Beyond Black: A Novel (17 page)

COLETTE: Oh, for the fifteenth bloody time, it’s to have a record—

ALISON: All right, all right, but let me tell it my way, will you? She took me in and made me beans on toast. And do you know it was the first time I ever—I mean, my mum used to get distracted, so the beans and the toast came separate, you’d have your beans at five o’clock and then she’d look at you about ten past and she’d say, oh, you didn’t get your toast yet, did you? You know when you go to a café, like on the motorway, and they have those big laminated menus with pictures of the food on? I used to wonder what for, I mean, why do they do that, the food doesn’t look like that when it comes, it’s all huge and colored in the menus but in real life it’s all shrunken up and sick-coloured. Well, the reason they do that—this is what I think—is to help people like my mum, because they don’t know what food goes with what. When she’d got some man staying over, one she liked, she’d say, oh, I’m making a big Sunday, by which she meant a big Sunday lunch, but when it came he’d be, what’s this, Emmie? I mean, chicken and cauliflower, with white sauce out of a packet.

COLETTE: And mash?

ALISON: No, that would be later, that would come along at teatime. And she’d go to the corner and get curry—that was her idea of making lunch—she’d say, what you complaining about, I paid for it myself, didn’t I?

COLETTE: I really don’t want to interrupt your flow …

ALISON: So that’s why they have the pictures, to stop people like my mum ordering a fried egg with their chicken. And make sure they assemble all the bits of their meal at the same time.

COLETTE: And Mrs. Etchells—

ALISON: Made me beans 
on
 toast. Which made her a winner in my eyes, I mean I was always hungry then, I think that’s why I’m big now.

COLETTE: Just leaving that issue aside for the moment—

ALISON: She said, come in dear; sit down, tell me all about it. So I did. Because I had nobody to confide in. And I cried a lot, and it all came pouring out. Tehera. Lee. Mr. Naysmith. Morris. Everything.

COLETTE: And what did she say?

ALISON: Well, the thing was she seemed to understand. She just sat there nodding. When I’d finished she said, you see, like grandmother like granddaughter. I said, what? It’s descended to you, she said, my gift, missing out Derek, probably because he was a man. I said, who’s Derek, she said, my son Derek. Your dad, darling; well, he could be anyway.”

COLETTE: She only said, could be?

ALISON: All I thought was, thank God, so it wasn’t Morris. I said, so, if Derek’s my dad, and you’re my nan, why isn’t my name Etchells? She said, because he ran off before your mam could waltz him down the aisle. Not that I blame him there. I said, it’s surprising I wasn’t drawn to you. She said, you was, in a manner of speaking, because you was always leaning against my hedge with your young friends. And today, she said, I reckon that today you see, something drew you. You were in trouble, so you came to your nan.

COLETTE: That’s quite sad, really. You mean she’d been living down the road all the time?

ALISON: She said she didn’t like to interfere. She said, your mam minds her own business, and of course the whole neighbourhood knows what that business is—which was no surprise to me, you know, because I’d understood for quite some time why when a bloke went out he put a tenner on the sideboard.

COLETTE: And so, you and Mrs. Etchells, did you become close at this point?

ALISON: I used to go and do little errands for her. Carrying her shopping, because her knees were bad. Running for fags for her, not that she smoked like my mum. I always called her Mrs. Etchells, I didn’t like to start calling her Nan, I wasn’t sure if I ought. I asked my mother about Derek, and she just laughed. She said, she’s not on that old story again, is she? Bloody cloud-cuckoo land.

COLETTE: So she didn’t actually confirm it? Or deny it?

ALISON: No. She threw the salt pot at me. So … end of that conversation. The way Mrs. Etchells told it, Derek and my mum were going to get married, but he took off after he found out what she was like (
laughter
). Probably (
laughter
) probably she whizzed him up some of her tandoori prawns with tinned spaghetti. Oh God, she has no idea at all about nutrition, that woman. No idea of what constitutes a balanced meal.

COLETTE: Yes, can we get on to how you came to turn professional?

ALISON: When I got towards school-leaving, Mrs. Etchells said it’s time we had a talk, she said, there’s advantages and disadvantages to the life—

COLETTE: And did she say what they were, in her opinion?

