Beyond Black: A Novel (37 page)

“Do you think we’d get a bed in here?” Mart asked, when she took him down his flask.

Al said, “Maybe a futon,” but then she could have bitten her tongue.

“I should of thought to bring a sun lounger, from the garden centre,” Mart said. “I know!” He struck his hat with the flat of his hand. “A hammock! That would do me.”

“Mart,” she said, “are you sure you haven’t got a criminal record? Because I couldn’t be responsible, I couldn’t take a chance, I’d have to tell somebody, you see. You’d have to go.”

“My dad beat my head in with a piece of pipe,” Mart said. “Does that count?”

“No,” she said. “You’re the victim. That doesn’t count.” Severe blows to the skull, she thought. Colette thinks they’re very significant. She asked me about them once, on tape. I didn’t know why at the time. I realize now she thought they might have been the beginning of my abnormality.

“Though it was my step-dad, you know? I always thought it was my dad but my mum said not. No, she said, he’s your step.”

“How many step-dads did you have?”

“A few.”

“Me too.”

It was a warm day; they were sitting on the garden chairs, the door propped open slightly to give them some air. “Good thing we went for one with a window that opens,” Al said. “Or you’d be stifled.”

“But then again, not,” Mart said. “For reasons of them surveying me, peeking in and tipping off the Big D.”

“But then again, not,” she agreed. “I thought of getting curtains, at one time.”

One of the next-door children darted out of the playhouse, shrieking. Al stood up and watched her scoot across the lawn, skid to a halt, and sink her teeth into her brother’s calf. “Ouch!” Al said; she winced as if she had felt the wound herself.

“Mummy, Mummy!” the infant yelled.

Mart banged the shed door and dropped on all fours. Michelle’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “I’m coming out there, by God I am, and there’ll be slaps all round.”

“Get down,” Mart pulled her skirt. “Don’t let her see you.”

“Bite him,” Michelle roared, “and I’ll bloody bite you.”

They knelt on the floor together. Mart was trembling. Al felt she ought to pray.

“Oh Jesus!” Mart said. Tears sprang out of his eyes. He lurched into her. She supported his weight. Sagging against her, he was made of bones and scraps; his flesh breathed the odour of well-rotted manure.

“There, there,” she murmured. She patted his hat. Michelle shot across the scabby turf, the baby on her arm and her teeth bared.

Colette answered her cell phone, and a voice said, “Guess who?”

She guessed at once. What other man would be phoning her? “Haven’t seen you since we ran into you coming out of Elphicks.”

“What?” Gavin said. He sounded dumbstruck, as if she had cursed him.

“The shop,” she said. “In Farnham. That Saturday?”

“Out of 
what
?”

“Elphicks. Why do you have such trouble, Gavin, with the ordinary names of things?”

A pause. Gavin said uneasily, “You mean that’s what it’s called? That department store?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

She said, “God give me strength.” Then, “Perhaps you should end this call and we could start again?”

“If you like,” Gavin said. “Okay.” His line went dead. She waited. Her phone buzzed. “Gavin? Hello?”

“Colette? It’s me,” he said.

“What a nice surprise.”

“Is it okay to talk to you now?”

“Yes.”

“Were you busy, or something?”

“Let’s just forget you called me before. Let’s just have another go, and I won’t mention where I last saw you.”

“If that’s what you want,” Gavin said airily. His tone showed he thought her capricious in the extreme. “But why couldn’t you talk, was it because 
she
 was around? You know, Fat Girl?”

“If you mean Alison, she’s out. She’s gone for a walk.”

Even as Colette said it, it sounded unlikely to her, but that was what Alison had said she was doing.

“So you can talk?”

“Look, Gavin, what do you want?”

“Just checking up on you. Seeing how you’re doing.”

“Fine. I’m fine. And how are you doing?” Really, she thought, I’m losing patience with this.

He said, “I’m seeing somebody. I thought you should know.”

“It’s no concern of mine, Gavin.”

But she thought, how odd of him to get it right for once. I may not need to know, but I want to know, of course I want to know. I want her CV, her salary details, and a recent full-length photograph with her body measurements written on the back, so that I can work out what she’s got that’s so much better than me.

