‘What are you thinking?’ Jane murmured, and he told her that he had been reminded of the holiday in Pitlochry. ‘Tell me,’ she said, so he described the bus, and the sound of the rain in the trees, and the otter spinning in the water. ‘Was it better than this?’ she asked him.
‘Of course not,’ he told her.
‘So you’ll remember this, when we’re old and decrepit?’
‘Yes.’
She sat up and gazed over the city, at the sea and at the hills on the horizon, and her face again looked as it did when she listened to music.
28. Edwin
Alexander would recall that they were standing at the sink, facing their rain-pocked reflections, when his father mentioned Douglas Nesbit. Jane was very pleasant, very pretty, his father remarked, and then he was silent for a minute. They talked about the department in which she worked, and another pause followed. ‘Her dad’s name,’ he resumed, ‘wouldn’t be Douglas, would it?’ Alexander confirmed that it was. ‘What’s he like?’ his father asked negligently, and Alexander described Mr Nesbit. ‘Could be the same one,’ his father remarked, as if to himself. ‘I thought I’d told you about him,’ he said, when Alexander requested an explanation, and when told that he had not, not as far as Alexander could recall, he merely said ‘Oh well.’ Alexander persisted, and his father, arranging the cups and the coffee pot and the jug of milk on the tray, answered that Douglas was something of an operator, a long time ago, during rationing. ‘He had a way of lifting his finger,’ he said, copying Jane’s almost peremptory gesture, the gesture that Alexander had noticed that his father had observed and seemed to find interesting. ‘Apart from that, you’d never know she was his daughter. If she is his daughter,’ he added, nodding at the door. ‘Nothing like the Douglas Nesbit I remember,’ he said, but later Alexander saw him steal a look at her, as though intrigued by other similarities he had noticed between Jane and her supposed father.
But Jane would never talk about her father, and so rarely did Alexander visit her parents’ house that he learned little more about him until the Sunday evening they went to see Edwin, her mother’s brother, who was in London for the day.
Edwin was waiting for them, alone, in the living room, but he affected not to hear them enter. With his fingers intertwined behind his back and his back gracefully bent, he continued to peruse the face of the barometer until Jane was at his side, and then he turned and gave her a smile that showed that this was always his way. He was tall and narrow-shouldered, and his slenderness was accentuated by the close cut of his black suit, which he wore with a lemon shirt and a loosely knotted silk tie that was a slightly darker shade of yellow. His hair was as thick and the same colour as Jane’s and her mother’s, and was swept back in tight rigid waves that reminded Alexander of patterns drawn with icing sugar. ‘Hello, my dear,’ said Edwin, in a voice that was gentle and actorly. He cupped a hand around Jane’s waist and touched her cheek with his moustache, which was trimmed so that its fringe followed perfectly the rim of his lip. Edwin’s fingernails, Alexander noticed, were cut as neatly as a woman’s, and on his middle finger he wore a large signet ring, into which was set a flat oval bloodstone. ‘And this must be your beau,’ said Edwin to Alexander, uncovering bloodstone cuff-links and a watch with a gold-coloured face as he held out his hand. He had a strong and affable handshake, which left a perfume like sandalwood on Alexander’s skin. ‘How do you do, Alexander. As my niece’s young man, you are by definition a fine chap,’ he informed him. ‘If you’d be so kind,’ he requested, pointing to a paper bag on the seat of one of the chairs. ‘A belated Christmas present,’ he said to Jane, as she took the bag from Alexander and the record from the bag.
‘You gave me a Christmas present, Edwin,’ Jane said, as though talking to a friend rather than to an uncle.
‘Did I?’ Edwin replied, smiling at his absentmindedness and at Alexander. ‘Well, think of it as an advance against next Christmas.’
‘I caught my taste in music from Edwin,’ Jane explained. ‘He took me to a concert once, for my birthday. My twelfth. I was never the same again.’
Edwin gave a modest bow from the neck. ‘Do you like music, Alexander?’ he asked.
‘I run a record shop.’
‘How nice for you,’ said Edwin. ‘What kind of record shop?’
‘A standard record shop,’ said Alexander. ‘We sell all sorts.’
‘And what sort do you prefer?’
