Miles Garth with him.

Mark is gay, Genevieve Lee explained. He’s an acquaintance of Hugo and Caroline’s. We thought Miles was Mark’s partner, but it seems not. Probably for the best, because if they were partners there’d be an outstanding age difference between them, twenty years, more maybe. They apparently go to a lot of musicals together. Mark Palmer loves musicals. They tend to, don’t they? He’s in his sixties. He’s Hugo and Caroline’s friend.

Genevieve Lee went on to tell her that Brooke’s parents, the Bayoudes, had been invited too, and had also come along, though they’d recently moved here not from anywhere in Africa but from Harrogate.

Anyway, we were all having a lovely supper, Genevieve Lee said. Everything was going really well, until after the main course, he just stood up and went upstairs. Well, we thought, naturally, that he was going to the bathroom so I waited the sweet course, which was complicated in itself, because I needed to torch the brûlées. But he didn’t come down. Fifteen minutes at least. Possibly more, because we were quite happy, just drunk enough to be happy; that’s another thing about him, he wasn’t drinking, which always makes you self-conscious if you go to dinner or if you hold a dinner and someone’s not drinking and we all, I mean everyone else, is. Anyway, I put the coffee maker on, did the scorching, served everybody else, left them to get on with it, popped upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door and asked him was he all right. Of course he didn’t answer. Of course he wasn’t in the bathroom at all. Of course he’d already locked himself in our spare room.

He really virulently disliked what you’d served for starter and main, then, Anna said.

Genevieve Lee got quite excited.

He’s like that, is he? she said. Other people eating scallops and chorizo would have upset him that much?

Ah, well, I’ve no idea, no, I was just, you know, making a joke, Anna said.

It’s no laughing matter, Genevieve Lee said.

No, Anna said. Of course not.

You have no idea how awful this is for us, Genevieve Lee said. There is lovely, lovely furniture in there. It is a really outstanding spare room in there. Everybody who has stayed there has told us so. This last thirteen days has been hell.

Hell on earth, yes, I can imagine, Anna said.

She looked hard at the wood of the floor.

So then Eric went up, Genevieve Lee said. He knocked on the bathroom door and had the same response as I’d had, no response at all. When the coffee was poured and we were all, all nine of us, actually getting a little worried about him, his friend Mark, the man who’d brought him here in the first place, went up. Then he came down saying he’d tried the bathroom and that its door wasn’t locked, and that there was actually nobody in the bathroom, the bathroom was empty. So Eric went up to check, and then so did I. Completely empty. So we all assumed he’d just gone home, just left, you know, slipped out the front door without saying goodnight, although why he’d be that rude. And why he’d leave his jacket behind, which we realized when we were all saying our goodbyes and there it was just lying there on the couch.

Genevieve Lee gesticulated towards the couch. Anna looked at the couch. So did Genevieve Lee.

They both looked at the couch.

Then Genevieve Lee continued.

And Mark, who’s gay, she said, he’s an older man, was most upset. They can be hysterical, in a good way and a bad way. Anyway, after coffee, and a very nice orange muscat that Eric dug up in an Asda, which nobody could believe, everybody went home happy, except for Mark of course who was clearly a bit perturbed. And Eric and I went off to bed. And it wasn’t until the morning that we saw that his car was still in the Resident’s space and had actually already been ticketed — which I’m not paying for — and Josie, that’s our daughter, came downstairs and asked us why the spare room door was locked and what the note she’d found on the floor meant.

What did the note say? Anna asked.

Fine for water but will need food soon. Vegetarian, as you know. Thank you for your patience.

It was the child’s voice. It came from behind the armchair. She hadn’t left at all. She’d crept back into the room without them hearing or noticing her.

I thought you said in your email you’d been feeding him ham? Anna said.

Beggars can’t be choosers, Genevieve Lee said.

They don’t want him to get too at home in there, the Robin Day chair said.

Genevieve Lee ignored this.

Clearly he’s not all there, she said.

He is all there, the child behind the chair said. Where else could he be?

Genevieve Lee ignored this too, as if the child simply wasn’t there. She leaned forward, confidential.

We’re only glad to have been able to find a contact, she said. Mark hardly knows him at all, certainly not well enough to persuade him to open the door. He’s a bit of a loner, your Miles.

Anna told her again about how she hardly knew Miles Garth, that the only reason she knew him at all was fluke, in that they’d both won a place nearly thirty years ago on a European holiday for teenagers from all over the country, a competition organized through secondary schools and sponsored by a bank. She and Miles had spent two weeks in July of 1980 on the same tour bus, along with forty-eight other seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds.