Ghost MacIndoe

‘Simple question, lad. It’s not an algebra problem. All I want to know is what’s the connection?’

At the window of Mr Darrow’s room appeared a sheet of paper on which the word ‘MAD’ was crayoned in capital letters. Lionel Griffiths’ head rose into view beside it, with a finger tapping at his temple. All of a sudden Alexander understood. ‘Not that Monty, sir,’ he said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ queried Mr Owen, his lip crumpling into a sneer.

‘It’s not that Monty, sir.’

‘What do you mean, MacIndoe? “Not that Monty”? There is only one Monty.’

‘No, sir, there’s another one. It’s the other one, sir. Montgomery Clift.’

‘Montgomery Clift?’ Mr Owen repeated in an outraged shriek.

‘The actor, sir. The Search. Red River. A Place in the Sun.’

‘Yes, yes. I am not an ignoramus, MacIndoe.’ Momentarily deflated, Mr Owen looked without interest at Alexander’s books, and then he looked Alexander in the eye and instantly rediscovered his indignation. ‘Montgomery Clift? The gooey American?’

‘Sir.’

‘That long lump of unbaked dough?’

‘Yes, sir. They think I look like him. Some of them do.’

‘Is that so?’ Mr Owen rejoined, and the delayed repercussions of a thought spread across his features, like a gust of wind rippling the grass on a hill. The sneer subsided, to be succeeded by a look of placid distaste. ‘Nothing like him, if you ask me,’ he said.

‘I don’t see it either, sir,’ Alexander replied.

‘Whatever could they be thinking of, eh?’ Mr Owen rubbed the toe of one plimsoll with the toe of the other, then looked at Alexander’s face as if it were a tepidly amusing drawing that a child had done. ‘Off you go, MacIndoe.’

The gymnasium was beyond a pair of storage rooms and a padlocked classroom that he was never to see open, at the end of a corridor that smelled of stale canvas and rubber and skin and coconut matting. The way in was through the changing rooms, where in the morning the dairy-white tiles gleamed in the light that came in through the gymnasium door. From the playground the pointed high windows of the gymnasium and the terracotta plaques on the wall gave it the look of a chapel, and there was something church-like in its appearance in the morning, before it had been used. Some mornings Alexander would arrive at school early and enter the corridor by the door that led to the playground, and if nobody was around he would creep between the steel mesh clothes-racks, and go into the quiet, high-ceilinged hall. The painted white lines on the parquet he could see as the patterns on the floor of an aisle, and he could see the vaulting horse, standing against the end wall behind a painted semicircle, as an altar of sorts, capped with its pad of blood-red leather. Between the windows on both sides the wall-bars were arrayed like tiers of memorials. Looped over the bars, the ropes made curves like stone vaulting, rising to the rings by which they were attached to the rafters. Until five minutes before the bell was due to ring he would sit under a window, listening to the voices growing louder outside, fortifying himself with the emptiness of the gymnasium before crossing the playground to his classroom.

Mr Owen’s lessons always began the same way. They would await his arrival in a line across the centre of the gymnasium, facing the changing-room door, through which the squeak of Mr Owen’s plimsolls would be heard and then, a few seconds before he appeared, his command: ‘To attention!’ Swivelling on his heels, he closed the door, leaving his hand on the knob for a moment, an action that signified that he was not merely shutting a door but imprisoning them for his thirty minutes. ‘All here?’ he would ask, before squeaking towards them, reciting a selection from his roster of nicknames. ‘Hercules Halloran here; Goliath Griffiths here; Tiny Tim Pottinger here,’ he would call out, while Alexander concentrated on the great volume of air above their heads. ‘The Mighty Pickering here; Girly MacIndoe here; Fat Boy Radford here,’ Mr Owen would call out, smiling to himself.

‘One day, one day,’ Mick Radford once muttered as he retrieved a medicine ball that Mr Owen had thrown at him, and the phrase became the class’s refrain. ‘One day, one day,’ repeated John Halloran, peeling a handkerchief from his bleeding shin. ‘One day, one day,’ promised Timothy Pottinger, running cold water over a rope burn, before writing ‘One’ on the underside of the tongue of his left plimsoll, and ‘Day’ on the tongue of the right.

That day arrived at the end of an unseasonably cold week, near the end of term. It was a dark morning, as Alexander would remember, and it became darker and colder during the walk to school. Hail started to fall during assembly, and pools of melting ice were forming in the playground as they crossed to the gymnasium.

