Beyond Black: A Novel (8 page)

It was the tarot that started her off. Before that she had been just like everybody, reading her horoscope in the morning paper. She wouldn’t have described herself as superstitious or interested in the occult in any way. The next book she bought—from a different bookshop—was 
An Encyclopedia of the Psychic Arts.
 Occult, she discovered, meant hidden. She was beginning to feel that everything of interest was hidden. And none of it in the obvious places; don’t, for example, look in trousers.

She had left that original tarot pack in the boy’s room, inadvertently. She wondered if he had ever taken it out and looked at the pictures; whether he ever thought of her, a mysterious stranger, a passing Queen of Hearts. She thought of buying another set, but what she read in the handbook baffled and bored her. Seventy-eight cards! Better employ someone qualified to read them for you. She began to visit a woman in Isleworth, but it turned out that her specialty was the crystal ball. The object sat between them on a black velvet cloth; she had expected it to be clear, because that’s what they said, crystal-clear, but to look into it was like looking into a cloud bank or into drifting fog.

“The clear ones are glass, dear,” the Sensitive explained. “You won’t get anything from those.” She rested her veined hands on the black velvet. “It’s the flaws that are vital,” she said. “The flaws are what you pay for. You will find some readers who prefer the black mirror. That is an option, of course.”

Colette raised her eyebrows.

“Onyx,” the woman said. “The best are beyond price. The more you look—but you have to know how to look—the more you see stirring in the depths.”

Colette asked straight out and heard that her crystal ball had set her back 500 pounds. “And then only because I have a special friend.” The psychic gained, in Colette’s eyes, a deal of prestige. She was avid to part with her 20 pounds for the reading. She drank in everything the woman said, and when she hit the Isleworth pavement, moss growing between its cracks, she was unable to remember a word of it.

She consulted a palmist a few times, and had her horoscope cast. Then she had Gavin’s done. She wasn’t sure that his chart was valid, because she couldn’t specify the time of his birth. “What do you want to know that for?” he’d said, when she asked him. She said it was of general interest to her, and he glared at her with extreme suspicion.

“I suppose you don’t know, do you?” she said. “I could ring your mum.”

“I very much doubt,” he’d said, “that my mother would have retained that piece of useless information, her brain being somewhat overburdened in my opinion with things like where is my plastic washball for my Persil, and what is the latest development in bloody 
EastEnders
.”

The astrologer was unfazed by her ignorance. “Round it up,” he said, “round it down. Twelve noon is what we use. We always do it for animals.”

“For animals?” she’d said. “They have their horoscope done, do they?”

“Oh, certainly. It’s a valuable service, you see, for the caring owner who has a problem with a pet. Imagine, for instance, if you kept falling off your horse. You’d need to know, is this an ideal pairing? It could be a matter of life or death.”

“And do people know when their horse was born?”

“Frankly, no. That’s why we have a strategy to approximate. And as for your partner—if we say noon that’s fine, but we then need latitude and longitude—so where do we imagine Hubby first saw the light of day?”

Colette sniffed. “He won’t say.”

“Probably a Scorpio ascendant there. Controls by disinformation. Or could be Pisces. Makes mysteries where none needed. Just joking! Relax and think back for me. His mummy must have dropped a hint at some point. Where exactly did the dear chap pop out, into this breathing world scarce half made up?”

“He grew up in Uxbridge. But you know, she might have had him in hospital.”

“So it could have been anywhere along the A40?”

“Could we just say, London?”

“We’ll put him on the meridian. Always a wise choice.”

After this incident, she found it difficult to regard Gavin as fully human. He was standardized on zero degrees longitude and twelve noon, like some bucking bronco, or a sad mutt with no pedigree. She did call his mum, one evening when she’d had a half bottle of wine and was feeling perverse.

“Renee, is that you?” she said.

Renee said, “How did you get my name?”

“It’s me,” she said, and Renee replied. “I’ve got replacement windows, and replacement doors. I’ve got a conservatory and the loft conversion’s coming next week. I never give to charity, thank you, and I’ve planned my holiday for this year, and I had a new kitchen when you were last in my area.”

“It’s about Gavin,” she said. “It’s me, Colette. I need to know when he was born.”

