Beyond Black: A Novel Page 7

  “Nothing.” He threw the magazine down. “Nothing happened.”

  “But where was she? Was she at home?”

  “No. Getting her shopping. In Safeway. Apparently.”

  “And?”

  Gavin rubbed his forehead. He seemed to be making an honest effort. “I suppose she was pushing her trolley.”

  “Was she on her own?”

  “Dunno. Yes.”

  “And then?”

  “She fell over.”

  “She didn’t die there, did she? In the aisle?”

  “Nah, they got her to the hospital. So no worries about the death certificate.”

  “What a relief,” she said grimly.

  Carole, it seemed, was proposing to get the bungalow on the market as soon as possible, with Sidgewick and Staff, who for sole agency charged 2 percent on completion, and promised unlimited colour advertising and national tie-ins. “There should be a good payout,” he said. “The place is worth a few quid.”

  That was why, he explained, he was reading the new edition of What Car? Renee’s will would bring him nearer to what he most coveted in life, which was a Porsche 911.

  “Aren’t you upset?” she asked him.

  He shrugged. “We’ve all got to go, haven’t we? What’s it to you? It’s not as if you ever bothered with her.”

  “And she lived in a bungalow, Renee?”

  “’Course she did.” Gavin picked up his magazine and rolled it up in his hands, as if she were a wasp and he was going to swat her. “We went over for our lunch, that Sunday.”

  “No, we didn’t. We never went.”

  “Only because you kept cancelling us.”

  It was true. She’d hoped she could keep Renee at arm’s length; the wedding reception had proved her to have a coarse joke habit and slipping false teeth. The teeth weren’t all that was false. “She told me,” she said to Gavin, “that she had a stair lift installed. Which, if she lived in a bungalow, she couldn’t have.”

  “When? When did she tell you that?”

  “On the phone just now.”

  “Hello? Hello? Anyone at home?” Gavin asked. “Are you ever stupid? I told you she’s dead.”

  Alerted by the mutiny on her face, he rose from the sofa and slapped her with What Car? She picked up the Yellow Pages and threatened to take out his eye. After he had slunk off to bed, hugging his expectations, she went back into the kitchen and grilled the cutlets. The peas and green beans she fed to the waste disposal; she hated vegetables. She ate the lamb with her fingers, her teeth scraping the bone. Her tongue came out, and licked the last sweetness from the meat. She couldn’t work out what was worse, that Renee had answered the phone after she was dead, or that she had answered the phone on purpose to lie to her and tell her to bugger off. She threw the bones down the waste disposal too, and rejoiced as the grinder laboured. She rinsed her fingers and wiped them on a kitchen roll.

  In the bedroom, she inspected Gavin, spread-eagled across the available space. He was naked and snoring; his mag, rolled, was thrust under his pillow. That, she thought, is how much it means to him: the death of his only mother. She stood frowning down at him; her toe touched something hard and cold. It was a glass tumbler, lolling on its side, melted ice dribbling from its mouth onto the carpet. She picked it up. The breath of spirits hit her nostrils, and made her flinch. She walked into the kitchen and clicked the tumbler down on the draining board. In the dark tiny hall, she hauled Gavin’s laptop from its case. She lugged it into the sitting room and plugged it into the mains. She copied the files she thought might interest her, and erased his crucial data for tomorrow. In terms of life documentation, Gavin was less than some animal. He routinely misled her: but was it any wonder? What sort of upbringing could he have had, from a woman with false teeth who told lies after she was dead?

  She left the machine humming, and went back into the bedroom. She opened the wardrobe and went through Gavin’s pockets. The word “rifled” came to her: “she rifled through his pockets.” He stirred once or twice in his sleep, reared up, snorted, collapsed back onto the mattress. I could kill him, she thought, as he lies here, or just maim him if I liked. She found a bunch of credit card receipts in his knicker drawer; her index finger shuffled through them. She found newspaper ads for sex lines: Spicy lesbo chicks!