Alexander took his place in the line, underneath the basketball hoop. Locking and unlocking his fingers as Mr Owen would do when watching them exercise, he leaned forward to look at John Halloran. He licked his palm and swiped it across his hair from brow to nape, and blinked as if unable to credit the evidence of his eyes. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ he said. ‘What an abomination. Yes. You. An Johnny Weissmuller you are not, Halloran.’ He put his hands behind his back and flexed his knees, like Mr Owen did, and mimicked Mr Owen’s dry, mirthless laugh: ‘uck, uck, uck’. Roy Pickering bit his lip to prevent a smile. ‘I don’t know what you find so funny, Pickering. You are an fairy, are you not?’ Roy Pickering’s lip was turning white under the pressure of his teeth, and it was then that Alexander saw that Mr Owen had come soundlessly into the gymnasium, and was closing the door.

‘You’re dead, Monty,’ whispered Mick Radford. ‘I’ll bring the wreath.’

But Mr Owen did not appear to have heard Alexander. ‘Come on. Jump to it! In line!’ he ordered, looking at nobody in particular. ‘Right then, girls,’ he shouted in his usual exultant voice. ‘Ten sit-ups, ten squats, ten press-ups. Spread out. Now. Get to it.’ As he did every day, he wandered among them, ordering one to stand and explain the state of his singlet, another to account for the hole in his shoes. ‘Sloppy, Pickering, sloppy. Parents got no pride?’ Grinding the keys in the pocket of his tracksuit, he stood over David Kingsley. ‘Oh come on, Kingsley. This is pathetic. My grandmother could do better.’ He spun round to shout at Roy Pickering: ‘You seem to think you could do better, Pickering. Ten extra press-ups. Yes. You. Now. Get to it.’

Mr Owen wiped his hair; the flesh above his mouth flinched as if he had toothache. ‘Right, then,’ he said, in the doom-laden tone that always signified the same thing. ‘Your favourite game. Captains Allerton and Fletcher. Come here.’ Neil Allerton swaggered to his place on Mr Owen’s right hand, rotating his arms as if swinging Indian clubs; Dennis Fletcher stood on his left, regarding his classmates with a compromised look. ‘Allerton first,’ said Mr Owen, and so Allerton and Fletcher took turns to choose the members of their teams. Only Lionel Griffiths and John Halloran were left after Alexander had been selected for Allerton’s squad.

Mr Owen had left the gymnasium while the captains made their choices, and now he returned, cajoling a football along the floor with dainty taps of his instep. He inspected the teams. ‘No, no,’ he decided. ‘Too many weeds in this brigade. MacIndoe, go to Fletcher. You too, Malinowski. I’ll join Allerton’s mob. Form up.’

They adopted their skittle formations at opposite ends of the hall. Mr Owen nudged the ball towards Fletcher’s team, then pushed his way into the midst of Allerton’s. ‘Fletcher, your man,’ said Mr Owen.

Paul Malinowski, from his place at the point of the triangle, chipped the ball softly into the midst of the opposition. The boy whom the ball had first struck stepped out of the formation, taking care that his gratitude was not apparent. ‘Ten squats, ten press-ups, ten sit-ups,’ Mr Owen ordered. The boy withdrew to the sector of the gymnasium where the eliminated players did their penance, while Malinowski went back to his position.

Allerton’s front player kicked the ball hard and low into Fletcher’s formation, dislodging Malinowski. A member of Fletcher’s front line retaliated with a powerful strike, and thus the game proceeded until Alexander, the last survivor of his row, faced Mr Owen. Alexander would remember the way Mr Owen put the ball softly on the circle of blue paint in the middle of the floor, then turned it two or three times, as if locking a manhole cover. He would remember seeing the wet leaves swabbing the glass of the windows to Mr Owen’s left, and noticing for the first time the pelt of dust on top of the rafter closest to the door, while in the periphery of his vision Mr Owen took a pace backwards. Then he realised that Mr Owen was taking more than a single pace. He saw Mr Owen look at the ball, at him, at the ball, again at him, and dash forward, his face still up.

