by Ali Smith
The girl took it. She shook her head. She held it for a moment, turned it in her hand. Then she put her hand into the wall and dropped the clock into the hole too.
Damn, Penny thought.
First, they heard the sound of nothing at all. Then they heard the clock hitting the bottom of the shaft with a faraway plastic snap. Damn, Penny thought again. I knew she was going to do that.
Do you think it’s broken? she said out loud.
Definitely broken, the girl said nodding, blackness under her eyes.
Do you think it was designer? Penny said.
She dared herself to the edge of the hole, dared herself to look down.
How on earth will we get it back? she said.
Dark. Nothing. A shaft of old air. She decided she’d claim that there had never been a clock. She stepped back away from the wall; it was a mess; it was nothing to do with her. If challenged she would write a letter of complaint on World paper saying they were charging her for something she’d never seen, the use of which she’d never had. There was no clock in my room on the dates stated. I refuse to pay for the disappearance of something which as far as I was concerned wasn’t there in the first place. I am not responsible.
If something is missing from my room I suggest you look to your own staff for the reparation of all relevant damages and absences.
Furthermore I wish to complain about the noise and mess made by members of your staff carrying out some kind of buildings alteration programme in the corridor outside my room remarkably late in the evening for this kind of procedure on the night of my stay at your hotel. This was disturbing not just to myself but to other guests too, and was something for which we were neither prepared nor given any apology.
The girl was talking.
But if it was heavier, she was saying, it’d fall a lot, a lot, uh, quicker. Something that weighed more would fall more quickly because it’s heavier. Something, something a lot heavier, would fall faster. Would it?
Well yes, obviously it would, Penny said.
No, the woman said.
No offence. But of course it would, Penny said. Say you dropped a grand piano down that hole. That’s assuming I had a grand piano available in my room to give you to drop down it, she said (pleasantly, pointedly) to the girl. Then a grand piano would obviously fall much more heavily than the clock you’ve just dropped down there.
A grand piano, whole, shining, falling and unassembling at the bottom of the void into sticks and strings in slowed-down motion, the flat gloss civilized surface of it crushing and splintering into cacophonic sharps, marrowbones and cleavers wavering up in the dark like broken reeds by a riverbed.
No, the woman said again.
The piano vanished in Penny’s head. Penny hated to be contradicted.
The woman was piling the twos, tens, twenty pence pieces together in mounds on the carpet; she sat in a mass of silver and copper.
Galileo, she said as she sorted the money. Dropped a pea and a feather off the leaning tower of Pisa. Both hit the ground at the same time.
Yes, Penny said, but if we’re talking in real terms. A grand piano will fall much more heavily than a clock, a clock will fall much more heavily than a coin, a coin will fall a little more heavily than a pea –
No, the woman said again. It won’t. She stopped what she was doing. She weighed different coins in her hand for a moment, then put them carefully down on top of the other coins.
Anything that gets dropped from the same place above the world, she said. It would fall at the same time. Roughly. But if they’re very different shapes like a feather and a pea. Then the feather has a bit more push against the air because of its shape. But not much. But if. Imagine. If it was on the moon instead. There’s no air. So a feather, a pea and even a piano. If they were all dropped above it they would reach it at exactly the same time. I mean the moon. It would be a bit slower, that’s all. If it was the moon. There’s only really about six times more gravity here. If it was the moon and the world you were talking about. And the things being dropped, even a piano. So small really. A piano, a pea, a feather, a coin, anything. All much the same, everything. Because what push against it that we’ve got here hardly counts. It makes everything as small or as big as everything else.
She stopped, and thought. Though it would be a lot different, she said then, if you were dropping two things at the same time and the sizes of them were, like, really different. Like if you dropped something like a coin or a pea. And you dropped a planet, size of the world maybe, alongside it.
She pushed the five pence piece mound to one side. She brought the fifty pence piece pile and the pound coin pile towards herself by cupping her hands round them and began placing the coins on top of each other in columns, counting them as she did.
