Hotel World

by Ali Smith

  & since in September he & mum gave it to some friends of the Hendersons the Hendersons had said they knew some people who wanted a single bed suppose they didn’t tell the people who have it now that it belonged to someone who was fucking well dead deadbed death bed ha ha wonder who’s sleeping in it now wonder what they’d do if they knew wonder if they’d still sleep in it & now it’s my room not our room they took off the mattress got it out the door sideways put it on top of a car he dismantled the slats & wrapped the flex off an old heater round them to hold them together he couldn’t get it to tie in a knot because of it being rubber they all clattered on to the pavement the man had to pick them up he put them in the back of the car it was an estate car the mattress looked small kind of nothing on the top of it when I looked out the window I was surprised how small because a bed seems big when you are quite close up to it but from a bit further away it is small it looked like just a child’s bed they carried the frame out I could hear them trying to edge it out the door behind me then it was gone they unscrewed it put it in the back with the seat down & now there’s just space in here it’s like the room is the same but changed empty too light lopsided or something but there are the dents left in the carpet they prove it was there if you put your hand down & feel you can feel the dips where the feet of the bed were & there was all dust down the back of it that he hoovered up they told us in Biology that a lot of dust is made of human skin so if that is true then some of Sara is in the hoover God but she would be laughing she was always in trouble for not hoovering behind the bed picked up what I could of it still there after he hoovered & it is in the handkerchief in with my pants & tights underneath them in the top drawer because maybe it came off you Sara it is possible like when your skin peels off in summer maybe I have some of her skin from spring 1999 in the top drawer God fuck sake one minute there is & the next you are you were just flakes of whatever stuff that you can’t even see properly God now all of the chest of drawers is mine though there isn’t enough of my stuff yet I don’t have enough they close now before they were all stuck out stuffed full with stuff & half the wardrobe empty like she just upped & went ran away from home my stuff all spread out across the rail to make it look like nothing was taken but all her stuff was taken away well he missed the spare overall didn’t he yeah but all the pictures too he took off the wall & they repapered it because the Blu-tack had left the marks now it is red stripes but only on the one wall stupid used to be George Clooney & Carol Hathaway & Pulp & Romeo & Juliet poster stuck over the old paper God it is really freaky all those things are already so not what people have on their walls any more it makes it seem like it happened years ago instead of like just then he put the swimming stuff in the outside dustbin I didn’t know he had when I went out & opened it to put in the onion peel there was all this gold & silver the medals & statues & the shields & everything I picked it all out & took it all back inside my arms were full of her prizes the ones she won when she was small the ones she won when she was in the inter-school sports all the Junior Championships the diving one she won last year it was all smelling like the bin I brought it back into the livingroom & put it all down on the carpet he went fucking mad ballistic he was a man needing a lobotomy put them back outside I’m warning you I won’t tell you twice Clare right now put them back outside well he did tell me twice didn’t he yeah some of the medals had her name on them as well engraved into their backs I looked at it all on the livingroom carpet & I said I said something I can’t believe I actually said something out loud I said yeah but this rosebowl thing has to be passed on next year to the next person who wins it you can’t just throw it away it’s not yours to he went quiet even angrier I could tell from the breathing he took it in his hands held it like not to get any marks on it put it on the top of the sideboard opened the sideboard door put it inside closed the door then got everything else up off the carpet wrapped it in a teatowel put it back in the dustbin the next day he took the rosebowl out of the house with him in a carrier bag when he went to work then going round the house for days with a look on his face his shoulders hunched up like the fucking hunchback of wherever hunched up like he’s carrying a backpack full of stuff I don’t know what stones bricks rocks hope it’s fucking heavy anyway I can hear him now that endless fucking snoring I can hear him turning over in his sleep he has no fucking trouble sleeping does he no he fucking doesn’t & our mum not our only my completely out of it going round like she’s a ghost herself all the time getting that stuff from the doctor to help her ami or mazi something that creep Brett from fourth year saying to me is your mother or father on anything after the funeral and everything bring it in I can sell it for you I told him to fuck off he said if it’s a good dosage I’d get a good price on it fuck off fucking wanker doesn’t matter what they say wankers all this time it’s been ClareWilby’ssister didherselfin ClareWilby’ssister didherselfin those fucking wankheads at the north gate shouting it when I went past