Alison said timidly, “I’m not sick much, since Morris went.” She tried to imagine Colette dancing on a table. She could only conjure a harsh tango on the blond wood of the coffee table, Colette’s spine arched, her chicken-skin armpits exposed as if for a bite. She heard a buzz in her ear; the meek little woman came through, saying, ’scuse me,’scuse me, have you seen Maureen Harrison?
“Look in the kitchen,” Al said. “I think she’s behind the fridge.”
When 9/11 came, Colette was watching daytime TV. She called Alison through. Al rested her hands on the back of the sofa. She looked without surprise as the Twin Towers crumbled, as the burning bodies plunged through the air. Alison watched till the news looped itself around again and the same pictures were played. Then she left the room without comment. You feel as if you should say something, but you don’t know what it is. You can’t say you foresaw it; yet you can’t say no one foresaw it. The whole world has drawn this card.
Merlyn rang up later that day. “Hello,” she said. “How’s you? Seen the news?”
“Awful,” Merlyn said, and she said, “Yes, awful, And how’s Merlin?”
“No idea,” he said.
“Not seen him on the circuit?”
“I’m quitting that.”
“Really? You’re going to build up the psychic detective work?”
Or psychic security services, she thought. You could certainly offer them. You could stand at airports and X-ray people’s intentions.
“No, nothing like that,” Merlyn said. He sounded remarkably buoyant. “I’m thinking of becoming a life coach. I’m writing a book, a new one. Self-Heal Through Success. It’s using the ancient wisdom traditions for health, wealth, and happiness. Believe the world owes you: that’s what I say.”
Alison excused herself, put the receiver down, and went into the kitchen to get an orange. When she came back, she wedged the receiver under her chin while she peeled it. You don’t want to waste your time, Merlyn was saying, with these young girls and grandmas. Here we are in the heartland of the hi-tech boom. Affluence is as natural as breathing. Each morning when you rise you stretch out your arms and say, I possess the universe.
“Merlyn, why are you telling me this?”
“I was hoping you’d buy a franchise. You’re very inspirational, Alison.”
“You’d have to talk to Colette. She makes the business decisions.”
“Oh, does she?” said Merlyn. “Let me tell you now, and I’ll tell you for free, you alone are responsible for your health and your wealth. You cannot delegate what is at the core of your being. Remember the universal law: you get what you think you deserve.”
Peel fell on the carpet, fragrant and curly. “Really?” she said. “Not much, then, in my case.”
“Alison, I’m disappointed by your negativity. I may have to put the phone down, before it contaminates my day.”
“Okay,” she said, and Merlyn said, “No, don’t go. I’d hoped—oh, well, I was thinking along the lines of a partnership. Well, there you are. I’ve said it. What do you think?”
“A business partnership?”
“Any kind you like.”
She thought, he thinks I’m stupid, just because I’m fat; because I’m fat, he thinks I’m stupid.
“No.”
“Would you be more specific?”
“More specific than no?”
“I value feedback. I can take it on the chin.”
The trouble is, she thought, you don’t have a chin. Merlyn was running to fat, and his damp grey skin seemed to sweat out, in public, the private moisture contained within the shell of his trailer home. She looked, in imagination, into his chocolate-coloured eyes, and saw how his pastel shirt stretched over his belly.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “You’re overweight.”
“Well, pardonnez-moi,” Merlyn said. “Look who’s talking.”
“Yes, I know, me too. But I don’t like the way your shirt buttons are bursting off. I hate sewing, I’m no good with a needle.”
“You can get staplers,” Merlyn said nastily. “You can get dedicated staplers nowadays. Anyway, who told you that I would require you to sew on my shirt buttons?”
“I thought you might.”
“And you are seriously giving me this as a reason why you are turning down my offer of a business arrangement?”
“But I thought you were offering something else.”
“Who knows?” Merlyn said. “That’s the technical term, I believe, that people use when advertising. “For friendship and who knows?”
