The First Person: And Other Stories - By Ali Smith Page 0,37

a switch, I say.

A whole huge orchestra inside one lightbulb, she says. It’s really clever to do that like with just writing some words together, it’s really good the words doing all that by themselves. I really like it. Do you know that thing about the phrase written water?

No, I say.

That thing about the historic poet John Keats Miss Aberdeen in English told us today, she says.

The tragic pop star of the Romantic period, I say. Did Miss Aberdeen not say that?

Yeah, but when he died, my fourteen-year-old self says, like, before he died, the poet John Keats, right, apparently he said to someone, put it on my gravestone that here lies a poet whose name is written water. Not written down, but written water. Water that was written on. I think that’s really beautiful. Here lies a poet whose name was written water.

One, I say. Not a poet. It says on the stone, here lies one.

Well, same thing, she says.

And it’s writ in water, I say. It’s three words, not two.

No, it’s written, like one word, she says.

It isn’t, I say. It’s writ. Then in. Then water.

Yeah, but writ isn’t a word, she says.

It is a word, actually, I say.

Yeah, like half a word, my fourteen-year-old self says. It doesn’t mean anything.

It’s a real whole word by itself, I say. You can find it in any dictionary. It’s changed its meaning over time and at the same time it’s kept its meaning. We just don’t use the word exactly like that, in that form, any more these days.

I can hear her kicking at the bar under the table.

Don’t do that, I say.

She stops it. She goes silent again. I look out over the darkening grass. I don’t have to look round to know what she’s doing, still swinging her leg under the table behind me but just above the bar, just expertly missing it every time.

He did die unbelievably young, you know, Keats, I say.

No he didn’t, she says. He was twenty-five or something.

A joy forever, I say. Its loveliness increases. I can’t remember what comes after nothingness. God. I used to know that poem off by heart.

We did a poem by him, she says.

Which one? I say.

The one about looking in an old book, she says. And oh yeah, I forgot. Because when I got into school this morning, it was really appalling because the art teacher made me take off my clothes. In front of everyone.

I turn round.

He what? I say.

Not he, she says. Miss MacKintosh. Weirdo.

Don’t call Miss MacKintosh that, I say. Miss MacKintosh is really nice.

She’s a weirdo from Weirdoland, she says.

No she isn’t, I say.

Like, she said to me you’ve to take off the soaking wet things and put them on the radiator and you can wear my coat. I had to sit in her coat the whole way through double period art. My hands were freezing. I had to put them in the pockets a couple of times. My tights were ripped though, from the stones on the way down on the Landscaping. Then Laura Wise from 3B said she wasn’t cold and gave me hers. She saw it happen. She said John McLintock was spazzodelic.

Wait a minute, I say. First, I don’t think you should use that word. And second. What stones? Soaking wet, why exactly?

That boy John McLintock pushed me down the Landscaping, she says.

I remember the Landscaping; we used to hang around the Landscaping a lot. I don’t remember anything about this, though. We used to pass the Landscaping every day on the way to school then home again. It was the green slope at the back of the houses where they kept what was left of the original wasteground they built the two estates on. Presumably there was some planning prohibition and that was why they couldn’t cover the whole thing with houses; instead they pulled up the trees and grassed over the stubby bushes all the way to the new car park. The Landscaping was quite steep, if I remember rightly.

A boy was pushing people off it? I say.

Just me, she says. He only pushed me off it. Nobody else. There were loads of us.

And you were on top of the Landscaping because? I say.

Because of the new snow, she says.

Let me get this right, I say. He pushed –

It was slippy, she says.

She covers her face. She’s smiling under her hands, still sitting at the table with the cold coffee in front of her, swinging her leg