Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

COLETTE: My uncle used to tickle me.

ALISON: You mean, your dad?

COLETTE: Yes, come to think of it. My dad. It wasn’t ordinary tickling … .

ALISON: It’s all right, take your time.

COLETTE: I mean it was aggressive, stabbing at you with a finger—a man’s finger, you know, it’s as thick as that—and I was little, and he knew it hurt me. Oh, God, and Gav used to do it. His idea of a joke. Maybe that’s why I went and married him. It seemed familiar.

ALISON: Sounds classic to me, marrying a man with the same sense of humour as your father. I hear about it all the time.

COLETTE: I didn’t laugh when he did it. It was more—you know, convulsing. As if I were having a fit.

ALISON: That must have been a pretty sight.

COLETTE: He stabbed into me with his finger, between my thin little ribs. It was like—it really was—the way he’d come at me, sticking it out … . Oh, I don’t think I can say it.

ALISON: It’s not like you to be coy.

COLETTE: As if he was rehearsing me.

ALISON: Giving you a practice for your later life. ( pause ) I suppose that’s what dads are for. Here, do you want a tissue?

COLETTE: Let’s get back on track. You need an early night, you’ve got a client phoning for tarot before her breakfast meeting. Mrs. Etchells, you were going to fill me in about Mrs. Etchells.

ALISON: You see, I got to the point where I wanted money of my own. I thought, if I saved up, I could get on the train at Ash Vale and just go somewhere, I wouldn’t have minded where. So, the way it was, Mrs. Etchells got me started. You see, one day I was leaning on her front hedge, bawling my eyes out, because Nicky Scott and Catherine and them—because these girls, my friends, at least they were supposed to be my friends—

COLETTE: Yes?

ALISON: They’d been calling me spastic all afternoon, because in English I’d had this—sort of incident. It was Morris really started it off; he’d come in halfway through English and said, oh, William bloody Shakespeare is it? Bloody Bill Wagstaffe, Bill Crankshaft, I know that cove, he’s dead, he is, or so he claims, and he owes me a fiver. We were doing Romeo and Juliet and he said, I seen that Juliet, she’s dead, and she’s no better than she should be, a right slapper let me tell you. So then I knew he was lying, because Juliet’s a fictional character. But at first, you see, I believed him about things. I didn’t know what to believe.

COLETTE: Yes, and?

ALISON: So then he squashed up in the chair next to me, because Nicky Scott and Catherine and all that lot, they weren’t bothering with me and they were leaving me to sit on my own. He put his hand on my knee—above my knee, really, squeezing—and I couldn’t help it, I squealed out. And he was saying, I’ll tell you another thing about that Juliet—her mother was at it before she was out of ankle socks, she was no slouch on the couch. Remind you of home, does it, remind you of home sweet home? And he started pulling my skirt up. And I was trying to pull it down and push his hands away, I was slapping at him but it didn’t do any good. And Mr. Naysmith said to me, excuse me for intruding on your private reverie, but I don’t think I have your undivided attention, Alison. Just then I couldn’t stand it and it all came out in a rush, I was crying and swearing and shouting “piss off, you perv,” and “bugger off back where you came from.” So Mr. Naysmith looking like thunder came belting down the class towards me, and I shout, keep your filthy pervvy hands to yourself. And he got hold of me by the back of my neck. Well, they did. In those days. At my school, anyway. They weren’t allowed to cane you but they used to get hold of you in a painful way. And he dragged me off to the headmaster … . So I got suspended. Excluded, they call it now. For making accusations against Mr. Naysmith. You see, I was wailing, he was pulling up my skirt, he was pulling up my skirt. And in those days they didn’t have sexual abuse, so nobody believed me, whereas these days nobody would believe him.

COLETTE: So how does this fit in with Mrs. Etchells?

ALISON: What?

COLETTE: You said you were leaning on her hedge crying.

ALISON: Yes, that’s it, because they’d been tormenting me you see. I didn’t care about getting suspended—it was a relief really—they said they’d be calling my mum in but I knew they wouldn’t because the headmaster was too frightened of her. Anyway, Mrs. Etchells spotted me and she came running out, she said leave off, girls, why ever are you tormenting poor Alison like that? And I was surprised that she knew my name.

COLETTE: And who was Mrs. Etchells? I mean I know she taught you all you know—you’ve said so several times—but, you know, who was she?

ALISON: My gran, or so she said.

COLETTE: What?

( click )

COLETTE: This is Colette, resuming the session at twelve-thirty. Alison, you were telling us about your reunion with your grandmother.

ALISON: Yes, but it wasn’t like that, good God, it wasn’t like This Is Your Life , and your gran walks in smiling through her bloody tears. I don’t know why you put these questions on the tape, Colette. I’ve just told you how it was.

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?