“I dunno,” Al said.
“What do you mean, Al, you don’t know? You went in there with a specific question, and I should think you could come out with an answer, yes or bloody no.”
“It wasn’t that simple,” Al said.
“What was the doctor like?”
“He was bald and nasty.”
“I see,” Colette said. “Fasten your shoes.”
Al bent at the waist: where her waist would be. “I can’t reach,” she said pitifully. By the reception desk, she put one foot on a vacant chair and bent over. A receptionist tapped the glass. Tap-tap, tap-tap. Startled, Al wobbled; her body trembled; Colette leaned against her, to prop her upright. “Let’s go,” Al said, limping faster. When they reached the car she opened the door, plopped her right foot on the doorsill, and fastened her sandal.
“Just get in,” Colette said. “In this heat, doing up the other foot will kill you.”
Al heaved herself into her seat, scooping up her left shoe with her toe. “I could have made him a prediction,” she said, “but I didn’t. He says it could be my thyroid.”
“Did he give you a diet plan?”
Al slammed the passenger door. She tried to worm her swollen foot into her shoe. “I’m like an Ugly Sister,” she said. She took out a cologne tissue and fumbled with the sachet. “Ninety-six degrees is too much, in England.”
“Give it here.” Colette snatched the sachet and ripped it open.
“And for some reason, the neighbours seem to think I’m responsible.”
Colette smirked.
Al mopped her forehead. “That doctor, I could see straight through him. His liver’s beyond saving. So I didn’t mention it.”
“Why not?”
“No point. I wanted to do a good action.”
Colette said, “Oh, give over!”
They came to a halt in the drive of number twelve. “You don’t understand,” Al said. “I wanted to do a good action but I never seem to manage it. It’s not enough just to be nice. It’s not enough just to ignore it when people put you down. It’s not enough to be—forbearing. You have to do a good action.”
“Why?”
“To stop Morris coming back.”
“And what makes you think he will?”
“The tape. Him and Aitkenside, talking about pickles. My feet and hands tingling.”
“You didn’t say this was work-related! So we’ve been through this for nothing?”
“You haven’t been through anything. It’s only me had to listen to that stinky old soak criticizing my weight.”
“It can stand criticism.”
“And though I could have made him a prediction, I didn’t. A good action means—I know you don’t understand, so shut up now, Colette, you might learn something. A good action might mean that you sacrificed yourself. Or that you gave your money away.”
“Where did you get this stuff?” Colette said. “Out of RE at school?”
“I never had religious education,” Alison said. “Not after I was thirteen. I was always made to stand in the corridor. That lesson, it would tend to lead to Morris and people trying to materialize. So I got sent out. I don’t seem to feel the lack of it. I know the difference between right and wrong. I’m sure I always did.”
“Will you stop this drivel?” Colette said, wailing. “You never think of me, do you! You don’t seem to realize how I’m fixed! Gavin’s going out with a supermodel!”
A week passed. Al had filled her prescriptions. Her heart now beat slowly, thump, thump, like a lead weight swinging in space. The change was not disagreeable; she felt slower, though, as if her every action and perception were deliberate now, as if she was nobody’s fool. No wonder Colette’s been so spiteful, she thought. Supermodel, eh?
She stood at the front window, looking out over Admiral Drive. A solitary vehicle ploughed to and fro across the children’s playground, turning up mud. The builders had put down asphalt at one stage, but then the surface had seemed to heave and split, and cracks developed, which the neighbours stood wondering at, leaning on the temporary fence; within a week or two weeds were pushing through the hard core, and the men had moved in again to break up what remained with pneumatic drills, dig out the rubble, and reduce it back to bare earth.
Sometimes the neighbours accosted the workmen, shouting at them over the noise of their machines, but none of them got the same story twice. The local press was strangely silent, and their silence was variously attributed to stupidity and bribes. From time to time the knotweed rumour resurfaced. “You can’t keep down knotweed,” Evan said. “Especially not if it’s mutated.” No actual white worms had been spotted, or none that anyone had admitted to. The residents felt trapped and baffled. They didn’t want public attention, yet they wanted to sue somebody; they thought it was their entitlement.
