“I remember this dress I used to own” said Carla, absent mindedly stroking the waterproof fabric of her coat. It was a short duffle, stained in deep dark patches by years of sleeping in doorways and standing in the rain, but you could still see it’s sunny primrose complexion shining through, like a ray of hope. “It was just this colour,” she said. “It was beautiful.” Carla sighed, gazing off now into space, recalling times past. “Absolutely beautiful.”
I had first met Carla at the St Emmanuel shelter in Bedminster four months before. I had signed up as a volunteer in the ladies’ night shelter out of a restlessness, a conviction that my job as a commercial writer wasn’t having any great impact on the world, and that I needed to do more. I was young, and naïve.
Carla was a regular client at the shelter. She looked older than her early 40s, with leathery skin and short, wild hair. She always wore the same filthy low-slung jeans and a battered polo neck. Her attire, plus her boyish frame and sharp features, gave her a somewhat androgynous appearance.
“What happened to it, Carla?” I asked, laying the mats out on the kitchen table where she sat. The other ladies would be in soon, eager for the sofa and the kettle before making their way off to bed.
Carla withdrew from her dream at the sound of my voice. I saw her dark eyes pull themselves back from the distant place they had been and focus on the brightly lit room.
She shrugged. “What happens to everything?” She said. “I lost it.” She stood up and shuffled, dragging her feet as she always did, over to the kettle.
Coffee. Endless cups of coffee. She had never touched alcohol, and long been off the drugs, but it was a testament to Carla’s body how much it was immune now to artificial stimulants that she could drink cup after cup of coffee and still manage to sleep. Her teeth were black with the stuff, and so broken and misshapen that it effected the way she spoke, giving her soft South African burr a slurred edge.
The buzzer of the front door went and I left the kitchen to let the other women in. It was a freezing November night and they bustled in, round and waddling in several coats and scarves and hats apiece.
Eva, Joan, Sharon, Tracey, Roxanne, Sabriye, Maria, in they all came. An eclectic mix of Brits, Polish, Spanish, Somalian, and one we guessed as African Spanish but we weren’t sure, and she was unable to tell us.
The house would always be quiet as the ladies made their way to their allotted beds to shed their layers. In a sad parody of a teenage sleepover they would change into their pyjamas and drop their clothes into screwed up piles beside the washing machine, before joining us at the kitchen table to dunk broken biscuits in tea and hot chocolate. They warmed stiff fingers on steaming mugs, exhausted from the day’s wanderings, and chatted amongst themselves.
Carla sat on the fringes of the conversation that night, eyes closed and rocking. Her head was tilted as if she listened to some private lecture. I longed to know where she went and who she was with. What was causing the smile on her face?
Retreating from the others, I gently touched her arm and said her name.
“Are you going to have something to eat before bed?” I asked.
“No, thank you,” she smiled toothily. “I don’t like to eat too much before bed, it isn’t good for you.”
“You’re very good to be so health conscious,” I replied.
“I always have been,” she said, brightly. “Always was. When I was a teenager I never craved sugar, never wanted it.” Her face dropped suddenly into a frown.
“Although there was a time when I was young when I was very fat,” she said.
“I find that very hard to believe, Carla.” There was certainly nothing of her now. Shorter than my modest 5ft 5, she had a thin wiry frame. Her arms showed muscle and her belly was slightly pushed out by the curvature of her back due to a permanent slouch, but there was little other meat on her. Her clothes hung from narrow shoulders and hips.
“I lost it all though,” she went on. “I lost a lot of weight when I went to Kathmandu.”
“I didn’t know you’d been travelling,” I exclaimed.
“Yes, I went to Nepal for a long time after I left South Africa,” she said, smiling at the memory. “I love to travel. I walked in the Himalayas for weeks. I lost my shoes. My friend was meant to come with me, but she didn’t. She was sick, I think. I don’t remember.” She trailed off and turned her head away from me with a deep frown line between her brows.
I watched her for a moment, wondering if she would continue. A few times I thought she might speak, but she simply muttered to herself and rested her head on her hand, scowling at the table cloth.
The chiming of the clock told us it was eleven, and time for the ladies’ curfew. With much scrapping of chairs the women cleared the kitchen table, depositing their dishes in the sink, and disappeared off to their shared rooms. They traipsed out with stooped backs and heavy feet, calling goodnight to each other as they went. Carla was off out the door for her last cigarette of the evening, letting a blast of cold air into the warm house, and I was left alone with the dirty dishes and empty wrappers.