  She packed a bag. Surely he would wake? Drawers clicked, opening and shutting. She glanced over her shoulder. Gavin stirred, made a sort of whinny, and settled back again into sleep. She reached down to unplug her hair dryer, wrapped the flex around her hand, and stood thinking. She was entitled to half the equity in the flat; if he would embrace the car loan, she would continue paying off the wedding. She hesitated for a final moment. Her foot was on the wet patch the ice had left. Automatically she plucked a tissue from an open box and blotted the the carpet. Her fingers squeezed, the paper reduced itself to wet pulp. She walked away, brushing her hands together to jettison it.

  Gavin’s screen saver had come up. Colette slotted a floppy into his drive, and overwrote his programs. She had heard of women who, before departing, scissored up their husband’s clothes. But Gavin’s clothes, in their existing state, were punishment enough. She had heard of women who performed castration; but she didn’t want to go to jail. No, let’s see how he gets on without his bits and bytes, she thought. With one keystroke, she wrecked his operating system.

  She went down to the south coast to see a noted psychometrist, Natasha. She didn’t know then, of course, that Natasha would figure in her later life. At the time, it was just another hope she grappled with, a hope of making sense of herself; it was just another item in her strained monthly budget.

  The flat was two blocks back from the sea. She parked with difficulty and at some distance. She wasted time looking for the street numbers. When she found the right door she rang the bell and spoke into the intercom: “I’m your eleven-thirty.”

  Without a word, the psychic buzzed her up; but she thought she had heard a cough, stifling a little laugh. Her cheeks burned. She ran up three flights and as soon as Natasha opened the door she said, “I’m not late.”

  “No, dear. You’re my eleven-thirty.”

  “You really ought to tell your clients where to park.”

  The psychic smiled tightly. She was a sharp little bleached blonde with a big jaw, common as a centrefold. “What?” she said. “You think I should exercise my powers and keep a space free?”

  “I meant you should send a map.”

  She turned to lead the way: tight high bottom in the kind of jeans that acts as a corset. She’s too old, Colette thought, for denim; shouldn’t somebody tell her?

  “Sit there,” Natasha said precisely, dipping her false nail.

  “The sun’s in my eyes,” Colette said.

  “Diddums,” said Natasha.

  A sad-eyed icon drooped at her, from a cheap gilt frame on the wall; a mist washed up from the sea. She sat and flipped open her shoulder bag: “Do you want the cheque now?”

  She wrote it. She waited for the offer of a cup of herb tea. It didn’t come. She almost had hopes of Natasha; she was nasty, but there was a businesslike briskness about her that she’d never found in any psychic so far.

  “Anything to give me?” Natasha said.

  She dived into her bag and passed over her mother’s wedding ring.

  Natasha twirled it around her forefinger. “Quite a smiley lady.”

  “Oh, smiley,” Colette said. “I concede that.” She passed over a pair of cuff links that had belonged to her dad.

  “Is that the best you can manage?”

  “I don’t have anything else of his.”

  “Sad,” Natasha said. “Can’t have been much of a relationship, can it? I sense that men don’t warm to you, somehow.” She sat back in her chair, her eyes far away.

  Colette waited, respectfully silent.

  “Well, look, I’m not getting much from these.” She jiggled the cuff links in her hand. “They’re definitely your d
ad’s, are they? The thing is, with cuff links, with dads, they get them for Christmas and then it’s, ‘Oh, thanks, thanks a bunch, just what I always needed!’”

  Colette nodded. “But what can you do? What can you get, for men?”

  “Bottle of Scotch?”

  “Yes, but you want something that will last.”

  “So he stuffs them in a drawer? Forgets he’s got them?”

  She wanted to say, why do you think men don’t warm to me? Instead she opened her bag again. “My wedding ring,” she said. “I suppose you didn’t think I’d been married?”