Penny knew the woman was wrong. She opened her mouth to say, and looked down, and she could almost see the nothing coming out of her mouth. This was a good reflex, after all; Penny wouldn’t want to offend the woman in case the woman was somebody. The woman could be anybody. Who knew? It was good that she could keep quiet under pressure. But the nothing she said curled out of Penny’s mouth and wound itself snake-like round her neck. It hissed; it was going to strike. Penny hated it, nothing. She hated her imagination, it was full of snakes, dead animals, and unexpectedly beautiful smashed-up pianos. This was turning into a very unpleasant evening.
Now the irritating teenage girl had peeled one of her trainers off. She went and stood by the hole she’d made in the wall. She unbuttoned her hotel uniform overall and took it off, bunched it up in her hand round the shoe. She held the things just inside the hole. The woman steadied a column of coins by her foot and watched. Penny said nothing. The girl opened her hand, let the things fall out of it. Penny wasn’t sure whether she really heard them land or imagined she did, the trainer with the muffled thud of rubber, the uniform more airy with a light material sigh.
The girl slid down to the floor, leaning against the wall. She looked exhausted. She looked about to cry.
The woman in the coat stood up. She took half of one of the columns of pound coins and some of the smaller change, and let it all fall into the insides of her coat again. The noise it made was jarring.
You know, she said. That they keep Big Ben in London running with two pence pieces? They pile them on the pendulum. That makes it keep the right time.
She gestured first to the hole in the wall, then to the sorted money on the carpet. Yours, she said to the girl. Thirty-two pounds fifty. Minus what you dropped in there.
She stepped over the money and nodded to the girl and then to Penny. Hands in her pockets, she pushed through the stair doors. They swung shut stiff on their hinges behind her.
Penny felt utterly abandoned. Worse, the girl had started, noiselessly, to cry. She had put her head down inside her arms, was rocking slightly, back and fore on the floor. Penny got up. One of the girl’s feet, small without its shoe, had skin that was bare and white just above the ankle sock.
Don’t, Penny said, from where she stood. Oh, don’t cry. Please don’t. It’s all right. It’ll be all right.
The girl rocked and cried. Penny looked round, uneasy. She could just go into her room and shut the door. But the teenage girl would still be crying out here and Penny, on the other side of nothing more than a thin door, would know (and worse, would maybe still be able to hear it). Or she could go into her room and call another member of staff. Then that other member of staff could come upstairs and be responsible for this member of staff.
Penny picked up the cracked wood panel and carried it away from her door across to a door on the far side of the lobby. She leaned it up against someone else’s room. She checked both her hands carefully for splinters. She bent down and picked her make-up out of the money and debris. She put things back into the make-up bag. She blew paint flakes off her make-up mirror and wiped it clean on a clean patch of carpet.
Back in her own room she pressed the number 1 on her phone. She meant well.
Hello, Reception, a voice said.
Hello, Penny said. This is Room 34. A member of your staff seems to be crying in the corridor outside my door.
Penny pulled her coat on. She slipped the strap of her bag on to her shoulder. She shut the door behind her and tested it to make sure it was locked. She stepped over the piles of coins and crossed the hall. She pressed the lift button and stood waiting for the lift doors to open. The lift took a long time.
From over by the lift doors she called to the girl, crosslegged and weeping, leaning against the disfigured wall. The hollow socket of it sagged open above the girl’s head.
Someone’s on their way up, Penny said in a cheery voice. Won’t be long now.
At the bottom of the shaft, colourless in the dark, there was a shoe and a crumpled uniform, both still warm, both going cold. There were three or four coins, maybe more. There was a broken clock. Its plastic shell was shattered and its face was in bits.
A bell pinged. The lift door opened. Penny got in. The lift door closed.
