Ghost MacIndoe Read online

  ‘I like him a lot.’

  ‘So do I,’ she smiled, turning to look at him. ‘He thinks you’re like him. You’ve got patience, he says.’

  ‘That’s kind of him.’

  ‘And respect. A respectful young man, Harry calls you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not many young ones have that. Respect and patience, either of them.’

  ‘No, Mrs Beckwith,’ Alexander replied.

  Mrs Beckwith took a final sip of her drink. ‘He was a handsome one, too.’ She put the empty glass on the floor and stood up for a moment, before sitting back on the arm of her chair, facing him.

  ‘I should be going, Mrs Beckwith,’ he told her.

  ‘Megan will be here any second,’ she said. She folded her arms on her stomach and, bending forward, looked at him as though to press the anxiety out of his mind with her gaze. ‘You’re such a beautiful boy, Alex. One day my girl will fall in love with you, I wouldn’t mind betting.’ The fabric of her dress hung away from her skin in a hammock shape, exposing to Alexander the swell of her breast.

  ‘She thinks I’m stupid,’ he said.

  ‘She thinks we’re all stupid sometimes, Alex.’

  Alexander meshed his hands together and clenched his fingers on his knuckles.

  ‘You’re a fearful lad, aren’t you? Don’t be. You don’t want to have lots of regrets when you’re older. They eat you up, regrets.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m fearful, Mrs Beckwith.’

  ‘Don’t be. Because nothing lasts, Alex. The whites of my eyes, look at them. They’ve gone all mucky now. But they used to be like yours once. Look here,’ she instructed, and she pinched up a ridge of skin on the back of her hand and watched it subside. ‘I was a slender girl. A slip of a thing, my mother used to say. But nothing lasts,’ and she leaned over him. She kissed him lightly on the lips. Her lipstick pulled at his skin and he caught the sweet fume of her breath. Sitting on the arm of the chair once more, she breathed out as if exhaling smoke and gave him a look as if he had done something foolish but endearing. A key rattled angrily in the lock of the front door. ‘The princess returns,’ said Mrs Beckwith. ‘That you, Megan?’ she called out.

  ‘Who else?’ asked Megan from behind the opening door. ‘Hello, Eck,’ she said upon seeing him, and then she went out of the room, closing the door.

  ‘Sorry, Alex,’ said Mrs Beckwith after a minute. ‘Megan’s in a mood, it looks like.’

  ‘I’ll go then.’

  ‘Yes, OK,’ agreed Mrs Beckwith cheerfully, as if what had happened had been instantly forgotten.

  12. The Diet of Augsburg

  Alexander’s mother was painting the skirting boards in the kitchen and she had set the record-player on top of the stove so she could listen to her LPs while she worked. Spread on the lid were half a dozen record sleeves, illustrated with islands of uniformly green palm trees, and the Manhattan skyline against a cornflower sky, and vast fields of custard-yellow wheat. A record lay on the table, inside its paper inner sleeve. Alexander picked it up and slipped the disc into his palm.

  ‘You be careful with that,’ she told him, looking at him over the table’s edge as she tightened the maroon scarf that was knotted on the top of her head. She went back to her painting. Singing softly, she dragged the brush along the beading of the skirting board with an elegant bending of her wrist, as if trailing a piece of fine fabric across the wood.

  ‘Is there a spare brush somewhere?’ he asked. ‘I could help.’

  ‘Nearly done,’ she said, jabbing the bristles into the angle by the pantry door. ‘But thank you for the thought.’

  Alexander gazed down onto the surface of the record. Something of the richness of America was implied by the deep wet blackness of it and by the rays of rainbow colour that swung across the oily plastic. ‘Do you want to see my report?’ he asked, rolling the disc back into its sleeve.

  ‘After your father,’ she replied. She pressed a hand into the small of her back, and released a long breath.

  ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Later. It’d only taste of paint right now,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t you be doing your homework? Better get it done before your dad gets back.’

  From the window of his bedroom Alexander saw his father turn into the road, and he was at the top of the stairs before the front door opened. In the hall his father dropped his briefcase and whisked his fingers against each other. ‘The stains of filthy lucre,’ he said, showing his hands. He draped his jacket on the finial of the banisters and tugged at its lapels as if correcting someone’s attire. ‘Ah, well. Puts bread on the table, doesn’t it? Your mother in the galley?’

