Autumn Read online

  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.

  You are a very smart young person, Daniel said.

  I am planning to go to college when I leave school, Elisabeth said. If I can afford it.

  Oh, you don’t want to go to college, Daniel said.

  I do, Elisabeth said. My mother was the first in my family ever to go, and I will be the next.

  You want to go to collage, Daniel said.

  I want to go to college, Elisabeth said, to get an education and qualifications so I’ll be able to get a good job and make good money.

  Yes, but to study what? Daniel said.

  I don’t know yet, Elisabeth said.

  Humanities? Law? Tourism? Zoology? Politics? History? Art? Maths? Philosophy? Music? Languages? Classics? Engineering? Architecture? Economics? Medicine? Psychology? Daniel said.

  All of the above, Elisabeth said.

  That’s why you need to go to collage, Daniel said.

  You’re using the wrong word, Mr Gluck, Elisabeth said. The word you’re using is for when you cut out pictures of things or coloured shapes and stick them on paper.

  I disagree, Daniel said. Collage is an institute of education where all the rules can be thrown into the air, and size and space and time and foreground and background all become relative, and because of these skills everything you think you know gets made into something new and strange.

  Are you still using avoidance tactics about the question about the hotel? Elisabeth said.

  Truthfully? Daniel said. Yes. Which game would you rather play? I’ll give you a choice of two. One. Every picture tells a story. Two. Every story tells a picture.

  What does every story tells a picture mean? Elisabeth said.

  Today it means that I’ll describe a collage to you, Daniel said, and you can tell me what you think of it.

  Without actually seeing it? Elisabeth said.

  By seeing it in the imagination, as far as you’re concerned, he said. And in the memory, as far as I’m concerned.

  They sat down on a bench. A couple of kids were fishing off the rocks ahead of them. Their dog was standing on the rocks and shaking canal water off its coat. The boys squealed and laughed when the water fanned out into the air off the dog and hit them.

  Picture or story? Daniel said. You choose.

  Picture, she said.

  Okay, Daniel said. Close your eyes. Are they closed?

  Yes, Elisabeth said.

  The background is rich dark blue, Daniel said. A blue much darker than sky. On top of the dark blue, in the middle of the picture, there’s a shape made of pale paper that looks like a round full moon. On top of the moon, bigger than the moon, there’s a cut-out black and white lady wearing a swimsuit, cut from a newspaper or fashion magazine. And next to her, as if she’s leaning against it, there’s a giant human hand. And the giant hand is holding inside it a tiny hand, a baby’s hand. More truthfully, the baby’s hand is also holding the big hand, holding it by its thumb. Below all this, there’s a stylized picture of a woman’s face, the same face repeated several times, but with a different coloured curl of real hair hanging over its nose each time –

  Like at the hairdresser? Like colour samples? Elisabeth said.

  You’ve got it, Daniel said.

  She opened her eyes. Daniel’s were shut. She shut her own eyes again.

  And way off in the distance, in the blue at the bottom of the picture, there’s a drawing of a ship with its sails up, but it’s small, it’s the smallest thing in the whole collage.

  Okay, Elisabeth said.

  Finally, there’s some pink lacy stuff, by which I mean actual material, real lace, stuck on to the picture in a couple of places, up near the top, then further down towards the middle too. And that’s it. That’s all I can recall.

  Elisabeth opened her eyes. She saw Daniel open his eyes a moment later.

  Later that night, when she was home and falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV, Elisabeth would remember seeing his eyes open, and how it was like that moment when you just happen to see the streetlights come on and it feels like you’re being given a gift, or a chance, or that you yourself’ve been singled out and chosen by the moment.

  What do you think? Daniel said.

  I like the idea of the blue and the pink together, Elisabeth said.

  Pink lace. Deep blue pigment, Daniel said.

  I like that you could maybe touch the pink, if it was made of lace, I mean, and it would feel different from the blue.

  Oh, that’s good, Daniel said. That’s very good.

  I like how the little hand is holding the big hand as much as the big hand is holding the little hand, Elisabeth said.

  Today I myself particularly like the ship, Daniel said. The galleon with the sails up. If I’m remembering rightly. If it’s even there.

  Does that mean it’s a real picture? Elisabeth said. Not one you made up?

  It’s real, Daniel said. Well, it was once. A friend of mine did it. An artist. But I’m making it up from memory. How did it strike your imagination?

  Like it would be if I was taking drugs, Elisabeth said.

  Daniel stopped on the canal path.

  You’ve never taken drugs, he said. Have you?

  No, but if I did, and everything was in my head all at once, all sort of crowding in, it would be a bit like it, Elisabeth said.

  Dear God. You’ll tell your mother we’ve been taking drugs all afternoon, Daniel said.

  Can we go and see it? Elisabeth said.

  See what? Daniel said.

  The collage? Elisabeth said.

  Daniel shook his head.

  I don’t know where it is, he said. It might be long gone by now. Goodness knows where those pictures are now in the world.

  Where did you see it in the first place? Elisabeth said.

  I saw it in the early 1960s, Daniel said.

