Ghost MacIndoe

by Jonathan Buckley

  As soon as he could, Alexander retreated to the garden, from where frequently he would see Pen pass behind a window, always talking, as if her appetite for speech could not be satiated. When he went back inside, a woman wearing a low-necked green dress and a coral necklace touched his arm as he made his way towards Pen. They stood underneath a Moorish arch that creaked when he leaned against it.

  ‘You’re Alexander, I assume,’ she said, drawing out the third syllable of his name. ‘The London boy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From London myself,’ she said. ‘Chiswick,’ she added, and raised an emerald enamelled lighter to her cigarette.

  ‘Greenwich,’ Alexander replied.

  ‘I know,’ she said. A stream of smoke flowed over her upper lip. ‘I’m Sarah. Pleased to meet you.’ By way of a handshake she dragged her long fingers across his palm.

  ‘Do you find these people entertaining?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, though it would have been more precise to say that they made him conscious that he was not entertaining.

  ‘Neither do I,’ she said, and a pipette of smoke sprang from the tight circle of her lips. ‘And what do you do in London, Alexander? Remind me?’

  ‘I work –’

  ‘A record shop,’ Sarah interrupted.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  ‘And that’s where Penelope found you?’

  ‘That’s where we met, yes,’ he replied. ‘And what do you do?’

  Sarah spread a hand over her breastbone, raising a fragrance of rosewater. ‘What do I do?’ she drawled. ‘That is an incisive question, Alexander. I do almost nothing. I am a diplomatic wife. My husband is at the embassy.’

  ‘That sounds like it should be interesting,’ commented Alexander.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I should imagine it does,’ said Sarah.

  ‘What does he do there?’

  ‘Now that, Alexander, is a real question. What does my husband do? I think what he does is tell lies to people who tell lies to him. And he writes reports on the ghastly creatures with whom he has to mingle. He goes to receptions and asks the Russians if they’re going to take over the world, and they tell him it’s the last thing on their minds. That’s what he does, as I understand it.’

  A claret-skinned man with a gold watch chain slung across his white waistcoat pushed between Alexander and the arch. Pen followed, and glanced at Alexander with ambiguous curiosity. ‘Dear Pen,’ said Sarah, when Pen had gone. ‘So good at keeping life fresh. Every week’s a new adventure. Never in a rut,’ she sighed, extinguishing her cigarette with a sardonic frown.

  ‘A lot of energy,’ Alexander agreed.

  ‘Has she taken you to Pare Montsouris yet?’ enquired Sarah, turning the biggest of the coral beads.

  ‘She has.’

  ‘Charming, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ said Alexander.

  ‘Pen speaks highly of you,’ Sarah observed.

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Most highly,’ she told him, still turning the bead.

  A remark other than mere agreement was expected of him, but Alexander could think of nothing that might suffice. The superiority faded from Sarah’s smile, and then the smile itself withdrew. ‘You really don’t have any idea what’s going on here, do you?’ she asked, with a laugh that was not so much an effusion of amusement as a statement that she was amused.

  In the taxi Pen pushed herself into the angle of the seat and the door. ‘Sluiced, was she?’ she demanded, jabbing her elbow on the armrest. ‘Under the influence?’

  ‘Didn’t appear to be.’

  ‘She wouldn’t appear to be. She’s a professional soak.’

  ‘Forget it, Pen.’

  ‘What a bitch. Class-A bitch.’

  ‘Calm down. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I don’t want to calm down, Mr Serene,’ she said with bitterness. ‘I like being uncalm. OK?’ She glared at the traffic, and her face seemed paralysed by vindictiveness. Her expression had barely changed when she reached for the switch through the chiffon scarf that covered the lampshade beside her bed.

  Six weeks after his return from Paris, he received through the post a copy of a French magazine. Page 22 was folded over, and featured a trio of miniskirted girls on Vespa scooters, a Mod in the doorway of a club, and himself beside a Carnaby Street window. The caption to Alexander’s picture, translated by Pen in the margin, read: ‘A face of young London … he lives for today … looking good is what life is all about … he looks good, and expects other people to recognise it, girls especially.’ A photograph of Alexander on a staircase in the Louvre fell out of the magazine. On the back was written: ‘Well, I recognised it, and I wasn’t alone. It was so good to know you, Alexander – good luck with everything.’

