They fell asleep under his coat, and it was eight o’clock when they awoke. They dressed in the darkness of the back room, and passed through the darkened shop like burglars. While he locked the door Liz waited for him on the other side of the street, rummaging in her handbag.
‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said to her.
‘That’s kind of you, Mr MacIndoe,’ she said. ‘Because at the moment I’m not sure where my house is.’
They walked together, not speaking, as far as the street before the one in which she lived.
‘See you tomorrow?’ he said.
‘I should think so,’ she said.
‘Lunchtime?’
‘Who can tell?’ she replied enigmatically, shaking a curl down over one eye. She took two steps back from him. ‘I meant it, you know,’ she said, and then she turned and hurried home.
Alexander’s mother called from the living room as he was hanging his coat in the hall. ‘In the oven. Burned to a cinder.’ Under an upturned plate he found a pork chop and half a dozen wrinkled sprouts and a pair of cracked potatoes. His mother eventually came into the kitchen. She watched him eat for a minute. ‘Anything to report?’ she asked.
‘Sold a chair and a couple of pictures.’
‘That all?’
‘That’s all,’ he said. His mother looked at him and left the room.
On her way to the bathroom, in her dressing gown, she came into his room. ‘Who is it, Alexander?’ she asked, resignedly.
‘Who’s what?’ he replied. He interposed a shirt between his face and hers.
‘Please don’t try to be clever, Alexander. It doesn’t suit you. Who is she?’
‘Don’t understand, Mum.’
His mother snatched the shirt and threw it onto the floor. ‘I can see it in your eyes, you stupid boy. I can smell her on you,’ she said, her fury rising. Alexander looked at his mother, trying to divine how much she had guessed. ‘Who is she?’ she asked again.
No name except the true one would come to him. ‘Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘Liz.’
‘Liz who? There’re a lot of Lizzes in the world. It’s a common name.’
‘Liz Gatting.’
‘Do I know her?’
‘Used to be in Megan’s year.’
‘I can’t picture her. Describe her.’ Alexander described Liz Gatting. ‘What does she do?’ his mother demanded.
‘Works in the optician’s, near the shop.’
His mother retied the belt of her dressing gown. ‘Gangly girl?’ she asked.
‘She’s tall, yes.’
‘Peroxide blonde? Brassy?’
‘She’s fair-haired.’
A flinch of disgust raised a corner of his mother’s mouth. ‘I know the one. You can do better than that, Alexander.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘You don’t even know her.’
‘I know enough.’
‘You don’t know her,’ he stated. ‘You didn’t even know who I meant when I told you who she was.’
‘I know who she is,’ said his mother emphatically, opening the door. ‘Don’t you go doing anything irresponsible. We don’t want a girl like that getting her claws into you.’
‘Girl like what?’ Alexander shouted.
‘A girl like that.’
Almost every word of this bickering would be remembered by Alexander for many years, as would his feeling, as he lay on his bed, still dressed, after his parents had turned out their light, that he was no longer the person to whom this room belonged. And he would never forget reaching for the lamp beside his bed and discovering the dust of dried blood under the nails of his right hand, nor the silhouette of Liz’s neck and the thin curved shadows of her ribs in the watery grey light from the street.
18. A Name You Can Trust
It was a humid evening around the middle of August, as Alexander would remember, because the Berlin Wall had gone up, and it was still the main story in the papers.
He sat at the bar in the saloon of the George, waiting for Sam Saunders. The landlord’s daughter came round the front of the bar, carrying a watering can, and he watched her through the open window as she watered a basket of geraniums that hung from a bracket on the signpost. Every table was occupied, and Mick Radford was in one of the groups.
‘How’s things, Monty?’ Mick asked when he came up to the bar, at the same time beckoning the barmaid with a folded banknote.
‘OK,’ said Alexander. ‘Yourself?’
‘Mustn’t grumble,’ said Mick, and he ordered his round. ‘Work all right?’ he asked, glancing from the stream of beer to Alexander.
‘It’s fine,’ said Alexander. ‘And you? What are you up to?’