“But in your case, what you want is my money in your bank, and who knows? Come on, Merlyn! You just think I’m an easy touch. And by the way it’s no good ringing up Mandy—Natasha, I mean—or any of the girls. They all don’t like you, for the reason I don’t like you.” She paused. No, that’s unfair, she thought. There is a particular reason I don’t like Merlyn. “It’s your tie pin,” she said. “I don’t like the sight of a tie pin. I always think it’s dangerous.”
“I see,” Merlyn said. “Or rather, I don’t, I don’t at all.”
She sighed. “I’m not sure I can account for it myself. Goes back to a past life, I suppose.”
“Oh, come on!” Merlyn sneered. “Martyred with a tie pin? In antiquity they didn’t have tie pins. Brooches, I grant you.”
“Maybe it was me who did the martyring,” she said. “I don’t know, Merlyn. Look, good luck with your book. I hope you do get all that wealth. I do really. If you deserve it, of course. And I’m sure you do. Whatever. Whatever you think. When you leave your mobile home for Beverly Hills, let us have your new address.”
Colette came in five minutes later, with the shopping. “Do you want a fudge double-choc brownie?” she asked.
Al said, “Merlyn phoned. He’s doing a new book.”
“Oh yes?” Colette said. “You do like these yogurts, don’t you?”
“Are they high-fat?” Al said happily. Colette turned the pot about in her fingers, frowning. “They must be,” Al said, “if I like them. By the way, Merlyn asked me to go and live with him.”
Colette continued stacking the fridge. “Your chops are past their sell-by,” she said. She hurled them in the bin and said, “What? In his trailer?”
“I said no.”
“Who the fuck does he think he is?”
“He propositioned me,” Al said.
She wiped her hand down her skirt. “What about our book, Colette? Will it ever be finished?”
Colette had accumulated a little pile of printout upstairs; she guarded it, locking it in her wardrobe—a precaution Al found touching. The tapes still gave them trouble. Sometimes they would find their last session had been replaced entirely by gibberish. Sometimes their conversation was overlaid by squeaks, scrapes, and coughs, as if a winter audience were tuning up for a symphony concert.
COLETTE: So, do you regard it as a gift or more as a—what’s the opposite of a gift?
ALISON: Unsolicited goods. A burden. An infliction.
COLETTE: Is that your answer?
ALISON: No. I was just telling you some expressions.
COLETTE: So … ?
ALISON: Look, I just am this way. I can’t imagine anything else. If I’d had somebody around me with more sense when I was training, instead of Mrs. Etchells, I might have had a better life.
COLETTE: So it could be different?
ALISON: Yes. Given a more evolved guide.
COLETTE: You seem to be doing okay without Morris.
ALISON: I told you I would.
COLETTE: After all, you’ve said yourself, a lot of it is psychology.
ALISON: When you say psychology, you’re calling it cheating.
COLETTE: What would you call it?
ALISON: You don’t call Sherlock Holmes cheating! Look, if you get knowledge, you have to use it however it comes.
COLETTE: But I’d rather think, in a way—let me finish—I’d rather think you were cheating, if I had your we
lfare at heart. Because a lot of people who hear voices, they get diagnosed and put in hospital.
ALISON: Not so much now. Because of cutbacks, you know? There are people who walk around believing all sorts of things. You see them on the streets.
COLETTE: Yes, but that’s just a policy. That doesn’t make them sane.
ALISON: I make a living, you see. That’s the difference between me and the people who are mad. They don’t call you mad, if you’re making a living.
Sometimes Colette would leave the tape running without telling Al. There was some obscure idea in her mind that she might need a witness. That if she had a record she could make Al stick to any bargains she made; or that, in an unwary moment while she was out of the house, Al might record something incriminating. Though she didn’t know what her crime might be.
