Winter

by Ali Smith

  But his world is in meltdown!

  He puts his hand to the nape of his neck. He is sweating.

  Is a snow-job a sex thing?

  What do people do to each other when they do a snow-job?

  He looks it up online. Definitions come up straight away on this public screen so it can’t be anything too obscene.

  It seems to be something to do with G.I. Joe.

  Okay.

  He puts his off phone in his pocket, pushes the chair back and goes to the Gents.

  In the Gents, behind the only lockable working door, he sits and stares at the floor. But it is horrible in here, smells foul and there’s nothing to see. If this is privacy it effects nothing.

  He gets up and unlocks the door.

  When he comes out there’s a woman in the Gents. She is quite young, twenties, South American maybe, dark hair, maybe Spanish or Italian. She is warming her chest, the bare tops of her breasts, in the air from the hand-dryer nozzle; she has turned the nozzle sideways towards her. She is wearing quite a low top for December. She gestures to it and to the dryer.

  Cold. Warm. Forgive me, she says over the noise. The one in the Ladies is kaput.

  I forgive you, he says.

  She smiles and curves back towards the airflow and as he leaves the Gents he feels a bit better for just seeing another person, just having a passing exchange with another person, seeing someone doing such a lovely natural warm and warming thing.

  Just saying out loud the word forgive. He hadn’t known it was such a powerful word. He is smiling. People who walk past him on the stairs look at him like he’s weird because he’s smiling. None of them smiles back. He doesn’t care. As he crosses the landing towards the Ideas Store he wishes he’d thought to ask her, that warm-breasted smiling girl, if she’d like to come with him to his mother’s for Christmas.

  Ha ha. Imagine.

  But a man with a face that’s all furrows is sitting in the seat Art was formerly in and working at the keyboard, and a woman with three very young children hanging off her arm and legs is folding Art’s coat neatly on top of his notebook and briefcase on the floor beyond the cubicle.

  Fair enough. Art nods to the woman, who looks tireder, he thinks, in this blatant revealing Ideas Store striplight, than anyone he’s ever seen.

  Thank you, he says.

  He means for folding the coat. But she looks right through him, maybe in case he’s being sarky because the man she’s with has taken his seat, in fact she looks like she’s going to swear at him or give him hassle, so he picks up his stuff, goes towards the doors, stops at the main desk where he borrows a biro on a string from the woman there and writes the words blatant and revealing with it on the back of his hand.

  Nothing is lost. Nothing is wasted. See, Art? Always half full.

  Half fool. (Charlotte, in his ear.)

  He leaves the building through the side door; the old front entrance of the library building is reserved for the people who live in the luxury flats in the rest of the building now. But he can’t get angry about that, it is a waste of valuable energy to get angry about the kind of thing you can’t do anything about, the kind of thing Charlotte goes on and on about. Thinking about Charlotte is also a waste of valuable energy and to free himself from it and from her he is now going to go out into the streets of this city and find, wherever he can, a handful of earth

  (is dying

  is divided into twenty four

  is doomed

  is destroyed

  is dead)

  so as ceremonially to hold in his hand nothing but soil, a handful of it breathing at its own rate, slow and meditative and completely itself through all the anger and the rot, earth itself, to remind him of it stilling to hard and frozen when the temperatures fall and thawing back to pliant again when they rise. That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again. An exercise in adapting yourself to whatever frozen or molten state it brings you. So gentle Art will look for literal earth. City earth. He’ll look in the places where the city trees meet the pavement; sometimes there are patches of earth round them if they haven’t been rubbered-in under that bouncy plastic stuff. Nature is adaptable. Nature changes all the time.

  When he comes out on to the high street he sees a girl. It is the same girl he saw from the window nearly three hours ago. She is still at the bus stop. She’s sitting in exactly the same place still reading something. She is reading whatever it is very assiduously.

  He watches a bus pull up and stop, pick some people up, then indicate out and continue.

  He watches another bus indicate, stop, then pull away again. As it does, there she is, still sitting, still reading.

