‘Let us hear what the greatest of all books has to say,’ Alexander would remember Mr Barrington often saying, as he hoisted from the basin a heavy volume that was pierced by dozens of bookmarks. ‘Edward Gibbon,’ he would declare, flourishing the book like a smash-and-grab robber’s brick. For many years Alexander would remember Mr Barrington pounding his chest with the book and turning his woeful eyes to the ceiling, in emulation of the self-flagellating Jerome. And similarly he recalled Mr Barrington with his cheeks sucked in, to emulate the holy starvation of Simeon Stylites, and swaying on the lip of the dais like Simeon atop his pillar, giddily surveying the desert in which the demented hermits swarmed.
More substantial than any of these, however, would be Alexander’s memory of a gusty morning in spring, and all the windows open, and Mr Barrington wearing a tomato-red tie. With no preamble at all, Mr Barrington declaimed: ‘“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”’ Pieces of apple blossom fell onto Alexander’s bench while Mr Barrington read. From the street came the sound of a wooden crate full of bottles being loaded onto a van, as Mr Barrington turned back through the book. ‘“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,”’ he read. Alexander looked around the room: John Halloran, his fingers pressed to his brow, was feigning concentration and was perhaps asleep; Mick Radford had a copy of the Eagle folded inside his Bible; only Paul Malinowski appeared to be listening.
When he was done with Genesis, Mr Barrington stepped down from the desk and sauntered along the gangway between the windows and the benches, his copy of Gibbon held behind his back. ‘To recap. Last week, as I fear few of you will recall, we grappled with the mystery of the incarnation of the Son. We were entertained by the quaint simplicity of the Docetes, who maintained that the conception and birth of our saviour were to be thought of as phantasms, that the figure who suffered flagellation and crucifixion was but the image of a man conjured by the Almighty. In the opposite corner we had Cerintus of Asia, who contended that Christ was a real, physical man who became the vessel of the Holy Spirit. Somewhere between these two extremes lies the subtle Nestorian heresy. Here the humanity of Christ is seen as a sort of overcoat that is thrown over his divinity. We spent some time in the company of other, more abstruse doctrines, and we came to have some sympathy, did we not, for those early theologians of whom the blessed Gibbon writes’ – he brought the book to his face – ‘“as soon as they beheld the twilight of sense and heresy, they started, measured back their steps, and were again involved in the gloom of impenetrable orthodoxy.”’ Mr Barrington clapped the book shut.
‘The Incarnation is a difficult one, no question of that,’ said Mr Barrington, and he rolled his eyes in comical bewilderment. ‘A bona fide head-breaker. But today’s mystery is the trickiest poser of them all. The Trinity,’ he proclaimed with a throw of an arm, as if unveiling a statue of that name. ‘Let me sketch a map of the terrain we are about to cross. The creed as we know it was formulated in AD 325 at the first Council of Nicaea. The Nicene Creed, we should more properly call it. The Council of Nicaea, convened in the place where the Turkish city of Iznik now stands, devoted much time and effort to the refutation of three great heresies concerning the Trinity. The first of these was Arianism, which maintained, crudely speaking, that God the Father was the creator of all things, even of God the Son. The Father preceded the Son by an interval too infinitesimal for the human mind to comprehend, but precede Him He did, so the Arians insisted, and of course in doing so they denied the eternal perfection of the Trinity. Tritheism, the second heresy, posited a sort of committee of three equal beings who comprise the Divine Essence. Sabellianism, a more abstract version of the preceding, posited the notion that the three component divinities of the Trinity were attributes rather than beings – a Trinity of abstractions, if you will.’ Mr Barrington stopped beside Alexander and rubbed his troubled brow. ‘The Council of Nicaea rejected these and many other abominable philosophies and asserted the absolute consubstantiality of the Father and Son. The Father and the Son, in other words, are somehow one and the same substance, for all eternity. As we shall now discover, this idea is difficult to contemplate for any length of time without falling, unwittingly, into heresy – which is precisely what the bishops did at the Council of Rimini, a mere thirty-five years later. Athanasius, esteemed by Gibbon as the wisest of theologians, confessed that the more he thought about the Creator of the universe, the less he understood. We might take some consolation from this.’
