“What army?” Al said.
“I don’t know.” Morris sounded impatient. “The army, the navy, the forces, innit, bomber command, special boat squadron, there’s only one army, and that’s ours. Will you stop interrupting?”
“Sorry.”
“So it all worked out just like Mr. Aitkenside said it would, and I got leave, and off I go, rounding up a few of the lads
“What had she ever done to you?”
“Etchells? She put me out in the street. She kicked me off Spirit Guide, she wanted Pikey Paul with his shiny outfits, Poncey Paul as I call him; if he wasn’t the uncle of Pete who is a mate of mine, I could cast aspersions there, I really could. I had to live in a builder’s skip, under an old broken fireplace, till I could happen to move in with you.”
“It’s a long time to hold a grudge.”
“It’s not a long time, when you’re dead and you’ve bugger-all else to do. You can’t treat a guide like that— maltreat him, and it comes back on you. So anyway … we got ourselves down the Fig and Pheasant, we tampered with the optics and nipped the little girls’ bottoms that was serving behind the bar, we strolled into the function room cool as you like and then we lined up on the back row. Etchells, blimey, you should have seen her face.”
“I did.”
“But you didn’t see our modifications.”
“So what are those? Apart from your tattoo?”
“Lifelike, innit?” Morris said. “I got it done when we was on a spot of R and R in the Far East. We got leave halfway through our course. Still, you ain’t seen nothing till you seen young Dean. We oldsters, we’ve got enough to sicken folk as it is, by God have we a collection of scars, there’s Mac with his eye socket and his chewed-off ear and Capstick with his private problem that he don’t like mentioned. Pikey Pete booked in to have his teeth filed, but Dean said, you could get that earthside nowadays, mate, you could get your teeth filed and your tongue slit. Oh, but Dean did rib him! So Capstick says, I’ll show willing, I’ll lay my money out, so he’s had his hair stood on end and his tongue rasped, but the youngsters don’t think nothing of that. They’ve all got these new tongue extensions. You can have it hung further back so it’s retractable, or you can have your palate heightened so your tongue rolls up neatly till required. Now Dean has opted for the last one, it costs you but it’s more neat and tidy, doesn’t slide out when you’re walking, and Mr. Aitkenside is teaching him to take a pride in his appearance. He’s going for the full scroll-out, so he’ll have to wear a guard till he gets used to it, but he claims it’s worth it, I dunno. He’s gone in for his knees swivelled as well, so he’s walking backwards when he’s walking forwards; you have to see it to appreciate it, but I can tell you it’s comical. Mr. Aitkenside has got six legs, so he has got six boots; that’s because he has got made up to management, that’s all the better for kicking them with.”
Colette came in. “Al? Cara’s on the phone—do you think Mrs. Etchells would have liked a woodland burial?”
“I don’t think so. She hated nature.”
“Right,” Colette said. She went out again.
Al said, “Kicking who?”
“Not just kicking, kicking out. We are chasing out all spooks what are asylum seekers, derelicts, vagrants, and refugees, and clearing out all spectres unlawfully residing in attics, lofts, cupboards, cracks in the pavement, and holes in the ground. All spooks with no identification will be removed. It ain’t good enough to say you’ve nowhere to go. It ain’t good enough to say that your documents fell through the hole in your breeches. It’s no good saying that you’ve forgot your name. It’s no good pretending to go by the name of some other spook. It’s no good saying you ain’t got no documents because they ain’t invented printing yet—you got your thumb print, ain’t you, and it’s no good saying they cut off your thumb—don’t come that, they all say that. Nobody is to take up room they ain’t entitled to. Show me your entitlement or I’ll show you the boot—in Aitkenside’s case, six boots. It’s no good trying to bamboozle us because we have got targets, because Nick has set us targets, because we have got a clear-up rate.”
Al said, “Is Nick management?”
“You’re joking me!” Morris said. “Is Nick management? He is the manager of us all. He is in charge of the whole blooming world. Don’t you know nothing, girl?”
She said, “Nick’s the devil, isn’t he? I remember seeing him, in the kitchen at Aldershot.”
“You should have taken more notice. You should have been respectful.”
“I didn’t recognize him.”
“What?” Morris said. “Not recognize a man wiv a leather jacket, asking for a light?”
“Yes, but you see, I didn’t believe in him.”
“That’s where you was under a mistake.”
“I was only a girl. I didn’t know. They kept throwing me out of the RE class, and whose fault was that? I hadn’t read any books. We never got a newspaper, except the ones the blokes brought in, their racing paper. I didn’t know the history of the world.”
“You should have worked harder,” Morris said. “You should have listened up in your history lessons, you should have listened up in your Hitler lessons, you should have learned to say your prayers and you should have learned some manners.” He mimicked her: “‘Is Nick the devil?’ ’Course he’s the devil. We have only been under pupillage with the best. Who have you got to put up against him? Only mincey Mandy and the rest, they’re not worth MacArthur’s fart. Only you and stringbean and that sad bastard used to live in the shed.”
As the week passed, her parade of business-as-usual became less convincing, even to Colette, whom she sometimes caught gazing at her dubiously. “Is something troubling you?” she said, and Colette replied, “I don’t know that I trust that doctor you saw. How about a private health check?”
Al shrugged. “They’ll only talk about my weight again. If I’m going to be insulted, I’m not paying for it. I can get insults on the NHS.” She thought, what the doctors fail to realize is that you need some beef, you need some heft, you need some solid substance to put up against fiends. She had been alarmed, climbing out of the bath, to see her left foot dematerialize. She blinked, and it was back again; but she knew it was not her imagination, for she heard muffled laughter from the folds of her bath towel.
That was the day they were getting ready for Mrs. Etchells’s funeral. They had opted for a cremation and the minimum of fuss. A few elderly practitioners, Mrs. Etchells’s generation, had clubbed together for a wreath, and Merlyn sent a telegram of sympathy from Beverly Hills. Al said, “You can come back to my house afterwards, Colette’s got some sushi in.” She thought, I ought to be able to count on my friends to help me, but they’d be out of their depth here. Cara, Gemma, even Mandy—they’ve had nothing like this in their lives, they’ve never been
“Do you think in Spirit she’ll be at her best age?” Gemma said. “I find it hard to picture what Mrs. Etchells’s best age might have been.”
“Sometime between the wars,” Mandy said. “She was one of the old school, she went back to when they had ectoplasm.”
“What’s that?” Cara said.
“Hard to say.” Mandy frowned. “It was supposed to be an ethereal substance that took on the form of the deceased. But some people say it was cheesecloth they packed in their fannies.”
Cara wrinkled her nose.
“I wonder if she left a will?” Colette said.
“No doubt behind the clock, with the milk money,” Gemma said.
“I hope you’re not looking at me,” Silvana said. She had threatened to boycott the ceremony, and only turned up out of fear that the other Sensitives might talk about her behind her back. “I don’t want anything from her. If she did leave me anything, I wouldn’t take it. Not after those wicked things she said about me.”
“Forget it,” Mandy said. “She wasn’t in her right mind. She said herself, she saw something in the back row she couldn’t stomach.”
“I wonder what it was,” Gemma said. “You wouldn’t have a theory, Al, would you?”
“Anyway,” Mandy said, “somebody ought to see about her affairs. You’ve still got a key, Silvy?” Silvana nodded. “We’ll all come over. Then if there’s no will in the obvious places, we can dowse for it.”
