He crossed the room to the side of the settee. Mrs Beckwith appeared to be dozing; a couple of her upper teeth were exposed, as if a dream were amusing her. A piece of needlepoint work, stressed tightly on its frame, rested on Mrs Beckwith’s lap; her right hand held the needle to the petals of a half-formed carnation. Gingerly he stepped around the table; his foot struck something on the floor, lightly, but the contact made him gasp with shock. The fallen tumbler rolled against the castor, and he bent down to retrieve it. Mrs Beckwith’s eyes were open, squinting drowsily at him. ‘Mrs Beckwith?’ he said. ‘Mrs Beckwith?’ He took a magazine from the rack beside the electric fire and scooped her unresisting, heavy hand onto it.
For perhaps a full minute Alexander looked at Mrs Beckwith. She had been a friend of his mother when they were girls, he told himself; she had been a wife to Mr Beckwith and a mother to Megan; she had been the sister of a man of whom he knew almost nothing; and all that she had been was but a breath that now had gone. And now that this breath was gone, her body was no longer hers. The hands were like replicas of her hands in wax. An artificial tinge of violet had appeared in the skin around her eyes and lips. The feeble smile, which seemed to widen as he looked at her, was no longer like any smile her mouth had ever formed. He thought of her kiss, and the smile began to seem malevolent, as if it were a message from Death.
His limbs were weightless but he could not move. ‘Mr Beckwith,’ he said, too quietly to be heard. The magazine fell from his quaking hand. ‘Mr Beckwith,’ he called. ‘Mr Beckwith, come here.’
Mr Beckwith rushed past him. He placed his palms and then the backs of his hands to Mrs Beckwith’s cheeks. ‘Oh God,’ he murmured, as if he were looking into the far distance and could see that something terrible was about to happen to some people there. ‘Oh God,’ he repeated, in exactly the same tone. He touched his brow to the tip of Mrs Beckwith’s nose. ‘Oh God,’ he repeated again. ‘Oh God, oh God.’ He took hold of her wrist and squeezed it tightly.
Alexander went into the kitchen, where he stayed until he heard Megan scream. He hurried back into the room, where Mr Beckwith was sitting beside his wife and stroking her hand, and Megan was standing on the threshold, her hands flattened over her eyes and her mouth moving.
‘Could you phone Dr Simpson for me?’ asked Mr Beckwith. ‘Tell him that my wife has died, and ask him to come.’ He eased Mrs Beckwith’s head against his shoulder. And when the call had been made he asked ‘Is that done?’ and said ‘Thank you,’ and continued to stroke Mrs Beckwith’s hand, as though they were a couple sitting on a bench at the end of a tiring day. ‘Go and see to our girl,’ he said.
Megan was sitting on the paving stone that formed a step in front of Mr Beckwith’s shed, staring at the back wall of the house. Drinking the air into her body in shuddering gulps, she fanned a hand at him to keep him away, then hid her eyes. Tears were dripping from her fingers, but she neither moved nor spoke.
‘Shall I leave you alone?’ he asked. He fixed his gaze on the grass around her feet, waiting for her to reply.
‘Don’t go, Eck,’ she said at last. ‘Not yet.’ She uncovered her eyes, and looked at the ground with a resolute vacancy. ‘Don’t go yet, Eck.’
Alexander would remember Dr Simpson glancing at him suspiciously through the French windows, and the undertakers manoeuvring the coffin into the hall, followed by Mr Beckwith, who kept one hand on its lid, and Mr Beckwith coming out into the garden to lead Megan inside, and the blackbird that was singing on the TV aerial as Alexander stood on his own doorstep, rehearsing what he might say to his mother. He opened the door and saw his mother in the kitchen, wiping her eyes, and his father leaning against the wall and looking at her helplessly.
16. Chocolate soldiers
‘Let’s have a look at you then,’ said his mother, leading him to the middle of the living room carpet. She let go of his hands and circled him twice, as if she were checking the condition of a valuable object that had been damaged then perfectly repaired. ‘You’re taller,’ she decided.
‘I’m exactly the same height as I was when I left,’ he replied.
‘No, I don’t think so. Taller.’
