Beyond Black

  And then the foster mother. Who stuck for a year or two. Till a policy moved him on to the next. I wish I’d had a foster mother, Al thought. If I’d just been given a break till I was two or three, I might have turned out normal, instead of my brain all cross-wired so I’m forced to know the biographies of strangers. And pity them.

  By the time she’d thought all this, she was grilling bacon. As she whipped the rashers over with the tongs, she thought, why am I doing this? God knows. I feel sorry for the bloke. Homeless and down on his luck.

  She made towering, toasted sandwiches, oiled with mayonnaise, garnished with cucumber, cherry tomatoes and hardboiled eggs. She made twice as many as one homeless mad person could possibly consume. She made what she anticipated would be the very best plate of sandwiches Mart had ever seen in his life.

  He ate them without comment, except for saying, “Not very good bacon, this. You ought to get that kind that is made by the Prince of Wales.”

  Sometimes he said, “Aren’t you having one?” but she knew he hoped she wasn’t, and she said, “I’ll have mine later.” She glanced at her watch. “Is that the time? I’ve got a telephone client.”

  “I used to have a watch,” Mart said. “But Police Constable Delingbole stamped on it.” He looked up at her from the corner and begged, “Don’t be long.”

  Lucky that Colette had gone to Guildford! Al could count on her to be away for some hours. In that time she could give the boy some advice and twenty quid, and set him on his way. Colette had things to do—pop into the occult shop on White Lion Walk with some flyers, etc.—but mainly she would be going shopping, trawling around the House of Fraser for that elusive perfect lip shade, and getting her hair cut into a white pudding-bowl shape. Colette’s hair never seemed to grow, not so that you noticed, yet she felt some sort of social obligation to have it trimmed and tweaked every six weeks. When she came home she would stand before the mirror and rage at the stylist, but it never looked any different—not that Alison could see.

  Her telephone consultation ran the full hour, and after it Al was so hungry that she had to grab a bowl of cornflakes, standing up in the kitchen. A feeling, something like fellow-feeling, was hauling her back in the direction of Mart; she hated to think of him shrinking from the light, crouching on the hard floor.

  “First I was a white-liner,” Mart said. “That’s where you paint lines on the road, excellent daily rate and no previous experience required. A truck picked us up every morning at the bandstand and took us to where we were lining that day. You see, Pinto was with me. He got bored of it. I didn’t get bored of it, I liked it. But Pinto, he started painting little islands in the road, then he said, go on, go on, let’s do a box junction. It took us an hour. But when they saw it, they weren’t all that keen. They said, you’re off the job, mate, and the ganger said, come here while I give you a smack with this shovel.” Mart rubbed his head, his eyes distant. “But then they said, we’ll give you another chance, you can go on roadworks. We got put on human traffic light. Twirling a sign: STOP__GO. But the motorists wouldn’t observe me. Stop-and-go when they fucking well liked. So the boss says, lads, you’re not in sync. He says that’s your big problem that you’ve got. You’re twirling, but you’re not twirling in sync. So I got took off that job.”

  “And then?”

  Al had been to the garage to fetch them two folding garden chairs. She didn’t feel she could keep standing, with her back to the shed wall and Mart crouching at her feet. It was natural for Mart to want to tell his life story, his career history, just to reassure her that he wasn’t an axe murderer; not that anything he had told her had actually reassured her of that, but she thought, I would have a feeling, my skin would prickle and I’d know.

  “So then …” Mart said. He frowned.

  “Don’t worry,” Al said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”

  All Mart’s jobs seemed to have involved hanging about in public places. For a while he was a car park attendant, but they said he didn’t attend it enough. He was a park patroller, selling tickets for the attractions. “But some little lads knocked me down and robbed my tickets and threw them in the pond.”

  “Didn’t the hospital give you any help? When you got out?”

  “You see, I came through the net,” Mart said. “I’m an outloop. I’m on a list, but I’m not computerate yet. I think—the list I was on—I think they lost it.”