‘Nothing in particular. Some –’
‘I’m working on him,’ Jane declared, clutching Alexander’s arm. ‘He used to be in a pop group.’
‘Oh, really?’ Edwin smiled genially. ‘How frightful,’ he commiserated, unbuttoning his jacket before sitting down on the settee. He crossed his legs, raising high an uncreased shoe, and smoothed the adjacent cushion to make Jane sit down beside him. ‘And tell me, Alexander, how are you finding your in-laws?’ he asked.
‘Jane’s mother’s lovely,’ Alexander replied.
‘Nicely put,’ said Edwin, raising a hand languidly to point at him, and letting it slowly fall. ‘Jane is her mother’s daughter, isn’t she? The face, the complexion, the sweetness of temperament. Very determined genes on the female side.’
‘They are,’ said Alexander.
Edwin looked at the shelves to the side of the settee, as if reacquainting himself quickly with the ornaments displayed on them. ‘So tell me, my dear, how have you been?’ he enquired, squeezing Jane’s hand. ‘What tales of corruption and deviousness from the corridors of local government?’
No sooner had Jane begun to speak than Martin appeared in the doorway. ‘Food,’ he announced drearily, as though enervated by the duties that had been imposed upon him. He walked off, letting the door swing back before Alexander could reach it.
‘That boy,’ Edwin remarked plaintively to Jane. ‘No music has charms to soothe that savage breast.’ Before they left the front room he removed his jacket, fitted it carefully onto the back of a chair and, with the demeanour of a man who was about to undergo a medical examination, removed his tie and posted it, rolled, into a pocket.
Alexander was seated between Edwin and Martin, who remained silent throughout the meal, except when Edwin asked him about the supermarket where he worked, questions which Martin answered in sentences of a single clause. ‘Good, good,’ Edwin concluded, when it had become clear that Martin had nothing more to say, and he glanced at Jane, who was staring at her plate as if she were reading something of scarcely bearable inanity, an expression that Martin noticed and copied when Edwin was telling them all about his argument with his manager at the Pump Room, which had almost led to his resignation a week before. There was a conversation about Edwin’s holiday in Ireland, as Alexander would remember, and almost every time Jane’s father addressed Edwin he used his name like a full stop. Describing the evening he had come across a poacher brandishing a hunting knife, Edwin rested his hand on his sister’s wrist to accentuate the drama of the encounter, and he left his hand there while Jane was speaking. Mr Nesbit glanced at Edwin’s hand, as if at some broken object that he had long intended to mend. And when they all rose from the table, he would remember, Jane was the last to get up; carrying a plate past her, Edwin touched her on the shoulder with his fingertips, at which she smiled; her father, following, touched her arm, and Jane did not respond in any way.
When the dishes had been cleared, Martin went out to meet some friends at a pub, and they went back to the table, where they opened the bottle of port that Edwin had bought. After a while Edwin returned to the subject of Alexander’s shop. Alexander told him how he had met Sidney Dixon, how he had come to work for him, how the shop had changed over the years. While he was talking, Jane’s father leaned over to open a drawer in the sideboard and took from it a box of cigars; having offered one to Edwin, who declined like a reformed sinner banishing temptation from his sight, he unpeeled the cellophane wrapper with his teeth and clamped the cigar in his mouth as he fished for his lighter.
‘Not in here, please,’ said Jane’s mother. ‘You’ll make the house smell for a week. Outside, if you don’t mind.’ Closing his lips on the cigar, Mr Nesbit glowered at his wife, at his daughter and at his brother-in-law in turn. His mouth made a chewing motion, and he bowed to his wife like an usher to a magistrate. He left the table, bowed once more at the door, and closed it behind him silently. ‘I don’t know why he’s being like that,’ said Jane’s mother to Alexander. ‘He knows it’s the one thing I can’t abide.’ Edwin recounted another episode from his holiday, which in turn prompted from Jane’s mother the reminiscence of a girl from Ballymena who had been in Edwin’s class at school. Deirdre, her name was; she used to bring an apple to school every day, wrapped in a white handkerchief; she had a crush on Edwin and wrote his name on the wall of their house once, with a lump of coal. Edwin laughed, but could not recall her. ‘Wait till you see this,’ said Jane’s mother; she went back to the kitchen and returned with a newspaper. Pointing to a small photograph above a story about a mother who had reported her own daughter to the police for shoplifting, she asked: ‘Ring any bells? That’s her.’ Edwin held the page as far from his face as he could and said that he would need his glasses, which were in his jacket. Alexander offered to fetch them.
