The First Person: And Other Stories - By Ali Smith Page 0,22
crowd burst into tears. She was the People’s Queen. Her hand-maidens fixed a white cloth on her eyes.
WEARING A WIG
When she came forward to the block, she stumbled. The crowd all went oooh! aaah! After two swipes of the axe, she was unfortunately dead. The executioner picked up her head. That’s when it was revealed to everyone that she had grey hair and wore a wig and was not at all as beautiful as people had thought, but much older in actuality.
NOBLE BREED
Legend has it that she spoke for a long time after being dead, though nobody has reported what it was she actually said. We at the DAILY NEWS believe she probably said ‘I am dead. Do not grieve for me. Please make sure my dog is fed properly after my demise.’
Her dog, a Skye Terrier, which is a noble breed, would not leave her side even when she was dead. Then it would not leave the place where her head once was. Then it died too. And that was the sad end of the noble breed herself, the Scottish queen of Scots, and also of her dog.
I heard something clattering on the stairs.
Christ almighty I hate these fucking books, my mother was shouting. They’re full of shit. I’m never going to read a single one of these again in my life.
She must have thrown the book down the stairs. That must have been what had made the clattering noise. Either that or she’d thrown the dog.
I had never heard her use language like that before.
I very much disapproved.
My mother’s gone mad, I told my friend Sandra the next day at school.
Mine too, Sandra said. All she does is make things and put them in Tupperware boxes in the freezer. It’s because the people next door got a freezer and then my dad got us one, a really huge one in the garage and it’s like she can’t bear to think of it having any space left in it so she’s busy freezing things.
No, I mean really mad, I said, not just normal mad. She won’t cook anything. She says I’m to call her by her real name.
What’s she mean, real name? Sandra said.
Margaret, I said. She keeps saying that’s the name she was born with. She won’t answer to anything other than that anymore. I mean, I can’t call her, like, Margaret. I can’t say, I’ll be back at ten, Margaret, I’m going out with Roddy. I can’t say, I’m home, Margaret, when I get home after school. It sounds stupid.
Yeah, Sandra said. Right.
She laughed a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh, like I’d told her a joke she didn’t understand.
It started last month, I said. She began to say things like, I’m a person, and all that kind of thing. Then she was just, like, watching TV a couple of weeks ago, that programme The Good Life, it was something about the posh one singing in a choir. And she stood up and said, I am no longer your wife, to my dad, and I am no longer your mother, to me. Then she went out in the car and we didn’t know where she’d gone, and when she came back it was two in the morning and we thought it would be okay, but the next day she was still saying the stuff.
Oh, Sandra said.
Sandra was my best friend, but she was walking a little further away from me. She was listening but she was looking not at me but at the ground, as though something baffling was walking two feet ahead of her.
Worst fucking thing is, she’s started swearing now, I said.
But it was as if I’d told my best friend I was gay, or something astonishing like that, and made her feel embarrassed because of me. Oh yeah, by the way, she said. I can’t walk home at four o’clock today. I’ve got to go to town with my mum.
If it was me, imagine, I’d be having to go to town with someone called Margaret, I said. I’d be saying, I can’t walk home with you because I’ve got to go to town with Margaret. And you’d be like, who’s Margaret?
Yeah, she said. Ha ha.
What’s your mum’s real name anyway? I said.
Eh, it’s Shona, she said. Bye.
Imagine that, I called after her. Imagine you’re going into town with Shona, not your mother at all.
She went round the corner out of earshot without looking back. We went our separate ways to our separate classes; I’d