ALISON: She said, why not use your God-given talent? But then she said, you come in for a great deal of name-calling and disbelief, and I can’t pretend that your colleagues in the profession are going to welcome you with open arms—which indeed I did find to be the case, as you know yourself, Colette, to your cost, because you know what they were like when I introduced you as my assistant. She said, of course, you could try to act as if you were normal, and I said I’d give it a try, though it never worked at school. I got a job in a chemist in Farnborough. Temporary sales assistant. It was more temporary than they meant, of course.

COLETTE: What happened?

ALISON: Catherine and Nicky Scott would come in, they hadn’t got jobs, they were on the social. When he saw them, Morris would start fiddling around with the contraceptives. Taking them out of their packets and strewing them around. Blowing them up like balloons. Naturally they thought it was me. They thought it was the sort of thing a sixteen-year-old would do—you know, have her mates in and have a laugh. So that was that. Then Mrs. Etchells got me a job at a cake shop.

COLETTE: And what happened there?

ALISON: I started eating the cakes.

When Alison decided to change her name she rang up her mother in Bracknell to ask if she would be offended. Emmie sighed. She sounded frayed and far away. “I can’t think what would be a good name in your line of country,” she said.

“Where are you?” Alison said. “You’re fading away.”

“In the kitchen,” said Emmie. “It’s the cigs, I can’t seem to give up no matter what. Do my voice in.”

“I’m glad I don’t smoke,” Alison said. “It wouldn’t be very professional.”

“Huh. Professional,” said Emmie. “You, a professional. That’s a laugh.”

Alison thought, I may as well change the whole thing while I’m about it. I don’t have to stick with any part of my old self. She went to a bookshop and bought one of those books for naming babies.

“Congratulations,” said the woman behind the till.

Alison smoothed down the front of her dress. “I’m not, actually,” she said. Sonia Hart. Melissa Hart. Susanna Hart. It didn’t work. She managed to lose Cheetham, but her baptismal name kept sliding back into her life. It was part of her, like Morris was.

Over the next few years she had to get used to life with Morris. When her mum went off to Bracknell she made it clear she didn’t want a daughter trailing after her, so Al got a temporary billet with Mrs. Etchells. Morris no longer stopped at the gate. He came inside and exploded the lightbulbs, and disarranged Mrs. Etchell’s china cabinet. “He is a one!” said Mrs. Etchells.

It was only when she got older and moved among a different set of psychics that she realized how vulgar and stupid Morris really was. Other mediums have spirit guides with a bit more about them—dignified impassive medicine men or ancient Persian sages—but she had this grizzled grinning apparition in a bookmaker’s checked jacket, and suede shoes with bald toe caps. A typical communication from Sett or Oz or Running Deer would be, “The way to open the heart is to release yourself from expectation.” But a typical communication from Morris would be: “Oh, pickled beetroot, I like a nice bit of pickled beetroot. Make a nice sandwich out of pickled beetroot!”

At first she thought that by an effort of will and concentration, she would make him keep his distance. But if she resists Morris, there is a buildup of pressure in her cheekbones and her teeth. There is a crawling feeling inside her spine, which is like slow torture; sooner or later you have to give in, and listen to what he’s saying.

On days when she really needs a break she tries to imagine a big lid, banging down on him. It works for a time. His voice booms, hollow and incomprehensible, inside a huge metal tub. For a while she doesn’t have to take any notice of him. Then, little by little, an inch at a time, he begins to raise the lid.

FIVE

It was in the week after Diana’s death that Colette felt she got to know Alison properly. It seems another era now, another world: before the millennium, before the Queen’s Jubilee, before the Twin Towers burned.

Colette had moved into Al’s flat in Wexham, which Alison had described to her as “the nice part of Slough,” though, she added, “most people don’t think Slough has a nice part.”

On the day she moved in, she took a taxi from the station. The driver was young, dark, smiling, and spry. He tried to catch her eye through the rearview mirror, from which dangled a string of prayer beads. Her eyes darted away. She was not prejudiced, but. Inside the cab was an eye-watering reek of air freshener.