Alexander opened the door of the front room and saw Edwin’s jacket by the light from the hall. As the door swung shut, he crossed the carpet to the chair on which the jacket hung. He brushed a sleeve with the back of his fingers to feel the sleekness of the fabric, then hooked the collar with a finger. The door met the jamb and bounced back, so that a blade of light traversed the room to Alexander’s left. From Alexander’s right came Mr Nesbit’s voice. ‘I hope you’ve washed your hands,’ he said. Mr Nesbit was sitting where Edwin had sat, a tumbler in one hand and the unlit cigar held in front of his face, as if he had been about to light it when Alexander had intruded. ‘Cost a lot of money, an outfit like that,’ he said, and he raised the tumbler to take a judicious sip. ‘How much do you reckon?’ he asked, squinting through the gloom.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Alexander, suspending the jacket at arm’s length as though to test its weight.
‘Nor me,’ said Mr Nesbit, showing his teeth as the bite of the whisky made him grimace. He rested the tumbler on one knee and the other hand on the arm of the settee, in the attitude of a man enthroned. ‘Stay a minute, why don’t you? Let’s have a chat. You and me.’ Again he showed his teeth, perhaps in a smile.
Alexander sat on the chair and draped the jacket across his lap two or three times before leaving it.
‘Enjoyed your evening, son?’ asked Mr Nesbit.
‘I have.’
‘Good,’ said Mr Nesbit, and he took another sip. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it?’ he said, exhibiting the cigar. ‘A man can’t even have a smoke in his own home. What’s the world coming to, eh? An Englishman’s home is his castle? Prison, more like.’ He put the cigar between his teeth and picked up the lighter from the cushion. ‘Well, bugger them, I say,’ he said staunchly. The flame illuminated his face; his eyes and brow were clenched, as if at a harsh noise. He drew on the cigar three times, quickly, smacking his lips on it, and then he asked: ‘So what do you make of our Uncle Edwin, son?’
‘Very pleasant, he seems to me.’
Mr Nesbit directed a long breath of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Nice man, isn’t he?’
‘He is.’
‘He knows how to tell a story.’
‘He does.’
‘A cultured kind of man,’ Mr Nesbit proposed. ‘Very – sensitive,’ he said, as he knocked the ash into the fireplace. He brought the glass to his mouth, smiled at it, and drank.
‘I should take this through,’ said Alexander, cradling the jacket
Mr Nesbit ground the back of his head against the settee, as though to relieve a tension in the muscles of his neck. ‘She’s told you, of course,’ he stated, with a weakly interrogative accent.
‘Who, Jane?’
‘Who else?’
‘Told me what?’
‘About our Edwin. Taking care of things.’
Alexander looked blankly at him, but Mr Nesbit was looking away. ‘No,’ he replied.
‘The year of Uncle Eddy,’ said Mr Nesbit, stirring an arm to the side of the settee. His hand came up, holding the bottle of whisky. He poured a deep measure, with one eye wincing in the thick stream of smoke. ‘Uncle Eddy’s year at the helm,’ he snarled, as though repeating the words of an unpalatable toast
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Yes you do. She told you,’ said Mr Nesbit. ‘Course she told you. I can tell,’ he cajoled, with a hostile leer.
‘I hadn’t even heard of Edwin till last week,’ insisted Alexander.
‘Get away with you.’
‘It’s true,’ Alexander protested.
Mr Nesbit lowered the glass and swung the cigar far from his face, as if throwing open a window. ‘That can’t be true. How long you two been going out now?’
‘It is true.’
Staring at Alexander, Mr Nesbit gulped his drink. ‘So it must just be because your old man’s a banker,’ he surmised. His heels bounced on the carpet, like a boxer’s as he waits for the bell to begin the round.
‘What must be? I still don’t –’
‘Why you’re like you are.’
‘I beg your –’
‘Why you reckon you’re better.’
‘Why I what?’