As I tided, the house slowly fell silent. The bathroom door squeaked open and shut a few times, and footsteps pattered about on the floor above. I crossed to the window, a mug and a tea towel in hand, and looked out. Carla was stood on the doorstep, her face lit by the faint orange spark of a cigarette. As I watched, she put it out on the wall of the house and pocketed the stub before coming back in with a swirl of wind and a slam of the door. She stomped upstairs in her heavy boots.
I looked out at the cold night. Across the street the black face of the massage parlour stared vacantly back at me. Groups of revellers on their way into town passed the window, laughing and shouting. St Emmanuel stood as an oasis of calm in the madness. In the next room, Tracey snored.
It was the following week when a few of us sat around the kitchen table. I had my hands wrapped around a cup of tea, bleary eyed from a day in the office. Joan and Tracey picked at a bowl of grapes on the table, listening to Maria as she tried, in her broken English, to explain to the rest of us what kind of food she had as a child back in Spain. Carla was slumped in a chair, a coffee in hand. Her eyes were closed.
Maria pointed to the toaster, shaking her head impatiently. Like a game of charades the ladies all began to shout out guesses.
“No bread?” I attempted.
“No white bread,” came Carla’s voice. I jumped, unaware that she had even been listening to the group.
“We haven’t got white bread in South Africa either.”
“What kind of food they got in South Africa then?” asked Joan.
“Oh it’s not all that different,” said Carla.
“Do you have lots of different meats?” asked Tracey.
“Oh yes, there were a few different things. I remember we would have venison a lot, antelope and things like that. I had crocodile once.”
“Flippin’ heck,” said Joan. “I think you’d wanna eat that before it eats you.” Carla ignored the quick patter of laughter that passed around the table.
“It’s not that different,” she said dreamily. “I don’t really miss it. I wouldn’t say that I miss it. Just the fresh fruit I suppose. We had wonderful fruit, so big and colourful. I remember how sweet and juicy it was. Especially on a hot day. It would get so hot.”
“It sounds like a lovely place,” I said.
“Oh yes,” she replied. “It was lovely.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I had to,” she said simply. “I had to get away from my mother. Had to get away.” She went quiet, staring into her coffee and swilling it around in the cup.
“Did you live in a remote area?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” she said, sitting up straight. “Our farm was right out in the middle of nowhere. I would cycle to school for miles and there would only be about twenty children from other farms near ours. But we always got the chance to go outside and play games and do sports, not like here. I remember in our school sports day I beat all the boys. I beat them at running and at the triple jump.”
“That’s very impressive,” I said.
“Yes, I was good at sports when I was a girl, but I never had the chance to pursue it.”
Tracey and Joan stood up, clattering dishes into the sink, and said their goodnights. Slowly, they headed off up the stairs to bed. Maria smiled and waved.
“You obviously like to stay fit and healthy Carla,” I said, when the others had gone.
“Oh yes,” her eyes had been closing but now they sprung open and looked at me. “Yes I like to be fit. I remember when I had my son, I put on lots of weight. I hadn’t been fat since I was a girl, but I got really fat when I was pregnant. But then with the second one, I barely put on any weight at all. It’s funny isn’t it? It’s funny how they can be so different.”
“Do you only have the two children?”
“Yes, just two. A boy and a girl. They are five and seven, I think. No they must be older by now. I had the first in 1999 and the second in 2001. So maybe they are a little bit older. Around eight and ten. I think that’s right. I remember how old I was when I had them, but not the year. I was 32 when I had my son and 34 when I had my daughter.” She was rocking in her chair as she spoke.
“How old are you now, Carla?” I asked.
“42, or 43. Something like that. Yes 42, it must be 42….42.” She trailed off again and looked at her feet.
“I think that must be right then,” I said, trying to sooth her. “They must be around eight and ten.”
Her head snapped back to look at me, smiling.
“Yes, that must be it. Eight and ten. Anyway, I will see them again. When they are 16. When they are 16 I will see them again.”
She suddenly stopped rocking and looked straight ahead.
“I doubt they’ll want to see me, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
I was surprised by the sudden hardness in her voice. Her eyes closed and her shoulders slumped. She rocked back and forth again slowly, but this time her brow was furrowed and her expression was one of confusion. Every now and then she turned her head from side to side, as if trying to brush off a thought. I wanted to reach out and help her, to draw her back from it all.
