Beyond Black. Hilary Mantel

jokes. Behind the house was a scrubby field, with a broken-down caravan on blocks; sometimes there was a light in it. ‘Who lives in there?’ she asked her mum, and her mum replied, ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you,’ which even at an early age Alison knew was untrue.

      Beyond the caravan was a huddle of leaning corrugated sheds, and a line of lock-up garages to which the men had the keys. Two white ponies used to graze in the field, then they didn’t. Where have the ponies gone? she asked her mum. Her mum replied, to the knackers, I suppose.

      She said, who’s Gloria? You keep talking to her. Her mum said, never you mind.

      ‘Where is she?’ she said. ‘I can’t see her. You say, yes, Gloria, no, Gloria, want a cuppa, Gloria? Where is she?’

      Her mum said, ‘Never mind Gloria, you’ll be in kingdom come. Because that’s where I’m going to knock you if you keep this up.’

      Her mum would never stay in the house if she could help it: pacing, smoking, smoking, pacing. Desperate for a breath of air, she would say, ‘Come on, Gloria,’ shrug on her coat and flee down the road to the minimart; and because she did not want the trouble of washing or dressing Alison, or having her under her feet whining for sweeties, she would take her up to the top of the house and lock her in the attic. ‘She can’t come to any harm up there,’ she would reason, out loud to Gloria. ‘No matches so can’t set the house on fire. Too small to climb out the skylight. Nothing sharp up there the like of which she is drawn to, such as knives or pins. There’s really no damage she could come to.’

      She put an old rug up there for Alison to sit on, when she played with her bricks and animals. ‘Quite a little palace,’ she said. There was no heating, which again was a safety factor, there being no power points for Alison to put her fingers into. She could have an extra cardy instead. In summer the attic was hot. Midday rays streamed fiercely down, straight from the sky to the dusty rug. They lit up the corner where the little lady used to fade up, all dressed in pink, and call out to Alison in a timid Irish voice.

      Alison was perhaps five years old when the little lady first appeared, and in this way she learned how the dead could be helpful and sweet. She had no doubt that the little lady was dead, in every meaningful sense. Her clothes were felt-like and soft to the touch, and her pink cardigan was buttoned right up to the first fold of her chin. ‘My name is Mrs McGibbet, darlin’,’ she said. ‘Would you like to have me round and about? I thought you might like to have me with you, round and about.’

      Mrs McGibbet’s eyes were blue and round and startled. In her cooing voice, she talked about her son, who had passed over before her, met with an accident. They’d never been able to find each other, she said, I never could meet up with Brendan. But sometimes she showed Alison his toys, little miniature cars and tractors, neatly boxed. Once or twice she faded away and left the toys behind. Mum just stubbed her toe on them. It was as if she didn’t see them at all.

      Mrs McGibbet was always saying, ‘I wouldn’t want, my darlin’, to come between a little girl and her mother. If that were her mother coming up the stairs now, coming up with a heavy tread, no, I wouldn’t want to put myself forward at all.’ When the door opened she faded away: leaving, sometimes, an old doll collapsed in the corner where she had sat. She chuckled as she fell backwards, into the invisible place behind the wall.

      Al’s mum forgot to send her to school. ‘Good grief,’ she said, when the man came round to prosecute her, ‘you mean to say she’s that age already?’

      Even after that, Al was never where she should be. She never had a swimsuit so when it was swimming she was sent home. One of the teachers threatened she’d be made to swim in her knickers next week, but she went home and mentioned it, and one of the men offered to go down there and sort it out. When Al went to school next day she told the teacher, Donnie’s coming down; he says he’ll push a bottle up your bleeding whatnot, and – I don’t think it’s very nice, Miss – ram it in till your guts come out your mouf.

