Jonathan Buckley - Ghost MacIndoe

‘Your things are behind there, Mrs MacIndoe,’ said Colin when they were in the other room, indicating a folding cloth screen with willows painted on it. ‘And this is your kit,’ he told Alexander, lifting a towel from a pile of school clothes that lay folded on the seat of a chair. The uniform had never been worn before: the cuffs of the shirt were as hard as tea cups, and the toe caps of the shoes had not a single dent in them. Colin aligned the knot of Alexander’s tie then slung an empty leather satchel over his shoulder.

‘The model schoolboy,’ his mother remarked as she came out from behind the screen. ‘Perhaps Colin should get you ready every day.’ She had a different dress on, and a starched white apron over it.

‘You’ll be needing this,’ said Colin, and he thrust a wooden spoon into her hand. ‘The master awaits,’ he told them, in a voice that dragged with the dreariness of his duties. He held the door open and waved them through like a traffic policeman.

In the main room Mr Stevens was straightening the skirt of black material that hung from the back of the camera, and another man was entering from the office, combing his hair as he walked.

‘This is Mr Darby,’ said Mr Stevens. ‘Mr Darby will be completing our – ensemble.’

Mr Darby had a face as smooth and symmetrical as a shopwindow dummy’s, and like a dummy’s outfit his white shirt and grey suit had no creases. He combed back his oily forelock, so it stood up like a little grille, and said ‘Hi,’ instead of ‘Hello’.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Darby,’ said Alexander’s mother.

‘Call me Geoff,’ he replied with a smile that went up as if pulled by wires. ‘Irene, right?’

‘And Alexander,’ said his mother.

Mr Darby peered at Alexander over his mother’s shoulder; he might have been looking over a wall at a guard dog. ‘Hi, kid. Things OK?’ he asked, turning straight away to Mr Stevens. ‘Come on, Harry, let’s go. Tempus fugit .’ Mr Darby leaped onto the podium and took up a position behind the stove, jerking the sleeves of his jacket and then his cuffs.

Mr Stevens manoeuvred Alexander and his mother into their places around the stove, on which Colin set a big copper pot and a snow-white saucepan. Mr Darby put his hand on Irene MacIndoe’s shoulder and looked into the copper pot. ‘Yum yum,’ he said heavily, ‘that does look so good. Get that spoon in there, girl, and give it a stir.’

A muffled voice came out of the head of the one-eyed, five-legged creature that was watching Alexander and his mother and Mr Darby. ‘Mrs MacIndoe, could you raise your right hand a bit, and keep your left by your side? That’s good. And look as if you’ve found fifty pounds in among the carrots. The imaginary carrots. That’s good, Mrs MacIndoe.’ Like a monstrous spider a hand crept out from the pleats of the cloth and advanced to the front of the camera, where it writhed around the lens and then retreated. ‘Come on, Geoff, look keen,’ said the voice. ‘This blasted stove is the best thing that’s happened to you since I don’t know what.’

‘The weekend?’ suggested Mr Darby. He made a movement with his lips as if dislodging something from between his teeth.

The skirt of the camera bulged and out slipped Mr Stevens’ head. ‘Alexander, could you move in a bit closer?’ he requested. ‘And look at the pot, not the camera. Try to forget I’m here.’ He raised the cloth, drew a deep breath like a diver, and ducked under. ‘Nearly there, Alexander, nearly there. Left foot forward a bit. Perhaps tiptoes? And not quite so glum?’

‘Smile at me, Alexander,’ said his mother, and this was the moment of the day that he would remember most clearly: her damp red lips smiling into the vacant copper pot, while the fingers of her left hand shook against her thigh.

‘The quid pro quo,’ Alexander repeated quietly to himself, and the comical words made his face adjust itself to Mr Stevens’ satisfaction.

‘Excellent,’ said Mr Stevens. ‘Excellent. Don’t move.’ There was a flash into which everything vanished, and then the room seemed to assemble itself quickly out of the white air, wobbling for a second before standing firm. Alexander blinked. He saw a room that was colourless and stood like a ghost in front of the real room. He blinked again and the phantom room was fainter, and smaller, as if it were retreating. ‘One more, everyone,’ Mr Stevens called. Again everything disappeared and rushed back, and Alexander blinked to see the ghostly room.

‘Thank you, Alexander. Very professional,’ said Mr Stevens, satisfied at last, and then he dropped a spent flashbulb into Alexander’s hand. Waiting for his mother to change out of the borrowed clothes, Alexander rolled the warm bulb on his palm. In the pock-marked glass he saw the grey of railway lines in the rain, the grey of the silted riverbank below the power station in Greenwich, the grey of the ash in the Doodlebug House. This he would remember too, and he would remember looking up to see his mother in the doorway to the back room, where Mr Darby stood in her way and said something to her. She lowered her eyes, then after ten seconds or so she smiled at Mr Darby as if he had said something amusing, though it appeared he had said nothing. She reached into Mr Darby’s pocket, drew out his comb, snapped it in half and dropped the halves on the floor. Having wiped her fingers on the door jamb, she hurried across the shining floor, her heels hammering on the tiles.

‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Stevens,’ she said, and snatched Alexander’s hand in passing.

‘And vice versa,’ replied Mr Stevens to her back. ‘Goodbye, Alexander.’

As the door to the office closed, Alexander turned to see Mr Stevens laughing with Mr Darby, who was fanning his hand in front of his mouth, miming an endless yawn.

‘What happened?’ Alexander asked his mother on the stairs.

‘A very rude man,’ she said, placing the back of a hand on her reddened cheeks. ‘A very disagreeable person.’

‘I didn’t like him,’ said Alexander.

‘Quite right,’ she told him.

‘Smarmy.’

‘Smarmy,’ she agreed, but she was making them walk so fast they could not talk, and on the train she sat in silence, glaring at the window as if her reflected face were Mr Darby’s.

The advertisement appeared in Every Woman magazine near the end of the year, next to a knitting pattern and opposite an advertisement in which a boy of Alexander’s age was striding along a road in a countryside of wheat fields and sheep and thatched cottages, with a spiral of steam rising from a mug in the foreground, above the slogan ‘It’s The Only Way To Start The Day!’ The road and fields and cottages were painted, not real, and the vista of cupboards and shelves behind his mother and Mr Darby was unreal as well, like a pencil tracing rather than a photograph.

His father leaned back in his chair and brought the page close to his face. ‘A peculiar scene all right, son,’ he said. ‘Looks like no kitchen I’ve ever been in. And as for Mr Handsome, the cuckoo in the nest.’ He shook his head in histrionic sorrow.

‘Your idea as well as mine,’ said Alexander’s mother, turning her embroidery frame. ‘We got a good deal.’

‘Imagine, son. Your poor old dad not wanted on voyage. Insufficient juttiness of jaw. The humiliation of it.’ He put down the magazine and picked up his newspaper, but as soon as they were left alone he turned to Alexander and whispered behind his hand, like a classmate playing a prank: ‘Borrow your pencil?’

Alexander sat on the arm of the chair and watched his father draw a goatee moustache and glasses on the man, and then a speech bubble from Alexander’s mouth. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he wrote in the bubble.