‘Bit of this, bit of that,’ said Mick. He ground his cigarette stub into the chipped glass ashtray. ‘Thirsty weather, eh?’
‘It is,’ Alexander agreed.
‘Be good,’ said Mick, lifting the tray of drinks. ‘See you around.’
‘And you,’ Alexander replied, and that was the end of the first conversation he had with Mick Radford that year.
Sam punched Alexander lightly between the shoulderblades and planted his elbow on a saturated beer mat. ‘What you should know, Al, is that I have already taken a considerable quantity of drink and I intend to take a good deal more.’ He slicked his moustache with the ball of a thumb, and smacked his lips like a pantomime glutton. ‘Professional obligation, old man. My colleagues cannot bear to see a sober man after seven o’clock. Makes them suspect he might be happier than they are. Cheers, and may the good Lord bless you.’ Alexander fitted a pint into the receptive curve of Sam’s hand. ‘How are things in the mausoleum?’
‘Uneventful,’ said Alexander, having guessed that Sam’s day had not been.
‘A laugh and a half I’ve had,’ Sam duly told him. ‘Behold,’ he grinned. His left hand rose from his pocket and flopped palm upwards on the bar, presenting half a dozen stigmata, ranged in a quarter-circle. ‘And a matching set,’ Sam boasted, turning his hand to show a rake of scarlet weals. ‘First martyr of insurance I am. Saint Samuel Saunders of South London, patron saint of all who struggle for their daily commission.’ In a single draught he swallowed half his pint.
‘Let’s hear it, then.’
‘You know what did this?’ Sam demanded. ‘You want to know? This big it was.’ He slanted an arm downwards, swivelled and slipped off the stool. ‘This big,’ he insisted, levelling a hand beside Alexander’s ankle. ‘Like a bottle of pop with legs and hair. And teeth. Boggle-eyed little freak. Looked like it had been throttled to within an inch of its life and stuck like it.’ Dreamily Sam contemplated his punctured skin. ‘Doggie comes skipping down the stairs and stops six steps from the bottom. Rule one: if they’ve got a pet, be very nice to it, however repulsive the beast is. So I put the hand out. Tickle the little bastard between the ears. Sod took off like a rocket. The fangs go right in. Sharp as a bloody sewing machine, I tell you, and tight as a limpet. The old dear has to prise its jaws off with a spoon. Blood all over the place. “I’m so sorry, Mr Saunders,” she says.’
‘“He’s never done that before,”’ Alexander joined in.
‘Exactly. “Can’t think what came over him.” Utterly mystified, she is. But, ever the professional, I seize the initiative. I have her on my side. She feels guilty. I’m magnanimous. “It’s nothing,” I assure her, all noble like. “Occupational hazard.” And then the stroke of inspiration. “But see how easily accidents can happen, Mrs Jarvis. Out of the blue: snap! The jaws of fate.” I give her the meaningful stare. The Moment of Truth look. Ten minutes later, she signs.’ Triumphantly Sam raised his glass and chinked it on Alexander’s. ‘You are in the presence of a master. No point making out otherwise. Sam Saunders could sell life insurance to Jesus Christ Almighty. Contents policy to a monk. You should give it a go, Al. Make more than you’re getting from Sid’s place.’ Alexander made a gesture of demurral. ‘I mean it. A mint you’d m
ake, with your mug. Charm the chequebooks out of their handbags.’
‘Can’t do the spiel like you, Sam.’
‘No need to do much of that if they like you. Let them natter, that’s what you do. That’s all a lot of them want. A change from the same old faces, day in day out. You’d make a very nice change, and you’re a good listener. All you’ve got to do is learn a few lines. Recite the script and be pleasant.’
‘It’s not for me. Really, it’s not.’
‘Good money, mate. Good money.’ Sam smiled regretfully at the floor, as if looking at a heap of cash that Alexander was spurning. He flicked his empty glass to make it ring. ‘You could do with it, Al. It’s about time you got a place of your own. Nice folks, your mum and dad, but they’re still your mum and dad. Know what I’m saying?’
‘Time to move on,’ Alexander replied. ‘I know, Sam. But I can’t do what you’re doing.’