      After that, on swimming afternoon, she was just sent home again. She never had her rubber-soled shoes for skipping and hopping or her eggs and basin for mixing a cake, her times tables or her poem or her model mosque made out of milk-bottle tops. Sometimes when she came home from school one of the men would stop her in the hall and give her fifty pence. She would run up to the attic and put it away in a secret box she had up there. Her mother would take it off her if she could, so she had to be quick.

      One day the men came with a big van. She heard yapping and ran to the window. Three blunt-nosed brindle dogs were being led towards the garages. ‘Oh, what are their names?’ she cried. Her mother said, ‘Don’t you go calling their names. Dogs like that, they’ll chew your face off. Isn’t that right, Gloria?’

      She gave them names anyway: Blighto, Harry and Serene. One day Blighto came to the house and bumped against the back door. ‘Oh, he’s knocking,’ Al said. She opened the door though she knew she shouldn’t, and tried to give him half her wafer biscuit.

      A man came shooting out of nowhere and hauled the dog off her. He kicked it into the yard while he got Alison up off the floor. ‘Emmie, sort it!’ he yelled, then wrapped his hands in an old jersey of her mum’s and went out and pummelled the dog’s face, dragging it back to the sheds and twisting its neck as he dragged. He came back in shouting, ‘I’ll shoot the fucker, I’ll strangle that bastard dog.’ The man, whose name was Keith, wept when he saw how the dog had ripped at her hairline. He said, Emmie, she ought to go to casualty, that needs stitching. Her mum said she couldn’t be sitting in a queue all afternoon.

      The man washed her head at the kitchen sink. There wasn’t a cloth or a sponge so he put his hand on the back of her neck, pressed her down over the plastic bowl, and slapped the water up at her. It went in her eyes, so the bowl blurred. Her blood went in the bowl but that was all right; it was all right because the bowl itself was red. ‘Stay there, darling,’ he said, ‘just keep still,’ and his hand lifted from her nape as he bent to rummage in the cupboard at his feet. Obedient, she bent there; blood came down her nose too and she wondered why that was. She heard the chinking noise as Keith tossed the empties out from under the sink. Em, he said, you not got any disinfectant in here? Give us a rag for Chrissakes, tear up a sheet, I don’t know, and her mother said, use your hankie or ain’t you got none? In the end her mother came up behind her with the used tea towel and Keith ripped it out of her hand. ‘There you go, there you go, there you go,’ he kept saying, dabbing away, sighing the words between his teeth. She felt faint with pain. She said, ‘Keef, are you my dad?’

      He wrung the cloth between his hands. ‘What you been telling her, Emmie?’

      Her mother said, ‘I’ve not been telling her nothing, you ought to know by now she’s a bloody little liar. She says she can hear voices in the wall. She says there are people up in the attic. She’s got a screw loose, Gloria says.’

      Keith moved: she felt a sudden sick cold at her back, as he pulled away, as his body warmth left her. She reared up, dripping water and dilute pink blood. Keith had crossed the room and pinned her mother up against the wall. ‘I told you, Emmie, if I told you once I told you a dozen times, I do not want to hear that name spoken.’ And the dozen times, Keith reinforced, by the way he gave her mum a little bounce, raising her by her hair near the scalp and bobbing her down again. ‘Gloria’s buggered off back to Paddyland,’ he said (bounce), that’s all (bounce), you bloody (bounce) know about it, do you (bounce) understand (bounce) that, do I bloody (bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce) make myself crystal (bounce) clear? You just (bounce) forget you ever (bounce) set eyes.’

      ‘She’s all right, is Gloria,’ said her mum, ‘she can be a good laugh,’ and the man said, ‘Do you want me to give you a slap? Do you want me to give you a slap and knock your teeth out?’

      Alison was interested to see this happen. She had had many kinds of slap, but not that kind. She wiped the water from her eyes, the water and blood, till her vision cleared. But Keith seemed to get tired of it. He let her mother go and her legs went from under her; her body folded and slid down the wall, like the lady in the attic who could fold herself out of sight.

      ‘You