Beyond Black

‘Listen,’ Alison said. ‘What I want to say to you is, don’t shed tears. The fact is, you barely started with this man. He didn’t know what marriage was. He didn’t know how to make an equal relationship. He liked – gadgets, am I right, hi-fi, cars, that stuff, that was what he related to.’

‘Oh yes,’ Colette chirped up. ‘But then wouldn’t it be true of most men?’ She stopped herself. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘True of most men?’ Al queried gently. ‘I’ll give you that. The point is, though, was it true of him? Was it true that at the great highlights of your life, he was thinking about sports seats and sound systems? But look, darling, there is a man for you. A man who will be in your life for years and years to come.’ She frowned. ‘I want to say…oh, you know…“for better or worse” – but you’ve been married, chuck, so you know all that.’

Colette took a deep breath. ‘Does he have the initial M?’

‘Don’t prompt me, dear,’ Al said. ‘He’s not in your life yet, but he’s coming into it.’

‘So I don’t know him now?’

‘Not yet.’

Oh good, Colette thought – because she had just done a quick mind-scan of the men she already knew. ‘Will I meet him at work?’

Alison closed her eyes. ‘Sort of,’ she offered. She frowned. ‘More through work, than at work. Through work, is how I’d put it. First you’ll be sort of colleagues, then it’ll get closer. You’ll have a, what’s the word, a long association. It may take a bit of time to get close. He has to warm to you.’ She chuckled. ‘His dress sense is a bit lacking, but I expect you’ll soon fix that, darling.’ Alison smiled around at the audience. ‘She’ll just have to wait and see. Exciting, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’ Colette nodded. She kept up an inner monologue. It is, it is. I have hope, I have hope. I will get a salary rise – no, not that. I will get a place of my own – no, not that. I must, I had better, I ought to look around for a new job, I ought to shake my life up and open myself to opportunities. But whatever I do, something will happen. I am tired, I am tired of taking care of myself. Something will happen that is out of my hands.

Alison did a few other things that night at the Harte & Garter. She told a depressed-looking woman that she’d be going on a cruise. The woman at once straightened her collapsed spine and revealed in an awestruck voice that she had received a cruise brochure by the morning post, which she had sent for because her silver wedding was coming up shortly, and she thought it was time they exported their happiness somewhere other than the Isle of Wight.

‘Well, I want to say to you,’ Alison had told her, ‘that you will be going on that cruise, yes you will.’ Colette marvelled at the way Alison could spend the woman’s money. ‘And I’ll tell you something else; you’re going to have a lovely time. You’re going to have the time of your life.’

The woman sat up even straighter. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you,’ she said. She seemed to take on a sort of glow. Colette could see it even though she was four rows away. It encouraged her to think that somebody could hand over a tenner at the door and get so much hope in return. It was cheap, compared to what she was paying in Brondesbury and elsewhere.

After the event, Colette walked to the Riverside Station in the chilly evening air. The sun made a red channel down the centre of the Thames. Swans were bobbing in the milky water near the banks. Over towards Datchet, outside the pub called the Donkey House, some French exchange students were dipping one of their number in the water. She could hear their excited cries; they warmed her heart. She stood on the bridge, and waved to them with a big sweep of her arm, as if she were bringing a light aircraft in to land.

I won’t come back tomorrow, she thought. I will, I won’t, I will.

The next morning, Sunday, her journey was interrupted by engineering works. She had hoped to be first in the queue but that was not to be. As she stepped out of the station, there was a burst of sunshine. The high street was crammed with coaches. She walked uphill towards the castle and the Harte & Garter. The great Round Tower brooded over the street, and at its feet, like a munching worm, wound a stream of trippers gnawing at burgers.

It was eleven o’clock and the Extravaganza was in full spate. The tables and stands were set up in the hall where the medium had done the demonstration the night before. Spiritual healing was going on in one corner, Kirlian photography in another, and each individual psychic’s table, swathed in chenille or fringed silk, bore her stock-in-trade of tarot pack, crystal ball, charms, incense, pendulums and bells: plus a small tape machine so the client could have a record of her consultation. Almost all the psychics were women. There were just two men, lugubrious and neglected; Merlin and Merlyn, according to their name cards. One had on his table a bronze wizard waving a staff, and the other had what appeared to be a shrunken head on a stand. There was no queue at his table. She wandered up. ‘What’s that?’ she mouthed, pointing. It was difficult to make yourself heard; the roar of prediction rose into the air and bounced around in the rafters.

‘My spirit guide,’ the man said. ‘Well, a model of him.’

‘Can I touch it?’

‘If you must, dear.’

She ran her fingers over the thing. It wasn’t skin, but leather, a sort of leather mask bound to a wooden skull. Its brow was encircled by a cord into which were stuck the stumps of quills. ‘Oh, I get it,’ she said. ‘He’s a Red Indian.’

‘Native American,’ the man corrected. ‘The actual model is a hundred years old. It was passed on to me by my teacher, who got it from his teacher. Blue Eagle has guided three generations of psychics and healers.’

‘It must be hard if you’re a bloke. To know what to put on your table. That doesn’t look too poncey.’

‘Look, do you want a reading, or not?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Colette said. To hear a psychic at all, you would almost have to be cheek to cheek, and she didn’t fancy such intimacy with Blue Eagle’s mate. ‘It’s a bit sordid,’ she said. ‘This head. Off-putting. Why don’t you chuck it and get a new model?’ She straightened up. She looked around the room. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, shouting over a client’s head to a wizened old bat in a shawl, ‘excuse me, but where’s the one who did the dem last night? Alison?’

