Ghost MacIndoe

That day arrived at the end of an unseasonably cold week, near the end of term. It was a dark morning, as Alexander would remember, and it became darker and colder during the walk to school. Hail started to fall during assembly, and pools of melting ice were forming in the playground as they crossed to the gymnasium.

Alexander took his place in the line, underneath the basketball hoop. Locking and unlocking his fingers as Mr Owen would do when watching them exercise, he leaned forward to look at John Halloran. He licked his palm and swiped it across his hair from brow to nape, and blinked as if unable to credit the evidence of his eyes. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ he said. ‘What an abomination. Yes. You. An Johnny Weissmuller you are not, Halloran.’ He put his hands behind his back and flexed his knees, like Mr Owen did, and mimicked Mr Owen’s dry, mirthless laugh: ‘uck, uck, uck’. Roy Pickering bit his lip to prevent a smile. ‘I don’t know what you find so funny, Pickering. You are an fairy, are you not?’ Roy Pickering’s lip was turning white under the pressure of his teeth, and it was then that Alexander saw that Mr Owen had come soundlessly into the gymnasium, and was closing the door.

‘You’re dead, Monty,’ whispered Mick Radford. ‘I’ll bring the wreath.’

But Mr Owen did not appear to have heard Alexander. ‘Come on. Jump to it! In line!’ he ordered, looking at nobody in particular. ‘Right then, girls,’ he shouted in his usual exultant voice. ‘Ten sit-ups, ten squats, ten press-ups. Spread out. Now. Get to it.’ As he did every day, he wandered among them, ordering one to stand and explain the state of his singlet, another to account for the hole in his shoes. ‘Sloppy, Pickering, sloppy. Parents got no pride?’ Grinding the keys in the pocket of his tracksuit, he stood over David Kingsley. ‘Oh come on, Kingsley. This is pathetic. My grandmother could do better.’ He spun round to shout at Roy Pickering: ‘You seem to think you could do better, Pickering. Ten extra press-ups. Yes. You. Now. Get to it.’

Mr Owen wiped his hair; the flesh above his mouth flinched as if he had toothache. ‘Right, then,’ he said, in the doom-laden tone that always signified the same thing. ‘Your favourite game. Captains Allerton and Fletcher. Come here.’ Neil Allerton swaggered to his place on Mr Owen’s right hand, rotating his arms as if swinging Indian clubs; Dennis Fletcher stood on his left, regarding his classmates with a compromised look. ‘Allerton first,’ said Mr Owen, and so Allerton and Fletcher took turns to choose the members of their teams. Only Lionel Griffiths and John Halloran were left after Alexander had been selected for Allerton’s squad.

Mr Owen had left the gymnasium while the captains made their choices, and now he returned, cajoling a football along the floor with dainty taps of his instep. He inspected the teams. ‘No, no,’ he decided. ‘Too many weeds in this brigade. MacIndoe, go to Fletcher. You too, Malinowski. I’ll join Allerton’s mob. Form up.’

They adopted their skittle formations at opposite ends of the hall. Mr Owen nudged the ball towards Fletcher’s team, then pushed his way into the midst of Allerton’s. ‘Fletcher, your man,’ said Mr Owen.

Paul Malinowski, from his place at the point of the triangle, chipped the ball softly into the midst of the opposition. The boy whom the ball had first struck stepped out of the formation, taking care that his gratitude was not apparent. ‘Ten squats, ten press-ups, ten sit-ups,’ Mr Owen ordered. The boy withdrew to the sector of the gymnasium where the eliminated players did their penance, while Malinowski went back to his position.

Allerton’s front player kicked the ball hard and low into Fletcher’s formation, dislodging Malinowski. A member of Fletcher’s front line retaliated with a powerful strike, and thus the game proceeded until Alexander, the last survivor of his row, faced Mr Owen. Alexander would remember the way Mr Owen put the ball softly on the circle of blue paint in the middle of the floor, then turned it two or three times, as if locking a manhole cover. He would remember seeing the wet leaves swabbing the glass of the windows to Mr Owen’s left, and noticing for the first time the pelt of dust on top of the rafter closest to the door, while in the periphery of his vision Mr Owen took a pace backwards. Then he realised that Mr Owen was taking more than a single pace. He saw Mr Owen look at the ball, at him, at the ball, again at him, and dash forward, his face still up.

