Beyond Black

  The man ushered them to a revolving summerhouse. “This is nice,” he said, “for a lady. You can envisage yourself, as the day closes, sitting with your face turned to the west, a cooling drink in hand.”

  “Give over!” Colette said. “All we want is a place to keep the mower.”

  “But what about your other essential equipment? What about your barbecue? And what about your winter storage? Tables, waterproof covers for tables, parasols, waterproof covers for parasols—”

  “Garage,” said Colette.

  “I see,” the man said. “So forcing you to park your car in the open, exposing it to the elements and the risk of theft?”

  “We’ve got Neighbourhood Watch.”

  “Yes,” Alison said. “We all watch each other, and report each other’s movements.” She thought of the spirit trucks, and the mound beneath the blanket: she imagined the nature of it.

  “Neighbourhood Watch? I wish you joy of it! In my opinion, house-holders should be armed. We in the Bisley area are run ragged by opportunistic thieves and every type of intruder. Police Constable Delingbole gave us a lecture on home security.”

  “Can we get on?” Colette said. “I’ve set aside this afternoon for buying a shed, and I want to get it sorted. We still have to do our food shopping.”

  Alison saw her dreams of dolls’ teatime fading. Come to think of it, had she ever had a doll? She followed the salesman towards a small log cabin.

  “We call this one ‘Old Smokey,’” he said. “It takes its inspiration, the designers claim, from railway buildings in the golden days of the Old West.”

  “I’ll say this for you. You don’t give up easily.” Colette turned her back and stalked away in the direction of the honest working sheds.

  Just as Alison was about to follow her, she thought she saw something move inside Old Smokey. For a second she saw a face, looking out at her. Bugger, she thought, a haunted shed. But it was nobody she knew. She trailed after Colette, thinking, we’re not going to get anything nice, we’re just going to get one of these tidgy sheds that anybody could have. What if I were to lie down on the ground and say, it’s my money, I want one of those cream-painted Shaker-style ones with a porch?

  She caught up with them. Colette must be in an exceptionally nice mood today, because she hadn’t struck the salesman. “Pent or Apex?” he demanded.

  Colette said, “It’s no good trying to blind me with science. The pent are the ones with a sloping roof, and the apex are the ones with pointy roofs. That’s obvious.”

  “I can do you a Sissinghurst. Wooden garden workshop, twelve-by-ten, double door, and eight fixed-glass windows, delivery date normally one month but we could be flexible on that: 699.99 pounds, on-the-road price.”

  “You’ve got a nerve,” Colette said.

  Alison said, “Did you see somebody, Colette? Inside Old Smokey?”

  The salesman said, “That will be a customer, madam.”

  “He didn’t look like a customer.”

  “Nor do I,” Colette said. “That’s obvious. Are you going to sell me something, or shall I drive up to Nottcutts on the A30?”

  Al pitied the man; like her, he had his job to do, and part of his job was to stimulate the customer’s imagination. “Don’t worry,” she said, “we’ll have one from you. Honest. If you can just point us to the kind my friend wants.”

  “I’ve lost my bearings here,” the man said. “I confess to a certain amount of total bafflement. Which of you ladies is the purchaser?”

  “Oh, let’s not go through that again.” Colette groaned. “Al, you take over.” She walked away, giggling, between the ornamental wheelbarrow planters, the cast-iron conservatory frogs and the roughcast Buddhas. Her thin shoulders twitched.

  “Will you sell one to me?” Al asked. She smiled her sweetest smile. “What about that one?”

  “What, the Balmoral?” The man sneered. “Eight-by-ten pent with single-pitch roof? Well, that seems like a decision made, at last. Thank you, madam, it seems we’ve found something to suit you. The only problem is, as I could have told you if you’d let me get a word in edgewise, it’s the end of the range.”

  “That’s okay,” Al said. “I’m not bothered about whether it’s in fashion.”

  “No,” the man said, “what I’m saying to you is this, it would be futile, at this stage in the season, for me to ask the manufacturer to supply.”