The old woman jerked her thumb. ‘Three down. In the corner there. Mind, she knows how to charge. If you hang on till I’m finished here, I can do you psychometry, cards and palms, thirty quid all in.’

‘How very unprofessional,’ Colette said coldly.

Then she spotted her. A client, beaming, rose from the red leatherette chair, and the queue parted to let her through. Colette saw Alison, very briefly, put her face in her hands: before raising it, smiling, to the next applicant for her services.

Even Sundays bring their ebb and flow – periods of quiet and almost peace, when sleep threatens in the overheated rooms – and then times of such confusion – the sunlight strikes in, sudden and scouring, lighting up the gewgaws on the velvet cloth – and within the space of two heartbeats, the anxiety is palpable, a baby crying, the incense choking, the music whining, more fortune seekers pressing in at the door and backing up those inside against the tables. There is a clatter as a few Egyptian perfume bottles go flying; Mrs Etchells, three tables down, is jawing on about the joys of motherhood; Irina is calming a sobbing adolescent with a broken engagement; the baby, wound up with colic, twisting in the arms of an unseen mother, is preying on her attention as if he were entangled in her gut.

She looked up and saw a woman of her own age, meagrely built, with thin fair hair which lay flat against her skull. Her features were minimal, her figure that of an orphan in a storm. A question jumped into Al’s head: how would this play if you were a Victorian, if you were one of those Victorian cheats? She knew all about it; after all, Mrs Etchells, who had trained her, almost went back to those days. In those days the dead manifested in the form of muslin, stained and smelly from the psychic’s body cavities. The dead were packed within you, so you coughed or vomited them, or drew them out of your generative organs. They blew trumpets and played portable organs; they moved the furniture; they rapped on the wall, they sang hymns. They offered bouquets to the living, spirit roses bound by scented hands. Sometimes they proffered inconveniently large objects, like a horse. Sometimes they stood at your shoulder, a glowing column made flesh by the eyes of faith. She could see it easily, a picture from the past: herself in a darkened parlour, her superb shoulders rising white out of crimson velvet, and this straight flat creature at her elbow, standing in the halflight: her eyes empty as water, impersonating a spirit form.

‘Would you like to come and sit?’

Not fair! the queue said. Not her turn!

‘Please be patient,’ Alison said sweetly. ‘I think someone’s trying to come through for this lady, and I daren’t keep spirit world waiting.’

The queue fell back, murmuring. She sat down before her, the pallid meek being, like a sacrifice drained of blood. Al searched her for clues. Probably never known the joys of motherhood? Fair bet, with those tits. Oh, wait, didn’t I see her last night? Near the front, third row, left of centre, no? Broken wedding ring. Man with the gadgets. Career girl, of sorts. Not much of a career, though. Drifting. Anxious. Pains in her gut. Tension at the back of her neck; a big dead hand squeezing her spine.

On her left, Mrs Etchells was saying, ‘Going on hols, are we? I see an aeroplane.’ Irina was saying, yes, yes, yes, you are very sad now, but by October zey are coming, four men in a truck, and building your home extension.

Alison held out her hand to Colette. Colette put her hand in it, turned up. The narrow palm was drained of energy, almost corpse-like.

I would have liked that, Al thought, all that Victorian fuss and frippery, the frocks, the spirit pianos, the men with big beards. Was she seeing herself, in a former life, in an earlier and possibly more lucrative career? Had she been famous, perhaps, a household name? Possibly; or possibly it was wish-fulfilment. She supposed she had lived before but she suspected there wasn’t much glamour attached to whatever life she’d led. Sometimes when her mind was vacant she had a fleeting vision, low-lit, monochrome, of a line of women hoeing, bending their backs under a mud-coloured sky.

Well now…she scrutinised Colette’s palm, picking up her magnifying glass. The whole hand was bespattered with crosses, on the major lines and between them. She could see no arches, stars or tridents. There were several worrying islands in the heart line, little vacant plots. Perhaps, she thought, she sleeps with men whose names she doesn’t know.

The pale client’s voice cut through. She sounded common and sharp. ‘You said somebody was coming through for me.’

‘Your father. He recently passed into spirit.’

‘No.’

‘But there’s been a passing. I’m getting, six. The number six. About six months back?’

The client looked blank.

‘Let me jog your memory,’ Alison said. ‘I would be talking about Guy Fawkes Night, or maybe the run-up to Christmas. Where they say, only forty shopping days left, that sort of thing.’ Her tone was easy; she was used to people not remembering the deaths in their family.

‘My uncle died last November. If that’s what you mean.’

‘Your uncle, not your father?’

‘Yes, my uncle. For Christ’s sake, I should know.’

‘Bear with me,’ Alison said easily. ‘You don’t by any chance have something with you? Something that belonged to your dad?’

‘Yes.’ She had brought the same props she had given to the psychic in Hove. ‘These were his.’

She handed over the cuff-links. Alison cupped them in her left palm, rolled them around with her right forefinger. ‘Golf balls. Though he didn’t play golf. Still, people don’t know what to buy for men, do they?’ She tossed them up and caught them again. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Look, can you accept this? The bloke who owned these was not your dad. He was your uncle.’