Beyond Black: A Novel

eleven

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.”

Oh, you wish, Al thought, you wish you did, you’d be round there like a shot, getting yourself flattered. “It will have to do me for this week,” she said, good-humoured. “Okay, see you tomorrow night.”

Next day when they came to pack the car, they couldn’t find her silk, her apricot silk for draping the portrait. But it’s always, always, she said, in just the same place, unless it’s in the wash, and to prove to herself it wasn’t she turned out her laundry basket, and then turned out Colette’s.

Her heart wasn’t in it, she knew it had vanished or been filched. For a week she had noticed the loss of small objects from her bathroom and dressing table.

Colette came in. “I looked in the washing machine,” she said.

“And? It’s not there, is it?”

Colette said, “No. But you might like to look for yourself.”

In the kitchen, Colette had been running the extractor fan, and spraying room freshener. But the odour of burst fat still hung in the air. Al bent down and looked into the washing machine. Her hand shrank from it, but she picked out the object inside. She held it up, frowning. It was a man’s sock, grey, woolly, the heel gone into holes.

So this is what it’s led to, she thought; Morris going on a course. It’s led to him sucking away my silk and my nail scissors and my migraine pills, and taking eggs out of the fridge and frying them. It’s led to him intruding his sock into Colette’s sight: and soon, perhaps, his foot. She looked over her shoulder, as if he might have materialized entirely; as if he might be sitting on the hob and taunting her.

Colette said, “You’ve had that vagrant in.”

“Mart?” How wrong can you be?

“I’ve seen him hanging around,” Colette said, “but I draw the line at his actual admission to the premises, I mean his using the cooking facilities and our utilities. I suppose that would account for the lavatory seat left up, which I have found on several occasions over the last few days. You have to decide who’s living here, Alison, and if it’s him or me, I’m afraid it won’t be me. As for the frying, and the bread that was obviously brought in somehow, that will have to rest with your own conscience. There isn’t a diet on this earth that allows the wholescale consumption of animal fats and burning another person’s pan. As for the sock—I suppose I should be glad I didn’t find it before it was washed.”

The Fig and Pheasant, under a more dignified name, had once been a coaching inn, and its frontage was still spattered with the exudates of a narrow busy A-road. In the sixties it had stood near-derelict and draughty, with a few down-at-heel regulars huddled into a corner of its cavernous rooms. In the seventies it was bought out by a steak-house chain and Tudorized, fitted with plywood oak-stained panels and those deep-buttoned settles covered in stain-proof plush of which the Tudors were so fond. It offered the novelty of baked potatoes wrapped in foil, with butter or sour cream, and a choice of cod or haddock in bread crumbs, accompanied by salad or greyish and lukewarm peas. With each decade, as its ownership had changed, experiments in theming had suceeded each other, until its original menu had acquired retro-chic, and prawn cocktails had reappeared. Plus there was bruschetta. There was ricotta. There was a Junior Menu of pasta shapes and fish bites, and tiny sausages like the finger that the witch tested for plumpness. There were dusty ruched curtains and vaguely William Morris wallpaper, washable but not proof against kids wiping their hands down it, just as they did at home. In the Sports Bar, where smoking was banned, the ceilings were falsely yellowed, to simulate years of tobacco poisoning; it had been done thirty years ago, and no one saw reason to interfere with it.

To get to the function room you had to push through the bar, past the winking fruit machines. Colette got a round in, counting on her fingers: Gemma, Cara, Silvana, Natasha—four large vodka tonics, include me in and make that five, sweet sherry for Mrs. Etchells, and a fizzy water for Alison. The internal walls were thin, porous; at the noisy reenactment of early evening goals the rooms seemed to rock, and cooking smells crept into the nostrils of the Sensitives as they gathered in an airless hutch behind the stage. The mood was militant. Mandy read out the order.

“I’ll only do twenty minutes because of my arthritis,” Mrs. Etchells said, and Mandy said, “Look, love, you were only doing twenty minutes anyway, that’s the whole idea, it’s like a tag team, or passing the baton.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do anything like that,” Mrs. Etchells said.

