‘Oh God,’ laughed Alexander. ‘Here we go again.’
‘It’s not funny, Alexander,’ said Jane, with her hands on her hips, as she had stood when she argued with her brother on the hill.
‘You mean Edwin?’
‘Of course.’
‘He told me a bit. Yes.’
‘How much is a bit?’
‘That he lived in your house for a while.’
‘And why?’
‘Yes, and why.’
‘Anything else?’
‘He only had a couple of minutes, Jane.’
‘He shouldn’t have,’ she said, but her anger had gone.
‘I asked him. He didn’t have any choice.’
‘But he shouldn’t have. He should have left it to me.’
Alexander put a hand on her shoulder and she stepped back from him. ‘I don’t see it’s such a terrible thing,’ he pleaded, but she stared morosely at the floor. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘He’s a bad man, Alexander,’ said Jane quietly, as if making a confession. ‘There’s more. You don’t understand.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘He’s a bully. I don’t like him. Let’s leave it at that.’
In bed they read for a while, then she turned out the light on her side. Alexander read his book for half an hour more. He was almost asleep, he would remember, when she put the light on and leaned over him. ‘Was he horrible to you?’ she asked. She held his face between her hands as she looked at him searchingly, as if his face were a mirror, before she kissed him.
29. Esmé
Megan left Mitchell not long after they came to see the Park Rangers play, and by the beginning of the next school year she had left Leeds to take up a job in Berwick, where eventually she met Shaun Clarke, a teacher at a different school, with whom she was living by the start of 1971. Of this date Alexander would be certain, because he could recall that the card on which she had written her new address and phone number, and no other message, arrived in the week the currency changed.
After she had moved to Berwick, Megan did not come down to London as often as she used to, but she continued to visit at least once during every school holiday, and at some half-terms, and Alexander still spoke to her every two or three weeks, until she went to live with Shaun. They talked about little else but Mr Beck with, whose fondness for him was all that sustained the friendship with Megan now, Alexander would sometimes think as he put the phone down, feeling an undertow of regret that weakened once he was with Jane, and in time vanished entirely. Jane was sometimes with him when Megan rang, but she met her only once, in the half-term break after the trip to Edinburgh. Megan had called in at the shop, and when she was about to leave he said that if she could wait for another half-hour she would get to meet Jane, and Megan, as he would remember, opened the bag that she was carrying to take out a textbook, which she carried into the stockroom, where she sat making notes until Jane arrived. She came out of the room as if she were the owner emerging to greet a customer, and spoke to Jane with a familiarity that Jane seemed to take as condescension. When Megan asked Jane what they had done in Edinburgh, she replied in a single sentence. Megan asked if they had visited a certain shop, which she located in the wrong street. Alexander corrected her. ‘It’s maddening, isn’t it?’ Megan remarked to Jane. ‘He’s been there once and he knows it better than I do, and I’m there every other week.’ Jane smiled sympathetically, but as if Megan were talking about something that had nothing to do with her. When Megan asked Alexander a question about Mr Beckwith, a question she had already asked him, Jane sidled to the nearest rack and took a record out. She was nicer than she looked in the photos was all Jane said when Megan had left, but in the weeks after Megan’s visit she began to seem resentful of the time he spent with Mr Beckwith. Putting down her book as Alexander set the phone down after talking to Megan, she asked why it was impossible for her to meet him. She became almost petulant. ‘You know everything about me,’ she would protest. Why should she be excluded from this part of his life, she wanted to know. And after Edwin’s visit it seemed at times as though she had determined that they should spend the minimum amount of time apart. She rarely spent an evening with her friends unless he agreed to come along. For several weeks she would appear outside the shop every night as he closed, as if she suspected that he might sneak away. Often, when she kissed him, she would hesitate as her lips were about to touch his, and look into his eyes, as if to ensure that he comprehended the significance of her kiss. ‘You’re mine,’ she would say, locking her hands over the buckle of his belt as she nuzzled at his neck. ‘And I’m yours,’ she would tell him, and he would not turn round, because he would not be able to look at her honestly.
