Ghost MacIndoe

by Jonathan Buckley

  ‘Dog house for me,’ said his father. He took the newspaper from her hand and unrolled it. ‘Mind you, we’ll all be done for at this rate,’ he added, looking into the open pages as if he were staring into a pit.

  Alexander would remember the words ‘38th Parallel’ in the headline, and his pang of perplexity at the notion that something was happening in which peril and geometry were in some way combined. And he would remember looking at the advertisement his father had defaced, at his mother stirring the empty pot, at the simpering boy who was more like the boy on the painted road than he was like himself, and at the unpleasant Mr Darby, who seemed to be smirking at him, as if he knew that Alexander wanted him to go away.

  8. Tollund Man

  It was raining as the train went over Hungerford Bridge, and Alexander looked to his left at the roof of the Dome of Discovery, which was like a pavement of silver.

  ‘That’s called the Skylon,’ said his mother, pointing to the rocket-shaped thing that balanced on tightropes beside the river. A boy across the aisle leaned forward to see, and slapped his bare knees with excitement. On the far bank, the big tower of the Houses of Parliament was wrapped in a cocoon of scaffolding.

  ‘An hour till rendezvous,’ said his father as they jostled down the steps off the bridge. ‘Let’s follow our noses for a while.’

  First they went to look at the section on British wildlife, where Alexander, willing the time to pass, entranced himself with a picture of a Scottish wild cat cringing into the hollow of a tree trunk. People buffeted his back as he stood his ground, staring at the cat’s gaping mouth. ‘Come along, daydream,’ said his mother, touching his neck. ‘There’s lots more to see. We can’t spend all day looking at a moggy.’

  ‘How much longer till they arrive?’ Alexander asked.

  His father did not even check his watch. ‘Good grief,’ he said. ‘Patience, boy. About one hour minus five minutes.’

  They went to a pavilion in which there were large straw figures of a lion and a unicorn. ‘The twin symbols of the Briton’s character,’ his father read.

  ‘Twin symbols?’ said Alexander.

  ‘Yes. Of the Britons,’ said his father. ‘All the people who are British. Me, you. All of us. What don’t you understand?’

  ‘Why two?’

  ‘The lion is like the lion on the flags,’ his father explained. ‘Like the British Lions. Richard the Lionheart. Lion-hearted Britons in general – Francis Drake, Henry the Fifth, Winston Churchill, Randolph Turpin.’

  ‘So not all of us?’

  ‘Deep down, all of us, yes. But it’s more obvious with some than with others, I grant you. Noël Coward, for instance. You have to dig pretty deep to find the lion there.’

  ‘I thought it was the British bulldog.’

  ‘It can be that too, yes,’ his mother said. ‘But the lion’s more noble, more regal. And more ancient. There’s history with the lion.’

  ‘And a damned great straw bulldog would look pretty silly,’ said his father, and he blew some dirt off his glasses.

  ‘What’s a unicorn got to do with it?’ asked Alexander. ‘They never existed, did they?’

  His father pressed a thumb to the furrow between his eyebrows; he drew a long breath and let it go. ‘No, that’s right. They never existed.’

  ‘The unicorn is for fantasy, Alexander,’ said his mother. ‘Imagination, playfulness, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Think of Denis Compton,’ said his father, and with an imaginary bat he clipped an imaginary ball up to the ceiling. ‘Éclat, élan, vim, panache, et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Or Noël Coward,’ said his mother.

  Alexander trailed his parents out of the pavilion, ruminating on the mythical Briton, whose qualities were combined in nobody he knew. Sheltering under the eaves of the Dome, he watched the row of fountains in front of the Skylon as they wriggled like a squad of restless giants.

  ‘This is definitely the right place?’ his father asked his mother, hooking his cuff clear of his wrist.

  ‘Well, how many domes can you see, Graham?’ replied his mother. ‘The dome at eleven,’ she assured him, and no sooner had she said the words than Megan and Mrs Beckwith arrived, under a big black umbrella.

  ‘We late, Irene?’ asked Mrs Beckwith, picking at the net that held her hair bunched at the back of her head. ‘Problems choosing young madam’s wardrobe. Us girls always have to look our best, you know. A lesson you’ll learn soon enough, Alexander,’ she said, and she kissed him on his forehead.

