Hotel World

by Ali Smith

  The woman in the coat had gone, limped far in the distance, was turning a corner. Penny couldn’t believe how far. She panicked again. She said goodbye to the elderly lady who didn’t hear her, was bending to look underneath a car. Penny ran to keep up. The heels of her boots slowed her down. Ahead of her, the woman disappeared, hunched and limping, over a railway bridge.

  Finally Penny found her sitting on a bench made of concrete outside what looked like a small shopping centre. Behind her was a library and a couple of shops. One was a shoe shop and had Christmas decorations round the shoes in its window. The other had been emptied and closed-up; its window was dark, bare apart from a banner which said 50% OFF EVERYTHING; its insides were stripped. Its sign said: Hiltons Simply The Best. Penny couldn’t work out from what was left of it what it was that the shop used to sell. It depressed her. She turned to look in the opposite direction. In the distance there was a racketing noise; she could see two boys on skateboards throwing themselves against concrete slopes behind the shops.

  That’ll keep them nice and warm, Penny said.

  The woman’s face was deep down inside her coat. Her breath came out of a gap between two buttons.

  There was a public phone in the front alcove of the shut library. Penny’s heart rose again. She went over, picked up the receiver. It worked. God. Thank God. That was a blessing. It was almost time to ask politely, don’t you think we should maybe call a taxi now to get us back to the hotel? It’s so cold, and I have to get back now. I’ve got to work when I get in, it’s been a lovely walk, thank you. But when she sat down on the bench beside the woman for a moment and started to say it, the wind blew a hair into her open mouth. It wasn’t her own hair, or the woman in the coat’s. It was long. It was someone else’s entirely. Penny picked it out, disgusted. Then she held it up in front of her. Its ends blew about.

  In a way it was the same, she thought, exactly the same, as watching through the windows of all those houses had been, seeing people who had no idea that anyone was watching them. The women sewing, leaning on their hands, and the TV pictures flickering like open fires in their sitting rooms. The men delicately placing cigarettes between their lips, or asleep, network light shifting on their faces. The endless eating and drinking; she had been watching the eating process all night from outside unknowing people’s houses. Think of it. People, if they’d looked up and out, at the square of black they made by leaving the curtains open or the blinds up in their rooms, would have seen, not black at all, and certainly not people watching them there, but themselves, reflected in the reflections of the rooms they lived in. If they’d switched their lights off, let their eyes adjust to the change, then looked out again, what would they have seen outside their houses? Whom would they have seen? Would they have seen anyone there at all?

  It was foul and it was queasily exciting, this humdrum digestive-system exotica of others’ lives; Penny was repelled and energized by it, the knowledge that she could be brought together with someone else by the simple flick of a switch from light to dark, or by a literal thread, by something with the thinness, the genetic randomness, the intimacy of a single hair from a single other head. She held the long hair up in the wind. She let it go. It blew off her glove and she followed it with her eyes along the pavement as far as she could before it disappeared. She turned to let herself take a good look for the first time at the woman sitting shivering next to her on this bench made of cold stone.

  The woman looked tired out. Her breathing was short and audible, as if she were breathing through several layers of wet material. Every breath she breathed was shadowed by another separate breath somewhere at the back of it. She looked like she had already been savaged by something stronger than she was. There was something about her; obliqueness in the eyes, tautness around the mouth, deliberation in the way of sitting, all of which suggested she had been unplugged, she was running on back-up power, a kind of energy that was finite. Her hands were closed but their closedness was submissive, her boots hung on the end of her legs as if they might belong to someone else. How she sat, how she moved, how she walked, slumped and alert, frozen and careless at once, was telling. Penny tried to think what of. Partly she was dead to the world. Partly there was something about her that was more commanding than anyone Penny could at this precise moment in time think of, and it struck Penny for the first time that she had met, in the course of her life so far, literally thousands of other people, none of whom had been at all like this one.