One Wednesday lunchtime, having closed the shop for the afternoon, he went into Greenwich, and as he was about to cross the road in front of St Alfege a noise from the riverfront made him look to his left and he saw Jane. Sauntering past the shops on the other side, with one hand on the strap of her shoulder bag and the other in the pocket of her dress, she resembled herself as she used to look, when he would see her walking slowly down the hill, as if nothing could hurry her or disturb her self-possession.
Alexander stepped into the churchyard to watch her as she passed. At the newsagent’s window she stopped to read something that produced a smile like the smile he had used to see sometimes when she browsed through the records in his shop. When she turned into Nelson Road he followed her, at a distance. She stooped to look at a picture in the window of the framer’s shop, where she stayed for some time. Curious to see what had absorbed her attention, Alexander ran over as soon as Jane had reached the next corner. The picture was an engraving of the Rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens, and Alexander studied it with such concentration that years later he would still be able to see the colossal circular hall with something at its centre that looked at first like an altar but was in fact a brazier, and the orchestra playing on a structure shaped something like a typewriter, and the groups of gentlemen in tricorne hats and ladies in wide-hipped skirts dotted here and there on the vast disc of the floor. He followed her as she rounded the block and crossed the road to walk back towards the town hall. One would have thought that she was taking a long afternoon’s stroll in the springtime sun rather than returning to a job that bored her. He watched her until she had gone, and what he felt, he thought, was perhaps a last upsurging of love.
Soon after Easter they spent an evening with Sam and Liz. She barely spoke during the drive back from Croydon, as if she were brooding over some remark that he had not heard. It had been raining lightly, and she kept the windscreen wipers going after she had turned the engine off, until the blades screeched on the glass. She left her hand on the switch, but took it away when he touched her. Raindrops as fine as pollen were filling the tracks of the wipers. She opened the door and then closed it again. ‘Alexander,’ she said, in the tone of someone who has listened long enough and now must speak, ‘I want to be married, and I want to leave London. I am not going to wait for ever.’ She turned in her seat and challenged him with a gaze in which humiliated anger was stronger than affection. ‘I don’t want to mess around any more.’
‘We’re not messing around,’ he said.
‘Time’s passing. A few more years and I’ll be thirty. I’m not going to be a sad old spinster.’
‘Come on, Jane. Nobody’s a spinster nowadays. Spinsters became extinct after the war.’
‘I want to get married, Alexander.’
‘Why?’ he asked, and the word had the taste of a farewell.
‘The same reason as anyone. Why don’t you want to? That’s the real question. You won’t marry me, will you?’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Alexander. Clearly you don’t want to. So what is it? Is it my family?’ she demanded.
‘Of course it’s not your family.’
‘It’s not my father? Because he doesn’t like you?’
&nbs
p; ‘Your father? Of course it’s not.’
‘So what is it? Explain. I want to know.’
Thinking of the day he had followed her, he did not answer immediately, and then he replied: ‘I don’t know why you need to be married.’
‘I don’t need to. I want to,’ she told him.
Fifty yards down the street a fox squeezed itself under an advertising hoarding and trotted along the pavement, away from them, he would remember. For a second or two he was distracted, then he looked at Jane, who was staring at the animal, with her hands gripping the steering wheel tightly, as if she intended to run it down. ‘Oh, go away, Alexander,’ she said, staring at where the fox had been. ‘Go away, go away, go away,’ she said, her voice dwindling hopelessly. She stayed in the car until he reached the corner of the street; as soon as he turned the corner he heard her drive off.
She would phone him at the shop every second or third day, to berate him for his weakness, for his fecklessness, for his cowardice, his laziness, his selfishness, his charm. She implored him to come back, she reminded him of days they had spent together, she swore at him for deceiving her. One afternoon she came to the shop and berated him in front of one of his regular customers, and after that the calls became less frequent. ‘You’ll be back,’ she told him, the last time she rang.
