Beyond Black: A Novel (14 page)

Something drew her attention, and she stopped in her paces, and glanced up. She could see men going to and fro from the garages, carrying boxes.

“Hi-ya!” she said. She waved to them. She was sure they were men she knew.

But then a minute later she thought they were men she didn’t know. It was hard to tell. They kept their faces turned away. A sick feeling crept over her. Silent, faces downcast, the men moved over the tussocky grass. Silent, faces downcast, they passed the boxes. She couldn’t judge the distance from herself to them; it was as if the light had grown more thick and dense. She took a step forward, but she knew she should not. Her dirty nails dug into the palms of her hands. Sick came up into her throat. She swallowed it and it burned. Very slowly, she turned her head away. She took one plodding step towards the house. Then another. Air thick as mud clotted around her ankles. She had some idea of what was in the boxes, but as she stepped inside the house it slipped clear from her mind, like a drug slipping from a syringe and deep into a vein.

Her mother was in the lean-to, nattering away to Gloria. “Excuse me, will you,” she said affably, “while I just see if this child wants a clip around the ear?” She turned around and glared at her daughter. “Look at you,” she said. “Wash your face, you’re all running in sweat, you bloody turn me up. I was never like that at your age, I was a neat little thing, I had to be, I wouldn’t have made a living if I’d gone about like that. What’s the matter with you, you’re green, girl, look at yourself in the mirror, have you been stuffing yourself with them Rolo again? If you’re going to chuck up, go outside and do it.”

Alison did as she was told and looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t recognize the person she saw there. It was a man, with a check jacket on and a tie skew-whiff; a frowning man with a low hairline and a yellowish face. Then she realized that the door was open, and that the men were piling in behind her. “Fuck, Emmie, got to wash me hands!” one of them shouted.

She ran. For always, more or less, she was afraid of the men. On the stairs to the attic she doubled up and let brown liquid run out of her mouth. She hoped her mother would think it was the cat, Judy, who was responsible. She toiled on upwards and swung open the door. Mrs. McGibbet was sitting, already formed, in her corner. Her stumpy legs in their thick stockings stuck out in front of her, wide apart, as if she had been punched and knocked down. Her eyes were no longer startled, but blank as if their blinds had been drawn.

She did not greet Alison: no “How’s my darlin’ girl today?” She just said, in a distracted mutter, “There’s an evil thing you wouldn’t want to see at all. There’s an evil thing you wouldn’t want to see … .” She faded with rapidity; there was a scrabbling noise beneath the floorboards, and she was gone.

Mrs. McGibbet never came back after that day. She missed her, but she realized that the old lady was too frightened to return. Al was a child and hadn’t got the option of leaving. Now there was no appeal or relief from Gloria and her mum, and the men in the front room. She went out to play at the back as seldom as possible; even the thought of it made thick spit come up into her mouth. Her mother berated her for getting no fresh air. If she was forced to play out—which happened sometimes, with the door locked after her—she made it a rule never to raise her eyes as far as the sheds and the lockup garages, or the belt of woodland beyond them. She could not shake off the atmosphere of that afternoon, a peculiar suspension, like a breath held: the men’s averted faces, the thunderous air, the dying grass, her mother’s outgust of tobacco smoke, the yellow face in the mirror where she expected to see her own, the man’s need to wash his hands. As for what was in the cardboard boxes, she hoped not to think about it; but sometimes the answer turned up, in dreams.

COLETTE: So … are you going to tell me?

ALISON: I might, if I was quite sure I knew.

COLETTE: Only 
might
?

ALISON: I don’t know if I could speak it out.

COLETTE: Drugs, could it have been? Or didn’t they have drugs in those days?

ALISON: God Almighty, of course they had drugs, do you think I come out of the Ark? They’ve always had drugs.

COLETTE: So?

ALISON: It was a funny district, you see, the army camps all around, these squaddies coming and going, I mean it was a big area for, well, women like my mum and the sort of men she knew, there was a lot of illegal gambling, there were women and boys who were on the game, there were all sorts of—

COLETTE: So come on, what do you think was in the boxes? (
pause
) Bits of Gloria?

ALISON: No. Surely not? Keef said she’d gone home to Ireland.

COLETTE: You didn’t believe that, did you?