‘So I’ve miraculously begun to grow again, have I?’
‘It’s the boots, Mrs MacIndoe,’ Sam Saunders interjected. ‘Like Frankenstein. It’s all in the footwear.’ Hoisting a trouser leg at the knee, he wiggled a gleaming black boot for her.
Alexander’s mother took a step back and surveyed her son from his feet to his beret. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But you’re holding yourself better, Alexander. Not slouching.’
‘I never slouched,’ he replied.
‘It didn’t seem so before, but now I’m not so sure.’ She came towards him and tugged both his cuffs at once. ‘The making of you, this will be,’ she said firmly.
‘A fine figure of a man,’ Sam observed, appraising the knot of his own tie in the mirror and sleeking his hair with his palms.
‘Yes, he is,’ said Alexander’s mother. ‘And I’m sure your mother will be just as pleased with you.’
Sam removed his elbow from the mantelpiece and stood at ease for her. ‘Nice of you to say so, Mrs MacIndoe. As long as I bring her a few packets of fags she’ll be pleased. Otherwise, the odds are against it.’
‘That’s unkind,’ she said.
‘Not unkind, Mrs MacIndoe. The truth. The plain truth. Not every mother is like you, Mrs MacIndoe,’ Sam told her with a gallant grin. ‘I’m the fifth kid in ours, and it’s hard enough feeding two, she’s always said.’
‘Well, we’ll be feeding you this evening,’ said Alexander’s mother, glancing towards the door. She returned her attention to the fit of Alexander’s jacket.
His mother’s discomfiture with Sam Saunders was what Alexander would remember from the first hour of his homecoming, and that she had set the dinner table in pairs, as if he and Sam were both guests in her house. ‘So, Sam, do they treat you properly?’ she asked, setting his plate on its mat.
‘Alexander’s letters don’t tell us much about himself,’ his father explained. ‘Quite good on the weather. Poor on the human dimension.’
‘Well enough,’ said Sam, prodding his fork on the surface of his chop. ‘But you get nothing like this from the NAAFI, I tell you.’
‘I should hope not,’ said Alexander’s father.
‘And how are you finding it?’ Alexander’s mother asked solicitously, laying down her cutlery.
‘We’ll get through OK, Mrs MacIndoe. Some better than others, but we’ll all get through, God willing.’
‘That isn’t terribly encouraging,’ she said, hesitantly lifting her knife.
‘Some find it a struggle, but it’s OK.’
‘Is it a struggle for you?’ she asked, frowning as she looked from Alexander to Sam and back to her son.
‘Do you want an honest answer?’ asked Sam.
‘Honesty’s always best, I say.’
Sam impaled a potato on his fork and pondered it before speaking. ‘As I see it, Mrs MacIndoe, this rigmarole is a waste of time. These should be the best years of our lives and we’re hanging around in a stupid camp, keeping the files nice and tidy, doing the paperwork, waiting for life to get going again. Learning all this useless stuff by rota.’
‘The breech and the cocking piece and the upper sling swivel and the lower sling swivel,’ chanted Alexander drearily.
‘By rote,’ interjected Alexander’s father. ‘One learns by rote. One performs tasks in accordance with a rota. Or not, as the case may be.’
‘I stand corrected, Mr MacIndoe. But whatever it is, I think it’s going to make me a mental case. Patience of a saint, your son. But me, I’m chafing at the bit, morning, noon and night.’
‘But you’re making friends?’ Alexander’s mother asked.
‘A few, Mrs MacIndoe. But a mite too keen, some of them, if you get my meaning.’
‘I’m not sure that I do,’ said Alexander’s father.
‘Bit too enamour
ed of the old rifle for my liking, Mr MacIndoe. They’d like nothing more than to skewer some lad with a bayonet.’
‘A lot of gung-ho,’ Alexander agreed. ‘Itching for a fight.’
‘Useful quality in a soldier,’ commented Alexander’s father.
‘I’m afraid we’re not real soldiers, Mr MacIndoe,’ Sam responded. ‘We’re chocolate soldiers, me and him.’
Alexander laughed, and his father’s displeased face was turned on him. ‘Just a joke, Dad,’ he said, as his father shook the salt cellar over his food.