  She looks like she’s about nineteen. She is quite pretty. She looks pale. She looks a bit rough. But the thing she most looks is concentrated.

  Nobody has focus like that when they’re just sitting at a bus stop.

  He forgets about the earth.

  He crosses the road and stands along from the bus shelter. He can see from here what it is she’s reading. It’s a take-away menu, a junk mail leaflet for a fast food place. He comes closer until he can make out the words FREE, DELIVERY, VARIETY and BUCKET.

  She is reading a Chicken Cottage menu.

  She reads the front of the leaflet. She opens the leaflet out. She reads it from one side to the other. She folds it closed and reads the back with the attention you’d give a good book.

  When she finishes the back she turns it over to read the front again.

  —

  It is Christmas Eve morning three days later.

  It is twenty minutes later than their agreed meeting time.

  The girl isn’t here.

  There’s no girl or young woman anything like her waiting anywhere near the place he suggested by the rows of seats in front of the information boards.

  So she hasn’t turned up.

  So she’s not coming, then.

  Good. It is a relief.

  It was a really really stupid idea and he has been regretting it.

  Plus, he’ll save the £1,000, money he’d prefer not to waste on an experiment really.

  He will brave it out with his mother when he gets there. Or make something up: poor Charlotte, she was really ill. I’ve never seen her so ill. [Then why did you, how could you, leave her?] Oh no, she’s at her mother’s, gone to her mother’s for Christmas. Or better: her mother’s come down to London especially to look after her so I could still spend this Christmas with you.

  He gets himself a coffee then scans the people waiting on and around the seats. He walks round a couple of times, checks again just in case.

  Not that he can really remember what she looks like; it’s not as if they’ve known each other for longer than a sandwich.

  He can’t phone her because she told him she doesn’t have a phone.

  Probably a bad idea anyway to think to hook up in any way with the kind of person who hasn’t got a phone.

  He settles into himself.

  He stops feeling that way you do when you’re acting differently because you know you’re being seen from the outside.

  But then he sees, way off in the distance, someone so unmistakeably the girl that he is almost shocked at how it couldn’t be anybody other than her.

  She appears and disappears, a still point in the churning crowd on the Heathrow Express ramp with their luggage and their tubes of wrapping paper, their plastic bags; she is standing looking up at the station roof as the people go up and down the ramp all round her.

  Art hurries to the machine queue to buy her her ticket, so as not to seem rude and do it in her presence. When he’s bought it there’s not much time left. He goes to the designated meeting place, the rows of chairs. But there’s no sign of her.

  He looks across the concourse again. There she is, still standing on the ramp.

  What she seems to be looking at so keenly, he finds when he goes to fetch her (because th
e train leaves in under fifteen minutes), is some old metal curlicues in the design of the station windows.

  He stands at the bottom of the ramp. He jiggles his coffee cup from hand to hand. She still doesn’t see him.

  He pushes up the ramp through the people coming down.

  Oh, hi, she says.

  —

  Is this, like, Travel Light Day? he says. Because if it is, I don’t think anyone else in this station got the notification. Where’s your luggage?

  I uh didn’t know whether to get you a coffee, he says. I didn’t know how you’d take it.

  You have the seat, he says on the train. I like standing. I can sit on the floor, no worries. I’ll sit on the floor.

  Oh, I work for SA4A Ents, he says. It’s the entertainment division of SA4A. SA4A. You know, SA4A. I can’t believe you haven’t heard of them. They’re huge, they’re everywhere. I’m a copyright consolidator. It means I check through all forms of media, online and offline, films, visuals, things in print, soundtrack, everything really, for copyright infringement, any unlawful or uncredited quotation or usage, and report back to SA4A Ents when I find anything out of place or not credited so they can chase up rightful payment or issue the lawsuits. And if they’ve actually credited SA4A I check it’s all shipshape. What? No, I work from home. Oh. Ha ha. No, shipshape means, like, properly ratified, legally done. It’s never boring plus I’m my own boss. My own hours, middle of the night if I want, it’s all on my own terms, which is basically why I do it. Also, it does mean I get to watch loads of things. I see all sorts of things I’d otherwise never in a million years.