“Take my name off your list,” her mother-in-law said. “And if you must call me, could you not call during my programme? It’s one of my few remaining pleasures.” There was a pause, as if she were going to put the receiver down. Then she spoke again. “Not that I need any others. I’ve had my suite recovered. I have a spa bath already. And a case of vintage wine. And a stair lift to help me keep my independence. Have you got that? Are you taking notice? Bugger off.”

Click.

Colette held the phone. Daughter-in-law of fourteen months, spurned by 
his
 mother. She replaced the receiver, and walked into the kitchen. She stood by the double sink, mastering herself. “Gavin,” she called, “do you want peas or green beans?”

There was no answer. She stalked into the sitting room. Gavin, his bare feet on the sofa arm, was reading
What Car?

“Peas or green beans?” she asked.

No reply.

“
Gavin
!” she said.

“With wot?”

“Cutlets.”

“What’s that?”

“Lamb. Lamb chops.”

“Okay,” he said. “Whatever. Both.”

“You can’t.” Her voice shook. “Two green veg, you can’t.”

“Who says?”

“Your mother,” she said; she felt she could say anything, as he never listened.

“When?”

“Just now on the phone.”

“My mother was on the phone?”

“Just now.”

“Bloody amazing.” He shook his head and flicked over a page.

“Why? Why should it be?”

“Because she’s dead.”

“What? Renee?” Colette sat down on the sofa arm: later, when she told the story, she would say, well, at that point, my legs went from under me. But she would never be able to recapture the sudden fright, the weakness that ran through her body, her anger, her indignation, the violent exasperation that possessed her. She said, “What the hell do you mean, she’s dead?”

“It happened this morning. My sis rang. Carole.”

“Is this a joke? I need to know. Is this a joke? Because if it is, Gavin, I’ll kneecap you.”

Gavin raised his eyebrows, as if to say, why would it be funny?

“I didn’t suggest it was,” she said at once: why wait for him to speak? “I asked if it was 
your idea
 of a joke.”

“God help anybody who made a joke around here.”

Colette laid her hand on her rib cage, behind which something persistently fluttered. She stood up. She walked into the kitchen. She stared at the ceiling. She took a deep breath. She came back. “Gavin?”

“Mm?”

“She’s really dead?”

“Mm.”

She wanted to hit him. “How?”

“Heart.”

“Oh, God! Have you no feeling? You can sit there, going peas or beans—”

“You went that,” he said reasonably.

“Weren’t you going to tell me? If I hadn’t said, your mother was on the phone—”

Gavin yawned. “What’s the hurry? I’d have told you.”

“You mean you might just have mentioned it? When you got around to it? When would that have been?”

“After the food.” She gaped at him. He said, with some dignity, “I can’t mention when I’m hungry.”

Colette bunched her fingers into fists, and held them at chest height. She was short of breath, and the flutter inside her chest had subdued to a steady thump. At the same time an uneasy feeling filled her, that anything she could do was inadequate; she was performing someone else’s gestures, perhaps from an equivalent TV moment where news of a sudden death is received. But what are the proper gestures when a ghost’s been on the phone? She didn’t know. “Please. Gavin,” she said. “Put down 
What Car?
 Just … look at me, will you? Now tell me what happened.”

“Nothing.” He threw the magazine down. “Nothing happened.”

“But where was she? Was she at home?”

“No. Getting her shopping. In Safeway. Apparently.”

“And?”

Gavin rubbed his forehead. He seemed to be making an honest effort. “I suppose she was pushing her trolley.”

“Was she on her own?”

“Dunno. Yes.”

“And then?”

“She fell over.”

“She didn’t die there, did she? In the aisle?”

“Nah, they got her to the hospital. So no worries about the death certificate.”

“What a relief,” she said grimly.

Carole, it seemed, was proposing to get the bungalow on the market as soon as possible, with Sidgewick and Staff, who for sole agency charged 2 percent on completion, and promised unlimited colour advertising and national tie-ins. “There should be a good payout,” he said. “The place is worth a few quid.”

That was why, he explained, he was reading the new edition of 
What Car?
 Renee’s will would bring him nearer to what he most coveted in life, which was a Porsche 911.

“Aren’t you upset?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “We’ve all got to go, haven’t we? What’s it to you? It’s not as if you ever bothered with her.”

