roll of carpet? Go on, go on, bet you don’t know, do you? What’s the difference between—”
She slammed the bolt on. She lowered herself into the bath: lavender oil. She wiped away the stench of death, exfoliating herself for good measure. Morris slipped under the door. He stood leering at her. His yellow face mingled with the steam. When she came out of the bathroom she was scored all over with faint pink lines, but the cuts on her thighs flared darkest, as if she had been whipped with wire.
In the following week Colette learned things about sudden death that she’d never suspected. Al said, what you should understand is this: when people go over, they don’t always know they’ve gone. They have a pain, or the memory of one, and there are people in white, and strange faces that loom up and there’s a noise in the background, metal things banging together—as if there were a train wreck going on, but in another country.
Colette said, “And what are they? These noises.”
“Mrs. Etchells says it’s the gates of hell clattering.”
“And do you believe that?”
“There ought to be hell. But I don’t know.”
There are the lights, she said, the noises, the waiting, the loneliness. Everything slips out of focus. They suppose they’re in a queue for attention but nobody attends. Sometimes they think they’re in a room, sometimes they sense air and space and they think they’ve been abandoned in a car park. Sometimes they think they’re in a corridor, lying on a trolley, and nobody comes. They start to cry, but still nobody comes. You see, she said, they’ve actually gone over, but they think it’s just the National Health.
Sometimes, when famous people pass, their fans-in-spirit are waiting for them—their fans and, in the case of someone like Diana, their ancestors too—and often those ancestors have something to say, about the way estates have been subdivided, money frittered, their portraits sold at auction. Also, when famous people pass they attract spirit imposters, just as on this side you have look-alikes and body doubles. This fact, unless kept constantly in mind by a medium, can ruin an evening on the platform, as the tribute bands and the impersonators break through, claiming to be Elvis, Lennon, Glenn Miller. Occasionally some oddball breaks through saying he’s Jesus. But I don’t know, Al said, there’ll be something in his manner—you just know he’s not from ancient Palestine. In Mrs. Etchell’s day, she explained, people still thought they were Napoleon. They were better educated then, she said, they knew dates and battles. Surprisingly, Cleopatra is still popular. “And I don’t like doing Cleopatra, because—”
“Because you don’t do ethnics.”
Al had explained it to her, in delicate language. She didn’t work the inner city or places like downtown Slough. “I’m not a racist, please don’t think that, but it just gets too convoluted.” It wasn’t just the language barrier, she explained, but these people, those races who think they have more than one life. Which means, of course, more than one family. Often several families, and I don’t know, it just gets—She closed her eyes tight, and flapped her fingers at her head, as if trying to beat off mosquitoes. She shivered, at the thought of some bangled wrinkly from the Ganges popping up: and she, flailing in time and space, not able to skewer her to the right millennium.
When Colette looked back, from the end of August 1997 to the early summer, when they had met … .“It’s what you call a steep learning curve,” she said. That the dead can be lonely, that the dead can be confused; all these things were a surprise to Colette, who had only ever spoken to one dead person: who earlier in her life had never given them much thought, except insofar as she had hoped—in some limp sort of way—that the dead were best off where they were. She now understood that Al hadn’t been quite straight with her in those first few weeks. There wasn’t a necessary tie-up between what she said on the platform and the true state of affairs. Uncomfortable truths were smoothed over before Al let them out to the public; when she conveyed soothing messages, Colette saw, they came not from the medium but from the saleswoman, from the part of her that saw the value in pleasing people. She had to admire it, grudgingly; it was a knack she had never acquired.
Until the princess died, Colette had not seen the seamy side of the work. Take Morris out of the equation, and it was much like any other business. Al needed a more modern communications system, a better through-put and process-flow. She needed a spam filter for her brain, to screen out unwanted messages from the dead; and if Colette could not provide this, she could at least control how Al managed those messages. She tried to view Al as a project and herself as project manager. It was lucky she’d got such sound experience as a conference organizer, because of course Al was something like a conference in herself.
When she moved in with Al, Colette had made a pretty smart exit from her early life—a clean break, she told herself. Nevertheless, she expected old workmates to track her down. She practiced in her mind what she’d tell them. I find my new role diverse, rewarding, and challenging, she would say. Above all, I like the independence. The personal relationships are a bonus; I’d describe my boss as caring and professional. Do I miss going to the office every day? You must appreciate I never exactly did that; travel was always part of the brief. Think what I haven’t got: no slander at the water cooler, no interdepartmental tensions, no sexual harassment, no competitive dressing. I have to be smart, of course, because I’m customer- facing, but it’s a real perk to be able to express yourself through your own sense of style. And that encapsulates, more or less, what I feel about my new situation; I’ve a role that I can sculpt to suit my talents, and no two days are the same.
All this rehearsal was wasted, except upon herself. No one, in fact, did track her down, except Gavin, who called one night wanting to boast about his annual bonus. It was as if she’d ceased to exist.
But after that death night at the end of August, she couldn’t fool herself that her position with Al was just a logical part of her career development. And exactly what was her position with Al? Next day, she, Colette, tried to sit her down for a talk, and said, Al, I need you to be straight with me.
Al said, “It’s okay, Col, I’ve been thinking about it. You’re a godsend to me, and I don’t know what I ever did without you. I never thought I’d get someone to agree to live in, and you can see that at a time of crisis, twenty- four-hour care is what I need.” Only a half hour before Al had been bringing up a clear ropey liquid; once again, rank sweat filmed her face. “I think we should agree on new terms. I think you should have a profit share.”
Colette flushed pink up to the roots of her hair. “I didn’t mean money,” she said. “I didn’t mean, be straight with me in that way. I—thank you Al, I mean it’s good to be needed. I know you’re not financially dishonest. I wasn’t saying that. I only mean I think you’re not giving me the full picture about your life. Oh, I know about Morris.
Alison said, “What you’re asking me is, how do you do it?”
“Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s what I’m asking you.”
She made Al some ginger tea; and Al talked then about the perfidy of the dead, their partial, penetrative