‘Graham,’ said Alexander’s mother. ‘Anyone would think you were a general or something.’
Sam watched Alexander’s father for a moment, then brightly asked: ‘So what did you do in the war, Mr MacIndoe?’
‘Civil Defence.’
‘A volunteer,’ his mother added. ‘And there was the desk job too.’
‘Keeping the wheels of the economy turning,’ his father said.
‘The eyesight,’ explained his mother, and there was a pause in which the chatter of cutlery on crockery was the only sound. ‘But you’ve made some friends?’ she then resumed.
‘Not many, Mrs MacIndoe, and Sandy here’s the best of them,’ Sam said vigorously. ‘The thing about your boy is that he has a great capacity for pain, tedium and misery. Whereas I have great difficulties with pain, tedium and misery, and need the companionship of a better specimen.’
‘So you’re doing well?’ Alexander was asked, and his mother’s effortful optimism obliged him to say that he was, though it was from a shared sense of futility that his friendship with Sam Saunders had grown.
‘He’s a good man to have beside you on exercises, is your boy, Mrs MacIndoe. Never gives up. Doesn’t make a fuss. Gets his head down and gets on with it.’
‘Pleased to hear that,’ said Alexander’s father, looking steadily at his son.
‘And very handy for the social life too. Only one thing impresses the ladies more than a uniform, and that’s Sandy’s face. Honeypot MacIndoe, I call him.’
‘Alexander?’ his mother queried.
‘Joking again, Mum.’
‘It’s all right, Mrs MacIndoe. Alexander’s a good lad. Keeps me on the straight and narrow, he does. Most of the time.’
‘So, son,’ said his father. ‘Any prospect of an interesting posting?’
‘Do you mean dangerous, Mr MacIndoe?’ asked Sam. ‘Malaya, that kind of thing?’
‘Not that I’ve heard,’ Alexander told his father, and he looked to Sam for confirmation.
‘No, Mr MacIndoe. No point. They’d give anyone independence sooner than send us to sort them out.’
‘What exactly have you been doing these past few months?’ his father asked neither of them in particular. ‘Tell me. Tell me what you’ve been up to,’ he said, as though rejecting his own annoyance, and Sam, no longer facetious, told him about their drills and their lessons, embellishing his stories with such conviction that Alexander had no difficulty in corroborating them.
At the end of the evening, while his mother and Sam washed the dishes, Alexander went out into the garden with his father. He lit a cigarette and listened as his father talked about Hanif Mohammed’s heroic innings. ‘Remarkable,’ his father pronounced, his chest rising in admiration of Hanif Mohammed. ‘Never be beaten, that record, not in my lifetime,’ he said, and he groped for his pipe in his cardigan pocket. Fastidiously he packed a pinch of tobacco into the bowl, and as his father’s fingertips tamped the tobacco repeatedly, Alexander experienced a burgeoning awareness, like an onrush of nausea, that he was about to speak to his father in a way he had never spoken to him before.
‘You can’t stand him, can you?’ Alexander said.
His father regarded the unlit pipe, then raised it to his lips. ‘Matches?’ he said, from the side of his mouth.
Alexander struck a match and touched it to his father’s pipe. ‘You really don’t like him, do you?’
‘Who?’
‘You know.’
‘Him indoors?’ replied his father, and he blew a shot of smoke towards the door. ‘I wouldn’t put it like that.’
‘But you don’t, do you?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Hard to say. Perhaps I’ve seen a few too many of his sort.’
‘And what sort is that?’
‘Alexander, it doesn’t matter. Leave it be.’
‘What sort?’
‘Talkers. He’s a talker.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it. Not my type, that’s all.’ His father craned his neck to look into the kitchen over Alexander’s shoulder, and smiled wryly. Sam walked past the doorway, carrying a low stack of plates on a support of splayed fingers, like a waiter. ‘Remember a character called Douglas Nesbit? Worked in Stan Porter’s shop, until he got sacked?’
‘No,’ Alexander replied, making no effort to remember.
‘He had another line, selling nylons out of a suitcase. You’d see him at the station, flogging his stuff. Any sign of the police he’d jump on the nearest train and put out his stall at the next stop. Remember Iris Evans?’