Mandy sighed. “Forget I spoke. You just do your usual. You can have a chair on stage if you want. Colette, do you think you could find her a chair?”

“That’s not my job.”

“Perhaps not, but couldn’t you show a bit of team spirit?”

“I’ve already agreed to do the microphone. That’s enough.”

“I’ll get Mrs. E a chair,” Al said.

Mrs. Etchells said, “She never calls me granny, you know.”

“We can go into that another time,” Al said.

“I could tell you a story,” Mrs. Etchells said. “I could tell you a thing or two about Alison that would knock your socks off. Oh, you think you’ve seen it all, you young ’uns. You’ve seen nothing, let me tell you.”

When the card Papessa is reversed, it hints that problems go deeper than you think. It warns you of the hidden hand of a female enemy, but it doesn’t oblige by telling you who she is.

“Let’s kick it off, shall we?” said Cara. From beyond the wall came a long roar of Go-o-o-al!

It’s raw, this kind of work, and near the knuckle: unsupported by music, lighting, video screen, it’s just you and them, you and them and the dead, the dead who may oblige or may not, who may confuse and mislead and laugh at you, who may give you bursts of foul language very close up in your ear, who may give you false names and lay false trails just to see you embarrassed. There’s no leeway for a prolonged course of error and no time to retrieve a misstep, so you must move on, move on. The punters all think they are talented now, gifted. They’ve been told so often that everyone has dormant psychic powers that they’re only waiting for the opportunity for theirs to wake up, preferably in public. So you have to suppress them. The less they get to say, the better. Besides, the psychics need to avoid any charge of complicity, of soliciting information. Times have changed and the punters are aggressive. Once they shrank from the psychics, but now the psychics shrink from them.

“Don’t worry,” Gemma said, “I won’t stand for any nonsense.” Her face grim, she stepped out to begin.

“Go, girl!” Cara said defiantly. “Go, go, go!”

It was a low platform; she was only a step above her audience. Her eyes scoured them as if they were a bunch of criminals. “When I come to you shout up. Do not say your name, I don’t want to know your name. I want no information from you but yes or no. I need a minute. I need a minute of hush please; I need to attune; I need to tune in to the vibrations of Spirit World.” Time was she would have told them to hold hands, but these days you don’t want them to strike up alliances.

“I have it, I have it,” Gemma said. Her face was strained, and she tapped the side of her head, which was a mannerism of hers. “You, have I ever seen you before, madam?”

“No,” mouthed the woman.

Colette stuck the mike under her nose. “Can you give us that again, loud and clear?”

“No!” the woman roared.

Gemma was satisfied. “I’m going to give you a name. Answer yes or no. I’m going to give you the name Margaret.”

“No.”

“Think again. I’m going to give you the name Margaret.”

“I did know a girl called—”

“Answer yes or no!”

“No.”

“I’m going to give you the name Geoff. Can you take that?”

“No.”

“Geoff is standing here by my side. Can you take that?”

“No,” the woman whimpered.

Gemma looked as if she were going to fly from the stage and slap her. “I am going to give you a place. I am going to give you Altrincham, Cheshire, that is to say Greater Manchester. Can you take Altrincham?”

“I can take Wilmslow.”

“I am not interested in Wilmslow. You, can you take Altrincham?” She jumped from the stage, gestured to Colette to hand her the microphone. She paced the aisle between them throwing out names; Jim, Geoff, Margaret. She spun a series of questions that dizzied the punters; she tied them in twisting knots with her yes or no, yes or no?; before they could think or draw breath, her fingers were clicking at them, “no need to think it over, darling, just tell me, yes or no.” Yes breeds further yes and no breeds yes too. They haven’t come out for the evening to say no. People aren’t going to go on and on refusing her offers, or with a contemptuous hitch of her shoulders she will move on to the next prospect. “Yes? No. No? Yes.”

