30. The riot in Buenos Aires
In the same way as he would know that this was the year of his thirty-third birthday, there were things Alexander would know had occurred in 1973 but had left no mark in his memory. There were some things that were attached securely to that year but were recalled as mere information, as if recorded as incidents or facts in a disembodied memory that existed alongside the memory of his experience. And there were many others – coming home late and seeing Sid Dixon smoking a cigarette behind the counter of the unlit shop, or standing by Mr Beckwith in the garden while he listened to the ringing of the phone until it stopped, or recognising the overweight man outside the bank as the boy who had attacked him outside the George a dozen years before, or rowing on the Serpentine with Nicola Cowell and her identical twin, who kissed him as Nicola stepped out of the boat – that had become detached from the time of their occurrence, to rise and fall with fragments of other years, like debris in a river. But twenty-five years later, the year 1973 would evoke spontaneously only one replete memory that was rooted in that year of his life, and it consisted of this: it was the morning of Midsummer’s Day, and Alexander stood in the doorway of the shop, in the shade of the awning, and opened a newspaper at a page on which, alongside a photograph of a riot in Buenos Aires airport, the name Penelope Hollander was printed, and when he glanced into the shop he saw her there, with her black corduroy smock and patent leather satchel, and the pleasure of seeing her was such that it seemed a perfect recapitulation of that day in March, nine years ago, as if the intervening time, and his present self, had been annihilated.
31. The light on the stairs
After Edwin’s visit, several months passed before Alexander mentioned Douglas Nesbit to Sid Dixon. Some days he foresaw the consequences of speaking and told himself to say nothing. Some days he decided that this was the occasion to speak, but the words would break apart and change in a moment, as if unwilling to be composed into an utterance. And then one afternoon, as he was writing an order by the light of the lamp on the counter, he found himself seeing the watch from the Doodlebug House, on the day that Liz came into the shop in her mother’s red coat, and he said: ‘I’ve met an old acquaintance of yours, Sid.’
‘Oh aye?’ Sid replied, from the back office.
‘Does the name Douglas Nesbit ring a bell?’
‘Doug Nesbit? Of course.’
‘My girlfriend Jane. He’s her father.’
‘Is that so? Your girl’s Jane Nesbit?’ Sid was standing in the office doorway, and his expression was one of benign curiosity.
‘She is,’ said Alexander. ‘You know him?’
‘I knew him,’ Sid replied, as though it were a subject of no consequence.
‘During the war?’
‘Aye.’
‘And after?’
‘Aye.’
‘He says he used to do business with you.’
‘Hardly anyone round here he didn’t do business with. A finger in a thousand pies.’
‘Used to sell stockings, didn’t he? From a suitcase?’
‘He did that. Nylons, fags, sweets. Anything that people wanted, Doug could get.’
‘A dodgy sort of character?’
‘Some would say.’
‘Would you say?’
‘I’d say tricky. Resourceful.’
‘He said he used to sell you things.’
‘He used to sell to everyone, like I say. Everyone bought from him.’
‘Sell to the shop, he meant.’
Sid paused and scrutinised Alexander before replying. ‘He sold me things. Once in a while.’ Now there was impatience in his tone, and his impatience was stoked by the look that Alexander gave him. ‘What point are you trying to make, Alex?’ he asked.
‘I wanted you to know what he told me.’
‘No, you don’t. You’re accusing me.’
‘I’m not accusing you, Sid. I suppose it just bothers me –’
‘Bothers you!’
‘He said –’
‘Bothers you! Bothers you! Who do you think you are? The Archbishop of bleeding Canterbury?’
‘No, Sid –’
‘So what’s this bloody holier-than-thou stuff!’ Sid shouted, and he flung away the receipts he had been holding.
‘I don’t think I’m being holier-than-thou, Sid.’
‘That’s exactly what you’re being. You don’t know what it was like. Remember that, will you? What are you saying? That Doug did some things that were a bit shady? He did. He did all sorts of stuff, and he got caught, and he took what was dished out to him. When he was your age he had a wife and kid to support, and things were a bloody sight tougher then than they are now, I can tell you.’
