Beyond Black: A Novel (45 page)

“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.”

Alison 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 having 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.”

Her mother shouted, “You hear that, Gloria? She’s coming over. Better bake a cake, eh? Better get the fancy doilies out.”

“Oh, you’re not on that again, are you?” Al’s voice was weary. “I thought we’d got Gloria out of our lives twenty years ago.”

“So did I, pardon me, till she turned up on me doorstep the other night. I never had such a thunderclap. I says, Gloria! and she says, hello, and I says, you’ve not changed a bit, and she says, I can’t say the same for you, she says, give us a fag, I says, how’d you track me down in Bracknell? She says—”

“Oh, Mum!” Alison yelled. “She’s 
dead
!”

I said it, she thought, I uttered the word no Sensitive ever uses: well hardly ever. I didn’t say passed, I didn’t say gone over, I said dead, and I said it because I believe that when it comes to dead, Gloria is deader than most of us, deader than most of the people who claim to be dead: in my nightmares since I was a child she is cut apart, parcelled out, chewed up.

There was a silence. “Mum? You still there?”

“I know,” said Emmie, in a small voice. “I know she’s dead. I just forget, is all.”

“I want you to remember. I want you to stop talking to her. Because it’s driving me round the twist and it always did. It’s not as if you made a living out of it. So there’s no use fooling yourself. You may as well get it straight and keep it straight.”

“I have.” Emmie sounded cowed. “I have, Alison. I will.”

“So do you want to come to Mrs. Etchells’s service?”

“Why?” Emmie was mystified. “Is she getting married?”

“We’re burying her, Mum. I told you. Cremating. Whatever. We don’t know what her wishes would have been. I was hoping you could shed some light, but obviously not. Then as soon as that’s over, I’m coming to see you, and we’re going to sit down and have a heart-to-heart. I don’t think you’re fit to live on your own. Colette says you should be living in a warden-assisted bungalow. She says we ought to make you a care plan.”