COLETTE: My project for the new millennium is to manage you more efficiently. I’m going to set you monthly targets. It’s time for blue-skies thinking. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be at least ten percent more productive. You’re sleeping through the night now, aren’t you? And possibly I could handle a more proactive role. I could pick up the overflow clients. Just the ones who require fortune-telling. After all, you can’t really tell the future, can you? The cards don’t know it.
ALISON: Most people don’t want to know about the future. They just want to know about the present. They want to be told they’re doing all right.
COLETTE: Nobody ever told me I was doing all right. When I used to go to Brondesbury and places.
ALISON: You didn’t feel helped, you didn’t feel you’d had any emotional guidance?
COLETTE: No.
ALISON: When I think back to those days, I think you were trying to believe too much. People can’t believe everything at once. They have to work up to it.
COLETTE: Gavin thought it was all a fraud. But then Gavin was stupid.
ALISON: You know, you still talk about him a lot.
COLETTE: I don’t. I never talk about him.
ALISON: Mm.
COLETTE: Never.
“So okay, okay,” Al said. “If you want to learn. What do you want to try first, cards or palms? Palms? Okay.”
But after five minutes, Colette said, “I can’t see the lines, Al. I think my eyes are going.” Al said nothing. “I might get contacts. I’m not having glasses.”
“You can use a magnifying glass, the punters don’t mind. In fact, they think they’re getting more for their money.”
They tried again. “Don’t try to tell my future,” Al said. “Leave that aside for now. Take my left hand. That’s where my character is written, the capacities I was born with. You can see all my potential, waiting to come out. Your job is to alert me to it.”
Colette held her hand tentatively, as if she found it disagreeable. She glanced down at it, and up at Alison again. “Come on,” Al said. “You know my character. Or you say you do. You’re always talking about my character. And you know about my potential. You’ve just made me a business plan.”
“I don’t know,” Colette said. “Even when I look through a magnifier I can’t make sense of it.”
“We’ll have a go with the cards then,” Al said. “As you know, there are seventy-eight to learn, plus all the meaningful combinations, so you’ll have a lot of homework. You know the basics, you must have picked that up by now. Clubs rule the fire signs—you know the signs, don’t you? Hearts rule water, diamonds earth.”
“Diamonds, earth,” Colette said, “that’s easy to remember. But why do spades rule air?”
“In the tarot, spades are swords,” Al said. “Think of them cutting through the air. Clubs are wands. Diamonds are pentacles. Hearts are cups.”
Colette’s hands were clumsy when she shuffled; pictures cascaded from the pack and she gave herself paper cuts, as if the cards were nipping her. Al taught her to lay out a consequences spread and a Celtic Cross. She turned the major arcana face up so she could learn them one by one. But Colette couldn’t get the idea. She was diligent and conscientious, but when she saw the cards she couldn’t see beyond the pictures on them. A crayfish is crawling out of a pond: why? A man in a silly hat stands on the brink of a precipice. He carries his possessions in a bundle and a dog is nipping at his thigh. Where is he going? Why doesn’t he feel the teeth? A woman is forcing open the jaws of a lion. She seems happy with life. There is a collusive buzz in the air.
Al said, “What does it convey to you? No, don’t look at me for an answer. Close your eyes. How do you feel?”
“I don’t feel anything,” Colette said. “How should I feel?”
“When I work with the tarot, I generally feel as if the top of my head has been taken off with a tin opener.”
Colette threw down the cards. I’ll stick to my side of the business, she said.
Al said, that would be very wise. She couldn’t explain to Colette how it felt to read for a client, even if it was just psychology. You start out, you start talking, you don’t even know what you’re going to say. You don’t even know your way to the end of the sentence. You don’t know anything. Then suddenly you do know. You have to walk blind. And you walk slap into the truth.