  Megan stood behind her, twirling her pleated tartan skirt. Her hair was held back above her ears by plastic clips that matched her eyes. ‘Hello, Mrs MacIndoe,’ said Megan, stepping out to the side. ‘Hello, Mr MacIndoe. Hello, Eck. What are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alexander, and he looked to his mother.

  ‘Can I decide then?’ Megan asked.

  ‘Bossy child,’ said Mrs Beckwith, and she nudged Megan towards Alexander.

  Megan looked over his shoulder at the Skylon. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said to Alexander. Her eyes followed the tower’s curve up into space.

  ‘No visible means of support,’ observed his father. ‘Just like the country.’

  ‘Cynicism is inappropriate here, Graham,’ chided his mother. ‘For domestic consumption only.’

  Tapping a cigarette on the lid of the steel case she had taken from her handbag, Mrs Beckwith nodded in the direction of the river. Two boys were kicking each other’s shins underneath the Skylon. ‘The male of the species,’ she commented drily, then accepted the match that Alexander’s father held out to her.

  ‘Boys will be boys,’ agreed his mother.

  Megan’s fingers appeared on Alexander’s sleeve, and she said the only words that he would always be able to retrieve from his memory of that morning. ‘But you’re different, Eck,’ she said, as if placating him. ‘You’re almost a girl.’

  ‘Beg pardon?’ exclaimed Mrs Beckwith.

  ‘Whatever do you mean, young lady?’ his father asked Megan, putting his hands on her shoulders from behind and looking down onto her face.

  ‘I was being nice, Mr MacIndoe, that’s all. Eck’s gentle, like a girl, that’s all I meant.’

  Alexander’s father frowned at Megan but he was more amused by her than he ever was by him, it seemed to Alexander, and it seemed throughout that morning that he preferred her company to his son’s. ‘That’s called the regulator,’ his father said to her, putting a finger close to a photograph in which a trio of iron spheres whirled on thick iron arms above a huge steam engine. Crouching between Alexander and Megan, he explained how the apparatus worked, but it was to Megan that he was speaking. ‘They rise up, and the steam escapes here, and so the pressure drops and they fall again,’ he said.

  ‘Ingenious,’ Megan commented, as if Alexander’s father were the inventor and she was congratulating him.

  ‘Ingenious indeed,’ his father agreed, smiling to himself.

  ‘Too technical for us,’ commented his mother, pulling a face for Alexander, though he understood the machine well enough. She put a hand out to steer him to the next exhibit; he shrugged his shoulder away and followed his father.

  ‘Now this,’ said his father, in front of another photograph, ‘was invented by a man who used to live not very far from here. Sir Henry Bessemer. He lived in Herne Hill. Do you know where Herne Hill is?’

  ‘No,’ said Megan, before Alexander could say ‘Near Camberwell.’

  ‘Between Camberwell and Dulwich,’ his father said.

  Side by side the three of them looked at the picture of a huge bucket from which a burning liquid flowed.

  ‘What is it?’ Megan asked, and his father explained how steel was manufactured.

  At every picture they stopped and listened as his father talked to them like a schoolteacher. They were standing in front of a photograph of a shipyard when Alexander heard Mrs Beckwith, standing a couple of ya
rds behind him, say to his mother: ‘Sun’s coming out, Irene.’ Through a window Alexander saw a glow rise quickly on a wet concrete wall, turning it to the colour of chalk. The last raindrops of the exhausted shower sparkled against the dark gaberdine raincoat of a woman who stood with her back to him, her hand on the catch of her half-lowered umbrella.

  ‘Shame to squander it,’ said his mother, raising her voice slightly.

  ‘Right enough,’ agreed Mrs Beckwith.

  ‘We can’t leave yet,’ moaned Megan. ‘We haven’t seen half of it.’

  ‘You can’t see everything here,’ said Mrs Beckwith.

  ‘Why not?’ Megan demanded, with an eagerness that seemed overdone to Alexander and annoyed him.

  ‘Well, let’s work it out,’ said Alexander’s father. ‘How long have we been looking at this one?’

  ‘Half a minute,’ replied Megan.

  ‘More than that,’ Alexander interjected.

