by Ali Smith
She could go to the winter-shelter. The rules of the Winter-Shelter are as follows:
This Winter-Shelter is only for the use of people who would otherwise have to sleep rough.
No drugs or alcohol are permitted on the premises of the Winter-Shelter.
Customers of the Winter-Shelter are expected to behave appropriately when in the Shelter.
Customers are requested to behave with respect and consideration to our neighbours on their journeys to and from the Winter-Shelter each day.
The Winter-Shelter opens at 5 p.m. and closes at 9 p.m. Customers will be asked to vacate the Shelter by 9 a.m. of the following morning.
Else doesn’t use the shelter when she can help it. It is a room full of deafening sleep, the coughing, snoring and shouting of dozens of sleeping or out of it people. The multi-storeys (there is a choice of three) are better, quieter, can be warm enough, depending, and you are less likely there to have to talk to anyone or have sex with anyone, depending which security man is on. There is nothing there but the sheen of empty cars and the oil-stained places where cars were and will be. The top decks are reliably quiet after eleven at night until seven in the morning. You can often find money there. It falls out of the pockets or the hands of the people looking for change for the ticket machine. There are lights that stay on all night. There are low walls that cut the wind out. There are good places to lean. There are cameras; it’s safe. Nobody bothers you, depending.
She has a choice.
The flying head on the front of that hotel. What if you could grow feathers out of you like hair? That would be something, if your head could detach from your body and fly about by itself. Else wonders where her head would go, if she could take it off and hold it in her hands and then fling it up and set it flying, leaving her chest and her stomach and her legs and her waving-goodbye arms, her head soaring by itself up past the huddles of freezing starlings. The sky would open. The roof of it would come off. She would be so careful up there. She would avoid aeroplanes. She would perch on her neck-stem at the very tops of trees, she would land on the spike of the top flagpole (careful not to let the spike pierce through her chin) and she would look down. She would survey the ground. The whole town would be below her.
Down there, over there, she sees her remains; her sleeping bag, her blanket, her day’s takings. Where she sits each day is piled like a mistake, like rubbish, against the edge of the hotel.
She stops the imagining. It will make her go mad.
A taxi stops. Someone gets out and pays through the window, goes up the hotel steps and through the door.
She could stay in the hotel.
Tonight she could stay in a hotel.
That woman who offered her the room in the hotel; it is never as chancy, an offer from a woman, as it is from a man. That’s common sense. Women aren’t as strong, usually, and anyway they’re less likely to give you a hard time, although they’re just as likely to be lying. But she could check it all out. She could make a real noise if it wasn’t okay. There’s bound to be other people in a hotel. A hotel has a staff who have to clean out rooms, or at least every few days they do. There would always be somebody about, eventually, if she was in any trouble.
No strings. Who knows what it means?
It could mean money.
It could mean something foul.
It could mean something good.
It could even be a disguise, a shorthand, for something that might make her happy.
Or it could mean something she doesn’t know, can’t know yet, something else. Something, Else. And there’s no denying this has been a lucky day, so far. She leans backwards, stretches to touch the doorframe of the carpet showroom. Touch wood. This has been quite a good day. Whatever the game, it might be worth, in the end, her own room with a bed in it for the night.
She drops the girl’s money in handfuls into the pocket of her coat, where it falls down into the lining.
She will cross the road and take the change she’s folded under her blanket and put it in her pocket too. Then she will walk up the road like someone who is going to stay in a hotel. She will pass under the flying head. Now she can’t tell any more whether she’s just imagining it, as she pushes through the revolving door and into the blast of heat and the scent of meats and sauces that the air in a hotel is. Nobody stops her. She is walking on carpet that sinks like gracious mud, past chairs that are as big as she is. Nobody has stopped her yet. The reception desk comes up to her shoulders. The person behind it is on the telephone. She looks different, more frightening, in the light. She is speaking very loudly, and in an accent that has been clipped into a style. Something is clipping at her words as they come out of her mouth. Else imagines the clipping is being done by pinking-shear blades; narrow strands of irrelevant material stripped back, soft-tooth-edged, off the receptionist’s words, dropped and wavering down to the floor and landing round her feet under the reception desk, like the swathes of speech that come out of the mouths of people in cartoons and holy pictures drawn and painted centuries ago.