A loud humming began inside Al’s head; it was the brush of skin as a thousand dead people twiddled their thumbs. God, it’s boring, this, they were saying. Her mind wandered. Where’s my silk? she wondered. Whatever has Morris done with it? Her photograph on its easel looked bare without it. In the picture her smile looked thinner, almost strained, and her glowing eyes seemed to stare.

Gemma swished past her, coming off to a spatter of applause. “On you go, take your time,” Silvana said to Mrs. Etchells.

Mrs. Etchells toddled forward. As she passed Alison, she muttered again, “Never called me granny.”

“Get out there, you batty old witch,” Gemma breathed. “You next, Cara.”

“What a joy to see your faces,” Mrs. Etchells began. “My name is Irene Etchells, I have been gifted with second sight from an early age, and let me tell you there has been a great deal of joy in my life. There is no place for gloom when we reach out to Spirit World. So before we can see who’s with us tonight, I would like you all to join hands, and join me in a little prayer … .”

“She’s up and running,” Silvana said, satisfied.

A moment or two, and she was eliciting symptoms from a woman in the second row left: palpitations, light-headedness, a feeling of fullness in her abdomen.

Gemma stood in the wings, prompting, “Yes or no, answer yes or no.”

Alison sighed. “Let her do it in her own sweet way.”

“Oh, I can’t do with that yes-no malarkey,” Mrs. Etchells said, apparently to no one. The woman with the fullness paused, and looked offended. “There’s a gentleman coming through from Spirit who’s trying to help me,” Mrs. Etchells said. “He begins with a K, can you take a K?”

They began negotiations. Kenneth? No, not Kenneth. Kevin? Not Kevin.

“Think, dear,” Mrs. Etchells urged. “Try and think back.”

In the house before Al left that evening, there had been further signs of a creeping male presence. There had been a whiff of tobacco and meat. As she was getting changed she had stepped on something with her bare foot, something rolling, round and hard. She had picked it up from the carpet; it was the gnawed stump of a pencil, the kind of pencil someone used to wear behind his ear. Aitkenside? Or Keef?

“It’s Keith,” Mrs. Etchells said. “K for Keith. Do you know a Keith, dear?”

I used to know one, Al thought, I used to know Keef Capstick, and now I’ve re-created him, brought him to mind, his pals can’t be far behind. She stood up, her breathing tight, wanting to get out. The room had a close smell, damp and medicinal, like mould under a box lid.

Onstage Mrs. Etchells was smiling. “Keith is suggesting an answer to your problem, dear. About your swollen tummy. He says, well madam, are you in the pudding club?”

There was a yelp of laughter from the audience: of indignation, from the woman in the second row left. “At my age? You must be joking.”

“Chance would be a fine thing, eh?” said Mrs. Etchells. “Sorry, dear, but I’m only passing on what the spirits tell me. That’s all I can do, and what I’m bound to do. Keith says, miracles can ’appen. Those are his exact words. Which I have to agree with, dear. Miracles can happen, unless of course you’ve had a little op?”

“Dear God,” Gemma whispered, “I’ve never known her like this.”

“Been at the cooking sherry,” Mandy said. “Before she came out.”

“I’d have smelled it on her breath,” Silvana snapped.

“Have you placed Keith, yet?” Mrs. Etchells asked. “He’s laughing, you know, he’s quite a joker. He says, you wouldn’t catch him wiv his trousers down in your vicinity, but some geezers don’t bother. They say, you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire.”

There was a puzzled silence in the hall; laughter from some; from others a hostile mutter. “They’re turning,” Silvana said, a warning in her voice. “Can we get her off?”

“Leave her be,” Mandy said. “She’s been working with Spirit more years than you’ve had hot dinners.”

“Oops,” said Mrs. Etchells. “Somebody’s got their wires crossed. Now I look at you, dear, I see you’re not of an age for any how’s-your-father. Let’s clear the vibrations, shall we? Then we’ll have another go at it. You have to be able to laugh at yourself, don’t you? In Spirit World there’s lots of laughter. After the sunshine comes the rain. A chain of love links us to the world beyond. Let’s just tune in and have a little chat.”

