Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

“Give it here.” Colette snatched the sachet and ripped it open.

“And for some reason, the neighbours seem to think I’m responsible.”

Colette smirked.

Al mopped her forehead. “That doctor, I could see straight through him. His liver’s beyond saving. So I didn’t mention it.”

“Why not?”

“No point. I wanted to do a good action.”

Colette said, “Oh, give over!”

They came to a halt in the drive of number twelve. “You don’t understand,” Al said. “I wanted to do a good action but I never seem to manage it. It’s not enough just to be nice. It’s not enough just to ignore it when people put you down. It’s not enough to be—forbearing. You have to do a good action.”

“Why?”

“To stop Morris coming back.”

“And what makes you think he will?”

“The tape. Him and Aitkenside, talking about pickles. My feet and hands tingling.”

“You didn’t say this was work-related! So we’ve been through this for nothing?”

“You haven’t been through anything. It’s only me had to listen to that stinky old soak criticizing my weight.”

“It can stand criticism.”

“And though I could have made him a prediction, I didn’t. A good action means—I know you don’t understand, so shut up now, Colette, you might learn something. A good action might mean that you sacrificed yourself. Or that you gave your money away.”

“Where did you get this stuff?” Colette said. “Out of RE at school?”

“I never had religious education,” Alison said. “Not after I was thirteen. I was always made to stand in the corridor. That lesson, it would tend to lead to Morris and people trying to materialize. So I got sent out. I don’t seem to feel the lack of it. I know the difference between right and wrong. I’m sure I always did.”

“Will you stop this drivel?” Colette said, wailing. “You never think of me, do you! You don’t seem to realize how I’m fixed! Gavin’s going out with a supermodel!”

A week passed. Al had filled her prescriptions. Her heart now beat slowly, thump, thump, like a lead weight swinging in space. The change was not disagreeable; she felt slower, though, as if her every action and perception were deliberate now, as if she was nobody’s fool. No wonder Colette’s been so spiteful, she thought. Supermodel, eh?

She stood at the front window, looking out over Admiral Drive. A solitary vehicle ploughed to and fro across the children’s playground, turning up mud. The builders had put down asphalt at one stage, but then the surface had seemed to heave and split, and cracks developed, which the neighbours stood wondering at, leaning on the temporary fence; within a week or two weeds were pushing through the hard core, and the men had moved in again to break up what remained with pneumatic drills, dig out the rubble, and reduce it back to bare earth.

Sometimes the neighbours accosted the workmen, shouting at them over the noise of their machines, but none of them got the same story twice. The local press was strangely silent, and their silence was variously attributed to stupidity and bribes. From time to time the knotweed rumour resurfaced. “You can’t keep down knotweed,” Evan said. “Especially not if it’s mutated.” No actual white worms had been spotted, or none that anyone had admitted to. The residents felt trapped and baffled. They didn’t want public attention, yet they wanted to sue somebody; they thought it was their entitlement.

Al caught sight of Mart, down at the children’s playground. He was wearing his brickie’s hat, and he appeared so suddenly in the middle distance that she wondered if he’d come up through one of the secret tunnels the neighbours were speculating about.

“How are you doing?” he yelled.

“Okay.” Her feet were moving sideways and every which ways, but by tacking to the left then abruptly changing course she managed to manoeuvre herself down the hill towards him. “Are you working here, then, Mart?”

“I’ve been put on digging,” he said. “We’re remediating, that’s the nature of it and the job description. Did you ever have a job description?”

“No, not me,” she said. “I make it up as I go along. So what’s remediating?”

“You see this soil?” He pointed to one heap. “This is what we’re taking off. And you see this?” He pointed to another heap of soil, very similar. “This is what we’re putting down instead.”

“So who are you working for?”

Mart looked wild. “Subcontracting,” he said. “Cash in hand.”

“Where are you living?”

“Dossing at Pinto’s. His floor got put down again.”

“So you got rid of the rats?”

“In the end. Some pikey come round with a dog.”

“Pikey?”

“You know. Gypsy fella.”

“What was his name?”

“He didn’t say any name. Pinto met him down the pub.”

Al thought, if a man is always no more than three feet from a rat—or is it two?—how does that feel from the rats’ point of view? Do they spend the whole of their lives in trembling? Do they tell each other nightmare stories about a gypsy with a terrier on a rope?

“How’s the old shed?” Mart said. He spoke as if it were some foolish indulgence of his youth.

“Much as you left it.”

“I was thinking I might get the odd night there. If your friend had no big objection.”

“She does have a big objection. So do the neighbours. They think you’re an asylum seeker.”

“Oh, go on, missus,” Mart said. “It’s just for when Pinto says, Mart, take a walk. Then we could have a chat again. And if you’ve got the money we could get a takeaway.”

“Are you remembering your pills, Mart?”

“On and off. They’re after meals. I don’t always get a meal. It was better when I was living in your shed and you was bringing a tray and reminding me.”

“But you know that couldn’t go on.”

“Because of your friend.”

I will continue to do a good action, she thought. “Wait there, Mart,” she said. She went back into the house, took a twenty out of her purse. When she got back, Mart was sitting on the ground.

“They’re going to be water-jetting the sewers soon,” Mart said. “It’s due to complaints and concerns.”

“You’d better look busy,” she said. “Or you’ll get the sack.”

“The lads have gone on their lunch,” Mart said. “But I don’t have a lunch.”

“Now you can get one,” she said, handing over the bank note.

Mart stared at it. She thought he was going to say, that’s not a lunch. She said, “It represents a lunch. You get what you want.”

“But I’m barred.”

“Your mates will go for you.”

“I’d rather you made me a lunch.”

“Yes, but that’s not going to happen.”

She turned her back and plodded away. I want to do a good action. But. It won’t help him to hang around here. On the doorstep of the Collingwood she turned and looked back at him. He was sitting on the ground again, in the freshly dug soil, like a gravedigger’s assistant. You could spend your life trying to fit Mart together, she thought. There’s no cause and effect to him. He feels as if he might be the clue to something or other, made up as he is out of bits and pieces of the past and the fag end of other people’s phrases. He’s like a picture where you don’t know which way up it goes. He’s like a walking jig-saw, but you’ve lost the box lid to him.

She was closing the front door, when he called out to her. She stepped outside again. He loped towards her, his twenty screwed up in his fist.

“Forgot to ask you. If in case of a terrorist outrage, could I come in your shed?”

“Mart,” she said warningly, and began to close the door.