Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

“Give over!” Colette said. “All we want is a place to keep the mower.”

“But what about your other essential equipment? What about your barbecue? And what about your winter storage? Tables, waterproof covers for tables, parasols, waterproof covers for parasols—”

“Garage,” said Colette.

“I see,” the man said. “So forcing you to park your car in the open, exposing it to the elements and the risk of theft?”

“We’ve got Neighbourhood Watch.”

“Yes,” Alison said. “We all watch each other, and report each other’s movements.” She thought of the spirit trucks, and the mound beneath the blanket: she imagined the nature of it.

“Neighbourhood Watch? I wish you joy of it! In my opinion, house-holders should be armed. We in the Bisley area are run ragged by opportunistic thieves and every type of intruder. Police Constable Delingbole gave us a lecture on home security.”

“Can we get on?” Colette said. “I’ve set aside this afternoon for buying a shed, and I want to get it sorted. We still have to do our food shopping.”

Alison saw her dreams of dolls’ teatime fading. Come to think of it, had she ever had a doll? She followed the salesman towards a small log cabin.

“We call this one ‘Old Smokey,’” he said. “It takes its inspiration, the designers claim, from railway buildings in the golden days of the Old West.”

“I’ll say this for you. You don’t give up easily.” Colette turned her back and stalked away in the direction of the honest working sheds.

Just as Alison was about to follow her, she thought she saw something move inside Old Smokey. For a second she saw a face, looking out at her. Bugger, she thought, a haunted shed. But it was nobody she knew. She trailed after Colette, thinking, we’re not going to get anything nice, we’re just going to get one of these tidgy sheds that anybody could have. What if I were to lie down on the ground and say, it’s my money, I want one of those cream-painted Shaker-style ones with a porch?

She caught up with them. Colette must be in an exceptionally nice mood today, because she hadn’t struck the salesman. “Pent or Apex?” he demanded.

Colette said, “It’s no good trying to blind me with science. The pent are the ones with a sloping roof, and the apex are the ones with pointy roofs. That’s obvious.”

“I can do you a Sissinghurst. Wooden garden workshop, twelve-by-ten, double door, and eight fixed-glass windows, delivery date normally one month but we could be flexible on that: 699.99 pounds, on-the-road price.”

“You’ve got a nerve,” Colette said.

Alison said, “Did you see somebody, Colette? Inside Old Smokey?”

The salesman said, “That will be a customer, madam.”

“He didn’t look like a customer.”

“Nor do I,” Colette said. “That’s obvious. Are you going to sell me something, or shall I drive up to Nottcutts on the A30?”

Al pitied the man; like her, he had his job to do, and part of his job was to stimulate the customer’s imagination. “Don’t worry,” she said, “we’ll have one from you. Honest. If you can just point us to the kind my friend wants.”

“I’ve lost my bearings here,” the man said. “I confess to a certain amount of total bafflement. Which of you ladies is the purchaser?”

“Oh, let’s not go through that again.” Colette groaned. “Al, you take over.” She walked away, giggling, between the ornamental wheelbarrow planters, the cast-iron conservatory frogs and the roughcast Buddhas. Her thin shoulders twitched.

“Will you sell one to me?” Al asked. She smiled her sweetest smile. “What about that one?”

“What, the Balmoral?” The man sneered. “Eight-by-ten pent with single-pitch roof? Well, that seems like a decision made, at last. Thank you, madam, it seems we’ve found something to suit you. The only problem is, as I could have told you if you’d let me get a word in edgewise, it’s the end of the range.”

“That’s okay,” Al said. “I’m not bothered about whether it’s in fashion.”

“No,” the man said, “what I’m saying to you is this, it would be futile, at this stage in the season, for me to ask the manufacturer to supply.”

“But what about this one? The one standing here?” Al tapped its walls. “You could send it right away, couldn’t you?”

The man turned away. He needed to struggle with his temper. His grand-dad had come through in spirit and was sitting on the Balmoral’s roof—its pent—ruminatively working his way through a bag of sweets. When the man spoke, granddad flapped his tongue out, with a melting humbug on the end of it.

“Excuse me madam—”

“Go ahead.”

“—are you asking me and my colleagues to dismantle that garden building and supervise its immediate transport, for a price of some four hundred pounds plus VAT plus our normal service charge? While the World Cup’s on?”

“Well, what else are you going to do with it?” Colette came up to rejoin them, her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her jeans. “You planning to leave it there till it falls down by itself?” Her foot scuffed the ground, kicked out casually at a concrete otter with its concrete pup. “If you don’t sell it now, mate, you never will. So come on, look sharp. Whistle up your crew, and let’s get on with the job.”

“What about your hardstanding?” the man said. “I don’t suppose you’ve given a thought to your hardstanding. Have you?”

As they walked back to the car, Colette said, “You know, I really think, when men talk, it’s worse than when they don’t.”

Alison looked at her narrowly, sideways. She waited for more.

“Gavin never said much. He’d say nothing for such a long time that you wanted to lean over and poke your finger in him to see if he was dead. I used to say, tell me your thoughts, Gavin. You must have thoughts. You remember when we met him, in Farnham?”

Alison nodded. She had smelled, trailing after Gavin, the reek of a past life: an old tweed collar rancid with hair oil. His aura was oatmeal, grey, it was as tough as old rope.

“Well,” Colette said. She flicked her remote to open the car doors. “I wonder what he was doing in Farnham.”

“Having a run out?”

“He could shop in Twickenham.”

“Change of scene?”

“Or Richmond.” Colette chewed her pale lip. “I wonder what he wanted in Elphicks? Because when you think, he gets all he needs at car shops.”

“Perhaps he wanted a new shirt.”

“He has a wardrobe full of shirts. He has fifty shirts. He must have. I used to pay a woman to iron them. Why did I pay? He seemed to think, if I didn’t want to do it myself, I ought to pay. When I look back now, I can’t for one minute imagine what was going through my head when I agreed to that.”

“Still,” Al said. She eased herself into her seat. “Some years have passed. Since you were together. They might be—I don’t know—frayed? His neck might have grown.”

“Oh yes,” Colette said. “He looks porky, all right. But he never did up his top button. So. Anyway. Plenty shirts.”

“But a new tie? Socks, underpants?” She felt shy; she’d never lived with a man.

“Knickers?” Colette said. “Car shops every time. Halfords. Velour for the proles, but leather for Gavin, top spec. They stock them in six-packs, shouldn’t wonder. Or else he buys them mail order from a rescue service.”

“A rescue service?”

“You know. Automobile Association. Royal Automobile Club. National Breakdown.”

“I know. But I didn’t think Gavin would need rescuing.”

“Oh, he just likes to have a badge and a personal number.”

“Have I got a personal number?”