  “But what about this one? The one standing here?” Al tapped its walls. “You could send it right away, couldn’t you?”

  The man turned away. He needed to struggle with his temper. His grand-dad had come through in spirit and was sitting on the Balmoral’s roof—its pent—ruminatively working his way through a bag of sweets. When the man spoke, granddad flapped his tongue out, with a melting humbug on the end of it.

  “Excuse me madam—”

  “Go ahead.”

  “—are you asking me and my colleagues to dismantle that garden building and supervise its immediate transport, for a price of some four hundred pounds plus VAT plus our normal service charge? While the World Cup’s on?”

  “Well, what else are you going to do with it?” Colette came up to rejoin them, her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her jeans. “You planning to leave it there till it falls down by itself?” Her foot scuffed the ground, kicked out casually at a concrete otter with its concrete pup. “If you don’t sell it now, mate, you never will. So come on, look sharp. Whistle up your crew, and let’s get on with the job.”

  “What about your hardstanding?” the man said. “I don’t suppose you’ve given a thought to your hardstanding. Have you?”

  As they walked back to the car, Colette said, “You know, I really think, when men talk, it’s worse than when they don’t.”

  Alison looked at her narrowly, sideways. She waited for more.

  “Gavin never said much. He’d say nothing for such a long time that you wanted to lean over and poke your finger in him to see if he was dead. I used to say, tell me your thoughts, Gavin. You must have thoughts. You remember when we met him, in Farnham?”

  Alison nodded. She had smelled, trailing after Gavin, the reek of a past life: an old tweed collar rancid with hair oil. His aura was oatmeal, grey, it was as tough as old rope.

  “Well,” Colette said. She flicked her remote to open the car doors. “I wonder what he was doing in Farnham.”

  “Having a run out?”

  “He could shop in Twickenham.”

  “Change of scene?”

  “Or Richmond.” Colette chewed her pale lip. “I wonder what he wanted in Elphicks? Because when you think, he gets all he needs at car shops.”

  “Perhaps he wanted a new shirt.”

  “He has a wardrobe full of shirts. He has fifty shirts. He must have. I used to pay a woman to iron them. Why did I pay? He seemed to think, if I didn’t want to do it myself, I ought to pay. When I look back now, I can’t for one minute imagine what was going through my head when I agreed to that.”

  “Still,” Al said. She eased herself into her seat. “Some years have passed. Since you were together. They might be—I don’t know—frayed? His neck might have grown.”

  “Oh yes,” Colette said. “He looks porky, all right. But he never did up his top button. So. Anyway. Plenty shirts.”

  “But a new tie? Socks, underpants?” She felt shy; she’d never lived with a man.

  “Knickers?” Colette said. “Car shops every time. Halfords. Velour for the proles, but leather for Gavin, top spec. They stock them in six-packs, shouldn’t wonder. Or else he buys them mail order from a rescue service.”

  “A rescue service?”

  “You know. Automobile Association. Royal Automobile Club. National Breakdown.”

  “I know. But I didn’t think Gavin would need rescuing.”

  “Oh, he just likes to have a badge and a personal number.”

  “Have I got a personal number?”

  “You are in all the major motoring organization
s, Alison.”

  “Belts-and-braces approach?”

  “If you like.” Colette swung them out of the shed sellers’ compound, carelessly scattering a party of parents and children who were clustering about the hot-dog stand. “That’s done their arteries a favour,” Colette said. “Yes, you have several, but you don’t need to know them.”

  “Perhaps I do,” Al said. “In case anything happened to you.”

  “Why?” Colette was alarmed. “Are you seeing something?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. Colette, don’t drive us off the road!”

  Colette corrected their course. Their hearts were beating fast. The lucky opals had paled on Alison’s fists. You see, she thought. That’s how accidents happen. There was a silence.

  “I don’t really like secrets,” Alison said.

  “Bloody hell!” Colette said. “It’s only a few digits.” She relented. “I’ll show you where I keep them. On the computer. Which file.” Her heart sank. Why had she said that? She’d just bought an elegant little laptop, silver and pleasingly feminine. She could perch it on her knees and work in bed. But when Al loomed up with a cup of coffee for her, the keyboard started chattering and scrambled itself.