on the other side of the road & now I know she didn’t now I have proof so they can all fuck off wait till I tell mum & dad but I can’t can I I can’t just like say it over the tea things him going off his head because someone is mentioning it again her not eating anything not seeing anything not hearing anything all broken in her chair like someone snapped her off a tree & broke her like you can break a bit of branch into bits suppose I could say to her if I got her on her own if he’s out or isn’t in the room or is in the bath or fucking shaving again with that wheeeeeee fucking razor going & can’t hear I could tell her listen it’s all right I know it wasn’t on purpose for any reason or anything I know because I went to the place I went to the hotel I met the people that work there & this man told me it was by accident for definite he was actually there he saw it because she was meant to be on the same shift as him all week & they were talking about loads of stuff he said they were just having a laugh they were even going to be going to a film on their night off they had arranged it Happiness she was just playing around it was by mistake it wasn’t supposed to but I’m not supposed to ever say fucking anything am I I’m just supposed to keep out of the fucking way imagine if I spoke actually said something the walls of this house would fucking fall down in shock like a ghost had spoke nobody’s supposed to say anything about anything real how would I say it anyway it’s too real to how would I start if I did what first words would I use what first word & anyway if I did she’d be too spaced out to hear or the crying would start that would make him go mad again it’d be like when he took down the photos or threw out the swimming stuff all that gold & silver the diving trophy that’s shaped like a dolphin under the ground now out at the dump dark unless they have streetlights out at the dump as well do they buried anyway now under the rubbish all mixed in with old teabags & leftover food condoms shit with like a skin of mouldy stuff over all of it like there is on the split binbags dumped for months down the back of the railway bridge & by now there’ll be the tons of other shit that’s been thrown away just since then as well pressing all her swimming stuff in even deeper into the ground like buried treasure one day someone will maybe dig it up like on the programmes where they do excavating to find out what a society was like in the old days & it will be like finding something really good under there & they will have her name on them & people will wonder who she was in hundreds of years’ time centuries from now they will be in a museum in a glass case & people looking at them will say I wonder who Sara Wilby who won the 50 m Butterfly 1996 Junior League all those hundreds of years ago was I wonder what she was like as a person & what her life was like she must have been a very fast swimmer to win but maybe in the future they will think our fast was slow they will all be going so fast themselves God she was fast though she was really really fast we used to go & watch her when they could still make me go & she was always miles ahead reaching the side turning that way under the water like doing a somersault in it pushing off first from the side in one push way ahead miles ahead of whoever she was racing you couldn’t believe she could stay under for so
long then her shoulders & head bursting up out of it imagine her taking a breath after holding it for so long imagine not being able to breathe & then at the last minute being able to again that would be fucking amazing she always came first in the races where there weren’t any good swimmers & at least second or placed in the ones where there were really good swimmers they had to be really good to beat her we were up in the spectator seats him shouting clapping waving his arms in the air then afterwards with the towel round her shoulders the water running down her legs & her shoulders & her neck her hair all sticking up water on her face all over her we were standing at the poolside I remember a friend of mum’s saying you should teach your little sister to swim too Sara you’d have two medal-winners in the family everyone laughing & him giving me that look because he knew no way no fucking way was he or any of them ever getting me near fucking water doing that swimming thing in front of everybody everybody thinking it is hilarious because she’s this great medal-winner & I can’t even swim now when the bits of her start coming by themselves I think of the water running like that down from one part of her to the next & it kind of holds her together to think of water running down her like that it means her head is on her neck & her neck is on her shoulders & her shoulders are on her body with her arms etc the smell of chlorine or whatever they put in the water always in our bedroom always the smell of it kind of faint round her bed & out in the hall too because of the swimsuits in the laundry basket I can still smell it at least I think far away no I’m imagining wonder if her bed still smells of it & the Hendersons’ friends are wondering what that is they keep smelling in their bedroom they won’t know what it is they won’t be able to work it out there was that one night I was still awake & she was falling asleep suddenly she jerked awake again she jerked so fast the bed moved her whole body kind of jolted I said what she said God she laughed she said I was just dreaming I fell