Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

Colette came in. “Al? Cara’s on the phone—do you think Mrs. Etchells would have liked a woodland burial?”

“I don’t think so. She hated nature.”

“Right,” Colette said. She went out again.

Al said, “Kicking who?”

“Not just kicking, kicking out. We are chasing out all spooks what are asylum seekers, derelicts, vagrants, and refugees, and clearing out all spectres unlawfully residing in attics, lofts, cupboards, cracks in the pavement, and holes in the ground. All spooks with no identification will be removed. It ain’t good enough to say you’ve nowhere to go. It ain’t good enough to say that your documents fell through the hole in your breeches. It’s no good saying that you’ve forgot your name. It’s no good pretending to go by the name of some other spook. It’s no good saying you ain’t got no documents because they ain’t invented printing yet—you got your thumb print, ain’t you, and it’s no good saying they cut off your thumb—don’t come that, they all say that. Nobody is to take up room they ain’t entitled to. Show me your entitlement or I’ll show you the boot—in Aitkenside’s case, six boots. It’s no good trying to bamboozle us because we have got targets, because Nick has set us targets, because we have got a clear-up rate.”

Al said, “Is Nick management?”

“You’re joking me!” Morris said. “Is Nick management? He is the manager of us all. He is in charge of the whole blooming world. Don’t you know nothing, girl?”

She said, “Nick’s the devil, isn’t he? I remember seeing him, in the kitchen at Aldershot.”

“You should have taken more notice. You should have been respectful.”

“I didn’t recognize him.”

“What?” Morris said. “Not recognize a man wiv a leather jacket, asking for a light?”

“Yes, but you see, I didn’t believe in him.”

“That’s where you was under a mistake.”

“I was only a girl. I didn’t know. They kept throwing me out of the RE class, and whose fault was that? I hadn’t read any books. We never got a newspaper, except the ones the blokes brought in, their racing paper. I didn’t know the history of the world.”

“You should have worked harder,” Morris said. “You should have listened up in your history lessons, you should have listened up in your Hitler lessons, you should have learned to say your prayers and you should have learned some manners.” He mimicked her: “‘Is Nick the devil?’ ’Course he’s the devil. We have only been under pupillage with the best. Who have you got to put up against him? Only mincey Mandy and the rest, they’re not worth MacArthur’s fart. Only you and stringbean and that sad bastard used to live in the shed.”

As the week passed, her parade of business-as-usual became less convincing, even to Colette, whom she sometimes caught gazing at her dubiously. “Is something troubling you?” she said, and Colette replied, “I don’t know that I trust that doctor you saw. How about a private health check?”

Al shrugged. “They’ll only talk about my weight again. If I’m going to be insulted, I’m not paying for it. I can get insults on the NHS.” She thought, what the doctors fail to realize is that you need some beef, you need some heft, you need some solid substance to put up against fiends. She had been alarmed, climbing out of the bath, to see her left foot dematerialize. She blinked, and it was back again; but she knew it was not her imagination, for she heard muffled laughter from the folds of her bath towel.

That was the day they were getting ready for Mrs. Etchells’s funeral. They had opted for a cremation and the minimum of fuss. A few elderly practitioners, Mrs. Etchells’s generation, had clubbed together for a wreath, and Merlyn sent a telegram of sympathy from Beverly Hills. Al said, “You can come back to my house afterwards, Colette’s got some sushi in.” She thought, I ought to be able to count on my friends to help me, but they’d be out of their depth here. Cara, Gemma, even Mandy—they’ve had nothing like this in their lives, they’ve never been offered . They’ve sold spirit services; they haven’t been sold, like me. She felt sad, separate, set apart; she wanted to spare them.

“Do you think in Spirit she’ll be at her best age?” Gemma said. “I find it hard to picture what Mrs. Etchells’s best age might have been.”

“Sometime between the wars,” Mandy said. “She was one of the old school, she went back to when they had ectoplasm.”

“What’s that?” Cara said.

“Hard to say.” Mandy frowned. “It was supposed to be an ethereal substance that took on the form of the deceased. But some people say it was cheesecloth they packed in their fannies.”

Cara wrinkled her nose.

“I wonder if she left a will?” Colette said.

“No doubt behind the clock, with the milk money,” Gemma said.

“I hope you’re not looking at me,” Silvana said. She had threatened to boycott the ceremony, and only turned up out of fear that the other Sensitives might talk about her behind her back. “I don’t want anything from her. If she did leave me anything, I wouldn’t take it. Not after those wicked things she said about me.”

“Forget it,” Mandy said. “She wasn’t in her right mind. She said herself, she saw something in the back row she couldn’t stomach.”

“I wonder what it was,” Gemma said. “You wouldn’t have a theory, Al, would you?”

“Anyway,” Mandy said, “somebody ought to see about her affairs. You’ve still got a key, Silvy?” Silvana nodded. “We’ll all come over. Then if there’s no will in the obvious places, we can dowse for it.”

“I’d rather not, myself,” Al said. “I try to steer clear of Aldershot. Too many sad memories.”

“There would be,” Mandy said. “God knows, Al, I don’t think any of us had what you’d call a regular upbringing, I mean when you’re a Sensitive it’s not like a normal childhood, is it? But those kind of old people tend to keep cash lying about. And we’d want a responsible witness. A relative ought to be present.”

“I’m not,” Al said. “A relative. As it turns out.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Colette said. If there were any bundles of fivers to be picked up, she didn’t see why Alison should lose out. “It’s just what her mum’s been putting into her head.”

“Didn’t your mum want to come today?” Gemma asked.

But Alison said, “No. She’s got a house guest.”

Guilty—knowing they’d been fed up with Mrs. Etchells, knowing they were glad to have her off their patch—they let the conversation drift back to discounts, to advertising rates, to Web sites, and to supplies. Gemma had found a place on the North Circular that undercut the Cornwall people on crystal-gazing kits. “Nice cauldrons,” Gemma said. “Very solid. They’re fibre-glass, of course, but as long as they look the business. You don’t want to be lugging cast iron around in the boot of your car. They go from mini to three gallon. Which is going to set you back a hundred quid, but if that’s what you need, you’ve got to invest, haven’t you?”

“I don’t do much with Wicca anymore,” Cara said. “I got bored of it. I’m more interested in personal development, and ridding myself and others of limiting beliefs.”

“And are you still rubbing people’s feet?”

“Yes, if they’ll sign a disclaimer.”

“It can’t be very nice, remembering the womb,” Gemma said.

There was a feeling among them, in fact, that nothing about the day was very nice. Mandy’s nose kept twitching, as if she could smell spirits. Once the sushi and meringues were consumed, they showed no wish to linger. As they parted on the doorstep, Mandy took Al’s arm and said. “If you want a bolt-hole, you know. You can soon be down in Hove. Just pick up the car keys and come as you are.”