  “So what about when you lived with Gavin, did he tell you his personal number?”

  Colette tilted up her chin. “He kept it secret. He kept it where I couldn’t access it.”

  “That seems a bit unnecessary,” Alison said, thinking, now you know how it feels, my girl.

  “He wouldn’t put me on joint membership. I think he was ashamed, to phone them up and mention my car. It was all I could afford, at the time. I used to say, what’s your problem, Gavin? It gets me from A to B.”

  Alison thought, if I were a great enthusiast for motoring, and somebody said “It gets me from A to B,” I think I would sneak up on them and smash their skull in with a spanner—or whatever’s good to smash skulls in, that you keep in the back of a car.

  “We’d have rows.” Colette said. “He thought I should have a better car. Something flash. He thought I should run up debt.”

  Debt and dishonour, Al thought. Oh dear. Oh dear and damnation. If somebody said to me, “What’s your problem?” in that tone of voice, I would probably wait till they were snoring and drive a hot needle through their tongue.

  “And as it worked out, I was putting so much into the household—his ironing and so on—I went through a whole winter without cover. Anything could have happened. I could have broken down in the middle of nowhere—”

  “On a lonely road at night.”

  “Exactly.”

  “On a lonely motorway.”

  “Yes! You stop on the hard shoulder, if you get out—Jesus,” Colette slapped the wheel, “they just drive into you.”

  “Or suppose a man stopped to help you. Could you trust him?”

  “A stranger?”

  “He would be. On a lonely road at night. He wouldn’t be anyone you knew.”

  “You’re advised to stay put and lock your doors. Don’t even put your window down.”

  “By the rescue services? Is that what they say?”

  “It’s what the police say! Alison, you drove yourself around, didn’t you? Before me? You must know.”

  She said, “I try to imagine.”

  For think of the perils. Men who wait for you to break down just so they can come and kill you. Men hovering, monitoring the junctions. How would you know a sick car, to follow it? Presumably, smoke would come out of it. She herself, in her driving days, had never thought of such disasters; she sang as she drove, and her engine sang in tune. At the least whine, stutter, or hiccough, she sent it her love and prayers, then stuffed it in the garage. She supposed they were fleecing her, at the garage; but that’s the way it goes.

  She thought, when me and Colette bought the car, soon after we got together, it was quite easy, a good afternoon out, but now we can’t even buy a Balmoral without Colette nearly driving us off the road, and me thinking of ways to stove her skull in. It shows how our relationship’s come on.

  Colette careered them to a halt in the Collingwood’s drive, and the handbrake groaned as she hauled at it. “Bugger,” she said. “We should have food-shopped.”

  “Never mind.”

  “You see, Gavin, he didn’t care if I was raped, or anything.”

  “You could have been drugged with date-rape drugs, and taken away by a man who made you live in a shed. Sorry. Garden building.”

  “Don’t laugh at me, Al.”

  “Look, the man back there asked us a question. Have we given a thought to our hardstanding?”

  “Yes! Yes! Of course! I got a man out of the local paper. But I got three quotes!”

  “That’s okay then. Let’s go in. Come on, Colette. It’s okay, sweetheart. We can have a cheese omelette. I’ll make it. We can go back. We can shop later. For God’s sake, they’re open till ten.”

  Colette walked into the house, and her eyes roamed everywhere. “We’ll have to replace that stair carpet,” she said, “in under a year.”

  “You think so?”

  “The pile’s completely flattened.”

  “I could avoid wearing it, if I jumped down the last three steps.”

  “No, you might put your back out. But it seems a shame. Only been here two minutes.”

  “Three years. Four.”

  “Still. All those marks rubbed along the walls. Do you know you leave a mark? Wherever your shoulders touch it, and your big hips. You smear everything, Al. Even if you’re eating an orange, you slime it all down the wall. It’s a disgrace. I’m ashamed to live here.”

  “At the mercy of shed merchants,” Al said. “Ah dear, ah dear, ah dear.”

