“No, that was Aitkenside,” her mother said. “God help you, girl, you never could keep anything straight in your head. I don’t know if I’d recognize Keith if he come round here today. Not after that fight he had, he was that mangled I don’t know if I’d know him. I remember that fight, I see it as if it were yesterday—old Mac with the patch over his eye socket, and me embarrassed, not knowing where to look. We didn’t know where to put our loyalties, you see? Not in this house we didn’t. Morris said he was putting a fiver on Keith; he said I’ll back a man with no balls over a man with one eye. He had a fiver on Keith, oh, he was mad with him, the way he went down. I remember they said, after, that MacArthur must have had a blade in his fist. Still, you’d know, wouldn’t you? You’d know about blades, you little madam. By Christ, did I wallop you, when I found you with those whatsits in your pocket.”
Al said, “I want to stop you, Mum.”
“What?”
“I want to stop you and rewind you.”
She thought, they took out my will and they paid my mother in notes for the privilege. She took the money and she put it in that old cracked vase that she used to keep on the top shelf of the cupboard to the left of the chimney breast.
Her mum said, “Al, you still there? I was thinking, you never do know, Keith might have got his face fixed up. They can do wonders these days, can’t they? He might have got his appearance changed. Funny, that. He could be living round the corner. And we’d never know.”
Another pause.
“Alison?”
“Yes … . Are you still taking pills, Mum?”
“On and off.”
“You see your doctor?”
“Every week.”
“You been in the hospital at all?”
“They closed it.”
“You all right for money?”
“I get by.”
What else to say? Nothing, really.
Emmie said, “I miss Aldershot. I wish I’d never moved here. There’s nobody here worth talking to. They’re a miserable lot. Never had a laugh since I moved.”
“Maybe you should get out more.”
“Maybe I should. Nobody to go with, that’s the trouble. Still, they say there’s no going back in life.” After a longer pause, just as Al was about to say goodbye, her mother asked, “How are you then? Busy?”
“Yes. Busy week.”
“Would be. With the princess. Shame, innit? I always think we had a lot in common, me and her. All these blokes, and then you get the rough end of it. Do you reckon she’d have been all right with Dido?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t an idea.”
“Never one for the boys, were you? I reckon you got put off it.”
“Do you? How?”
“Oh, you know.”
“No, I don’t,” she was starting to say, I don’t know, but I very much want to know, I find this enlightening, you’ve told me quite a few things—
But Emmie said, “Got to go. The gas is running out,” and put the phone down.
Al dropped the handset on the duvet cover. She lowered her head to her knees. Pulses beat; in her neck, in her temples, at the ends of her fingers. She felt a pricking in the palms of her hands. Galloping high blood pressure, she thought. Too much pizza. She felt a low, seeping fury, as if something inside her had broken and was leaking black blood into her mouth.
I need to be with Colette, she thought. I need her for protection. I need to sit with her and watch the TV, whatever she’s watching, whatever she’s watching will be all right. I want to be normal. I want to be normal for half an hour, just enjoying the funeral highlights; before Morris starts up again.
She opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the small square hall. The sitting room door was closed but raucous laughter was rocking the room where Colette, she knew, kicked up her heels in her little socks. To avoid hearing the tape, Colette had turned the TV volume up. That was natural, very natural. She thought of tapping on the door. But no, no, let her enjoy. She turned away. At once Diana manifested: a blink in the hall mirror, a twinkle. Within a moment she had become a definite pinkish glow.
She was wearing her wedding dress, and it hung on her now; she was gaunt, and it looked crumpled and worn, as if dragged through the halls of the hereafter, where the housekeeping, understandably, is never of the best. She had pinned some of her press cuttings to her skirts; they lifted, in some otherworldly breeze, and flapped. She consulted them, lifting her skirts and peering; but, in Alison’s opinion, her eyes seemed to cross.
“Give my love to my boys,” Diana said. “My boys, I’m sure you know who I mean.”
