Jonathan Buckley - Ghost MacIndoe

Their laughter brought Alexander’s mother back. ‘What’s funny?’ she asked, drying her hands on a tea-towel, and Alexander displayed the advertisement. ‘Which one of you two infants did that, then?’ she demanded, not smiling.

‘He did,’ said Alexander’s father, handcuffing his son with his fingers.

‘Idiot.’

‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity,’ his father replied, for which he received a swat on the back of the head with the newspaper. ‘I’ll get you another one,’ he laughed.

‘You will indeed,’ said Alexander’s mother.

‘Dog house for me,’ said his father. He took the newspaper from her hand and unrolled it. ‘Mind you, we’ll all be done for at this rate,’ he added, looking into the open pages as if he were staring into a pit.

Alexander would remember the words ‘38th Parallel’ in the headline, and his pang of perplexity at the notion that something was happening in which peril and geometry were in some way combined. And he would remember looking at the advertisement his father had defaced, at his mother stirring the empty pot, at the simpering boy who was more like the boy on the painted road than he was like himself, and at the unpleasant Mr Darby, who seemed to be smirking at him, as if he knew that Alexander wanted him to go away.

It was raining as the train went over Hungerford Bridge, and Alexander looked to his left at the roof of the Dome of Discovery, which was like a pavement of silver.

‘That’s called the Skylon,’ said his mother, pointing to the rocket-shaped thing that balanced on tightropes beside the river. A boy across the aisle leaned forward to see, and slapped his bare knees with excitement. On the far bank, the big tower of the Houses of Parliament was wrapped in a cocoon of scaffolding.

‘An hour till rendezvous,’ said his father as they jostled down the steps off the bridge. ‘Let’s follow our noses for a while.’

First they went to look at the section on British wildlife, where Alexander, willing the time to pass, entranced himself with a picture of a Scottish wild cat cringing into the hollow of a tree trunk. People buffeted his back as he stood his ground, staring at the cat’s gaping mouth. ‘Come along, daydream,’ said his mother, touching his neck. ‘There’s lots more to see. We can’t spend all day looking at a moggy.’

‘How much longer till they arrive?’ Alexander asked.

His father did not even check his watch. ‘Good grief,’ he said. ‘Patience, boy. About one hour minus five minutes.’

They went to a pavilion in which there were large straw figures of a lion and a unicorn. ‘The twin symbols of the Briton’s character,’ his father read.

‘Twin symbols?’ said Alexander.

‘Yes. Of the Britons,’ said his father. ‘All the people who are British. Me, you. All of us. What don’t you understand?’

‘Why two?’

‘The lion is like the lion on the flags,’ his father explained. ‘Like the British Lions. Richard the Lionheart. Lion-hearted Britons in general – Francis Drake, Henry the Fifth, Winston Churchill, Randolph Turpin.’

‘So not all of us?’

‘Deep down, all of us, yes. But it’s more obvious with some than with others, I grant you. Noël Coward, for instance. You have to dig pretty deep to find the lion there.’

‘I thought it was the British bulldog.’

‘It can be that too, yes,’ his mother said. ‘But the lion’s more noble, more regal. And more ancient. There’s history with the lion.’

‘And a damned great straw bulldog would look pretty silly,’ said his father, and he blew some dirt off his glasses.

‘What’s a unicorn got to do with it?’ asked Alexander. ‘They never existed, did they?’

His father pressed a thumb to the furrow between his eyebrows; he drew a long breath and let it go. ‘No, that’s right. They never existed.’

‘The unicorn is for fantasy, Alexander,’ said his mother. ‘Imagination, playfulness, that sort of thing.’

‘Think of Denis Compton,’ said his father, and with an imaginary bat he clipped an imaginary ball up to the ceiling. ‘Éclat, élan, vim, panache, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘What?’

‘Or Noël Coward,’ said his mother.

Alexander trailed his parents out of the pavilion, ruminating on the mythical Briton, whose qualities were combined in nobody he knew. Sheltering under the eaves of the Dome, he watched the row of fountains in front of the Skylon as they wriggled like a squad of restless giants.

‘This is definitely the right place?’ his father asked his mother, hooking his cuff clear of his wrist.

‘Well, how many domes can you see, Graham?’ replied his mother. ‘The dome at eleven,’ she assured him, and no sooner had she said the words than Megan and Mrs Beckwith arrived, under a big black umbrella.

‘We late, Irene?’ asked Mrs Beckwith, picking at the net that held her hair bunched at the back of her head. ‘Problems choosing young madam’s wardrobe. Us girls always have to look our best, you know. A lesson you’ll learn soon enough, Alexander,’ she said, and she kissed him on his forehead.

Megan stood behind her, twirling her pleated tartan skirt. Her hair was held back above her ears by plastic clips that matched her eyes. ‘Hello, Mrs MacIndoe,’ said Megan, stepping out to the side. ‘Hello, Mr MacIndoe. Hello, Eck. What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alexander, and he looked to his mother.

‘Can I decide then?’ Megan asked.

‘Bossy child,’ said Mrs Beckwith, and she nudged Megan towards Alexander.

Megan looked over his shoulder at the Skylon. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said to Alexander. Her eyes followed the tower’s curve up into space.

‘No visible means of support,’ observed his father. ‘Just like the country.’

‘Cynicism is inappropriate here, Graham,’ chided his mother. ‘For domestic consumption only.’

Tapping a cigarette on the lid of the steel case she had taken from her handbag, Mrs Beckwith nodded in the direction of the river. Two boys were kicking each other’s shins underneath the Skylon. ‘The male of the species,’ she commented drily, then accepted the match that Alexander’s father held out to her.

‘Boys will be boys,’ agreed his mother.

Megan’s fingers appeared on Alexander’s sleeve, and she said the only words that he would always be able to retrieve from his memory of that morning. ‘But you’re different, Eck,’ she said, as if placating him. ‘You’re almost a girl.’

‘Beg pardon?’ exclaimed Mrs Beckwith.

‘Whatever do you mean, young lady?’ his father asked Megan, putting his hands on her shoulders from behind and looking down onto her face.

‘I was being nice, Mr MacIndoe, that’s all. Eck’s gentle, like a girl, that’s all I meant.’

Alexander’s father frowned at Megan but he was more amused by her than he ever was by him, it seemed to Alexander, and it seemed throughout that morning that he preferred her company to his son’s. ‘That’s called the regulator,’ his father said to her, putting a finger close to a photograph in which a trio of iron spheres whirled on thick iron arms above a huge steam engine. Crouching between Alexander and Megan, he explained how the apparatus worked, but it was to Megan that he was speaking. ‘They rise up, and the steam escapes here, and so the pressure drops and they fall again,’ he said.

‘Ingenious,’ Megan commented, as if Alexander’s father were the inventor and she was congratulating him.

‘Ingenious indeed,’ his father agreed, smiling to himself.

‘Too technical for us,’ commented his mother, pulling a face for Alexander, though he understood the machine well enough. She put a hand out to steer him to the next exhibit; he shrugged his shoulder away and followed his father.