  22. The Crown and Anchor

  ‘The ugliest pub in Christendom,’ Sam Saunders called it. ‘The dullest dump known to humanity.’

  A solitary whitewashed and pebble-dashed building, the Crown and Anchor stood next to a boarded-up house and an overgrown plot of land that had once been occupied by prefabs, on the corner of two streets that led to other streets that ended in hillocks of waste ground. There was only one bar inside, and it had the appearance of a room that had been assembled from whatever furniture and materials had been to hand whenever the landlord had decided to make improvements. No two tables were the same, and three-legged cast-iron stools of differing heights were scattered across the peat-brown carpet. Swivelling panels of frosted glass were set into old wooden frames above the bar, but the bar stools were steel and plastic and stood on a track of burgundy lino that was mottled like a ten-pin bowling ball. Half a dozen daffodil-shaped lamps were attached to the walls; the bare neon strip in the centre of the ceiling was used only to signal closing time. To reach the toilets one pushed aside a folding door of plastic panels that were moulded to resemble planks of pine. A three-bar electric fire, with an inset of fibreglass red-hot coals, was installed in the scorched brick fireplace, and along one wall there was a black vinyl banquette that might have been salvaged, as Sam said, from a Soho strip club. Behind the banquette, next to an old advertisement for Guinness, the landlord had wedged a large oblong aquarium; on its gravel floor lay a miniature galleon, a miniature hump-backed bridge and a whisky bottle with its base cut off, through which swam tiny transparent fish with guts the colour and size of apple pips.

  At around the time that Sidney Dixon changed his shop, it became Alexander’s habit to call at the Crown and Anchor after work, two or three nights a week. He would sit by the larger window, opposite the picture of Sir Gordon Richards, and read his newspaper. Alf Davies, who lived across the road, in the house in which he had been born in the last year of the nineteenth century, was invariably there before him, reading a paperback from which he would look up to acknowledge Alexander’s arrival and to which, having said nothing, he would then return. From time to time Alf might glance up at Alexander or at his pint of mild, which he scarcely touched in the hour that Alexander stayed, but the only person to whom he ever talked was John, whose surname Alexander never knew, and whose greeting to Alexander – ‘All right?’ – never changed and never led to any more substantial exchange. Seated at adjacent tables in the centre of the room, these two would conduct a mumbled conversation for a minute or so, and then Alf would prop his book on his chest and continue his reading, while John studied the door to the street, through which, in the course of the hour, another four or five customers, all known to Alexander solely by their first names, if by any name at all, would pass with a nod on their way to the bar, from where they would cross to a table at the furthest point from the other drinkers, as though repelled by magnetic force. They were all in their fifties or older, except for a couple called Colin and Christine, who would roll up their sheepskins and put them on the banquette beside their padded gloves, as carefully as Alexander used to lay out his army uniform, and would leave after one drink.

  ‘What on ear
th’s the attraction?’ Sam asked him the first time they went there together. Sam inspected his surroundings suspiciously, squirming in his jacket as though the room made him itch.

  Alexander looked out of the window, at the end walls of the terraced houses, on which the evening light was maturing to the orange of marigolds. ‘It’s quiet,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s that all right. Like the mummy’s tomb.’

  ‘And the beer’s good.’

  ‘Granted,’ said Sam. He tilted his glass to salute Alf Davies, who was looking at them as though they were creating a disturbance in a public library. ‘Evening,’ Sam volunteered, but received no response. ‘Life and soul,’ he murmured. ‘The long-lost brother of Bela bleeding Lugosi.’

