Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

“But I thought you were offering something else.”

“ Who knows? ” Merlyn said. “That’s the technical term, I believe, that people use when advertising. “For friendship and who knows? ”

“But in your case, what you want is my money in your bank, and who knows? Come on, Merlyn! You just think I’m an easy touch. And by the way it’s no good ringing up Mandy—Natasha, I mean—or any of the girls. They all don’t like you, for the reason I don’t like you.” She paused. No, that’s unfair, she thought. There is a particular reason I don’t like Merlyn. “It’s your tie pin,” she said. “I don’t like the sight of a tie pin. I always think it’s dangerous.”

“I see,” Merlyn said. “Or rather, I don’t, I don’t at all.”

She sighed. “I’m not sure I can account for it myself. Goes back to a past life, I suppose.”

“Oh, come on!” Merlyn sneered. “Martyred with a tie pin? In antiquity they didn’t have tie pins. Brooches, I grant you.”

“Maybe it was me who did the martyring,” she said. “I don’t know, Merlyn. Look, good luck with your book. I hope you do get all that wealth. I do really. If you deserve it, of course. And I’m sure you do. Whatever. Whatever you think. When you leave your mobile home for Beverly Hills, let us have your new address.”

Colette came in five minutes later, with the shopping. “Do you want a fudge double-choc brownie?” she asked.

Al said, “Merlyn phoned. He’s doing a new book.”

“Oh yes?” Colette said. “You do like these yogurts, don’t you?”

“Are they high-fat?” Al said happily. Colette turned the pot about in her fingers, frowning. “They must be,” Al said, “if I like them. By the way, Merlyn asked me to go and live with him.”

Colette continued stacking the fridge. “Your chops are past their sell-by,” she said. She hurled them in the bin and said, “What? In his trailer?”

“I said no.”

“Who the fuck does he think he is?”

“He propositioned me,” Al said.

She wiped her hand down her skirt. “What about our book, Colette? Will it ever be finished?”

Colette had accumulated a little pile of printout upstairs; she guarded it, locking it in her wardrobe—a precaution Al found touching. The tapes still gave them trouble. Sometimes they would find their last session had been replaced entirely by gibberish. Sometimes their conversation was overlaid by squeaks, scrapes, and coughs, as if a winter audience were tuning up for a symphony concert.

COLETTE: So, do you regard it as a gift or more as a—what’s the opposite of a gift?

ALISON: Unsolicited goods. A burden. An infliction.

COLETTE: Is that your answer?

ALISON: No. I was just telling you some expressions.

COLETTE: So … ?

ALISON: Look, I just am this way. I can’t imagine anything else. If I’d had somebody around me with more sense when I was training, instead of Mrs. Etchells, I might have had a better life.

COLETTE: So it could be different?

ALISON: Yes. Given a more evolved guide.

COLETTE: You seem to be doing okay without Morris.

ALISON: I told you I would.

COLETTE: After all, you’ve said yourself, a lot of it is psychology.

ALISON: When you say psychology , you’re calling it cheating.

COLETTE: What would you call it?

ALISON: You don’t call Sherlock Holmes cheating! Look, if you get knowledge, you have to use it however it comes.

COLETTE: But I’d rather think, in a way—let me finish—I’d rather think you were cheating, if I had your welfare at heart. Because a lot of people who hear voices, they get diagnosed and put in hospital.

ALISON: Not so much now. Because of cutbacks, you know? There are people who walk around believing all sorts of things. You see them on the streets.

COLETTE: Yes, but that’s just a policy. That doesn’t make them sane.

ALISON: I make a living, you see. That’s the difference between me and the people who are mad. They don’t call you mad, if you’re making a living.

Sometimes Colette would leave the tape running without telling Al. There was some obscure idea in her mind that she might need a witness. That if she had a record she could make Al stick to any bargains she made; or that, in an unwary moment while she was out of the house, Al might record something incriminating. Though she didn’t know what her crime might be.

COLETTE: My project for the new millennium is to manage you more efficiently. I’m going to set you monthly targets. It’s time for blue-skies thinking. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be at least ten percent more productive. You’re sleeping through the night now, aren’t you? And possibly I could handle a more proactive role. I could pick up the overflow clients. Just the ones who require fortune-telling. After all, you can’t really tell the future, can you? The cards don’t know it.

ALISON: Most people don’t want to know about the future. They just want to know about the present. They want to be told they’re doing all right.

COLETTE: Nobody ever told me I was doing all right. When I used to go to Brondesbury and places.

ALISON: You didn’t feel helped, you didn’t feel you’d had any emotional guidance?

COLETTE: No.

ALISON: When I think back to those days, I think you were trying to believe too much. People can’t believe everything at once. They have to work up to it.

COLETTE: Gavin thought it was all a fraud. But then Gavin was stupid.

ALISON: You know, you still talk about him a lot.

COLETTE: I don’t. I never talk about him.

ALISON: Mm.

COLETTE: Never.

“So okay, okay,” Al said. “If you want to learn. What do you want to try first, cards or palms? Palms? Okay.”

But after five minutes, Colette said, “I can’t see the lines, Al. I think my eyes are going.” Al said nothing. “I might get contacts. I’m not having glasses.”

“You can use a magnifying glass, the punters don’t mind. In fact, they think they’re getting more for their money.”

They tried again. “Don’t try to tell my future,” Al said. “Leave that aside for now. Take my left hand. That’s where my character is written, the capacities I was born with. You can see all my potential, waiting to come out. Your job is to alert me to it.”

Colette held her hand tentatively, as if she found it disagreeable. She glanced down at it, and up at Alison again. “Come on,” Al said. “You know my character. Or you say you do. You’re always talking about my character. And you know about my potential. You’ve just made me a business plan.”

“I don’t know,” Colette said. “Even when I look through a magnifier I can’t make sense of it.”

“We’ll have a go with the cards then,” Al said. “As you know, there are seventy-eight to learn, plus all the meaningful combinations, so you’ll have a lot of homework. You know the basics, you must have picked that up by now. Clubs rule the fire signs—you know the signs, don’t you? Hearts rule water, diamonds earth.”

“Diamonds, earth,” Colette said, “that’s easy to remember. But why do spades rule air?”

“In the tarot, spades are swords,” Al said. “Think of them cutting through the air. Clubs are wands. Diamonds are pentacles. Hearts are cups.”

Colette’s hands were clumsy when she shuffled; pictures cascaded from the pack and she gave herself paper cuts, as if the cards were nipping her. Al taught her to lay out a consequences spread and a Celtic Cross. She turned the major arcana face up so she could learn them one by one. But Colette couldn’t get the idea. She was diligent and conscientious, but when she saw the cards she couldn’t see beyond the pictures on them. A crayfish is crawling out of a pond: why? A man in a silly hat stands on the brink of a precipice. He carries his possessions in a bundle and a dog is nipping at his thigh. Where is he going? Why doesn’t he feel the teeth? A woman is forcing open the jaws of a lion. She seems happy with life. There is a collusive buzz in the air.