She put her weight against the revolving door and pushed it round till she found herself on the street. Relief streamed over her, unheated unconditioned air. She had been blessed with the gift of no guilt, or at least the gift of guilt that was never more than momentary, a matter of the imagination only. All she ever had to do was change her air. She stood in the hotel doorway and breathed in, then out again.
It had stopped raining. Penny could see the woman in the coat ahead of her, slowly crossing the road. She caught up with her outside a warehouse. The woman was looking in its window, using her hand to shade her eyes so she could see in beyond the reflective streetlight. Penny looked in too. She saw herself superimposed on rolls of cheap carpeting.
Hello again, Penny said.
The woman saw her, ignored her, carried on peering into the warehouse.
There was a story here somewhere. Penny could sense it, feel it, as if half-remembered. She was on to something. She persevered.
God knows what all that was about, she said. Cigarette?
The woman shook her head.
I can’t bear it when people cry, Penny said. She lit up, breathed smoke in, blew smoke out. But luckily I was born with the gift of no guilt, she said. What are you going to do now? Where are you off to, anywhere interesting?
The woman shrugged.
Do you want to go for a drink somewhere, Penny said, something to eat?
The woman turned away, said something garbled. It sounded like she said she was going to look at the horses.
I’ll come, Penny said. I love horses.
The woman laughed, choked, coughed. She shook her head and held herself. Houses, she said when she’d stopped coughing.
Oh, Penny said. Houses, right. Well, can I chum you along? To be honest with you, I’ve absolutely nothing else to do, at least for the next while.
The woman’s face was expressionless. After a moment she nodded.
She led the way down the side of the warehouse then along a badly lit road, deserted except for three cars slewed outside a Chinese takeaway.
Are you looking at houses to buy a house? Penny said.
Uh? the woman said.
I was just wondering if you’re looking at houses because you’re hoping to buy one, Penny said.
The woman wheezed another coughing laugh. Yeah, she said. That’s right.
They walked past some boys sitting and leaning on the takeaway wall. Hello, Penny said as they passed. Hello, the boys mimicked. One of them threw something after Penny and the woman. It was a flattened beercan. The boys fell about laughing, shouted something else. Bye, Penny shouted. Bye, they shouted back.
The woman was limping. For someone with a limp she moved fast and Penny was under pressure keeping up with her.
Have you hurt yourself? Pulled a muscle? Penny said.
Yeah. Playing tennis, the woman said.
You have to be careful with tennis, Penny said. You have to stretch well beforehand otherwise you can do yourself real damage.
The wind blew. They walked for what felt like miles. The woman stopped often to cough. After a couple of tries Penny stopped talking; the silence back made her embarrassed. The coughing made her wince inside. It was possible the woman was an alcoholic. It was all nearly as embarrassing as the crying girl had been. She began to regret leaving the hotel and to think about turning back while she could still remember the way. But if she turned back, she’d have to pass those boys outside the takeaway, by herself this time. Possibly she hadn’t left it long enough yet for the hotel people to sort out the crying. So they passed from the town into a suburb of the town and the scent on the wind changed from winter-damp metal to winter-damp earth, the smell of hedges and strips of garden. There were rose-bushes dug into the middles of small front lawn after small front lawn; they were bare, or the roses on them were frostbitten.
The woman stopped.
They were outside a window with its curtains open; they could see in. A child, a girl, sat on a sofa reading a book. A woman came into the room, said something. The child rolled her eyes and put the book down. She left the room, shutting a door behind her.
You like this one? Penny said, looking at the house. It was mid-terrace. It was squat and ugly. It would surely be worth little. There was open grass in a square in front of it with several cars parked on it. One had no windscreen.
Shh, the woman said. Or maybe it was just the noise her breathing was making, Penny couldn’t be sure. She stood in front of the window a little longer. Then she started walking again.
She stopped by another lit window several houses down. Penny caught up. Behind this one a man was standing on a chair trying to watch television while a woman measured his legs with a tape-measure.
