Ghost MacIndoe

by Jonathan Buckley

  Once or twice each week in the ensuing months Alexander would take a walk that would pass Mr Beckwith’s house. Most weeks he would talk to Megan, who seemed to gain reassurance from reassuring him. ‘He’s no different with me,’ she told him. ‘I’m sorry he’s gone like this. All you can do is wait. He’ll come out of it.’ One night, having seen the four square windows of the door light up, Alexander opened the front gate and approached the house. He raised his hand, but as he was about to knock he heard a chair scrape on the kitchen floor and the sound of a plate being set on the table, and in that moment he saw himself as the violator of Mr Beckwith’s cloistered life, and he lowered his hand and walked away. Still he continued to walk past Mr Beckwith’s house, but he never again went up to the door.

  And then, one Sunday afternoon in June, he saw Mr Beckwith on the path beside the house, exactly where he had first seen him, more than twenty years before. His arms were thin and tanned, and hung from his shoulders as straight as chains from a yoke. He was holding a carrier bag in each hand. Like a surrendering fugitive he put the bags down and came to the gate. His cheeks were concave and looked as if the flesh had been scoured by a pestle.

  ‘Alexander,’ he said, making his name sound like a remark made reluctantly. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Same as ever, Mr Beckwith. How are you?’

  Mr Beckwith looked at him, but he might have been gazing into air. ‘Sorry to have caused trouble,’ he said. ‘People have to be alone from time to time. You understand.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alexander, meaning to go on, but already Mr Beckwith had taken a step away from him.

  ‘I’ll give you a call,’ said Mr Beckwith. He went back down the path, and that was the last time that Alexander saw him.

  32. Mr Harvey

  ‘That must be him,’ said Megan, pointing to the man who was stepping into the porch. He was wearing a black blazer and a broad black tie, the knot of which was obscured by a beard that was bardic in its length and taper. His hair, which like his beard was white and streaked with strands of nicotine yellow, stuck closely to his scalp and turned up on his collar in a greasy curl. He seemed somewhat older than Mr Beckwith, perhaps in his seventies, and he carried a slender walking stick for which he appeared to have no need, for he mounted the steps as nimbly as Alexander’s father.

  Alexander gave Megan the letter that Sidney Dixon had written to her, and went into the church. Mr Harvey had taken a seat in the second pew from the front and was perusing the order of service. As soon as Alexander sat down behind him, he put the card aside, then linked his hands on the greyhound’s-head handle of his walking stick, which he clamped upright between his knees. His fingernails, Alexander would remember, were long and hooked and ridged like almonds, and he stared at the altar as if rigorously keeping guard over it. A ragged high note, like a pig’s squeal, was emitted by the organ. The old man did not flinch.

  ‘Pardon the intrusion,’ said Alexander, ‘but would you happen to be Mr Harvey?’

  The old man turned his head a few degrees, sufficiently to ascertain who had spoken to him. Heavily the lashless eyelids closed over his eyes and rose, uncovering half the iris. ‘I am,’ he replied, and resumed his vigil. His lips were bracketed by hinge-like indentations of muscle. It seemed like a face that could never express any spontaneous feeling.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my talking to you, but I’m a friend of Mr Beckwith’s daughter.’

  Mr Harvey leaned towards Alexander, like a passenger in a cornering car. ‘And you would be?’ he asked.

  ‘Alexander MacIndoe. I –’

  ‘Yes. You were mentioned. The gardener,’ he stated, and he sat upright again, knotting his fingers more tightly on the head of his walking stick.

  Alexander eased forward to ask: ‘You had known Mr Beckwith for a considerable time, I believe?’

  Now Mr Harvey did not move at all, nor react in any way to indicate that he had heard the question. Alexander was about to repeat it when Mr Harvey said: ‘Yes. A considerable time.’

  ‘How long, would you mind my asking?’

  ‘Since 1943.’

  ‘And you last saw him, before –’

  ‘1946,’ Mr Harvey interrupted crisply.

  ‘Never since?’

  ‘1946 was the last time I saw him.’

  Obdurately immovable, Mr Harvey obliged Alexander to address him in the manner of a courtier petitioning his master. ‘Did it strike you as strange that he reappeared, after so long?’ Alexander enquired, lowering his voice.

