Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

And so she passes, her voice fading until she melts into the wall.

Even the ones who went over with plenty of warning liked to recall their last hours on the ward, dwelling in a leisurely fashion on which of their family showed up for the deathbed and which of them left it too late and got stuck in traffic. They wanted Alison to put tributes in the newspaper for them— Thanks, sincerely meant, to the staff at St. Bernard’s —and she promised she would, for I’ll do anything, she would say, that will make them lie down, wait quietly and waft to their next abode instead of making themselves at home in mine. They will finish their ramblings with, “Well, that’s all from me for now,” and “Hoping this finds you well,” and “Let me have your family news soon”: sometimes with a quiet, stoical, “I ought to go now.” Sometimes, when they bob back, with a cheery, “Hello, it’s me,” they are claiming to be Queen Victoria, or their own older sister, or a woman who lived next door to them before they were born. It’s not intentional fraud; it’s more that a mingling and mincing and mixing of personality goes on, the fusing of personal memory with the collective. You see, she explains to Colette, you and me, when we come back, we could manifest as one person. Because these last years, we’ve shared a lot. You could come back as my mum. I could come over, thirty years from now, to some psychic standing on a stage somewhere, and claim I was my own dad. Not that I know who my dad is, but I will one day, perhaps after I’ve passed.

But Colette would say, panicked for a moment, stampeded into belief, what if I die? Al, what shall I do, what shall I do if I die?

Al would say to her, keep your wits about you. Don’t start crying. Don’t speak to anybody. Don’t eat anything. Keep saying your name over and over. Close your eyes and look for the light. If somebody says, follow me, ask to see their ID. When you see the light, move towards it. Keep your bag clamped to your body—where your body would be. Don’t open your bag, and remember the last thing you should do is pull out a map, however lost you feel. If anybody asks you for money ignore them, push past. Just keep moving towards the light. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t let anyone stop you. If somebody points out there’s paint on your coat or bird droppings in your hair, just keep motoring, don’t pause, don’t look left or right. If a woman approaches you with some snotty-nosed kid, kick her out of the way. It sounds harsh, but it’s for your own safety. Keep moving. Move towards the light.

And if I lose it? Colette would say. What if I lose the light and I’m wandering around in a fog, with all these people trying to snatch my purse and my mobile? You can always come home, Alison would tell her. You know your home now, Admiral Drive. I’ll be here to explain it all to you and put you on the right path so that you can manage the next bit, and then when I come over in the fullness of time we can get together and have a coffee and maybe share a house again if we think it will work out.

But what if you go before me, Colette would say, what if we go together, what if we’re on the M25 and a wind blows up and what if it’s a mighty wind and we’re blown into the path of a lorry?

Alison would sigh and say, Colette, Colette, we all get there in the end. Look at Morris! We end up in the next world raw, indignant, baffled or furious, and ignorant, all of us: but we get sent on courses. Our spirits move, given time, to a higher level, where everything becomes clear. Or so people tell me, anyway. Hauntings can persist for centuries, for sure, but why wouldn’t they? People have no sense of urgency, airside.

Inside the Collingwood the air was serene. Weekly, Colette polished the crystal ball. You had to wash it in vinegar and water and rub it up with a chamois. Al said, the tools of the trade are what keep you on track. They focus the mind and direct the energy. But they have no magic in themselves. Power is contained in domestic objects, in the familiar items you handle every day. You can look into the side of an aluminium pan and see a face that’s not your own. You can see a movement on the inside of an empty glass.

The days, months, blurred into one. The venues offered a thousand grannies with buttons missing; a thousand hands raised. Why are we here? Why must we suffer? Why must children suffer? Why does God mistreat us? Can you bend spoons?

Smiling, Al said to her questioner, “I should give it a go, shouldn’t I? Give me something to do in the kitchen. Stop me raiding the fridge.”

The truth was—though she never admitted it to anyone—that she had once tried it. She was against party tricks, and generally against showing off and being wasteful, and wrecking your cutlery seemed to come under those heads. But one day at Admiral Drive the urge overcame her. Colette was out: all well and good. She tiptoed into the kitchen and slid out a drawer. It snagged, bounced back. The potato masher had rolled forward spitefully and was catching its rim on the front of the unit. Unusually irritated, she slid in her hand, dragged the utensil out and threw it across the kitchen. Now she was in the mood for spoon-bending, she wasn’t to be thwarted.

Her hand jumped for the knives. She picked one out, a blunt round-edged table knife. She ran her fingers around the blade. She put it down. Picked up a soupspoon. She knew how to do this. She held it loosely, fingers caressing its neck, her will flowing from her spinal column sweetly into the pads of her fingers. She closed her eyes. She felt a slight humming behind them. Her breathing deepened. She relaxed. Then her eyes snapped open. She looked down. The spoon, unaltered, smiled up at her; and suddenly she understood it, she understood the essence of spoonhood. Bending it wasn’t the point, anymore. The point was that she would never feel the same about cutlery. Something stirred deep in her memory, as if she had been cross-wired, as if some old source of feeling had been tapped. She laid the spoon to rest, reverently, snug inside a fellow spoon. As she closed the drawer her eye caught the glint of the paring knife, a more worthwhile blade. She thought, I understand the nature of it. I understand the nature of spoon and knife.

Later, Colette picked up the potato masher from where it had fallen. “It’s bent,” she said.

“That’s all right. I did it.”

“Oh. You’re sure?”

“Just a little experiment.”

“I thought for a minute it must be Morris come back.” Colette hesitated. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

But truly, there was no sign of him. Al sometimes wondered how he was doing on his course. It must be that he’s going to a higher level, she reasoned, you wouldn’t get sent on a course to go to a lower level.

“No, not even Morris,” Colette said, when she mentioned it. If Morris were on a lower level, he’d be no good, he’d not even scrape up to standard as an ordinary spirit, let alone get employed anywhere as a guide. He’d be just an agglomeration of meaninglessness, a clump of cells rolling around through the netherworld.

“Colette,” she said, “when you’re sweeping, have a look at the vacuum cleaner bag from time to time. If you find any big lumps you can’t account for, check it out with me, okay?”

Colette said, “I don’t think that sifting through the vacuum cleaner bag was in my job description.”

“Well, write it in, there’s a good girl,” Al said.

There are some spirits, she knew, who are willing to sink: who are so tenacious of existence that they will assume any form, however debased, ridiculous, and filthy. That was why Al, unlike her mother, made sure to keep a clean house. She thought that she and Colette, between them, could keep down the lower sort, who drift in dust rolls under beds and make streaks and finger-prints on windowpanes. They cloud mirrors and sometimes vanish with a chortle, leaving the mirror clear and unkind. They clump in hairbrushes, and when you comb them out, you think, can this thin grey frizz be mine?