“And she lived in a bungalow, Renee?”

“’Course she did.” Gavin picked up his magazine and rolled it up in his hands, as if she were a wasp and he was going to swat her. “We went over for our lunch, that Sunday.”

“No, we didn’t. We never went.”

“Only because you kept cancelling us.”

It was true. She’d hoped she could keep Renee at arm’s length; the wedding reception had proved her to have a coarse joke habit and slipping false teeth. The teeth weren’t all that was false. “She told me,” she said to Gavin, “that she had a stair lift installed. Which, if she lived in a bungalow, she couldn’t have.”

“When? When did she tell you that?”

“On the phone just now.”

“Hello? Hello? Anyone at home?” Gavin asked. “Are you ever stupid? I told you she’s dead.”

Alerted by the mutiny on her face, he rose from the sofa and slapped her with 
What Car?
 She picked up the Yellow Pages and threatened to take out his eye. After he had slunk off to bed, hugging his expectations, she went back into the kitchen and grilled the cutlets. The peas and green beans she fed to the waste disposal; she hated vegetables. She ate the lamb with her fingers, her teeth scraping the bone. Her tongue came out, and licked the last sweetness from the meat. She couldn’t work out what was worse, that Renee had answered the phone after she was dead, or that she had answered the phone on purpose to lie to her and tell her to bugger off. She threw the bones down the waste disposal too, and rejoiced as the grinder laboured. She rinsed her fingers and wiped them on a kitchen roll.

In the bedroom, she inspected Gavin, spread-eagled across the available space. He was naked and snoring; his mag, rolled, was thrust under his pillow. That, she thought, is how much it means to him: the death of his only mother. She stood frowning down at him; her toe touched something hard and cold. It was a glass tumbler, lolling on its side, melted ice dribbling from its mouth onto the carpet. She picked it up. The breath of spirits hit her nostrils, and made her flinch. She walked into the kitchen and clicked the tumbler down on the draining board. In the dark tiny hall, she hauled Gavin’s laptop from its case. She lugged it into the sitting room and plugged it into the mains. She copied the files she thought might interest her, and erased his crucial data for tomorrow. In terms of life documentation, Gavin was less than some animal. He routinely misled her: but was it any wonder? What sort of upbringing could he have had, from a woman with false teeth who told lies after she was dead?

She left the machine humming, and went back into the bedroom. She opened the wardrobe and went through Gavin’s pockets. The word “rifled” came to her: “she rifled through his pockets.” He stirred once or twice in his sleep, reared up, snorted, collapsed back onto the mattress. I could kill him, she thought, as he lies here, or just maim him if I liked. She found a bunch of credit card receipts in his knicker drawer; her index finger shuffled through them. She found newspaper ads for sex lines: 
Spicy lesbo chicks!

She packed a bag. Surely he would wake? Drawers clicked, opening and shutting. She glanced over her shoulder. Gavin stirred, made a sort of whinny, and settled back again into sleep. She reached down to unplug her hair dryer, wrapped the flex around her hand, and stood thinking. She was entitled to half the equity in the flat; if he would embrace the car loan, she would continue paying off the wedding. She hesitated for a final moment. Her foot was on the wet patch the ice had left. Automatically she plucked a tissue from an open box and blotted the the carpet. Her fingers squeezed, the paper reduced itself to wet pulp. She walked away, brushing her hands together to jettison it.

Gavin’s screen saver had come up. Colette slotted a floppy into his drive, and overwrote his programs. She had heard of women who, before departing, scissored up their husband’s clothes. But Gavin’s clothes, in their existing state, were punishment enough. She had heard of women who performed castration; but she didn’t want to go to jail. No, let’s see how he gets on without his bits and bytes, she thought. With one keystroke, she wrecked his operating system.

She went down to the south coast to see a noted psychometrist, Natasha. She didn’t know then, of course, that Natasha would figure in her later life. At the time, it was just another hope she grappled with, a hope of making sense of herself; it was just another item in her strained monthly budget.

The flat was two blocks back from the sea. She parked with difficulty and at some distance. She wasted time looking for the street numbers. When she found the right door she rang the bell and spoke into the intercom: “I’m your eleven-thirty.”