  Natasha held out a flat, open palm. Colette placed the ring on it. “Oh dear,” Natasha said. “Oh dear oh dear.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve already left.”

  “Sometimes you’ve got to cut your losses,” Natasha agreed. “Well, sweetie, what else can I tell you?”

  “It’s possible I might be psychic myself,” Colette said casually. “Certain, really. I dialled a number and a dead person answered.”

  “That’s unusual.” Natasha’s eyes flitted sideways, in a calculating way. “Which psychic line offers that service?”

  “I wasn’t calling a psychic line. I was calling my mother-in-law. It turned out she was dead.”

  “So what gave you the idea?”

  “No—no, look, you have to understand how it happened. I didn’t know she was dead when I rang. I didn’t know till afterwards.”

  “So she was dead when you called? But you didn’t realize?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she came over from beyond?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “She said she’d got a stair lift. It was a lie.”

  “Well, perhaps she’s got one in Spirit?”

  Colette considered. Renee had said there was no comfort she lacked. “I’m not really bothered about that aspect, about what she said, only that she picked the phone up. That she answered. At first that was what bothered me, about the stair lift—that she didn’t even say the truth—but then when I thought about it, her saying anything seemed to be the most surprising … . Well, you know.”

  Colette’s voice died in her throat. She was not used to speaking her thoughts. Life with Gavin had discouraged her.

  “Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before, but I think it proves I must have a gift. I’m a bit bored with my job and I wouldn’t mind a change. I wondered about this, you know? If there’s much money in it.”

  Natasha laughed. “Well, if you think you could stand the pace. You have to train.”

  “Oh do you? It’s not enough to be able to do it?”

  “Look,” Natasha said, “I don’t want to sound hostile, but isn’t it possible that you’re being a bit naïve? I mean you’ve got a good career now, I can see that. So why waste it? You’d need to build up your psychic skills. You can’t expect to start cold at your age.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Colette said. “At my age?”

  “I started at twelve,” Natasha said. “You’re not telling me you’re twelve, are you?” With one hand, she lazily shuffled her cards together. “Want me to see what I get?” She began to lay out a spread, her nails clicking on the back of each card. “Look, if you’re going to work with higher powers, it will happen. Nothing will stop it. But you’ll get the here-and-now sorted, if you’ll heed my advice.” She looked up. “Letter M comes to mind.”

  Colette thought. “I don’t know anyone of that letter.” She thought, M for Man?

  “Someone coming into your life. Not yet. An older bloke. Not too keen on you at first, I must say.”

  “But then?”

  “All’s well that ends well,” Natasha said. “I suppose.”

  She had walked away, disappointed; when she got back to her car, she had been ticketed. After that she had gone for crystal healing, and had some private Reiki sessions. She arranged to meet Gavin in a new bar called Peppermint Plaza. He arrived before her, and when she walked in he was sitting on a pale green leather-look banquette, a bottle of Mexican lager planted in front of him, leafing through Thames Valley Autotrader.

  “Renee’s money not come through yet?” she asked. She slid into the seat opposite. “When it does, you could use some of it to buy me out of the flat.”

  “If you think I’m giving up the chance of a decent car, then no way,” said Gavin. “If I don’t get the Porsche this is what I’m getting, I’m getting this Lancia.” He flopped the magazine down on the table. “There’s one here.” He turned the picture around obligingly so it was the right way up for her. “Recarro seats. Full spec. Seriously speedy.”

  “Put it on the market then. The flat. If you can’t buy me out.”

  “You said that. You said it before. I said, yes. I agree. So don’t go on about it. Okay?”

  There was a silence. Colette looked around. “Quite nice here. Quiet.”

  “Bit girly.”

  “That’s probably why I like it. Being a girl.” Her knees touched his, under the table. She tried to pull her chair away, but it was bolted to the floor.

  Gavin said, “I want fifty percent of the bills till the flat’s sold.”

  “I’ll pay half the monthly service charge.” Colette pushed his magazine back across the table. “I won’t pay half the utilities.”