  His father returned a minute later, balancing the report book on his fingertips like a salver. ‘Come before the throne of Solomon,’ he intoned, leading the way to the living room with a portentous tread. Gravely he eased himself into his armchair and pointed to the seat that Alexander was to occupy. His reading glasses were on the round table, with his pipe and tobacco and a bottle of Zubes Cough Mixture which was stuck to the front page of a newspaper. He opened the book and scanned the page rapidly through one lens, and neither approval nor displeasure was legible on his face. ‘“Biology”,’ he read, putting his glasses on properly. ‘“A subject for which Alexander seems to possess little talent and less interest.” Rather severe. Remind me who this chap is again.’

  ‘Mr Porterfield.’

  ‘A reasonable man, is he?’

  Reluctant to prolong his interrogation, Alexander shrugged, studying the chrysanthemum pattern in the carpet.

  ‘Would you agree? About the interest?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Alexander conceded. ‘It’s all fruit-flies and frogs.’

  ‘Flute fries and flogs, eh?’ responded his father.

  Alexander raised his eyes; his father was neither smiling nor looking at him, but Alexander could tell he was waiting for him to smile, and he realised in that moment that his father’s disappointment in him was becoming habitual. Staring at his feet, Alexander made a laughing sound. ‘Mr Porterfield once told me I was outstandingly average,’ he joked.

  His father did not appear to be listening. ‘“Chemistry – Average”’, he read. ‘Could be better. And could be worse. “English – Average”. This is Mr Darrow, isn’t it?’

  Alexander confirmed with a nod, and there appeared in his mind the sight of Mr Darrow tripping on a paving stone by Mr Mullins’ pub. A car’s headlight illuminated Mr Darrow’s face at the moment he comprehended, raising himself to a crouch, that Alexander was standing in front of him. ‘Mum’s the word, MacIndoe,’ said Mr Darrow, sealing his own lips with a finger that left a sooty exclamation mark on his chin. ‘You are one of my favourite pupils. You know that? One of my favourites.’ He settled his disarrayed quiff and belched demurely into his hand. ‘I like you because you have no imagination. Keep it that way, MacIndoe.’ Mr Darrow winked and turned his back. ‘A fine English virtue,’ he concluded, addressing the wall.

  ‘“Geography – Average”,’ his father recited. ‘Not doing too badly. But here’s an interesting one,’ he went on, in a rising tone. ‘“Mathematics – An indolent but personable boy.” I think it’s indolent. Couldn’t be insolent. You wouldn’t be insolent. Wouldn’t be like you at all, would it?’ Alexander would have answered, but from the kitchen came a crescendo of his mother’s voice, in duet with a quieter tenor. ‘But are you indolent?’ resumed his father with a quizzical frown. ‘It means lazy.’

  ‘I don’t think I am,’ he replied.

  ‘Mr Smythe is of the opinion that you are.’

  ‘I just don’t understand the subject, Dad, that’s all. I try.’ There was another crescendo, and Alexander thought of Mr Smythe. He saw his crew-cut hair and the gold-rimmed lenses that magnified his eyes, and then he saw him standing with his arms braced against the window-sill, gazing out at the street.

  ‘Then try harder, Alexander,’ advised his father. ‘If you want to be som
ebody you’ve got to make an effort. We can all be good at something, if we try.’

  ‘I try as hard as I can.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should make more of an effort to let people know that you’re making an effort,’ his father replied.

  Mr Smythe’s hands stayed on the sill as he turned his head. ‘I have thought long and hard about this, Halloran,’ he said. ‘And I have arrived at the opinion, after much consideration, that you are a rhino.’ There was ragged, uncertain laughter from the other boys. ‘Really here in name only,’ Mr Smythe elucidated. The laughter was louder and more concerted. And then Mr Smythe smacked his hands on the sill and said through clenched teeth: ‘And that goes for you too, Allerton. And you, MacIndoe. Really here in name only, all three of you.’

  ‘Alexander?’ his father was enquiring. ‘Alexander? Who’s your history teacher?’

  ‘Mr Barrington.’

  ‘Barrington?’

  ‘He’s new.’

  ‘Chinese is he?’

  ‘Really here in name only,’ Alexander heard again, waiting for his father to explain.

  ‘Seems to write in Chinese,’ said his father. He turned the page towards Alexander. ‘What’s this say?’ he asked. ‘It looks like a steamroller’s gone over it.’ His forefinger covered all but two words in the box next to Mr Barrington’s signature.

  ‘“Dark horse”,’ Alexander read, unsure whether this was a compliment.

  ‘And this?’ The finger slid away, uncovering the rest of the line.

  ‘“Alexander has an excellent head for facts, but he must learn what to do with them.”’