  Within the hour they had moved on, yet they met again in the Crown and Anchor a few weeks later, and before long it became a routine. For more than two years Sam and Alexander met almost every week in the Crown and Anchor, but when, in his fifty-eighth year, Alexander came to deduce how many evenings they had passed in that pub he was surprised by the answer, because all those hours had left little of any substance in his memory. He remembered John remarking sourly ‘Never seen that before’ when Sam scored 180 with three darts. He remembered the evening the jukebox was delivered and the evening it was removed, the following month. And he would remember giving Sam the photographs that Pen had sent, and Sam pushing them back across the table and saying: ‘I’d like to see her make something out of this hole.’ Before these pieces, though, he remembered a scene that commenced with Sam in the street, by the house with the green tarmac drive, smoothing his tie against his chest as he walked.

  Sam did not look up as he approached the pub, and when he joined Alexander he kept glancing at his briefcase, as if preoccupied with what was in it. ‘Bugger of a day,’ he said. ‘People. Who needs them?’

  ‘What have they done?’ asked Alexander.

  ‘Changing their minds all the bloody time. Their word isn’t their bond any more. I’m tired of it, Mac,’ he said, rubbing his face with a weariness that did not seem genuine.

  They had downed their first pints and Alexander was on the point of going to the bar when the door opened and Liz Gatting was there. She hesitated, pulling her coat close to her, as if she were about to step out of doors into rain. ‘Can’t believe the awfulness of it,’ Sam commented, and he raised a hand. ‘Actually, she needs glasses but she’s too vain to wear them.’

  Liz put her hand on Sam’s shoulder and bent down to let him kiss her cheek. Several months had passed since Alexander had seen her, and their last conversation had been easy and trivial, but when she looked up at him now it was as if she had been slighted by him recently and had not decided how she should act towards him.

  ‘You know each other, of course,’ said Sam, looking at neither of them.

  ‘We do,’ said Alexander. He took the hand that she was holding out to him and guided her to the seat beside him. She gave him a small smile. ‘What would you like?’ he asked her. ‘I was on my way.’

  She looked across at the bar and pressed a hand to her hair, which now was straight and a darker blonde. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘What shall I have, Sam?’

  Sam swapped two beermats quickly on the tabletop, as if performing a conjuring trick, and Liz watched his hands. ‘What say we go somewhere else instead?’ he said. ‘Down to the river? What say you, Mac?’

  ‘Mac?’ Liz interjected. ‘Why do you call him that? Makes him sound American.’ She put a hand on Alexander’s arm protectively and instantly withdrew it.

  ‘We all called him Mac, in the army,’ Sam explained to her. ‘Don’t know who started it.’

  ‘You did,’ said Alexander, to make Sam look at him.

  ‘You sure about that?’ asked Sam, looking at Alexander from under lowered brows.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alexander, and he chinked the empty glasses against each other.

  ‘What do you say, Liz? Do we move on?’ asked Sam.

  ‘All right with me,’ said Liz. ‘Would you mind, Alec?’

  ‘No, let’s go.’ It’s a two-thirds majority. Democracy must prevail. Take me away from all of this.’

  They walked down to Greenwich, three abreast for most of the way, with Liz on the other side of Sam, holding his arm demurely. They went to another pub and sat upstairs, at a table that gave a broad view of the river. Every boat on the water attracted Sam’s attention. ‘So how long have you two –?’ Alexander finally asked him.

  ‘Early days,’ Sam replied, patting the back of Liz’s hand. ‘Early days,’ he repeated, and he took his wallet from his jacket. Liz asked Alexander about the shop and about his family, in such a way that nobody overhearing their conversation would have detected any hint of their former intimacy.

  Occasionally they returned to that upstairs bar, where Sam was always readily distracted by any traffic on the river. Once the three of them went to the cinema together, to see Zulu. Liz sat upright in her seat throughout the film, with a magazine flat on her knees and her hands primly folded on the magazine. They went to the circus on Blackheath, where at last he saw her laugh as she used to laugh, so the gap in her teeth could be seen. And then they all met again in the Crown and Anchor, on an evening that Alexander would remember acutely.

  Sam and Liz came in together. He was wearing a brown and white checked shirt with a button-down collar, and a cardigan with leather buttons under his jacket. Liz wore a violet dress that was very short, and a broad white plastic belt and gold earrings. Her eyes were rimmed so thickly with black liner that she looked drowsy. She waited with Sam until he had been served, then followed him to Alexander’s table.

