Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

Emmie says, “Where there is waste ground, there is outbuildings. It stands to reason. That’s where the boys used to keep their knocked-off ciggies and their bottles of spirits, they was always bringing in spirits by the case—oops, I think I’ve spoken out of turn now, it’s a good thing MacArthur’s not around, he’d have walloped me one, do me a favour and don’t mention to the boys it was me what told you.”

“I’m not the police,” Al says.

“Police? That’s a laugh. They was all in on it, only you don’t want to mention it to MacArthur. I’ll only get my eye blacked and my teef knocked out—not that I have any teef, but I wouldn’t like a smack in the gums. Police used to come round, saying I’m after the whereabouts of MacArthur, I’m attempting to locate a gypsy fella name of Pete, they was having a laugh, they weren’t locating, all they was wanting was a rolled-up fiver in their top pocket and a glass of whisky and lemonade, and if I couldn’t oblige them, on account of I’d spent me last fiver and you’d drunk the lemonade, they’d say, well now, Mrs. Cheetham, well now, I’ll just get my leg over before I depart your premises.”

She walks past the van, young Alison, the van where Gloria rests in pieces: past the dog run, where Harry, Blighto and Serene lie dreaming; past the empty chicken runs, where the chickens are all dead because Pikey Pete has wrung their necks. Past the caravan with its blacked-out windows: back to the hut where she lies and howls. She peeps in, she sees herself, lying bleeding onto newspapers they’ve put down: it will be hygienic, Aitkenside says, because we can burn them once she’s clotted.

Aitkenside says, you’d better stay off school, till it scabs over. We don’t want questions asked, into our private business. If they say anything to you, say you was trying to jump barbed wire, right? Say you did it scrambling over broken glass.

She lies, moaning and thrashing. They have turned her over on her back now. She screams out: if anybody asks I’m sixteen, right? No, officer sir, my mummy is not at home. No officer sir, I have never seen this man before. No, officer, sir, I don’t know that man either. No sir, for certain I never saw a head in a bath, but if I do I will be faithfully sure to come to the station and tell you.

She hears the men saying, we said she’d get a lesson, she’s had one now.

The telephone again. She won’t answer. She has lowered the kitchen blind, in case despite the new locks the police have installed the neighbours are so furious as to swarm over the side gate. Colette was right, she thinks; those gates are no good, really, but I don’t think she was serious when she mentioned getting barbed wire.

She goes upstairs. The door of Colette’s room stands open. The room is tidy, as you would expect; and Colette, before leaving, has stripped the bed. She lifts the lid of the laundry basket. Colette has left her soiled sheets behind; she stirs them, but finds nothing else, not a single item of hers. She opens the wardrobe doors. Colette’s clothes hang like a rack of phantoms.

They are in Windsor, at the Harte and Garter. It is summer, they are younger; it is seven years ago; an era has passed. They are drinking coffee. She plays with the paper straws with the sugar in. She tells Colette, a man called M will enter your life.

At Whitton, Colette’s hand reached out in the darkness of the communal hall; accurately, she found the light switch at the foot of the stairs. As if I’d never been away, she thought. In seven years they say every cell of your body is renewed; she looked around her and remarked, the same is not true of gloss paintwork.

She walked upstairs ahead of Gavin, to her ex-front door. He reached around her to put the key in the lock; his body touched hers, his forearm brushed her upper arm.

“Sorry,” she said. She inched aside, shrinking herself, folding her arms across her chest.

“No, my fault,” he said.

She held her breath as she stepped in. Would Zoë, like Alison, be one of those people who fills up the rooms with her scent, a person who is present even when she’s absent, who sprays the sheets with rose or lavender water and who burns expensive oils in every room? She stood, inhaling. But the air was lifeless, a little stale. If it hadn’t been such a wet morning, she would have hurried to open all the windows.

She put her bag down and turned to Gavin, questioning.

“Didn’t I say? She’s away.”

“Oh. On a shoot?”

“Shoot?” Gavin said, “What do you mean?”

“I thought she was a model?”

“Oh, yes. That. I thought you meant like on safari.”

“So is she?”

“Could be,” Gavin said, nodding judiciously.

She noticed that he had placed his car magazines on a low table in a very tidy pile. Other than that, there was very little change from the room she remembered. I’d have thought he’d have redecorated, in all these years, she said to herself. I’d have thought she’d have wanted to put her stamp on it. I’d have thought she’d throw all my stuff out—everything I chose—and do a make-over. Tears pricked her eyes. It would have made her feel lonely, rejected, if she’d come back and found it all changed, but that fact that it was all the same made her feel somehow … futile.

“I suppose you’ll want the bathroom, Gav,” she said. “You’ll have to get off to work.”

“Oh no. I can work from home today. Make sure you’re all right. We can go out for a bite of lunch if you feel up to it later. We could go for a walk in the park.”

Her face was astonished. “A what, Gavin? Did you say a walk in the park?”

“I’ve forgotten what you like,” he said, shuffling his feet.

In the corner of Colette’s room, where the air is turbulent and thickening, there arises a little pink felt lady whom Al has not seen since she was a child.

“Ah, who called me back?” says Mrs. McGibbet.

And she says, “I did, Alison. I need your help.”

Mrs. McGibbet shifts on the floor, as if uncomfortable.

“Are you still looking for your boy Brendan? If you help me, I’ll swear I’ll find him for you.”

A tear creeps out of Mrs. McGibbet’s eye, and makes its way slowly down her parchment cheek. And immediately a little toy car materializes by her left foot. Alison doesn’t trust herself to pick it up, to handle it. She doesn’t like apports. Start on that business, and you’ll find some joker trying to force a grand piano through from the other side, pulling and tugging at the curve of space__time, wiping his boots on your carpet and crying, “Whew! Blimey! Left hand down a bit, steady how she goes!” As a child, of course, she had played with Brendan’s toys. But in those days she didn’t know how one thing led to another.

“I don’t know how many doors I’ve knocked on,” says Mrs. McGibbet. “I’ve tramped the streets. I’ve visited the door of every psychic and Sensitive from here to Aberdeen, and attended their churches though my priest told me I must not. And never a sighting of Brendan since the circus fellas put him in a box. He says, ‘Mam, it is the dream of every boy to join the circus, for hasn’t my sister Gloria a costume with spangles? And such a thing was never seen in these parts.’ And that was true. And I didn’t care to spell out to him the true nature of her employment. So he was taken on as box boy.”

“They put him in a box?”

“And fastened round the chain. And box boy will burst out, they said. A roll on the drums. The audience agog. The breath bated. The box rocking. And then nothing. It ceases to rock. The man MacArthur comes with his boot, oi, box boy!”

“Was MacArthur in the circus?”

“There wasn’t a thing that MacArthur wasn’t in. He was in the army. He was in the jail. He was in the horse game, and the fight game, and the box game. And he comes with his boot and kicks the side of the box. But poor Brendan, he makes not a murmur; and the box, not an inch does it shift. And a deadly silence falls. So then they look at each other, at a loss. Says Aitkenside, Morris, have you ever had this happen before? Says Keith Capstick, we’d better open it up, me old china. Morris Warren protests at the likely damage to his special box, but they come with a lever and a bar. They pull out the nails with pliers and they prize off the lid. But when they open it up, my poor son Brendan is gone.”