By the end of August the calls had ceased. It was at the end of August that Megan came down from Berwick for the weekend. Fischer was playing Spassky in Reykjavik, he would remember; in a shop window on Oxford Street a chess board had been set up with a Stars and Stripes next to the white pieces and a Russian flag by the black. They had not seen each other for almost half a year, since she had begun living with Shaun.
Alexander took the afternoon off to meet her up in town. As he crossed the last road before Bond Street station he saw her waiting for him at the top of the steps, watching him as he approached, as though she had instantly detected that some aspect of his appearance had changed but was trying to define what the change might be. It was not until he was a couple of yards from her, and she put out her hand to take the hand of a small dark-haired girl who was wearing, like Megan, a white shirt and a denim skirt, that he realised she had brought Shaun’s daughter. ‘This is Alexander,’ said Megan to the girl, putting a hand on the front of Alexander’s shoulder. ‘And this is Esmé.’
‘Hello, Esmé,’ said Alexander, smiling at the girl.
‘Say hello, Esmé,’ said Megan.
Esmé screwed up her eyes at him, as if she were looking up into the clouds. ‘We’ve been to the zoo,’ she told him, and her fist unfurled from a pair of crumpled tickets.
‘And now we’re going to the big shops,’ said Megan. Over Esmé’s head she winced at Alexander, miming ‘Nothing I could do.’
‘We’re going to ride the stairs.’
‘She means the escalators. Madame Tussaud’s, the zoo, the big shops. Our mission for the weekend.’ There was an infinitesimal delay, then she leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek.
Alexander touched her arm and smiled at Esmé, who was scowling at him as if he had told her to be quiet. She tugged at Megan’s hand and they crossed the road to Selfridge’s, where they took the escalator to the first floor. At the second flight Esmé stamped up the steps to get ahead of them, and stood with a hand on each handrail, her head pushed forward, leaning into an imagined gale. Following Esmé, they travelled up to the top floor, turned, and went back down to the basement. ‘You look well,’ said Megan as they returned to the ground floor, giving him a wry look.
‘As do you.’
‘Are things all right?’
‘Things are all right. Everything all right with you?’
‘Oh yes.’ Megan held Esmé back to allow a family to overtake them, then let her go. She looked at Alexander earnestly and pressed her lips together as if she were dissatisfied with him. ‘Are things really all right?’ she asked.
‘I’m not with Jane any more,’ he told her. He had told no one else.
‘Bloody hell, Eck,’ Megan muttered. ‘I thought something was up.’
‘Bloody hell indeed,’ he said, with a smile of resignation.
‘You were together for ages. How long?’
His last conversations with Jane seemed to obstruct his mind, preventing him from seeing the months that lay beyond them. ‘A long time,’ he admitted.
‘I thought you two were in love.’
‘I think we were. Most of the time.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing happened, Meg. We split up,’ he said, now wishing he had said nothing.
‘But why? I thought –’
‘I don’t know,’ he interrupted. ‘It was good and then it wasn’t. It became too –’ he said, making a circle of his arms as though to clutch a figure on the step beside him. Hearing the tone of complaint in his voice, he stopped.
‘Too what?’ she asked, but Esmé took hold of her skirt and pulled her towards the door. They left the shop and walked along the street to John Lewis, where Esmé clung to Megan on every flight of the escalator until they arrived at the floor with the toy department. Megan and Alexander stood by a pillar while Esmé explored the shelves of toys. ‘And how’s Jane?’ she resumed.
‘We haven’t spoken for a while. I’ve hurt her.’
‘So you were the one who ended it?’ asked Megan, apparently intrigued.
‘You could say that. She wanted to get married. And I said no.’
‘You said no?’
‘In effect. I couldn’t say yes.’
‘Why not?’
‘I told you,’ he said, looping his arms again.
‘Not much of an explanation, Eck.’
‘Well, it’s the best I can do,’ said Alexander, looking for Esmé. ‘She thinks it’s because I’m weak and chronically indecisive. Says I’m just drifting through life.’
‘She might have something there,’ smiled Megan, stroking his arm glancingly. ‘But you’re not chronically indecisive. You have made a decision, after all. Or might you get back together?’