There was no pain to the blow immediately, just a sound like the sizzle of lard in a hot pan, and a warm dribble over his lips. His head felt too heavy on the floor. A long way away, Mr Owen’s feet were splayed like a penguin’s; there were other feet close by, rocking from heel to toe. No one approached him. The ball was at rest against his arm; he placed his hand on it, and felt the texture of the matt leather, the rib-like laces and the yielding rubber nipple between them. With no thought of what he was doing, he scooped the ball into his lap and lifted it. He stood up dizzily, and then he dropped the ball and kicked it on the half-volley. Indifferently he saw Mr Owen double over. He could feel the air congeal about him.

Mr Owen unfolded himself and looked pensively around the gymnasium. He contemplated the cages that protected the light bulbs on the walls; his gaze skimmed over the boys’ faces, and his head nodded in agreement with himself. When at last he spoke, his voice was precise and low, and pleasant. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Continue this game without me. Then the same teams for an end-to-end relay. Then out on the field for a few laps. Allerton, keep order.’ He fetched the ball from the corner of the room and handed it to Allerton. ‘MacIndoe. You come with me.’

Mr Owen led him through the changing rooms and out into the corridor, where he opened the outside door. ‘Please,’ he said, ushering Alexander into the rain. ‘If you’d oblige,’ Mr Owen requested, indicating that Alexander should move farther away. Alexander took a backwards step, into the puddle that was spreading from the drain; the cold water flowed over the tops of his plimsolls. From the shelter of the doorway Mr Owen looked at Alexander with the expression of someone trying to understand why the shivering boy had chosen to stand in ankle-deep water. ‘Now, Monty,’ began Mr Owen solicitously. ‘We have a choice. We could proceed forthwith to the headmaster’s office. It is my belief that a measure of corporal punishment would ensue from this course of action. A report to your parents might follow. To be frank, Monty, I would stake my job on such an outcome. In fact, not to beat about the bush, I would make damned sure of it.’ He stooped forward to inspect the sky and made a snort of satisfaction. ‘Or we could resolve this matter now and have done with it. What do you say, Monty? The choice is yours.’

Water dripped from Alexander’s fingertips; blood dripped from his chin. Watching Mr Owen’s hands squirming in his tracksuit pockets, he realised that he could hold an adult in contempt, and the chill of his flesh seemed to increase his exhilaration at his discovery. It was his intention to say nothing, so he was taken aback to hear himself say: ‘I don’t mind, sir.’

One of Mr Owen’s feet made a movement as if crushing a cigarette. ‘I suggest the latter course of action,’ he said.

‘Whatever you say, sir,’ Alexander replied.

For half a minute Mr Owen blankly regarded Alexander, and then, like a man preparing for an arduous task, he pulled the hood of his tracksuit slowly over his head. ‘We shall proceed to the playing field. On the double. Now.’

On the slope above the cricket nets Mr Owen overtook him and stopped him with a straight arm. ‘Give me those shoes,’ he demanded, and he cracked the soles against the back of Alexander’s legs six times. ‘Now you’ll run around that field until I tell you to stop. Do you understand? And if you ever do anything like that again, ever, ever,’ he repeated, with the tendons of his neck straining, ‘I’ll have you running on roads in your bare feet until the bones come through. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Alexander.

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’

The pain of Alexander’s beaten skin seemed to dissolve into his body, and as it weakened he experienced a clenching of his mind against Mr Owen. It was not a hatred he felt now, but an adamant exclusion, and the pain in his ribcage enclosed him perfectly. Armoured by his discomfort he ran over the cold, clutching grass; the rain tingled on his tongue.

‘Don’t slacken, MacIndoe,’ shouted Mr Owen from the embankment, flapping a plimsoll.

‘No, sir,’ Alexander replied, assuming for Mr Owen’s benefit a rictus of agony.

Alexander’s classmates were appearing on the path above the playing field. ‘Right, MacIndoe,’ called Mr Owen when Alexander came back on to the straight. ‘Back to the gym with you. A dozen more press-ups, I think.’ He lobbed the sodden plimsolls towards him, so they landed short, in the waterlogged long-jump pit. ‘Eyes right!’ ordered Mr Owen as Alexander neared his approaching friends. They all looked away from him, and he from them, but as he trudged down the line Alexander heard them chanting quietly: ‘One day. One day. One day.’

Before the day was over Alexander MacIndoe understood that he had been transformed into a new character. Mick Radford, who had often thrown a punch at him whenever they had met in a place where there was no teacher to observe them, ambushed him in an empty corridor. The fingers of Mick Radford’s right hand furled into a fist, then opened out again as he cackled. ‘An hero, Monty,’ he said. ‘Proud of you, pal.’

