Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

Sorry, Diana, she said, I just had to get that wind up, and Colette said—well, she said nothing, really, but Al could see she was annoyed about being told off by Mandy. “She was only advising you,” she said. “She didn’t mean any harm. Me and Mand, we go back a long way.”

“Put your seat belt on,” Colette said. “I’m hoping to get home before dark. You’ll need to stop somewhere to eat, I suppose.”

“Fucking will,” Morris said, settling himself into the rear seat. “Here, don’t drive off yet, wait till we get settled.”

“We?” Al said. She swivelled in her seat; was there a thickening of the air, a ripple and disturbance, a perturbation below the level of her senses? A smell of rot and blight?

Morris was in wonderful spirits, chortling and bouncing. “Here’s Donald Aitkenside hitching a ride. Donnie, what I’ve been trying to meet up wiv. You know Donnie, don’t you? ’Course you do! Donnie and me, we go back a long way. Donnie knew MacArthur. You remember MacArthur, from the old days? And here’s young Dean. Don’t know Dean, do you? Dean’s new at this game, he don’t know nobody—well, he knows Donnie but he don’t know the army crowd nor any of that lot from the old fight game. Dean, meet the missus. That? That’s the missus’s pal. Like a length o’ string, ain’t she? Would you? No, not me, no chance, I like a bit of meat on their bones.”

He laughed raucously.

“Tell you what, gel, tell you what, stop off south of Leicester somewhere, and we might meet up with Pikey Pete. For Pikey Pete,” he told Dean, “he is such a man, if he’s down on his luck you’ll see him picking fag ends off the road, but let him have a win on the dogs and he will see you and slot a cigar in your top pocket, he’s that generous.”

“Should we pull in south of Leicester?” Al asked.

Colette was irritated. “That’s no distance.”

“Look, it’s not worth antagonizing him.”

“Morris?”

“Of course, Morris. Colette, you know the tape, you know those men that were coming through?”

“Paramilitaries?”

“No. Forget them. I mean the fiends, the fiends I used to know.”

“Can we please not talk about it? Not while I’m driving.”

The service stations were quiet, winding down after the weekend trade, though it had been an odd sort of weekend, of course, because of Di. The fiends swarmed out of the back of the car, yipping and squeaking. Inside the building, Al wandered around the food court, an anxious expression on her face. She lifted the lid of a mock-rustic tureen and gazed into the soup, and picked up filled rolls and tugged at their wrappings, turning them up to look at them end on. “What’s in this one, do you think?” she said. The film was misty, as if the lettuce had been breathing out.

“For God’s sake sit down,” Colette said. “I’ll bring you some pizza.”

When she came back, edging among the tables with her tray, she saw that Al had taken out her tarot cards.

She was amazed. “Not here!” she said.

“I just have to—”

The card’s scarlet wrappings flowed over the table, and puddled in Colette’s lap as she sat down. Alison drew out one card. She held it for a moment, flipped it over. She didn’t speak, but laid it down on top of the pack.

“What is it?”

It was the Tower. Lightning strikes. The masonry of the tower is blasted away. Flames shoot out of the brickwork. Debris is thrown into space. The occupants hurtle towards earth, their legs scissoring and their arms outflung. The ground rushes up at them.

“Eat your pizza,” Colette said, “before it goes all flabby.”

“I don’t want it.” The Tower, she thought; it’s my least favourite. The death card I can handle. I don’t like the Tower. The Tower means—

Colette saw with alarm that Al’s eyes had slipped out of focus; as if Al were a baby whom she were desperate to placate, whose mouth she was desperate to fill, she grabbed the plastic fork and plunged it into the pizza. “Look, Al. Try a bit of this.”

The fork buckled against the crust; Al snapped back, smiled, took the fork from her hand. “It may not be so bad,” she said. Her voice was small and tight. “Here, Col, let me. When you get the Tower it means your world blows up. Generally. But it can have a—you know, quite a small meaning. Oh, blast this thing.”

“Pick it up in your fingers,” Colette advised.

“Wrap my cards up, then.”

Colette shrank; she was afraid to touch them.

“It’s all right. They won’t bite. They know you. They know you’re my partner.”

Hastily, Colette bundled them into their red wrappings.

“That’s right. Just drop them in my bag.”

“What came over you?”

“I don’t know. I just had to see. It gets you that way sometimes.” Al bit into a piece of raw-looking green pepper, and chewed it for a while. “Colette, there’s something you ought to know. About last night.”

“Your baby voice,” Colette said. “Talking to nobody. That made me laugh. But then I thought at one point you were having a heart attack.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my heart.”

Colette looked meaningfully at her pizza slice.

“Well, yes,” Alison said. “But that’s not going to finish me off. Nobody perishes of a pizza slice. Think of all those millions of Italians, running round quite healthy.”

“It was a horrible weekend.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know,” Colette said. “I didn’t have any expectations. That card—what do you mean by a small meaning?”

“It can be a warning that the structure you’re in won’t contain you anymore. Whether it’s your job or your love life or whatever it is, you’ve out-grown it. It’s not safe to stay put. The Tower is a house you know. So it can mean just that. Move on.”

“What, leave Wexham?”

“Why not? It’s a nice little flat but I’ve got no roots there.”

“Where would you like to move?”

“Somewhere clean. Somewhere new. A house that nobody’s lived in before. Could we do that?”

“New-build is a good investment.” Colette put down her coffee cup. “I’ll look into it.”

“I thought—well, listen, Colette, I’m sure you’re as tired of Morris as I am. I don’t know if he’d ever agree to—you know—take his pension—I think Mandy was being a bit optimistic there. But our lives would be easier, wouldn’t they, if his friends didn’t come round?”

“His friends?” Colette said blankly.

Oh, Jesus, Al said to herself, it’s all uphill work. “He’s beginning to meet up with his friends,” she explained. “I don’t know why he feels the need, but it seems he does. There’s one called Don Aitkenside. I remember him. He had a mermaid on his thigh. And this Dean, now, he’s new to me, but I don’t like the sound of him. He was in the back of the car just now. Spotty kid. Got a police record.”

“Really?” Colette’s flesh crawled. “In the back?”

“With Morris and Don.” Al pushed her plate away. “And now Morris is off looking for this gypsy.”

“Gypsy? But there won’t be room!”

Alison just looked at her sadly. “They don’t take up room, in the usual way,” she said.

“No. Of course not. It’s the way you talk about them.”

“I can’t think how else to talk. I only have the usual words.”

“Of course you do, but it makes me think—I mean it makes me think they’re ordinary blokes, except I can’t see them.”

“I hope they’re not. Not ordinary. I mean, I hope the standard is better than that.”

“You never knew Gavin.”

“Did he smell?”

Colette hesitated. She wanted to be fair. “Not more than he could help.”