  ‘Yours,’ said Sam, positioning a pint in the centre of a beermat and sliding it towards Alexander. Daintily he placed Liz’s half-pint before her. ‘Elizabeth’s. And mine.’ He raised his glass and gulped a quarter of its contents.

  ‘You look great,’ Liz told Alexander.

  ‘He does,’ Sam agreed, and he put down his glass. He watched the foam until it had ceased to move. ‘Mac,’ he began, and as Liz shifted on her stool Alexander knew what was about to be said. ‘Thing is, we’re going to get married.’ He looked at Alexander as if he were looking at a house of cards to which he had just added another piece.

  ‘And we’d like you to be our best man,’ Liz added warily.

  ‘Delighted,’ said Alexander, but Sam’s expression remained watchful. ‘Delighted for you,’ Alexander insisted, and as proof he took Liz’s hand and kissed it.

  ‘Once more?’ requested Sam. ‘With a touch of joy this time.’

  ‘Sam,’ Liz chided. ‘Thank you, Alec,’ she said graciously.

  ‘Do you have a date?’ asked Alexander.

  ‘It will be a short engagement,’ said Sam.

  ‘Very short,’ said Liz.

  ‘Very short indeed,’ said Sam. ‘Six weeks from today.’

  ‘From tomorrow,’ Liz corrected him.

  ‘From tomorrow,’ Sam said.

  ‘Woolwich Town Hall,’ said Liz. ‘Mum wanted a church, but I insisted. Don’t want all that palaver.’

  ‘If a registry office is good enough for David Bailey, it’s good enough for us,’ Sam stated, easing back and taking out his cigarettes. ‘You’re OK with being best man, Mac? You’ll get the parents to look after. You realise that? Meet the ma, at last.’ He pulled a horrorstruck face for Liz, who reached for a cigarette and did not look at him.

  Before the ceremony there was no opportunity to meet Sam’s mother, because Sam lost so much time looking for his cuff-links that he and Alexander arrived at the town hall barely a minute before the bride. Neither did he have a chance to talk to her when the wedding ceremony was over, because Liz’s parents came up to Alexander immediately, one on each side, smiling thinly, and walked with him across the hall to the cars that were to take the guests to the party, an interval during which they let him know that they had once allowed th
emselves to think of him as their future son-in-law. ‘But not to be,’ said her mother, and she drew a glove through the loop of a thumb and forefinger, as if it gave her the consolation that others would derive from rosary beads.

  ‘Nice enough boy, though,’ said Liz’s father.

  ‘And a friend of yours, Alexander,’ said her mother, giving him a winsome, sorrowing smile.

  ‘It’s just, you know,’ her father insinuated.

  ‘It’s just –?’

  ‘Well, you know,’ her mother replied. ‘Some young men are the steady type. Others aren’t the steady type. You always seemed steady.’

  ‘I’m sure he loves her, Mrs Gatting,’ said Alexander.

  ‘Yes,’ she mused. ‘Yes, I’m sure he does.’

  ‘And vice versa,’ he added.

  Mrs Gatting made no response, but hurried half a dozen steps forward to yoke two children with her arms and steer them down the steps; her husband nodded at Alexander, then followed her.

  Inside the restaurant Sam’s mother was waiting for him, stocky as a snowman in her pleated gaberdine. As Alexander approached she beckoned her husband, who was still in the street, lifting a lapel to shelter his match.

  ‘Hello, love,’ she said. She turned her back to Alexander, offered him a shoulder of her coat, and unwound herself out of it. ‘Peculiar we’ve never spoke, what with you knowing my Sam all these years.’

  ‘It is, Mrs Saunders,’ said Alexander, draping her coat on his arm.

  Her eyes were dark as mahogany, and she looked at him as if she were determined to discover immediately, and did discover, what it was that had made her son befriend him. She smiled, and in the skin below her eyes appeared scores of lines as fine and clear as the veins of a mint leaf. ‘This is Arnold,’ she said.