Ali Smith - How to be both

Mrs Rock sits next to her table in front of George like a mainland off an island for which the last ferry boat of the day is already long gone.

Silence.

Five minutes pass in this silence.

Those five minutes alone pass like an hour.

George considers risking looking insolent and getting her earphones out of her bag and listening to music on her phone. But she can’t, can she? Because this is her new phone and she hasn’t downloaded any music on to this phone yet, though she’s had it for nearly two months and there’s nothing on it except that song H downloaded for her to which H wrote the words for the DNA revision yesterday.

I will always want you.

Want is quite a complicated word there, because there’s volo, which means I want, but it’s not usually used with people. Desidero? I feel the want of, I desire. Amabo? I will love.

But what if I will never love? What if I will never desire? What if I will never want?

Numquam amabo?

Mrs Rock, do you mind if I send a text? George says.

You want to send a text to me? Mrs Rock says.

No, George says. Not to you.

Then I do mind, Georgia, because this is a session in which we have decided to spend the duration talking to each other, Mrs Rock says.

Well, George says. It’s not like we’re doing any talking, we’re just sitting here not saying anything.

That’s your choice, Georgia, Mrs Rock says. You get to choose how to use this time with me.

You mean this time in which it was decided by whoever decided it in some school meeting, George says, that I should come and sit in your room so you can all minotaur me to see how I’m doing after my mother dying.

Minotaur you? Mrs Rock says.

I’m sorry? George says.

You said minotaur you, Mrs Rock says.

No I didn’t, George says. I said monitor. You’re monitoring me. You must have heard that other word inside your own head and decided I said it for some reason of your own.

Mrs Rock looks suitably discomfited. She writes something down. Then she looks back up at George with exactly the same blank openness as before the conversation.

And anyway, literally, if I get to choose how I use this time, then I can choose to send a text in it, George says.

Not unless it’s to me, Mrs Rock says. And if you do, you’ll be in trouble. Because, as you know, if you get your phone out of your bag and I see you using it on school property at a time that’s not lunch hour, I’ll have to confiscate it and you won’t get it back till the end of the week.

Does that rule hold even in counselling? George says.

Mrs Rock stands up. It is quite shocking that she does. She takes her coat off the back of the door and opens the door.

Come with me, she says.

Where? George says.

Come on, she says.

Will I need my jacket? George says.

They walk down the corridor and past all the classrooms full of people doing lessons, out of the main school doors then along the front of the school to the school gate, which Mrs Rock walks through. George follows.

As soon as they’re beyond the gate Mrs Rock stops.

You can now get your phone out, Georgia, without breaking any rules, she says.

George gets her phone out.

Mrs Rock turns her back.

You can send that message now, Mrs Rock says.

— Semper is always, George writes. Or there is a good word, usquequaque. It means everywhere, or on all occasions. Perpetuus means continual or continuous and continenter means continuously. But I can’t mean any of them because right now for me they are just words . Then she presses send.

When they get back to Mrs Rock’s room, there’s ten minutes of the session left.

This is the point at which you sit forward and tell me the story or whatever you’ve decided to tell me about and with which you want to round off the session, George says.

Yes, but today, Georgia, I think you should round the session off, Mrs Rock says. I think the theme which arose for us today was talking and not talking, and the whens and the wheres and the hows of both of these. Which is why I think it was important that we detoured a little out of the school structure, so that you could make the connection you so clearly felt it was urgent to make.

Then Mrs Rock talks for a bit about what saying things out loud means.

It means a decision to try to articulate things. At the same time it means all the things that can’t be said, even as you make the attempt to put some of them into words.

Mrs Rock means well. She is very nice really.

George explains that when she gets out of here and checks her phone she’ll see that the message Mrs Rock just went so out of her way to let her send will have the little red exclamation mark and the sign next to it saying not delivered, because there is no way you can send a message to a phone number that no longer exists.

So you sent a message knowing that your message would never reach the person you sent it to? Mrs Rock says.

George nods.

Mrs Rock blinks. She glances at the clock.

We have two minutes left, Georgia, she says. Is there anything else you’d like to bring to the session today, or anything else you feel you need to say?

Nope, George says.

They sit in silence for one minute and thirty seconds. Then the bell goes.

Same time next Tuesday, Georgia, Mrs Rock says. See you then.

When George gets home, H is waiting on the front step.

This is the third time H has come to the house.

I thought you weren’t talking to me / what if I will never love / never want / never desire / I think I might not be a very /

Hi, George says.

Hi, H says. I’m really. I’m.

It’s okay, George says.

I was feeling really lousy today, H says. I wasn’t much up to it.

Then H tells her that she found out last night when she got home that her family is moving to Denmark.

Moving? George says. You?

H nods.

Away? George says.

H nods.

For good? George says.

H looks away, then looks back at George.

Can you just take a school student out of a school year like that? George says.

H shrugs.

When? George says.

Beginning of March, H says. My father’s work. He’s in Copenhagen now. He’s found us a fantastic apartment.

She looks miserable.

George shrugs.

Empathy sympathy? she says.

H nods.

Brought my ideas, she says.

They sit down at the downstairs table. H switches on her iPad.

She has had an idea that they should do a presentation on the painter who did the painting which George’s mother liked enough to go all the way to Italy to see. She has found some other pictures by him and a bit of biography.

Not that there’s much, she says. The thing it always says about him, in the hardly-anything-there-is when you do look him up, is that very little is known about him. They don’t know for sure when he was born and they only know he died because there’s a letter that says he did, maybe in the plague, and he was 42 the letter says, which means they can work out a rough birthdate, but no one’s sure exactly which years, it could be one or the other. And there’s the letter he wrote himself, that your mother told you about, that he wrote to the Duke about wanting higher pay. There’s one of his pictures in London in the National Gallery and there’s a drawing at the British Museum. There are only fifteen or sixteen things by him in the whole world. At least I think so. A lot of what I was looking at came up in Italian. I google-translated it.

H reads something out.

Cossa was the victim of the plague that infierti in Bologna between 1477 and 1478 … the 78 would be the most likely date, jackets in this year’s disease came of rawness .