Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

New Year’s Eve was cold at Admiral Drive, and the skies were bright. The planes didn’t fall out of them, and there was no flood or epidemic—none, anyway, affecting the southeast of England. The clients gave a listless, apathetic sigh and—just for a month or two—accepted their lives as they were. By spring, trade was creeping back.

“They’re coming to take samples from the drains,” Michelle told Alison.

“Who are?”

“Drain officials,” Michelle said fearfully.

After Morris left, their life was like a holiday. For the first time in years, Alison went to bed knowing she wouldn’t be tossed out of it in the small hours. She could have a leisurely late-night bath without a hairy hand pulling out the plug, or Morris’s snake tattoo rising beneath the rose-scented bubbles. She slept through the night and woke refreshed, ready for what the day might bring. She blossomed, her plumped-out skin refining itself, the violet shadows vanishing from beneath her eyes. “I don’t know when I’ve felt so well,” she said.

Colette slept through the nights too, but she looked just the same.

They began to talk about booking a last-minute holiday, a break in the sun. Morris on an aircraft had been impossible, Al said. When she was checking in, he would jump on her luggage, so that it weighed heavy and she was surcharged. He would flash his knuckle-dusters as they walked through the metal detector, causing the security staff to stop and search her. If they made it as far as the plane, he would lock himself in the lavatory or hide in some vulnerable person’s sick bag and come up— boom! —into their face when they opened it. On the way to Madeira once, he had caused a cardiac arrest.

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore,” Colette said. “Where would you like to go?”

“Dunno,” Al said. Then: “Somewhere with ruins. Or where they sing opera. It’s night, and you hold candles, and they sing in an arena, an amphitheatre. Or they perform plays wearing masks. If I were an opera singer I’d be quite alluring. Nobody would think I was overweight.”

Colette had been thinking in terms of sex with a Greek waiter. There was no reason, on the face of it, why Alison’s cultural yearnings and her sexual ones shouldn’t be fulfilled within five hundred yards of each other. But she pictured her hot-eyed beau circling their table on the terrace, his sighs, his raised pulse, his fiery breath, his thoughts running ahead: is it worth it, because I’ll have to pay a mate of mine to sleep with the fat girl?

“Besides,” Al said, “it would be nice to have somebody with me. I went to Cyprus with Mandy but I never saw her, she was in and out of bed with somebody new every night. I found it quite squalid. Oh, I love Mandy, don’t get me wrong. People should enjoy themselves, if they can.”

“It just happens you can’t,” Colette said.

It didn’t matter what she said to Al, she reasoned. Even if she didn’t speak out loud, Al would pull the thoughts out of her head; so she would know anyway.

Alison withdrew into a hurt silence; so they never got the holiday. A month on, she mentioned it again, timidly, but Colette snapped at her, “I don’t want to go anywhere with ruins. I want to drink too much and dance on the table. Why do you think this is all I want to do, live with you and drive you to sodding Oxted to a Celtic Mystery Convention? I spend my sodding life on the M25, with you throwing up in the passenger seat.”

Alison said timidly, “I’m not sick much, since Morris went.” She tried to imagine Colette dancing on a table. She could only conjure a harsh tango on the blond wood of the coffee table, Colette’s spine arched, her chicken-skin armpits exposed as if for a bite. She heard a buzz in her ear; the meek little woman came through, saying, ’scuse me,’scuse me, have you seen Maureen Harrison?

“Look in the kitchen,” Al said. “I think she’s behind the fridge.”

When 9/11 came, Colette was watching daytime TV. She called Alison through. Al rested her hands on the back of the sofa. She looked without surprise as the Twin Towers crumbled, as the burning bodies plunged through the air. Alison watched till the news looped itself around again and the same pictures were played. Then she left the room without comment. You feel as if you should say something, but you don’t know what it is. You can’t say you foresaw it; yet you can’t say no one foresaw it. The whole world has drawn this card.

Merlyn rang up later that day. “Hello,” she said. “How’s you? Seen the news?”

“Awful,” Merlyn said, and she said, “Yes, awful, And how’s Merlin?”

“No idea,” he said.

“Not seen him on the circuit?”

“I’m quitting that.”

“Really? You’re going to build up the psychic detective work?”

Or psychic security services, she thought. You could certainly offer them. You could stand at airports and X-ray people’s intentions.

“No, nothing like that,” Merlyn said. He sounded remarkably buoyant. “I’m thinking of becoming a life coach. I’m writing a book, a new one. Self-Heal Through Success . It’s using the ancient wisdom traditions for health, wealth, and happiness. Believe the world owes you: that’s what I say.”

Alison excused herself, put the receiver down, and went into the kitchen to get an orange. When she came back, she wedged the receiver under her chin while she peeled it. You don’t want to waste your time, Merlyn was saying, with these young girls and grandmas. Here we are in the heartland of the hi-tech boom. Affluence is as natural as breathing. Each morning when you rise you stretch out your arms and say, I possess the universe.

“Merlyn, why are you telling me this?”

“I was hoping you’d buy a franchise. You’re very inspirational, Alison.”

“You’d have to talk to Colette. She makes the business decisions.”

“Oh, does she?” said Merlyn. “Let me tell you now, and I’ll tell you for free, you alone are responsible for your health and your wealth. You cannot delegate what is at the core of your being. Remember the universal law: you get what you think you deserve.”

Peel fell on the carpet, fragrant and curly. “Really?” she said. “Not much, then, in my case.”

“Alison, I’m disappointed by your negativity. I may have to put the phone down, before it contaminates my day.”

“Okay,” she said, and Merlyn said, “No, don’t go. I’d hoped—oh, well, I was thinking along the lines of a partnership. Well, there you are. I’ve said it. What do you think?”

“A business partnership?”

“Any kind you like.”

She thought, he thinks I’m stupid, just because I’m fat; because I’m fat, he thinks I’m stupid.

“No.”

“Would you be more specific?”

“More specific than no?”

“I value feedback. I can take it on the chin.”

The trouble is, she thought, you don’t have a chin. Merlyn was running to fat, and his damp grey skin seemed to sweat out, in public, the private moisture contained within the shell of his trailer home. She looked, in imagination, into his chocolate-coloured eyes, and saw how his pastel shirt stretched over his belly.

“I couldn’t,” she said. “You’re overweight.”

“Well, pardonnez-moi ,” Merlyn said. “Look who’s talking.”

“Yes, I know, me too. But I don’t like the way your shirt buttons are bursting off. I hate sewing, I’m no good with a needle.”

“You can get staplers,” Merlyn said nastily. “You can get dedicated staplers nowadays. Anyway, who told you that I would require you to sew on my shirt buttons?”

“I thought you might.”

“And you are seriously giving me this as a reason why you are turning down my offer of a business arrangement?”