Beyond Black: A Novel (19 page)

Until the princess died, Colette had not seen the seamy side of the work. Take Morris out of the equation, and it was much like any other business. Al needed a more modern communications system, a better through-put and process-flow. She needed a spam filter for her brain, to screen out unwanted messages from the dead; and if Colette could not provide this, she could at least control how Al managed those messages. She tried to view Al as a project and herself as project manager. It was lucky she’d got such sound experience as a conference organizer, because of course Al was something like a conference in herself.

When she moved in with Al, Colette had made a pretty smart exit from her early life—a clean break, she told herself. Nevertheless, she expected old workmates to track her down. She practiced in her mind what she’d tell them. I find my new role diverse, rewarding, and challenging, she would say. Above all, I like the independence. The personal relationships are a bonus; I’d describe my boss as caring and professional. Do I miss going to the office every day? You must appreciate I never exactly did that; travel was always part of the brief. Think what I haven’t got: no slander at the water cooler, no interdepartmental tensions, no sexual harassment, no competitive dressing. I have to be smart, of course, because I’m customer-facing, but it’s a real perk to be able to express yourself through your own sense of style. And that encapsulates, more or less, what I feel about my new situation; I’ve a role that I can sculpt to suit my talents, and no two days are the same.

All this rehearsal was wasted, except upon herself. No one, in fact, did track her down, except Gavin, who called one night wanting to boast about his annual bonus. It was as if she’d ceased to exist.

But after that death night at the end of August, she couldn’t fool herself that her position with Al was just a logical part of her career development. And exactly what was her position with Al? Next day, she, Colette, tried to sit her down for a talk, and said, Al, I need you to be straight with me.

Al said, “It’s okay, Col, I’ve been thinking about it. You’re a godsend to me, and I don’t know what I ever did without you. I never thought I’d get someone to agree to live in, and you can see that at a time of crisis, twenty-four-hour care is what I need.” Only a half hour before Al had been bringing up a clear ropey liquid; once again, rank sweat filmed her face. “I think we should agree on new terms. I think you should have a profit share.”

Colette flushed pink up to the roots of her hair. “I didn’t mean money,” she said. “I didn’t mean, be straight with me in that way. I—thank you Al, I mean it’s good to be needed. I know you’re not financially dishonest. I wasn’t saying that. I only mean I think you’re not giving me the full picture about your life. Oh, I know about Morris.
Now
 I know, but when I took on the job you didn’t tell me I’d be working with some foul-mouthed dwarf spook; you let me find that out. I feel as if I don’t want any more nasty shocks. You do see that, surely? I know you mean well. You’re sparing my feelings. Like you do with the trade. But you must realize, I’m not the trade, I’m your friend. I’m your partner.”

Alison said, “What you’re asking me is, how do you do it?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s what I’m asking you.”

She made Al some ginger tea; and Al talked then about the perfidy of the dead, their partial, penetrative nature, their way of dematerializing and leaving bits of themselves behind, or entangling themselves with your inner organs. She talked about her sharp earsight and voices she heard in the wall. About the deads’ propensity to fib and confabulate. Their selfish, trivial outlook. Their general cluelessness.

Colette was not satisfied. She rubbed her eyes; she rubbed her forehead. She stopped and glared, when she saw Alison smiling at her sympathetically. “Why? Why are you smiling?”

“My friend Cara would say, you’re opening your third eye.”

Colette pointed to the space between her brows. “There is no eye. It’s bone.”

“Brain behind it, I hope.”

Colette said angrily, “It’s not that I don’t believe in you. Well I do. I have to believe in what you do, because I see you doing it, I see and hear you, but how 
can
 I believe it, when it’s against the laws of nature?”

“Oh, those,” Al said. “Are you sure we have them anymore? I think it’s a bit of a free-for-all these days.”

They had arranged, on the Saturday of the princess’s funeral, to do an evening event in the Midlands, a major fayre in an area where psychic fayres were just establishing themselves. Mandy Coughlan said on the phone to Al, “It would be a shame to cancel, sweetie. You can take a sick bag in the car if you’re still feeling queasy. Because you know if you pull out they’ll charge you full price for the stall, and some amateur from up the M6 will be straight in there, quicksticks. So if you’re feeling up to it? Good girl. Do you think Mrs. Etchells is going?”

