Ali Smith: There But For The

History Of Education Part 2: There are six days left, after this day today, of Easter holiday LITTLE PIECE OF it is okay. It is still quite a lot of days.

(Wendy Slater was writing out project stuff with her Hello Kitty pen. The Hello Kitty pen was a very short fat silver-coloured one with a little Hello Kitty head on a chain fixed to its top, but because it was such a funny shape and a bit difficult to hold, because it made you wrap your whole hand round it, it was making Wendy Slater’s writing look retarded. She’s writing with a vibrator, Jack Shadworth said. Chloe and Emily laughed like mad. Brooke thought up a good rhyme. Wendy Slater writes with a vibrator. But she didn’t say it because it would make everybody say it, and that would end up with a lot of everybody being cruel to Wendy Slater and because rhyme makes you not forget things easily people would remember to be cruel for longer. You don’t know what a vibrator is, Josh Banham said to Wendy. Yes she does, Brooke said. No I don’t, Wendy said. More boys gathered round, Daniel and Thomas, and Megan and Jessica came over from the library shelves too. You don’t know either, Josh said to Brooke. Duh, obviously I know what a vibrator is, Brooke said. She turned away from the laughing, back to the book about Flight and the page about the Montgolfier Brothers, who believed they had invented a new gas whereas the fact was, they had just discovered heated-up air. She was no good at drawing hearts. She could cut very straight with scissors, but not snap her fingers. She didn’t have a Facebook page. She had a weird accent. She didn’t talk like or sound like the other girls, any of them. Everybody knew she didn’t even have an ordinary mobile, never mind just a phone that wasn’t an iPhone. Wendy Slater was still asking everybody what a vibrator was when Mr. Warburton came back into the room. He heard Wendy and then pretended he hadn’t. He winked at the boys and then at the girls like Simon Cowell on Britain’s Got Talent when he gives the person on the stage in the theatre a wink if he’s liked them and they’re going to get through to the next round. Brooke saw his glance go round the class and allow everybody not to like her. She looked hard at the picture of the first Montgolfier balloon, blown about by the wind high above the crowds in the streets in France. Everybody in the room knew, though nobody would ever have dared say it, about Mr. Warburton not liking Brooke. She looked at the wildly blowing-about balloon in the picture. Last year a plane going from Brazil to France just fell into the sea by itself in a storm, just right there into the sea, and all the people on it drowned. In the paper a Science Correspondent said that modern jets should be able to withstand any storm.

The fact is, Brooke stood in her parents’ bedroom at 5am in the morning, with the light coming under the blind. She had not been able to sleep. She had got out of her own bed and come through. Their door had been a little open. It did not creak. Her mother was lying on her side, facing away from her father. Her father was lying on his back. Her mother’s arm was flung over her father’s stomach and side. Her mother’s breathing was steady and quiet. She couldn’t hear her father’s breathing, but could see his chest moving under the cover so he was definitely not dead. They looked really happy asleep. Brooke thought what she would say instead. Who invented fireplaces? What is the world’s most dangerous cake? There was Brooke’s father, over by the window in the kitchen with the two letters in his hand. Over less than 80 % attendance concerns over Brooke’s truanting behaviour no doubting Brooke’s intelligence however conduct leaves a great deal to be desired is what the letter from the head said. There was her mother patting the chair next to her. Tell us. CLEVER-CLEVER CLEVEREST. Alfred the Grate. Attila the Bun. Right, Mr. Warburton shouted. Project books away. History charts out. Daniel. Give out these photocopies. Thank you. A vibrator, Brooke said to herself under her breath to nobody, is a thing which vibrates.)

