Beyond Black. Hilary Mantel
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wouldn’t she be proud of me if she saw me in chiffon, each inch of my flesh powdered and perfumed? In chiffon, my nails lacquered, with my lucky opals glittering – would she be pleased? Instead of being dismembered in a dish, which I know was her first ambition for me: swimming in jelly and blood. Wouldn’t she like to see me now, my head on my shoulders and my feet in my high-heeled shoes?
No, she thought, be realistic: she wouldn’t give a toss.
Ten minutes to go. Abba on the sound system, ‘Dancing Queen’. Glass of gin held in one hand, the bottle of tonic looped by her little finger, Colette peeped through a swing door at the back of the hall. Every seat was full and space was tight. They were turning people away, which the manager hated to do but it was fire regulations. How does it feel tonight? It feels all right. There’d been nights when she’d had to sit in the audience, so Alison could pick her out first and get the show going, but they didn’t like doing that and they didn’t need to do it often. Tonight she would be flitting around the hall with a microphone, identifying the people Al picked out and passing the mike along the rows so she could get clear answers out of them. We’ll need three minimum to cover the space, she’d told the manager, and no comedians who trip over their own feet, please. She herself, fast and thin and practised, would do the work of two.
Colette thought, I can’t stand them now: the clients, the punters, the trade. She didn’t like to be among them, for any purpose. She couldn’t believe that she was ever one of them: lining up to listen to Al, or somebody like her. Booking ahead (all major cards accepted) or jostling in a queue by the box office: a tenner in her fist, and her heart in her mouth.
Alison twisted her rings on her fingers: the lucky opals. It wasn’t nerves exactly, more a strange feeling in her diaphragm, as if her gut were yawning: as if she were making space for what might occur. She heard Colette’s footsteps: my gin, she thought. Good-good. Carefully, she took the mint out of her mouth. The action left her lips sulky; in the mirror, she edged them back into a smile, using the nail of her third finger, careful not to smudge. The face does disarrange itself; it has to be watched. She wrapped the mint in a tissue, looked around, and looped it hesitantly towards a metal bin a few feet away. It fell on the vinyl. Morris grunted with laughter. ‘You’re bloody hopeless, gel.’
This time, as Colette came in, she managed to step over Morris’s legs. Morris squawked out, ‘Tread on me, I love it.’
‘Don’t you start!’ Al said. ‘Not you. Morris. Sorry.’
Colette’s face was thin and white. Her eyes had gone narrow, like arrow slits. ‘I’m used to it.’ She put the glass down by Alison’s eyelash curlers, with the bottle of tonic water beside it.
‘A splash,’ Al directed. She picked up her glass and peered into the fizzing liquid. She held it up to the light.
‘I’m afraid your ice has melted.’
‘Never mind.’ She frowned. ‘I think there’s someone coming through.’
‘In your G & T?’
‘I think I caught just a glimpse. An elderly person. Ah well. There’ll be no lolling in the old armchair tonight. Straight on with the show.’ She downed the drink, put the empty glass on the countertop with her strewn boxes of powder and eyeshadow. Morris would lick her glass while she was out, running his yellow fissured tongue around the rim. Over the public address system, the call came to switch off mobile phones. Al stared at herself in the mirror. ‘No more to be done,’ she said. She inched to the edge of her chair, wobbling a little at the hips. The manager put his face in at the door. ‘All right?’ Abba was fading down: ‘Take a Chance on Me’. Al took a breath. She pushed her chair back; she rose, and began to shine.
She walked out into the light. The light, she would say, is where we come from, and it’s to the light we return. Through the hall ran small detonations of applause, which she acknowledged only with a sweep of her thick lashes. She walked, slowly, right to the front of the stage, to the taped line. Her head turned. Her eyes searched, against the dazzle. Then she spoke, in her special platform voice. ‘This young lady.’ She was looking three rows back. ‘This lady here. Your name is – ? Well, Leanne, I think I have a message for you.’
Colette released her breath from the tight space where she held it.
Alone, spotlit, perspiring slightly, Alison looked down at her audience. Her voice was low, sweet and confident, and her aura was a perfectly adjusted aquamarine, flowing like a silk shawl about her shoulders and upper arms. ‘Now, Lee, I want you to sit back in your seat, take a deep breath, and relax. And that goes for all of you. Put on your happy faces – you’re not going to see anything that will frighten you. I won’t be going into a trance, and you won’t be seeing spooks, or hearing spirit music.’ She looked around, smiling, taking in the rows. ‘So why don’t you all sit back and enjoy the evening? All I do is, I just tune in, I just have to listen hard and decide who’s out there. Now if I get a message for you, please raise your hand, shout up – because if you don’t it’s very frustrating for the spirits trying to come through. Don’t be shy, you just shout up or give me a wave. Then my helpers will rush over to you with the microphone – don’t be afraid of it when it comes to you, just hold it steady and speak up.’
They were all ages. The old had brought cushions for their bad backs, the young had bare midriffs and piercings. The young had stuffed their coats under their chairs, but their elders had rolled theirs and held them on their knees, like swaddled babies. ‘Smile,’ Al told them. ‘You’re here to enjoy yourselves, and so am I. Now, Lee my love, let me get back to you – where were we? There’s a lady here called Kathleen, who’s sending lots of love in your direction. Who would that be, Leanne?’
Leanne was a dud. She was a young lass of seventeen or so, hung about with unnecessary buttons and bows, her hair in twee little bunches, her face peaky. Kathleen, Al suggested, was her granny: but Leanne wouldn’t own it because she didn’t know her granny’s name.
‘Think hard, darling,’ Al coaxed. ‘She’s desperate for a word with you.’
But Lee shook her bunches. She said that she didn’t think she had a granny; which made some of the audience snigger. ‘Kathleen says she lives in a field, at a certain amount of money. Bear with me. Penny. Penny Meadow, do you know that address? Up the hill from the market – such a pull, she says, when you’ve got a bagful of potatoes.’ She smiled at the audience. ‘This seems to be before you could order your groceries online,’ she said. ‘Honestly, when you think how they lived in those days – we forget to count our blessings, don’t we? Now, Lee, what about Penny Meadow? What about Granny Kathleen walking uphill?’
Leanne indicated incredulity. She lived on Sandringham Court, she said.
‘Yes, I know,’ Al said. ‘I know where you live, sweetheart, but this isn’t anywhere around here, it’s a filthy old place, Lancashire, Yorkshire, I’m getting a smudge on my fingers, it’s grey, it’s ash, it’s something below the place you hang the washing – could it be Ashton-under-Lyne? Never mind,’ Alison said. ‘Go home, Leanne, and ask your mum what Granny was called. Ask her where she lived. Then you’ll know, won’t you, that she was here for you tonight?’
There was a patter of applause. Strictly speaking, she hadn’t earned it. But they acknowledged that she’d tried; and Leanne’s silliness, deeper than average, had brought the audience over to her side. It was not uncommon to find family memory so short, in these towns where nobody comes from, these south-eastern towns with their floating populations and their car parks where the centre should be. Nobody has roots here; and maybe they don’t want to acknowledge roots, or recall their grimy places of origin and their illiterate foremothers up north. These days, besides, the kids don’t remember back more than eighteen months – the drugs, she supposed. She was sorry for Kathleen, panting and striving, her wheezy goodwill evaporating, unacknowledged; Penny Meadow and all the terraced rows about seemed shrouded in a northern smog. Something about a cardigan, she was saying. A certain class of dead people was always talking about cardigans. The button off it, the pearl button, see if it’s dropped behind the dresser drawer, that little