“What’s her name?”

“Zoë.”

“That won’t last. Far too classy for you. Is it serious?” It must be, she thought, or he wouldn’t be telling me. “Where did you meet her? Is she in IT?” She must be, of course. Who else did he meet?

“Actually,” he said, “she’s a model.”

“Really?” Colette’s voice was cold. She almost said, a model what? She stood up. “Look, I can see Alison coming back. I have to go.”

She cut off the call. Alison was lumbering up the hill. Colette stood watching her, the phone still in her hand. Why’s she wearing that big coat? Her temperature control must be shot again. She says it’s spirits but I bet it’s just an early menopause. Look at her! The size of her! Fat Girl!

When Al came in Colette was standing in the hall waiting for her. Her face was savage. “I suppose it’s something, that you’re taking a bit of exercise!”

Alison nodded. She was out of breath.

“You were practically on your knees, by the time you got halfway up the hill—you should have seen yourself! How far have you waddled, about a mile? You’ll have to be sprinting that distance, with weights attached to you, before you see any improvement. Look at you, puffing and sweating!”

Obedient, Al glanced at herself in the hall mirror. There was a flicker of movement; that’s Mart, she thought, scooting out of the side gate.

Alison went into the kitchen and out of the back door. She unbuttoned her coat, and—listening out all the time for Colette—disentangled herself from the two supermarket carrier bags that were swinging like saddlebags at her sides. She placed her surreptitious groceries behind the wheelie bin, came in, and shrugged off the coat.

It’s like being a reverse shoplifter, she thought. You get to the checkout with your cart and you pay for everything; then, when you get outside, you open your coat and start concealing the bags about your person. People stare at you, but you stare back. If they asked you why you were doing it, what would you say? You can’t think of a single good reason, except that you want to do a good action.

It had come to this: either she ate, or Mart did. I’ll have to explain to him, she thought. How Colette checks up on me all the time. How she controls the groceries. How she shouted, the day you came, when she finally stock-taked the fridge and realized two eggs were missing. How she accused me of eating them boiled and made me ashamed, even though I never ate them, you did. How she supervises every minute of my day. How I can’t just go freelance shopping. How, if I took the car, she’d want to know where. And if I drove off by myself, she’d want to know why.

She thought, on Friday at Sainsbury’s they have twenty-four-hour opening. So I could sneak out when she was asleep. Not ordinary asleep, that wouldn’t do. I’d have to get her drunk. She imagined herself wedging a plastic funnel into Colette’s open throat, and pouring chardonnay through it. I could take the car, she thought, if backing it out of the drive wouldn’t wake her. Probably that would only work if I drugged her. Beat her into insensibility. Come here, she thought: would you like a slap with this shovel?

But really, he must be gone by weekend. I’ll tell him. Even if she doesn’t form the ambition to rehone the forks and the hoes, those water-feature people will be around again early next week.

She locked the back door. She crossed the kitchen, stood at the sink and downed a glass of water. All quiet on the shed front; the door was closed, the ground undisturbed. She refilled her glass. Quick, quick, she thought, before she comes in and says tap-water can kill you, quick, before she says drinking too fast is a notorious cause of death in the obese.

She was aware that the Collingwood was silent.

She went into the hall. “Colette?”

No answer. But from above she heard a bleating, a little trail of bleating that grew louder as she followed it upstairs.

She stood outside Colette’s door. She is lying on her bed sobbing, she thought. But why? Can she have regretted what she said to me, about my personal fatness? Has a lifetime of tactlessness flashed before her eyes? This didn’t seem likely. Colette didn’t think she was tactless. She thought she was right.

Whatever, Al thought. Now is my opportunity. While her emotions are detaining her, I will just sneak down the garden and distribute my haul to Mart. Or, as he’s gone out, I will leave it inside his door, for him to find as a happy surprise when he returns.

Yesterday she had taken him three oranges. He had not been impressed when she had explained that she could get away with oranges, by claiming to have juiced them. He had hinted that he preferred a steak, but she couldn’t see her way to setting up cooking facilities. So he was getting tinned tuna, that sort of thing. She hoped he would appreciate that tins were extremely heavy.