Alison peeped out. She saw that Colette stood at the back of the room, ramrod-straight, the mike in her hand. “There’s a gentleman in the back row,” Mrs. Etchells said. “I’m coming to you, sir.”

Colette looked up, her eyes searching the platform for guidance. Her difficulty was clear. The back row was empty. From the wings Silvana cooed, “Mrs. E, dear, he must be in spirit, that gentleman, the audience can’t see him. Pass on, dear.”

Mrs. Etchells said, “That gentleman at the back, on the end there, have I seen you before? Yes, I thought I had. You’ve got a false eye now. I knew something was different. Used to wear a patch, didn’t you? I remember now.”

Alison shivered. “We must get her off,” she said. “Really, Mandy, it’s dangerous.”

A little louder, Silvana called, “Mrs. Etchells? How about some messages for the people in front?”

The audience were turning around, craning their necks and swivelling in their seats to see the empty back row: to giggle and jeer. “Aren’t they ungrateful!” Cara said, “You’d think they’d be glad of a manifestation! There’s obviously somebody there. Can you see him, Al?”

“No,” Al said shortly.

Mrs. Etchells beamed down at the hecklers. “Sometimes I wonder what I’ve done to be surrounded with so much love. God gave us a beautiful world to live in. When you’ve had as many ops as me you learn to live for the moment. As long as the youngsters are willing to listen and learn, there’s hope for this world. But now they’re only willing to put dog shit through your letter box, so I don’t see much hope. God has put a little light inside of us and one day we will rejoin the greater light.”

“She’s gone on automatic,” Cara said.

“Which one of us is going to get her?” Mandy said.

“Mrs. Etchells,” Silvana called, “come on now, time’s up. Come on for your cup of tea.”

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?”

“It might come to all of us.”

“Not to me,” Colette said. “If I can’t get as far as the lavatory, I’ll top myself. Honestly. There’s only so far you can sink in self-esteem.”

“If you say so.”

They drove in silence, to the next traffic light. Then Al lurched forward in her seat; her seat belt dragged her back. “Colette,” she said, “let me explain to you how it works. If you have lovely thoughts, you get attuned to a high level of Spirit, right? That’s what Mrs. Etchells always said.”

“I wouldn’t call that a high level of Spirit, the one who said that old biddy was up the duff.”

“Yes, but then a spirit—” she gulped; she was frightened to name him—“but then a spirit, you know who he was, had broken in on her, like a burglar—she couldn’t help it, she was just transmitting his message. But you see, Colette, some people are nicer than you and me. Some people are much nicer than Mrs. Etchells. They do manage to have lovely thoughts. They have thoughts that are packed inside their head like the chocolates in an Easter egg. They can pick out any one, and it’s just as sweet as the next.”

The lights changed; they shot forward. “What?” Colette said.

“But other people’s heads, on the inside, the content is all mixed up and it’s gone putrid. They’ve gone rotten inside from thinking about things, things that the other sort of people never have to think about. And if you have low, rotten thoughts, not only do you get surrounded by low entities, but they start to be attracted, you see, like flies around a dustbin, and they start laying eggs in you and breeding. And ever since I was a little kid I’ve been trying to have nice thoughts. But how could I? My head was stuffed with memories. I can’t help what’s in there. And with Morris and his mates, it’s damage that attracts them. They love that, some types of spirits, you can’t keep them away when there’s a car accident, or when some poor horse breaks its leg. And so when you have certain thoughts—thoughts you can’t help—these sort of spirits come rushing round. And you can’t dislodge them. Not unless you could get the inside of your head hoovered out. So if you ask why I have an evil spirit guide instead of an angel or something—”

“I don’t,” Colette said. “I’ve lost interest. I’m past caring. I just want to get in and open a bottle of wine.”

“—if you ask why I have an evil guide, it’s to do with the fact that I’m a bad person, because the people who were around me in my childhood were bad. They took out my will and put in their own. I wanted to do a good action by looking after Mart, but you wouldn’t let me—”

“So everything’s my fault, is that what you’re saying?”