  At first she didn’t recognize who was speaking, and then she realized it was Mrs. McGibbet. She urged Colette towards the kitchen by slow degrees and consoled her with a microwaved sponge pudding, with hot jam and double cream. “You seriously think I’m going to eat this?” Colette asked; then gulped it down like a hungry dog.

  They went to bed all tucked up safe that night. But she dreamed of snapping jaws, and temporary wooden structures. Of Blighto, Harry and Serene.

  nine

  It was about 2 A.M.; Colette woke in darkness, to the screeching of garden birds. She lay suffering under her duvet, till birdsong was replaced by the long swish of waves against a shingle beach. Then came some twitters, scrapes, and squeaks. What’s it called? Oh yes, rain forest. She thought, what is rain forest anyway? We never had it when I was at school.

  She sat up, grabbed her pillow, and beat it. Beyond the wall the croaking and chirping continued, the twittering of strange night fowl, the rustling of the undergrowth. She lay back again, stared at the ceiling: where the ceiling would be. The jungle, she thought, that’s what we had; but they don’t call it the jungle now. A green snake looped down from a branch and smiled into her face. It unravelled itself, falling, falling … she slept again. A need to urinate woke her. Al’s sodding relaxation tapes had reached the waterfall track.

  She stood up, dazed, passing her hand over her hair to flatten it. Now she could see the outlines of the furniture; the light behind the curtains was brilliant. She crept into her en-suite and relieved herself. On her way back to bed she pulled aside the curtain. A full moon silvered the Balmoral, and frosted its pent.

  There was a man on the lawn. He was walking around it in circles, as if under an enchantment. She pulled back, dropped the curtain. She had seen him before, perhaps in a dream.

  She lay down again. The waterfall track was finished, and had given way to the music of dolphins and whales. In the cradle of the deep she swayed, slept, and slept more deeply still.

  It was 5 A.M. when Al came down. Her guts were churning; this happened. She could eat quite an ordinary meal, but her insides would say no-no, not for you. She raised the kitchen blind, and while her bicarb fizzed in a glass at her elbow she looked out over the larch-lap fences swathed in pearly light. Something moved
, a shadow against the lawn. In the distance, a milk truck hummed, and nearer at hand an early businessman slammed with a metallic clatter his garage’s Georgian door.

  Alison unlocked the kitchen door and stepped out. The morning was fresh and damp. From across the estate a car alarm whooped and yodelled. The man on the lawn was young, and had a dark stubble and a blueish pallor. He wore a woolly hat pulled down over his brow. His big sneakers bruised his footprints into the dew. He saw Alison, but hardly checked his stride, simply raising two fingers to his forehead in acknowledgement.

  What’s your name? she asked him silently.

  There was no reply.

  It’s all right, you can tell Al, don’t be shy. The creature smiled shyly and continued to circle.

  She thought, you can go under a false name if you like. Just as long as I have something to call you by, to make our life together possible. Look at him, she thought, look at him! Why can’t I get a spirit guide with some dress sense?

  Yet there was something humble in his manner, that she liked. She stood shivering, waiting for him to communicate. A train rattled away in the distance, up from Hampshire, London bound. She noticed how it gently shook the morning; the light broke up around her, flaking into creamy fragments edged with gold, then settling again. The sun was creeping around the edge of a Rodney. She blinked, and the lawn was empty.

  Colette, pouring her orange juice at eight-thirty, said, “Al, you cannot have two pieces of toast.” Colette was making her diet; it was her new hobby.

  “One?”

  “Yes, one. With a scrape—no more than a scrape, mind—of low-fat spread.”

  “And a scrape of jam?”

  “No. Jam will play havoc with your metabolism.” She sipped her orange juice. “I dreamed there was a man on the lawn.”

  “Did you?” Alison frowned, holding the lid of the bread bin before her like a shield. “On the lawn? Last night? What was he like?”

  “Dunno,” Colette said. “I almost came and woke you.”

  “In your dream?”

  “Yes. No. I think I was dreaming that I was awake.”