“Carla,” I said, timidly. “Won’t you have something to eat?”
Her eyes flew open and she looked at me with an expression I had never seen before. Her eyes were so dark they were almost black and her lip curled with disdain.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” she snapped.
I was taken aback.
“Of course not Carla, I just…”
“So stop doing it then,”
I fell silent and she turned her face away from me, closing her eyes once more.
Hurt, I got up and went to the sink to do the dishes. There was a creaking and banging upstairs as someone fought with the sticky bathroom door. I washed up a few glasses and placed them on the draining board, then turned to look at the clock. It was a few minutes to eleven. The person upstairs won the battle and the house went quiet. Only the ticking of the clock could be heard.
“I don’t know why you keep talking about my mother,” Carla said suddenly.
I looked at her. Her eyes were open now and she glowered at me.
“Carla, I…”
She cut me off again.
“My mother is in South Africa, I don’t know why you keep talking about her. I doubt she knows, I doubt she cares.”
I closed my mouth and averted my eyes from her gaze, turning back to the sink. The other volunteers had told me about these episodes before, but I never thought she’d do it with me. The trick was, they said, not to engage.
“My mother is a Scorpio, therefore I did it. That’s about the size of it isn’t it? Well I’ve had enough of it.You can’t tell me what to do!” She finished the sentence with a shout that made me drop the glass I was drying.
The clock chimed and Carla and I looked at each other and then down at the sea of broken glass at my feet. Without a word she stood up, took her lighter from her pocket and went outside for her usual cigarette.
I stood rooted to the spot. The door slammed and the clock ticked.
I retrieved the dust pan and brush from the cupboard under the sink and was just folding the shards of glass into a newspaper when I heard the front door again and Carla stomped up the stairs. She was still mumbling to herself quietly.
I finished clearing up, put on a load of washing and locked myself into the living room. I got into my sleeping bag on the sofa and clicked off the light. Lying in the dark I strained my ears to hear any sound of a voice upstairs but all was quite. The washing machine trundled contentedly in the next room.
I must have drifted off, because when I awoke the machine had reached full pitch. It shook the floor and I could hear the cutlery rattling on the draining board. I sat up and reached for my phone. It was 12.45am. Straining my ears again I thought I could make out another sound. I cocked my head to listen, and over the sound of the machine I heard it again. It was a distant wail. Kicking my way out of my sleeping bag, I crossed the dark room and slowly slid back the bolt on the door.
In the hallway all was quiet. I slowly ascended the stairs, moving on tiptoe, and tentatively pressed my ear to Carla’s door. It was silent. I was about to step away when I heard the sound again, closer this time. It was the cry of a wounded animal.
I opened the door and went inside. Carla was on her own tonight, St Emmanuel’s not being at full capacity, and two beds stood empty before me. In the far corner by the window, the street light outside threw a yellow glow upon the figure huddled on the very edge of the single bed, pushed right up against the wall.
“Get out,” she moaned. “Leave me alone.” Her voice was slurred and broken.
Carefully I shut the door behind me and put my hand on the light switch.
“Carla,” I said. “You don’t need to be afraid. It’s only me. I’m going to put on the light.”
“Leave me alone,” she moaned.
I clicked on the light and her hands flew up to her face, shielding them from the glare. I crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed. She leaned as far away from me as possible.
“Do you want to tell me what the matter is?” I asked.
“I don’t have to talk to you,” came the muffled reply.
“No,” I said. “No you don’t.
“Just leave me alone.”
“Carla, you know I can’t leave you like this.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.” She was raising her voice now.
“Carla, I need you to calm down.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” She took her hands away from her face and yelled at me. Her cheeks were red, streaked with the dirty marks of tears. Her eyes were bright and ferocious and her greasy hair stood on end. I tried to stop myself but I involuntarily stood up and took a step away from the bed.
Carla retreated back into her corner muttering to herself.
“Carla,” I tried to sound calm and held up my hand. “Carla, I need you to stop or you’re going to have to leave.”
“This isn’t your house, you didn’t pay for it, you don’t own it so you can’t tell me to leave it.”
I took a breath.
“You know the rules here, Carla. If you are going to disturb other people, you have to leave.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Carla”
“No!”
“Carla”
“No!”
“Carla, you’re going to have to go if you can’t calm down.”