The receptionist presses a button, holds the receiver away from herself and turns.
Can I help you? she says.
Then she says, Oh. Oh. Right. Can I, can I help you?
Else clears her throat and swallows.
A room? the woman says. For tonight?
Else nods.
The woman glances over her own shoulder; she looks younger when she does that, and nervous. Then she nods back, one nod.
For the one night, she says very loud. Certainly, madam. If you could just bear with me a moment.
She types something into a computer, then types something else. She presses a button. A bell rings somewhere down a corridor. Else gets ready to make a run for the door. Nothing happens. The woman stands up and reaches behind her for a key.
Else stifles a rising coughing. It will make her chest burst, but she holds it in. The woman waits, her hands on the counter, till Else is ready. Else sees that she’s wearing a badge with four letters on it. L. I. S. E. She wonders what it’s short for.
Room 12, the woman says. Breakfast in our dining room is included in the price.
When the panic crosses Else’s face the woman shakes her head, just slightly. She goes on reciting. Please don’t hesitate to call down if there’s anything we can do for you. Our bellboy will be glad to show you to your room. We hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us here at the Global Hotel.
She is holding out a key. Else takes it. It is attached to a weight that is several times its size. The weight is bigger than Else’s hand and wrist.
Fck sk, Else says.
A shaft of delight, like sunlight, crosses the receptionist’s face.
First floor, she says smiling.
Else is inside. She is lying in the bath and looking at the taps.
She has looked at the little bottles of shampoo and shower stuff, so like the bright unthreatening colours of children’s medicine that she has already opened one and tasted it on her tongue, as if it might have made her cough better. She has looked at the whiteness of the flannel and the cardboard band round it with the G of Global printed on it. Someone in a factory or workshop somewhere has wrapped up the soap in paper so that to use it you have to unwrap it like it’s a gift. There are cotton wool buds and each one is individually wrapped. The fact that they are individually wrapped has made Else miserable. Now she can’t stop looking at the taps.
These two taps have never been anything but dazzling. Every day someone has come in here and wiped them back to being brand new again. In every silver curve of them, in their long noses and the blunt snubs of their gleaming star-handles, she can see herself in a bath, distorted, pink and smudged, squeezed small and tight into the reflection. She has tried to find it funny. A pigmy. A circus freak. But she looms at herself, small and misshapen.
Water gathers at the underlip of one of the taps, wells into a drip and falls – it can’t not – into the bathwater where it becomes more bathw
ater. Water runs down Else’s face and down her breasts and does the same. Where it hits the water it becomes the water.
She huddles against the side of the bath and watches the taps and herself huddled in them.
What a coughing she’d had though, a really good one, one of the best; but not till the boy/man in the hotel uniform, who kept his eyes lowered all the way up the staircase and along the carpet of the corridor, had gone and the door was shut and locked behind her, nothing but her and the four walls and the bathroom, a whole other room behind its own door. Left alone in the rooms she’d roared and hacked like a lion. She’d bucked and snapped herself across the luxurious bed; it had hurt like fuck, like she imagines giving birth must hurt. Giving birth to a cough. Congratulations! Proud parent of snot and gob, twins, she hacks out a laugh. The noise she makes echoes in the bathroom and alarms her. The hot no-air in the bedroom had helped, tickling in her throat like a sick-feather. Then the satisfaction of coughing in a room that there’s no one else in, really letting go into the silence of a place that’s yours, a place where there’s nobody to stare (or to not stare, which is, some days, worse). The pure rising satisfaction of dredging them up, your yellow old insides, and into your mouth and out, hawking them into the toilet water, hearing them spittoon in and watching them sink and flushing them out and away; that was good; that was really good; once the door was locked she had hammered at herself like hammering a rock, and broken it and spat it out, got as much of it up as she could into the clean mouth of the rich people’s toilet and now, lying in the bath, with her clothes on the floor in a sweating pile and the sweat running down her, she is exhausted, still weak, bruised all up her muscles by it, but it was worth it, yes.