‘I know, Sid.’
‘You saying that I wasn’t spotless? Possibly I wasn’t. Sorry I don’t have your scruples. It would have been nice to live by the book, but I didn’t much fancy eating out of bins. There didn’t seem much choice at the time. Didn’t seem to be many avenues open to me,’ he said bitterly, jabbing a ruined finger at his own face. ‘And I’ll tell you another thing. Douglas Nesbit was bloody decent to me. He was a bloody good friend. Like your father was.’
‘I wasn’t –’
‘Yes you were. There’s nothing I can do about it now, is there? Can’t take the past back, can I? What do you want me to do? Sack you to save your soul?’
‘I know,’ Alexander started, but Sid had already left.
Each offered an apology to the other the next time they met, but for a while afterwards the affront was perceptible in the evasiveness of Sidney’s gaze and the crispness of his manner. And when that episode was over there was a new civility to their dealings with each other, as though they had agreed to conduct themselves more conventionally, as employer and employee. It took almost two years for the wash from their disagreement to dissipate. It was early in 1974 that they were wholly reconciled, through what happened with Mr Beckwith.
For years the quality of the friendship between Alexander and Mr Beckwith had not changed. Spending their time in the same few rooms and in the garden of Mr Beckwith’s house, they acted as though in observance of a rule they had established tacitly. Like scribes they worked together assiduously, slowly, similarly contented by their shared and unfinishable task. Yet there came a point at which, it seemed to Alexander, their friendship began to lose its efficacy for Mr Beckwith. Their talk had always been sparse, but their silences became longer, and Mr Beckwith’s silence became a thing that clothed him like a heavy coat. When Mr Beckwith knelt to tend a plant, his shoulders seemed to curve under a weight. Sometimes Alexander would ask him if he had spoken to Megan recently, knowing from Megan that they had spoken. ‘She’s doing well,’ Mr Beckwith would invariably reply, and he would talk about her in such a way that it was as if he had forgotten how long and how well Alexander had known her. He seemed to be forgetting the significance of the things that were around him. Sometimes Alexander would observe an expression of dismayed concentration on Mr Beckwith’s face, as if he were trying to make himself remember that this was his house, that this was his garden, that this was a person with whom he had spent innumerable hours. Or he would stop what he was doing and get to his feet and go into the house, where Alexander might find him later, sitting in an armchair as if waiting for something to be brought to him, or standing at the sink in the kitchen, staring at his hand on the cold water tap as if the hand and tap together formed a single apparatus, the function of which he could not understand. Crossing the garden, Mr Beckwith would often come to a halt and look down at his feet, as he had done when Megan, as a girl, had led him through the park, and Alexander would ask, quietly, without moving from where he was: ‘Mr Beckwith? Are you all right?’ Promptly Mr Beckwith would reply ‘Oh yes,’ in a voice that was tranquil. ‘Thank you, yes,’ he would say, and then he would resume his work, tamping the moist soil around the stems with light movements of his fingers.
The frequency of Alexander’s visits had beg
un to diminish at around the time that he joined Mick Radford’s band. One Sunday evening, when Alexander had locked the shed, Mr Beckwith said to him: ‘Don’t feel obliged to come here, Alexander. You have your friends to see.’ There were other evenings for them, Alexander replied. Mr Beckwith surveyed the garden. ‘There’s not so much to do at the moment,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave it for a couple of weeks.’ Gradually it became common for two weeks to pass between their afternoons together, and then it became customary for Mr Beckwith to suggest a longer interval, which he would do in a manner that made it seem not a rejection but rather an affirmation of the value of Alexander’s understanding, as if the absence of company were a positive thing that Alexander could give him. By the time that Alexander was with Jane Nesbit, his visits had dwindled further, and some months he would see Mr Beckwith no more than once. He was rarely in the house when Megan phoned, because Mr Beckwith preferred to spend the evenings alone now. ‘I get so tired,’ Alexander would remember him saying, as he gazed at the keys in his hand as if looking at the cause of his weariness. They no longer ate together. In the cupboard in the kitchen, he would remember, tins of beans and tomatoes and corned beef were packed onto the shelves in perfect, complete rows. In the drawer to the side of the sink there was a single fork, a single spoon, a single knife.
