The Weeping Women Hotel by Alexei Sayle Page A

somehow come into the shop and was
blocking her view. Once she realised it was him her heart gave such a lurch of
fear it was as if a buffalo was loose inside her, careening around madly trying
to smash its way out of her skin.
    ‘You
told me you were in Cardiff ,’
Patrick said.
    She saw
that his skin was completely white, even paler than it usually was. Harriet
seemed to remember a medical student saying you shouldn’t fear an aggressive
person who was red in the face because they weren’t going to harm you, all
their blood was in their head thinking angry thoughts. You should really fear
the white-faced since all their blood had gone to the extremities, their hands
and feet, ready to do terrible damage.
    ‘Oh
well, yes but … they told me it …‘ she trailed off unable to think of a
lie.
    ‘But
you’re here.’, ‘Yes.’
    ‘So as
it turns out we can do our lesson.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Lock
the door and get up the stairs then.’
    With
uncertain legs Harriet rose, put the shop sign to ‘Closed’ and turned the lock
on the door. She thought fleetingly of fleeing into the street but what
would-she say to people? ‘There’s a man in my shop and I’m afraid that he wants
to give me a fitness lesson.’ So instead she turned off the lights and walked
into the hall. He followed close behind as they mounted the stairs up to the
empty room.
    Outside
the big windows the sky was now a single shade of grey the colour of the
sugarpaper that Harriet remembered they used to draw on in art class at school.
Somewhere over Hackney lightning crackled.
     
    Standing in the centre of
the room she waited to be told what to do.
    Patrick
walked in tight circles around her and she tried to follow him with her eyes
until he hissed, ‘Look straight ahead.’
    After
some more pacing, out of her vision, he spoke again. ‘We’re going to try
something different today. You’re to stand as if you’re riding a horse, do you
know how to do that? Legs apart, knees bent.’
    ‘Like
I’m riding a horse?’
    Suddenly
he was right in front of her face. ‘Yes, like you’re riding a fucking horse,
playing fucking horsey, do you know how to fucking do that?’
    She
thought to herself that she’d never seen her plumber angry, the postman had
never sworn at her, Mr Sargassian, the old man from next door who came in to
water her plants while she was away, had never stood in front of her, his spit
flying into her eyes, telling her to play fucking horsey, so how had she got
into this situation? This man who’d come to her house six times was now yelling
at her to do weird stuff and she couldn’t think of anything to do but to obey.
    Slowly
Harriet settled into the shape remembered from childhood, her legs apart, her
bottom sticking out at a stupid angle. She felt the fat of her stomach creasing
over itself and a single rivulet of sweat trickled down her back, suddenly
making her want to giggle..
    ‘Arms
by your side, fists clenched …‘ He was directly behind her now as he spoke
and though she desperately wanted to she was afraid to turn her head.
    Then,
more frightening than any angry words, there was nothing; for what must have
been ten minutes Harriet stood in this posture; occasionally she thought she
heard him, move behind her, sometimes sensing he was somewhere at the back of
the room, at other times feeling that he was right behind her, feeling his
breath only a few inches from her spine. Soon her legs began to shake and she
was considering asking if she might move when suddenly from somewhere out of
the darkness he walked up and kicked her hard in the shins. Over the next few
months Harriet would learn that each part of the body has its own kind of pain:
head pain is like a bad fog, arm pain is like a stale sandwich, but she would
always say that shin pain is one of the worst.
    ‘Ow,’
she yelped.
    Immediately
Patrick’s face was centimetres from her own. ‘Get back into your fucking
stance, get back into your fucking