Al wouldn’t prompt her: you must never, in that fashion, give way to the dead. They will tease you and urge you, they will suggest and flatter; you mustn’t take their bait. If they want to speak, let them speak for themselves.
Diana stamped her foot. “You do know their names,” she accused. “You oiky little grease spot, you’re just being hideous. Oh, fuckerama! Whatever are they called?”
It takes them that way, sometimes, the people who have passed: memory lapses, an early detachment. It’s a mercy, really. It’s wrong to call them back, after they want to go. They’re not like Morris and company, fighting to get back, playing tricks and scheming to get reborn, leaning on the doorbell, knocking at the window, crawling inside your lungs and billowing out on your breath.
Diana dropped her eyes. They rolled, under her blue lids. Her painted lips fumbled for names. “It’s on the tip of my tongue,” she said. “Anyway, whatever. You tell them, because you know. Give my love to … Kingy. And the other kid. Kingy and Thingy.” There was a sickly glow behind her now, like the glow from a fire in a chemical factory. She’s going, Al thought, she’s melting away to nothing, to poisoned ash in the wind. “So,” the princess said, “my love to them, my love to you, my good woman. And my love to him, to—wait a minute.” She picked up her skirts and puzzled over a fan of the press cuttings, whipping them aside in her search for the name she wanted. “So many words,” she moaned, then giggled. The hem of her wedding gown slipped from her fingers. “No use, lost it. Love to all of you! Why don’t you just bog off now and let me get some privacy.”
The princess faded. Al implored her silently, Di, don’t go. The room was cold. With a click, the tape switched itself on.
WAGSTAFFE: This sceptered isle … .
MORRIS: My sceptered—
Colette yelled, “Al, are you playing that tape again?”
“Not on purpose, it just switched itself—”
“Because I don’t think I can face it.”
“You don’t want it for the book?”
“God, no. We can’t put that stuff in the book!”
“So what shall I do with it?”
WAGSTAFFE: This other Eden—
MORRIS: My sceptered arse.
Colette called, “Wipe it.”
seven
At Admiral Drive there were these house types: the Collingwood, the Frobisher, the Beatty, the Mountbatten, the Rodney, and the Hawkyns. Colette, initially, was unimpressed. The site was ragged grassland, half of it turned over already by the diggers.
“Why is it called Admiral Drive?”
The woman in the sales caravan said, “We theme all our developments nautically, you know?” She wore a name badge and a bright orange skirt and jersey, like a supermarket cashier.
“Awful uniform,” Colette said. “Wouldn’t navy be more appropriate?”
“We’ll be glad of it,” the woman said, “once the building starts. Orange stands out against the landscape. We’ll have to wear hard hats when we go out there. It’ll be mud up to your knees. Like a battlefield.” One of nature’s saleswomen, Colette thought. “What I’m saying is,” the woman added, “it’s really much better to buy off-plan?”
Colette picked up a fistful of brochures from the desk, banged them end-on to tidy them, and dropped them into her bag.
“Can I help you there at all?” the wo
man said. She looked aggrieved at the loss of her leaflets. “How many beds were you looking at?”
“I don’t know. Three?”
“Here you are then. The Beatty?”
Colette was puzzled by the woman, who turned most of her statements into questions. It must be what they do in Surrey, she decided; they must have had it twinned with Australia.
She opened the brochure for the Beatty and took it to the light. “Are these the actual room sizes, Suzi?”
“Oh no. It’s for information purposes only?”
“So it’s information, but it’s wrong?”
“It’s guidelines?”
“So the rooms could be bigger than this?”
“Probably not.”
“But they could be smaller?”
“Some contraction could occur.”
“We aren’t midgets, you know? What are the four-beds like? We could merge the rooms, or something.”
“At this stage, subject to building regulations, some redesign is possible?” Suzi said. “Extra costs may be incurred?”
“You’d charge for walls you didn’t put up?”