  ‘It did not,’ replied Mr Harvey. ‘He did not reappear. We were not strangers to each other. Letters were exchanged. Infrequently, but sufficiently. He did not arrive out of the blue.’

  ‘Did he give a reason for wanting to see you? A particular reason?’

  ‘Time was passing. We had intended to meet for many years.’

  ‘Nothing more particular than that?’

  ‘Young man,’ said Mr Harvey, dropping his gaze to the back of the pew in front of him, ‘I should be grateful if you would modify your tone. You are not addressing a suspect in a murder case.’

  ‘I apologise.’

  ‘I accept your apology.’

  Alexander waited for Mr Harvey to resume, but was obliged to ask again: ‘But nothing –?’

  ‘No, nothing. He informed me that he would be coming to Evesham. He thought he might take the opportunity to visit me.’

  ‘Did he say why he would be in Evesham?’

  ‘He did not.’

  ‘Do you think there was in fact any other reason for him to be there?’

  ‘I would regard it as inappropriate to speculate.’

  ‘Did he seem distressed?’

  ‘No, he did not.’

  ‘Did he strike you as being unhappy?’

  ‘I could not say he seemed happy, but then Harold had not been a happy man when I knew him. None of us had been. We were not in a place where one could be happy. And thirty years of life tends to put a weight on one’s mind, wouldn’t you say?’ Alexander gave a mild smile, which Mr Harvey, by a flickering glance, appeared to accept as assent. ‘We passed a pleasant afternoon,’ he continued. ‘We took tea in my garden. We exchanged reminiscences. Such, I think, is what customarily passes for conversation.’

  ‘So there was nothing out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Nothing was said, I assure you, that you would regard as being of any significance.’

  ‘Nothing that you –’

  A spasm of vexation tightened Mr Harvey’s grip. ‘Nothing,’ he reiterated.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that his daughter –’

  ‘I understand,’ replied Mr Harvey, with a taut nod. Father Medlicott appeared at a door in the transept; sorrowfully he regarded the congregation and touched the silver crucifix that hung from his belt; he turned back into the sacristy. ‘He drowned, Mr MacIndoe,’ Mr Harvey resumed. ‘That is fact, and the only fact.’

  ‘His daughter finds it –’

  ‘Of course, of course. But the choice is simple: an act of will, or an accident. An accident I would regard as improbable, and a strong will was always a characteristic of Harold Beckwith,’ asserted Mr Harvey dispassionately. ‘But then,’ he added, with no apparent feeling, ‘he used to be a courageous man as well.’

  Father Medlicott came out through the doorway and walked down the aisle with his head bowed, as though in a procession that nobody else could see. ‘I’m not sure I understand you,’ responded Alexander.

  ‘I should have thought my meaning was abundantly clear,’ said Mr Harvey. Then, as if further provoked by a comment he had imagined Alexander to have made, he twisted to face him directly. ‘Mr MacIndoe,’ he said, ‘I am here to pay my respects to a man I once held in the highest regard. I should appreciate it if I may be allowed to do so without disturbance. As for Harold Beckwith’s state of mind in recent years, I think you know as much as I – more than I do, in fact. There let us leave the matter.’

  Of Father Medlico
tt’s speech Alexander would remember not the text but rather its inane cadences, which sounded as if they had been composed for words that were not the words he was speaking, and he would remember looking from the lectern at people he did not recognise, then at Mr Harvey, whose impassive eyes were trained constantly on the altar, then at Megan, who was staring at the floor. He would remember beginning to read, and finding that his voice became the voice with which he used to speak to Mr Beckwith, and did not falter as he had feared it would. He would remember that Mr Harvey raised his eyes briefly as Alexander descended the steps, but that neither spoke to the other until the interment was done, whereupon Mr Harvey offered his hand and said: ‘It is unfortunate that we should have met in such circumstances, Mr MacIndoe. Harold held you in some affection, I believe.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alexander.

  ‘Thank him,’ replied Mr Harvey, flourishing his stick at the open grave.