“—and they wouldn’t let me because they want the shed to themselves. They want me, and it’s because of me that they can exist. It’s because of me that they can go on the way they do, Aitkenside and Keef Capstick as well as Morris, and Bob Fox and Pikey Pete. What can you do? You’re only human, you think they’ll play by earthside rules. But the strong thing about airside is that it has no rules. Not any we can understand. So they have the advantage there. And the bottom line is, Colette, there are more of them than us.”

Colette pulled into the drive. It was half-past nine, not quite dark.

“I can’t believe we’re home so early,” Al said.

“We cut it short, didn’t we?”

“You could hardly expect Cara to go on. She was too upset.”

“Cara gets on my tits. She’s a wimp.”

Al said, “You ask why I have an evil spirit guide, instead of an angel. You might as well ask, why do I have you for my assistant, instead of somebody nice?”

“Manager,” Colette said.

As they stepped out of the car, Pikey Paul, Mrs. Etchell’s spirit guide, was weeping on the paving by the dwarf conifers that divided them from Evan next door.

“Pikey Paul!” Al said. “It’s years since I seen you!”

“Hello, Alison dear,” sniffed the spirit guide. “Here I am, alone in this wicked world. Play your tape when you get in. She’s left you a few kindly sentiments, if you want to hear them.”

“I’m sure I shall!” Alison cried. She sounded, in her own ears, like someone else; someone from an earlier time. “Why, Paul,” she cried, “the sequins is all fell off your jacket!”

Colette removed Al’s portrait from the boot of the car. “They’re right,” she said. “You need to get this picture redone. No point in fighting reality, is there?”

“I don’t know,” Al said to her: temporizing. Said Paul, “You might fetch out a needle and a scarlet thread, darling girl, then I can stitch up my glad rags and be on my way to my next post of duties.”

“Oh, Pikey Paul,” she said, “do you never rest?” and “Never,” he said. “I’m on my way to link up with a psychic in Wolverhampton, would you know anyone who could give me a lift up the M6?”

“Your nephew is around here somewhere,” she said.

“Never speak of Pete, he’s lost to me,” said Paul. “I want no truck with his criminal ways.”

She stood by the car, her hand resting on its roof, her face entranced.

“What’s the matter with you?” Colette said.

“I was listening,” she said. “Mrs. Etchells has passed.”

Torches crept over Admiral Drive. It was the Neighbourhood Watch, beginning their evening search among the cow parsley meadows that led to the canal, for any poor wastrels or refugees who had grubbed in for the night.

Colette played the messages on the answering machine; several clients wanting to set up readings, and Mandy’s cool level voice … . “on a trolley in the corridor … didn’t linger … mercy really … given your name as next of kin.” Once she had shot her first draught of sauvignon blanc down her throat, she wandered into the sitting room to see what Al was doing. The tape recorder was in action, emitting chirps and coughs.

“Want a drink?” Colette said.

“Brandy.”

“In this heat?”

Al nodded. “Mrs. E,” she said, “what’s it like there?”

“It’s interactive?” Colette asked.

“Of course it is.” She repeated, “Mrs. E, what’s it like in Spirit?”

“Aldershot.”

“It’s like Aldershot?”

“It’s like home, that’s what it’s like. I’ve just looked out of the window and it’s all happening, there’s the living and there’s the dead, there’s your mum reeling down the road with a squaddie on her arm, and they’re heading for hers to do the unmentionable.”

“But they’ve demolished those houses, Mrs. Etchells. You must have been past, you only live down the road. I went past last year, Colette drove me. Where my mum used to live, it’s a big car showroom now.”

“Well, pardon me,” said Mrs. Etchells, “but it’s not demolished on this side. On this side it looks the same as ever.”

Alison felt hope drain away. “And the bath still in the garden, is it?”

“And the downstairs bay got a bit of cardboard in the corner where Bob Fox tapped on it too hard.”

“So it’s all still going on? Just the way it used to?”

