Ali Smith - Autumn

She hands it back to Elisabeth.

If I’d seen this ridiculous thing that passes for a passport before the referendum, she says, I’d have known to be ready well ahead of time for what was so clearly on its way.

Elisabeth tucks the new passport beside the mirror in the bedroom her mother’s made for her at the back of the house. Then she pulls on her coat to go to the bus stop.

Don’t forget, her mother shouts through. Supper. I need you here by six. Zoe’s coming.

Zoe is the person who was a BBC child actor when her mother was small, whom her mother met filming the episode of The Golden Gavel two weeks ago and with whom her mother is now firm friends. Zoe has been invited over to watch the opening of the Scottish Parliament, which her mother saved on her TV box at the start of the month and has already insisted on showing to Elisabeth. Her mother, who’d seen it several times already herself, was in tears from the start, from when the man doing the voiceover mentioned the words carved on the mace.

Wisdom. Justice. Compassion. Integrity.

It’s the word integrity, her mother said. It does it every time. I hear it and I see in my head the faces of the liars.

Elisabeth grimaced. Every morning she wakes up feeling cheated of something. The next thing she thinks about, when she does, is the number of people waking up feeling cheated of something all over the country, no matter what they voted.

Uh huh, she said.

I’m still looking at properties up there, her mother said. I’m not leaving the EU.

It is all right for her mother. Her mother has had her life.

Rule Britannia, a bunch of thugs had been sing-shouting in the street at the weekend past Elisabeth’s flat. Britannia rules the waves. First we’ll get the Poles. And then we’ll get the Muslims. Then we’ll get the gyppos, then the gays. You lot are on the run and we’re coming after you , a right-wing spokesman had shouted at a female MP on a panel on Radio 4 earlier that same Saturday. The chair of the panel didn’t berate, or comment on, or even acknowledge the threat the man had just made. Instead, he gave the last word to the Tory MP on the panel, who used what was the final thirty seconds of the programme to talk about the real and disturbing cause for concern — not the blatant threat just made on the air by one person to another — of immigration . Elisabeth had been listening to the programme in the bath. She’d switched the radio off after it and wondered if she’d be able to listen to Radio 4 in any innocence ever again. Her ears had undergone a sea-change. Or the world had.

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and —

Rich and what? she thought.

Rich and poor.

She rubbed the condensation off the mirror, stood in the echo of herself just standing in a bathroom. She looked at her blurred reflection.

Hi, Elisabeth had said down the phone to her mother next morning. It’s me. At least, I think it is.

I know exactly what you mean, her mother said.

Can I come and stay at yours for a bit? I want to get some work done and to be a bit closer to, uh, home.

Her mother laughed and told her she could have the back room for as long as she needed.

Meanwhile Zoe, the 1960s child star, was also coming, to have Scotland played to her.

Zoe and I bonded over a silver sovereign holder, her mother’d told her. I don’t know if you know what they are, do you? They look like little fob-watches when they’re closed, I’ve seen one or two on the TV antiques markets. There was one on top of a cabinet and Zoe picked it up and opened it and said oh what a pity, someone’s taken all the clockwork out of it. And I said no, it’s probably a sovereign holder. And she said blimey, is that the size of sovereignty? Old money, after all? Might have known. The original £1 coin. Soon to be worth 60p. We both laughed so loud we spoiled a take in the next room.

I want you to meet her, her mother says again now. She’s cheered me up no end.

I won’t forget, Elisabeth says.

She forgets as soon as she’s through the door.

Time and time again.Even in the increased sleep period, with his head on a pillow and his eyes closed, hardly here, he does it, what he’s always been able to do.

Endlessly charming, Daniel. Charmed life. How does he do it?

She’d brought the chair from the corridor. She’d shut the door to the room. She’d opened the book she bought today. She’d started to read, from the beginning, quite quietly, out loud. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us. The words had acted like a charm. They’d released it all, in seconds. They’d made everything happening stand just far enough away.

It was nothing less than magic.

Who needs a passport?

Who am I? Where am I? What am I?

I’m reading.

Daniel lies there asleep like a person in a fairytale. She holds the opened book at its beginning in her hands. She says nothing at all out loud.

There was a time, she says inside her head, when I was very small and my mother banned me from seeing you, and I did what she’d asked but only for three days. By the morning of the third day I knew for the first time that one day I would die. So I blatantly ignored her. I went against her instructions. There was nothing she could do about it. It was only three days, and I prided myself on your not noticing or knowing about it at the time.

But I want to apologize for not being here these last years. It’s ten years, all in. I’m really sorry. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was hopelessly hurt, about something stupid.

Of course, it’s possible that you didn’t notice that absence either.

Myself, I thought about you the whole time. Even when I wasn’t thinking about you, I thought about you.

Silence from Elisabeth, except for the sound of her breathing.

Silence from Daniel, except for the sound of his.

Not long after this, she falls asleep on the upright chair with her head leaning against the wall. She sits in the whited-out place in her dream.

The whited-out place this time is her flat.

To be truthful, it isn’t her flat and she knows this in the dream; she’s got used to the idea now that she’ll probably never be able to buy a house. It’s no big deal, no one can these days except people who’re loaded, or whose parents die, or whose parents are loaded. But never mind. She has a lease. She has a lease on a white-walled flat in a dream. She can hear the people next door’s TV through the wall. It is one of the ways you know you’ve got neighbours.

Someone knocks at the door. It’ll be Daniel.

But it isn’t. It’s a girl. She has a face as blank as a piece of paper, blank as a blank screen. Elisabeth begins to panic. A blank screen means the computer is failing and all the knowledge is disappearing. There’ll be no way she’ll be able to access her workfiles. There’ll be no way of knowing what’s going on in the world right now. There’ll be no way of getting in contact with anyone. There’ll be no way she’ll be able to do anything ever again.

The girl ignores Elisabeth. She sits down in the doorway so that Elisabeth can’t shut the door. She gets out a book. She must be Miranda, from The Tempest. Miranda from The Tempest is reading Brave New World.

She looks up from her book as if she’s just realized Elisabeth is there too.

I’ve come to bring you news of our father, she says.