‘Squandering himself,’ Sam told the barmaid, and he took a new pint from her. ‘Whereas I, on the other hand, am doing some very tasty business.’ Having waited until the barmaid was out of earshot, he propped his elbow on the bar and his head on his palm, and slid closer to Alexander. ‘Imagine Shirley MacLaine, if you will, but with a bigger frontage in the upper storey. See that, can you? Well, that’s the very tasty business I’ve been doing,’ he confided, with a slow, suave smile. ‘That’s Pauline Alford.’ Sam paused, relishing the vision he had invoked for himself; his sleeve slid back along the bar, dragging through a spill of beer. ‘Mrs Pauline Alford,’ he added, hooding his eyes lasciviously.
Rather than look at Sam, Alexander took out a cigarette and turned to the barmaid for a light.
‘Shocked you, haven’t I?’ asked Sam.
‘No,’ said Alexander.
‘Oh yes I have.’
‘No,’ said Alexander. ‘You haven’t. But I wish you’d kept it to yourself.’
‘Can’t keep it to myself. That’s the problem.’ A laugh passed quickly across his face, then he looked at Alexander, severe as a magistrate. ‘You need to live a bit, Al. Nice girl, your Liz. But there’s a lot more to life than holding hands with the girl next door. Know what I mean?’
‘She’s a nice girl, like you say,’ said Alexander plainly.
Sam withdrew his smile and set his glass on the bar, as if replacing something that did not belong to him. ‘Meant no offence, Al,’ he said, putting a hand on Alexander’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, mate. I’m drunk as a skunk. Let’s change the subject.’
‘Agreed,’ said Alexander, offering a cigarette.
Nothing of the remainder of their conversation would stay for long in Alexander’s memory, but he would remember standing in the car park at closing time and Sam taking out a card with the slogan “A Name You Can Trust” below his name, and hugging him as he cried out: ‘Save me from myself, Father MacIndoe, for I have sinned.’ And he would remember Sam climbing aboard a bus that Alexander realised, as it turned at the traffic lights, was not the one that Sam should have taken. He watched the bus until its roof went under the hill and then he turned to walk home, treading the joints of the paving stones.
Alexander was still within sight of the pub when he heard someone say, behind him, as if making a remark to a companion: ‘I’ll have whatever you’ve got.’ Listening for the reply, Alexander kept walking. ‘Talking to you,’ said the same voice, more loudly. Something struck his back and there was the tick of a stone on the pavement. A second stone skittered into the road.
He was a few years younger than Alexander and was wearing a royal blue V-neck jumper under a black leather jacket. A white comb stuck out from behind one ear. His blond quiff bobbed like a little springboard. ‘I said, I’ll have whatever you’ve got.’ The unfastened buckles of his crocodile shoes made a chinking sound as he shifted his feet.
‘Who, me?’ Alexander replied.
‘No one else here, is there?’ said the boy, looking around.
‘I suppose not.’
‘So what have you got? For a quid I won’t kick your head in.’
‘Do I know you?’ asked Alexander in panic.
‘Do I know you?’ mimicked the boy, with a prissy squirm of his lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Alexander, thrusting a hand into a pocket and feeling only coppers. ‘I don’t have much on me.’
‘What a pity,’ said the boy. He brought a hand forward and handcuffed its wrist with his fingers. For half a minute he contemplated Alexander; a developing thought brought a look of satisfaction to his face. ‘You,’ he said, ‘you’re a fucking poof. That’s what you are.’
‘I’m what?’
‘I’m what?’ he echoed. He gave Alexander the sort of scrutiny a newly arrived prisoner might receive from a gaoler who already bore him a grudge. Mouthing his words exaggeratedly and without tone, as if addressing a lip-reader, he said: ‘You. You’re a queer.’
Alexander held a pool of coins on his dithering hand.
‘You’re a fucking ponce.’ Biting his lower lip, the boy looked at the coins. ‘What the fuck is that? What the fuck? Money from your ma, is it?’ He swiped the hand aside, and the coins were flung into the road.
‘That’s all I have,’ Alexander pleaded.
‘Not good enough, pal.’