  More than likely, Al thought. I dare say, when I was a kid, people put me on a list. I expect they made a list of bruises, that sort of thing, noticeable marks. But it never came to anything. I guess that list got put in a file; I guess that file got left in a drawer; “I’d like to know,” she said, “how you got in trouble with the police.”

  Mart said, “I was at the zone. I was near the scene. I had to be somewhere. Somebody had to be there. Police Constable Delingbole beat the shit out of me.”

  “Mart, ought you to be taking your pills? What time do you have them?”

  “You see, we got some stickers and we put them on people’s cars, that were parked. We waited till we saw them leave and then we came with the stickers and put NO PARKING BY ORDER on their windscreen. Then we hid in the bushes. When they came back we jumped out and fined them a fine.”

  “Did they pay?”

  “No way. One geezer got on his mobile. Delingbole was round like a shot.”

  “And where were you?”

  “Back in the bushes. He didn’t catch us that day. It was a good idea, but it caused a description of us to be made and put in the local paper. Have you seen this distinctively attired man?”

  “But you’re not. I wouldn’t call you distinctive.”

  “You didn’t see the hat I had in those days.”

  “No. That’s true.”

  “By the time I came round your place, I’d got a different hat. I was down on the building site, sometimes they give us tea. I said to this Paddy, look mate, can I have your hat? Because it’s been in the paper about mine. He says, sure, I says, I’ll buy it off you, he says, no, you’re all right, I’ve another one at home, a yellow one. So when I came for mowing your garden, I said to your friend, does this hat make me look like a brickie? Because it belonged to a brickie. And she said, I’d take you for a brickie anywhere.”

  “So you’ve met Colette,” Alison said. “I see. You’re the bloke from the gardening service.”

  “Yes.” Mart gnawed his lip. “And that was another job that didn’t last. How about some more tea?”

  Alison hurried back across the garden. Michelle’s kids were home from their nursery; she could hear their wailing, and the air was loud with their mother’s threats and curses. She brought out another flask, with a mug for herself, and a packet of Chocolate Digestives, which Colette allowed her to keep for nervous clients, who liked to crumble and nibble. This time she made sure she got some; she held the packet on her lap, and offered them to Mart one by one. “Missus,” he said, “have you ever been described in the paper?”

  She said, “I have, actually. In the Windsor Express.” She’d had three dozen photocopies made: ATTRACTIVE FULL-FIGURED PSYCHIC, ALISON HART. She’d sent one to her mum, but her mum never said anything. She’d sent them out to her friends, but they’d never said anything either. She had plenty of press cuttings now, of course, but none of them mentioned her appearance. They skirt around it, she thought. She had shown the Windsor Express cutting to Colette. Colette had sniggered.

  “You were lucky,” Mart said. “Windsor, you see. That’s outside Delingbole’s area.”

  “I’ve never had any time for the police,” she said. I suppose I should have called them, when I was a kid. I suppose I could have laid charges. But I was brought up to be scared of a uniform. She remembered them shouting through the letter box: Mrs. Emmeline Cheetham? She thought, why didn’t my mum get one of her boyfriends to nail it shut? It isn’t as if we had any letters.

  Just as Al had finished cleaning the kitchen and tidying away
signs of Mart’s lunch, Colette came in with a handful of carrier bags and in a state of outrage. “I was putting the car away,” she said. “Somebody’s swiped our garden chairs! How did that happen? It must have been that man in the night. But how did he get in the garage? There’s no sign of forced entry!”

  “You sound like Constable Delingbole,” Alison said.

  “Been talking to Michelle, have you? I can tell you, I wish I’d been a bit more wide awake this morning. I should have rung the police as soon as I spotted him. I blame myself.”

  “Yes, do,” Alison said, in such a commiserating tone that Colette didn’t notice.

  “Oh well. I’ll claim it on the insurance. What have you had to eat while I’ve been out?”

  “Just some cornflakes. And a bit of salad.”

  “Really?” Colette swung open the fridge door. “Really and truly?” She frowned. “Where’s the rest of the chicken?”