Little of this and little of what followed made any sense to Alexander, and barely one word of it would be left in his memory the next day. But he would remember that, as Mr Barrington expounded the errors and inadvertent blasphemies of the ancient bishops, the infinite formulations of the Trinity became an incantation that cast a mood of rapturous passivity over him. A flag of sunlight wafted across the room, making the benches shine like new bronze. Sunlight slithered into the jar of copper sulphate, illuminating oceanic depths of perfect colour. He could feel the pressure of the air on his skin.
Mr Barrington was concluding the lesson: ‘A venerable hermit by the name of Abbas Pambo, upon being asked to give guidance to a visitor, memorably replied: “If he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my words.” Five minutes of our period remain to us. Let us spend it in instructive silence. Close your eyes, gentlemen. Consider the matter of today’s lesson.’
Alexander imagined a hall of white stone with white stone benches around the wall and glassless windows that gave a view of an aquamarine sky and a sea as blue as copper sulphate. He heard the sweep of feet on a sandy floor and the murmuring of men in deep and pleasurable perplexity. He opened one eye, and saw that Mr Barrington was smiling at the apple tree, but with a smile that seemed veiled, as if what he was smiling at was not the petals that the tree was shedding by the hundred, but the memory of those petals.
13. The great Mclndoe
‘But I have to say, I believe our friend Nasser will get the better of it,’ Mr Greening ruminated, accepting another slice of beef from Alexander’s mother.
‘You do?’ said Alexander’s father, eliciting Mr Greening’s further thoughts rather than doubting his foresight.
‘I do,’ Mr Greening affirmed. From Alexander’s father he accepted another measure of wine, which he held above the new tablecloth and gazed into for a moment, as if to read the omens in it.
Still looking at Mr Greening, Alexander’s father replaced the wine bottle softly on its coaster.
‘In the long run, I do,’ confessed Mr Greening, with a sombre shake of his head. ‘There will be mighty ructions. Damned mess there’ll be. But when the situation settles down Mr Nasser will still be there, you wait and see. And we’ll have made enemies of people we need on our side.’ He raised a flap of meat towards his mouth. ‘And then we’ll have to look out,’ he added, lowering his fork again.
‘We shall,’ said Alexander’s father.
‘A bad business,’ said Alexander’s mother.
With his knife Mr Greening pushed a tide of gravy across his wedge of beef. ‘Oil,’ he said. ‘Oil is the key to everything. The engine of the globe runs on oil, and we should never forget it. Mr Nasser and his ilk are the chaps who have it, not our chums in Israel. We’re making a rod for our own backs if we carry on like this.’
‘We are,’ agreed Alexander’s father, and then for a moment everyone at the table was busy with their food.
Alexander glanced at Mr Greening, who was working his knife into the meat as if he were teaching it a lesson, while the champing of his jaws made wrinkles appear around the base of his ears and on the sides of his soft naked scalp. Mr Greening looked up and met his gaze. ‘Madmen and buffoons on all sides, eh?’ he said. ‘Madmen and buffoons.’
‘Y
es, sir,’ Alexander concurred, conscious that his father’s hands had ceased moving over his plate.
‘Still, not all gloom and doom in the world, is it?’ resumed Mr Greening. ‘Let’s be grateful for Jim Laker, eh?’
‘A remarkable exploit,’ said Alexander’s father.
‘If we had more men like Laker we’d all be better off,’ Mr Greening told Alexander. ‘Fewer men like Eden. More men like Jim Laker, and more like your father,’ he went on, sagely regarding his glass of wine. ‘You’re a sporting chap aren’t you, Alexander?’
‘I’m not very good at cricket,’ Alexander replied, becoming aware that the collar of his shirt, starched that morning by his mother, was making his skin sore.