  He said it as if a time could be a place.

  I was there the day she made it, he said.

  Who? Elisabeth said.

  The Wimbledon Bardot, Daniel said.

  Who’s that? Elisabeth said.

  Daniel looked at his watch.

  Come on, art student, he said. Pupil of my eye. Time to go.

  Time flies, Elisabeth said.

  Well, yes. It can do, Daniel said. Literally. Watch this.

  Elisabeth doesn’t remember much of the above.

  She does remember, though, the day they were walking along the canal bank when she was small and Daniel took his watch off his wrist and threw it into the water.

  She remembers the thrill, the absolute not-doneness of it.

  She remembers there were two boys down on the rocks and they turned their heads as the watch arced through the air over them and hit the canal, and she remembers knowing that it was a watch, Daniel’s watch, not just any old stone or piece of litter, flying through the air, and knowing too that there was no way those boys could know this, that only she and Daniel knew the enormity of what he’d just done.

  She remembers that Daniel had given her the choice, to throw or not to throw.

  She remembers she chose to throw.

  She remembers coming home with something amazing to tell her mother.

  Here’s something else from another
time, from when Elisabeth was thirteen, that she also only remembers shreds and fragments of.

  And anyway, why else are you always hanging round an old gay man?

  (That was her mother.)

  I don’t have a father fixation, Elisabeth said. And Daniel’s not gay. He’s European.

  Call him Mr Gluck, her mother said. And how do you know he’s not gay? And if that’s true, and he’s not gay, then what does he want with you?

  Or if he is, Elisabeth said, then he’s not just gay. He’s not just one thing or another. Nobody is. Not even you.

  Her mother was ultra-sensitive and ultra-irritating right now. It was something to do with Elisabeth being thirteen, not twelve. Whatever it was about, it was ultra-annoying.

  Don’t be rude, her mother said. And what you are is thirteen years old. You’ve got to be a bit careful of old men who want to hang around thirteen year old girls.

  He’s my friend, Elisabeth said.

  He’s eighty five, her mother said. How is an eighty five year old man your friend? Why can’t you have normal friends like normal thirteen year olds?

  It depends on how you’d define normal, Elisabeth said. Which would be different from how I’d define normal. Since we all live in relativity and mine at the moment is not and I suspect never will be the same as yours.

  Where are you learning to talk like this? her mother said. Is that what you do on those walks?

  We just walk, Elisabeth said. We just talk.

  About what? her mother said.

  Nothing, Elisabeth said.

  About me? her mother said.

  No! Elisabeth said.

  What, then? her mother said.

  About stuff, Elisabeth said.

  What stuff? her mother said.

  Stuff, Elisabeth said. He tells me about books and things.

  Books, her mother said.

  Books. Songs. Poets, Elisabeth said. He knows about Keats. Season of mists. Opening an opiate.

  He opened a what? her mother said.

  He knows about Dylan, Elisabeth said.

  Bob Dylan? her mother said.

  No, the other Dylan, Elisabeth said. He knows it off by heart, a lot of it. Though he did meet the singer Bob Dylan once, when Bob Dylan was staying with his friend.

  He told you he’s friends with Bob Dylan? her mother said.

  No. He met him. It was one winter. He was sleeping on a friend’s floor.

  Bob Dylan? On a floor? her mother said. I don’t think so. Bob Dylan has always been a huge international star.

  And he knows about that poet you like who killed herself, Elisabeth said.

  Plath? her mother said. About suicide?

  You so don’t get it, Elisabeth said.

  What exactly don’t I get about an old man putting ideas about suicide and a lot of lies about Bob Dylan into my thirteen year old daughter’s head? her mother said.

  And anyway, Daniel says it doesn’t matter how she died so long as you can still say or read her words. Like the line about no longer grieving, and the one about daughters of the darkness still flaming like Guy Fawkes, Elisabeth said.

  That doesn’t sound like Plath, her mother said. No, I’m almost completely sure I’ve never come across that line in any Plath I’ve read, and I’ve read it all.

  It’s Dylan. And the line about how love is evergreen, Elisabeth said.

  What else does Mr Gluck tell you about love? her mother said.

  He doesn’t. He tells me about paintings, Elisabeth said. Pictures.

  He shows you pictures? her mother said.

  By a tennis player he knew, Elisabeth said. They’re pictures people can’t actually go and see. So he tells me them.

  Why can’t people see them? her mother said.

  They just can’t, Elisabeth said.

  Private pictures? her mother said.

  No, Elisabeth said. They’re, like. Ones he knows.

  Of tennis players? her mother said. Tennis players doing what?

  No, Elisabeth said.

  Oh God, her mother said. What have I done?

  What you’ve done is used Daniel as my unofficial babysitter for years, Elisabeth said.

  I told you. Call him Mr Gluck, her mother said. And I haven’t been using him. That’s just not true. And I want to know. I want to know in detail. Pictures of what?

  Elisabeth made an exasperated sound.

  I don’t know, she said. People. Things.

  What are the people doing in these pictures? her mother said.

  Elisabeth sighed. She shut her eyes.