ALISON: I didn’t believe it or not believe it.

COLETTE: But she did disappear?

ALISON: Not from our house, she didn’t. Yes Gloria, no, Gloria, have a cuppa Gloria.

COLETTE: I’m quite interested in this because it suggests your mum was mad or something—but let’s just keep to the point about the disappearance—was anything reported?

ALISON: I was eight. I didn’t know what was reported.

COLETTE: Nothing on TV?

ALISON: I’m not sure we had a TV. Well, yes, we did. Several. I mean the men used to bring them in under their arms. Just, we never had an aerial. That was us. Two bathtubs, no TV aerial.

COLETTE: Al, why do you make such silly jokes all the time? You do it when you’re on the platform. It’s not appropriate.

ALISON: Personally I think the use of humour’s very important when you’re dealing with the public. It puts them at their ease. Because they’re scared, when they come in.

COLETTE: I was never scared. Why do they come if they’re scared?

ALISON: Most people have a very low fright threshold. But it doesn’t stop them being curious.

COLETTE: They should toughen up.

ALISON: I suppose we all should. (
sighs
) Look, Colette—you come from Uxbridge. Oh, I know you say, Uxbridge not Knightsbridge, but it’s a place where you had hydrangeas, right? Well, that’s not like where I come from. I suppose if you had a crime in Uxbridge, if you had somebody disappear, the neighbours would notice.

COLETTE: So what are you saying?

ALISON: People went missing all the time, round our way. There was wasteland. There was army land, there was miles of it. There was heath land and just generally these acres where anything … could have … .

COLETTE: Did the police ever come round?

ALISON: The police came round regularly, I mean there was no surprise in that.

COLETTE: So what did you do?

ALISON: My mother would say, down on the floor. The police would flap the letter box. They’d shout through, is that Mrs. Emmeline Cheetham?

COLETTE: Was that her name?

ALISON: Yes, Emmeline. It’s nice, isn’t it?

COLETTE: I mean Cheetham, that’s not your name.

ALISON: I changed it. Think about it.

COLETTE: Oh, yes … . Al, does this mean you might have previous identities?

ALISON: Past lives?

COLETTE: No … For God’s sake, I’m just talking about other names, other names by which you may have been known to the Revenue. I mean you must have worked before you became self-employed, so you must have tax records in the name of Cheetham, with some other district. I wish you’d mentioned this before!

ALISON: I want to go to the loo.

COLETTE: Because I don’t think you have any idea how embattled I am. About your tax. And I can do without any complication of this nature.

ALISON: So could you turn the tape off?

COLETTE: Oh, cross your legs, you can hang on for two minutes. Just to get us back on track—we are concluding our conversation about the mysterious boxes Alison saw when she was eight—

ALISON: Or maybe nine, or ten.

COLETTE:—and these boxes were being carried by people she didn’t know, men, and towards the back of her house, yes?

ALISON: Yes, towards the back, that’s right. Down towards the fields. The open ground. And no, I don’t know what was in them. Oh God, Colette, can you switch off? I really need the loo. And Morris is making such a racket. I don’t know what was in those boxes, but sometimes I feel as if it’s me. Does that make sense to you?

COLETTE: I think the big question is, will it make sense to our readers?

(
click
)

When Alison was at school, she had to keep My Diary. She was allowed to crayon what she did every day, as well as put words. She put about Keith and his face getting mashed. About the dog Blighto and the drag of his claws in the mud.

“Do we really want to know about this, Alison?” her teacher said.

Her mother was invited in to see the headmaster, but when she lit up he tapped the NO SMOKING sign perched on top of the typewriter on his desk.

“Yes, I can read,” Emmeline said proudly, as she puffed away.

“I really think—” said he, and her mother said, “Look, you asked me here, so you’ve got to put up with it, is that right?” She tapped her ash into his wire in-tray. “You got a complaint about Alison, is that it?”

“It’s not a question of complaint,” the headmaster said.

“Oh, good,” said her mum. “Because my daughter’s as good as gold. So if you had any complaint, it’d be up to you to get it sorted. Otherwise I’d have to get you sorted, wouldn’t I?”