Other than his workmates, the only acquaintances Mr Beckwith ever mentioned were George and Cynthia Carmichael. When Mr Beckwith returned to England after the war, it was Cynthia Howett who had nursed him in the first few months, Alexander eventually learned. She was known to all her patients as Georgie, on account of the Orwell books she was always reading, and she had met George Carmichael in a bookshop on Charing Cross Road. When they married they moved to Southwold, the town George’s family came from, and there George and Cynthia ran a small hotel, overlooking the harbour. They had two sons, the elder named George, the younger Eric, and that was almost all Alexander knew about the Carmichaels, even though Mr Beckwith had been to stay in their hotel once or twice a year every year, from some time in 1960, when Alexander was completing his National Service.
Towards the end of 1973 Mr Beckwith went to Southwold for a few days. Early in January, more than a week after the date on which Mr Beckwith should have come back, Alexander went to the house, as they had arranged. The front lawn had recently been trimmed and there were rake marks on the grass. The empty dustbin was set perfectly in the centre of its plinth of paving stones. Every curtain on the upper floor was closed. Alexander knocked at the door and waited, and knocked again, more forcefully. He opened the letterbox to look in. The doors were all shut, and no light could be seen under them. There were no scuffs on the hall carpet. Alexander put an ear to the open letterbox and listened, and heard nothing but the ticking of the radiator at the foot of the stairs. Pressing his brow to the glass of the living room window, Alexander peered through the net curtains. The room was as lifeless as a showhouse. The gate at the side of the house was locked. Alexander went back to the door and rapped the knocker a dozen times. From the call box at the end of the road he rang Mr Beckwith’s number, but there was no answer. He phoned Megan, but there was nobody at home. He ran back to the house and called Mr Beckwith’s name through the letterbox. For five minutes he watched the house, and then he returned to his flat. At nine o’clock that night he went to the house again. The curtains had not been touched, it appeared, and the rooms at the front were dark. He knocked at the door, but there was no response. He looked through the letterbox: a pale light was on the higher stairs. He clattered the flap of the letterbox; he called Mr Beckwith’s name. Still there was no response.
When he phoned his parents his mother answered, but she handed the phone to his father as soon as Alexander had explained why he was worried.
‘Perhaps he’s decided to stay away longer,’ his father suggested.
‘Another week?’
‘Could be.’
‘It’s not like him. He likes everything to go to plan. If he says he’s coming back on such-and-such a day he’s coming back.’
‘It’s not impossible. There’s no reason to panic.’
‘I’m not panicking. I’m worried. He’s in the house. There’s no post on the mat. He must have picked it up.’
‘Do you think he gets much post?’
‘Dad, he’s there. The heating’s on. I can hear it clicking.’
‘He could have left it on. Some people do. Stops the pipes freezing.’
‘He wouldn’t, Dad. I know he wouldn’t. He’s there.’
His father paused. ‘Let me give him a call,’ he said, which he did, but still there was no answer. ‘I’ll go over there,’ his father volunteered when he called Alexander back, and now there was some concern in his voice.
An hour later Alexander’s mother rang to tell him that a light was on upstairs at Mr Beckwith’s.
‘At the front of the house?’ Alexander asked, and he heard his mother repeat the question to his father.
‘Yes, at the front,’ she said. ‘Was there a light at the front before?’
‘No.’
‘There you are, then. Obviously he’s not fallen or anything. He’s moving around the house. There’s no need to call the police out.’
The following morning, before opening the shop, Alexander rang the printer’s. Mr Beckwith was not well, Alexander was told; he had sent a note from his doctor and would not be back for a week. On the hour at nine, ten, eleven and noon Alexander rang the house, and there was no answer. In the afternoon Mr Beckwith’s line was engaged every time. Again he rang Megan, and only then did he remember that she had told him she would be away that week. In the next moment he had the idea of asking Sid Dixon for his help.