‘Why you reckon you’re better than me.’
‘I don’t think any such thing, Mr Nesbit.’
‘You reckon you’re better.’
‘I don’t think I’m better than anyone.’
‘Yes, you do. You and her both –’
‘I don’t think I’m the one who –’ Alexander interrupted, but Mr Nesbit then interrupted him.
‘How’s Sid then?’ he demanded, as if by this interjection he had clinched an argument.
‘How’s Sid?’
‘Fuck me. You’re like a bloody parrot sometimes, son. You know that?’
‘You know Sid? Sid Dixon?’
‘I know Sid. Sid knows me. We know each other. We had the same sideline, for a while. During the war. After his –’. He waved the cigar, sketching over his face in the air. ‘Scavenging Sid Dixon. A smart man, Sidney. Knew some things would be worth a bit, one day. Knew what he was doing. Wily as an Arab. Always been doing deals. Behind the scenes, if you know what I mean.’
‘You mean –’
‘Bent as a nine-bob note, in other words.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Lord love a duck,’ Mr Nesbit laughed sourly. ‘A right ten-watt bulb you are. Of course I’m sure. I know. I’ve put a lot of business his way over the years. I could have shopped him. I could have shopped a lot of people over the years. Sid and a lot of others.’ Pinching the cigar between two fingers, he pointed it at Alexander. ‘That’s your boss, son. That’s who you work for. So don’t you go looking down your nose at me.’
‘Mr Nesbit,’ Alexander responded, ‘I’ve told you, I don’t –’ and then Jane came in and turned the light on.
Her father held up a hand to shade his eyes, and Jane looked at him, at the cigar, at the glass of whisky. Standing with her feet almost touching his, she looked again at her father’s face, on which Alexander saw a childish shame and defiance, and a pitiable awareness of his daughter’s distaste. She glanced at Alexander. ‘Edwin will give us a lift,’ she said.
‘Good old Eddy,’ said her father. Ostentatiously he set the empty glass down on the edge of the arm of the settee, in demonstration of his sobriety.
‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ Jane said to Alexander, and he left her with her father.
Ten minutes later he was waiting with Edwin by Edwin’s car, an old crimson Jaguar with handles and chrome trim that shone like dental mirrors. They leaned against the doors, gazing up at the Plough, the only whole constellation they could see in a sky that had no visible clouds but
seemed to have congealed into opacity. ‘When I was a boy,’ Edwin observed, ‘the London sky was clearer, I’m certain. It was like looking at a chart. You have to go up Ben Nevis now, to get a view like that.’ With his arms crossed to signify his dissatisfaction, he surveyed the desultory stars.
‘Edwin,’ Alexander began, seeing shadows move on the front room’s curtains. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘By all means,’ Edwin replied, still scanning the mediocre sky.
‘I was talking to Jane’s father.’
‘So I gathered.’
‘I think he’s had a bit too much.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me, dear boy. Wouldn’t surprise me at all.’
Jane appeared in the hallway, and her mother came out of the dining room. ‘He was going on about the year of Uncle Edwin, but I don’t know what he was talking about. What did he mean?’
‘Ah,’ Edwin protractedly exhaled.
‘If you’d rather not –’
‘No, no. If Douglas brought it up –’
‘He assumed I knew.’
‘Yes,’ Edwin drawled. Jane took her coat from her mother and put her arms around her. ‘Well, once upon a time brother Douglas was away from home for a year. And I lived here while he was away, to help Patricia with the children. Hence the warmth between Jane and myself. And the extraordinary warmth of my relationship with her brother.’ Still he was looking up at the sky, as though this were a trivial chat to pass the time. ‘A guest of Her Majesty, you understand.’ Now, noticing that Jane was approaching, he at last looked at Alexander and whispered, as if conveying an item of ribald gossip: ‘Receiving stolen goods.’ Making a chauffeur’s salute, he held the door open for Jane.
Alexander saw a spasm of displeasure in the corner of Jane’s mouth, but she said nothing about his conversation with Edwin as they drove away from the Nesbits’ house, which Alexander was never to visit again. But as soon as they were in the flat she turned to him and said, with a tone of accusation: ‘He told you, didn’t he? He told you.’
Ghost MacIndoe Page 29
