Free NW by Zadie Smith Page B

Madonna,” destroyed in the reformation and burned, along with the ladies of Walshingham, Ipswich and Worcester—by the Lord Privy Seal.” Also a Cromwell. Different Cromwell? Doesn’t say. This is where decent history GCSE level teaching would have come in helpful. . . . “was shrine here since—” wait is this the original then? 1200s? Can’t be. Very craply written, not clear which—NAOMI COME AWAY FROM

37
    “How have you lived your whole life in these streets and never known me? How long did you think you could avoid me? What made you think you were exempt? Don’t you know that I have been here as long as people cried out for help? Hear me: I am not like those mealy-mouthed pale Madonnas, those simpering virgins! I am older than this place! Older even than the faith that takes my name in vain! Spirit of these beech woods and phone boxes, hedgerows and lampposts, freshwater springs and tube stations, ancient yews and one-stop-shops, grazing land and 3D multiplexes. Unruly England of the real life, the animal life! Of the old church, of the new, of a time before churches. Are you feeling hot? Is it all too much? Did you hope for something else? Were you misinformed? Was there more to it than that? Or less? If we give it a different name will the weightless sensation disappear? Are your knees going? Who are you? Would you like a glass of water? Is the sky falling? Could things have been differently arranged, in a different order, in a different place?”

18.
    –Oh, I used to faint a lot. A lot! They thought it was a sign of a delicate constitution, sensitive, a bit artistic. But everyone went into the nursing or secretarial back then, you see. That’s simply how it was. We didn’t have the opportunities.
    –It was just hot.
    –Because you had a lot of potential, no, listen, you did: piano, the recorder, the dancing, the thing with the . . . the . . . what’s its name now, oh you know—sculpting—you liked the sculpting for a while, and the violin, you were a wonder on the violin, and lots of little things like that.
    –I brought one pot home from school. I played the violin for a month.
    –We made sure you had all the lessons, fifty pee here, fifty pee there, it all adds up! And we didn’t always have it! That was your father—God rest him—he didn’t want you to grow up feeling poor, even though we
were
poor. But you never really settled on the one thing, that’s what I mean. This lawn needs watering.
    Pauline stoops down suddenly, coming up with a handful of grass and earth.
    –London clay. Very dry. Of course, you girls do everything differently now. You wait and wait and wait. Though what you’re waiting
for
I don’t know.
    Almost purple with the effort, the bowl of white hair damp and flat round her face. Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself.
    –Eugh. Probably put the mud down now, Mum.
    •  •  •
    T hey sit together on a park bench Michel discovered some years ago. Somebody had left it in the middle of the road, up at Cricklewood Broadway. Calm as you like! Just sitting there in traffic! It looked like it had grown out of the tarmac. All other cars swerved to avoid it. Michel stopped the Mini Metro, put the seats down flat, opened the boot and wedged it in, with Pauline adding an unhelpful hand, to a chorus of car horns. When they got it home they found it had the seal of the Royal Parks upon it. Pauline calls it the throne. Let us sit on the throne for a wee while.
    –It was the heat. Olive, come here, baby.
    –Not near me! I don’t want my eyes going up! That’s my grandchild, there. Only one I’m likely to get if things go on the way they are. I’m allergic to my own grandchild.
    –Mum, enough!
    They