‘A passable fielder,’ said his father.
‘But you follow the game?’ demanded Mr Greening. ‘Read the papers, listen to the wireless?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Alexander replied.
‘Never trust a chap who doesn’t know his cricket,’ said Mr Greening. ‘Diligence, dependability, application, a sense of history, sense of team spirit.’ Mr Greening watched his own hand rotate the glass through ninety degrees. ‘Your father, now. I knew he was a good egg from the moment I set eyes on him. I dropped by at lunchtime, out of the blue, and what do I find? What is your father doing? He’s at his desk, statements of account on one side, Test report on the other, corned beef sandwich and a glass of water in the middle. Good egg, I thought to myself. And I was right.’
‘Thank you, Mr Greening,’ said Alexander’s mother.
‘Something of Stafford Cripps about that glass of water, I thought,’ said Mr Greening to Alexander’s father, and then he turned to Alexander again. ‘What of your future path, young man?’ he enquired, and lifted a potato to his mouth.
‘We’re undecided, aren’t we?’ Alexander’s father replied.
‘My advice,’ Mr Greening commenced, before Alexander could think of an acceptable response, ‘is that you should consider following in your father’s footsteps. Give it serious consideration, young man. It’s a good career, and a dependable one. People will always need a safe place for their money. And they will always need a bit more than they have. A position of responsibility, of trust,’ said Mr Greening, but of what he went on to say Alexander would remember only the word ‘profit’, expelled repeatedly from his lips as if the excitement of the idea had set off a little explosion in his mouth. He would remember also Mr Greening’s paisley silk cravat, and the way his parents sat like members of a preacher’s congregation while Mr Greening was speaking, and that they used the dinner service that had once been Nan Burnett’s and which was kept in a brass-cornered box beside the sideboard in the dining room. And he would remember that when Sidney Dixon came round, no more than one month later, they used the ordinary plates, and his father drew the box out onto the rug to let Sidney Dixon see the special plates.
‘May I?’ asked Sidney Dixon. ‘It’s very nice, very nice,’ he slurred, turning a tureen in his white-gloved hands. ‘About 1890? Worth a pretty penny. Don’t ever sell it, though,’ he said to Alexander’s father. ‘Not even to me,’ he added, and his thickened purple lips opened in a smile. Careful as a bomb disposal man, he lowered the tureen into the box. He stood up, then walked across the room to the window and back to the sideboard, raising his foot to flex his knees after each step. In the mirror above the mantelpiece Alexander looked at Sidney Dixon’s head, at the nose that was like a stub of melted candle on one side, at the ginger hair that sprouted in clumps on his mottled scalp. The reflection of Sidney Dixon’s eyes, set deeply behind tight circles of skin as if peering through a torn sheet, met Alexander’s in the mirror, and seemed to excuse him for his rudeness.
Alexander’s mother left the room to fetch the dishes and when she came back they arranged themselves as they had sat for Mr Greening’s dinner, with the guest at the head of the table and Alexander and his parents on opposite sides. Sidney Dixon watched the movements of her hands as she apportioned the food. ‘Not so much for me, Mrs MacIndoe, if you wouldn’t mind,’ he said, making a narrowing gesture with his raised hands. At each syllable the struggling skin around his mouth tightened into minuscule pleats. ‘A small portion only. A small portion for a guinea pig,’ he said, glancing at Alexander’s father, who smiled in return.
‘Sidney’s a guinea pig,’ said Alexander’s father, turning to his son, who smiled bemusedly. ‘You explain, Sidney.’
‘Your dad’s right. I’m a guinea pig. A Mclndoe Guinea Pig, second class.’ Sidney Dixon again exchanged a look with Alexander’s father.
‘Explain, go on,’ said Alexander’s father.
Alexander saw his mother fiddle with the roses in the bowl that she had put in the centre of the table, but his father’s attention did not leave the face of their guest.