  She decided she’d give things another few minutes out here before she went back to the hotel. You never knew what could happen. This was one of the things she liked about herself, that she was so open to experience, to experiences like this one.

  She waited politely until the woman had stopped coughing. She took her cigarettes out of her bag again, and then she began.

  Sure I can’t tempt you? Penny said.

  Bad for you, the woman said.

  Don’t mind if I do? Penny said.

  The woman shook her head.

  What’s your name? Penny asked as she lit her own. What do you do?

  Do? the woman said.

  You know, Penny said. To live.

  Ah, live, the woman said. Her voice, gravelled, came from inside her coat. Penny waited, but the woman didn’t say anything else.

  Cold tonight, Penny said.

  Clear, the woman said. She gestured up.

  Above them the sky was acned with stars. Lovely, Penny said. She shivered. She tried another tack.

  What do you think she was doing, that maid in the hotel? she asked again.

  The woman shrugged again.

  Penny eyed the public telephone behind the woman’s shoulder, but then the woman said something.

  She needed to take that wall apart, she said.

  Yes, Penny said. She seemed lost, a lost thing. I think she was actually too young to have been working. I was thinking of checking up on it when we get back. What do you think?

  She isn’t a runaway, the woman said.

  Penny nodded blankly.

  It was her money, the woman said.

  Ah, Penny said, bewildered. Now I’m lost too, she said.

  Yeah, the woman said. It’s good. That way, you’re probably not still going to get it.

  Get what? Penny said.

  Lost, the woman said.

  Oh right, Penny said. Lost. I see.

  If you know you are, the woman said. Then you’re not about to be it, lost.

  Penny memorized that. If you know you’re lost then you’re probably not just about to get lost. Was that it? She wasn’t sure. Clever, she said out loud.

  The woman nodded.

  Then she said, See that old woman on Morgan Road? Did she tell you she’d lost her cat?

  Poor thing, Penny said. I hope she found it.

  No, the woman said. She’s always out looking for a cat. There isn’t one. If there was ever a cat, it went months ago.

  Oh, Penny said. Do you often do the walk we did tonight, then? Do you stay up here often?

  I don’t think there is a cat, the woman said.

  Penny knew that some people like to live in hotels rather than have a house or rent a place. Do you live over in the hotel? she asked.

  Silence.

  Penny stubbed out her cigarette on the stone arm of the bench. She thought she’d try, just once more, one more time.

  You’re not from here originally, are you? she said.

  The woman shook her head.

  Where did you grow up, then? Penny said.

  The woman breathed, saying nothing.

  It’s funny, Penny said, as though talking to herself. When people ask me that kind of thing, I usually tell whoever asked me a lie. You know, a white lie. I tell them that my childhood was miserable, and that I’m an orphan. Can you still be an orphan in your thirties? I used to tell people who asked me, at parties or wherever. I’d say, actually I’m an orphan, and watch their faces, it was kind of fun, seeing such immediate discomfor
t. In the long run I think it makes people imagine I’ve come through something extraordinary, something which at some point they have to experience for themselves, both parents dead. And at the same time it makes them see me as vulnerable, needing special care. Perfect combination. But to be honest for once in my life, Penny said. Which I rarely am.

  Penny checked. The woman seemed to be listening. Penny went on.

  My mother and father are actually both still quite happily alive. Well, to tell the truth, quite gloomily and miserably alive. They live in different cities now, which makes Christmas a little tricky for my brother and I. They’re both well-off. We were brought up in reasonable comfort. My childhood was averagely happy, averagely tortured. And since I’m being honest with you, this is how it went. My father had affairs with women who weren’t my mother. Most fathers do. So when I was a teenager, and I realized this was what he was doing, I started what you might call taking things. You know, from shops. From other people’s houses too but mainly from shops.

  The woman still seemed to be listening.