  ‘Let’s say half a minute,’ said his father, ticking off the first stage of the calculation on a little finger for Megan’s benefit. ‘There are twenty-five thousand photos here, it says. That’s twelve and a half thousand minutes. That’s more than two hundred hours. That’s more than a week. And we have less than one day.’

  Disgruntled by this proof, Megan appealed to her aunt. ‘A bit longer?’

  Mrs Beckwith looked at his father; his father smiled at Megan and rubbed his palms together as if limbering up for a tug-of-war.

  ‘The wives are playing truant, then,’ said his mother. ‘Outside in an hour?’

  Megan and his father walked away, and Alexander followed his mother and Mrs Beckwith, who were not aware that he had decided to go with them. Arm in arm the women walked, like grown-up sisters, perfectly in step with each other, their foreheads almost touching as they talked. ‘Come on, Joan, tell me,’ Alexander heard his mother say, and he stopped on the carpet that ran to the door, to avoid eavesdropping on Mrs Beckwith’s reply. He would remember looking at the sharp tendons of their ankles as they moved away from him, and then looking at his mother’s face, which now was in perfect profile. She laughed and her eyes became huge with astonishment as her mouth formed a word like ‘No’. The vivacity of her expression was of a kind that Alexander had never previously seen in her face; it was mischievous and very young, more like Megan than his mother. With a vertiginous lurch he felt that he was seeing a moment from the life she had led before he existed, or her life as it would have been had he not been born, and he understood in that instant that she loved him out of choice. A curl of hair fell across her ear. He wanted to rush to her, but his legs were like iron. She turned, as if she had become conscious of the empty space behind her, and then noticed him standing on his own. ‘Catch up, Alexander,’ she called. He trudged to the door, encumbered by sadness. ‘Slowcoach,’ his mother said, with a look that told him she knew there was something on his mind but was not going to ask what it was.

  ‘You have a run about, so we can gossip,’ said Mrs Beckwith outside. ‘We’ll all go for something to eat soon.’

  Alexander walked around the train that was parked on a short length of track nearby. He sat down on the pavement on the far side of the train, so that he could see his mother and Mrs Beckwith through the gap between the undercarriage and the track. Where the sun hit the rails there were red and blue grains in the steel. Tufts of grease glistened on the bolts of the rails; they were the colour of the jelly in a pork pie. Alexander touched a finger to one of them, and the smell of it made him close his eyes. He saw the fire station and remembered how, when he was younger, his mother used to lift him so that he could see through the panes in the folding red wooden doors. Pressing his palms to his temples he willed into sight the scarlet metal of the fire engines and the black gleam of their tyres, like varnished charcoal, and the firemen’s jackets and tall boots arranged around the walls like vestments. Across his eyelids flooded a red so profound it brought a taste to the air in his mouth, a sweet and elusive taste he could name only as the flavour of redness. Again he brought the greasy fingertip to his nose. Water sprang into his mouth as if out of hunger.

  ‘Are you all right?’ someone was asking.

  Alexander opened his eyes, and saw that a tall elderly man with a white moustache was looking at him quizzically. The waxed tips of the man’s moustache stuck out of the bristles like prongs of chicken bone; these repulsive miniature horns would still be in his memory more than forty years later, though the face to which they had belonged would not, nor the place where he had seen that face.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you,’ said Alexander, and he peered under the train. His mother and Mrs Beckwith, arm in arm, were approaching. ‘I’m waiting for my mother. She’s coming now,’ he said, pointing.

  ‘Jolly good,’ said the man, and he doffed his hat to Mrs Beckwith and Alexander’s mother.

  ‘Not easy, pet, I’ll tell you that much,’ concluded Mrs Beckwith, and she blinked one eye at the sting of the smoke from her raised cigarette. She looked at Alexander and it was clear that she knew he had heard. Her dress tightened across her ribs and creased as she sighed.

  They all ate in the Regatta Restaurant, where the door handles were shaped like hands, and the plates were thicker and heavier and whiter than the plates at home, and they were served by a woman who said ‘Oh yes’ after every order, as if she had guessed perfectly what each of them was going to say.

  ‘What did you do, Eck?’ Megan asked as she chopped at her food.

  ‘Just wandered,’ Alexander replied.

  ‘So what did you find out?’

