Beyond Black

After that, when she got fifty pence from the men, she took it straight down the minimart and bought chocolate, which she ate on the way home.

When Alison was eight years old, or maybe nine or ten, she was playing outside one day, a greyish, sticky day in late summer. She was alone, of course: playing horses, neighing occasionally, and progressing at a canter. The rough grass of their back plot was worn in patches, like the pile on the rug that made the attic into a little palace.

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.

‘Hiya!’ 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 round the ear?’ She turned round 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 Rolos 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 recognise 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 realised 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 then she was gone.

Mrs McGibbet never came back after that day. She missed her, but she realised that the old lady was too frightened toreturn. 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 theback as seldom as possible; even the thought of it made thickspit come up into her mouth. Her mother berated her forgetting no fresh air. If she was forced to play out – whichhappened sometimes, with the door locked after her – shemade it a rule never to raise her eyes as far as the sheds andthe lock-up 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 avertedfaces, the thunderous air, the dying grass, her mother’soutgust of tobacco smoke, the yellow face in the mirror whereshe expected to see her own: the man’s need to wash hishands. As for what was in the cardboard boxes, she hopednot to think about it; but sometimes the answer turned up,in dreams.