All Hours

ALL HOURS

The clock above the folding table stopped at 4:47, years ago, though no one can remember when. Nobody’s asked why. Nobody’s fixed it, but All Hours Laundry regulars know what it means.

‘I’ll be back in three 4:47s, as in tomorrow night.’

‘Perfect. I’ll bring you the ironing when I’ve finished my shift.’

Rosa has been going to All Hours Laundry every Thursday night for eleven months. She tells people it’s because her machine at home shreds socks, but really, she comes to be in a place where the silence doesn’t feel personal. Rosa’s cardigan has been mended at one elbow with wool that doesn’t quite match. She likes that it shows. She’s the only person in the shop who irons her socks, a habit her husband Dom found endlessly ridiculous, but one she’s never once considered stopping.

Rosa passes the time waiting for her washing by studying the other customers and writing their life stories. The woman who always brings a can of neon-coloured energy drink is working in witness protection. She looks about forty-five, has strong forearms and always sits facing the door next to dryer 3, which has the best view of the street.

Then there’s the man in his sixties, who holds himself like someone who has never once let his spine soften. He wears a jacket buttoned up to his throat even in the heat coming off the machines, and pulls his clothes out of the dryer in the same order every time. She imagines him in the park doing tai chi. He has a small business. Maybe a print shop, or a counter in a supermarket for key cutting and shoe repair.

The girl with bad acne always picks the machine in the darker corner. Rosa decides she’s a graffiti artist no one knows about yet, like a female version of Banksy waiting to be revealed. She doesn’t fold her clothes. She just stuffs them back into the black bin bag she always brings them in. Rosa wonders if she sleeps in it too.

Tonight, there’s a new visitor. A young man wearing headphones who feeds the coins furiously into machine 9, as if he resents every single one. Rosa thinks he must be a student who has failed the same exam twice but hasn’t told his parents yet. He’s washing his clothes in case they tell him to leave home. Rosa is halfway through inventing the parents when Nomvula comes through, pushing a trolley full of lost socks and ironed laundry.

‘He hasn’t failed anything, love. He just likes the smell in here and the way it stays on his clothes. I’ve asked him. He comes in on Tuesdays too.’

Rosa feels sweat prickle under her hair. ‘How did you know—’

‘You do it to everyone you see coming in here.’ Nomvula pulls out a gauzy layer of lint from the lint trap she’s cleaning and wraps it around her finger like a ring. ‘I’ve heard you, and they’re good stories. Better than the real versions, most of the time.’

‘How?’ Rosa asks, using the single word to ask more than ten questions.

Nomvula is small, wiry, with forearms that wouldn’t look out of place on the woman Rosa put into witness protection. Her hair is cropped close, with a single grey streak above one ear. She stretches and presses her hand into the small of her back. ‘It’s a system,’ she says, looking up into the cracked ceiling, ‘bigger than both of us.’

Rosa isn’t keen on systems, especially ones she doesn’t seem to be part of. She thinks of the other people who’ve come to wash and dry their clothes here and tries to remember the backstories she gave them, but now they just sound like static in her head.

‘That clock’s never been right,’ Rosa says, mainly to change the subject.

‘And this one.’ Nomvula taps the glass door of machine 6. ‘It’s never empty.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it isn’t finished.’ She pauses as if thinking. ‘Some loads never are.’

Then she wheels her trolley away through the front door just as Femi comes in. Femi is one of Rosa’s favourites because he comes every Thursday at the same time and always smiles over to her, without expecting an answer. But this evening she can feel electricity fizzing off his skin as he loads his washing, then scrapes around the bottom of the bag for coins.

‘You’re going to want to close the door before you start it,’ she says.

He looks up and stares at her like he’s never seen her before. ‘Right. Yes. Sorry.’ He closes it, and the machine groans and then chugs.

Rosa feels the air settle, but not entirely.

‘I got a job,’ he says. ‘A proper job in London in IT. I found out four hours ago, but I haven’t told anybody because I don’t actually know anybody who isn’t currently asleep or fighting about whose turn it is to buy toilet roll.’

‘I don’t need any,’ Rosa says.