She thrashed around on the bed and pulled the blankets to her.
“Sitting there on the sofa looking at me, why don’t you be a real man, why don’t you get a job!”
She rocked back and forth, fixing me with her fierce stare.
“They told me I was entitled to a house. I’m entitled to a house!”
“Carla,” I swallowed hard. “You know the rules. I need you to go.”
“It’s cold outside! You can’t make me leave!”
She fell forwards, burying her face in the duvet and wept.
I went over to her and sat on the edge of the bed. Gently I put my hand on her shoulder. She flinched away from me instantly like I had scalded her and crawled away to the far side of the bed, backing her way back into the corner.
“Don’t touch me,” she cried. “Don’t touch me. He shouldn’t have touched me.” She held her head in her hands and began rocking again.
“Who shouldn’t have touched you?” My voice was barely a whisper, as if I was afraid to ask.
“They expected me to forgive him. They wanted to help me and told me I had to forgive him. My mother did nothing. She did nothing. She told me to forgive him.” Her voice cracked and gave way to terrible sobs. She hid her face and shook.
After a few minutes I tried to get to through to her again.
“Carla,” I said gently. “Would you like to come downstairs for some coffee.”
At first it appeared as if she had heard me. She stopped sobbing and raised her head to look at me.
“You said that you loved me,” she whispered. She looked back at her hands, seemingly amazed by their appearance. “Where are they all now?”
With more speed and agility than I thought she was capable off she suddenly got off the bed and looked around the room.
“They’re going to keep me here,” she cried. “They’re going to lock me up.”
She ran from the room and down the stairs. Startled, I followed her, but too late. On the landing I heard the front door slam and the house shook with the force. I ran to the window and looked out. In the artificial light I saw her limping down the street, she turned a corner and was gone. In the room below, I heard the washing machine wind down and come to a sudden stop.
It was two weeks later that I saw her again. I’d heard that she had reappeared a few days prior to my regular shift. Bright and cheery once more, she had turned up with the other ladies one evening and carried on as normal.
We passed a peaceful evening, and Carla chatted happily with the others. I sat across the table, trying not to watch her, distracted from the talk at hand.
It was a quiet night and though I awoke several times in the night and went to the foot of the stairs, I didn’t hear a sound from her. In the morning she came down early and ate two slices of toast and had three cups of coffee.
At eight o’clock, as everyone was collecting their things to leave, I stood by as Carla made herself a sandwich to go.”
“You do like your cheese, don’t you,” I said, watching her cut thick slabs.
“Oh yes,” she grinned in her usual toothy fashion. “I’ve always loved cheese. When I went to Switzerland they had the most amazing cheese.”
“You’ve been to Switzerland?”
“Yes, when I was young. I remember I was amazed to see cows walking around with bells on, just like in the movies. I didn’t think that happened in real life,” she laughed. “I loved Switzerland. I really felt at home there.”
“Why didn’t you stay?” I asked.
“I tried to, I applied for a job, but it didn’t work out. And then I came here, and met my husband. He was the love of my life. It was such a happy time.” She stopped talking and looked at her hands as they wrapped up the sandwich.
“But they say it’s better to have loved and lost than to never to have loved at all, don’t they?”
“They do indeed,” I said, smiling. She smiled back and put the sandwich in her pocket. I followed her to the hall where the others were waiting and held the front door open. They filed out, Carla bringing up the rear. She smoothed down the folds of her coat and looked out at the drab rainy morning. It had been drizzling since we woke up and the sky was grey and heavy. The ladies pulled up their hoods and dug their hands deep into their pockets, stepping out into the day with resignation.
“Did I ever tell you about the most beautiful dress I ever owned?” said Carla, pausing at the door. “It was so beautiful, just the same colour as this.” She held out the hem of her yellow coat for me to see. “It was so lovely.” She paused, then added as an aside, “My father bought it for me.”
“Did he?” I said. “That was nice of him.”
The coat fell from her hands and she looked at her feet.
“He said I looked beautiful in it,” she whispered.
She looked up at me again and her eyes burnt into mine. I caught my breath under her gaze.
“What happened to you?” I whispered.
Carla shook her head and looked out at the rain. Her coat had no hood so when she stepped out her thin hair was soaked in seconds. The drops collected, clinging to her hair and running down her face but she didn’t seem to mind. She looked back at me, shrugging.
“What happens to everything,” she said.
Emma Pocklington 