Mr Owen did not return after the summer holiday, and by many of the boys it was taken as a fact that his departure was due to his punishment of Alexander MacIndoe. ‘That’s what made the boss twig he was a loony,’ said Lionel Griffiths on their first day back. ‘It’s obvious.’ A note in Paul Malinowski’s handwriting was glued to the underside of his desk’s lid: ‘By his sacrifice we were redeemed.’ Throughout the winter term and into the spring, boys to whom he had never spoken would acknowledge him with the password of his name. ‘MacIndoe,’ they hailed him, clenching a fist and raising it to shoulder height. He was being acclaimed for something he had not intended to do, but which had become a story, he told himself, a story like a garment that had been put over him. ‘MacIndoe,’ the boys pronounced defiantly, and he would be obliged to act in a manner befitting the figure he had become, nodding like an officer to his off-duty men.

11. The girls’ party

The Gattings moved into their house before Coronation Day. Of this Alexander would always be certain, because he would remember the way the street looked for the party: the bunting slung so low that he could touch it when he stood on his chair, and the house in which the new family lived standing out from the others in the terrace, with its windowframes freshly painted white and the front door a blue-grey colour that was like a pigeon’s plumage. He would remember helping to set the trestle tables down the centre of the road, as they had done for the VJ party, and the paper plates coloured red, white and blue. He would remember that he had tried to picture the makeshift stage on which his mother had sung eight years before, and had succeeded in hearing her voice for an instant, like the voice of someone trapped. This he would recall, and the car – a black Jowett, with one front wheel removed – that was parked exactly where Gisbert had sat. He would not remember, however, that it was over Liz Gatting’s bent back that he had looked to see where Gisbert had been. Alexander would have no recollection of Liz Gatting that preceded a birthday party the following year, a week after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile.

It was because he was a friend of Megan’s that he was invited, but he walked to the house on his own, and she took no notice of him when he arrived. Sitting on one of the rugs that had been spread on the lawn, she was taking a plate of sandwiches from the mother of the girl whose birthday it was. ‘Feeding time,’ the mother called out, and each of the girls who were sitting in a ring around Megan reached over to grab from the plate.

The mother carried a plate to a second group of girls sitting on another rug, in front of a juniper bush. Her husband came out of the kitchen, bearing a pie in a fish-shaped dish. Balls of sweat were threaded onto the hair at his temples, and ovals of pale skin were disclosed between the buttons of his straining shirt. ‘A gooseberry are you, son?’ he remarked to Alexander in passing, as he swivelled the dish high above his head. Only then did Alexander realise that, apart from himself, there were just two boys in the garden.

‘Find yourself a place,’ said the mother. ‘This lot’ll eat every last crumb in five minutes.’

A tortoiseshell cat with matted fur butted its head on Alexander’s shins. Turning away from the girls, he knelt on the grass to rub the animal’s throat. A pair of crepe-soled sandals appeared beside the cat. Crumpled white cotton protruded through the gaps between the straps, like peaks of mashed potato, Alexander thought, and he almost laughed.

‘That’s Nelly’s cat,’ said a girl’s voice. ‘His name’s Willow, but her dad calls him Zeppelin. I’m Liz. Who are you?’

‘I’m Alexander,’ he said. ‘Megan’s friend.’

‘Only got one, has she?’ Liz replied. The gap where a tooth had come out at the side of her mouth increased the jollity of her smile, and there was something amusing, too, about the way her hair was done, in ringlets that bent on her shoulders, like the hair of a much younger girl. The collar of her blouse was sticking up, as if she had pulled it over her head. Awaiting Alexander’s answer, she tucked her thumbs behind the big rectangular buckle of her belt. Her missing tooth and this buckle, covered with grass-green hessian, would be what Alexander would continue to remember of her appearance that afternoon.

‘She’s got a lot of friends, I think,’ said Alexander.

‘You think?’

‘No, she does,’ said Alexander. ‘Don’t you?’ he asked Megan, who had left her group and was coming towards him.

‘Don’t I what?’ Megan asked.

‘Have lots of friends.’

‘What are you talking about, Eck?’ said Megan. She gave the cat’s head a quick scratch then looked impatiently at Alexander. ‘Come over here if you want anything to eat,’ she told him, hauling him by a shirt-sleeve.

When the food was finished they all went indoors to play games. In the hall Liz Gatting jabbed him in the small of his back and demanded: ‘We too boring for you, then?’

