backstage—you felt her as a presence, a trail. Alison had gone, but you would see a chemical mist of hair spray falling through the bright air. On the floor would be a line of talcum powder, and her scent—
In the centre of the room Colette stooped, picked up Al’s shoes. For a moment she disappeared from her own view. When her face bobbed back into sight in the mirror, she was almost relieved. What’s wrong with me? she thought. When I’m gone I leave no trace. Perfume doesn’t last on my skin. I barely sweat. My feet don’t indent the carpet.
“It’s true,” Alison said. “It’s as if you wipe out the signs of yourself as you go. Like a robot housekeeper. You polish your own fingerprints away.”
“Don’t be silly.” Colette said. “And don’t read my private thoughts.” She shook the black skirt, as if shaking Alison.
“I often ask myself, let’s see now, is Colette in the room or not? When you’ve been gone for an hour or two, I wonder if I’ve imagined you.”
Colette looped the black skirt onto a hanger, and hung it on the back of the long mirror. Soon Al’s big black overshirt joined it. It was Colette who had persuaded her into black. Black, she had said, black
Now she pouted at herself in the glass. “I think that’s quite nice, don’t you?”
Colette glanced at her. “Yes, it suits you.”
Alison was a genius with makeup. She had boxes full and she used it all, carrying it in colour-coded wash bags and cases fitted with loops for brushes and small-size bottles. If the spirit moved her to want some apricot eye shadow, she knew just which bag to dip into. To Colette, it was a mystery. When she went out to get herself a new lipstick, she came back with one that, when applied, turned out to be the same colour as all the others she had, which was always, give or take, the colour of her lips.
“So what’s that shade called?” she asked.
Alison observed herself, a cotton bud poised, and effected an invisible improvement to her underlip. “Dunno. Why don’t you try it? But get me that drink first.” Her hand moved for her lipstick sealant. She almost said, look out, Colette, don’t tread on Morris.
He was on the floor, half sitting and half lying, slumped against the wall; his stumpy legs were spread out, and his fingers played with his fly buttons. When Colette stepped back she trampled straight over him.
As usual she didn’t notice. But Morris did. “Fucking stuck-up cow,” he said, as Colette went out. “White-faced fucking freak. She’s like a bloody ghoul. Where did you get her, gel, a churchyard?”
Under her breath Alison swore back at him. In Colette’s five years as her partner, he’d never accepted her; time meant little to Morris. “What would you know about churchyards?” she asked him. “I bet you never had a Christian burial. Concrete boots and a dip in the river, considering the people you mixed with. Or maybe you were sawed up with your own saw?”
Alison leaned forward again into the mirror, and slicked her mouth with the tiny brush from the glass tube. It tickled and stung. Her lips flinched from it. She made a face at herself. Morris chuckled.
It was almost the worst thing, having him around at times like these, in your dressing room, before the show, when you were trying to calm yourself down and have your intimate moments. He would follow you to the lavatory if he was in that sort of mood. A colleague had once said to her, “It seems to me that your guide is on a very low vibratory plane, very low indeed. Had you been drinking when he first made contact?”
“No,” Al had told her. “I was only thirteen.”
“Oh, that’s a terrible age,” the woman said. She looked Alison up and down. “Junk food, I expect. Empty calories. Stuffing yourself.”
She’d denied it, of course. In point of fact she never had any money after school for burgers or chocolate, her mum keeping her short in case she used the money to get on a bus and run away. But she couldn’t put any force into her denial. Her colleague was right, Morris was a low person. How did she get him? She probably deserved him, that was all there was to it. Sometimes she would say to him, Morris, what did I do to deserve you? He would rub his hands and chortle. When she had provoked him and he was in a temper with her, he would say, count your blessings, girl, you fink I’m bad but you could of had MacArthur. You could have had Bob Fox, or Aitkenside, or Pikey Pete. You could have had my mate Keef Capstick. You could of had Nick, and then where’d you be?
Mrs. Etchells (who taught her the psychic trade) had always told her, there are some spirits, Alison, who you already know from way back, and you just have to put names to the faces. There are some spirits that are spiteful and will do you a bad turn. There are others that are bloody buggering bastards, excuse my French, who will suck the marrow out your bones. Yes, Mrs. E, she’d said, but how will I know which are which? And Mrs. Etchells had said, God help you, girl. But God having business elsewhere, I don’t expect he will.
Colette crossed the foyer, heading for the bar. Her eyes swept over the paying public, flocking in from the dappled street; ten women to every man. Each evening she liked to get a fix on them, so she could tell Alison what to expect. Had they prebooked, or were they queuing at the box office? Were they swarming in groups, laughing and chatting, or edging through the foyer in singles and pairs, furtive and speechless? You could probably plot it on a graph, she thought, or have some kind of computer programme: the demographics of each town, its typical punters and their networks, the location of the venue relative to car parks, pizza parlours, the nearest bar where young girls could go in a crowd.
The venue manager nodded to her. He was a worn little bloke coming up to retirement; his dinner jacket had a whitish bloom on it and was tight under the arms. “All right?” he said. Colette nodded, unsmiling; he swayed back on his heels, and as if he had never seen them before he surveyed the bags of sweets hanging on their metal pegs, and the ranks of chocolate bars.
Why can’t men just