In the new millennium Colette intended to lever her away from low-rent venues, where there are recycling bins in the car parks, crisps ground into the carpet, strip lighting. She wanted to see her in big well-furbished auditoriums with proper sound-and-lighting crews. She detested the public nature of public halls, where tipsy comics played on Saturday night and gusts of dirty laughter hung in the air. She loathed the worn grubby chairs, stained with beer and worse; hated the thought of Al attuning to Spirit in some broom cupboard, very often with a tin bucket and a string mop for company. She said, I don’t like it down there by the Gymnastics Club, by the Snooker Centre. I don’t like the types you get. I want to get down to the south coast where they have some lovely restored theatres, gilt and red plush, where you can fill the stalls and the royal circle, fill the balcony right to the back.
At Admiral Drive the early bulbs pushed through, points of light in the lush grass. The brick of the Mountbatten and the Frobisher was still raw, the tiled roofs slicked by April rain. Al was right when she said that the people down the hill would have a problem with damp. Their turf squelched beneath their feet, and a swampish swelling and bubbling lifted their patios. At night the security lights flittered, as if all the neighbours were creeping from house to house, stealing each other’s game consoles and DVD players.
Gavin never called, though his monthly payment for his share of the flat in Whitton continued to arrive in her bank account. Then one day, when she and Al were shopping in Farnham, they ran straight into him; they were coming out of Elphicks department store, and he was going in.
“What are you doing in Farnham?” she said, shocked.
Gavin said, “It’s a free country.”
It was just the sort of inane reply he always used to make when you asked him why he was doing anything, or why he was wherever he was. It was the kind of reply that reminded her why she had been right to leave him. He couldn’t have done much better if he’d pre-meditated it for a week.
Al’s glance took him in. When Colette turned to introduce her, she was already backing away. “I’ll just be …” she said, and melted in the direction of cosmetics and perfume. Tactfully, she averted her eyes, and stood spraying herself with one scent and then another, to distract herself from tuning in to what they were saying.
“That her? Your friend? Gavin said. “Christ, she’s a size, isn’t she? That the best you could do?”
“She’s a remarkably sound businesswoman,” Colette said, “and a very kind and thoughtful employer.”
“And you live with her?”
“We have a lovely new house.”
“But why do you have to live in?”
“Because she needs me. She works twenty-four/seven.”
“Nobody does that.”
“She does. But you wouldn’t understand.�
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“I always thought you were a bit of a lezzie, Col. I’d have thought so when I first saw you, only you came down the bar—that hotel, where was it, France—you walked straight up to me with your tongue hanging out. So I thought, could be wrong on this one.”
She turned her back and walked away from him. He called, “Colette …” She turned. He said, “We could meet up for a drink, sometime. Not her, though. She can’t come.”
Her mouth opened—she stared at him—a lifetime of insults swallowed, insults swallowed and digested, gushed up from deep inside her and jammed in her throat. She hauled in her breath, her hands formed claws; but the only words that came out were “Get stuffed.” As she dived into the store, she caught sight of herself in a mirror, her skin mottled with wrath and her eyes popping, and for the first time she understood why when she was at school they had called her Monster.
The following week, in Walton-on-Thames, they got into a parking dispute with a man in a multistorey car park. Two cars nosing for the same space; it was just one of those crude suburban flare-ups, which men easily forget but which make women cry and shake for hours.
Nine times out of ten, in these spats, Al would put her restraining hand on Colette’s hand, as it tightened on the wheel, and say, forget it, let him have what he wants, it doesn’t matter. But this time, she whizzed down her window and asked the man, “What’s your name?”
He swore at her. She was inured to bad language, from the fiends; but why should you expect it from such a man, an Admiral Drive sort of man, a mail-order-jacket sort of man, a let’s-get-out-the-barbecue sort of man?
She said to him, “Stop, stop, stop! You should have more on your mind than cursing women in car parks. Go straight home and boost your life insurance. Clean up your computer and wipe off those kiddie pictures, that’s not the sort of thing you want to leave behind you. Ring up your GP. Ask for an early appointment and don’t take no for an answer. Tell them, left lung. They can do a lot these days, you know. If they catch these things before they spread.” She whizzed up the window again. The man mouthed something; his car squealed away.
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