Beyond Black

by Hilary Mantel

  Behind her, she heard the slamming of doors. Manly cheers burst through, from the sports bar. She heard snatches of voices, a moan from Mrs. Etchells, the low rumbling voices of ambulance men: she heard Cara wailing, “She’s left her chakras open. She’ll die!”

  They drove home. Colette said, “They took her out on a stretcher. She was a bad colour.”

  Al glanced down at her hands, at the leaden sheen of her rings. “Should I have gone with her? But somebody had to hold the evening together.”

  She thought, I didn’t want that shower in the back row following me, not to a public hospital.

  “She was breathing all wrong. Sort of gasping. Like, ‘urg—ee, urg—ee … .’”

  “I get the picture.”

  “Silvana said, she can snuff it for all I care, she can rot in hell.”

  “Yes.”

  “She said, ‘I’ve bloody had enough of it, running around after her like a nanny, have you got your door keys, Mrs. Etchells, have you got your teeth in, have you got your spare pad for the toilet’—did you know Mrs. Etchells had an irritable bladder?”

  “It might come to all of us.”

  “Not to me,” Colette said. “If I can’t get as far as the lavatory, I’ll top myself. Honestly. There’s only so far you can sink in self-esteem.”

  “If you say so.”

  They drove in silence, to the next traffic light. Then Al lurched forward in her seat; her seat belt dragged her back. “Colette,” she said, “let me explain to you how it works. If you have lovely thoughts, you get attuned to a high level of Spirit, right? That’s what Mrs. Etchells always said.”

  “I wouldn’t call that a high level of Spirit, the one who said that old biddy was up the duff.”

  “Yes, but then a spirit—” she gulped; she was frightened to name him—“but then a spirit, you know who he was, had broken in on her, like a burglar—she couldn’t help it, she was just transmitting his message. But you see, Colette, some people are nicer than you and me. Some people are much nicer than Mrs. Etchells. They do manage to have lovely thoughts. They have thoughts that are packed inside their head like the chocolates in an Easter egg. They can pick out any one, and it’s just as sweet as the next.”

  The lights changed; they shot forward. “What?” Colette said.

  “But other people’s heads, on the inside, the content is all mixed up and it’s gone putrid. They’ve gone rotten inside from thinking about things, things that the other sort of people never have to think about. And if you have low, rotten thoughts, not only do you get surrounded by low entities, but they start to be attracted, you see, like flies around a dustbin, and they start laying eggs in you and breeding. And ever since I was a little kid I’ve been trying to have nice thoughts. But how could I? My head was stuffed with memories. I can’t help what’s in there. And with Morris and his mates, it’s damage that attracts them. They love that, some types of spirits, you can’t keep them away when there’s a car accident, or when some poor horse breaks its leg. And so when you have certain thoughts—thoughts you can’t help—these sort of spirits come rushing round. And you can’t dislodge them. Not unless you could get the inside of your head hoovered out. So if you ask why I have an evil spirit guide instead of an angel or something—”

  “I don’t,” Colette said. “I’ve lost interest. I’m past caring. I just want to get in and open a bottle of wine.”

  “—if you ask why I have an evil guide, it’s to do with the fact that I’m a bad person, because the people who were around me in my childhood were bad. They took out my will and put in their own. I wanted to do a good action by looking after Mart, but you wouldn’t let me—”

  “So everything’s my fault, is that what you’re saying?”

  “—and they wouldn’t let me because they want the shed to themselves. They want me, and it’s because of me that they can exist. It’s because of me that they can go on the way they do, Aitkenside and Keef Capstick as well as Morris, and Bob Fox and Pikey Pete. What can you do? You’re only human, you think they’ll play by earthside rules. But the strong thing about airside is that it has no rules. Not any we can understand. So they have the advantage there. And the bottom line is, Colette, there are more of them than us.”

  Colette pulled into the drive. It was half-past nine, not quite dark.

  “I can’t believe we’re home so early,” Al said.

  “We cut it short, didn’t we?”

  “You could hardly expect Cara to go on. She was too upset.”