  Peanuts? he says. So does that mean you have to wear like special hygienic clothes, or if you go on a train you have to announce yourself so people with nut allergies will know not to travel anywhere with you near them? Oh. Those. Those things’re really bad for the planet. I really dislike them. On principle. I mean, being someone who really cares about the planet. Well. Well, if you say so.

  If you don’t mind me asking, he says. How old are you?

  Again, don’t mind me, he says, old-fashioned guilty as charged, but all the, the piercings? I mean, I get it, yeah, but so many?

  Actually I should explain that my mother’s a bit of a character, he says. She’s hugely – you could say anally – tidy, into tidiness. She’s a bit older than you might expect, she had me quite late, she’s a shoes off at the front door kind of person. Things clean and neat, people clean and neat, well I mean I like clean and neat too, but she’s what you’d call full-on.

  —

  Do I need luggage? she says.

  I wouldn’t have minded at all, she says. Why would I take you buying me a coffee the wrong way? Oh, I get it! ha ha! I like it naked. You just blushed, did you know? Okay, for future ref, I like it with nothing in it. Anyway I don’t need one right now but thanks.

  But you’re paying, she says. No, I’m the employee, I’ll sit on the floor. No, I don’t mind. I don’t mind! I really don’t. Look, we both can, what about we both do? Space by those bags in the corridor. Come on. Yeah?

  Who’re they? she says. A what? You work on a ship? Oh. Shipshape. Ha ha!

  I work at DTY, she says. Half the day I pad deliveries out with peanuts, the other half I pick up the peanuts that’ve fallen on to the floor and put them back in the basins. It beats standing at a stall selling no soap to anybody in a shopping centre twelve hours a day. No, no, not, like, real nuts – packing filler, it’s what packing filler gets called, peanuts, we call them it anyway. Those green things, white things, polystyrene. You’re wrong, they’re recyclable. They’re free of whatever it is that’s bad for it. It’s not as bad as you’d think. I quite like them. I do! No, it’s interesting, because, because they’re so amazingly light, so that when you pick them up it’s surprising every time. You always expect them to be heavier. Even if you tell yourself, even though you know they’re light, you think you already know, you pick one up and it’s like, wow that’s so light, it’s like holding actual lightness. It’s, like, the weight of your own hand just somehow got lighter. Like a bird’s bones kind of light. If you pick up several, hold several so your hand’s full of them, you look at your hand loaded with things and your eye can’t understand it because although you can see that your hand’s full of something it feels like almost nothing’s in your hand.

  Wow, you really are old-fashioned, she says. I’m twenty one. Special occasion so I’ve got them all in. Don’t you have any other friends with piercings? Okay, no worries. I’ll take them all out when we get there.

  So anyway, she says, you better maybe tell me some things about who it is I’m meant to be being again. What’s her name?

  —

  For a whole hour and a half, Art realizes, he hasn’t thought once about her.

  Charlotte.

  Her name’s Charlotte, he says.

  He laughs to himself.

  What’s funny? the girl says.

  Funny to be doing this, he says, and not yet know your name. And you don’t know mine either.

  Maybe we don’t need names, she says. Anyway, I’m Charlotte now.

  Okay, he says. But truthfully. I’m Art.

  What, really? she says. Art?

  Well, short for Arthur, he says. After the, you know, king.

  Which king’s that again? she says.

  You don’t really mean that, he says.

  Don’t I? she says.

  You know who King Arthur is, he says.

  Do I? she says. Anyway. Truthfully, I’m Lux.

  You’re what? he says.

  As in el then you then ex, she says.

  Lux, he says. Really?

  Short for Velux, she says. After, the, you know. Window.

  You’re making that up, he says.

  Am I? she says. Anyway. Help me make up Charlotte. I need a lesson in Charlotte.

