Loose Change

Maybe you’re not in the habit of making friends of strangers. Maybe you are. There are many types of people even in a single society and you might not discover how many strange individuals that are walking around – maybe looking up to a person like you.

Loose Change is a short story written by Andrea Levy. A middle-aged woman is the first person narrator in the story. She is a Londoner, and she has a clear image of a Londoner’s way of being. They are all the same to her. She indirectly tells about how she is being prejudiced against all Londoners; when she asks if anyone has change in the lavatory, the following sentence is: "Everyone seemed to leave the place at once – all of them Londoners I was sure of it" (p. 1, l. 10). This shows she is indirectly labelling Londoners for being miserly and for being indifferent when somebody needs a little help. All she needed were some coins for the tampon machine in that her period was two days earlier than expected. Only a single person remains behind in the lavatory – and of course she is not a Londoner. Her name is Laylor and she comes from Uzbekistan, which is a country in Central Asia. The first person narrator does not know that: "Was that the Balkans? I wasn’t sure. “Where is that?” " (p.2, l. 58). The first time Laylor talked, she thought she might be from Spain because of her accent. The first person narrator does not seem to know of anything besides Londoners and the situation in London proper. Elsewhere does not appear to have any sort of interest to her. It is like she is living in her own bubble called London. But again, the lasting woman in the lavatory is called Laylor. She had change – too much, according to the first person narrator: "I didn’t want a bag full of the stuff myself " (p. 1, ll. 19-20), "Only I don’t want all those coins" (p. 1, l. 28). It is as if she is used to bear large notes in her purse, not caring for small things like coins, which makes her appear to be kind of snobbish. Laylor has a reason to carry all these coins in her pocket: "She and her brother had to leave their country, Uzbekistan, when their parents, who were journalists, were arrested. It was arranged very quickly […] This country was just a safe place." (p. 3, ll. 83-87). For that reason, Laylor and her brother are sleeping out in the cold, in the shelter of a square in London, covered in blankets. That is probably why Laylor looks the way she does: "dirt under each of her chipped fingernails, the collar of her blouse crumpled and unironed, a tiny cut on her cheek, a fringe that looked to have been cut with blunt nail-clippers." (p. 2, ll. 71-73). The first person narrator only begins to notice these things after Laylor’s brother came to their table (they were drinking tea together) and began to talk with Laylor in Uzbek. Her brother wants to know where they are going to sleep tonight, and then he asks for money. The first person narrator gets very uncomfortable sitting at the table with at person "like that": "I found a tissue and used it to wipe my sweating palms." (p. 2, ll. 73-74). She is suddenly highly embarrassed by the whole situation, and she considers leaving in spite of Laylor’s politeness. But; there was something about this girl that fascinated her: "I resolved to help her." (p.4, ll.124-125). She probably feels sorry for her, guessing that this girl is "[…] no more than eighteen. A student perhaps." (p. 2, l. 55). She mentions in the text, that only she knows what a menacing place Laylor’s world had become. That leads back to a period of her grandmother’s life where benevolence was what kept her alive. That would be when she was woken by a stranger offering her a warm bed for the night instead of letting her sleep in a doorway. Now the first person narrator has a chance to be the Good Samaritan as well. But that is not the upshot. The setting of the story is in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The only reason the first person narrator went into the Gallery was to get out of the cold. Laylor, on the other hand, was actually walking around looking at pictures. As they are sitting at the table, Laylor leans toward the first person narrator, saying: "I like art" (p. 2, l. 54). The first person narrator is not into art at all, saying things like: "Was it […] the fact that she liked the dreadful painting that caused my mouth to gape? " (p. 1, ll. 34-36). The two women (the middle-aged first person narrator and the young girl Laylor) are very different from each other. There is a striking contrast between them and classifications like high/low status, taking life for granted/valuing life and being careless about money/appreciating the value of even a single coin can easily be mentioned. Regarding to the upshot of the story it can be unveiled that the first person narrator leaves Laylor at the National Portrait Gallery, pushing herself into the cold. Before she decided to leave, she had actually thought of all the negative things about the situation: "Why pick on a single mother with a young son? We haven’t got the time." (p.3, ll. 95-96), "I didn’t know anything about people in her situation. Didn’t they have to go somewhere? […] My life was hard enough without this stranger tramping through it." (p. 3, ll. 100-102) "How would I ever get rid of her? " (p. 3, ll. 106-107). The reason that the end appears so unexpected is because the first person narrator gave us the impression that she really wanted to help Laylor: "All Laylor’s grandchildren would know my name." (p. 4, l. 133). The one thing that made her change her mind again, was that Laylor’s nose was running with snot, and therefore used her arm to drag it across her face – she didn’t know better. The first person narrator says: "I’ll get you something to wipe your nose" (p. 4, l. 136), walked to the counter to get a napkin. She picked up four, stood up straight and walked on to the exit…