  “There wasn’t much left, I threw it out. And the bread.”

  Colette looked knowing. “Oh yes?” She lifted the lid of the butter dish. Her eyes swept the worktops, looking for evidence: crumbs, or a slight smearing of the surface. She crossed the kitchen, wrenched open the dish-washer and peered inside; but Al had already washed the grill pan and dishes, and put everything back where it should be. “Fair enough,” she said grudgingly. “You know, maybe that bloke down at Bisley was right. If they can get into the garage, they could certainly get into the shed. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea. I won’t move anything in yet. Till we see. If there’s any recurrence, in the neighbourhood. Because I’ve laid out quite a lot. On forks, and so on.”

  “Forks?” Alison said.

  “Forks, spades. Hoes. Et cetera.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Al thought, she’s in such a state of self-reproach that she’s forgotten to count the bacon rashers. Or even check the biscuit tin.

  “Mart,” Al said, “do you hear voices? I mean, inside your head? What’s it like when you hear them?”

  “My hands sweat,” Mart said. “And my eyes go small in my head.”

  “What do they say?”

  Mart looked at her cunningly. “They say, we want tea.”

  “I don’t mean to intrude, but do you find the pills help?”

  “Not really. They just make you thirsty.”

  “You know you can’t stay here,” Al said.

  “Could I just for tonight, missus?”

  He calls me missus, she thought, when he wants to be extra-pitiful. “Don’t you have a blanket? I mean, I thought if you’d been sleeping rough you’d at least have a blanket, a sleeping bag. Look, I’ll sneak something out.”

  “And a flask refill,” said Mart. “And a dinner, please.”

  “I don’t see how I can do that.”

  She felt ill already—she’d gone all day, on a bowl of cereal and a few biscuits. If she were to bring out her lo-fat turkey strips and vegetable rice to Mart, he would eat it in two swoops, and then she’d probably faint or something—plus, Colette would say, Al, why are you going into the garden with your Ready Meal?

  “Suppose I give you some money,” she said. “The supermarket’s still open.”

  “I’m barred.”

  “Really? You could go to the garage shop.”

  “Barred there too. And the off-licence, or else I could get crisps. They shout, Sod off, you filthy gyppo.”

  “You’re not! A gyppo.”

  “I tried to get a wash with the hose at the garage, but they chased me out. They said, you come round here again and we’ll run you over. They said I was disgusting the customers and taking their trade away. I blame Delingbole. I’m barred out of everywhere.”

  Anger swarmed up from her empty belly. It was unexpected and unfamiliar, and it created a hot glow behind her ribs. “Here,” she said. “Take this, go down the kebab van, I’m sure they’ll serve anybody. Don’t set off the security lights when you come back.”

  While Mart was away, and Colette was watching EastEnders, she crept out with a spare duvet and two pillows. She tossed them into the Balmoral, and sped back to the house. The microwave was pinging. She ate in the kitchen, standing once again. I am refused bread in my own house, she thought. I am refused a slice of bread.

  For a day or two, Mart came and went by night. “If Colette sees you, you’re stuffed,” she said. “Unfortunately, I can’t predict her comings and goings, she’s a real fidget these days, always banging in and out. You’ll have to take your chances. Evan next door leaves at eight sharp. Don’t let him see you. Half-past nine, Michelle takes the kids to nursery. Keep your head down. Post comes at ten; keep out of the postman’s way. The middle of the day’s not too bad. By three o’clock it gets busy again.”

  Mart began again, on the story of how PC Delingbole stamped on his watch.

  “I’ll lend you one of mine,” she said.

  “I don’t want your neighbours to see me,” Mart said. “Or they’ll think I’m after their kids. Pinto and me, when we lived down Byfleet, some blokes came kicking on the door, shouting, pedos out!”

  “Why did they think you were pedophiles?”

  “Dunno. Pinto said, it’s the way you look, the way you go around, your toes coming out of your shoes, and that hat you have. But that was when I still had my other hat.”