  Open your eyes right now Elisabeth, her mother said.

  I have to close my eyes or I can’t see them, Elisabeth said. Okay? Right. Marilyn Monroe surrounded by roses, and then bright pink and green and grey waves painted all round her. Except that the picture isn’t literally of literal Marilyn, it’s a picture of a picture of her. That’s important to remember.

  Oh is it? her mother said.

  Like if I was to take a photo of you and then paint a picture of the photo, not you. And the roses look a bit like flowery wallpaper rather than roses. But the roses have also come out of the wallpaper and have curled up round her collarbone, like they’re embracing her.

  Embracing, her mother said. I see.

  And someone French, someone famous in France once, a man, he’s wearing a hat and sunglasses, and the top of the hat is a pile of red petals like a huge red flower, and he’s grey and black and white like a picture in a paper, and behind him is all bright orange, partly like a cornfield or golden grass, and above him is a row of hearts.

  Her mother had her hands over her own eyes at the kitchen table.

  Keep going, she said.

  Elisabeth shut her eyes again.

  One with a woman, not a famous person, she’s just any woman and she’s laughing, she’s sort of throwing her arms up in a blue sky, and behind her at the foot of the picture there are alps, but very small, and a lot of zigzags in colours. And instead of having a body or clothes, the woman’s insides are made up of pictures, pictures of other things.

  He told you about a woman’s body, a woman’s insides, her mother said.

  No, Elisabeth said. He told me about a woman whose body is made up of pictures instead of body. It’s perfectly clear.

  What pictures? Pictures of what? her mother said.

  Things. Things that happen in the world, Elisabeth said. A sunflower. A man with a machine gun like out of a gangster film. A factory. A Russian looking politician. An owl, an exploding airship –

  And Mr Gluck makes these pictures up in his head and puts them inside a woman’s body? her mother said.

  No, they’re real, Elisabeth said. There’s one called It’s a Man’s World. It’s got a stately home in it, and the Beatles and Elvis Presley and a president in the back of a car getting shot.

  That was when her mother started really yelling.

  So she decided not to tell her mother about the collages with the children’s heads being snipped off with the giant secateurs, and the massive hand coming out of the roof of the Albert Hall.

  She decided not to mention the painting of a woman sitting on a backwards-turned chair with no clothes on, who brought a government down, and all the red paint and the black smudges through the red, that look, Daniel says, like nuclear fallout.

  Even so, her mother still said it at the end of their talk

  (and this is what Elisabeth does remember, verbatim, nearly two decades later, of the above conversation):

  Unnatural.

  Unhealthy.

  You’re not to.

  I forbid it.

  That’s enough.

  A minute ago it was June. Now the weather is September. The crops are high, about to be cut, bright, golden.

  November? unimaginable. Just a month away.

  The days are still warm, the air in the shadows sharper. The nights are sooner, chillier, the light a little less each time.

  Dark at half past seven. Dark at quar
ter past seven, dark at seven.

  The greens of the trees have been duller since August, since July really.

  But the flowers are still coming. The hedgerows are still humming. The shed is already full of apples and the tree’s still covered in them.

  The birds are on the powerlines.

  The swifts left weeks ago. They’re hundreds of miles from here by now, somewhere over the ocean.

  2

  But now? The old man (Daniel) opens his eyes to find he can’t open his eyes.

  He seems to be shut inside something remarkably like the trunk of a Scots pine.

  At least, it smells like a pine.

  He’s got no real way of telling. He can’t move. There’s not much room for movement inside a tree. His mouth and eyes are resined shut.

  There are worse tastes to have in a mouth though, truth be told, and the trunks of Scots pines do tend to be narrow. Straight and tall, because this is the kind of tree good for telegraph poles, for the props that pit builders used in the days when industry relied on people working in pits and pits relied on pitprops to hold the ceilings of the tunnels up safely over their heads.

  If you have no choice but to go underground, go in the form of something useful. If you have to be cut down, good to spend the afterlife as messenger between people across landscapes. Pines are tall. It’s a lot better than being confined in a dwarf conifer.

  From the top of a Scots pine it’s possible to see quite a distance.

  Daniel in the bed, inside the tree, isn’t panicking. He isn’t even claustrophobic. It’s reasonable in here, excepting the paralysis, and perhaps it won’t last. Let’s be hopeful. No, in actual fact he’s pleased to be being held immobile inside not just any old tree but such an ancient and adaptable and noble species, the kind of tree that pre-dates by quite a long way the sorts of trees with leaves; a versatile tree, the Scots pine doesn’t need much soil depth, is remarkably good at long life, a tree that can last for many centuries. But the best thing of all about being inside this of all trees is the fact that it’s more versatile, when it comes to colour, than your average general tree. The green of a forest of Scots pines can verge towards blue. And then in the spring there’s the pollen, as yellow as bright paint pigment in an artist’s jar, plentiful, pervasive, scene-stealing like the smoke round a conjuring trick. Back in the old days, the primeval days, the people who wanted others to think they had special powers used to fling such pollen about in the air around them. They would come to the woods and collect it to take home and use it as part of their act.