  ‘And not all facts, it would appear,’ commented his father. ‘Numbers are facts too, Alexander. I think we should aim to impress our Mr Smythe next term. But this is good, son. This is good,’ he repeated, putting the report aside. Briefly his fingers rested on its pale blue cardboard cover and a look of mild perturbation appeared on his face, as if his fingertips were detecting something that might be meaningful, but which eluded his interpretation. He picked up the pipe and tobacco together, while his other hand burrowed in a trouser pocket. With his silver penknife he dug at the crystallized tar in the bowl of his pipe, while Alexander prepared to ask if he could return to his room, having said nothing in response to his father’s praise.

  It was Mr Barrington’s custom to install himself in the embrasure of the window as the boys processed into his classroom. Looking up from the book which his hands supported like a lectern, Mr Barrington might favour one or two with a glance that acknowledged that the chosen pupil was entering the class in the due spirit of solemn receptivity. When the last boy was at his desk Mr Barrington would cross the room, still reading his page, and push the book against the door to close it slowly. He then would sigh as he turned to face his class, or close the book so slowly it was as though its cover were resisting strongly the pressure of his hands, or watch the corridor until the room became absolutely silent. ‘Good day, form,’ he would invariably begin.

  ‘And good day to you, sir,’ they responded.

  ‘Any absentees?’

  ‘Radford,’ said Timothy Pottinger on this particular day.

  ‘He, of all people, cannot afford to absent himself,’ commented Mr Barrington, raising and lowering his arms as though requesting Pottinger to reconsider his reply. The sleeves of his gown, so deeply ingrained with chalk that they were the colour of elephant hide, gave off a thin smoke of dust. ‘Do we know if Mrs Radford has vouchsafed any reason for the indisposition of her firstborn?’

  ‘Haven’t heard, sir,’ Paul Malinowski apologised.

  ‘AWOL yet again, we must assume.’ Mr Barrington bent forward, as if to ease the ache of indigestion, and the grimy lenses of his spectacles, moving into a belt of sunlight, became instantly opaque. His white and bumpy skin shone through the ladder of hair that crossed his head. ‘Onward,’ said Mr Barrington, shoving himself upright from his desk. ‘The weather is somewhat oppressive, I think we would all agree? Inconducive to study, perhaps. Things we would all rather be doing. But thus will it often be. I am here to get you through your examinations, and that I shall do.’ He wrestled the gown from his shoulders, rolled it up, and hurled it into the corner, behind the green steel wastepaper bin. ‘Some dictation first,’ announced Mr Barrington.

  It was something to do with Pitt the Younger that he read to them, as Alexander would remember. Rocking his right foot on a loose brick of the parquet floor, Mr Barrington recounted a debate in Parliament, deepening his voice to quote the sententious speeches. Mid-speech he raised his eyes and asked of the class in general, as if asking to be reminded of a fact that had slipped from his mind: ‘The Diet of Augsburg. When was it?’

  ‘Sir?’ replied Lionel Griffiths, his pen arrested on the rim of the inkwell.

  ‘Don’t be querulous, Griffiths,’ said Mr Barrington. ‘The Diet of Augsburg is not, I grant you, germane to the career of William Pitt. It is, however, a subject on which you may one day be examined, and it is, furthermore, an event we have previously discussed, in this very room. So, anyone?’

  Every boy busied himself with correcting the punctuation and spelling of the dictated paragraphs.

  ‘For crying out loud, one of you must know?’ Mr Barrington picked up a stub of chalk from the gutter of his desk. ‘Are my labours to be in vain? Tell me it is not so, in God’s name,’ he cried, with actorly anguish. Propelled by Mr Barrington’s thumb, the chalk stub hit Alexander’s sleeve, leaving a white tick above the braiding of his cuff. ‘MacIndoe? Any prospect of an answer? Even a lunatic guess might mollify me.’

  Alexander had never yet volunteered an answer in Mr Barrington’s class. He studied the mark on his cuff for five seconds or so; he looked at Mr Barrington, who folded his arms in expectation of Alexander’s admission of defeat; he looked at the blackboard’s broad smears of half-erased writing, which struck him as an apt representation of the condition of his mind. His gaze lingered within a broad looping track of white dust, and his hearing seemed to fail. He had a vision of the thick walls of masonry and fantastical turrets he had imagined when he first heard the name of Augsburg, and the Diet again evoked a gathering of austere men whose vowels sounded like barks, and he saw a texture and a colour that were of limestone in the last moments of daylight. He felt an answer rise onto his tongue like a ball of sputum. Without a thought he let it out: ‘1530, sir.’

  Mr Barrington blinked away his surprise. ‘Good, MacIndoe. Very good. I thank you.’ He looked at the clock above the door. ‘The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis?’

