Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

They waited, side by side on stacking chairs. Colette talked about her self-esteem, her lack of it, her lonely life. Her voice quavered. Al thought, poor Colette, it’s the times we live in. If she can’t be in a psychic show, she fancies her chances on a true confession show. She pictured Gavin, stumbling over the cables, drawn from dark into dazzling light, from the dark of his own obtuse nature into the dazzling light of pale accusing eyes. She heard the audience groaning, hissing; saw Gavin tried, convicted, hung by the neck. It came to her that Gavin had been hanged, in his former life as a poacher. That’s why, she thought, in this life, he never does up the top button on his shirt. She closed her eyes. She could smell shit, farmyard manure. Gavin was standing with a noose round his neck. He wore sideburns, and his expression was despondent. Someone was bashing a tin drum. The crowd was small but keen. And she? She was enjoying her day off. A woman was selling mutton pies. She had just bought two.

“Wake up, Al,” Colette said. “They’re calling your number! Shall I come in with you?”

“No.” Al gave Colette a shove in the chest, which dropped her back in her chair. “Look after my bag,” she said, throwing it into her lap.

When she walked in, her hand—the palm burning and slightly greasy from her second pie—was still outstretched. For a moment the doctor seemed to think he was expected to shake it. He looked outraged at the familiarity, then he remembered his communication skills.

“Miss Hart!” he said, with a smile that showed his teeth. “Sit ye down, sit ye down. And how are you today?”

He’s been on a course, she thought. Like Morris. There was a stained coffee mug by his elbow, bearing the logo of a popular pharmaceutical company.

“I take it you’re here about your weight?” he said.

“Oh no,” she said. “I can’t help my weight, I’m afraid.”

“Huh. I’ve heard that a time or two,” the doctor said. “Let me tell you, if I had a pound for every woman who’s sat in that chair and told me about her slow metabolism, I’d be a rich man now.”

Not that riches would help you, Al thought. Not with a liver like yours. Slowly, with a lingering regret, she pulled out her gaze from his viscera and focused on his Adam’s apple. “I have tinglings down my arms,” she said. “And my feet, when I try to go home, my feet take me somewhere else. My fingers twitch, and the muscles in my hands. Sometimes I can’t use my knife and fork.”

“And so?” said the doctor.

“So I use a spoon.”

“You’re not giving me much to go on,” the doctor said. “Have you tried eating with your fingers?”

It was his little joke, she saw. I will bear it, she thought. I won’t abuse my powers by foreseeing about him. I’ll just be calm, and try and be ordinary. “Look, I’ll tell you what my friend thinks.” She put Colette’s theory to him.

“You women!” the doctor exclaimed. “You all think you’ve got multiple sclerosis! It beats me, why you’re all so keen to be in wheelchairs. Shoes off, please, and step on these scales.”

Al tried to ease her feet out of her sandals. They were stuck, the straps embedded in her flesh. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, bending down to unbuckle them, peel the leather away.

“Come on, come on,” the doctor said. “There are people waiting out there.”

She kicked away her shoes and stepped on the scales. She stared at the paint on the wall, and then, nerving herself, she glanced down. She couldn’t see past herself, to read the figure.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” the doctor said. “Get the nurse to test your wee. You’re probably diabetic. I suppose we ought to get your cholesterol checked, though I don’t know why we bother. Be cheaper to send a patrol officer to confiscate your crisps and beer. When did you last have a blood-pressure check?”

She shrugged.

“Sit here,” he said. “Never mind your shoes, we haven’t time for that, you can get back into your shoes when you get outside. Roll up your sleeve.”

Al touched her own warm skin. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt. She hardly liked to draw attention to it. “It is rolled up,” she whispered.

The doctor clasped a band around her arm. His other hand began to pump. “Oh, dear, oh, dear. At this level I would always treat.” He shot a glance upward, at her face. “Thyroid’s probably shot, come to that.”

He turned away and tapped his keyboard. He said, “We don’t seem to have seen you before.”

“That would be right.”

“You’re not registered with two doctors, are you? Because I should have expected a person in your state to be in here twice a week. You’re not moon-lighting? Signed up with another practice? Because if you are, I warn you, the system will catch up with you. You can’t pull that stunt.”

Her head began hurting. The doctor typed. Al fingered her scalp, as if feeling for the lumpy thread of an old scar. I got that somewhere in my past lives, she thought, when I was a labourer in the fields. Years passed like that, back bent, head down. A lifetime, two, three, four. I suppose there’s always a call for labourers.

“Now I’m going to try you on these,” the doctor said. “These are for your blood pressure. Book in with the nurse for a three-month check. These are for your thyroid. One a day. Just one, mind. No point you doubling the dose, Miss—er—Hart, because all that will do is ensure your total endocrine collapse takes place sooner than scheduled. Here you are.”

“Shall I come back?” she asked. “To see you personally? Though not too often?”

“See how it goes,” the doctor said, nodding and sucking his lip. But he was not nodding to her in particular. He was already thinking of the next patient, and as he wiped her from the screen, he erased her from his mind, and a well-drilled cheeriness overtook him. “Oh, yes,” he said, rubbing his fore-head, “Wait, Miss Hart—not depressed at all, are you? We can do a lot for that, you know.”

When Colette saw Al shuffling down the passage into the waiting area, trying to keep her unbuckled sandals on her feet, she threw down her magazine, drew her feet from the table, and leaped up, balancing sweetly like a member of a dance troupe. It’s nice to be lighter! she thought; Al’s diet was working, though not for Al. “Well? So have you got MS?”

“I dunno,” Al said.

“What do you mean, Al, you don’t know ? You went in there with a specific question, and I should think you could come out with an answer, yes or bloody no.”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Al said.

“What was the doctor like?”

“He was bald and nasty.”

“I see,” Colette said. “Fasten your shoes.”

Al bent at the waist: where her waist would be. “I can’t reach,” she said pitifully. By the reception desk, she put one foot on a vacant chair and bent over. A receptionist tapped the glass. Tap-tap, tap-tap. Startled, Al wobbled; her body trembled; Colette leaned against her, to prop her upright. “Let’s go,” Al said, limping faster. When they reached the car she opened the door, plopped her right foot on the doorsill, and fastened her sandal.

“Just get in,” Colette said. “In this heat, doing up the other foot will kill you.”

Al heaved herself into her seat, scooping up her left shoe with her toe. “I could have made him a prediction,” she said, “but I didn’t. He says it could be my thyroid.”

“Did he give you a diet plan?”

Al slammed the passenger door. She tried to worm her swollen foot into her shoe. “I’m like an Ugly Sister,” she said. She took out a cologne tissue and fumbled with the sachet. “Ninety-six degrees is too much, in England.”