Beyond Black: A Novel

“I’ll lend you one of mine,” she said.

“I don’t want your neighbours to see me,” Mart said. “Or they’ll think I’m after their kids. Pinto and me, when we lived down Byfleet, some blokes came kicking on the door, shouting, pedos out!”

“Why did they think you were pedophiles?”

“Dunno. Pinto said, it’s the way you look, the way you go around, your toes coming out of your shoes, and that hat you have. But that was when I still had my other hat.”

“So what happened then? After they kicked the door?”

“Pinto called the police. He had his mobile on him.”

“Did they come?”

“Oh, yes. They came in a patrol car. But then they saw it was me.”

“And then?”

A slow smile crept over Mart’s face. “Drive on, Constable Delingbole!”

She went through her jewellery box for spare watches, and discarded the diamante ones, which were for onstage. I’d better buy him one, she thought, just a cheap one. And some shoes, I’d have to ask his size. Maybe if he had new shoes he’d move on, before Colette noticed. She had to keep diverting Colette, attracting her attention to spectacles at the front of the house, and chatting to divert her whenever she went into the kitchen. He’ll have to be gone, she thought, before she decides to implement any shed security, because as soon as she goes down there she’ll see signs of occupation; she imagined the screaming Colette jabbing with her garden fork, and the panic- stricken visitor impaled on its tines.

“Do you think we’d get a bed in here?” Mart asked, when she took him down his flask.

Al said, “Maybe a futon,” but then she could have bitten her tongue.

“I should of thought to bring a sun lounger, from the garden centre,” Mart said. “I know!” He struck his hat with the flat of his hand. “A hammock! That would do me.”

“Mart,” she said, “are you sure you haven’t got a criminal record? Because I couldn’t be responsible, I couldn’t take a chance, I’d have to tell somebody, you see. You’d have to go.”

“My dad beat my head in with a piece of pipe,” Mart said. “Does that count?”

“No,” she said. “You’re the victim. That doesn’t count.” Severe blows to the skull, she thought. Colette thinks they’re very significant. She asked me about them once, on tape. I didn’t know why at the time. I realize now she thought they might have been the beginning of my abnormality.

“Though it was my step-dad, you know? I always thought it was my dad but my mum said not. No, she said, he’s your step.”

“How many step-dads did you have?”

“A few.”

“Me too.”

It was a warm day; they were sitting on the garden chairs, the door propped open slightly to give them some air. “Good thing we went for one with a window that opens,” Al said. “Or you’d be stifled.”

“But then again, not,” Mart said. “For reasons of them surveying me, peeking in and tipping off the Big D.”

“But then again, not,” she agreed. “I thought of getting curtains, at one time.”

One of the next-door children darted out of the playhouse, shrieking. Al stood up and watched her scoot across the lawn, skid to a halt, and sink her teeth into her brother’s calf. “Ouch!” Al said; she winced as if she had felt the wound herself.

“Mummy, Mummy!” the infant yelled.

Mart banged the shed door and dropped on all fours. Michelle’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “I’m coming out there, by God I am, and there’ll be slaps all round.”

“Get down,” Mart pulled her skirt. “Don’t let her see you.”

“Bite him,” Michelle roared, “and I’ll bloody bite you.”

They knelt on the floor together. Mart was trembling. Al felt she ought to pray.

“Oh Jesus!” Mart said. Tears sprang out of his eyes. He lurched into her. She supported his weight. Sagging against her, he was made of bones and scraps; his flesh breathed the odour of well-rotted manure.

“There, there,” she murmured. She patted his hat. Michelle shot across the scabby turf, the baby on her arm and her teeth bared.

Colette answered her cell phone, and a voice said, “Guess who?”

She guessed at once. What other man would be phoning her? “Haven’t seen you since we ran into you coming out of Elphicks.”

“What?” Gavin said. He sounded dumbstruck, as if she had cursed him.

“The shop,” she said. “In Farnham. That Saturday?”

“Out of what?”

“Elphicks. Why do you have such trouble, Gavin, with the ordinary names of things?”

A pause. Gavin said uneasily, “You mean that’s what it’s called? That department store?”

“Yes.”