  “Cara gets on my tits. She’s a wimp.”

  Al said, “You ask why I have an evil spirit guide, instead of an angel. You might as well ask, why do I have you for my assistant, instead of somebody nice?”

  “Manager,” Colette said.

  As they stepped out of the car, Pikey Paul, Mrs. Etchell’s spirit guide, was weeping on the paving by the dwarf conifers that divided them from Evan next door.

  “Pikey Paul!” Al said. “It’s years since I seen you!”

  “Hello, Alison dear,” sniffed the spirit guide. “Here I am, alone in this wicked world. Play your tape when you get in. She’s left you a few kindly sentiments, if you want to hear them.”

  “I’m sure I shall!” Alison cried. She sounded, in her own ears, like someone else; someone from an earlier time. “Why, Paul,” she cried, “the sequins is all fell off your jacket!”

  Colette removed Al’s portrait from the boot of the car. “They’re right,” she said. “You need to get this picture redone. No point in fighting reality, is there?”

  “I don’t know,” Al said to her: temporizing. Said Paul, “You might fetch out a needle and a scarlet thread, darling girl, then I can stitch up my glad rags and be on my way to my next post of duties.”

  “Oh, Pikey Paul,” she said, “do you never rest?” and “Never,” he said. “I’m on my way to link up with a psychic in Wolverhampton, would you know anyone who could give me a lift up the M6?”

  “Your nephew is around here somewhere,” she said.

  “Never speak of Pete, he’s lost to me,” said Paul. “I want no truck with his criminal ways.”

  She stood by the car, her hand resting on its roof, her face entranced.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Colette said.

  “I was listening,” she said. “Mrs. Etchells has passed.”

  Torches crept over Admiral Drive. It was the Neighbourhood Watch, beginning their evening search among the cow parsley meadows that led to the canal, for any poor wastrels or refugees who had grubbed in for the night.

  Colette played the messages on the answering machine; several clients wanting to set up readings, and Mandy’s cool level voice … . “on a trolley in the corridor … didn’t linger … mercy really … given your name as next of kin.” Once she had shot her first draught of sauvignon blanc down her throat, she wandered into the sitting room to see what Al was doing. The tape recorder was in action, emitting chirps and coughs.

  “Want a drink?” Colette said.

  “Brandy.”

  “In this heat?”

  Al nodded. “Mrs. E,” she said, “what’s it like there?”

  “It’s interactive?” Colette asked.

  “Of course it is.” She repeated, “Mrs. E, what’s it like in Spirit?”

  “Aldershot.”

  “It’s like Aldershot?”

  “It’s like home, that’s what it’s like. I’ve just looked out of the window and it’s all happening, there’s the living and there’s the dead, there’s your mum reeling down the road with a squaddie on her arm, and they’re heading for hers to do the unmentionable.”

  “But they’ve demolished those houses, Mrs. Etchells. You must have been past, you only live down the road. I went past last year, Colette drove me. Where my mum used to live, it’s a big car showroom now.”

  “Well, pardon me,” said Mrs. Etchells, “but it’s not demolished on this side. On this side it looks the same as ever.”

  Ali
son felt hope drain away. “And the bath still in the garden, is it?”

  “And the downstairs bay got a bit of cardboard in the corner where Bob Fox tapped on it too hard.”

  “So it’s all still going on? Just the way it used to?”

  “No change that I can see.”

  “Mrs. Etchells, can you have a look round the back?”

  “I suppose I could.” There was a pause. Mrs. Etchell’s breathing was laboured. Al glanced at Colette. She had flung herself onto the sofa; she wasn’t hearing anything. “Rough ground,” Mrs. Etchells reported. “There’s a van parked.”

  “And the outbuildings?”

  “Still there. Falling down, they’ll do somebody a damage.”

  “And the caravan?”

  “Yes, the caravan.”

  “And the dog runs?”

  “Yes, the dog runs. Though I don’t see any dogs.”

  Got rid of the dogs, Al thought: why?