‘Honestly, that’s all I have.’ Alexander turned his pockets inside out. He pointed at the road. ‘That’s it. Look,’ he said, wringing the empty fabric.
The boy gnawed at his lip and made a moaning noise like a thwarted child. ‘You’re a fucking poof,’ he said, with deliberation. ‘You’re a fucking nance.’
‘Please,’ said Alexander. ‘This is a mistake.’ A car was approaching from behind him. He dashed into the road, but before he could reach the opposite kerb he was tripped. He raised an arm into the light of the headlamps; the car passed.
The boy’s eyes widened, flabbergasted at Alexander’s attempt to escape. ‘No mistake, pal,’ he said.
Alexander saw him draw back one arm and, in the style of a fighter in a comic, clench a fist and hold it high in the air, wide of the shoulder. And then two of the distant streetlights disappeared behind the swinging arm and Alexander’s cheek was hit by something that felt like a perfectly flat board, not like a hand. The blow seemed not to have hurt him. Benumbed, stupefied, he gazed at the boy as though he had been asked a question that he had not quite understood. There was the moaning noise again, and he was hit twice more. His head bounced on the road and the pain seemed to flow into him through cracks in the bone. A kick to the belly forced the air out of his body with a squeal. He curled on the road, putting his hands to his face. Cold wet fingers wrenched his guard away and a fist swooped down on his temple and rose and fell again on his mouth. He cried out, but it felt as if the noise remained trapped in his head.
He was then at home, bringing his face out of the pink water that was brimming in the kitchen sink. His mother was pressing her hands to her face as if she thought he was in danger of dying. He saw someone he did not recognise and then Mick Radford.
‘Smile, please,’ said Mick Radford, and Alexander obeyed. ‘Teeth all there. Bugger of a headache you’re going to have,’ Mick Radford diagnosed. ‘But no serious damage. Lucky lad.’
‘Cavalry arrived in the nick of time,’ said the unknown friend.
‘Dave, Monty. Monty, Dave,’ said Mick Radford.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Dave Gordon, and Mick Radford raised the sopping flannel to Alexander’s cheek.
In the morning his cheek came away from the pillow with a soft tearing sound, leaving a sticking plaster behind, in a corona of blood. He looked in the mirror on the back of his wardrobe door and saw a face that was not his face. One eye was like an overripe plum; the lips reminded him of Charles Laughton; his teeth were smeared with a brown paste. He went back to bed and slept. The door opened, and his mother came into the room, advancing reverently with a poultice and a pot of tea. He slept again, then was awoken by a sound on the landing; the sun was low and the walls w
ere the colour of chamois leather; Megan’s head appeared at the edge of the door.
‘Awake?’ she said. He hoisted a bandaged hand. ‘Lord above, Eck,’ she murmured, and she put a hand to her mouth.
‘Not contagious,’ he said.
‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Who was it?’ She drew the chair to the side of the bed.
He had not seen her since the beginning of January, when they had sat for an hour in her bedroom, from which every remnant of her childhood had been expunged. The knitted doll with button eyes, which for years had sat on the sill, was no longer there. The red satchel had gone from the hook on the door. The embroidered pillowcase, the annuals with the russet cloth spines, the shoe box filled with plastic farmyard animals, the crayon portrait that a classmate had drawn when she was nine – all had gone. He had sat beside her desk, under a shelf of books, looking at a board to which were pinned photographs of her friends. Broad-striped scarves were looped around their necks, as if yoking them all together. A stone wall, like the wall of a fort, rose behind them. Midstream on a sunny river, there was a boat in which Megan was laughing at the boy who was rowing. Alexander looked at these pictures of people he had never met and would never meet, and it was as though time had become inverted: these faces were gazing at him, seeing nothing, as if he were a ghost who was looking out of a window at Megan and her friends.
Her appearance had changed since then. Her hair was now cut short as a boy’s, and she was dressed like nobody else he knew would have dressed, in sky-blue capri pants and a sleeveless white shirt. She put a hand on his bruised fingers while he spoke; she was wearing a silver ring that he had never seen before.
Ghost MacIndoe Page 19