Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

When Alison had seen Colette’s horoscope (cast by Merlyn as a favour), she had quailed. “Really?” she’d said. “Don’t tell me, Merlyn. I don’t want to know.” Farking air signs, Merlyn had said, what can you bloody do? He had felt for Alison’s hand with his damp Pisces palm.

Sunday morning: she gave readings in a side room, tense, waiting to go on the platform at 2 P.M. From her clients, through the morning, it was more of the same. Diana, she had her problems; I have my problems too. I reckon she had her choice of men, but she was a bad picker. After an hour of it, a feeling of mutiny rose inside her. Mutiny on the Bounty was the phrase that came into her head. She put her elbows on the table, leaned towards the punter and said, “Prince Charles, you think he was a bad pick? So you’d have known better, eh? You’d have turned him down, would you?”

The client shrank back in her chair. A moment, and the little poor woman sat there again, in the client’s lap: “Excuse me, miss, have you seen Maureen Harrison? I’ve been seeking Maureen for thirty year.”

About lunchtime she sneaked out for a sandwich. She and Gemma split a pack of tuna and cucumber. “If I had your problems with the Irish,” Gemma said, “I’d be straight on the phone to Ian Paisley. We all have our crosses to bear, and mine personally tend to be derived from my ninth life, when I went on crusade. So any upheaval east of Cyprus, and frankly, Al, I’m tossed.” A sliver of cucumber fell out of her sandwich, a sliding green shadow on her white paper plate. She speared it artfully and popped it into her mouth.

“It’s not just the Irish,” Al said. “With me, it’s everybody, really.”

“I used to know Silvana, in that life. ’Course, she was on the other side. A Saracen warrior. Impaled her prisoners.”

“I thought that was Romanians,” Al said. “It just goes to show.”

“You were never a vampire, were you? No, you’re too nice.”

“I’ve seen a few today.”

“Yes, Di’s brought them out. You can’t miss them, can you?” But Gemma did not say what signs she looked for in a vampire. She balled up her paper napkin and dropped it on her plate.

Two-twenty P.M. She was on the platform. It was question time.

“Could I get in touch with Diana if I used a Ouija board?”

“I wouldn’t advise it, darling.”

“My gran used to do it.”

And where’s your gran now? She didn’t say it: not aloud. She thought: that’s the last thing we need, Amateur Night, Diana pulled about and puzzled by a thousand rolling wineglasses. The young girls in the audience bounced up and down in their seats, not knowing what a Ouija board was. Being the current generation, they didn’t wait to be told, they yipped at her and whistled and shouted out.

“It’s just an old parlour game,” she explained. “It’s not a thing any serious practitioner would do. You put out the letters and a glass rolls around and spells out words. Spells out names, you know, or phrases that you think mean something.”

“I’ve heard it can be quite dangerous,” a woman said. “Dabbling in that sort of thing.”

“Oh, yes, dabbling,” Al said. It made her smile, the way the punters used it as a technical term. “Yes, you don’t want to go dabbling. Because you have to consider who would come through. There are some spirits that are—I’m not being rude now, but they are on a very low level. They’re only drifting about earthside because they’ve got nothing better to do. They’re like those kids you see on sink estates hanging about parked cars—you don’t know if they’re going to break in and drive them away or just slash the tyres and scratch the paintwork. But why find out? Just don’t go there! Now those sort of kids, you wouldn’t ask them in your house, would you? Well, that’s what you’re doing if you mess about with a Ouija board.”

She looked down at her hands. The lucky opals were occluded, steamy, as if their surfaces were secreting. There are things you need to know about the dead, she wanted to say. Things you really ought to know. For instance, it’s no good trying to enlist them for any good cause you have in mind, world peace or whatever. Because they’ll only bugger you about. They’re not reliable. They’ll pull the rug from under you. They don’t become decent people just because they’re dead. People are right to be afraid of ghosts. If you get people who are bad in life—I mean, cruel people, dangerous people—why do you think they’re going to be any better after they’re dead?

But she would never speak it. Never. Never utter the word death if she could help it. And even though they needed frightening, even though they deserved frightening, she would never, when she was with her clients, slip a hint or tip a wink about the true nature of the place beyond black.

At teatime, when the event was over and they went down in the lift with their bags, Colette said, “Well now!”

“Well now what?”

“Your little outburst at breakfast! The less said about that, the better.”

Al looked sideways at her. Now that they were alone together, and with the drive home before them, Colette was obviously about to say a great deal.

As they stood at the desk, checking out, Mandy came up behind them. “All right, Al? Feeling better?”

“I’ll be okay, Mandy. And look, I really want to apologize about Morris last night—”

“Forget it. Could happen to any of us.”

“You know what Cara said, about unconditional love. I suppose she’s right. But it’s hard to love Morris.”

“I don’t think that trying to love him would get you anywhere. You’ve just got to get clever about him. I don’t suppose there’s anyone new on the horizon, is there?”

“Not that I can see.”

“It’s just that round about our age, you do sometimes get a second chance—well, you know yourself how it is with men, they leave you for a younger model. Now I’ve known some psychics who, frankly, they find it devastating when their guide walks out, but for others, let me say, it’s a blessed relief—you get a fresh start with a new guide, and before you know where you are your trade’s taken an upturn and you feel twenty years younger.” She took Al’s hand. Her pink-frosted nails caressed the opals. “Alison, can I speak frankly to you? As one of your oldest friends? You’ve got to get off the Wheel of Fear. Onto the Wheel of Freedom.”

Al pushed her hair back, smiling bravely. “It sounds a bit too athletic for me.”

“Enlightenment proceeds level by level. You know that. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that thinking was at the source of your problems. Too much thinking. Take the pressure off, Al. Open your heart.”

“Thanks. I know you mean well, Mandy.”

Colette turned from the desk, credit card slip between her fingers, fumbling with the strap of her bag. The nail of Mandy’s forefinger dug her in the ribs. Startled, Colette looked up into her face. Her mouth was set in a grim pink line. She’s quite old, Colette thought; her neck’s going.

“Look after Al,” Mandy said. “Al is very gifted and very special, and you’ll have to answer to me for it if you let her talent bring her to grief.”

In the car park, Colette strode briskly ahead with her holdall. Alison was dragging her case—one of the wheels had come off—and she was still limping, in pain from her smashed-up feet. She knew she should call Colette back to help her. But it seemed more suitable to suffer. I ought to suffer, she thought, though I am not sure why.

“The amount you take away!” Colette said. “For one night.”

“It’s not that I pack too much,” Al said meekly. “It’s that my clothes are bigger.” She didn’t want a row, not just at this minute. There was a quivering in her abdomen which she knew meant that someone was trying to break through from Spirit. Her pulse was leaping. Once again she felt nauseated, and as if she wanted to belch.