“Any alteration to the basic plan may be subject to extra costs,” Suzi said, “but I don’t say it will. Might you be interested in the Frobisher at all? It comes with a spacious utility area?”
“Wait a minute,” Colette said. “Wait a minute, I’ll get my friend.” She skipped out of the sales caravan and across the hardstanding to where the car was parked. The builders had put up a flagpole to dignify their sales area, and Alison was watching their emblem sailing in the wind. Colette swung open the car door. “Al, you’d better come in. The Frobisher comes with a spacious utility area. So I’m told.”
Al released her seat belt and stepped out. Her knees were stiff after the short drive down into Surrey. Colette had said, new-build appeals, but I need time to do my research. You have to go back beyond paint finishes and colour schemes, back beyond bricks and mortar, look at the ground we’ll be standing on. It isn’t just a place to live. It’s an investment. We need to maximize the profit. We need to think long-term. After all, she said, you appear to have no pension plans in place. Don’t be silly, Al had said. How could I retire?
Now she stood looking about her. She sensed the underscape, shuddering as it waited to be ripped. Builders’ machines stood ready, their maws crusted with soil, waiting for Monday morning. Violence hung in the air, like the smell of explosive. Birds had flown. Foxes had abandoned their lairs. The bones of mice and voles were mulched into mud, and she sensed the minute snapping of frail necks and the grinding into paste of muscle and fur. Through the soles of her shoes she felt gashed worms turning, twisting and repairing themselves. She looked up, to the grassland that remained. The site was framed by a belt of conifers, like a baffle wall; you could not guess what lay beyond it. In the middle distance was a stand of young birch trees. She could see a ditch running with water. Towards the main road to Guildford, she could see a hedge, a miscarried foetus dug in beneath it. She could see ghost horses, huddled in the shadow of a wall. It was an indifferent place; no better nor worse than most others.
Colette said briskly, “Is something upsetting you?”
“No.”
“Was there something here before?”
“Nothing. Just country.”
“Come in the caravan. Talk to Suzi.”
Al caught the scent of standing water; the ditch, a pond, a sludgy canal, widening into a basin that reflected faces looking down at her from the sky, sneering. The dead don’t ascend, or descend, so properly speaking they can neither leer down at you from the treetops nor grumble and toss beneath your feet; but they can give the appearance of it, if it takes them that way.
She followed Colette and heaved herself into the caravan. The metal steps were flimsy; each tread, under her weight, bowed a little and came snapping back.
“This is my friend,” Colette said.
“Oh, hello?” Suzi said. She looked as if she meant to say, we discourage friends. For a few minutes she left them alone. She took out a duster and passed it over her model drawer fronts and cupboard doors, clicking them backwards and forwards on their swivel-jointed display stand with a sound like the gnashing of giant dentures. She blew some dust off her carpet samples, and found a spot of something disagreeable on her stack of vinyl tiles, which she worked at by spitting on it and then scrubbing at it with her fingernail.
“You could offer us a coffee?” Colette said. “We’re not time wasters.”
“Some people make a hobby of it. Driving around the new developments on a Sunday afternoon, comparing prices? With their friends?”
I never got this far with Gavin, Colette thought. She tried to imagine the life they might have had, if they’d been planning to have a family. She would have said to him, what kitchen do you want, and he’d have said, wot’s the choice? And when she pointed to the model drawer fronts and cupboards, he’d have said, are they kitchens? And when she had said yes, he’d have said, wotever.
But here was Alison, studying the details of the Frobisher, behaving just like a normal purchaser. Suzi had put her duster away and, her back still turned, was edging towards the counter by degrees. Al looked up. “It’s tiny, Col. You can’t do anything with these rooms, they’re just dog kennels.” She handed the leaflet back to the woman. “No thank you,” she said. “Have you got anything bigger?” She rolled her eyes and said to Colette, “Story of my life, eh?”
Suzi enquired, “Which lady is the purchaser?”
“We are both the purchaser.”