Do you know them? Penny asked. The woman shook her head. She looked at Penny and her look was fierce; Penny stepped back, alarmed. Behind the window the man had said something which made the woman inside laugh. She laughed as though her lips were holding pins. He laughed too. She took the pins out of her mouth, held them away from herself in her hand and sank to the floor laughing.
Just when it was getting interesting, when the people had stopped laughing behind the glass and were falling into each other’s arms on the floor, the woman in the coat moved on. Each time they found a window whose curtains were open and whose lights were on, the woman stopped outside it and stood by the gate where she could see. From terrace to terrace, house to harled house with garden after small square garden, their windows too small as if shrunken, the light behind their drawn curtains making squares of tawdry colour in the night, the rooms Penny could see into were full of unlikeable furniture. Repetitious armchairs angled in corners towards corners; worthless stuff piled up or neat, familial, claustrophobic, on shelves and mantelpieces. People in the lit rooms watched televisions, or televisions blared fast-moving light into empty rooms with windows uncurtained open to the dark, and the houses went on forever. There were unmowed grass edgings in front of them, and between their pavements and the roads. It was municipal grass. Penny walked on the pavement. She took care not to walk on the grass at all.
The woman was watching more people watching television again. Penny shuffled, put her hands up her sleeves, made cold noises. Brr, she said. The woman flinched; her held-up hand told Penny to be quiet again.
Penny went over to lean against a lamppost; she was angry. She opened her bag under the light of it to see if she had any paracetamol with her. She didn’t. She was getting a chill. She was getting a headache. It was fucking buggering damnably freezing. They passed from a rough street, the houses patched or boarded and the gardens dog-chewed, into a richer set of streets where the cars were in better shape and the gardens full of cut-back clematis and winter pansies recently planted.
This is a much nicer place to buy, Penny whispered, confidential.
The woman was staring in at a middle-aged woman wearing a bathrobe, drinking something out of a mug and eating something ora
nge off a plate. Occasionally she glanced down at a newspaper on her lap, other than that she gazed ahead of her. There was no light flickering. Possibly she was listening to music, or the radio. Possibly she was sitting in a silent room. Penny memorized the name of the road up on one of the walls of a house on a corner. It would be okay, slightly better, to take a taxi from round here. But she had taken her mobile out of her bag and left it at the hotel, it was still next to the hotel phone, and she had no money with her to call a taxi with. Christ, Penny thought. Damn. Her heart sank. She panicked.
But the woman in the coat had money with her, she had plenty of change, Penny knew this, she had seen her put it in her pocket on the hotel landing. Her heart rose. There would be a callbox somewhere. And if Penny was somehow left on her own here, anywhere around here (it sank), she could always reverse the charges to someone at home or at the paper and have them call a taxi for her through Talking Pages (it rose again), who could find numbers for anywhere in the country regardless of where you were phoning from.
They crossed a grass embankment, Penny lagging behind, worrying all the way across it about whom exactly to phone. Then she began worrying for her boots. On the other side, in a street of pleasant semi-detached villas, a clean-looking elderly lady wandered about in the middle of the road between the lines of parked cars.
Hello, Penny said. We’re out looking at houses. Aren’t you cold?
The elderly lady wasn’t wearing a coat. She told Penny she was looking for her cat.
She’s never been out this late, the elderly lady said. I just turned around and she was gone. It’s not like her. I don’t know what to do.
Don’t worry, Penny said. Have you checked all round your house? She might be asleep in a cupboard or under a bed. Cats are very independent. They can look after themselves. Go inside, it’s cold. She’ll come home by herself. She’s probably there now.
She’s black and white, the elderly lady said. Have you seen her?
No, Penny said.
She has a white spot here above her eye and a white bib. She never goes out. She must have slipped out when the lifeboat people knocked on the door. She must have gone out when I went to get my purse. I never let her out. She never goes out.