“I’m not sure you quite grasp, Mrs. Cheetham—”

“I dare say,” Al’s mum said. “We know where your sort get off, smacking little girls’ bottoms, I mean you wouldn’t do it otherwise, it’s not a man’s job, is it?”

“Nothing of that kind—” the headmaster began.

Alison began to cry loudly.

“Shut it,” her mother said casually. “So I’m just telling you, I don’t like people writing to me. I don’t like stuff coming through my door. Any more of it, and you’ll be picking your teeth out of your typewriter.” She took one last draw on her cigarette and dropped the stub on the carpet tiles. “I’m only saying.”

By the time Al was in Mrs. Clerides’s class, she’d rather not put pen to paper because of the risk that someone else would master the pen and write gibberish in her exercise book. “Gibberish” was what Mrs. Clerides called it, when she got her up to the front of the class and asked her if she were subnormal.

Mrs. Clerides read out Al’s diary in a disgusted tone.

“Slurp, slurp, yum yum,” said Harry. “Give us some,” said Blighto.

“No,” said Harry. “Today it is all for me.”

“It’s a dog writing,” Al explained. “It’s Serene. She’s the witness. She tells how Harry polished his bowl. When he’d done you could see your face in it.”

“I don’t believe I asked you to keep the diary of your pet,” said Mrs. C.

“She’s not a pet,” Al said. “Bloody hell, Mrs. Clerides, she pays her way, we all have to pay. If you don’t work you don’t eat.” Then she had gone quiet, thinking, the dogs’ work is fighting, but what is the men’s? They go about in vans. They say, what game am I in? I am in the entertainment game.

Mrs. Clerides slapped her legs. She made her write out something or other, fifty times, maybe a hundred. She couldn’t remember what it was. Even when she was writing it she couldn’t remember. She had to keep on reminding herself by looking back at the line before.

After that, if she’d got a few words down safely, she preferred to go over them with her blue ballpoint, branding the letters well into the paper: then drawing daisy petals around the “o”s and giving the “g”s little fishy faces. This was dull but it was better to be bored than to risk letting the gibberish in by an unguarded stroke, branching out into white space. It made her look occupied, and as long as she looked occupied she got left alone at the back with the mongols, the dummies, and the spastics.

The men said, the bloody little bitch. Is she sorry for what she’s done? Because she don’t look sorry, stuffing her face wiv sweets like that!

I am, I am, she said; but she couldn’t remember what she ought to be sorry for. It had gone woolly in her mind, the way things do when they happen in the night.

The men said, she don’t look sorry, Em! It’s a wonder nobody’s dead. We’re going to take her down the back, and teach her a lesson she won’t forget.

They didn’t say what the lesson was. So after that she always wondered, have I had it? Or is it still to come?

By the time Al was ten, she had begun sleepwalking. She walked in on her mum, rolling on the sofa with a squaddie. The soldier raised his shaven head and roared. Her mother roared too, and her thin legs, blotched with fake tan, stood straight up into the air.

Next day her mum got the squaddie to fix a bolt on the outside of Al’s bedroom door. He did it gladly, humming as he worked. You’re the first man was ever handy around here, her mum said, is that right, Gloria?

Alison stood behind her bedroom door. She heard the bolt shunt into its bracket, with a small tight thud. The squaddie hummed, happy in his work. “I wish I was in Dixie, hooray, hooray”—
tap-tap
—“In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand … .” Mum, she said, let us out. I can’t breave. She ran to the window. They were walking down the road, laughing, the soldier swigging from a can of lager.

A few nights later she woke suddenly. It was very dark outside, as if they had been able to shut off the streetlamp. A number of ill-formed greasy faces were looking down on her. One of them seemed to be in Dixie, but she couldn’t be sure. She closed her eyes. She felt herself lifted up. Then there was nothing, nothing that she remembers.

ALISON: So what puzzles me, and the only thing that makes me think it might have been a dream, was that darkness—because how did they switch the streetlamp off?

COLETTE: You slept in the front, did you?

ALISON: Initially in the back, because the front was the bigger bedroom so Mum had it, but then she swapped me, must have been after the dog bite, probably after Keef, I get the impression she didn’t want me getting up in the night and looking out over the waste ground, which is possible because—

COLETTE: Al, face up to it. You didn’t dream it. She had you molested. Probably sold tickets. God knows.