off a pavement down the side of a kerb that was just a couple of weeks before she got killed died God it is amazing what people will do so they don’t have to say the word or come anywhere near anyone who has been anywhere near it like at school looking embarrassed like I’ve done something to embarrass them it’s sad no that’s not sad sad is what it was when Fluff died that’s how I remember it sad looking round & there being no cat in the kitchen or on the chair it was very sad but that was cat-sized sad with this it is as if the kitchen is meaningless it is stupid to even have one the chair is irrelevant it is what is not on it or in it that is made into everything the only other dead person I really knew is Granddad & that was so long ago & when he used to sit in the garden with his chest bare in the sun it was all loose folds round his neck & face like he was too small for his skin now it was folding in on him it isn’t the same at all as with her it was like he was getting ready to go like inside he was too light for a skin that had got too thick & heavy for him but with her it was perfect hers fitted her perfect it was all stretched & ready about her about to go a long way as if she was an arrow or something & all someone had to do was put her in a bow & shoot her into the air yeah & all the people at the funeral saying her name wrong & looking embarrassed neighbours if I meet them outside or if I’m at the shops & there’s someone who knows mum or him it’s this funny sideways look & how are you all coping a dreadful loss like we lost a purse or a dog or a terrible way to lose one’s life like she just put it down somewhere & when she looked up she didn’t know what she’d done with it a terrible way to lose someone close like we lost her in a department store in the sportswear dept & if we went to the customer service desk we could put a call out for her over the intercom speakers this is a message for Sara Wilby your family is waiting at customer services could Sara Wilby please come back from the dead ah shit ah & so & so now now she’s passed away hasn’t she well that’s more like it passed in a fraction of a 0.45 of a fucking second into the next world the beyond yeah where all the dead people are standing about smiling Sara & Granddad & the Grannies with them & Fluff & that old lady from across the road that died all of them singing someone’s crying lord kum by yah with dead Mrs Kincher from primary three strumming it on the guitar for them nobody will say it will they the word dead your sister’s dead she died Mrs Johnstone from up the road stopping me on the way to school telling me I understand what you are feeling holding that psycho way on to my arm her eyes all wide it is a void that no one can fill well I suppose there’s something in that because when I looked inside the shaft I could see that the steel grooves the things made of steel or iron that helped the whatever it’s called the lift for food and dishes to go up and down the shaft are all still there attached to the back of the wall huh they could pretend easy enough that the lift shaft wasn’t there by putting a piece of wood over it & painting it the same colour as the wall but they couldn’t take the metal off the wall inside could they no they couldn’t be bothered to do that still there running from the top of it all the way down to the bottom of it & there was a little wheel at the top inside it for the steel rope that held it the wheel is still there too about the size of a jaffa cake I reached in & pushed it it went round smooth as anything like it would still work like nothing had really changed & God knows what it would take to fill that cavity Mr Dentist lorry-loads of fucking concrete but they haven’t it is still there it was just disguised all I had to do was look I saw I looked down it one minute she was at the top exactly where I was tonight the next minute something about that metal still being there like it would always be there I suppose that even if they did fill it up with concrete in a way even so it would still be there it would still be the same hole just filled with concrete that’s all & even if they knocked down the whole of the hotel & that lift shaft was taken apart & wasn’t there any more it would still somehow be there though you couldn’t see it & didn’t know it but that means if that’s true then it’s also true that because Sara was here because she walked along streets or pulled water towards her like when she used to swim her arms pulled it so she could propel herself through it then somehow she is still here too but that’s a lot of shit because she’s gone I mean she’s really really gone aren’t you & so if they ever knock down that building or even just its insides say if they were making it into a different building but keeping its outsides they like to do that keep the outer shell of a building & change all the insides like they did with that cinema in Merret St where you were going to see Happiness eventually I suppose they will do that change the building & by then it won’t matter that someone fell down it & died because by then no one will remember anyway no one will know

