Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

Mrs. Etchells flapped a dismissive hand towards the wings. “Ignore that raddled little madam. Silvana? That’s not her name. They none of them have their right names. She’s light-fingered, that one. She comes into my house to collect me, and the next thing is the milk money’s gone, the milk money that I left behind the clock. Why does she give me a lift anyway? It’s only because she thinks I’ll leave her something when I go over. And will I? Will I buggery. Now let us link hands and pray. Our prayers can put a chain of love around—”

She looked up, dumbfounded; she had forgotten where she was.

The audience shouted up with various silly suggestions: Margate, Cardiff, Istanbul.

“I’ve never seen such unkindness,” Mandy breathed. “Listen to them! When I get out there, I’ll make them sorry they were born.”

Silvana said, “She has a nerve! That’s the last lift she’ll get from me.”

Al said quietly, “I’ll get her.”

She stepped out onto the platform. The lucky opals gleamed dully, as if grit were embedded in their surface.

Mrs. Etchells turned her head towards her and said, “There’s a little flower inside us that we water with our tears. So think of that, when sorrows come. God is within all of us, except Keith Capstick. I recognize him now, he had me there for a minute, but he can’t fool me. He only once did a good action and that was to drag a dog off a little girl. I suppose God was within him, when he did that.”

Alison approached, softly, softly, but the stage creaked beneath her.

“Oh, it’s you,” Mrs. Etchells said. “You remember when you used to get belted for playing with knitting needles?” She turned back to the audience. “Why did her mum have knitting needles? Ask yourself, because she never knitted. She had ’em for sticking up a girl when she’s in trouble, you don’t have to do that these days, they vacuum it out. She stuck a needle up herself but the baby never come out till it was good and ready, and that was Alison here. You’d see all manner of sharp objects in her house. You’d go in and the floor would be all rolling over with little dead babies, you wouldn’t know where to put your feet. They all brought their girlfriends round—Capstick, MacArthur, that crew—when they found themselves with a bun in the oven.”

So, Al thought, my brothers and sisters, my half brothers and sisters—every day, when I grew up, I was treading on them.

“There was hardly anybody up that way knew the joy of motherhood,” Mrs. Etchells said.

Al took her arm. Mrs. Etchells resisted. Sedately, she and Mrs. Etchells tussled, and the audience laughed, and gradually Al inched the old woman towards the edge of the platform and behind the scenes. Colette stood there, a pale burning figure, like a taper in fog.

“You could have done something,” Al complained.

Mrs. Etchells shook off Al’s hands. “No need to molest me,” she said. “You’ve pulled my nice new cardigan all out of shape, you’ve nearly had the button off. No wonder they’re laughing! A laugh’s all right, I like a laugh but I don’t like people pointing fun at me. I’m not going back out there because I don’t like what I’ve seen. I don’t like who I seen, would be a better way to put it.”

Al put her mouth close to Mrs. Etchells’s ear. “MacArthur. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, and the other bloody shyster, Bob Fox. All along the back row.”

“Was Morris with them?”

Mandy said, “Cara, you’re next, go on.”

“Not me,” Cara said.

Mrs. Etchells sat down and fanned herself. “I’ve seen something you wouldn’t want to see in a month of Sundays. I saw Capstick at the back there. And the rest. All that old gang. I recognized them large as life. But they’ve got modifications. It was horrible. It turned me up.”

Mandy stepped out onstage. Her chin jutted and her voice was crisp. “There will be a short delay. One of our Sensitives has been taken ill.”

“How short?” a man shouted.

Mandy gave him a baleful glance. “As short as we can contrive. Have some compassion.” She turned her back on them. Her heels clicked, back to the hutch. “Al, it’s for you to decide, but I don’t like the feel of Mrs. Etchell’s blood pressure, and I think Colette should call an ambulance.”

“Why me?” Colette said.

“Colette could drive her,” Cara said. “Where’s the nearest A and E?”

“Wexham Park,” Colette said. She couldn’t resist supplying the information, but then added, “I’m not taking her anywhere on my own. Look at her. She’s gone weird.”

Said Mrs. Etchells, “I could tell you a thing or two about Emmeline Cheetham. No wonder the police were always around her place. She was a big drinker and she knew some terrible people. Judge not, that ye may not be judged. But there is a word for women like her and that word is prostitute. Soldiers, we all know soldiers—Tommies, no harm in ’em. Have a drink, have a laugh, we’ve all done it.”

“Really?” Silvana said. “Even you?”

“But no two ways about it. She was on the game. Gypsies and jockeys and sailors, it was all the same to her. She used to go down to Portsmouth. She went off after a circus once, prostituting herself to dwarves and the like, God forgive her, foreigners. Well, you don’t know what you’ll catch, do you?”

“Quick!” Mandy said. “Loosen her collar. She can’t get her breath.”

“She can choke for all I care,” Silvana said.

Mandy struggled with the buttons of Mrs. Etchells’s blouse. “Colette, call nine-nine-nine. Al, get out there, darling, and keep it going for as long as needed. Cara, go through into the bar and find the manager.”

Al stepped out onto the stage. She took in the audience, her gaze sweeping them from left to right, front row to the back row, which was empty: except for a faint stirring and churning of the evening light. She was silent for a long moment, letting their scattered wits regroup, their attention come to rest. Then she said, slowly, softly, almost drawling, “Now, where were we?” They laughed. She looked back at them, grave, and slowly let her smile spread, and her eyes kindle. “We’ll drop the yes and no,” she said, “since tonight has not turned out the way we expected.” She thought, but of course I have expected it, I have done nothing but expect it. “I suppose it teaches us,” she said, “to expect the unexpected. It doesn’t matter how many years’ experience you have, Spirit can never be anticipated. When we work with Spirit we are in the presence of something powerful, something we don’t completely understand, and we need to remember it. Now I have a message for the lady in row three, the lady with the eyebrow piercing. Let’s get the show back on the road.”

Behind her, she heard the slamming of doors. Manly cheers burst through, from the sports bar. She heard snatches of voices, a moan from Mrs. Etchells, the low rumbling voices of ambulance men: she heard Cara wailing, “She’s left her chakras open. She’ll die!”

They drove home. Colette said, “They took her out on a stretcher. She was a bad colour.”

Al glanced down at her hands, at the leaden sheen of her rings. “Should I have gone with her? But somebody had to hold the evening together.”

She thought, I didn’t want that shower in the back row following me, not to a public hospital.

“She was breathing all wrong. Sort of gasping. Like, ‘urg—ee, urg—ee … .’”

“I get the picture.”

“Silvana said, she can snuff it for all I care, she can rot in hell.”

“Yes.”

“She said, ‘I’ve bloody had enough of it, running around after her like a nanny, have you got your door keys, Mrs. Etchells, have you got your teeth in, have you got your spare pad for the toilet’—did you know Mrs. Etchells had an irritable bladder?”