Al caught sight of Mart, down at the children’s playground. He was wearing his brickie’s hat, and he appeared so suddenly in the middle distance that she wondered if he’d come up through one of the secret tunnels the neighbours were speculating about.
“How are you doing?” he yelled.
“Okay.” Her feet were moving sideways and every which ways, but by tacking to the left then abruptly changing course she managed to manoeuvre herself down the hill towards him. “Are you working here, then, Mart?”
“I’ve been put on digging,” he said. “We’re remediating, that’s the nature of it and the job description. Did you ever have a job description?”
“No, not me,” she said. “I make it up as I go along. So what’s remediating?”
“You see this soil?” He pointed to one heap. “This is what we’re taking off. And you see this?” He pointed to another heap of soil, very similar. “This is what we’re putting down instead.”
“So who are you working for?”
Mart looked wild. “Subcontracting,” he said. “Cash in hand.”
“Where are you living?”
“Dossing at Pinto’s. His floor got put down again.”
“So you got rid of the rats?”
“In the end. Some pikey come round with a dog.”
“Pikey?”
“You know. Gypsy fella.”
“What was his name?”
“He didn’t say any name. Pinto met him down the pub.”
Al thought, if a man is always no more than three feet from a rat—or is it two?—how does that feel from the rats’ point of view? Do they spend the whole of their lives in trembling? Do they tell each other nightmare stories about a gypsy with a terrier on a rope?
“How’s the old shed?” Mart said. He spoke as if it were some foolish indulgence of his youth.
“Much as you left it.”
“I was thinking I might get the odd night there. If your friend had no big objection.”
“She does have a big objection. So do the neighbours. They think you’re an asylum seeker.”
“Oh, go on, missus,” Mart said. “It’s just for when Pinto says, Mart, take a walk. Then we could have a chat again. And if you’ve got the money we could get a takeaway.”
“Are you remembering your pills, Mart?”
“On and off. They’re after meals. I don’t always get a meal. It was better when I was living in your shed and you was bringing a tray and reminding me.”
“But you know that couldn’t go on.”
“Because of your friend.”
I will continue to do a good action, she thought. “Wait there, Mart,” she said. She went back into the house, took a twenty out of her purse. When she got back, Mart was sitting on the ground.
“They’re going to be water-jetting the sewers soon,” Mart said. “It’s due to complaints and concerns.”
“You’d better look busy,” she said. “Or you’ll get the sack.”
“The lads have gone on their lunch,” Mart said. “But I don’t have a lunch.”
“Now you can get one,” she said, handing over the bank note.
Mart sta
red at it. She thought he was going to say, that’s not a lunch. She said, “It represents a lunch. You get what you want.”
“But I’m barred.”
“Your mates will go for you.”
“I’d rather you made me a lunch.”
“Yes, but that’s not going to happen.”
She turned her back and plodded away. I want to do a good action. But. It won’t help him to hang around here. On the doorstep of the Collingwood she turned and looked back at him. He was sitting on the ground again, in the freshly dug soil, like a gravedigger’s assistant. You could spend your life trying to fit Mart together, she thought. There’s no cause and effect to him. He feels as if he might be the clue to something or other, made up as he is out of bits and pieces of the past and the fag end of other people’s phrases. He’s like a picture where you don’t know which way up it goes. He’s like a walking jig-saw, but you’ve lost the box lid to him.
She was closing the front door, when he called out to her. She stepped outside again. He loped towards her, his twenty screwed up in his fist.
“Forgot to ask you. If in case of a terrorist outrage, could I come in your shed?”
“Mart,” she said warningly, and began to close the door.
“No, but,” he said. “It was at the Neighbourhood Watch last week.”