The hotel room is a collection of stuff, all matching. There is a fridge with drinks and chocolate in it; on the front of it Else read the notice: Welcome to your Global Minibar. This Minibar is laser-set. Anything removed from the Minibar for more than twenty seconds will automatically register on your Room Account. A list of our Minibar Prices can be found in your Global Information Brochure. Global asks that you please do not store anything of your own in the Minibar, as this will trigger laser reaction. Global Hotels. All Over The World. The bed is good. It smells of a kind of cleanness that even shops full of things that haven’t been used by anyone yet don’t smell of. A small folded card on the pillow reads: Please ring 0 for one of our staff to come and turn down your bed when you are ready to retire. Global Hotels. We Think The World Of You. Else wondered when she read it if this is because there are so many covers; that the bed, being so thick with them all, needs two people if you want to pull them back. There is a carpet in the room, and cups with Gs on them; a kettle, a teapot and little packets of coffee and teas. There are several sorts of teas. Else has looked in a drawer. There was a hairdryer.
On the back of the door, Room Tariff. Global Hotels. All Over The World. A huge mirror. Else didn’t look. The room has seven different lamps. Else has switched on only one. Hanging in the wardrobe, whiter than a ghost, a dressing gown made of towel. In the bottom of the wardrobe, a piece of stuff with a picture of a pair of shoes on it. A piece of paper. Else read it in the bath. Valet Service, Name … Room … DRY CLEANING, suit 3 piece £10.50, Suit 2 piece £8.40 Jacket Trousers Overcoat £5.40 each garment Overcoat £10.80 Anorak/jerkin £5.80 Knitwear £3.90 Dress – day £5.00 evening £9.00 Skirt – plain £4.00 pleated £7.00 Silk blouse/shirt £6.00 Tie £3.00 waistcoat £4.90. The piece of paper is on the floor of the bathroom next to her clothes, wet from her hands from her reading it in the bath. Else will have to dry it (she can do it with the hairdryer) before she puts it back in the wardrobe.
After the man/boy who had shown her where the room was had closed the door, Else had stood at the side of the room. After a few minutes she sat on the edge of the bed. It is a high bed; her feet were off the floor. She sat on it for a while reading about the things you can eat here tonight. Hamhock terrine pancetta salad taglionne of prawn w. garlic and parmesan venison sausages pommes purée crème brûlée grand marnier and seasonal fruits parfait. Then she had started to cough. Then, when she was finished coughing, she had tried to get the window to open, but it wouldn’t, or she couldn’t. Then she had decided to have a bath. She had taken off her boots, her socks, her jeans, her coat, her top jumper, her next jumper, her shirt, her undershirt and her vest, and carried them through to the bathroom where she could keep an eye on them.
Now she is in the hotel bath, looking at the taps.
She has been important before now. This is not the first time she has been it, and it is not just people in hotels who are it. There was the journalist last year, or the year before, in the spring, who brought a photographer with her who was photographing the things people on the street have in their pockets. Else emptied her pockets on to the pavement and the man photographed the things. The photograph was for a Sunday paper. The insides of Else’s pocket have maybe been seen by thousands of people. The journalist had written down Else’s name; the people who read the paper would have read that as well as seeing the things in the picture; the word of her name and the photograph of what was hers would have passed through the eyes and into the brains and maybe the memories of what could be millions of people.
She had forgotten about that.
She doesn’t have any of those things any more, that she had in her pockets then.
