Ali Smith - There But For The

See those windows? See that one in the middle? He’s in there, she said.

The man in the suit?

He’s not in a suit, not as far as I know, the girl said.

Well, I’m not dead yet, then.

You said it, the girl said.

For 29 January

Dear Mrs. Young,

I’m sorry not to be there in person this year, I’m in Canada on secondment and won’t be home in the UK again till the end of February.

But am sending this card to say hello.

With best wishes.

I hope you are well.

Miles

fact is, London might not always be here! There have been times in the history of London that London practically stopped existing! Brooke stands next to the Shepherd Galvano-Magnetic Clock. She holds her sides. It is what you do when you are getting your breath back. Then she feels her jeans pocket to check for the Moleskine book. Moleskine books are notebooks that were famously used by famous authors like Ernest Hemingway and Bruce someone. She can feel the edge of the sticker Anna stuck on its cover. The word HISTORY is in her pocket. That is quite cool! For example there is when Queen Boudicca burned London to the ground which was to do with a tribe called the Iceni tribe and the uprising they were part of. If you were being witty with words that is what you could call what Brooke just did right now when she ran up the slope: up-rising. To be more literal she did it a moment ago and it took under a minute yip yip! Brooke Bayoude Fastest Runner In World Coming In Well Below 60 Second Mark. You can leave the word the out of Fastest Runner In World and in other places because it is a headline kind of thing and people will understand that the word the is there even if it isn’t actually there. It means the word the is implied. But it would obviously have been a lot faster than 54 seconds if she hadn’t had to dodge a lot of people. A lot of people have decided to visit the Observatory today due to it being the Easter holidays. The Shepherd Galvano-Magnetic Clock is a slave clock. A slave clock is a clock driven by a master clock, whose mechanism is elsewhere from the slave clock. The Shepherd Galvano-Magnetic Clock also has 23 hours marked on it instead of just the normal 12, like it is a double-length clock plus an 0 at the top where 12 midnight and noon would be, to make 24. It means that sometimes it is actually nothing o’clock. Nothing o’clock! What time is it? It’s a quarter past nothing. It’s half past nothing. Doctor, Doctor, I think I’m a clock. Well, don’t go getting all wound up about it. Joke from the days before watch batteries and digital. Brooke’s own watch is new. It is a Me To You watch. The picture on it is of a bear holding out a flower so that every time you look at the time it is as if the bear would like to give you the flower. It was from her mother and father on her birthday and it came with an actual bear that has been made to look like it is old though it isn’t, it is new with a pretend patch sewn into its face with big stitches. This is because old-looking things are more lovable. The bear is called Tatty Teddy. 54 seconds is Brooke’s first up-slope score (according to the watch) since she became ten. She has been ten for one day. She became it on Sunday 11 April. Ten on eleven April twenty ten. It will be particularly good next year because she will be 11 on 11.4.2011! Last year at school Brooke told Wendy Slater that there is a whole other range of numbers other than the usual ones that come after twenty-nine, that go twenty ten, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. Wendy Slater believed her and altered her homework accordingly is what the letter home said about it THINK YOU’RE SO CLEVER Brooke’s class has had Mr. Warburton as its teacher now for two years. There is no doubting Brooke’s intelligence. Her verbal dexterity is notable and she is wonderfully imaginative and of course we do not have a problem with that or either of these things. But sometimes her infectious imagination can be vertiginous for her peers THINK YOU’RE THE CLEVEREST vertiginous: makes you feel dizzy.

But the fact is, Greenwich, right now, with all the buildings down there that people come here specially to look at, and the towers that are from now, and the old buildings that are historical, was once, way back in time, quite bustling and so on exactly like it is bustling today. But then out of nowhere and in a way no one could have predicted it all just stopped being bustling, not just when Queen Boudicca set fire to London and burned it down, but also when the Roman Empire began to not be an empire. Then, for some reason that is historical, London stopped being a port that was important — ha! the im port ant port stopped being im port ant. Greenwich was very im port ant back then, historians know now, because it had a temple and a shrine and so on.