She fixes her eyes on his clothes rotating in the drum. He never overloads. She’s spent eleven months writing a backstory for him. He works an evening shift. He’s a nurse, has a small dog that greets him enthusiastically when he gets home. He’s gay. Rosa thought she knew Femi completely, but now that he’s finally spoken to her, she has absolutely no idea how to reply.

From the back of the shop, machine 6 gives one of the loud clunks it makes at regular intervals every night.

‘Sorry,’ Femi says, looking at Rosa properly for the first time since coming in. ‘That’s a lot to say to someone I’ve never actually spoken to before. I’ve been coming here for eight months, and all we’ve done is smile at each other.’

‘Eleven,’ Rosa says.

‘Eleven what?’

‘Months. You’ve been coming here for eleven months, just like me.’ She busies herself smoothing a pillowcase. ‘Eleven months and one week to be precise.’

Femi studies her face. ‘Right. So, what else have you got filed on me?’

‘I’ve given you a whole backstory. I think you’re a nurse, maybe. At least a job with a uniform under the coat you always wear. Rain or shine. You always look like you’re in a hurry, running between things.’

Femi laughs. ‘I stack shelves at the Spar on Bird Street until ten, and then I come here. I haven’t got a uniform, just this hi-vis vest.’ He pulls the zipper down on his jacket and peels the sides apart. ‘I hate it as much as I hate being the last one living at home with my parents.’

‘But now you’re going to work in IT,’ Rosa says without disguising her disappointment. ‘I had you falling in love with someone here, eventually. I’d given you a whole future.’

‘Did we get married?’

‘You were considering it, but first you had to finish reading that book you always bring with the corner folded down on page thirty-four.’

He glances down at the book lying on the table beside the bag for his washing. ‘You got that part wrong. I’ve never even thought about reading it. I just need something to hold and look at that isn’t my phone. My girlfriend never shuts up about how I’m always scrolling.’

Machine 6 clunks and judders.

‘Do you know whose washing that is?’ Rosa asks.

‘I always assumed it was yours.’

‘Mine? I’ve never touched machine 6 in my life.’

‘You have. You tap the glass twice every time you leave. I’ve seen you do it.’

Rosa opens her mouth, then closes it. She remembers patting the glass on her way in, same as always, twice, the way you knock on a door. ‘I’m checking that it’s still running, which isn’t the same as it being full of my washing.’

Machine 6 clunks, and then the buzzer goes off. The exact same sound launderette dryers of a certain vintage make for every finished load in every laundrette in the world, more or less.

Femi looks over to it. ‘That’s the first time.’

Rosa nods.

Nomvula reappears from wherever she’s been, wiping her hands on her apron. She looks at the two of them, then at the machine.

‘It does that sometimes.’

‘Does what?’ Rosa asks.

‘Stops.’

‘Well, shouldn’t someone empty it?’ Femi asks, looking pointedly at her.

Nomvula shrugs. ‘Maybe, but not me.’

Rosa watches her walk to the back of the shop and wrench open a paint-caked door. She thinks of all the people who have pulled it open and walked through, each leaving another layer behind. The person who painted it the first time, and the person who painted it the next. Layers on layers of stories. Above the folding table, the clock still says 4:47.

Femi crosses to the machine. ‘Do you think she meant me?’

Rosa looks at his hand on the handle and sees psoriasis, which she hadn’t seen before. ‘Who knows?’

‘Will you write these clothes a backstory too?’ Femi laughs, then counts out loud. ‘One… two… three…’ and opens the door.

Rosa sees the tension leave his face until, for a moment, she can imagine him as a small boy on his first day at nursery: crying, his nose needing to be wiped, while someone tries to persuade him to stay and play. She needs to take control.

‘Let’s see what’s in there.’ She leans in and pulls out a small bright green pullover. ‘I’ll leave the folding to you.’

‘That’s mine.’ Femi’s voice is unsteady. ‘I wore it on my last day of school because we didn’t have to wear uniform.’ He laughs, but this time it sounds more like a bark. ‘Mr Halliday, our English teacher, said I looked like a lost lime.’ He balls the pullover in one fist. ‘When I told Dad, he said I had to man up.’