‘Yes.’
‘She used to buy her scent and stockings from Dougie. One of his regular customers. Best ladies’ outfitter in London, he used to call himself. Kept up his spiel non-stop until he’d emptied his case. Never knew a talker like him.’ His father exhaled and smiled, as if the flavour of his recollection resided in the smoke. ‘A bit like Douglas, your pal. Similar in some ways. Gift of the gab. Would have made an excellent spiv, your friend.’
‘He’s a good chap, Dad,’ said Alexander, and he told his father about the time that Sam had rescued a boy from the river, and how he punched the boxing champion who was making fun of a boy who stuttered. ‘He makes everyone laugh,’ he said. ‘Even the sergeant-major.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ said his father, and he knocked his pipe against the concrete post of the garden fence. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said, though he could not have been unaware that Alexander had more to say.
On the next day Alexander went to the Beckwiths’ house. It was not the same as it had been before he went away. New paper covered the walls of the hall, and the pictures of the Cornish harbour and the bullfight had been taken down. The furniture in the living room was different: the cushions of the new settee and armchairs were perfectly flat, as if nobody had yet sat on them; the ship’s-wheel clock had gone, as had the glass-fronted cabinet with the two shelves of books; heavy new curtains framed the windows, their folds as hard and regular as plaster mouldings.
Alexander scanned the lifeless room. ‘I’ll make some tea,’ Megan suggested. ‘You two go on out. I’ll bring it to you.’
Mr Beckwith led Alexander into the garden. They stopped in front of the central flowerbed, by a rectangle of green canvas on which lay the shears and a pair of scissors. A purple and scarlet fuchsia lolled over the step to the shed, and a Spanish broom now masked the water butt.
‘Looks nice,’ Alexander remarked. Mr Beckwith gave him a look that had nothing in it. ‘I miss this as much as anything,’ Alexander was about to say, but he prevented himself and said instead: ‘My parents send their best wishes.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Mr Beckwith. He glanced towards the French windows. ‘Haven’t seen them for a while,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome any time, my mother said to tell you.’
‘Good of her,’ said Mr Beckwith.
‘Give them a call one weekend,’ Alexander said.
‘Aye,’ said Mr Beckwith. Staring at the ground, he stirred a fingertip on the creases of his brow. ‘Thank you for coming round,’ he said.
‘I like coming here,’ Alexander replied.
Briefly an exhausted smile appeared on Mr Beckwith’s face. ‘Must get this done,’ he said, picking up the scissors.
‘Shall I help you?’ Alexander asked.
‘Only
a one-man job, this one,’ said Mr Beckwith.
Megan came out of the house and set the tray on the canvas. ‘Staying for a while?’ she asked. In her voice there was no clue as to her wishes. Mr Beckwith was walking the lawn’s perimeter; he lifted a sawdust-coloured petal from the soil beneath the rose bush.
‘Not for much longer,’ Alexander replied.
‘I’ve got stuff to do,’ said Megan, taking a mug from the tray. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and she looked at him as she blew across the steaming tea. ‘But come up before you leave, won’t you? I’m in my room.’
Alexander walked around the garden while Mr Beckwith worked. Neither of them spoke for five minutes. ‘I was thinking of our holiday in Cornwall,’ Alexander then remarked, though this was not true. ‘Remember the drunkards in the churchyard?’
‘Aye,’ said Mr Beckwith, but in the tone of ‘No’.
Alexander surveyed the garden again, and saw Megan at her window, turning back into her room.
‘You’ve better things to do,’ said Mr Beckwith. ‘Go up now, why don’t you? Come back and say goodbye. I’ll be here.’
Megan was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, holding a book on her knees in such a way that Alexander imagined her as the custodian of a secret society and the book as its list of rules and regulations. ‘You OK?’ she asked.
‘Ready for battle at a moment’s notice,’ he said.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said. ‘I meant, are you OK with this?’ She took one hand off the book and made a gesture that swooped around the hallway.
‘I think so. Should I have stayed away?’
‘Like everyone else? No,’ she said, and she looked strongly at him. ‘I’m glad you didn’t.’
Ghost MacIndoe Page 17