  & since it happened there I think that’s why I was going & sitting outside it because I didn’t know where else to I don’t know why I just wanted to know something I don’t know what but all there was at home was fucking dents in the carpet fucking nothing just them sitting on stupid chairs staring at the off TV I don’t know I don’t know what I thought was going to happen did I think you were going to come back again going to just appear out of nowhere round a corner waving saying hi thought I was dead didn’t you well no I’ve been here the whole time hanging around I’ve hired a room I live here now had you all worried didn’t I well of course I knew fucking nothing like that was going to happen & anyway dead people when they come back aren’t like when she came back just wearing her cardigan like normal usually they’re always vampires or weird & scary moaning on about revenge or not there at all they just move things round rooms invisible like with the what are they called poltergeists or floating outside the windows like in that film Salem’s Lot those are just stories it wasn’t like that you wouldn’t be like that you wouldn’t be a vampire with stupid teeth you would be just yourself but what if she was herself like she is must be now under the ground her face all no no she would just be standing there she would be wearing her swimming things or her jeans & pyjama top like at home like she was all the times when I thought she was standing there then I stopped being able to do that making her up didn’t I fucking lobotomic all that was left was the bits of her coming
by themselves there has to be some way of stopping them doing it & then I found the uniform when I put it on it was a bit big the buttons all the way up the front it must be the spare the one she wasn’t wearing when not the uniform obviously it’s not the one because when she fell it was just lying there under my coat folded up they must have missed it when they cleaned the wardrobe out nobody noticed it because if they had they’d have thrown it out for sure I hadn’t noticed it till now so it was a sign I thought if I got inside I could find out for sure but then it was that woman at the front desk who was always coming out over the road who was on & she’d already been out tonight I’d already done a runner so I thought maybe tonight wasn’t the best night but then it was after all when I came back I had it on under my fleece I took the fleece off at the door I was going to try to slip past when I got inside like just be a new member of staff so she wouldn’t know or notice but when I went in she was asleep totally out of it with her head down on the desk I didn’t have to say anything to anybody about why was I there nobody asked nobody stopped me nobody even saw me I just walked up the stairs & went up to the top floor where it had happened I knew it was the top floor it had happened on it was in all the papers with that school photo of her from 6th form TALENTED SWIMMER DEAD FREAK ACCIDENT CLAIMS LOCAL GIRL SWIMMER TRAGIC TEENAGE DEATH DIVE when I looked them up in the library I found the hollow place by knocking on the wall then later when that woman from the desk Lisa came upstairs & found me she didn’t throw me out or anything she wasn’t angry she said it was a bit of a mess & that she’d sort it out with the hotel maintenance actually she was nice I always thought she’d be horrible when she used to come across the road but she wasn’t she had this key in her pocket that could open any of the doors she knocked on a door & when there wasn’t an answer she opened it with her key & went in & came back out with kleenex my nose was really blocked it was quite hard to breathe it can be quite hard to after you cry I had been really crying I think it was because of the lift shaft because actually fucking seeing it it was so dark in there old-smelling the thing was I couldn’t see the bottom of it or how far away or how near how long it would take or how short I knew as soon as I saw it all opened up like that I suppose I just knew that of all the things that were sad about it this was the saddest that it didn’t matter not really whether she had wanted to do it or not it didn’t make any difference either way just the fact that one minute she’d been there right there on the exact same spot where I was and the next she wasn’t & she was holding out the kleenex now she asked me where my other shoe was I ignored her she said whose was all that money on the floor I thought if I just went on ignoring her she would go away but she said it looked like the wall was a giant slot machine & that I had hit the jackpot that kind of made me want to laugh because that was exactly what it looked like like all that money had come spewing out of the wall or something she went back into the bedroom & came out with a wastepaper bin & picked up all the money & told me I had to go downstairs now with her I thought she might phone the police I was going to make a run for it but she had my arm she put me in a back room like an office with lockers & a kettle kind of place while she helped someone get their key & answered a phone then she came & got me by the arm & she stood outside this cupboard & knocked on it & the door opened it was full of junk stuff everywhere & a man came out he was like a bear blinking in the light like he’d just been wakened out of a cave he used to know Sara the woman said for me to tell him my name & she told him I needed new shoes & he said what size was I & came back out with a pair of quite old-looking Doc boots with zips up their front in one hand & a newish pair of white ankle Nikes kind of low slung in the other really sleek like they’d hardly been worn at all they really fitted then she came back from behind the desk she had a Dustbuster she told him he had to go & clean up the top floor with