Rosa leans in again to pull out a pale blue shirt, unmistakably a man’s, its sleeve looped around an invisible shoulder. She hovers her hand over it, as if it might bite or be slimy. When she finally lifts it out, she holds it at arm’s length.

‘This one’s mine,’ she says. Then, quieter, correcting herself. ‘No. It’s Dom’s. He always wore blue to work. Every day, for twelve years, the same colour. I bought him other colours, but he wore this one anyway.’ She doesn’t fold it.

The dryer sits open between them, empty.

Nomvula is watching them from the back door, ajar just enough to show her nose.

Rosa sits down on the folding table’s edge, the shirt in her lap. ‘I don’t know why I hate the colour blue. Once, towards the end, I told him I’d bury him in it.’

‘Did you?’

‘I can’t remember.’

Femi sits down beside her, the jumper still balled in one fist. ‘My Nan knitted this for me, and Mum made me wear it all the time. Do you have particular days you want to forget?’

Rosa nods. ‘We all knew Dom was dying, but it still came as a surprise when he did. When are you leaving?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘So this was your last load.’

‘This one?’ He nods to the jumper in his hand. ‘Or that one over there?’

Rosa folds Dom’s shirt along its old lines, proving her hands haven’t forgotten them. ‘Both.’

Femi picks up the book, the corner still folded down at page thirty-four. ‘I can’t even remember what it’s about. Maybe I’ll leave it for someone else to finish.’

‘Give it to me. I’m going to need another story.’

Rosa takes it but doesn’t smooth the corner flat. On her way to collect the last of her washing from machine 4, she feels her feet take her to machine 6 at the back. Her hand is already lifting before she notices it’s happening. She stops, palm close to the glass, then lowers her hand.

Outside, rain has started to batter the front window. It’s the kind that isn’t going to stop just because someone is ready to walk home. The washing isn’t dry yet, but Femi doesn’t reach for his bag. Neither does Rosa.

‘Train’s not till six,’ he says.

‘My house is empty either way,’ Rosa says.

Nomvula wipes down the folding table, then disappears behind the counter, into the cupboard-sized kitchenette that’s really just a sink, a kettle, and a shelf of mismatched mugs. ‘Serve yourselves,’ she says, ‘but you’ll need to check on the milk. I don’t know how long it’s been there.’

Rosa makes tea for two, the way she’s watched other people do it here a hundred times without ever making one herself.

The night finds its own shape after that. A shift worker in overalls comes in around one, says nothing to anyone, and Rosa gives him a whole life before he’s even chosen a machine. He’s a long-distance lorry driver, with a wife in another time zone. He’s always washing the same three days of clothes on rotation. He leaves before she finds out if she’s right.

A woman with a sleeping toddler slung across her chest feeds coins into machine 3 at half two, swaying without seeming to notice that she’s doing it. Rosa sways with her. Femi holds the door for her on her way out.

Nomvula doesn’t sit down once, the whole night. Rosa’s never seen her sitting, and thinks the chairs in this shop were only made for people who still have somewhere else to be. Nomvula is at home.

Around three, Rosa tells Femi about the year she and Dom didn’t speak, over something so small neither of them could remember it by the time they made up. Femi tells her about the flat he’s seen photos of but never visited, the one he’s meant to be living in by tomorrow.

The clock above the folding table says 4:47.

By five the rain has stopped, and the street outside is the grey that isn’t quite morning but has stopped being night. Femi packs his bag.

‘My train goes at six, and I’ll have to walk to the station,’ he says.

‘I know.’ Rosa stands to walk him to the front door.

‘Thanks for telling my story,’ Femi says. ‘I like it, even the parts that are wrong. Maybe especially those.’

Rosa stands in the doorway and watches until he turns the corner, which she has never done before, in eleven months of Thursdays.

The clock above the folding table still says 4:47 and will do when the next person walks in, and the one after that. Rosa checks her watch on her way back to the folding table, just to see what time it really is. It’s time to go home. Behind her, Nomvula turns the sign in the window to CLOSE, out of habit more than anything. The D fell off years ago, and nobody’s ever bothered fixing it. ‘All Hours,’ she says, ‘twenty-four seven.’ She laughs because it’s a joke she’s told herself a thousand times and never quite stopped finding funny.