Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

ALISON: All I thought was, thank God, so it wasn’t Morris. I said, so, if Derek’s my dad, and you’re my nan, why isn’t my name Etchells? She said, because he ran off before your mam could waltz him down the aisle. Not that I blame him there. I said, it’s surprising I wasn’t drawn to you. She said, you was, in a manner of speaking, because you was always leaning against my hedge with your young friends. And today, she said, I reckon that today you see, something drew you. You were in trouble, so you came to your nan.

COLETTE: That’s quite sad, really. You mean she’d been living down the road all the time?

ALISON: She said she didn’t like to interfere. She said, your mam minds her own business, and of course the whole neighbourhood knows what that business is—which was no surprise to me, you know, because I’d understood for quite some time why when a bloke went out he put a tenner on the sideboard.

COLETTE: And so, you and Mrs. Etchells, did you become close at this point?

ALISON: I used to go and do little errands for her. Carrying her shopping, because her knees were bad. Running for fags for her, not that she smoked like my mum. I always called her Mrs. Etchells, I didn’t like to start calling her Nan, I wasn’t sure if I ought. I asked my mother about Derek, and she just laughed. She said, she’s not on that old story again, is she? Bloody cloud-cuckoo land.

COLETTE: So she didn’t actually confirm it? Or deny it?

ALISON: No. She threw the salt pot at me. So … end of that conversation. The way Mrs. Etchells told it, Derek and my mum were going to get married, but he took off after he found out what she was like ( laughter ). Probably ( laughter ) probably she whizzed him up some of her tandoori prawns with tinned spaghetti. Oh God, she has no idea at all about nutrition, that woman. No idea of what constitutes a balanced meal.

COLETTE: Yes, can we get on to how you came to turn professional?

ALISON: When I got towards school-leaving, Mrs. Etchells said it’s time we had a talk, she said, there’s advantages and disadvantages to the life—

COLETTE: And did she say what they were, in her opinion?

ALISON: She said, why not use your God-given talent? But then she said, you come in for a great deal of name-calling and disbelief, and I can’t pretend that your colleagues in the profession are going to welcome you with open arms—which indeed I did find to be the case, as you know yourself, Colette, to your cost, because you know what they were like when I introduced you as my assistant. She said, of course, you could try to act as if you were normal, and I said I’d give it a try, though it never worked at school. I got a job in a chemist in Farnborough. Temporary sales assistant. It was more temporary than they meant, of course.

COLETTE: What happened?

ALISON: Catherine and Nicky Scott would come in, they hadn’t got jobs, they were on the social. When he saw them, Morris would start fiddling around with the contraceptives. Taking them out of their packets and strewing them around. Blowing them up like balloons. Naturally they thought it was me. They thought it was the sort of thing a sixteen-year-old would do—you know, have her mates in and have a laugh. So that was that. Then Mrs. Etchells got me a job at a cake shop.

COLETTE: And what happened there?

ALISON: I started eating the cakes.

When Alison decided to change her name she rang up her mother in Bracknell to ask if she would be offended. Emmie sighed. She sounded frayed and far away. “I can’t think what would be a good name in your line of country,” she said.

“Where are you?” Alison said. “You’re fading away.”

“In the kitchen,” said Emmie. “It’s the cigs, I can’t seem to give up no matter what. Do my voice in.”

“I’m glad I don’t smoke,” Alison said. “It wouldn’t be very professional.”

“Huh. Professional,” said Emmie. “You, a professional. That’s a laugh.”

Alison thought, I may as well change the whole thing while I’m about it. I don’t have to stick with any part of my old self. She went to a bookshop and bought one of those books for naming babies.

“Congratulations,” said the woman behind the till.

Alison smoothed down the front of her dress. “I’m not, actually,” she said. Sonia Hart. Melissa Hart. Susanna Hart. It didn’t work. She managed to lose Cheetham, but her baptismal name kept sliding back into her life. It was part of her, like Morris was.

Over the next few years she had to get used to life with Morris. When her mum went off to Bracknell she made it clear she didn’t want a daughter trailing after her, so Al got a temporary billet with Mrs. Etchells. Morris no longer stopped at the gate. He came inside and exploded the lightbulbs, and disarranged Mrs. Etchell’s china cabinet. “He is a one!” said Mrs. Etchells.

It was only when she got older and moved among a different set of psychics that she realized how vulgar and stupid Morris really was. Other mediums have spirit guides with a bit more about them—dignified impassive medicine men or ancient Persian sages—but she had this grizzled grinning apparition in a bookmaker’s checked jacket, and suede shoes with bald toe caps. A typical communication from Sett or Oz or Running Deer would be, “The way to open the heart is to release yourself from expectation.” But a typical communication from Morris would be: “Oh, pickled beetroot, I like a nice bit of pickled beetroot. Make a nice sandwich out of pickled beetroot!”

At first she thought that by an effort of will and concentration, she would make him keep his distance. But if she resists Morris, there is a buildup of pressure in her cheekbones and her teeth. There is a crawling feeling inside her spine, which is like slow torture; sooner or later you have to give in, and listen to what he’s saying.

On days when she really needs a break she tries to imagine a big lid, banging down on him. It works for a time. His voice booms, hollow and incomprehensible, inside a huge metal tub. For a while she doesn’t have to take any notice of him. Then, little by little, an inch at a time, he begins to raise the lid.

It was in the week after Diana’s death that Colette felt she got to know Alison properly. It seems another era now, another world: before the millennium, before the Queen’s Jubilee, before the Twin Towers burned.

Colette had moved into Al’s flat in Wexham, which Alison had described to her as “the nice part of Slough,” though, she added, “most people don’t think Slough has a nice part.”

On the day she moved in, she took a taxi from the station. The driver was young, dark, smiling, and spry. He tried to catch her eye through the rearview mirror, from which dangled a string of prayer beads. Her eyes darted away. She was not prejudiced, but. Inside the cab was an eye-watering reek of air freshener.

They drove out of town, always uphill. He seemed to know where he was going. Once Slough was left behind, it seemed to her they were travelling to nowhere. The houses ran out. She saw fields, put to no particular use. They were not farms, she supposed. There were not, for instance, crops in the fields. Here and there, a pony grazed. There were structures for the pony to jump over; there were hedgerows. She saw the sprawl of buildings from a hospital, Wexham Park. Some squat quaint cottages fronted the road. For a moment, she worried; did Al live in the country? She had not said anything about the country. But before she could really get her worrying under way, the driver swerved into the gravel drive of a small neat seventies-built apartment block, set well back from the road. Its shrubberies were clipped and tame; it looked reassuringly suburban. She stepped out. The driver opened the boot and lugged out her two suitcases. She gazed up at the front of the building. Did Al live here, looking out over the road? Or would she face the back? For a moment she struck herself as a figure of pathos. She was a brave young woman on the threshold of a new life. Why is that sad? she wondered. Her eyes fell on the suitcases. That is why; because I can carry all I own. Or the taxi driver can.