A girl in a pink cardigan rested her chin on Liz’s shoulder to stare at him. ‘Yes. More fun with your Megan, is it?’ asked the girl.

‘Stick with his Megan,’ said Liz to her companion, smugly.

‘Alexander’s Megan’s friend,’ said the girl in the pink cardigan, putting on a haughty face.

‘Goodbye, Megan’s friend,’ taunted Liz.

The two girls went into the living room, but Alexander stayed in the hall until Megan joined him.

‘You know Liz?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you get on with her?’

‘Sort of,’ said Megan.

‘So you don’t?’

‘So I do.’

‘So why are they being like that?’

‘Like what?’ she asked, and Alexander repeated what they had said. Megan looked at him for a moment, searching for something in his face. ‘You don’t know?’

‘No. If I knew I wouldn’t ask you.’

Water filled the inner corners of Megan’s eyes; she put her right hand firmly on his shoulder. ‘Eck, sometimes you really are slow, you know that?’

‘What do you mean?’ Alexander asked.

‘I mean, there is a mirror in your house somewhere, isn’t there?’

‘Of course there is.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Good grief, Eck. It’s perfectly simple. She wanted you to sit with them, not with me.’ She raised her hands to her face in mockery of his surprise.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Alexander.

‘No, Eck. “I don’t think.” That’s what you should say.’

‘She doesn’t even know who I am,’ he protested.

Megan pulled her socks up tight to her knees. ‘What a nit,’ she said to her shoes, and she left him in the hall.

For an hour or so they played charades. Embarrassed by the perpetual blush that he could feel on his skin, Alexander sat on the floor in a corner of the room, trying to hide behind the other two boys, who sat upright on adjacent straight-backed chairs. ‘One of the boys should have a go,’ the mother decreed, and the two on the chairs simultaneously looked back at Alexander, as if passing the blame for something.

Encircled by the girls, Alexander could think of nothing except his awkwardness. Megan was sitting under the keyboard of the piano, her chin on her knees, waiting for him. ‘Do The Cruel Sea,’ the mother told him. Alexander ground his teeth on the mouthpiece of an imaginary pipe and made a visor with his palm. Heroically he scanned the room’s horizon, facing the terrible waves. Decisive as Jack Hawkins, he gave wordless orders to his men and directed their efforts. Nobody guessed what he was doing.

‘That’s not how you do it, you nit,’ said Megan after he had given them the answer. With a mad grin she flailed at the carpet, then serenely made wave shapes with a fluttering hand. ‘That’s how you do The Cruel Sea. You do “cruel” and then you do “sea”.’ She smiled at him for a long time, however, and it was Megan who took the satin scarf to blindfold him for the last game of the party, and spun him around three times. ‘Behind you, behind you,’ she murmured. ‘Behind you, behind you.’ Shoeless feet made a constant shuffling all around him, and the springs of the armchairs groaned as they were trampled. Alexander’s fingers fell into the pleats of a puffed sleeve. He could distinguish the pitch of this girl’s breathing and the minty smell of her. As Liz Gatting’s hip touched his a girl shrieked, ‘Sandy MacIndoe, beware!’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Liz. Her eyes were levelled at his when he slipped the scarf off. ‘Take no notice,’ she said, and she touched his hand as he pulled the knotted blindfold over her hair.

‘That’s right,’ said Megan, ‘take no notice.’ She sat down on the edge of the settee, where she remained, with her arms crossed, while Liz Gatting fumbled along the curtains and groped broadly at the air. ‘Over here,’ instructed Megan, and then she walked on her toes to the door, stealthily pushed its handle down, and closed it silently behind her, as if this were part of the game. She had left the house before Alexander could think of an excuse to follow her.

Three days later he went to visit Mr Beckwith, hoping to see Megan. He went to the back of the house without knocking on the front door. Mr Beckwith was not in the garden and the padlock was clasped on the shed. The lilies Alexander had planted with Mr Beckwith were in bloom. He picked a snail shell from the soil of the flowerbed and lobbed it over the shed, but his throw was too weak and the shell bounced on the roof and fell back on the lawn.

Until he heard Mrs Beckwith’s voice he had not seen that the French windows were open. ‘Who’s that?’ she called from somewhere inside the back room. ‘Is that you, Megan?’

‘It’s me, Mrs Beckwith.’

‘Alex?’ she responded in a strange voice, as if he were someone who had been away for years.