  ‘I meant, thank you for talking to me,’ said Alexander.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Harvey, and his small, upturned nose made a snuff-taker’s sniff, as though this were his habitual means of closing a conversation. He presented himself to Megan, and left her as soon as he had shaken her hand. Rapidly he read the messages that were written on the wreaths, then for a minute he lingered at Mrs Beckwith’s headstone, holding aside the flower stems with his stick to read the bottom line of the inscription. Shunning the other mourners, he strode off down the path, swinging the stick to waist height and jabbing it into the gravel in unison with his heel.

  Megan, enclosed within a circle of black coats, watched Mr Harvey leave, and once he had disappeared behind the screen of poplars she peered over a shoulder to find Alexander. She gave him a beseeching look; he pointed out of the churchyard and mimed a word he hoped she would understand.

  Sitting on the hill, below the statue of General Wolfe, Alexander looked around him. Behind him a man held out his arms to catch a small girl on clattering rollerskates. To his left a French woman and her two daughters posed for a photo, straddling the Meridian line. The leaves of the oak trees shimmered in a gust too weak to stir the parched cigarette packet near his feet. The walls of the Queen’s House were sugar-white, and there was a constellation of platinum spangles on the river. On the boating pond, a red canoe met a blue canoe with a knock that was barely audible. The dome of St Paul’s seemed so small, like a cork on a pool of brown water. A dog, a golden retriever, ran down the hill, its head raised for the tennis ball that came out of the sky and bounced across the path. Everything Alexander saw and heard was delightful, and his delight seemed to have a quality of commemoration. When he told himself to think of Mr Beckwith he saw him beside the house, with the trowel in one hand and the clod of earth in the other, like a gift. He saw Mr Beckwith walking the Cornish lanes, with his white shirt cracking in the wind. He saw him fit his hand around the head of a rose and lift it slightly towards Alexander’s lowered face, as if inviting him to sip from a glass of wine, and he saw him walking behind Megan in the park, holding out his hand, limply, for Megan to take, and making a cap of his hand to rest on Megan’s head as she read to him.

  Megan sat down beside him and hooped her arms around her knees. ‘That was really horrible, wasn’t it?’ she asked, squinting straight ahead as if trying to read a distant notice.

  ‘Didn’t like the vicar much,’ Alexander agreed.

  ‘Dum-de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-da,’ Megan recited, mimicking the emollient dolefulness of Father Medlicott.

  ‘How were the relations?’

  ‘Can’t say I paid much attention, Eck. “A blessed relief,” someone said. Can you believe it? “A blessed relief.” Accidentally said what she meant. Great-aunt Enid. What would she know? Hasn’t picked up the phone in thirty years.’ She dabbed her cheeks on her skirt and looked at him. ‘What of Mr Harvey?’ she asked.

  ‘Waste of time, pretty much. He didn’t want to talk.’

  ‘No opinion?’

  ‘Not an approachable man, Meg. Perhaps today wasn’t the day. Did he say anything to you?’

  ‘“My thoughts are with you,” and that was it. And a manly handshake.’

  ‘It was certainly that.’

  ‘Never heard of Iain Harvey until a week ago.’

  ‘And we’ll never hear from him again.’

  They sat in silence for a while, and then suddenly she seized his arm and her mouth made a sipping motion. ‘Eck, he’s slipping away,’ she whispered. ‘I want to hold on to him, but he’s fading already.’

  ‘He won’t go,’ he told her, putting a hand on her shoulder to pull her closer to him. He closed his eyes and saw his father’s arm moving like a compass needle as he listed the names of buildings his son could not make out amid the crumpled roofs of the city, and his mother, to the side of them and apart, peering towards the docks, and Mr Beckwith under the chestnut tree, gathering the chestnuts that they then cupped their hands to receive, and Mr Beckwith, as their hands overflowed with the dark brown nuts, putting the palm of his left hand on Megan’s cheek and the palm of his right on his.

  They sat in silence for many minutes, and then Megan said: ‘I think I’ll be coming back to London, Eck.’

  He felt the air change, as if a tunnel had formed around him. ‘Why’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Shaun will be going back to his wife,’ she said flatly, plucking a blade of grass. ‘Sooner or later. I may have to go first. And if I go, I’ll try to get a job in London.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Alexander.