Suzi turned away and snatched up the coffeepot from its hotplate. “Coffee? Milk and sugar?” She turned, the pot held defensively before her, and gave them a wide smile. “Certainly,” she said. “Oh, yes, of course. We don’t discriminate. Far from it. Far on the other side. We’ve been away for a training day. We are enthused to play our part to enhance the diversity of the community. The very special kind of community that’s created wherever you find a Galleon Home?”
Colette said, “What do you mean, far on the other side?”
“I mean, no discrimination at all?”
Al said, “No sugar, thanks.”
“But you don’t get a bonus? I mean, if we were lesbians? Which by the way we aren’t? Would you get extra commission?”
Just then a normal couple came up the steps. “Hello?” Suzi called to them, with a warmth that almost scared them down again. “Coffee?” she sang. A few drips from the poised pot leaked onto the plans of the Frobisher, and widened like a fresh fecal stain.
Alison turned away. Her cheeks were plum-coloured.
Colette followed her. “Ignore her. This is Surrey. They don’t get many gays and they’re easily upset.” She thought, if I were a lesbian, I hope I’d get a woman who wasn’t so bulky.
“Could we come back later?” Alison asked. “When there are houses here?”
Suzi said coldly, “Half of these plots are under offer.”
Colette took Al back to the car and laid the facts before her. This is prime building land, she said. She consulted the literature and read it out. Convenient transport links and first-class health and leisure facilities.
“But there aren’t,” Al said. “It’s a field. There’s nothing here. No facilities of any sort.”
“You have to imagine them.”
“It’s not even on a map, is it?”
“They’ll redraw the map, in time.”
She touched Colette’s arm, conciliatory. “No, what I mean is, I like it. I’d like to live nowhere. How long would it be before we could move in?”
“About nine months, I should think.”
Alison was silent. She had given Colette a free hand in the choice of site. Just nowhere near my old house, she had said. Nowhere near Aldershot. Nowhere near a race course, a dog track, an army camp, a dockyard, a lorry park, or a clinic for special diseases. Nowhere near a sidings or a depot, a customs shed or a warehouse; not near an outdoor market
or an indoor market or a sweatshop or a body shop or a bookie’s. Colette had said, I thought you might have a psychic way of choosing—for instance, you’d get the map and swing a pendulum over it. God, no, Al had said, if I did that, we’d probably end up in the sea.
“Nine months,” she said now. “I was hoping to do it quicker.”
She had thought of Dean and Aitkenside and whoever, wondered what would happen if Morris brought them home and they got dug in at Wexham. She imagined them hanging around the communal grounds and making their presence felt: tipping over the bins and scratching the residents’ cars. Her neighbours didn’t know the nature of her trade; she had been able to keep it from them. But she imagined them talking behind her back. She imagined the residents’ meeting, which they held every six months. It was at best a rancorous affair: who moves furniture late at night, how did the stair carpet get frayed? She imagined them muttering, talking about her, levelling spiteful but unspecific accusations. Then she would be tempted to apologize; worse, tempted to try to explain.
“Well, there it is,” Colette sighed. “If you want new-build, I don’t think we can do it any quicker. Not unless we buy something nobody else wants.”
Alison swivelled in her seat. “We could do that, couldn’t we? We don’t have to want what everybody else wants?”
“Fine. If you’re prepared to settle for some peculiar little house next to a rubbish dump. Or a plot next to a main road, with all the traffic noise day and night.”
“No, we wouldn’t want that.”
“Alison, should we give it up for today? You’re just not in the mood, are you? It’s like dealing with a five-year-old.”
“Sorry. It’s Morris.”
“Tell him to go to the pub.”
“I have. But he says there isn’t a pub. He keeps going on about his mates. I think he’s met up with another one, I can’t get the name. Oh, wait. Hush, Col, he’s coming through now.”
Morris came through, loud, clear, indignant: “What, are we going to come and live in the middle of a field? I’m not living here.”