The The fact is notes will all go here. Brooke is sitting on one of the wooden benches near the river along from the place where you go down into the tunnel and she is counting the blank pages in the History Moleskine. The The fact is notes will go after the note about being vegetarian, which came first in real time, and then there will be the note about Mrs. Young, and then the The fact is notes. The the! It is funny to say two the’s. So there are times you don’t need a the at all, and there are other times you need more than one the. There are sixteen of the the the the the—! so many the’s all said together sounds like a car that won’t start — there are sixteen The fact is notes. That will need thirty-two pages or sixteen double pages. And then the piece will come which she will write down for historic records about visiting Mr. Garth on Wednesday, and that will take up a page or maybe two, so probably (she counts the pages) that will be on this page, and then the fact that Mr. Garth has left the room will need to be written down here. And then that will be the end of this history, at least the bit that has Mr. Garth actually in it. Though it might be a good idea to leave some pages blank at the end in case there is anything else that happens, in case the history isn’t over. There are definitely enough pages. There are loads. She keeps her finger in the right place in the book and she gets the pencil out. She starts at the top of the page, in her best handwriting. On Wednesday 7th of April Two Thousand and Ten at about half past two pm 1430 in 24 hr time Brooke Bayoude went in and sat in Mr. Garth’s room after she knocked on the door and said would he like a cup of tea and he said he would. The tea was Marks & Spencer’s Earl Grey tea the one that comes in a black box. The Milk was Skimmed kind. Brooke Bayoude made the tea in the Lees’ Kitchen. On the way up the stairs she did not spill it on the stair carpet. When she gave it to him he did not want sugar which was just as well because she had not brought any up stairs. Mr. Garth was very well and Brooke Bayoude said it was nice to see him and he said it was nice to see her. Brooke Bayoude asked him if he remembered her and he said yes he did. He told her some good jokes including the one about the grandads and grannies and there was also another astronomically long joke which was a variation on the Knock! Knock! kind of jokes, about “will you remember” see later in History). Brooke Bayoude then asked Mr. Garth if he would like a biscuit because she knows where they are kept in the Lees’ Kitchen. Mr. Garth Declined. Then the time for the visit alas was over and Brooke Bayoude said goodbye and Mr. Garth did too and they shook hands. Brooke Bayoude then closed the door after her and took the mug down stairs she washed it out at the sink and did not put it in the dish washer because the dish washer was full of Clean things. It was the mug that has the picture on it of a tiger which Mr. Garth drank out of on that historic day. Brooke Bayoude dried the mug and put the mug back in the cupboard. She reads over what she has written so far and then checks to see if she is keeping her lines level. It is not too bad for it being blank paper, it only slopes a bit at the ends where the writing has to get smaller to fit the words in, which is only natural. She reads through it again. When she gets to the last line she crosses out the word historic. It does not need to be said, because it is implied, being in a book with the word history on the front. Then she thinks she might like to say it even though it is implied. Then she is glad she has written in pencil so she can decide about the word for definite later.

(Brooke Bayoude Ten In Four Days’ Time Fastest Runner Up Stairs In World got in the front door when the cleaning lady who comes on a Wednesday was just leaving and was loading her things into her van and Brooke slipped past her and in the door while it was still open and ran up the stairs really fast as befits a so fast runner. She had the latest The fact is note to deliver. It had actually been weeks since the last one. Brooke had not been feeling like delivering anything to anyone. But then she had seen this fact on an antiques programme on TV and had thought it was a very good one and should maybe be shared. She stood at the door and took the note out of the front pocket of her jacket and unfolded it and was about to bend to slip the note under the wooden door when she said this, out loud, to the door, just, like, said it. Listen do you want to know a joke about a door? Then the voice from inside the room said the words why not. Okay, right, Brooke said. What prize did the man who invented door knockers win? The voice didn’t say anything. (The voice was Mr. Garth.) Do you give up? Brooke said. I give up, the voice said. The no bell prize, Brooke said. Then the voice said: Knock knock. Who’s there? Brooke said. Toby, the voice said. Toby who? Brooke said. Toby or not Toby, that is the question, the voice said. Brooke really laughed because it was about Hamlet. Then she started to tell a knock knock joke herself, but when she said Knock knock, the voice answered Come in. So Brooke turned the handle and the door opened. It’s not locked! Brooke said. Mr. Garth was sitting on the exercise bike with one foot on a pedal and one foot on the frame. It hasn’t been locked for months, not since last summer, Mr. Garth said, but nobody’s knocked on it till now. I brought you a note, Brooke said. Good, Mr. Garth said, is it a fact is note? I wondered where they’d gone. What’s the fact today, then?