  “What’s that, utilities?”

  “Gas and electric. Why should I pay to keep you warm?”

  “I’ll tell you what, you stuffed me with a huge sodding phone bill. You can pay that.”

  “It’s your phone too.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not on it all night, blah-bloody-blah to some bint I’ve sat next to all day and I’ll be seeing again the next morning. And it’s not me phoning premium-rate lines to what’s it called, bloody predictionists, bloody psychic lines at a quid a minute?”

  “Actually, sex lines are premium rate too.”

  “Oh well, you would know about that, wouldn’t you?” Gavin gathered up his car magazine, as if to shield it from her. “You’re not normal.”

  She sighed. She couldn’t summon up the energy to say, “I beg your pardon, not normal, what do you mean?” Any abstraction, indirection, or allusion was wasted on Gavin, and in fact even the most straightforward form of communication—other than a poke in the eye—was a challenge to his attention span. There hadn’t, so far as she’d understood, been any dispute between them about what they did in the bedroom—it had seemed fairly straightforward stuff, though she was fairly ignorant and limited, she supposed, and Gavin, certainly, he was fairly ignorant and limited. But after the marriage is over, maybe that’s what men do; they decide it was the sex that was wrong, because it’s something they can communicate over a drink, something they can turn into a story, snigger over; it’s an explanation they can give themselves, for what would otherwise remain the complete mystery of human relationships. There were other mysteries, which loomed large to her and hardly loomed at all for Gavin: what are we here for, what will happen next? It was no use trying to explain to him that without the fortune-tellers she had become afraid to act at all; that she liked to know that things were her fate, that she didn’t like life to be arbitrary. It was no use telling him either that she thought she might be psychic herself. The incident of the posthumous phone call, if it had ever sunk into his mind, had been chemically erased by the vodka he had drunk the night she moved out; this was lucky for her, because when next day he found his computer trashed he thought he had only himself to blame.

  “Don’t you want to ask anything?” she asked. “Like where I’m living?”

  “So where are you living, Colette?” he said sarcastically.

  “With a friend.”

  “Jesus, you’ve got a friend?”

  “But from next week I’ve arranged a house share in Twickenham. I’ll have to start paying rent, so I need the flat to be sold.”

  “All we need is a buyer.”

  “No, all we need is a seller.”

  �
��What?”

  “Put it on the market.”

  “I have. Last week.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” She slammed her glass down. “Why didn’t you just come out and say that?”

  “I would if I could get a word in edgewise. Besides, I thought you’d get a tip-off from the spirits. I thought they’d say, a strange man is walking around your bedroom with a steel measure.”

  Colette threw herself back in her seat; but it was strangely curved, and pushed her forward again, so her diaphragm was against the table’s edge. “So how much did they suggest?” He told her. “That’s far too low. They must think you’re an idiot. And they could be right. Leave it, Gavin, leave it. I’ll get on to it tomorrow. I’ll phone them myself.”

  “They said, realistic price for a quick sale.”

  “More likely they’ve got a mate lined up, who they’re selling it on to.”

  “That’s your trouble.” Gavin scratched his armpit. “You’re paranoid.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You use words without any idea what they mean. All you know is stupid jargon out of car mags. Recarro seats. Spicy lesbo chicks. That’s all you know.”

  Gavin turned down his mouth and shrugged. “So. You want anything?”

  “Yes. I want my life back.”

  “From the flat.”

  “I’ll make a list.”

  “Anything you want now?”

  “The kitchen knives.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re good ones. Japanese. You don’t want them. You won’t cook.”

  “I might want to cut something.”

  “Use your teeth.”

  He took a pull on his lager. She finished her spritzer.

  “If that’s all?” she said. She gathered her bag and her jacket. “I want everything in writing, about the flat. Tell the agents, all the paperwork must be copied to me. I want full consultation at every point.” She stood up. “I’ll be ringing every two days to check on progress.”