Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

“That’s right. But he might not be driving a lorry anymore.”

“What’s happened to it?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying, he might not. He might just turn up. If anybody comes knocking at your window—”

“Bob Fox, he always used to knock on the window. Come around the back and knock on the window and give me a fright.” Emmie laughed. “‘Caught you that time,’ he’d say.”

“Yes, so … you ring me.”

“Keith Capstick,” her mother said. “He were another. Keef, you used to call him, couldn’t say your tee-haitches; you was a stupid little bugger. Keef Catsick. ’Course, you didn’t know any better. Oh, it used to make him mad, though. Keef Catsick. He caught you many a slap.”

“Did he?”

“He used to say, I’ll skin the hide off her, I’ll knock her to Kingdom Come. ’Course, if it weren’t for Keith, that dog would have had your throat out. What did you want to let it in for?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember now. I expect I wanted a pet.”

“Pet? They weren’t pets. Fighting dogs, them. Not as if you hadn’t been told. Not as if you hadn’t been told a dozen times and Keith give you the back of his hand to drive it through your skull. Not that he did succeeded, did he? What did you want to open the back door for? You was all over Keith after that, after he pulled the dog off you. Couldn’t make enough of him. Used to call him Daddy.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He said, that’s worse than Catsick, her calling me Daddy, I don’t want to be her daddy, I’ll throttle the little fucker if she don’t leave off.” Emmie chuckled. “He would too. He’d throttled a few, in his time, Keith.”

There was a pause.

Al put her hand to her throat. She spoke. “I see. And you’d like to meet up with Keith again, would you? A laugh, was he? Always got a wodge in his wallet?”

“No, that was Aitkenside,” her mother said. “God help you, girl, you never could keep anything straight in your head. I don’t know if I’d recognize Keith if he come round here today. Not after that fight he had, he was that mangled I don’t know if I’d know him. I remember that fight, I see it as if it were yesterday—old Mac with the patch over his eye socket, and me embarrassed, not knowing where to look. We didn’t know where to put our loyalties, you see? Not in this house we didn’t. Morris said he was putting a fiver on Keith; he said I’ll back a man with no balls over a man with one eye. He had a fiver on Keith, oh, he was mad with him, the way he went down. I remember they said, after, that MacArthur must have had a blade in his fist. Still, you’d know, wouldn’t you? You’d know about blades, you little madam. By Christ, did I wallop you, when I found you with those whatsits in your pocket.”

Al said, “I want to stop you, Mum.”

“What?”

“I want to stop you and rewind you.”

She thought, they took out my will and they paid my mother in notes for the privilege. She took the money and she put it in that old cracked vase that she used to keep on the top shelf of the cupboard to the left of the chimney breast.

Her mum said, “Al, you still there? I was thinking, you never do know, Keith might have got his face fixed up. They can do wonders these days, can’t they? He might have got his appearance changed. Funny, that. He could be living round the corner. And we’d never know.”

Another pause.

“Alison?”

“Yes … . Are you still taking pills, Mum?”

“On and off.”

“You see your doctor?”

“Every week.”

“You been in the hospital at all?”

“They closed it.”

“You all right for money?”

“I get by.”

What else to say? Nothing, really.

Emmie said, “I miss Aldershot. I wish I’d never moved here. There’s nobody here worth talking to. They’re a miserable lot. Never had a laugh since I moved.”

“Maybe you should get out more.”

“Maybe I should. Nobody to go with, that’s the trouble. Still, they say there’s no going back in life.” After a longer pause, just as Al was about to say goodbye, her mother asked, “How are you then? Busy?”

“Yes. Busy week.”

“Would be. With the princess. Shame, innit? I always think we had a lot in common, me and her. All these blokes, and then you get the rough end of it. Do you reckon she’d have been all right with Dido?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t an idea.”

“Never one for the boys, were you? I reckon you got put off it.”

“Do you? How?”

“Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t,” she was starting to say, I don’t know, but I very much want to know, I find this enlightening, you’ve told me quite a few things—

But Emmie said, “Got to go. The gas is running out,” and put the phone down.

Al dropped the handset on the duvet cover. She lowered her head to her knees. Pulses beat; in her neck, in her temples, at the ends of her fingers. She felt a pricking in the palms of her hands. Galloping high blood pressure, she thought. Too much pizza. She felt a low, seeping fury, as if something inside her had broken and was leaking black blood into her mouth.

I need to be with Colette, she thought. I need her for protection. I need to sit with her and watch the TV, whatever she’s watching, whatever she’s watching will be all right. I want to be normal. I want to be normal for half an hour, just enjoying the funeral highlights; before Morris starts up again.

She opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the small square hall. The sitting room door was closed but raucous laughter was rocking the room where Colette, she knew, kicked up her heels in her little socks. To avoid hearing the tape, Colette had turned the TV volume up. That was natural, very natural. She thought of tapping on the door. But no, no, let her enjoy. She turned away. At once Diana manifested: a blink in the hall mirror, a twinkle. Within a moment she had become a definite pinkish glow.

She was wearing her wedding dress, and it hung on her now; she was gaunt, and it looked crumpled and worn, as if dragged through the halls of the hereafter, where the housekeeping, understandably, is never of the best. She had pinned some of her press cuttings to her skirts; they lifted, in some otherworldly breeze, and flapped. She consulted them, lifting her skirts and peering; but, in Alison’s opinion, her eyes seemed to cross.

“Give my love to my boys,” Diana said. “My boys, I’m sure you know who I mean.”

Al wouldn’t prompt her: you must never, in that fashion, give way to the dead. They will tease you and urge you, they will suggest and flatter; you mustn’t take their bait. If they want to speak, let them speak for themselves.

Diana stamped her foot. “You do know their names,” she accused. “You oiky little grease spot, you’re just being hideous. Oh, fuckerama! Whatever are they called?”

It takes them that way, sometimes, the people who have passed: memory lapses, an early detachment. It’s a mercy, really. It’s wrong to call them back, after they want to go. They’re not like Morris and company, fighting to get back, playing tricks and scheming to get reborn, leaning on the doorbell, knocking at the window, crawling inside your lungs and billowing out on your breath.

Diana dropped her eyes. They rolled, under her blue lids. Her painted lips fumbled for names. “It’s on the tip of my tongue,” she said. “Anyway, whatever. You tell them, because you know. Give my love to … Kingy. And the other kid. Kingy and Thingy.” There was a sickly glow behind her now, like the glow from a fire in a chemical factory. She’s going, Al thought, she’s melting away to nothing, to poisoned ash in the wind. “So,” the princess said, “my love to them, my love to you, my good woman. And my love to him, to—wait a minute.” She picked up her skirts and puzzled over a fan of the press cuttings, whipping them aside in her search for the name she wanted. “So many words,” she moaned, then giggled. The hem of her wedding gown slipped from her fingers. “No use, lost it. Love to all of you! Why don’t you just bog off now and let me get some privacy.”