The day slips away without us noticing. It’s summer dark outside. It’s not long, by the looks of it, till the light will come up again.
On my way downstairs to make us some tea I see the dining room table still out there in the garden on the lawn in the moonlight.
It looks unexpected. It looks unsafe, anomalous. It changes the garden. The garden changes it.
It strikes me, as I look at it, that the table is way beyond my control. Up until this moment, I mean, I believed I owned that table. Now, looking at it out in the open air, I know that I don’t. I know for the first time that I maybe don’t own anything.
If it rains tonight, the wood won’t warp immediately. But if we leave it out there for long enough in the open air, it’ll split. It’ll buckle open. It’ll stain. It’ll have little tracks all over it where wasps and other creatures have gnawed at it for nest material. Its legs will sink into the grass, grass will come up and round the sides of its legs. Bindweed will find it. Heat and cold will ruin it. Greenness will swallow it up, will die down and spring back up round it, will make it old, ruined, weathered.
I don’t know what I’ll think tomorrow or the next day, but this is what I think right now.
It’s the best thing that could happen to anything I ever imagined was mine.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
True short story
The child
Present
The third person
Fidelio and Bess
The history of history
No exit
The second person
I know something you don’t know
Writ
Astute fiery luxurious
The first person
Ali Smith, The First Person and Other Stories
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