  ‘No need, Eck. It’s been bad for a while. A long time. She wants him back, and he wants to go back. She called a year ago, and he’s wanted to go back ever since, but he was too weak to admit it. Instead, it’s my fault he’s unhappy. Everything I do is wrong now. He drinks because I’ve trapped him. He hates his job because he’s trapped. So I think I’m leaving. I should have made my mind up sooner.’ She pressed his hand to her face, and she began to cry. ‘I should have done it before. If I’d been here, then Dad –’

  ‘No,’ said Alexander.

  ‘It might have helped.’

  ‘Might not. Probably not.’

  ‘But it would have been different.’

  ‘Might have been worse, if he’d known you weren’t happy.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t have been unhappy. It would have been better.’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘It would have been,’ Megan insisted.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Alexander repeated. ‘We can’t know.’

  ‘God only knows, eh?’

  ‘Nobody knows. Not even him. He’s not even there.’

  ‘You think that?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure he’s not there,’ said Alexander. ‘Sure as I am of anything.’

  And then Megan looked at him in a way that was unfamiliar, and the trembling of her lips ceased for a moment.

  33. All Saints

  Sam came to the shop that morning, as Alexander would remember. It was a few minutes before midday, and Alexander was pulling the awning out when Sam appeared on the other side of the road, whistling the theme from High Noon.

  ‘Heard anything?’ Sam called, crossing over.

  Alexander shook his head. ‘Sam, what on earth are you wearing?’ he said, tweaking the lapel of his friend’s jacket. The jacket was the colour of fudge, and its buttons were fat as chequers. ‘That’s the most horrible garment in all of London.’

  ‘Fashion. You wouldn’t understand, you scruffy Herbert,’ Sam replied, giving Alexander a consoling pat on the shoulder. ‘Time for a fag?’ He took a steel cigarette case from his jacket and released its catch with a flip of a little finger.

  ‘This a social call?’ Alexander enquired.

  ‘Pleasure and business combined,’ said Sam, burrowing for his lighter. ‘A bit of freelance spying,’ he explained. He drew avariciously on his cigarette, making his cheeks bow inwards. ‘Let�
��s step inside.’

  ‘Who’s the victim?’

  ‘The suspected miscreant, Mac, is what you mean. Who’s the suspected miscreant?’ Sam sniffed the air of the shop. ‘Nice,’ he remarked, batting the mobile of albums in the window. ‘Diesel and joss sticks. Summertime, and the smell is disgusting.’

  ‘The miscreant?’

  ‘A not very smart fraudster,’ said Sam, exhaling thoughtfully, regretfully. He pointed up the hill, to a building encased in scaffolding. ‘See that bloke up there? In the jeans? The fat bugger? Well, his brother-in-law has been seen by my informant drinking with a bloke whose name must of course remain sub judice, but who, I can tell you, has had his van nicked three times in four years. Which is at least once too often, in my book. He lost the last one a couple of months back. Expensive vehicle, with a lot of expensive tools in it, allegedly. And unless I am very much mistaken, that’s it, over there,’ he said, pointing to the green van that was parked beside the scaffolding. ‘New plates, a respray, new set of documents, and Bob’s your uncle. Always up to something, that one up there. Used to work with a very dodgy crew in New Cross. They got caught doing a real daisy of a job.’ He picked a thread of tobacco from his gold tooth. ‘Fitting a roof they were, over in Peckham. Their boss, who reckons they’re on the fiddle, sits in the back of a car and watches what’s going on. Nothing amiss, it seems for a while. Two blokes winching timber and slates up into the roof. Half a dozen industrious lads up top, sawing and hammering. Right beehive. But then he fixes on one bloke and keeps an eye on him. Half an hour he watches this bloke hammering away. At the same bloody length of joist. For half an hour. Making a noise, that’s all he’s doing, while his mates are carting the stuff across the roof and winching it down into the garden at the back. Then it’s over the wall and onto the lorry, and off we go to flog the stuff we’re supposed to be using on Mrs Reilly’s roof. Who’s going to notice? Not going to get old Mrs Reilly shinning up the drainpipe to check if she’s being conned, are you?’ Watching the fat man on the scaffolding, Sam stroked the ends of his drooping moustache with a thumb and forefinger. ‘The dishonesty of some folks, eh?’