Ghost MacIndoe

‘Yes.’

‘And what does it make you think? Doesn’t it make you frightened? You must think something.’

‘Makes me wish there were no clouds in the way.’

‘That isn’t a proper thought, Eck,’ said Megan sharply, and she shook the sand from her hand. ‘Some of them are millions and millions and millions of miles away. So many millions that what you’re looking at isn’t there any longer. The light is like a parcel sent by somebody who’s died before it reaches you. Isn’t that horrible?’ She watched Alexander as he inspected the sky. ‘The stars are there now, but we can’t see them because the sun’s out. Or did you think they all went off somewhere for the day?’

‘Of course not.’

‘But doesn’t it make you feel giddy?’

‘Doesn’t what?’

‘That a long time ago all this wasn’t here, and a long time from now it won’t be here any more.’

‘No,’ said Alexander. ‘It’s here now. We’re here now. I don’t think anything about the beach. It just is.’

‘Don’t be daft, Eck. Nothing just is.’

‘Well, you just are. I just am.’

‘No you’re not. You’re the son of your parents. You’re part of them.’

‘No I’m not.’

‘You are, Eck. Where do you think you came from?’

‘I know where I came from. I’m not thick.’

‘Well then. You look like your mum. Exactly like her. It’s not a coincidence. A part of you is her.’

‘No,’ protested Alexander. ‘All of me is me.’

‘Same with your dad,’ continued Megan.

‘I’m nothing like him.’

‘Your dad’s a bit serious and a bit scatty.’

‘He’s not. He’s not at all scatty.’

‘Yes, he is. He’s always larking about.’

‘I don’t lark about,’ Alexander complained.

‘Yes you do. You do silly voices.’

‘No I don’t.’

‘Eck, you do,’ said Megan emphatically. ‘You do other people’s voices.’

‘But that’s not silly voices.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘What’s the point of this?’ he asked. ‘Why do you want to argue?’

‘I don’t, Eck. But you’re so sweet, I can’t help it,’ Megan told him, and she took his hand as they picked a route through the fallen stones.

They were on their own below Hoe Point, where Megan found a pool that was as smooth and long as a bathtub, with a fringe of spinach-coloured seaweed at one end, where she rested her head as she lay down. Water from the breaking waves frisked along the channels of the rocks and leaped into the pool. The water lapped at Megan’s goosefleshed thighs. Alexander would always remember this, and her hair twisted into unravelled plaits by the saltwater, and the freckles of dried salt that were mixed with the freckles of her cheeks.

Alexander watched the gulls wheeling out from the cliff where he had sat with Mr Beckwith. The birds made no noise now, and evening was beginning. The white flecks on the sea were like flowers that nobody would ever be able to pick.

‘You haven’t blinked for a minute,’ said Megan. ‘What are you thinking about?’

‘Not again,’ he moaned. ‘I’m just looking, Meg.’

‘Looking without thinking anything. I don’t believe you. It’s not possible.’

‘There’s a lot to look at.’

She looked at him as if pretending to be baffled. ‘Faraway Eck,’ she said, and she put her arms around his shoulders as a sister might have done.

‘Odd Eck,’ he responded. Creamy water hurried up through the gullies and touched his toes.

And he would remember the pyramid of towels packed onto a saddle of sand between two clumps of grass, and his father handing Mr Beckwith his Brownie camera. His father and mother and Mrs Beckwith stood at the back, their arms folded as if they were footballers in a team photograph. Alexander knelt in the sand by a mat of black seaweed that was baked as stiff as wicker, and Megan looped her arm through his. He looked back to see his mother picking a windblown strand of hair from her face. ‘Come on, Harry,’ said Mrs Beckwith. ‘The tide’ll wash us away before you press that blasted shutter.’ Mr Beckwith’s smile appeared at the side of the camera. Drifts of dry sand were moving down to the sea, flexing like snakes in their sidelong flight. A dog came running through the marram grass and Alexander wanted someone to ask him if he was happy because he wanted an excuse to say it, because he had realised that he had never been happier than he was at that moment, looking over Mr Beckwith’s shoulder and seeing the colour that the setting sun was painting on the rocks of Rinsey Head and the engine house of the Wheal Prosper mine.

10. Monty (#ulink_73e46cd9-523b-5c8b-9e10-42ad047aa111)

Mr Owen had been at the school for no more than a month when, one morning after assembly, he stopped Alexander in the corridor, outside Mr Darrow’s room, and said to him in an aggrieved tone of voice: ‘Montgomery is an hero, is he not?’

‘Sir,’ Alexander agreed, after a hesitation, having heard ‘Anne Eero’.

‘Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of the Eighth Army and victor of El Alamein, is an hero.’ Mr Owen shifted his feet as if adjusting his balance on a moving deck, and his plimsolls squealed on the stone floor. ‘He is a man who has achieved things. Stupendous things. He is a leader of men,’ said Mr Owen.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A leader of men you are not.’

‘No, sir,’ Alexander replied, puzzled as to what he might have done to offend Mr Owen. His classmates were passing behind Mr Owen, filing in for the English lesson. John Halloran glanced at Alexander and grimaced in sympathy.

‘So?’ demanded Mr Owen. He wiped a hand over the crown of his head, as if to quell his exasperation.

‘Sir?’

‘What is the connection, MacIndoe? Where is the relevance?’

Still having no notion what Mr Owen was talking about, Alexander assumed a posture of contrition, fixing his gaze on the books he was holding to his waist.