it she said did I want to go back up there for a minute too so I asked her could I borrow her watch if it had a hand for seconds it did she gave it to me through the banister when I got up to the top floor the man who used to know Sara was standing staring at the wall like woah fuck sake he said to me did you do this I nodded I thought I was going to get it he sat down like his legs folded under him & he told me the whole story I didn’t think I wanted to know it but then it was kind of amazing to know they were watching TV just before & it was a western about some people in the snow with Warren Beatty & someone else in it & then that she bet him a fiver she could get into the lift & she did he saw her in it all folded in upside down he said he was going to say a sentence he was going to say you must be double-jointed because that lift was only big enough for a child of eight but by the time he got half way through the sentence all there was was the cables whipping out & by the time he’d got to the end of the sentence there had already been the noise of it hitting oh God but I knew that stuff about the upside down already I did because I had read something about it in the papers so it wasn’t that new to me really he was shaking his head had his hands in his eyes & when I could hear & think again without that hum in my ears like something electric like his fucking wheeeeee razor I hadn’t really wanted to know not really I had only really wanted to do it I went over to the place I had my other trainer spare I could use I reckoned that would do it & I had the watch so this time I’d be able to do everything right I was careful I dropped it down & did the listening for it & when I looked back he had his hands out of his eyes now the man he was watching me well I was fucking well done by then anyway I was nearly off down the stairs but the man came after me held the door open with his foot he made this noise in his throat he was holding something out to me I didn’t know what it was it was grey-blue folded paper kind of scuffed he said this thing he said we made a bet & I owe it to her so can I give it to you I think he meant he owed you it Sara I unfolded it it was a five pound note it had been folded so hard right down into a square that when I unfolded it it had little squares all over it when I got down to the ground floor there was a new person at the desk I thought for a minute I would get caught & be in trouble about the wall I was just going to walk out the door like I was a guest the daughter of a guest or something but that Lisa came from through the back she took me in there again & she made me sit down ordered me the breakfast full English it was on the menu she let me choose it I gave her back the watch it was half one I’d been up there ages it hadn’t felt like any time at all then she went away & came back with the breakfast it was huge there were two eggs not one there was bacon two sausages some round black stuff I think it was black pudding I don’t know there were beans in a bowl separate from everything else maybe in case people don’t like beans there was loads of toast it was cut into triangles piles of it on a plate I think she brought extra everybody had some the new woman at the front desk took some through on a plate & a man in overalls came & had some he was really nice to me & the man from the top floor who knew you he had some too when he came down & the butter was in these curls in white dishes there was a choice of jams they were in jars like actually smaller than my thumb you could get raspberry or strawberry or apricot or blackcurrant I had raspberry the breakfast was great it was on the house I couldn’t eat it all people kept saying come on more you can do it it was really nice people kept patting my back like they knew me or they’d known me for ages or something everybody was nice then that Lisa walked me home it was funny to walk home in the new Nikes the ground felt different like there was air between me & it she stayed outside till I shut the door waving goodbye funny for it to be so good & so sad both at once she said to me on the way home I looked like I needed sleep I told her I wasn’t sleeping much & she said she was sleeping too much & I could have some of her sleep hours she’d send them to me imagine if you could do that lend someone some hours you weren’t using that would be so cool to be able to do that you could put them in an envelope & send them through the post saw-these-hours-&-thought-of-you but it is funny not ha ha but peculiar that it could be so sad I could be there & feel how sad it was then the next minute I could be eating t
his great breakfast & wearing these great Nikes & feeling really the best in ages it is sort of the same thing as reading the book & the story suddenly stopping because actually though it looked like it had stopped it hadn’t it went on & it’s all right to be relieved that it did because actually it’s okay that it did that it does it’s even good kind of like the date thing when everybody in the class was expecting me to be feeling something & for one fucking minute I had forgotten what it was I was supposed to be feeling as if like someone sent me a minute of relief a minute of something else through the post saw-this-minute-&-thought-of-you well it’s like tonight started out being about the usual end thing then it changed into something quite different unexpected kind of as if someone somewhere must have seen this evening & thought of me