Beyond Black: A Novel

worse than most others.

Colette said briskly, “Is something upsetting you?”

“No.”

“Was there something here before?”

“Nothing. Just country.”

“Come in the caravan. Talk to Suzi.”

Al caught the scent of standing water; the ditch, a pond, a sludgy canal, widening into a basin that reflected faces looking down at her from the sky, sneering. The dead don’t ascend, or descend, so properly speaking they can neither leer down at you from the treetops nor grumble and toss beneath your feet; but they can give the appearance of it, if it takes them that way.

She followed Colette and heaved herself into the caravan. The metal steps were flimsy; each tread, under her weight, bowed a little and came snapping back.

“This is my friend,” Colette said.

“Oh, hello?” Suzi said. She looked as if she meant to say, we discourage friends. For a few minutes she left them alone. She took out a duster and passed it over her model drawer fronts and cupboard doors, clicking them backwards and forwards on their swivel-jointed display stand with a sound like the gnashing of giant dentures. She blew some dust off her carpet samples, and found a spot of something disagreeable on her stack of vinyl tiles, which she worked at by spitting on it and then scrubbing at it with her fingernail.

“You could offer us a coffee?” Colette said. “We’re not time wasters.”

“Some people make a hobby of it. Driving around the new developments on a Sunday afternoon, comparing prices? With their friends?”

I never got this far with Gavin, Colette thought. She tried to imagine the life they might have had, if they’d been planning to have a family. She would have said to him, what kitchen do you want, and he’d have said, wot’s the choice? And when she pointed to the model drawer fronts and cupboards, he’d have said, are they kitchens? And when she had said yes, he’d have said, wotever.

But here was Alison, studying the details of the Frobisher, behaving just like a normal purchaser. Suzi had put her duster away and, her back still turned, was edging towards the counter by degrees. Al looked up. “It’s tiny, Col. You can’t do anything with these rooms, they’re just dog kennels.” She handed the leaflet back to the woman. “No thank you,” she said. “Have you got anything bigger?” She rolled her eyes and said to Colette, “Story of my life, eh?”

Suzi enquired, “Which lady is the purchaser?”

“We are both the purchaser.”

Suzi turned away and snatched up the coffeepot from its hotplate. “Coffee? Milk and sugar?” She turned, the pot held defensively before her, and gave them a wide smile. “Certainly,” she said. “Oh, yes, of course. We don’t discriminate. Far from it. Far on the other side. We’ve been away for a training day. We are enthused to play our part to enhance the diversity of the community. The very special kind of community that’s created wherever you find a Galleon Home?”

Colette said, “What do you mean, far on the other side?”

“I mean, no discrimination at all?”

Al said, “No sugar, thanks.”

“But you don’t get a bonus? I mean, if we were lesbians? Which by the way we aren’t? Would you get extra commission?”

Just then a normal couple came up the steps. “Hello?” Suzi called to them, with a warmth that almost scared them down again. “Coffee?” she sang. A few drips from the poised pot leaked onto the plans of the Frobisher, and widened like a fresh fecal stain.

Alison turned away. Her cheeks were plum-coloured.

Colette followed her. “Ignore her. This is Surrey. They don’t get many gays and they’re easily upset.” She thought, if I were a lesbian, I hope I’d get a woman who wasn’t so bulky.

“Could we come back later?” Alison asked. “When there are houses here?”

Suzi said coldly, “Half of these plots are under offer.”

Colette took Al back to the car and laid the facts before her. This is prime building land, she said. She consulted the literature and read it out. Convenient transport links and first-class health and leisure facilities.

“But there aren’t,” Al said. “It’s a field. There’s nothing here. No facilities of any sort.”

“You have to imagine them.”

“It’s not even on a map, is it?”

“They’ll redraw the map, in time.”

She touched Colette’s arm, conciliatory. “No, what I mean is, I like it. I’d like to live nowhere. How long would it be before we could move in?”

“About nine months, I should think.”

Alison was silent. She had given Colette a free hand in the choice of site. Just nowhere near my old house, she had said. Nowhere near Aldershot. Nowhere near a race course, a dog track, an army camp, a dockyard, a lorry park, or a clinic for special diseases. Nowhere near a sidings or a depot, a customs shed or a warehouse; not near an outdoor market or an indoor market or a sweatshop or a body shop or a bookie’s. Colette had said, I thought you might have a psychic way of choosing—for instance, you’d get the map and swing a pendulum over it. God, no, Al had said, if I did that, we’d probably end up in the sea.