“Oh yes. She loved Diana. She’ll be expecting a contact.”

“Joys of motherhood,” Mandy said. “Of course. Perhaps Di will come through and let her know if she was up the duff. But how will Mrs. Etchells get to Nottingham? Will there be trains, or will they be cancelled out of respect? You’re not far away, maybe you could give her a lift.”

Al dropped her voice. “I’m not being professionally divisive, Mandy, but there are certain issues around Mrs. Etchells—undercutting on tarot readings, slashing prices without prior consultation, trying to lure other people’s clients—Colette heard her doing it.”

“Oh yes. This person Colette. Whoever is she, Al? Where did you find her? Is she psychic?”

“God, no. She’s a client. And before that she was a client of yours.”

“Really? When did we meet?”

“Last year sometime. She came down to Hove with some cuff links. She was trying to find out who her father was.”

“And who was he?”

“Her uncle.”

“Oh, one of those. I can’t put a face to her.” Mandy sounded impatient. “So is she mad with me, or something?”

“No. I don’t think so. Though she is quite sceptical. In patches.”

Al said her polite goodbyes. She put the phone down and stood looking at it. Did I do the right thing, when I took on Colette? Mandy didn’t seem keen. Have I been impulsive, and is it an impulse I will regret? She almost called Mandy back, to seek further advice. Mandy knows what’s what, she’s been through the mill: thrown out a lover at midnight and his whole troop after him, some dead druid who’d moved in after the bloke, and a whole bunch of Celtic spirits more used to life in a cave than life in Hove. Out they go with their bloody cauldrons and their spears, Lug and Trog and Glug; and out goes Psychic Simon with his rotting Y-fronts dropped out of a first-floor window, his Morfesa the Great Teacher statue chucked in the gutter with its wand snapped off, and his last quarter’s invoice file tossed like a Frisbee in the direction of the sea: and several unbanked cheques rendered illegible and useless, speared by Mandy’s stiletto heel.

That was how it usually went, when you were unguarded enough to get into a relationship with a colleague. It wasn’t a question of personal compatibility between the two of you; it was a question of the baggage you trailed, your entourage, whether they’d fight and lay waste to each other, thrashing with their vestigial limbs and snapping with their stumps of teeth. Al’s hand moved to the phone and away again; she didn’t want Colette to overhear, so she talked to Mandy in her mind.

I know it’s bad when you go out with someone in our line, but some people say it’s worse to get into a thing with a punter—

A thing?

Not a thing, not a sex thing. But a relationship, you can’t deny that. If Colette’s going to live with you, it’s a relationship. God knows you need somebody to talk to, but—

But how can you talk to the trade?

Yes, that’s the trouble, isn’t it? How can they understand what you go through? How can they understand anything? You try to explain, but the more you try the less you succeed.

They haven’t got the language, have they? Don’t tell me, sweetheart. They haven’t got the range.

You say something perfectly obvious and they look at you as if you’re mad. You tell them again, but by then it sounds mad to you. You lose your confidence, if you have to keep going over and over it.

And yet you’re paying the rent, mortgage, whatever. It’s fine as long as everything’s humming along sweetly, but the first cross word you have, they start casting it up, throwing it in your face—Oh, you’re taking advantage of me because you’ve got all these people I can’t see, how do you know this stuff about me, you’re opening my mail—I mean, why should you need to open their bloody mail? As if you can’t see straight through to what they are. I tell you, Al, I went out with a punter once. I let him move in and it was murder. I saw within the week he was just trying to use me. Fill in my pools coupon. Pick me something at Plumpton.

Yes, I’ve explained it to Col, I told her straight off, I’m no good for lottery numbers.

And what did she say?

I think she could understand it. I mean, she’s a numerate woman. I think she understands the limitations.