The fact is, they found a coin and an artefact, or artefacts.

The fact is. The arte-fact is. Brooke bends down to do up her lace. The arty-fact is, there was a picture of a man’s head on the coin, and it was one of the things they found that prove that a Romano-British temple was here once. The picture is of the head of Flavius Constans who was an emperor and the coin is dated the year 337 and then the history of Flavius Constans is that he was murdered in the year 350 which is actually only thirteen years after his head was on a coin! So people in authority should be more careful because having your head on a coin doesn’t mean you are immune to history like people are immune to things they have been inoculated against by a doctor. Just because someone is in authority, for example in charge of you, and can get you by the arm when no one will know so that your arm afterwards really hurts, and shout in your ear, so loud so that it feels like a slap and your ear can feel the words in it for quite some time after, it doesn’t mean history won’t happen back to them.

The fact is, when someone shouts like that at you it is like a passenger-carrying hot air balloon filling with the hot air that’s supposed to send it into the sky but instead it is being inflated dangerously fast inside a very small room so that its sides and top press against the walls and ceiling which means that either the walls and ceiling will have to give way or the balloon that is your head will explode. The balloon that is your head is metaphorical. This does not mean that it is not real. It is just a way of saying something that is difficult to say.

(Brooke’s mother and father called her through to the kitchen. Her father was standing by the window, holding the two letters. Her mother was sitting at the table. She patted the chair next to her, which meant she wanted Brooke to come and sit there. Brooke stayed standing where she was at the door. She looked down and at the same time sideways at the letters out of the slant of her eye, because it is possible to look like you are looking down but actually be looking up. She could see the school letterhead on the top of one of the letters. Brooke, her mother said, we can sort out whatever it is if you tell us but we can’t if you don’t. We’re not angry, her father said, we’d just like to know why. Brooke shrugged one shoulder then the other. Later, her mother took her in her arms and sat her on her knee. I know something’s wrong, she said, I know my girl and I know when she’s sad, we can’t have this, your father is very worried. Brooke didn’t say anything. Later, her father took her for a walk down by the river. Want to go through the tunnel? he said. Brooke shook her head. I thought you liked the tunnel, her father said. Brooke stared at the slapping brown surface of the water. It shifted about like thousands and thousands of little shoves. You’ve got to start behaving better, her father said, your mother is very worried, all this not coming out of your room, not turning up at school, where do you go? what’s the problem? You can tell me. Her father looked at the water too as he said it. Then he said, or you can maybe tell your teacher, if you don’t want to tell me THINK YOU’RE THE CLEVEREST WELL WAIT AND SEE MISS CLEVER-CLEVER WHATEVER YOUR STUPID NAME IS BECAUSE BEING CLEVER IN MY CLASS IS ALL VERY WELL BUT IT MEANS NOTHING IN THE REAL WORLD WHICH YOU’LL FIND OUT THE HARD WAY YOU’RE A LITTLE PIECE OF NOTHING YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT then her father said, okay, imagine it isn’t me asking you. Imagine you are here with yourself, only yourself is my age, she’s old and wise and not nine any more, and imagine that you can say anything you like to yourself, about anything, and if you imagine that, then what would be the thing you would most need to tell her? Then there was a long time when nobody said anything. Then Brooke said, Dad? Yes? her father said and his face was waiting and serious. I think actually I would like to go through the tunnel after all, Brooke said. Her father nodded. He took her by the arms and he swung her into the air and carried her into the tunnel dome. They went down in the lifts. There weren’t very many people in the tunnel because it was the middle of the afternoon. He and Brooke did the whistling thing, where one of you goes way ahead of the other and then listens for the really good way that whistling sounds bouncing off the tiles down there, which is especially good when you can’t see the person who’s whistling or tell what direction the whistling is coming from. By the time they got to the other end and went up in the lift and patted the old one-eyed dog that sits on the grass at Island Gardens and looked at the view of the buildings and so on from the other side of the river, her father had forgotten what he was asking on the other side before they came down into the tunnel. So it was okay.)