  I took everything I could, from everywhere I could. It’s remarkably easy to do. I kept all the things under my bed; I think they’re all still there in my teenage bedroom at my father’s house. I was particularly good at hair accessories; they’re easy to slip up your sleeve, easy, a whole handful of them in their packets off a rack and into a bag or up a sleeve. They’re all still there under the bed, hordes of them, little plastic balls and elasticated things, all still in their packaging. Make-up, little computer games. Occasionally I get something out from under there and have a look at it, when I’m staying at my father’s house. Clothes too. Skirts, jumpers, tops. It’s like a dated treasure trove under there. Everything is pink, grey, light blue, pastel-coloured, woefully old-fashioned now when I look at it again. I took cups out of people’s kitchens, or spoons, whatever. I used to dare myself to leave whatever house we visited with whatever I could take.

  It hadn’t worked yet. Now the mother, Penny thought.

  My mother, she said, always preferred my brother to me. I know that, I knew it. I don’t mind now. There was a time when I did mind, and I took it out on her without her knowing by, well, sex really, I started sleeping with an old friend of hers and my father’s. I saw him at a station one day on the outskirts of London. He used to come to our house, I knew him. He was a kind of father figure, you know how it is.

  The woman nodded at last. Hooked, Penny thought and felt the thrill of it, slight chill on the back of her neck.

  I thought, that’s what I’ll do. And I did it, we had very rushed sex in the empty station waiting room. My first time. It was all quite exciting. All quite seedy. Terrible. You know?

  The woman looked at Penny, sympathetic. Penny looked dolefully back. Sex, she thought behind the doleful face. If the stealing doesn’t do it, and the my-parents-didn’t-understand-me, then the sex, the sex always does.

  She carried on talking.

  I used to wear very short skirts for him, he liked it. I used to steal short skirts especially. I was seventeen. He ran a newspaper. In fact he gave me my first job on a paper. So I suppose that experience marked my life for good, in more ways than one.

  The woman moved suddenly beside Penny. A paper? she said. Like a newspaper?

  The World, Penny said. It’s full of grey space. Since I’m being truthful. We have to fill it up as fast as we can. That’s what I do. That’s my job, filling up the grey space every week for people like you and me.

  She nudged the woman, like they were friends. The woman shook her head. Do you not work on a paper, then? she said.

  I work on the World, Penny said. The World. You know. The World on Sunday.

  Is that a paper? the woman said.

  The World, Penny said again.

  Is it a, I forget the word for it, the woman said. She put her arms out, as if holding something too big for her.

  Penny laughed. I can’t believe you don’t know the World, she said. But the woman’s eyes had widened and her head had come right out of her coat.

  Are you a journalist? she said. You interview people and stuff?

  Well, mostly just people, Penny said. Stuff isn’t usually very forthcoming.

  Was it your paper who did that page? the woman was saying. She was waving her hands about. Penny sat back.

  Probably, she said. Which?

  The page, the one about what was in the pockets of homeless people, what people kept in their pockets?

  Um, Penny said.

  There would have been a photograph in it of the things in the person’s pockets. It would have been all laid out for a photograph. And then there would have been a written thing about the person too, the woman said. Their name, where the picture was taken, things like that.

  No, I don’t think I remember a piece like that, Penny said. Not while I’ve been with the World.

  Is it long that you’ve been with the World? the woman said.

  Well, three years there now, Penny said.

  The woman’s eyes clouded. Oh, she said, and turned away. Then she turned back again. But do you remember a page like that, from any other paper, did you ever see it? she asked.

  Nope, Penny said shaking her head. Certainly not in our World. Other people still do that kind of story. It was probably somewhere else, we aren’t doing many just now. To be frank with you they don’t make good copy; with the last government it was always a good injustice story or a good humane story. With this government it just looks like whining. Nobody’s really doing them any more. Unless there’s a drug element. Drug stories are still okay.

  There is a drug element, the woman said. Everyone takes them. Everyone on the street takes stuff, we all do.

  You all do, Penny said.