“No change that I can see.”

“Mrs. Etchells, can you have a look round the back?”

“I suppose I could.” There was a pause. Mrs. Etchell’s breathing was laboured. Al glanced at Colette. She had flung herself onto the sofa; she wasn’t hearing anything. “Rough ground,” Mrs. Etchells reported. “There’s a van parked.”

“And the outbuildings?”

“Still there. Falling down, they’ll do somebody a damage.”

“And the caravan?”

“Yes, the caravan.”

“And the dog runs?”

“Yes, the dog runs. Though I don’t see any dogs.”

Got rid of the dogs, Al thought: why?

“It all looks much the same as I remember,” Mrs. Etchells said, “not that I was in the business of frequenting the back of Emmeline Cheetham’s house, it wasn’t a safe place for an old woman on her own.”

“Mrs. Etchells—listen now—you see the van? The van parked? Could you have a peep inside?”

“Hold on,” Mrs. Etchells said. More heavy breathing. Colette picked up the remote and began to flick through the TV channels.

“The windows are filthy,” Mrs. Etchells reported.

“What can you see?”

“I can see an old blanket. There’s something wrapped up in it.” She chuckled. “Blow me if there isn’t a hand peeping out.”

The dead are like that; cold-blooded. Nothing squeamish left in them, no sensitivities.

“Is it my hand?” Al said.

“Well is it, I wonder?” Mrs. Etchells said. “Is it a little chubby baby hand, I wonder now?”

Colette complained, “It’s like this every summer. Nothing but repeats.”

“Don’t torment me, Mrs. E.”

“No, it looks like a grown-up woman’s hand to me.”

Al said, “Could it be Gloria?”

“It could at that. Now here’s a special message for you, Alison dear. Keith Capstick has got his balls armour-plated now, you’ll not be able to get at ’em this time. He says you can hack away all bloody day, with your scissors, carving knife or whatever you bloody got, but you’ll not get anywhere. Excuse my language, but I feel bound to give you his very words.”

Alison clicked off the tape. “I need a breath,” she said to Colette. “A breath of air.”

“I expect there’ll have to be a funeral,” Colette remarked.

“I expect so. I don’t suppose the council will agree to take her away.”

“Oh, I don’t know. If we doubled her up and put her in a black bag.”

“Don’t. It’s not funny.”

“You started it.” Colette made a face behind her back. Alison thought, I have seen, or I have dreamed of, a woman’s body parts wrapped in newspaper. I have seen men’s hands smeared with something glutinous and brown as they unloaded parcels from the back of the van, wobbling packages of dog meat. I have heard a voice behind me say, fuck, Emmie, got to wash me hands. I have looked up, and where I thought I would see my own face in the mirror, I saw the face of Morris Warren.

She went out into the garden. It was now quite dark. Evan approached the fence, with a flashlight. “Alison? We had the police out earlier.”

Her heart lurched. She heard a low chuckle from behind her; it seemed to be at knee height. She didn’t turn, but the hair on her arms stiffened.

“Michelle thought she saw somebody snooping about your shed. You had that tramp, didn’t you, broke in? She thought it might be him again. Take no chances, so she called them out. Constable Delingbole came in person.”

“Yes? And?”

“He checked it over. Couldn’t see anything. But you can’t be too careful, when you’ve got kids. That type want locking away.”

“Definitely.”

“I’d throw away the key.”

“Oh, so would I.”

She stood waiting, her hands joined at her waist, the picture of patient formality, as if she were Her Majesty waiting for him to bow out of her presence.

“I’ll be getting in, then,” Evan said. But he shot her a backward glance as he crossed his balding lawn.

Alison turned and stooped over a large terra-cotta pot. Bending her back, she heaved it aside, managing only to roll it a few inches. The gravel beneath appeared undisturbed; that is to say, no one had dug it up. She straightened up, rubbing the small of her back. “Morris,” she said, “don’t play silly beggars.” She heard a scuffling; then the chuckle again, faintly muffled by the soil, coming from the very depths of the pot.