Oh, she says that 
now
. But honestly, when you let them move in, they’re like leeches, they’re like—whatever, whatever it is, that’s at you twenty-four hours a day. Actually my mum said as much. She warned me, well, she tried to warn me, but you don’t take any notice, do you? Did you know I was born the night that Kennedy was shot? Well, that dates me! (Mandy, in Al’s mind, laughed shakily.) No point trying to keep secrets from you, Al! The point is, my mum—you know she was like me, Natasha, Psychic to the Stars, and my grandma was Natasha, Psychic to the Tsars—this man she was with then, when I was born, he said, didn’t you know anything about it, doll? Couldn’t you of—oh, he was ignorant in his speech—couldn’t you of prevented it? My mum said, what do you want me to do, ring up the White House, with my feet up in stirrups and this withered old nun shouting in my ear, Push, Mother, push?

Nun? Alison was surprised. Are you a Catholic, Mandy?

No, Russian Orthodox. But you know what I mean, don’t you? About a relationship with the laity. They expect too much.

I know they do. But Mandy, I need someone, someone with me. A friend.

Of course you do. Mandy’s voice softened. A friend. A live-in friend. I’m not judgemental, God knows. Takes all sorts. Live and let live. Who am I to moralize? Al, you can tell me. We go back, you and me. You want a little love in your life, yes you do, you do.

Mandy, do you know the pleasures of lesbian anal sex? No. Nor me. Nor any other pleasures. With Morris around I really need some sort of fanny guard. You know what they do, don’t you—the guides—while you’re asleep? Creepy-creepy. Creak at the door, then a hand on the duvet, a hairy paw tugging the sheet. I know you thought Lug and Glug tried it on, though you say you had been taking Nytol so were a bit confused at being woken and you suspect it may well have been Simon, judging by the smell. It’s difficult to say, isn’t it? What kind of violation, spirit or not spirit. Especially if your boyfriend has a small one. I am fairly confident that Morris, when it comes down to it, he can’t—not with me, anyway. But what gets to me is all this back-alley masculinity, all this beer and belching and scratching your belly, billiards and darts and minor acts of criminal damage, I get tired of being exposed to it all the time, and it was fine for you, I know you kicked out the druid and Lug and Glug, but they were Psychic Simon’s, and Morris is mine. And somehow I suppose, what it is, with Colette as my partner—with Colette as my 
business
 partner—I was hoping—oh, let me say it—I was aspiring—I want a way out of Aldershot, out of my childhood, away from my mother, some way to upscale, to move into the affluent world of the Berkshire or Surrey commuter, the world of the businessman, the entrepreneur: to imagine how the rich and clever die. To imagine how it is, if you’re senior in IT and your system crashes: or the finance director, when your last shekel is spent: or in charge of Human Resources, when you lose your claim to have any.

When she was packing for their trip to Nottingham, Colette came in. Al was wearing just a T-shirt, bending over the case. For the first time, Colette saw the backs of her thighs. “Christ,” she said. “Did you do that?”

“Me?”

“Like Di? Did you cut yourself?”

Alison turned back to her packing. She was perplexed. It had never occurred to her that she might have inflicted the damage herself. Perhaps I did, she thought, and I’ve just forgotten; there is so much I’ve forgotten, so much that has slipped away from me. It was a long time since she’d given much thought to the scars. They flared, in a hot bath, and the skin around them itched in hot weather. She avoided seeing them, which was not difficult if she avoided mirrors. But now, she thought, Colette will always be noticing them. I had better have a story because she will want answers.

She fingered her damaged flesh; the skin felt dead and distant. She remembered Morris saying, we showed you what a blade could do! For the first time she thought, oh, I see now, that was what they taught me; that was the lesson I had.

SIX

As they drove north, Colette said to Alison, “When you were a little girl, did you ever think you were a princess?”

“Me? God, no.”

“What did you think then?

“I thought I was a freak.”

And now? The question hung in the air. It was the day of Diana’s funeral, and the road was almost empty. Al had slept badly. Beyond the bedroom wall of the flat in Wexham, Colette had heard her muttering, and heard the deep groan of her mattress as she turned over and over in bed. She had been downstairs at seven-thirty, standing in the kitchen, bundled into her dressing gown, her hair straggling out of its rollers. “We may as well get on the road,” she said. “Get ahead of the coffin.”

By ten-thirty, crowds were assembling on the bridges over the M1, waiting for the dead woman to pass by on her way to her ancestral burial ground just off Junction 15A. The police were lining the route as if waiting for disaster, drawn up in phalanxes of motorcycles and cordons of watching vans. It was a bright, cool morning—perfect September weather.