They’re just taps. They’re just stupid fucking taps. All they can do is do what you make them do. They can’t do anything else. Anything, Else. She reaches forward and turns the handle on the hot tap. She turns it as far as it will go. Water creeps up her sides. When it’s too hot to stay in the water, she gets out, leaving it running, and when the water level comes to the edge of the bath she reaches to pull the plug out. The chain is too hot to touch. She wraps her hand in one of her socks, puts it in the water and yanks the chain up and her hand as fast as possible out of the sock. Almost as fast as water goes out of the bath, water is smashing back into it out of the tap. She sits on her clothes in the steaming bathroom.
She has decided against using the towels; they are too white, folded in their gross wedges on a glass shelf next to the toilet. In the bedroom she dries herself down on her jumper. She drapes the wet jumper over the radiator.
Someone in the next room or the room above is watching TV. Else can hear muted voices changing and muted music crashing into itself and making no sense. There is rain on the window. She switches the light out. If that girl with the hood whose money she’s got was sitting opposite now, she’d see Else with no clothes on standing in the window.
That’d maybe be worth thirty quid, Else thinks.
There’s nobody at all outside World Of Carpets. There’s almost nobody on the night street. A car passes; its engine is nothing but a swishing noise.
Else realizes the windows of the hotel are thicker than normal windows. They won’t open.
She’s too hot.
She watches another car pass. The lights of cars are always brighter on a wet road. The lit-up words of the World Of Carpets neon sign in the showroom’s window throw colours on to the rainy pavement; orange, red, yellow; sleety rain mashes the colours. She wonders what it would sound like to stand behind the showroom glass, whether the rain can be heard there, whether the cars going past will be louder. She imagines sleeping in the showroom for the night. That would be something. It would be airy and cool in there. You could choose a different pattern of carpet to sleep on every night. You could choose it by the light that the neon sign gives out. You could roll out carpets that nobody has ever set foot on, be the first person in history ever to set your foot on them.
What about her blanket and her bag in the rain? Her stuff will get wet.
She should go down and get it.
She could go down and check whether the showroom has a back door, or a back window. She could go across there now. The rolls of carpet go right up to the ceiling. There’s so much carpet in there.
When her jumper a
nd sock are dry, she’ll go. She’ll get her things, and if there’s no way into the showroom round the back she’ll go to the multi-storey car park on Bank Street.
First, though, she could sit on the bed and count her money. She could pile the coins up, pennies separate from twos, twos separate from fives, fives separate from tens, tens separate from fifties, fifties separate from pounds in a neat sorted line, like an accountant out of a story or novel from a hundred years ago when the counting of pennies mattered so much that whole characters could be devoted to it.
Else sits on the bed naked and holding her coat, its lining heavy with small metal. She lies back. Her head is on firm cushions. There is sweat on her forehead, or bathwater, she can’t tell. She closes her eyes. Inside her head she can still see the things the photographer took the picture of, the things from inside her pockets, arranged on the pavement. Beside them, her name. ELSPETH. She hadn’t given them her second name.
Things from her pockets in the Sunday newspaper photograph:
The blue plastic clothespeg.
The pencil she found outside the bookies’.
That postcard, though it got folded and creased, that she’d sent her mother and father when she went to Venice, of a man in a gondola; an old-style postcard, the colours all that fake kind of bright.
Some fusewire, rolled.
The packet of matches.
The teaspoon.
The comb.
The ten pence piece.
The taste of silver, metallic, rheumy.
The tap is still running, full on, in the bathroom. It sounds like heavy rain. In a minute she will open her eyes, get up and go. She pulls her coat up over her. Inside it small change gathers weight, falls about. She tucks her feet in under the coat. Although it’s warm in the room somehow it’s cold too.
Her blood is pulsing. She can feel it. She can see it. She can actually see her blood, moving inside her eyes, in the collision of light and dark. Her irises behind her eyelids bloom open and shut on the beat of its pulse like the speeded-up heads of light-sensitive flowers or the sensitive shutters of cameras.
