Ali Smith - Autumn

It ran an online survey at the end of the news story. Were locals right to be angry about the banner: Yes or No?

Nearly four thousand people voted. Seventy per cent said no.

It was a typically warm Friday in late September 1943, in Nice, in the south of France. Hannah Gluck, who was twenty two years old (and whose real name wasn’t on her identity papers, which stated that her name was Adrienne Albert), was sitting on the floor in the back of a truck. They’d picked up nine so far, all women, Hannah didn’t know any of them. She and the woman opposite her exchanged looks. The woman looked down, then she looked back up, exchanged the look with Hannah one more time. Then they both lowered their eyes and looked down at the metal floor of the truck.

There were no accompanying vehicles. There were, in total, a driver plus a guard and a single quite young officer up front, and the two at the back, both even younger. The truck was part-open, part-roofed with canvas. The people on the streets could see their heads and the guards as they went past. Hannah had heard the officer saying to one of the men at the back as she climbed into the truck, keep it calm.

But the people on the street were oblivious, or made themselves it. They looked and looked away. They looked. But they weren’t looking.

The streets were bright and splendid. The sun sent shockingly beautiful light off the buildings into the back of the truck.

When they stopped up a sidestreet to pick up two more, Hannah’s eyes met again the eyes of the woman opposite. The woman moved her head with near-invisible assent.

The truck jolted to a stop. Traffic snarl-up. They’d taken the stupidest route. Good, and her sense of smell told her, the Friday fishmarket, busy.

Hannah stood up.

One of the guards told her to sit down.

The woman opposite stood up. One by one all the other women in the truck took their cue and stood up. The guard yelled at them to sit down. Both guards yelled. One waved a gun in the air at them.

This city isn’t used to it yet, Hannah thought.

Get out of the way, the woman who’d nodded to Hannah said to the men. You can’t kill us all.

Where are you taking them?

A woman had come over to the side of the truck and was looking in. A small gathering of women from the market, elegant women, headscarfed fish-seller girls and older women, formed behind her.

Then the officer got out of the truck and pushed the woman who’d asked where they were taking the women in the face. She fell and hit her head against a stone bollard. Her elegant hat fell off.

The women in that small gathering on the side of the road moved closer together. Their hush was audible. It spread back across the market like shadow, like cloud-cover.

It was a hush, Hannah thought, related to the quiet that comes over wildlife, happens to the birdsong, in an eclipse of the sun when something like night happens but it’s the middle of the day.

Excuse me, ladies, Hannah said. This is where I get off.

The body of women on the truck huddled aside, let her through, let her go first.

It was another Friday in the October holidays in 1995. Elisabeth was eleven years old.

Mr Gluck from next door is going to look after you today, her mother said. I have to go to London again.

I don’t need Daniel to look after me, Elisabeth said.

You are eleven years old, her mother said. You don’t get a choice here. And don’t call him Daniel. Call him Mr Gluck. Be polite.

What would you know about politeness? Elisabeth said.

Her mother gave her a hard look and said the thing about her being like her father.

Good, Elisabeth said. Because I wouldn’t want to end up being anything like you.

Elisabeth locked the front door after her mother. She locked the back door too. She drew the curtains in the front room and sat dropping lit matches on to the sofa to test how fireproof the new three piece suite really was.

She saw through a crack in the curtains Daniel coming up the front path. She opened the door even though she’d decided she wasn’t going to.

Hello, he said. What you reading?

Elisabeth showed him her empty hands.

Does it look like I’m reading anything? she said.

Always be reading something, he said. Even when we’re not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.

A constant what? Elisabeth said.

A constant constancy, Daniel said.

They went for a walk along the canal bank. Every time they passed someone, Daniel said hello. Sometimes the people said hello back. Sometimes they didn’t.

It’s really not all right to talk to strangers, Elisabeth said.

It is when you’re as old as I am, Daniel said. It’s not all right for a personage of your age.

I am tired of being a personage of my age and of having no choices, Elisabeth said.

Never mind that, Daniel said. That’ll pass in the blink of an eye. Now. Tell me. What you reading?

The last book I read was called Jill’s Gymkhana, Elisabeth said.

Ah. And what did it make you think about? Daniel said.

Do you mean, what was it about? Elisabeth said.

If you like, Daniel said.

It was about a girl whose father has died, Elisabeth told him.

Curious, Daniel said. It sounded like it might be more about horses.

There’s a lot of horse stuff in it, obviously, Elisabeth said. In fact, the father who dies isn’t actually in it. He isn’t in it at all. Except that him not being there is the reason they move house, and her mother has to work, and the daughter gets interested in horses, and a gymkhana happens, and so on.

Your father’s not dead, though? Daniel said.

No, Elisabeth said. He’s in Leeds.

The word gymkhana, Daniel said, is a wonderful word, a word grown from several languages.

Words don’t get grown, Elisabeth said.

They do, Daniel said.

Words aren’t plants, Elisabeth said.

Words are themselves organisms, Daniel said.

Oregano-isms, Elisabeth said.

Herbal and verbal, Daniel said. Language is like poppies. It just takes something to churn the earth round them up, and when it does up come the sleeping words, bright red, fresh, blowing about. Then the seedheads rattle, the seeds fall out. Then there’s even more language waiting to come up.

Can I ask you a question that’s not about me or my life in any way or about my mother’s life in any way either? Elisabeth said.

You can ask me anything you like, Daniel said. But I can’t promise to answer what you ask unless I know a good enough answer.

Fair enough, Elisabeth said. Did you ever go to hotels with people and at the same time pretend to a child you were meant to be being responsible for that you were doing something else?

Ah, Daniel said. Before I answer that, I need to know whether there’s an implicit moral judgement in your question.

If you don’t want to answer the question I asked you, Mr Gluck, you should just say so, Elisabeth said.

Daniel laughed. Then he stopped laughing.

Well, it depends on what your question really is, he said. Is it about the act of going to the hotel? Or is it about the people who do or don’t go to the hotel? Or is it about the pretending? Or is it about the act of pretending something to a child?

Yes, Elisabeth said.

In which case, is it a personal question to me, Daniel said, about whether I myself ever went to a hotel with someone? And in doing so chose to pretend to someone else that I wasn’t doing what I was doing? Or is it about whether it matters that the person I may or may not have pretended to was a child rather than an adult? Or is it more general than that, and you want to know whether it’s wrong to pretend anything to a child?

All of the above, Elisabeth said.