  You have to, the woman said. Fucks with your brain, I mean really really fucks it. Sorry about the swearing, she said, as a kind of afterthought.

  That’s what you do, Penny said.

  And also, the woman said. It really changes people.

  On the street, Penny said again.

  Yeah, wherever, the woman said. It can really make people into ugly fuckers.

  The woman stopped. She sat, said nothing. She shook her head. She held her hands up, open, empty. Then she said, Sorry again. Language.

  I’m an idiot, Penny was thinking. I’m such an idiot. Look. The coat. The money. The bad skin, the smell, the listless readiness. The wandering about. The breathing. I’m such a fool. The penny had dropped. Penny Drops. A good heading. It made her want to laugh again. Then it made her think of the public phone, and a taxi, and a warm room, with curtains, shut.

  The woman was talking. I’m sorry? Penny said.

  Things, the woman said. If you touch them, like. Ruined.

  You know, Penny said. Earlier when we met, I thought you had a room in the hotel.

  Yeah, the homeless woman said. I did.

  Oh, Penny said. She stood up now, was stamping her feet. Her boots were ruined and her feet were frozen. She wondered if she’d ever feel her feet again.

  Is it news and historic things like that air war there was that you report on? the homeless woman said.

  Mm? Penny said. Oh no, I do the style pages, she said. Though once, for one article, I had to jump out of a plane. That was fun.

  Wow, right, the woman said politely.

  Penny walked into the middle of the road. Cars went past, but none were taxis. Do taxis ever come out here? she called. She stamped her ruined boots.

  Can I maybe ask you a favour? the woman said.

  Mm? Penny called from the middle of the road, where she was wondering whether taxis up here would take credit cards or not.

  A favour. Can I ask you a meaning?

  How do you mean, a meaning? Penny said coming back on to the pavement.

  There’s a word. I don’t know what it means, the woman said.

  Uh-huh? Which word? Penny asked, stamping her heels, looking down the road for signs of other life.

  Rebi
ggot, the woman said.

  Penny stopped. Re-what? she said.

  The woman spelt the word out. Penny shook her head.

  I don’t know, she said. I don’t know what that word means. It’s not a word I’m familiar with at all.

  It’s out of a poem, the woman said. I am rebiggot.

  Penny opened her bag. She found her pen and looked for something to write on. The woman spelt the word again, and Penny wrote it letter by letter on the inside cover of her chequebook. She held it under what light there was from the shut library, shook her head.

  Nope, Penny said. Never heard of it. It looks foreign. French? Sorry.

  Penny surprised herself by actually feeling it, sorry. She looked at the woman again. She thought how the woman had been so wrong, how she’d even believed there was gravity on the moon. Everyone knew there wasn’t. She smiled to herself. She carried on writing in her chequebook.

  What’s your name? she asked the woman again. Tell me your name, please. I’ve had a lovely time tonight with you. It’s made a real difference to me, meeting you tonight.

  The woman looked pleased.

  Elspeth, she said.

  Elspeth. Elspeth what? Penny said, still writing.

  What do you want to know it for? the woman said.

  I just want to know. So I remember, Penny said.

  The woman thought for a moment. Then she said, Freeman. Elspeth Freeman.

  Penny Warner, Penny said. Pleased to have met you. She pulled off her glove and held out her hand. The woman, surprised, pleased, took Penny’s warm hand in her own cold one.

  Now, Elspeth, Penny said. If you ever need anything.

  Penny slipped the folded cheque inside the woman’s coat pocket, tucked it in, patted it. She forgot about her ruined boots. Her heart rose, flew about; her heart was like a bird, ecstatic, high above her head.

  And one last thing, she said. Do you need a lift back to the hotel?

  The homeless woman shook her head.

  Okay. So do you know where there’s a taxi rank round here? Penny said. Or could you, possibly, Elspeth, let me borrow, would it be possible for you to lend me, some change for that phone over there, so I can call a taxi? I’ve got to get back. Work to do.