  Alexander glanced at Mrs Beckwith, who was comparing the contents of her plate with his father’s. ‘This and that,’ he said.

  Megan fidgeted dismissively. ‘Mr MacIndoe explained such a lot of things,’ she said to his mother. ‘We’re going back to the Dome after this.’

  ‘Are we now?’ his mother asked his father.

  ‘It would appear so,’ he said. ‘Alexander, are you a member of the expedition?’

  Megan was fiddling with one of her hair clips. ‘These are a nuisance,’ she complained. ‘Help me out, Eck.’

  The clip jumped like a cricket into Alexander’s hand. ‘Are we all going?’ he asked.

  His mother said they were, but before they left the restaurant she changed her mind. ‘We’ll join you in a bit,’ she said to his father as she stood up. Alexander took hold of Mrs Beckwith’s arm.

  ‘Latching on to us, are we?’ teased Mrs Beckwith.

  ‘You don’t want to listen to our chatter, Alexander,’ said his mother.

  ‘I won’t listen,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk behind.’

  ‘In front, so we can keep an eye on you,’ Mrs Beckwith ordered, and the three of them went one way while his father and Megan went the other.

  Alexander led his mother and Mrs Beckwith from pavilion to pavilion, through rooms of new furniture and electric machines and wallpaper that was covered with patterns of crystals, and all the time he was holding the hairclip tightly in his palm. He was still holding it when Megan and Mrs Beckwith left, but the following day he decided to take it back, having convinced himself that it would not be wrong to go to Megan’s house, now that she and Mrs Beckwith had spent a day with him and his parents.

  Because his parents did not know John Halloran’s parents, he made out that he was going to John’s house. It began to rain, and he ran to the Beckwiths’ house, where he paused at the gate to inspect the building. It appeared that nobody was in. He swung the gate back and advanced, cautiously, halfway up the path. Through the living room window he could see a newspaper lying in damp light on the arm of an empty settee. Alexander took the clip from his pocket and eased the letterbox open like a trap. He looked into the hallway; every door inside was closed. He was about to drop the clip when a sound to his left made him jump and the steel flap clacked shut. Mr Beckwith was standing at the end of the path that went down the side of the house. He was holding a trowel in one hand and s
omething black in the other fist, and his white cotton shirt was clinging to his ribs, which showed like gills through the fabric. His bony knees looked like hammer-heads under the wet cloth of his trousers.

  Alexander had seen Mr Beckwith many times in the previous year, always alone, always walking steadily with his peculiar padding gait, facing straight ahead. He had never seen him speak to anyone, nor even exchange a greeting with anyone, nor stop at any shop. Mr Beckwith was always moving, and now he looked at Alexander as if the boy had brought him to a standstill and he did not know what to do.

  ‘Hello, Mr Beckwith,’ said Alexander timidly.

  Mr Beckwith looked meaninglessly at him, and his jaw moved rapidly up and down in a silent stammering.

  ‘I didn’t mean to disturb anybody,’ Alexander apologised.

  Mr Beckwith looked at the front door as if it were a third person waiting for him to speak. ‘No one in, lad,’ he said. His voice was very low, like the voice of a fat man, and the words seemed to buzz in his throat.

  ‘I was only going to give this back,’ said Alexander, unfurling his fingers from the clip.

  Mr Beckwith gazed uncomprehendingly at the piece of plastic. ‘Oh,’ he said, as if rebuking himself.

  ‘Is that all right?’ asked Alexander, but Mr Beckwith appeared to hear nothing. ‘Is that all right?’ he repeated. ‘If I put it through?’

  ‘Put it through,’ said Mr Beckwith, and with the trowel he made a posting action. Black water was dripping from the underside of his left hand. ‘Are you Alexander?’ he asked, stretching his narrow neck as if looking through murk.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Alexander replied. ‘Alexander MacIndoe.’

  Mr Beckwith considered what Alexander had said. ‘At school with Megan, are you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ echoed Mr Beckwith. Seeming to have nothing more to say, he watched a car go past the house. His head swung back to face Alexander. ‘My name’s Harold,’ he remarked at last, and he transferred the trowel to a windowsill so that he could offer a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. His fingers were cold, and rolled in Alexander’s hand like a sheaf of short sticks. ‘It’s raining. Do you want to shelter inside for a while?’