  “So what happened then? After they kicked the door?”

  “Pinto called the police. He had his mobile on him.”

  “Did they come?”

  “Oh, yes. They came in a patrol car. But then they saw it was me.”

  “And then?”

  A slow smile crept over Mart’s face. “Drive on, Constable Delingbole!”

  She went through her jewellery box for spare watches, and discarded the diamanté ones, which were for onstage. I’d better buy him one, she thought, just a cheap one. And some shoes, I’d have to ask his size. Maybe if he had new shoes he’d move on, before Colette noticed. She had to keep diverting Colette, attracting her attention to spectacles at the front of the house, and chatting to divert her whenever she went into the kitchen. He’ll have to be gone, she thought, before she decides to implement any shed security, because as soon as she goes down there she’ll see signs of occupation; she imagined the screaming Colette jabbing with her garden fork, and the panic-stricken visitor impaled on its tines.

  “Do you think we’d get a bed in here?” Mart asked, when she took him down his flask.

  Al said, “Maybe a futon,” but then she could have bitten her tongue.

  “I should of thought to bring a sun lounger, from the garden centre,” Mart said. “I know!” He struck his hat with the flat of his hand. “A hammock! That would do me.”

  “Mart,” she said, “are you sure you haven’t got a criminal record? Because I couldn’t be responsible, I couldn’t take a chance, I’d have to tell somebody, you see. You’d have to go.”

  “My dad beat my head in with a piece of pipe,” Mart said. “Does that count?”

  “No,” she said. “You’re the victim. That doesn’t count.” Severe blows to the skull, she thought. Colette thinks they’re very significant. She asked me about them once, on tape. I didn’t know why at the time. I realize now she thought they might have been the beginning of my abnormality.

  “Though it was my step-dad, you know? I always thought it was my dad but my mum said not. No, she said, he’s your step.”

  “How many step-dads did you have?”

  “A few.”

  “Me too.”

  It was a warm day; they were sitting on the garden chairs, the door propped open slightly to give them some air. “Good thing we went for one with a window that opens,” Al said. “Or you’d be stifled.”

  “But then again, not,” Mart said. “For reasons of them surveying me, peeking in and tipping off the Big D.”

  “But then again, not,” she agreed. “I thought of getting curtains, at one time.”

  One of the next-door children darted out of the playhouse,
shrieking. Al stood up and watched her scoot across the lawn, skid to a halt, and sink her teeth into her brother’s calf. “Ouch!” Al said; she winced as if she had felt the wound herself.

  “Mummy, Mummy!” the infant yelled.

  Mart banged the shed door and dropped on all fours. Michelle’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “I’m coming out there, by God I am, and there’ll be slaps all round.”

  “Get down,” Mart pulled her skirt. “Don’t let her see you.”

  “Bite him,” Michelle roared, “and I’ll bloody bite you.”

  They knelt on the floor together. Mart was trembling. Al felt she ought to pray.

  “Oh Jesus!” Mart said. Tears sprang out of his eyes. He lurched into her. She supported his weight. Sagging against her, he was made of bones and scraps; his flesh breathed the odour of well-rotted manure.

  “There, there,” she murmured. She patted his hat. Michelle shot across the scabby turf, the baby on her arm and her teeth bared.

  Colette answered her cell phone, and a voice said, “Guess who?”

  She guessed at once. What other man would be phoning her? “Haven’t seen you since we ran into you coming out of Elphicks.”

  “What?” Gavin said. He sounded dumbstruck, as if she had cursed him.

  “The shop,” she said. “In Farnham. That Saturday?”

  “Out of what?”

  “Elphicks. Why do you have such trouble, Gavin, with the ordinary names of things?”

  A pause. Gavin said uneasily, “You mean that’s what it’s called? That department store?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  She said, “God give me strength.” Then, “Perhaps you should end this call and we could start again?”

  “If you like,” Gavin said. “Okay.” His line went dead. She waited. Her phone buzzed. “Gavin? Hello?”