  He tells her his mother’s never met Charlotte. So basically, Charlotte can be anyone.

  She can even be me, she says.

  That’s not what I meant, he says.

  He blushes and she sees.

  Touchy, is she, your Charlotte? she says. Bit sensitive?

  The bane of my life, he says.

  Then why would you want to take her home in the first place? she says. Why wouldn’t you just tell your family the truth, that she’s the pain of your life –

  Bane, he says.

  – and that you don’t want to bring her so you just decided not to? she says.

  If you don’t want this employment, uh, Lux, he says (with that pause at using her name because he is asking himself inside his head whether it’s her real name or whether she’s just made up a name off the top of her head). I mean, I won’t mind at all if you’ve changed your mind. There’s a station stop in about quarter of an hour and I’ll gladly cover your return fare to London. If there’s something about the arrangement that doesn’t suit you.

  She looks momentarily panicked.

  No no, she says. We agreed. Three full days, £1,000. Which, by the way, works out as – I worked it out – just under £14 an hour, and if you decided on the Tuesday after we’re done to pay me just an extra £8, just £8 more on the 27th, I mean if you pay me £1,008 in the end, that’d make it a round £14 per hour. Which is a lot neater than the amount per hour otherwise.

  He says nothing.

  Not that I’m not completely fine with your original offer of the thousand, she says.

  I feel a bit bad, he says. I’m stopping you having, I’m taking you away from, your own family Christmas.

  She laughs like she thinks what he’s said is really funny.

  My family are out of the country, she says. Don’t feel bad. Think of it like, like I’m, I don’t know, working in the hotel trade. Which means I’ll have this fantastic Christmas after Christmas, and when your Christmas is finished and gone I’ll be still having mine, and I’ll be doing it with the salary you pay me for working over Christmas.

  The money thing feels weird, he
says.

  She smiles charmingly.

  Deal, she says. Fair and square. Helps me, helps you. And if your mother’s never met your Charlotte, then it’s easy. I mean, I might like a few pointers. Like, is your Charlotte clever or stupid? Is she kind or not? Does she like animals? That kind of thing.

  Your Charlotte.

  Charlotte, clever.

  Charlotte, stupid.

  Charlotte, kind.

  He looks at the girl next to him, a stranger saying Charlotte’s name.

  Charlotte, beautiful. More beautiful than anyone. More full of feeling and understanding than anyone he’s ever. Charlotte’s back, Charlotte on the bed with her beautiful bare back, the line of her spine turned towards him. Charlotte, stunning. Other words for Charlotte? Musical. Thoughtful. Always catching him out with her sidelong consciousness, her way of listening to the sides of what you say and responding to what you didn’t know you were saying, or to what you were trying but failing to say. Her complete lack of self-knowledge. Her laughably sincere university dissertation about the lyrics of Gilbert O’Sullivan: Ooh Wakka Doo Wakka Day: language, semiotics and presence in 1970s mainstream entertainment. Her handwriting. Her perfume. Her detritus of necklaces and bangles. Her bulge of a make-up bag in the bedside cabinet, the smell of her make-up. Her passionateness, her passion for all sorts of things. Her taking the world so personally. Her endless hurt and fury at the world’s sadnesses, like they’re personal, personally meant, personal affronts. Her endless feeling. Her endless feeling for everything. Her endless feeling for everything except him. Charlotte, tiresome. Charlotte, maddening. Charlotte doing that maddening thing, always stopping to speak to just any cat she’s seen in the street, in any street, here, there, in Greece on holiday, anywhere she sees a fucking cat getting down on her haunches and stretching her hand out like Art’s not there, like the cat won’t want to speak to him anyway even if he is, like the whole world has shifted to just her and some cat she doesn’t even know like she’s the only person in the whole world with any animal magnetism.

  Charlotte, taking the special screwdriver he needed with her when she left, on purpose, so he couldn’t put his laptop back together to find out whether anything on it could be rescued without going out and buying another of those screwdrivers.