Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

The day Morris said he was going, she could hardly wait to tell people the news. “He’s been called away,” she said. “Isn’t that great?” Smiles kept breaking out. She felt as if she were fizzing inside.

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Mandy said on the phone. “I mean, it’s good news for all of us, Al. Merlin said he was at the limit of his tolerance, and so did Merlyn. Your Morris had a really nasty way with him, he upset me dread-fully that night of Di’s funeral. I never felt clean afterwards. Well, you don’t, do you?”

“You don’t think it’s a trick?” Al said, but Mandy reassured her.

“It’s his time, Al. He’s pulled towards the light. He can’t resist, I bet you. It’s time he broke out of that cycle of criminality and self-destructive behaviour. He’ll be moving upwards. You’ll see.”

Colette was in the kitchen making decaffeinated coffee. Al told her, “Morris is leaving. He’s been called away.”

Colette raised her eyebrows and said, “Called away by who?”

“I don’t know, but he says he’s going on a course. I talked to Mandy, she says it means he’s moving to a higher level.”

Colette stood waiting for the kettle to boil, her fingers tapping. “Does that mean he won’t be bothering us in the future?”

“He swears he’s leaving today.”

“And it’s like, a residential course, is it?”

“I suppose.”

“And how long is it? Will he be coming back?”

“I think it takes as long as it takes. I can’t believe he’ll come back to the Woking area. Spirits don’t generally go backwards. I’ve never heard of that happening. When he’s moved towards the light he’ll be free to—” She stopped, perplexed. “Whatever they do,” she said finally. “Melt. Disperse.”

The kettle clicked itself off. “And all those other people he talks about—Dean, those others we get in the back of the car—will they be melting too?”

“I don’t know about Dean. He doesn’t seemed very evolved. But yes, I think, it’s Morris who attracts them, not me, so if he goes they’ll all go. You see, it might be the end of Morris as we know him. It had to happen one day.”

“Then what? What will it be like?”

“Well, it’ll be—silent. We’ll have some peace. I can get a night’s sleep.”

Colette said, “Could you move, please, so I can get to the fridge? … You won’t be giving up the business, will you?”

“If I gave up, how would I make a living?”

“I just want the milk. Thanks. But what will you do for a spirit guide?”

“Another one could turn up any day. Or I could borrow yours.”

Colette almost dropped the milk carton. “Mine?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

Colette looked horrified. “But who is he?”

“It’s a she. Maureen Harrison, her name is.”

Colette poured her milk all over the granite-style work surface, and stood watching it stupidly as it dripped. “Who’s that? I don’t know her. I don’t know anyone of that name.”

“No, you wouldn’t. She passed before you were born. In fact, it took me a while to locate her, but her poor old friend kept calling around, asking for her. So I thought I’d do a good action, link them up together. Okay, I should have told you! I should have mentioned it. But what’s your problem? She won’t make any difference to you. Look, relax, she’s not doing you any harm, she’s just one of those grannies who lose the buttons off their cardigans.”

“But can she see me? Is she looking at me now?”

“Maureen,” Al said softly. “You around, love?”

From a cupboard came the chink of a teacup.

“There,” Al said.

“Can she see me in my room at night?”

Alison crossed the kitchen and began to mop up the spilled milk. “Go and sit down, Colette, you’ve had a shock. I’ll make you another cup.”

She boiled the kettle again. Decaf’s not much use for a shock. She stood looking out over the empty garden. When Morris actually goes, she thought, we’ll have champagne. Colette called out to know where Maureen Harrison came from, and when Al called back, “Somewhere up north,” she sounded shocked, as if it would have been more natural to have a spirit guide from Uxbridge.

Al couldn’t help smiling to herself. “Look on the bright side,” she said, bringing the coffee through; she’d put out some chocolate biscuits as the beginning of her celebration. “Look on the bright side, you might have been lumbered with a Tibetan.” She imagined the Collingwood, ringing with temple bells.

There was an unusual calm in their sitting room. She stared hard at the voile panels, but Morris’s form was not bulking them out, nor was he lying, stretched, along the hem. No Aitkenside, no Dean, no Pikey. She sat down. “Here we are,” she said, beaming. “Just the two of us.” She heard a moaning, a scraping, a metallic rattle; then the flap of the letter box, as Morris made his exit.

As the millennium approached, their trade declined. It was nothing personal, no misstep in Colette’s business plan. All the psychics called up to grouch about it. It was as if their clients had put their personal curiosity on pause, as if they had been caught up in some general intake of breath. The new age was celebrated at Admiral Drive with fireworks, released by careful fathers from the raw back plots. The children’s play area, the natural site for the fiesta, had been fenced off and KEEP OUT notices erected.

The local free sheet said Japanese knotweed had been found. “Is that a good thing?” Michelle asked, over the back fence. “I mean, are they conserving it?”

“No, I think it’s noxious,” Al said. She went inside, worried. I hope it’s not my fault, she thought. Had Morris pissed on the plot, on his way out of her life?

Some people didn’t buy into the knotweed theory. They said the problem was an unexploded bomb, left over from the last war—whenever that was. Evan leaned over the fence and said, “Have you heard about that bloke over Reading way, Lower Earley? On a new estate like this? He kept noticing his paint was blistering. His drains filled up with black sludge. One day he was digging in his vegetable plot, and he saw something wriggling on his spade. He thought, hell, what’s this?”

“And what was it?” Colette asked. Sometimes she found Evan entrancing.

“It was a heap of white worms,” he said. “Where you’ve got white worms you’ve got radioactivity. That’s the only thing you need to know about white worms.”

“So what did he do?”

“Called in the council,” Evan said.

“If it were me I’d call in the army.”

“Of course it’s a cover-up. They denied everything. Poor beggar’s boarded the place up and cut his losses.”

“So what caused it?”

“Secret underground nuclear explosion,” Evan said. “Stands to reason.”

At Admiral Drive a few people phoned the local environmental health department, putting questions about the play area, but officials would only admit to some sort of blockage, some sort of seepage, some sort of contamination the nature of which they were unable as yet to confirm. They insisted that the white worm problem was confined to the Reading area and that none of them had made their way to Woking. Meanwhile the infants remained shut out of paradise. They roared with temper when they saw the swings and the slide, and rattled the railings. Their mothers dragged them uphill, towards their Frobishers and Mountbattens, out of harm’s way. Nobody wanted news of the problem to leak, in case it affected their house prices. The populace was restless and transient, and already the first FOR SALE signs were going up, as footloose young couples tried their luck in a rising market.