Ghost MacIndoe

‘Quiet!’ ordered Mr Gardiner, so ferociously that both John and Alexander blushed. The skinny scout was saluting the picture of the king with a rake-like hand.

‘When’s the football, Pete?’ John enquired as the two ranks broke up, but Peter Nichols, drawing back the bolt on a black tin chest, ignored him.

‘A few basics,’ said Peter Nichols. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, letting a bolt of cloth drop open from his outstretched hands.

‘The Union Jack,’ Alexander replied.

‘Wrong. It’s the Union Flag. The Union Jack is flown from a ship. On land it’s the Union Flag.’

‘What’s the difference?’ asked John.

‘I told you the difference. The Union Jack is flown from a ship. On land it’s the Union Flag.’

‘But it’s the same flag?’

‘Yes. But it’s wrong to call this the Union Jack, and there’s a right and a wrong way to fly it.’ Peter Nichols demonstrated the right way, and then they studied a chart of national flags and signalling flags, and then the skinny scout stood by the door to send semaphore messages to Mr Gardiner, who flapped his two small flags in reply, from in front of the king.

‘SOS!’ Mr Gardiner cried, and his rigid arms flew up and down in a sequence of electrocuted spasms. ‘Once again!’ cried Mr Gardiner, and the flags went up and down with a cracking sound.

‘Why do they need the flags when they can holler at each other?’ John asked Peter Nichols.

‘That wouldn’t do any good, would it?’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s obvious.’

‘Not to me.’

‘You couldn’t be heard in a storm, could you? It’s obvious,’ said Peter Nichols, with a contemptuous look. ‘Use your head.’

‘Ah,’ said John, relieved to have at last been given access to understanding. ‘This’ll be handy, I’m sure. One day. Lost in a storm on the Thames, miles from dry land.’

‘If you’re going to be flippant, Halloran,’ said Peter Nichols angrily, ‘there’s little point in your being here.’

‘Quite true, mein kapitan,’ John replied, but he and Alexander did return the following week and for several weeks after that. Under the tutelage of Peter Nichols they learned how to make a fire without matches, clean their teeth without a toothbrush, identify badger tracks and the tracks of foxes, otters, goats and sheep. They learned never to shelter under an oak tree in a thunderstorm, because the rainwater coursing through the grooved bark would conduct the lethal lightning bolt. They were required to memorise nonsense syllables that were said to represent the songs of birds they would never find in London. Doggedly Peter Nichols tied and untied knots of pointless complexity, until Alexander could form them unaided.

By then it required effort for John Halloran to dissemble his discontent. ‘Only deer we’re going to see are in the zoo,’ he grumbled, as Peter Nichols, his hand obscuring the captions, held up a page of hoofprints. ‘What about doing makes of cars instead?’ he suggested, when presented with the silhouettes of various wings. ‘Any chance of football, Pete?’ he would ask at some point in every evening, and ‘Not until you’ve got this right,’ became Peter Nichols’ customary reply. But only once did they go out to the yard for a game, and that was for no more than ten minutes, and then one evening Alexander called at John Halloran’s house and was told that he would have to go on his own.

‘Kicked out before I could walk out,’ John explained. ‘Himmler put in a call to the ma. It’ll be your turn next if you don’t put your name on the dotted line. Why don’t you tell them to stuff it?’

‘I think I will,’ said Alexander. ‘Soon.’

‘It’s so boring,’ said John. ‘Making a bivouac out of lettuce leaves and all that.’

Alexander did soon leave, but not because he was bored by the peculiar skills he was being taught. He was never bored, though he could rarely think of any use for what he was learning. He enjoyed making cross-sections from contoured maps of London, plotting the altitudes on a graph and bringing out the shape of the land beneath the houses and roads of his neighbourhood. There was pleasure in becoming able to shorten a length of rope with a sheepshank without looking at what his hands were doing, and to read the coming weather from the clouds. Had it not been for Mr Gardiner, he would have stayed longer. ‘You have an enthusiasm,’ said Mr Gardiner, but in a way that made enthusiasm sound like something Alexander did not want to have. The blue skin under his eyes, Alexander noticed, was like the skin that covered the bulging eyes of the dead fledgling he had found one evening below the gutter of the scouts’ hall. Mr Gardiner sat so close that his feet jammed against Alexander’s underneath the bench. ‘Johnny was a disruptive influence. You have the makings of a good scout,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep my eye on you,’ Mr Gardiner smiled, and an odour of sour milk escaped from his mouth. It was that evening, in the week that the last London tram broke down on its final journey to New Cross, that Alexander told his parents he did not want to go back.

‘Why on earth not?’ asked his father, folding the map that had been spread open on his lap.

‘It’s dull,’ said Alexander.

‘Dull,’ echoed his father dully.

‘Really dull.’

‘It’ll do you good if you stick at it.’

‘But it’s so boring.’

‘Any training’s boring sometimes.’

‘This isn’t training for anything, and it’s boring all the time.’

‘So it wasn’t boring when John Halloran was with you, but now it’s boring all the time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sounds to me as if you weren’t there for the right reason in the first place.’

‘And we’ll have to get him the uniform soon, if he keeps going,’ said Alexander’s mother. ‘The uniform’s expensive, Graham.’

‘We’ve discovered that today, have we?’ his father rejoined.

‘No. Alexander has discovered that it’s not for him. That’s what we’ve discovered.’

‘There would seem to be little purpose in continuing this discussion,’ said his father, raising the map. He was still reading it, as if it were a device to preserve his annoyance, when Alexander came downstairs to say goodnight.

‘What’s the map for, Mum?’ Alexander asked.

‘A graphic representation of the land, for the purposes of comprehension and navigation,’ replied his father. His left hand let go of the map, stirred the spoon in his mug of cocoa, and took hold of the map again.

‘Graham,’ said his mother. She closed the fashion magazine in her lap and stared at the map, waiting for it to be lowered. ‘Graham,’ she said again, and his father made busy humming noises. His mother made a loudhailer from the magazine and directed it at Alexander. ‘He’s planning our holiday,’ she whispered loudly. ‘A proper holiday.’ ‘Possibly,’ responded his father.

‘Two whole weeks,’ said his mother, making delighted eyes.

‘Possibly. If the piggy bank has put on enough weight.’

‘In sunny Cornwall.’

‘Don’t count your chickens.’

‘Next month.’ ‘Possibly,’ his father repeated, but there was now a sardonic inflection to his gruffness.

‘Graham,’ said his mother. ‘Come on, Graham. Don’t be a grump.’

‘A grump?’ said his father, feigning bafflement. ‘A grump? Come,’ he called, and when Alexander came around to the side of his chair his father reached out to fold down the collars of his dressing gown and pyjamas, feigning displeasure at Alexander’s disarray. ‘X marks the spot,’ he said, scribbling with the mouthpiece of his pipe on a long stroke of yellow ink. ‘Praa,’ he read. ‘Possibly Praa.’

Alexander looked at the bite-shaped bays and the roads that ended short of the coast, like wires that had been cut. ‘Next month?’ he asked his father.