She creaked down the stairs, away from Colette and her grief: whatever that was. At the foot of the stairs, she saw herself, unavoidably, in the glass. Her face looked as pink as a ham. She thought, I could have got him sliced cold meat, I bet that would have been lighter, though of course it being warm weather he’d have to eat it all the same day. At least, this way, I’ve built him up a little store that he can put in his rucksack, when he leaves.

She opened the back door, tottered out, reached behind the wheelie bin. The bags had gone. Mart must have darted back, crouching low, and swooped them up on his way in. In which case I hope he’s got strong teeth, she thought, as I didn’t buy him a can opener.

By close of day, Colette had not come down; but all it would take, Al thought, is a casual glance from her bedroom window, as Mart flits across the lawn by moonlight. Why don’t I just give him some money to set him on his way? I can’t afford more than, say, a hundred pounds, or Colette will want to know where I drew it out and what I spent it on. She will be quite pleasant about it, knowing I have the right, but she’ll be curious all the same.

When it was almost dark, she stepped out of the sliding doors.

“Alison? Is that you?” Michelle was waving.

Who else did she think it was? Reluctantly, she moved towards the fence.

“Lean over,” Michelle said. “I want to whisper to you. Have you heard about this plague of rabbit deaths?”

She shook her head.

“It’s very strange, you see. Not that I have any time personally for rabbits; I wouldn’t have any pets near my kids because they spread all sorts of toxicosis. But these little ones at the nursery, they’re crying their eyes out. They go down the garden to feed it and it’s keeled over in its hutch with a horrible trickle of black blood coming out of its mouth.”

I suppose, Al thought, me keeping Mart in the shed, it’s like being a kid again, doing things behind people’s backs, stealing food, all that stuff I used to do; running to the corner with any money I got. It’s a game really, it’s like that dolls’ tea party I wanted. We have a lot in common, she thought, me and Mart, it’s like having a little brother. She had noticed that Mart was always falling over; that was because of his medication. She thought, my mum, too, she was always falling over.

“So what do the vets say?” she asked Michelle.

“They just say, oh, rabbits, what do you expect? They try to put it on what they’ve been eating, a bad diet. They blame you, don’t they, the owner? That’s how they get around it. Evan says personally he has no time for rabbits either, but it’s very worrying, in the light of what’s going down with the playground. And the vets denying it, you see. He wonders if they know something we don’t.”

Oh dear, she said. They ought to hold postmortems, maybe. She couldn’t think what else to say. Got to go, she said; as she limped away from the fence, Michelle called, will the warm weather last till weekend?

By eight o’clock Al was beginning to feel very hungry. Colette didn’t show any sign of coming down and supervising her dinner. She crept upstairs to listen. More and more, this evening reminded her of her youth. The need to tip-toe, listen at doors: sighs and groans from other rooms. “Colette?” she called softly. “I need you to do my calories.”

No reply. She eased the door open. “Colette?”

“Go and eat yourself to death,” Colette said. “What do I care?”

She was lying face down on the bed. She looked very flat. She looked very out-of-it. Alison drew the door closed, in a manner so quiet that she hoped it showed her complete respect for Colette’s state of mind, so quiet that it offered condolences.

She crept down the garden. The moon had not yet turned the corner above the Mountbatten at the curve of the road, and she wasn’t clear where she was putting her feet. She felt she ought to knock, but that’s ridiculous, she thought, knock at your own shed?

She inched open the door. Mart was sitting in the dark. He had a torch, and batteries, but they were the wrong size; something else for my shopping list, she thought. She could have fixed him up with a candle, but she didn’t trust him not to start a fire.

“Get your shopping?”

“What shopping? I’m ravenous in here. Fainting.”

“I’m giving you fifty quid,” Al said. “Sneak off into Knaphill, will you, and get a takeaway Chinese? Get me a set menu for two, and whatever you want for yourself. Keep the change.”

When Mart left, diving low under the light sensors, she tried to make herself comfortable in the canvas garden chair. The earth was cooling, beneath their hardstanding; she lifted her feet and tried to tuck them beneath her, but the chair threatened to overbalance; she had to sit up straight, metal digging into her back, and plant her feet back on the ground. She thought, I wonder what happened to the shopping?