‘But I’ve never met the man,’ Sid objected, as Alexander had known he would.
‘I think that’ll be in your favour,’ he replied.
‘How do you reckon that? You’re his pal. Doesn’t want to see you, he isn’t going to want to see a total stranger.’
‘You’re not a total stranger, Sid. He knows about you.’
‘Like saying Ted Heath’s not a stranger. He doesn’t know me from Adam.’
‘And if he doesn’t, that might work. You’re the same age. The same generation.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Sid laughed. ‘“Come on in, mate. I see you’re as old as me.” How’s that work?’
‘I don’t know. But it might.’
‘And I might find a thousand quid lying in the gutter,’ said Sid, but from his voice it was evident he would do the favour that Alexander had asked of him.
At nine o’clock Alexander turned into Mr Beckwith’s street and saw Sid waiting by the telephone box. ‘Bloody barmy plan,’ Sid mumbled, stamping his feet on the pavement to hammer sensation back into them. His brusqueness seemed a performance, as if he were offering to resume the style of his former self with Alexander.
‘Not a plan, Sid,’ Alexander smiled. ‘A hunch.’
‘Bloody barmy hunch then,’ said Sid. He turned up the collar of his overcoat and with a sweep of an arm invited Alexander to lead the way to Mr Beckwith’s house. As before, all the rooms overlooking the street were in darkness, and a pallid light lay on the segment of staircase that could be seen through the letterbox. Over the edge of his collar Sid Dixon observed the house while Alexander rapped the steel bar of the knocker and called Mr Beckwith’s name repeatedly.
‘I get the picture,’ said Sid. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘I think I should go away and leave you to it.’
‘I do too,’ Sid replied. ‘I’ll report back.’ Thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, he sat down on the doorstep. Furtively he looked to right and left, like a sentry making sure that there is no one to see him taking an illicit rest. ‘Away with you,’ he ordered.
Two hours later Sid came to Alexander’s flat. ‘Siege over,’ he announced. Behind him his car was parked with its nearside wheels on the pavement and its engine running.
>
‘You spoke to him?’
‘Contact made.’
‘How did you do it?’
‘Introduced myself by the letterbox method and said I wasn’t leaving. Sat down on the path for a bit. Repeated message. A curtain twitched eventually. I showed my face.’ He flapped the wings of his coat and made a bow. ‘Waited a bit longer, then open sesame.’
‘He let you in?’
‘Course not. Reckon you’d need a search warrant to get in that house.’
‘But is he all right?’
‘Not what you’d call a jolly bloke,’ Sid pronounced, after a hesitation. ‘Doesn’t look like he needs looking after, though.’
‘So he’s not ill?’
‘Healthy as you or me, I’d say. Skinny bugger, but so are whippets.’
‘Did you talk to him for long?’ asked Alexander.
‘Long enough, Alex. Long enough,’ said Sid, glancing at the lorry that was passing close to his car. ‘He says not to worry yourself. Leave him be for a while. That’ll do the job.’
‘That’s what he said?’
‘That’s the gist of it,’ said Sid tersely. Waiting for further instruction, he stamped his feet and huffed a mouthful of steam into the air.
‘What do you think, Sid?’
‘What do I think,’ Sid pondered ruefully. He sniffed loudly and wrapped his coat more tightly about him. ‘I think he knows his own mind. I think there’s no point in pestering him.’ He presented his face frankly to Alexander, inviting him to read it, and it was clear that he had not liked Mr Beckwith, and that there was nothing more to be said.
‘Thanks, Sid,’ said Alexander. ‘Come in for a nightcap?’
‘Better be off,’ said Sid, looking at the multicoloured sequinned shirt and trousers that Alexander had pinned in the window. He smiled and shook his head. ‘Some other time,’ he said, and he patted Alexander on the elbow.
Ghost MacIndoe Page 31
