Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

Colette said, “What do you mean, far on the other side?”

“I mean, no discrimination at all?”

Al said, “No sugar, thanks.”

“But you don’t get a bonus? I mean, if we were lesbians? Which by the way we aren’t? Would you get extra commission?”

Just then a normal couple came up the steps. “Hello?” Suzi called to them, with a warmth that almost scared them down again. “Coffee?” she sang. A few drips from the poised pot leaked onto the plans of the Frobisher, and widened like a fresh fecal stain.

Alison turned away. Her cheeks were plum-coloured.

Colette followed her. “Ignore her. This is Surrey. They don’t get many gays and they’re easily upset.” She thought, if I were a lesbian, I hope I’d get a woman who wasn’t so bulky.

“Could we come back later?” Alison asked. “When there are houses here?”

Suzi said coldly, “Half of these plots are under offer.”

Colette took Al back to the car and laid the facts before her. This is prime building land, she said. She consulted the literature and read it out. Convenient transport links and first-class health and leisure facilities.

“But there aren’t,” Al said. “It’s a field. There’s nothing here. No facilities of any sort.”

“You have to imagine them.”

“It’s not even on a map, is it?”

“They’ll redraw the map, in time.”

She touched Colette’s arm, conciliatory. “No, what I mean is, I like it. I’d like to live nowhere. How long would it be before we could move in?”

“About nine months, I should think.”

Alison was silent. She had given Colette a free hand in the choice of site. Just nowhere near my old house, she had said. Nowhere near Aldershot. Nowhere near a race course, a dog track, an army camp, a dockyard, a lorry park, or a clinic for special diseases. Nowhere near a sidings or a depot, a customs shed or a warehouse; not near an outdoor market or an indoor market or a sweatshop or a body shop or a bookie’s. Colette had said, I thought you might have a psychic way of choosing—for instance, you’d get the map and swing a pendulum over it. God, no, Al had said, if I did that, we’d probably end up in the sea.

“Nine months,” she said now. “I was hoping to do it quicker.”

She had thought of Dean and Aitkenside and whoever, wondered what would happen if Morris brought them home and they got dug in at Wexham. She imagined them hanging around the communal grounds and making their presence felt: tipping over the bins and scratching the residents’ cars. Her neighbours didn’t know the nature of her trade; she had been able to keep it from them. But she imagined them talking behind her back. She imagined the residents’ meeting, which they held every six months. It was at best a rancorous affair: who moves furniture late at night, how did the stair carpet get frayed? She imagined them muttering, talking about her, levelling spiteful but unspecific accusations. Then she would be tempted to apologize; worse, tempted to try to explain.

“Well, there it is,” Colette sighed. “If you want new-build, I don’t think we can do it any quicker. Not unless we buy something nobody else wants.”

Alison swivelled in her seat. “We could do that, couldn’t we? We don’t have to want what everybody else wants?”

“Fine. If you’re prepared to settle for some peculiar little house next to a rubbish dump. Or a plot next to a main road, with all the traffic noise day and night.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that.”

“Alison, should we give it up for today? You’re just not in the mood, are you? It’s like dealing with a five-year-old.”

“Sorry. It’s Morris.”

“Tell him to go to the pub.”

“I have. But he says there isn’t a pub. He keeps going on about his mates. I think he’s met up with another one, I can’t get the name. Oh, wait. Hush, Col, he’s coming through now.”

Morris came through, loud, clear, indignant: “What, are we going to come and live in the middle of a field? I’m not living here.”

Al said, “Wait. He just said something interesting.” She paused, her hand held above her abdomen, as if she were tuning him in. “All right,” she said, “if you’re going to be like that, you know what you can do. See if you can find a better home to go to. (Not you, Col, I’m talking to Morris.) What makes you think I want you moving in anyway? I don’t need you. I’ve had it up to here! Bugger off!” She shouted the last phrase, staring through the windscreen.

Colette said, “Shh! Keep it down!” She checked over her shoulder that no one was watching them.

Al smiled. “I’ll tell you what, Colette, I’ll tell you what we should do. Go back in there, and tell that woman to put us down for the biggest house she’s got.”

Colette placed a small holding deposit and they returned two days later. Suzi was on duty, but it was a weekday morning and the caravan was empty.

“Hello, again. So you’re not working ladies?” Suzi enquired. Her eyes skittered over them, sharp as scissors.

“Self-employed,” Colette said.

“Oh, I see. Both of you?”

“Yes, is that a problem?”

Suzi took a deep breath. Once again a smile spread over her face. “No problem at all? But you will be wanting our package of personally tailored mortgage advice and assistance?”

“No, thank you.”

Suzi spread out the site map. “The Collingwood,” she said, “is very unique, on this site we shall only be erecting three. Being exclusive, it is in a preferential situation, here on top of the hill? We don’t have a computer-generated image as of this moment, because we’re waiting for the computer to generate it. But if you can imagine the Rodney? With an extra bedroom en suite?”

“But what will it look like on the outside?”

“If you’ll excuse me?” Suzi got on the phone. “Those two ladies?” she said. “That I mentioned? Yes, those ones. Wanting to know about the Collingwood, the exterior elevations? Like the Rodney with different gob-ons? Yes. Mmm. Just ordinary, really … . No, not to look at them. By-eee.” She turned back to Colette. “Now, if you can imagine?” She passed her forefinger over the sales leaflet. “For the Rodney you have this band of decorative plasterwork with the nautical knots motif, but with the Collingwood you will get extra portholes?”

“Instead of windows?”

“Oh no, they will just be decorative.”

“They won’t open?”

“I’ll check that for you, shall I?” She picked up the phone again. “Hi, there! Yes, fine. My ladies—yes, those ones—want to know, do the portholes open? That’s on the Collingwood?”

The answer took some time to find. A voice in Al’s ear said, did you know Capstick was at sea? He was in the merchant navy before he got taken on as a bouncer.

“Colette,” she said. She put her hand on Colette’s hand. “I think Morris has met Keef Catsick.”

“No?” Suzi said. “No! Really? You too? In Dorking? … Well, there must be a plague of them. What can you do? Live and let live, that’s what I say … . Yes, will do. By-eee.”

She clicked the phone down and turned away politely, believing she was witnessing a moment of lesbian intimacy.

Colette said, “Keith who?”

Alison took her hand away. “No. It’s all right. It’s nothing.” Her knuckles looked skinned and darkly bruised. The lucky opals had congealed in their settings, dull and matt like healing scabs.

Al thought you couldn’t bargain with a house builder, but Colette showed her that you can. Even when they had agreed on a basic price, three thousand below Suzi’s target, she kept on pushing, pushing, pushing, until Suzi felt sick and hot and she began to capitulate to Colette’s demands; for Colette made it clear that until she was dealt with, and dealt with in a way satisfactory to herself, she would keep away any other potential customers—which she did, by darting her head at them as they climbed the steps and fixing them with her pale glare; by snapping, “Do you mind, Suzi is busy with me?” When Suzi’s phone rang, Colette picked it up and said, “Yes? No she can’t. Call back.” When Suzi yearned after lost prospects as they stumbled down the steps, following them with her eyes, Colette zipped her bag, stood up and said, “I could come back when you’re more fully staffed—say, next Saturday afternoon?”