  “It all looks much the same as I remember,” Mrs. Etchells said, “not that I was in the business of frequenting the back of Emmeline Cheetham’s house, it wasn’t a safe place for an old woman on her own.”

  “Mrs. Etchells—listen now—you see the van? The van parked? Could you have a peep inside?”

  “Hold on,” Mrs. Etchells said. More heavy breathing. Colette picked up the remote and began to flick through the TV channels.

  “The windows are filthy,” Mrs. Etchells reported.

  “What can you see?”

  “I can see an old blanket. There’s something wrapped up in it.” She chuckled. “Blow me if there isn’t a hand peeping out.”

  The dead are like that; cold-blooded. Nothing squeamish left in them, no sensitivities.

  “Is it my hand?” Al said.

  “Well is it, I wonder?” Mrs. Etchells said. “Is it a little chubby baby hand, I wonder now?”

  Colette complained, “It’s like this every summer. Nothing but repeats.”

  “Don’t torment me, Mrs. E.”

  “No, it looks like a grown-up woman’s hand to me.”

  Al said, “Could it be Gloria?”

  “It could at that. Now here’s a special message for you, Alison dear. Keith Capstick has got his balls armour-plated now, you’ll not be able to get at ’em this time. He says you can hack away all bloody day, with your scissors, carving knife or whatever you bloody got, but you’ll not get anywhere. Excuse my language, but I feel bound to give you his very words.”

  Alison clicked off the tape. “I need a breath,” she said to Colette. “A breath of air.”

  “I expect there’ll have to be a funeral,” Colette remarked.

  “I expect so. I don’t suppose the council will agree to take her away.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. If we doubled her up and put her in a black bag.”

  “Don’t. It’s not funny.”

  “You started it.” Colette made a face behind her back. Alison thought, I have seen, or I have dreamed of, a woman’s body parts wrapped in newspaper. I have seen men’s hands smeared with something glutinous and brown as they unloaded parcels from the back of the van, wobbling packages of dog meat. I have heard a voice behind me say, fuck, Emmie, got to wash me hands. I have looked up, and where I thought I would see my own face in the mirror, I saw the face of Morris Warren.

  She went out into the garden. It was now quite dark. Evan approached the fence, with a flashlight. “Alison? We had the police out earlier.”

  Her heart lurched. She heard a low chuckle from behind her; it seemed to be at knee height. She didn’t turn, but the hair on her arms stiffened.

  “Michelle thought she saw somebody snooping about your shed. You had that tramp, didn’t you, broke in? She thought it might be him again. Take no chances, so she called them out. Constable Delingbole came in person.”

  “Yes? And?”

  “He checked it over. Couldn’t see anything. But you can’t be too careful, when you’ve got kids. That type want locking away.”

  “Definitely.”

  “I’d throw away the key.”

  “Oh, so would I.”

  She stood waiting, her hands joined at her waist, the picture of patient formality, as if she were Her Majesty waiting for him to bow out of her presence.

  “I’ll be getting in, then,” Evan said. But he shot her a backward glance as he crossed his balding lawn.

  Alison turned and stooped over a large terra-cotta pot. Bending her back, she heaved it aside, managing only to roll it a few inches. The gravel beneath appeared undisturbed; that is to say, no one had dug it up. She straightened up, rubbing the small of her back. “Morris,” she said, “don’t play silly beggars.” She heard a scuffling; then the chuckle again, faintly muffled by the soil, coming from the very depths of the pot.

  twelve

  Next morning, when she was eating her lo-salt cornflakes with skimmed milk, Morris put his head around the door. “Have you seen Keith Capstick?” he asked. “Have you seen MacArthur? He has a false eye and his earlobe chewed off, and he wears a knitted weskit? Have you seen Mr. Donald Aitkenside?”

  “I think I’d know them if I saw them.” The skin of her entire body crept at the sight of him, as if there were a million ants walking under her clothes; but she wasn’t going to let him know she was scared. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” she said. “Anyway, why the formality? What’s this about Mister Aitkenside?”