‘I very much doubt it,’ said Alexander. ‘It was marriage or nothing. She won’t change her mind.’
‘And neither will you?’
‘Highly unlikely.’
She hooked his arm and they walked down the aisle in which Esmé stood, gazing at a menagerie of soft toys. ‘It’s sad, Eck,’ said Megan, as if agreeing with him. ‘Perhaps we’re the same. I could never get married to someone who wanted to marry me.’ Alexander laughed briefly, dutifully, almost silently. ‘Remember Mitchell?’ she asked, as if something she saw had reminded her of him.
‘I do,’ he said, having waited for Megan to continue. ‘Try as I might to forget him.’
‘Married a German girl. A teenager. Who then ran off with someone even older.’
‘How terrible for him,’ said Alexander, feeling a nip of jealousy.
‘He was a fool,’ she sighed, as if only now arriving at that conclusion.
‘He was.’
Megan smiled at Esmé, who still had not noticed they were near. ‘Anyone else on the horizon?’ she asked.
He was watching Esmé, and did not answer. Pushing a hand into the depths of a shelf, she angled her shoulder to reach farther, and extracted something as if easing it from a trap. Unable to see what she had taken, Alexander crept up behind her and peered over her head. She was holding a small velour elephant. She held the toy firmly in both hands and turned it in front of her face, enraptured, it seemed, by the dark plum colour of its body, by the buttercup yellow of its eyes and mouth and the tuft of its tail. Suddenly aware that Alexander was behind her, she turned and held out the elephant. ‘Will you buy me this?’ she asked, with a jubilant grin.
‘Good Lord, child,’ said Megan, clamping Esmé’s head between her hands. ‘Curb your avarice.’
‘What?’
‘Alexander is a friend, Esmé. He’s not Father Christmas.’
‘I want it,’ Esmé sulked, crushing the toy
to her chest.
‘I can see that. But you can’t have everything you want all the time,’ Megan reasoned.
‘It’s lovely. I want it.’
‘It’ll be your birthday soon, Esmé. If you still want it then, we’ll see what we can do,’ Megan countered, but Esmé crumpled her face, as if she were hearing gibberish. ‘Elephants are today’s great passion,’ Megan explained to Alexander. ‘Aren’t they, my love? We wanted to free all the elephants from the zoo, didn’t we?’
‘When is your birthday?’ asked Alexander, but Esmé would not look at him.
‘November,’ said Megan, shaking her head at the recalcitrant girl.
Crouching in front of the girl, Alexander made a bowl of his hands and Esmé relinquished the toy. ‘Come on,’ he ordered her, ignoring Megan’s disapproving frown. Esmé followed him to the till, drumming her hands on her legs.
Somewhere near Manchester Square they had a cup of coffee and tried to keep Esmé entertained when she had finished her ice cream, and then Megan and Esmé went off to Shaun’s brother’s house, where Shaun was waiting for them. They stood in the mouth of Bond Street station, waving goodbye to him together. Megan seemed happier now than she had been since the day Mrs Beckwith died, Alexander thought.
A cool, damp breeze blew along Oxford Street, and the sunlight gave a concrete wall the lustre of oak. The temper of the street was changing, as the shoppers climbed onto buses and descended into the station, crossing the people who were up in the West End for the night. For a minute Alexander continued to stare at the station steps, from where Megan had disappeared into her life, and then he went back into his. He walked to Oxford Circus and down Regent Street, feeling as if an atmosphere of thicker air enveloped him and muffled the sounds of the crowds. Later that evening, he would remember, he walked across Greenwich Park to the street in which Jane lived. Her flat was in darkness, and at the sight of the black windows his sense of guilt abated temporarily. He went to the Crown and Anchor for an hour, and then he went home, where he played the recording of the Bach cello suites that she had given him for his thirtieth birthday, which brought to mind, intermittently, the drowsy pleasure of a Sunday morning, with the curtains of her bedroom window rising and falling slightly, and casting a sapphire light on the wall beside the bed, and the music rising and falling in the other room.
Ghost MacIndoe Page 30