Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

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.