Ali Smith: Autumn

Earlier today their father, according to the blank-faced girl, had gone to buy a new laptop.

A present for you, the girl (Elisabeth’s sister) says. But then this happened.

Then Elisabeth sees, like she’s watching a film, what happened next.

On the way to John Lewis a man (her father?) stops at the window of Cash Converters to look in and see if anything there is cheaper. A woman stops and looks in the window too. Are you looking at the laptops? she says. Yes, Elisabeth’s father says. The thing is, the woman says, I’m about to go into that shop and sell them my new laptop, and as I say, it’s brand new. I’ve got a new job in America and I now don’t need this new laptop. But if you’re looking to buy a laptop, I can sell it to you instead of to Cash Converters and at a very good price for a brand new laptop.

Elisabeth’s father goes with the woman to a car park where she opens the boot of a car and unzips a holdall in the boot. She takes out a brand new laptop. Elisabeth, in the dream, can smell how new it is.

£600 cash, the woman says, does that sound fair? Yes, Elisabeth’s father says. That sounds very fair. I’ll go and get the money from a cash machine.

I’ll come with you, the woman says putting the laptop back into the holdall and shutting the boot.

They go to a cash machine. He gets the money out. They go back to the car. He gives the woman the money. The woman opens the boot, takes the holdall out and hands it to him. She shuts the boot of the car and she drives away.

Then our father opened the bag, the girl with the blank face says. And there was nothing in that bag but onions. Onions and potatoes. Here.

She hands Elisabeth a holdall. Elisabeth opens it. It’s full of potatoes and onions.

Thank you, Elisabeth says. Thank him for me.

She looks over to where the cooker should be. But there’s nothing at all in the white-painted room.

Never mind, she thinks. When Daniel comes, he’ll know a way of making something with these.

That’s where she wakes up.

She remembers the dream for a fraction of a second, then she remembers where she is and she forgets the dream.

She stretches on the chair, her arms and shoulders, her legs.

So this is what sleeping with Daniel is like.

She smiles to herself.

(She’s often wondered.)

It was a standard sort of Wednesday in April in 1996. Elisabeth was eleven. She was wearing new rollerblades. When you put your weight on them coloured lights lit up and flashed at the heels. You couldn’t see this yourself unless it was dark outside and you put all the lights out in your bedroom or drew the blind and pressed down on them with your hands.

Daniel was at the front gate.

I’m going to the theatre, he said. The outdoor theatre. Want to come too?

He told her it was a play about civilization, colonization and imperialism.

It sounds a bit boring, she said.

Trust me, Daniel said.

So she went, and it wasn’t boring, it was really good, about a father and a daughter. It was also about fairness and unfairness, and people getting hypnotized on an island and hatching plots against each other to see who could take control of the island, and some characters were meant to be the slaves and other characters got to be freed. But mostly it was about a girl whose father, a magician, was sorting out her future for her. In the end the daughter could have been in it a bit more than she was, but all the same it was still really good; in the end Elisabeth was nearly crying when the grown-old father stepped forward without his magic cloak and stick and asked the people in the audience to clap because if they didn’t he’d be trapped forever in the play on the fake island with its cardboard scenery. If they hadn’t, it was really very much as if he might still be stuck there in the open air theatre standing in the dark all night.

It was also quite exciting to be able, just by clapping your hands, to free someone from something.

She rollerbladed home in front of Daniel so Daniel would be able to see the lights light up.

When she was in bed that night she remembered her feet and the pavement passing so fast beneath them and thought how strange it was that she could remember totally useless details about things like cracks in a pavement more clearly than she could recall anything about her own father.

The next day at breakfast she said to her mother,

I couldn’t sleep last night.

Oh dear, her mother said. Well, you’ll sleep tonight instead.

I couldn’t sleep for a reason, Elisabeth said.

Uh huh? her mother said.

Her mother was reading the paper.

I couldn’t sleep, Elisabeth said, because I realized I can’t remember a single thing about what my father’s face looks like.

Well, you’re lucky, her mother said from behind the paper.

She turned the page, folded it against another page, shook the paper into shape again and put it back up in the air between them.

Elisabeth strapped her rollerblades on, laced them up and went round to Daniel’s house. Daniel was in the back garden. Elisabeth rollerbladed down the path.

Oh hello, Daniel said. It’s you. What you reading?

I couldn’t get to sleep last night, she said.

Wait, Daniel said. First of all, tell me. What are you reading?

Clockwork, she said. It’s really good. I told you about it yesterday. The one about people making up the story but then the story becomes true and starts to happen and is really terrible.

I remember, Daniel said. They stop the bad thing happening by singing a song.

Yes, Elisabeth said.

If only life were so simple, Daniel said.

That’s what I’m saying, Elisabeth said. I couldn’t sleep.

Because of the book? Daniel said.

Elisabeth told him about the pavement, her feet, her father’s face. Daniel looked grave. He sat down on the lawn. He patted the place on the grass next to him.

It’s all right to forget, you know, he said. It’s good to. In fact, we have to forget things sometimes. Forgetting it is important. We do it on purpose. It means we get a bit of a rest. Are you listening? We have to forget. Or we’d never sleep ever again.

Elisabeth was crying now like a much younger child cries. Crying came out of her like weather.

Daniel put his hand flat against her back.

What I do when it distresses me that there’s something I can’t remember, is. Are you listening?

Yes, Elisabeth said through the crying.

I imagine that whatever it is I’ve forgotten is folded close to me, like a sleeping bird.

What kind of bird? Elisabeth said.

A wild bird, Daniel said. Any kind. You’ll know what kind when it happens. Then, what I do is, I just hold it there, without holding it too tight, and I let it sleep. And that’s that.

Then he asked her if it was true that the rollerskates with the lights on the backs of them only worked on roads, and if it was true that the lights in the backs of them didn’t come on at all if you rollerskated on grass.

Elisabeth stopped crying.

They’re called rollerblades, she said.

Rollerblades, Daniel said. Right. Well?

And you can’t rollerblade on grass, she said.

Can’t you? Daniel said. How very disappointing truth is sometimes. Can’t we try?

There’d be no point, she said.

Can’t we try anyway? he said. We might disprove the general consensus.

Okay, Elisabeth said.

She got up. She wiped her face on her sleeve.

Recalled to life,Elisabeth says. Hunger, want and nothing. The whole city’s in a storm at sea and that’s just the beginning. Savagery’s coming. Heads are going to roll.

Elisabeth is in the hall hanging her coat up. Her mother has just introduced her to her new friend Zoe and asked Elisabeth how far through A Tale of Two Cities they are today.