‘Yes, Mrs Beckwith.’ Alexander stood on the edge of the grass, stranded.

‘He’s asleep, if it’s Harry you’re after.’

Alexander approached the windows. The curtains were three-quarters drawn, obscuring everything except one end of the table and a rectangle of wallpaper to which was attached a calendar and a clock in the form of a ship’s wheel. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs Beckwith,’ said Alexander, speaking into this segment of the room.

‘And Megan’s down the shops,’ she said, as though conversing with someone right beside her.

‘Oh well,’ Alexander replied. ‘I’ll be going.’ He had moved closer and was standing on the crescent of irregular paving stones in front of the French windows. Still he could not see where Mrs Beckwith was.

‘She’ll be back in a little while. Come in and wait for her.’ Alexander placed one foot on the metal strip at the threshold.

‘It was Mr Beckwith I came to see really. In case I could help out, that’s all. It’s not important.’

‘Well, you’re here now. Come on in,’ said Mrs Beckwith. She was sitting in an armchair, facing the empty grate and brushing at a lapel of her navy blue dress. A sliver of sunlight cut across the arm of the chair, on which Mrs Beckwith’s hand was curved around a glass of clear liquid with a cube of ice in it.

‘How are you, Alex?’ she asked, pushing herself up on her elbows to look at him. Her mouth was darkened with lipstick and she was wearing ruby-coloured studs in her ears, as if she were about to go out.

‘I’m well, Mrs Beckwith, thank you,’ Alexander responded.

‘Sit down, why don’t you?’ said Mrs Beckwith, pointing at the armchair beside the chimney breast.

Next to the chair in which Alexander sat was a cabinet with sliding glass doors and a tea service on the lowest of its three shelves, below two rows of books. Aware that Mrs Beckwith was watching him, he began to read the spines. ‘The Day of the Triffids,’ he said, at the first title he recognised.

‘Megan’s the reader in this household,’ said Mrs Beckwith.

‘My dad’s the reader in ours. I think he’s read that one.’ Mrs Beckwith stirred the ice with a little finger and did not speak. Alexander completed his reading of the higher row; upstairs a toilet flushed. ‘I’m in your way,’ said Alexander. ‘There wasn’t anything special.’

‘No, Alex, wait for her,’ said Mrs Beckwith softly. ‘She’ll be glad to see you. We’re always glad to see you.’

Eking it out for as long as he could, Alexander read the lower titles; the churning of the water pipes was the only sound.

‘How’s school?’ Mrs Beckwith asked.

‘It’s OK, Mrs Beckwith.’

‘Do you like school?’

‘Not much.’

‘Neither did I,’ said Mrs Beckwith, with a rueful smile at the grate.

In the room above them Mr Beckwith coughed; a thrush sprang across the piece of paving that Alexander could see from where he sat. He twisted in his chair so that Mrs Beckwith could see him look at the ship’s-wheel clock. ‘I should be going, Mrs Beckwith. My mother will be expecting me back soon.’

‘Your mother and I,’ said Mrs Beckwith, and she paused for so long that Alexander thought she had finished her sentence and he had misheard. ‘We were at school together. You knew that?’

‘Mum said, yes,’ he replied.

‘She was gorgeous. A stunner she was. We used to go out together. To the cinema. Very popular with the boys was your mother. I was the invisible girl when I was with her.’

The talk of his mother’s schooldays made Alexander uncomfortable, and from the way Mrs Beckwith took a sip from her drink he sensed that if he stayed he would hear something he should not know. He cleared his throat, but she looked at him and spoke before he could get to his feet.

‘She could have been a singer, I reckon. A professional singer. On stage. Had the looks, had the voice. You’ve heard her sing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of course you have. Silly question. Wonderful voice. It’s a waste, Alex.’

‘I don’t know, Mrs Beckwith,’ replied Alexander.

‘Not the worst waste in the world, I grant you,’ said Mrs Beckwith, but suddenly her eyes became lustreless. ‘My brother went somewhere in France and never came back and his wife has gone looking for him and won’t ever come back now.’ She scratched at the lapel of her dress as if something were stuck to it. ‘Harry gets taken into some godforsaken jungle halfway round the world and comes back half-starved and half-cracked,’ she said, forcing a laugh.

‘Mr Beckwith doesn’t seem cracked to me, Mrs Beckwith.’

‘You’re sweet, Alex,’ she said. ‘Half-cracked, not cracked all the way.’ She took another sip. ‘Harry’s very fond of you. You know that?’