Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

Colette saved her screen, and then, without looking at Al, she said, “Yes, all that is true, but why were you naked and curled into a ball at the top of the stairs?”

Al padded downstairs in her furry slippers. Another red, blazing evening had come; when she went into the kitchen, it was filled with a hellish light. She opened the fridge. To her knowledge, she had not eaten that day. Can I please have an egg? she asked herself. In Colette’s voice, she said, yes, just one. There was a sound behind her, a little tapping noise. Painfully—every bit of her was stiff and aching—she moved herself around, to look behind her; around again, to take in the whole room. “Colette?” she said.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap. It was coming from the window. No one was there. She crossed the room. She looked out into the garden. It was empty. Or seemed so.

She unlocked the back door and stepped out. She heard the train rumbling through Brookwood, the distant background roar of Heathrow, Gatwick. A few drops of rain fell, hot swollen drops. Lifting her head, she called out, “Bob Fox?”

The rain plopped onto her face and ran backwards into her hair. She listened. There was no reply.

“Bob Fox, is that you? “She gazed out into the milky darkness; there was a fugitive movement, towards the back fence, but that could be Mart, seeking shelter from some civic catastrophe. I could have imagined it, she thought. I don’t want to be premature. But.

You can understand it, Al thought. Fiends would be attracted to any site where there’s diggings, workings, companies of men going about men’s business, where there’s smoking, betting, and swearing; where there are vans running around, and trenches dug where you could conceal things.

She lay on the sofa; the tarot cards slid from her hands and fanned out on the carpet. She levered herself upright, dabbing at her face, to see how the cards had fallen. The two of pentacles is the card of the self-employed, indicating uncertainty of income, restlessness, fluctuation, an unquiet mind, and an imbalance between the output of energy and the inflow of money. It is one of those cards so doubled and ambivalent in its meanings that if you draw it reversed it hardly matters much; it then suggests mounting debt, and the swing between paralyzed despair and stupid overconfidence. It’s not a card you want to draw when you’re making next year’s business plan.

Colette had got her online these days, e-mailing predictions around the globe and doing readings for people in different time zones. “I’d like to make you a global brand,” Colette said. “Like …” Her sentence had tailed off. She could only think of fat things, like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. In Al’s belief, the four of swords governed the Internet. Its colour was electric blue and its influence bore on people in a crowd, on the meetings of groups, on ideas that had mass appeal. Not all the psychics agreed; some backed the claims of the four, five, and six of cups, which govern secret areas of knowledge, recycled concepts, and work pursued in windowless rooms such as cellars or basements. As read by Mrs. Etchells, the four of swords indicated a short stay in hospital.

The weather broke; it thundered, then rained hard. The water ran down the patio doors in scallops and festoons. Afterwards, the gardens steamed under a whitening sky. Then the sun struggled through and the cycle began again, the buildup of unbearable heat. But if you looked into the crystal ball you could see shifting cloudbanks, as if it were making its own weather.

I don’t understand it, Colette said, peering in. I cleaned it yesterday.

She read for Colette and said, oh, look, the two of cups. Colette said, wait, I know that one, that means a partner, that means a man for me. Her optimism was endearing, Al supposed. The spread was short on the major arcana, as if Fate wasn’t really bothered about Colette.

Colette yelled. “Silvana on the phone. Are you up for team psychics?” Al picked up the phone by her own computer. “Oh, Silvana,” she said. “What’s team psychics then?”

Silvana said. “It’s a way to keep the excitement going, we thought. Up on the stage, twenty minutes, in and out, no time to get into anything deep and sticky; you’re on, you’re off, you leave them asking for more. Six times twenty minutes with shortest possible changeover is two hours, add in twenty minutes interval, and you’re away by ten-thirty, which means everybody can get home the same night, nice hot chocolate and a cheese toastie, tucked up in your own bed by midnight, which means you’re fresh the next day and up with the lark and manning the phones. Which looks to me like a good deal all round.”

“Sounds all right,” Al said, cautiously.

“We’d have come to you first off, except woss-name—Colette—she’s always so offhand and snotty.”

Yes, I’m afraid she is, Al thought, which is why I was last pick—

“Which is why you were last pick for the hen parties,” Silvana said. “But anyway, no hard feelings, Mandy said I should try you. She said one thing about Al, she’s nobody’s fool but she is the forgiving type, she says, there’s no malice or harm in her anywhere. So our problem is, we’ve advertised Six Sensational Psychics, but Glenora’s dropped out.”

“Why?”

“She had a premonition.”

“Oh, she’s always having those. She should get over herself. Where is it?”

“The Fig and Pheasant. You know. The steak house.”

Oh, dear. Not one of Colette’s favourite venues. “So it’s who?”

“Me, Cara, Gemma, Mrs. Etchells, Mandy, and then you.”

“You’re a bit light on men. Can’t you phone Merlyn?”

“We did. But his book came out, and he’s gone to Beverly Hills.”

It put Colette in a temper, the whole thing: the news about Merlyn, the insult of being called up last, and the fact that they would be performing at short notice in a so-called banqueting suite, cleared for the occasion, where beyond the wall a mega sports screen in the bar would be roaring with football chants, and in the “family area” a bunch of low-rent diners would be grimly hacking their way though honey-basted chicken kebabs.

She made her feelings known.

Alison drew the Papessa, with her veiled lunar face. She represents the inward world of women who love women, the pull of moods and gut feelings. She represents the mother, especially the widowed mother, the bereft feme sole , the one who is uncovered and abject and alone. She represents those things which are hidden and slowly make their way to the surface: she governs the virtue of patience, which leads to the revelation of secrets, the gradual drawing back of the velvet cloth, the pulling of the curtain. She governs temperature fluctuation and the body’s deep hormonal tides, besides the tide of fortune which leads to birth, stillbirth, the accidents and freaks of nature.

Next morning, when Colette came downstairs, her temper had not improved. “What’s this? A fucking midnight feast?”

There were crumbs all over the worktop, and her precious little omelette pan lay across two rings of the hob, skidded there as if by some disdainful hand which had used and abused it. Its sides were encrusted with brown grease and a heavy smell of frying hung in the air.

Alison didn’t bother to make excuses. She didn’t say, I believe it was the fiends that were frying. Why protest, only to be disbelieved? Why humiliate yourself? But, she thought, I am humiliated anyway.

She rang up Silvana. “Silvy, love, you know at the Fig and Pheasant, will there be a space to set up beforehand, you know, my easel and my picture?”

Silvana sighed. “If you feel you’ve got to, Al. But frankly, darling, a few of us have remarked that it’s time you retired that photo. I don’t know where you got it done.”