  Morris puffed up his chest, and tried to straighten his buckled legs. “Aitkenside’s got made up to management. Aren’t you informate with our new terms of employment? We’ve all got our training under our belt and we’ve all been issued wiv notebooks and pencils. Mr. Aitkenside’s got certificates, too. So we’re supposed to be foregathering.”

  “Foregathering where?”

  “Here is as good as any.”

  “What brings you back, Morris?”

  “What brings me back? I have got a mission. I have got a big job on. I have got taken on a project. You’ve got to retrain these days. You’ve got to update yourself. You don’t want to go getting made redundant. There’s no such thing anymore as a job for life.”

  Colette came in with the post in her hand. “Usual catalogues and junk mail,” she said. “Mayan calendar workshop, no thanks … . Shamanic requisites by return … . What about mixed seeds from Nature’s Cauldron? Henbane, wolfsbane, skullcap, hemlock?”

  “Some might blow over to next door.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. By the way, do you know you’re on the phone from eleven till three?”

  Al groaned. Morris, squatting before the empty marble hearth, glanced up at her and began to roll up his sleeves.

  “And we’ve had a call from those people near Gloucester, saying are you going on the Plutonic symbolism weekend? Only they need to know how many to cater for.” She laughed nastily. “And of course, they count you double.”

  “I’m not sure I want to go away by myself.”

  “Count me out, anyway. They say it’s in an idyllic location. That means no shops.” She flicked through the letters. “Do you do exorcisms for eating disorders?”

  “Pass it on to Cara.”

  “Will you go over to Twyford? There’s a woman got a loose spirit in her loft. It’s rattling around and she can’t get to sleep.”

  “I don’t feel up to it.”

  “You’re entitled to postpone things if you’ve had a bereavement. I’ll call her and explain, about Mrs. Etchells.”

  A light blinked at Al from a corner of the room. She turned her eyes and it was gone. Morris was scuttling fast across the carpet, swinging on his knuckles like an ape. As he moved, the light moved with him, a crimson ripple, sinuous, like an exposed vein; it was Morris’s snake tattoo, lit and pulsing, slithering along his forearm as if it had a life of its own.

  “Tee-hee,” Morris chuckled. She remembered what Mrs. Etchells had said: “They’ve got modifications. It turned me up.”

  Colette said, “Are you havi
ng that yogurt or not?”

  “I’ve lost my appetite.” Al put her spoon down.

  She phoned her mum. The phone rang for a long time, and then after it was picked up there was a scuffling, scraping sound. “Just pulling up a chair,” Emmie said. “Now then, who is it and what can I do for you?”

  “It’s me. I thought you’d like to know my grandma’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  “My grandma. Mrs. Etchells.”

  Emmie laughed. “That old witch. You thought she was your grandma?”

  “Yes. She told me so.”

  “She told everybody that! All the kids. She wanted to get ’em in her house, captive bloody audience, innit, while she goes on about how she’s had bouquets and whatnot, little op, chain of love, then when the time’s right she’s offering ’em around the district to all comers. I should know, she bloody offered me. Same with you, only the lads got in early.”

  “Now just stop there. You’re saying my grandmother was a—” She broke off. She couldn’t find the right word. “You’re saying my grandmother was as bad as you?”

  “Grandmother my arse.”

  “But Derek—listen, Derek was my dad, wasn’t he?”

  “He could of been,” her mother said vaguely. “I think I done it with Derek. Ask Aitkenside, he knows who I done it with. But Derek wasn’t her son, anyway. He was just some kid she took in to run errands for her.”

  Al closed her eyes tight. “Errands? But all these years, Mum. You let me think—”

  “I didn’t tell you what to think. Up to you what you thought. I told you to mind your own business. How do I know if I done it with Derek? I done it with loads of blokes. Well, you had to.”

  “Why did you have to?” Alison said balefully.

  “You wouldn’t ask that question if you were in my shoes,” Emmie said. “You wouldn’t have the cheek.”

  “I’m going to come over there,” Al said. “I want to put a few straight questions to you. About your past. And mine.”