  Alexander saw a cabal of slender Frenchmen in ruffs and stockings, and a castle by a river, and poplars swaying in a breeze. A number budded in his mouth, and he raised his hand swiftly.

  ‘MacIndoe, again? This is bold of you. Speak.’

  ‘1559, sir,’ said Alexander.

  ‘Fortune favours the brave. Indeed it was 1559. Good.’ Mr Barrington inspected the clock once more. ‘The Diet of Worms,’ he proposed, and again, a few seconds later, Alexander alone raised a hand. ‘Is nobody else prepared to venture an answer? No? Very well. MacIndoe?’

  ‘1521, sir.’

  ‘Were I wearing one, I should take my cap off to you, MacIndoe. And when was the great heresiarch born? Luther. Born. When?’

  Alexander saw a diagram of a fat man in the shape of a number, and another number that was the first number cut in half, like a fat face in profile. ‘1483,’ he stated.

  ‘And the year of his decease?’

  ‘1546.’

  ‘Astonishing,’ remarked Mr Barrington, looking at the boy in a way that made him feel as if he were suspected of having played some sort of trick on the class. ‘An example to you all,’ he said. ‘We shall have another catechism next week. I hope I’ll see some evidence that MacIndoe is not the only one who has been paying attention to the proceedings. Now, where were we? Can anyone remember?’

  The following week, while dictating an explanation of the Corn Laws, Mr Barrington pr
essed a finger onto the page as if pressing a button to set a machine going, and asked: ‘The Council of Trent. Year of commencement?’ Ignoring Alexander’s hand, his gaze progressed down the left file of desks, then the centre file. ‘Your colleagues would appear to have capitulated, MacIndoe. And your answer is?’

  ‘1545, sir.’

  ‘Another bull’s eye. I congratulate you.’ He looked at Alexander questioningly, and then at the book on his desk. ‘And ended? Somebody other than MacIndoe, if that would not be asking too much?’

  ‘1565,’ John Halloran offered, twirling his pencil aloft as if he had impaled the answer on it.

  The date sounded like a discord in Alexander’s head. ‘1563,’ he intervened, before Mr Barrington could ask for a correction.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mr Barrington. ‘Edict of Nantes?’ he requested, evoking in Alexander’s mind associations of probity and a prospect of silk pennants on a cobbled harbourside in a clear summer light.

  ‘1598, sir,’ Alexander responded.

  The puzzled twist of Mr Barrington’s mouth began to soften into a half-smile. ‘Issued by whom?’ he asked, directly to Alexander.

  ‘Henry IV, sir. Henry of Navarre.’

  ‘Revocation of same?’

  Alexander saw enormous wigs and a secretive chamber in which there was the sound of scratching quills and rain. ‘1685,’ he said.

  ‘Bravo. Another innings of Bradman-like consistency, MacIndoe.’

  A routine was soon established, in which Mr Barrington would randomly punctuate his readings with ‘Date, MacIndoe?’, and Alexander would immediately reply. Rarely did Mr Barrington look at him, and even more rarely did he remark on his response. It was like a circus turn, thought Alexander, the way the names and dates passed back and forth between them, yet Mr Barrington was the only teacher for whom he had affection, an affection that grew, however, not from these history lessons but from Mr Barrington’s performances in his religious education class.

  Mr Barrington taught religious education in a different classroom. It had once been a chemistry room and its air still smelled like bitter almonds and tasted metallic, though no chemicals were left there, except for a single jar of copper sulphate that had remained on the bottom shelf of the glass-fronted cabinet. The high benches at which they sat were scarred with shallow acid burns that had been varnished over so they looked like divoted peat. The teacher’s desk, occupying the prow of a dais in front of the worn-out blackboard, had two porcelain basins sunk into it, and two taps that curved like swan’s necks to left and right. Into one of the basins Mr Barrington would deposit the books he would consult in the latter half of his lesson, and then he would prop his Bible against one of the taps and begin to read. His voice was not the same as the voice with which he read from his history books: it was slower and more sonorous, with plentiful pauses and repetitions. He asked no questions that required a reply, and only when he had to turn a page did he look at the class. ‘You are following, I trust,’ he might say, or ‘There’s something for you to think about,’ and then he would resume, continuing until twenty minutes had passed. Precisely at the lesson’s midway point he would close the Bible, take a book from the pile in the basin, and begin to talk to them, ironically, sometimes mockingly, about the history of the church, the lives of the saints, witch-hunts, the complexities of doctrine and the multitudinous species of heresy, a word he pronounced in a way that seemed to allude to the illicit pleasures of adulthood.