Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

“Don’t cry, lovie. I’ll come and get you.”

“Please. For a night or two. Till it dies down. You see, the press are here. Cameras.”

Mandy was puzzled. “Is that good? For business, I mean?”

“No, I’ve got vigilantes. Demonstrators.”

Mandy clicked her tongue. “Witch-burning, isn’t it? Some people are so narrow-minded. Are the police there?”

“Yes.”

“But they’re not trying to arrest you or anything? Sorry, silly question; of course not. Look, I’ll bring Gemma for a bit of muscle.”

“No. Just come yourself.”

“Take a nice hot bath, Al. Unplug the phone. Spray some lavender around. I’ll be there before you know it. I’ll have you out of there. A bit of sea air will do you good. We’ll go shopping for you, give you a makeover. I always thought Colette gave you bad advice. Shall I book you a hair appointment? I’ll line up Cara to give you a massage.”

Three hours later, she is ready to leave the house. The police have not had much success in dispersing the crowd; they don’t, they explain, want to get heavy-handed. Sergeant Delingbole says, what you could do, probably it would be for the best, would be to come out with a blanket over your head. She says, do you have an official blanket you use for that, or can I choose my own? They say, feel free: the policewoman helpfully runs upstairs and looks out at her direction her mohair throw, the raspberry-coloured throw that Colette bought her once, in better times than these.

She places it over her head; the world looks pink and fuzzy. Like a fish, or something newborn, she opens her mouth to breathe; her breath, moist, sucks in the mohair. The policewoman takes her elbow, and Delingbole opens the door; she is hurried to a police vehicle with darkened windows, which whisks her smartly away from Admiral Drive. Later, on the regional TV news, she will glimpse herself from the knee down. I always wanted to be on TV, she will say, and now I have; Mandy will say, well, bits of you, anyway.

As they swing onto the A322, she pulls aside the woollen folds and looks around her. Her lips itch from their contact with the throw; she presses them together, hoping not to smudge her lipstick. Sergeant Delingbole is sitting with her: for reassurance, he says. “I’ve always been fascinated,” he says. “The paranormal. UFOs. All that. I mean there must be something in it, mustn’t there?”

“I think you tried to come through,” she says, “at one of my dems. Couple of years back. Just after the Queen Mother passed.”

“God bless her,” says Delingbole automatically, and Alison answers, “God bless her.”

The day has brightened. At Worplesden, trees drip onto the fairways of the golf club. The policewoman says, “The cloud’s lifting. Might see some action at Wimbledon this afternoon.”

Al smiles. “I’m sure I couldn’t say.”

Before they reach Guildford, they pull into an out-of-town shopping centre. The exchange takes place in front of PC World. Mandy clip-clips towards the white van: high-heeled pastel pumps in pistachio green, tight pale jeans, fake Chanel jacket in baby pink. She is smiling, her big jaw jutting. She looks quite lined, Al thinks; it is the first time in years she has seen Mandy in full daylight. It must be Hove that’s aged her: the sea breezes, the squinting into the sun. “Got the consignment?” says Mandy, breezy herself, and Delingbole opens the back door and gives Al his arm to help her out of the van. She tumbles to the ground, her sore feet impacting hard.

The soft-top stands by, lacquered once again to a perfect hard scarlet. “There’s a new nail bar at the end of our road,” Mandy says. “I thought after we’ve had some lunch we could pop in and treat ourselves.”

For a moment Al sees her fist, dripping with gore; she sees herself, bloody to the elbows. She sees, back at Admiral Drive, the tape unspooling in the empty house; her past unspooling, back beyond this life, beyond the lives to come. “That will be nice,” she says.

MORRIS: And another thing you can’t get, you can’t get a saveloy.

CAPSTICK: You can’t get tripe like you used to get.

DEAN: When I get my tongue guard off, I’m going for a curry.

MORRIS: You can’t get a decent cuppa tea.

DEAN: And then I’m going to get a swastika studded into it. I can hang it over walls and be a mobile graffiti.

MART: Tee-hee. When Delingbole comes you can wag it at him and then bugger off.

AITKENSIDE: Etchells could make a good cuppa.

CAPSTICK: She could. I’ll give her that.

MORRIS: By the way, Mr. Aitkenside.

AITKENSIDE: Yes? Speak up.

MORRIS: I only mention it.

AITKENSIDE: Spit it out, lad.

MORRIS: It’s a question of fundage.

AITKENSIDE: Warren, you have already tapped me for a sub. When I look in my wages book I find it ain’t the first time either. You are spending in advance of your entire income, as far as I can see. It can’t go on, me old mate.

MORRIS: I don’t want a sub. I only want what’s due.

MACARTHUR: He’s right, Mr. Aitkenside. It ain’t fair that Pete should keep all the money he got from Etchells’s personal effects, seeing as we all helped to frighten her to death, and especially me rising up with my false eye rolling.

AITKENSIDE: Pete! What you got to say about this? ( pause ) Pete? … Where is he?

CAPSTICK: Bugger me. Taken to the road. His wodge of cash wiv him.

MORRIS: Ain’t that his sort all over?

BOB FOX: What can you expect, Mr. Aitkenside, taking on pikeys?

AITKENSIDE: Don’t you tell me how to do my job, lad! I’ve got a diploma in Human Resources from Nick himself. We are working towards equal opportunities for all. Don’t tell me how to recruit, or you’ll be knocking on windows for all eternity.

CAPSTICK: We’ll have to contact the missus, then. If we want our cut. She’ll nail down Pikey for us. He likes her. He can’t keep away.

AITKENSIDE: Pardon me, but I don’t know if you’ll see your missus again.

DEAN: You’ve pissed her off good and proper.

CAPSTICK: What, not see her? Who we going to mediumize, then?

BOB FOX: Morris? Morris, speak up. It’s you in charge of this fiasco.

MORRIS: You can’t get decent vinegar, neither. You go in for vinegar, there’s bloody shelves and shelves of the stuff. There’s only one sort of proper vinegar, and that’s brown.

CAPSTICK: Morris? We’re talking to you.

AITKENSIDE: It was you, Warren, according to my ledger, what requested to have that crustie hanged, that lived in her shed.

MORRIS: He was on my manor! Only just got a proper outbuilding, where I can put me feet up evenings, and some geezer with an ’at moves in.

AITKENSIDE: But what did you fail to see, my son? You failed to see he was her good deed.

WAGSTAFFE: A good deed in a naughty world.

AITKENSIDE: That you, Wagstaffe? Bugger off, we’re talking.

MORRIS: Besides, you was all agreeable. Oooh, Morris, you said, let’s have an ’anging, haven’t had a good ’anging in years, it’ll be a right laugh when the little bugger kicks his feet!

AITKENSIDE: You failed to see that little bugger was her good deed. And what’s the result? She’s looking to commit a few others. They get the habit … see? They get the habit. It’s sad. But they get the taste for it.

MORRIS: So she don’t want to know us no more?

AITKENSIDE: I very much doubt it, old son.

MORRIS: But we go back, me and the missus. ( pause ) I’ll miss her. Be on my own. Won’t be the same.

CAPSTICK: Oh, leave off, do! Bring on the bloody violins! You wouldn’t think so well of her if she’d had away your balls.

MACARTHUR: You wouldn’t think so well of her if you’d seen your eye on her spoon.