Ali Smith Read online

  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