She stared at him. “You went to the meeting?”
“I sneaked in the back.”
“But why?”
“Keep my eye on Delingbole.”
“I see.”
“And the message was, in case of terrorist outrage or nuclear explosion, go indoors.”
“That seems sensible.”
“So if there’s one of those, can I come back and live in the shed? You’re supposed to stock up with a first-aid kit to include scissors, a wind-up radio—but I dunno what one is—and tins of tuna fish and beans, which I have, plus a tin opener to open them with.”
“And then what do you do?” She thought, I wish I’d gone to this meeting.
“Then you sit tight, listen to the radio, and eat your beans.”
“Till such time as?”
“What?”
“I mean, when is it safe to come out?”
Mart shrugged. “I suppose when Delingbole comes round and tells you. But he might not ever tell me because he hates me. So I’d just starve to death.”
Alison sighed. From under his brickie’s hat, Mart rolled a fallow eye at her. “Okay,” she said. “How about this? In case of terrorist outrage or nuclear explosion, never mind the shed, you can come and live in our house.”
“But she won’t let me.”
“I’ll tell her you’re my guest.”
“That won’t make no difference.”
He shows sense, Al thought.
“A bloke was here,” he said, “looking for you. Yesterday. In a van.”
“Oh, that would be the courier,” she said. They were expecting some more party packs from Truro.
“You was out.”
“Funny he didn’t leave a card. Unless Colette picked it up and didn’t say.”
“He didn’t leave a card, he didn’t leave a trace,” Mart said. He clapped his belly. “How about tea?”
“Mart, get back over there and start digging. These are testing times. We’ve all got to put a bit of effort in.”
“You wouldn’t give me a hand, would you?”
“What, with the digging? Look, Mart, I don’t do outdoors, horses for courses, I’m in here earning a twenty so I can give it you. What would your mates say if they came back and found me doing your job for you? They’d laugh at you.”
“They laugh at me anyway.”
“But that’s because you don’t get on with the job. You should have self-respect! That’s what’s important to all of us.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. That’s what people used to call it, now they call it self-esteem, but same difference. People are always trying to take it away from you. Don’t let them. You have to have backbone. Pride. So! You see! Get digging!” She stumped away, then stopped and turned. “This man, Mart, this courier. What did it say on the side of his van?” As an afterthought, she added, “Can you read?”
“I can,” Mart said, “but not a plain van with no writing. It didn’t say his name or anything. There was mud up the side of it, though.”
“So did he speak to you? I mean, did he have a box that he was wanting to leave, did he have a clipboard or one of those computers that you sign on, you know?”
“He had boxes. He opened the back doors and I looked in. He had boxes stacked up. But he didn’t leave any.”
A terrible uprush of fear swept over her. She thought her new heart pills prohibited such a feeling. But seemingly not.
“What type of bloke was he?” she said.
“He was one of them type of blokes what always hits you. The kind that, you’re in a pub, and he says, oi, mate, what you looking at? and you say, nothing, mate, and then he says—”
“Yes, I get the picture,” Al said.
“—and then the next thing you know is you’re in the hospital,” said Mart. “Having yourself stitched together. Your ears all sliced and blood down your jersey, if you have a jersey. And your teef spitting out of your head.”
In her own room, Alison took an extra heart pill. For as long as she could endure, she sat on the edge of the bed, hoping it would take effect. But her pulse wouldn’t slow; it’s remarkable, she thought, how you can be both bored and frightened at the same time. That’s a reasonable way, she thought, to describe my life with the fiends: I lived with them, they lived with me, my childhood was spent in the half-light, waiting for my talent to develop and my means of making a living, knowing always, knowing always I owed my existence to them; for didn’t a voice say, where d’you fink your mum gets the money to go down the shop and get instant mash, if it ain’t from your uncle Morris; where d’you fink your mum gets funding for her little bevvy, if it ain’t from your uncle Keef?