They drove out of town, always uphill. He seemed to know where he was going. Once Slough was left behind, it seemed to her they were travelling to nowhere. The houses ran out. She saw fields, put to no particular use. They were not farms, she supposed. There were not, for instance, crops in the fields. Here and there, a pony grazed. There were structures for the pony to jump over; there were hedgerows. She saw the sprawl of buildings from a hospital, Wexham Park. Some squat quaint cottages fronted the road. For a moment, she worried; did Al live in the country? She had not said anything about the country. But before she could really get her worrying under way, the driver swerved into the gravel drive of a small neat seventies-built apartment block, set well back from the road. Its shrubberies were clipped and tame; it looked reassuringly suburban. She stepped out. The driver opened the boot and lugged out her two suitcases. She gazed up at the front of the building. Did Al live here, looking out over the road? Or would she face the back? For a moment she struck herself as a figure of pathos. She was a brave young woman on the threshold of a new life. Why is that sad? she wondered. Her eyes fell on the suitcases. That is why; because I can carry all I own. Or the taxi driver can.

She paid him. She asked for a receipt. Her mind was already moving ahead, to Al’s accounts, her business expenses. The first thing I shall do, she thought, is bump up her prices. Why should people expect a conversation with the dead for the price of a bottle of wine and a family-size pizza?

The driver ripped a blank off the top of his pad, and offered it to her, bowing. “Could you fill it in?” she said. “Signed and dated.”

“Of what amount shall I put?”

“Just the figure on the meter.”

“Home sweet home?”

“I’m visiting a friend.”

He handed back the slip of paper, with an extra blank receipt beneath. Cabman’s flirtation; she handed back the blank.

“These flats, two-bedroom?”

“I think so.”

“En suite? How much you’ve paid for yours?”

Is this what passes for multicultural exchange? she wondered. Not that she was prejudiced. At least it’s to the point. “I told you, I don’t live here.”

He shrugged, smiled. “You have a business card?”

“No.” Has Alison got one? Do psychics have cards? She thought, it will be uphill work, dragging her into the business world.

“I can drive you at any time,” the man said. “Just call this number.”

He passed over his own card. She squinted at it. God, she thought, I’ll need glasses soon. Several numbers were crossed out in blue ink and a mobile number written in. “Cell phone,” he said. “You can just try me day or night.”

He left her at the door, drove away. She glanced up again. I hope there’s room for me, she thought. I shall have to be very neat. But then, I am. Was Alison looking down, watching her arrive? No, she wouldn’t need to look out of the window. If someone arrived she would just know.

Al’s flat was at the back, it turned out. She was ready with the door open. “I thought you’d be waiting,” Colette said.

Alison blushed faintly. “I have very sharp earsight. I mean, hearing—well, the whole package.” Yet there was nothing sharp about her. Soft and smiling, she seemed to have no edges. She reached out for Colette and pulled her resistant frame against her own. “I hope you’ll be happy. Do you think you can be happy? Come in. It’s bigger than you’d think.”

She glanced around the interior. Everything low, squarish, beige. Everything light, safe. “All the kit’s in the hall cupboard,” Al said. “The crystals and whatnots.”

“Is it okay to keep it in there?”

“It’s better in the dark. Tea, coffee?”

Colette asked for herbal tea. No more meat, she thought, or cakes. She wanted to be pure.

While she was unpacking, Al brought in a green soupy beverage in a white china mug. “I didn’t know how you liked it,” she said, “so I left the bag in.” She took the cup carefully, her fingertips touching Al’s. Al smiled. She clicked the door shut, left her to herself.

The bed was made up, a double bed. Big bouncy duvet in a plain cream cover. She turned the duvet back. The sheet was crisply ironed. High standards: good. She’d seen enough squalor. She picked up her wash bag. Found herself in Al’s bathroom—Al hovering and saying, rather guilty, just push up my things and put yours down—shall I leave you to do that? Another tea?

She stared around. 
Floris
, indeed. Is she rich or just in need of a great deal of comfort? It’s better than we had, she thinks, me and Gavin. She thought of their second-floor conversion, with the clanking and erratic central heating, the sudden icy draughts.

“Come through. Make yourself at home.” There were two sofas, square and tweedy; Al flopped onto one, a stack of glossies beside her, and indicated that Colette should join her. “I thought you might like to look at my advert.” She picked up one of the magazines. “Flick through from the back and you’ll see me.”