‘Well,’ Sidney Dixon began, ‘as you can see, I got a bit mucked up. Frazzled I was, in the Blitz. Sort of in the Blitz, but that’s another story.’ He wriggled his hands over the edge of the table, like glove-puppets. ‘Hands got fried, and the face, and other bits. In a bad way, I was. But it would have been worse if I hadn’t gone to Archibald Mclndoe. A lot worse. Wouldn’t have made it, probably. Loads of us wouldn’t have made it without him, or have come out looking like rashers of bacon.’
‘What did he do?’ Alexander asked, and it occurred to him that he had not made a single unprompted remark to Mr Greening.
‘You wouldn’t want the details of it,’ said Sidney Dixon, looking quickly at Alexander’s mother, who continued to stare at her plate. ‘But he was a burns man, and he did things that nobody else could do.’
‘And they worked,’ said Alexander’s father.
‘They worked,’ said Sidney Dixon, nodding. ‘Dozens of airmen there were. Hurricane and Spitfire pilots, then bomber crews. They were the real Mclndoe Guinea Pigs. Still stay in touch, a lot of them. Get together every year, down in East Grinstead. I’m an affiliated Guinea Pig, being a civilian.’ He made a fist of his right hand and beat gently on the table, singing quietly: ‘“We are Mclndoe’s army, We are his Guinea Pigs, With dermatomes and pedicles, Glass eyes, false teeth and wigs.” That’s our anthem. The bit that’s suited to polite society,’ he said, making a bow, unacknowledged, to Alexander’s mother. ‘Owe him everything, we do. He fixed us up in more ways than one. He fixed our skin and he loaned us money if we needed it. I couldn’t go back to my old trade. Used to be a mechanic, but I’d keep dropping things now. Sir Archibald’s money kept me going for a while, then I became a back-room boy in my old factory, ordering parts and all that. Deadly dull,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Sidney is not cut out to be a pen-pusher,’ said Alexander’s father. ‘Some of us are, but not Sid Dixon. And now the day of liberty is at hand.’
‘My second stroke of luck,’ Sidney Dixon told Alexander, without irony. ‘I decided I had to set up on my own.’
‘Swelling the ranks of the nation of shopkeepers,’ Alexander’s father interrupted.
‘Needed a few quid more, and I wandered into your father’s place. Saw his name on the door and I thought: this is fate. Same name. Spelt slightly different, but the same name. This is my man, I said to myself.’
‘Yes, but this MacIndoe charges interest,’ said Alexander’s father, pursing his lips into a smirk of cupidity.
‘What are you going to sell, Mr Dixon?’ Alexander asked.
‘Antiques is what I aim to do. Real antiques. Good quality stuff, like those plates. But it’ll be bric-à-brac for the time being, most likely. And some of my pictures. Bung them in old frames to make them look better.’
‘Your pictures, Mr Dixon?’ asked Alexander’s mother.
‘A bit of an artist on the quiet,’ said Alexander’s father.
‘I daub a little, Mrs MacIndoe. Watercolours. Something I did after I came out of the Victoria. Good exercise for the hands, and it keeps the spirits up.’
‘And what do you paint?’ asked Alexander’s mother, at last looking at Sidney
Dixon, focusing on his eyes fixedly, as if afraid of the consequences of allowing her gaze to wander.
‘Anything that takes my fancy,’ Sidney Dixon replied. ‘I go up to town on a Sunday, and walk around for a while until a scene catches me. Something always turns up.’
‘Sidney’s a great walker,’ Alexander’s father observed to his son, as if Alexander and Mr Dixon were boys of the same age, whom he was hoping to make friends. ‘Never takes a bus if he can help it, do you?’
‘Hardly ever. Might frighten the children.’
With the side of her hand Alexander’s mother brushed a microscopic crumb from the tablecloth. ‘Alexander likes to walk,’ she said. ‘He can’t wait till the holiday. Walks miles when we go away, don’t you? Up hill and down dale.’
Ghost MacIndoe Page 14