She took off her clothes: peeling them wetly from her body, dropping them on the floor. Colette was right, of course; she should be on a diet, any diet, all the diets at once. If TV, as people said, put extra weight on you, then she would look like—she couldn’t think what she would look like, something ridiculous, perhaps faintly menacing. Something from a sci-fi channel. She felt her aura wobbling around her, as if she were wearing a giant’s cape made of jelly. She pinched herself. The thyroid pills had not made any instant impact on her flesh. She imagined how it would be if she woke up one morning, to find she had shed layers of herself, like someone taking off a winter coat—then two coats, then three … . She took handfuls of flesh from here and there, repositioned and resettled them. She viewed herself from all angles but she couldn’t produce a better effect. I try my best with the diets, she said to herself; but I have to house so many people. My flesh is so capacious; I am a settlement, a place of safety, a bombproof shelter. “Boom,” she said softly. She swayed on her feet, rocked back on her heels. Through the long mirror she watched herself, rocking. When she was accustomed to her reflection, inured to it, she turned her back; craning her chin over her shoulder, she could see the raised, silver lines of her scars. In hot weather like this they seemed to puff and whiten, whereas in winter they seemed to shrink, redden, and pull. But perhaps that was her imagination. In her imagination, someone said, “The tricky little bitch. We’ll show her what a knife can do.”
Cold sweat sprang out across her back. Colette was right, Colette is right, she has to take me in hand, she has to hate me, it is important someone hates me. I liked it when Mart came and we got the takeaway, but I should have left it all to him. Though in all conscience I didn’t do it for the sake of the spare ribs. I did it because I wanted to do a good action. Colette never does a good action because she is being thin; it is what she does instead. See how she has starved herself, just to teach me, just to shame me, and see how impervious I am to example. In the last week or two, Col
ette’s wheat-coloured clothes had hung on her like bleached sacks. So cheer up, Al thought, we can go shopping. We can go shopping, me for a bigger size and Colette for a smaller. That will put her in a good mood.
The phone rang, making her jump. She sat down, naked, to take the call.
“Alison Hart, how may I help you today?”
“Oh, Miss Hart … is that you in person?”
“Yes.”
“So you are real? I thought you might be a call centre. Do you offer dowsing?”
“It depends what for. I do missing jewellery, old insurance policies, concealed wills. I don’t do lost computer files or any type of electronic recovery. I charge a flat-rate call-out fee, which depends on your area, and then after that I work on a no-find no-fee basis. I do indoor work only.”
“Really?”
“I’m not suited to distances, or rough terrain.”
“But it’s the outside that’s worrying us.”
“Then you need my colleague Raven, who specializes in earth energies, neolithic burials, mounds, caverns, burrows, and henges.”
“But you’re in my area,” the woman said. “That’s why I rang. I’m going by your telephone code in your ad.”
“What is it you’re actually looking for?”
“Actually, uranium,” the woman said.
Al said, “Oh, dear. I do think it’s Raven you want.” I expect he’ll be branching out, she thought, if these poisonings continue: knotweed, the bad drains. He’ll be branching out into sludge and toxic seepages, and detecting the walls of underground installations. If there were walls beneath my feet, she thought, if there were occult silos and excavations, cavities blasted in the earth, would I know? If there were secret chambers and bricked-in cul-desacs, would I sense them?
“Are you still there?” she asked the client. She imparted Raven’s details: his e-mail, and so on. It was hard to get the woman off the phone; she seemed to want some sort of free extra, like, I’ll throw you in a tarot reading, pick one card of three. It’s a while since I unwrapped the cards, Al thought. She said to the woman, “I really ought to go, because I have, you know, another client coming in—well, fifteen minutes, and—oh, dear, what is that smell? Oh, dear, I think I’ve left something on the stove … .” She held the phone away from her ear, and still the woman talked, and she thought, Colette, where are you, get this woman off the line … . She threw the receiver down on the bed and ran out of the room.