There was no pain to the blow immediately, just a sound like the sizzle of lard in a hot pan, and a warm dribble over his lips. His head felt too heavy on the floor. A long way away, Mr Owen’s feet were splayed like a penguin’s; there were other feet close by, rocking from heel to toe. No one approached him. The ball was at rest against his arm; he placed his hand on it, and felt the texture of the matt leather, the rib-like laces and the yielding rubber nipple between them. With no thought of what he was doing, he scooped the ball into his lap and lifted it. He stood up dizzily, and then he dropped the ball and kicked it on the half-volley. Indifferently he saw Mr Owen double over. He could feel the air congeal about him.

Mr Owen unfolded himself and looked pensively around the gymnasium. He contemplated the cages that protected the light bulbs on the walls; his gaze skimmed over the boys’ faces, and his head nodded in agreement with himself. When at last he spoke, his voice was precise and low, and pleasant. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Continue this game without me. Then the same teams for an end-to-end relay. Then out on the field for a few laps. Allerton, keep order.’ He fetched the ball from the corner of the room and handed it to Allerton. ‘MacIndoe. You come with me.’

Mr Owen led him through the changing rooms and out into the corridor, where he opened the outside door. ‘Please,’ he said, ushering Alexander into the rain. ‘If you’d oblige,’ Mr Owen requested, indicating that Alexander should move farther away. Alexander took a backwards step, into the puddle that was spreading from the drain; the cold water flowed over the tops of his plimsolls. From the shelter of the doorway Mr Owen looked at Alexander with the expression of someone trying to understand why the shivering boy had chosen to stand in ankle-deep water. ‘Now, Monty,’ began Mr Owen solicitously. ‘We have a choice. We could proceed forthwith to the headmaster’s office. It is my belief that a measure of corporal punishment would ensue from this course of action. A report to your parents might follow. To be frank, Monty, I would stake my job on such an outcome. In fact, not to beat about the bush, I would make damned sure of it.’ He stooped forward to inspect the sky and made a snort of satisfaction. ‘Or we could resolve this matter now and have done with it. What do you say, Monty? The choice is yours.’

Water dripped from Alexander’s fingertips; blood dripped from his chin. Watching Mr Owen’s hands squirming in his tracksuit pockets, he realised that he could hold an adult in contempt, and the chill of his flesh seemed to increase his exhilaration at his discovery. It was his intention to say nothing, so he was taken aback to hear himself say: ‘I don’t mind, sir.’

One of Mr Owen’s feet made a movement as if crushing a cigarette. ‘I suggest the latter course of action,’ he said.

‘Whatever you say, sir,’ Alexander replied.

For half a minute Mr Owen blankly regarded Alexander, and then, like a man preparing for an arduous task, he pulled the hood of his tracksuit slowly over his head. ‘We shall proceed to the playing field. On the double. Now.’

On the slope above the cricket nets Mr Owen overtook him and stopped him with a straight arm. ‘Give me those shoes,’ he demanded, and he cracked the soles against the back of Alexander’s legs six times. ‘Now you’ll run around that field until I tell you to stop. Do you understand? And if you ever do anything like that again, ever, ever,’ he repeated, with the tendons of his neck straining, ‘I’ll have you running on roads in your bare feet until the bones come through. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Alexander.

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’

The pain of Alexander’s beaten skin seemed to dissolve into his body, and as it weakened he experienced a clenching of his mind against Mr Owen. It was not a hatred he felt now, but an adamant exclusion, and the pain in his ribcage enclosed him perfectly. Armoured by his discomfort he ran over the cold, clutching grass; the rain tingled on his tongue.

‘Don’t slacken, MacIndoe,’ shouted Mr Owen from the embankment, flapping a plimsoll.

‘No, sir,’ Alexander replied, assuming for Mr Owen’s benefit a rictus of agony.

Alexander’s classmates were appearing on the path above the playing field. ‘Right, MacIndoe,’ called Mr Owen when Alexander came back on to the straight. ‘Back to the gym with you. A dozen more press-ups, I think.’ He lobbed the sodden plimsolls towards him, so they landed short, in the waterlogged long-jump pit. ‘Eyes right!’ ordered Mr Owen as Alexander neared his approaching friends. They all looked away from him, and he from them, but as he trudged down the line Alexander heard them chanting quietly: ‘One day. One day. One day.’

Before the day was over Alexander MacIndoe understood that he had been transformed into a new character. Mick Radford, who had often thrown a punch at him whenever they had met in a place where there was no teacher to observe them, ambushed him in an empty corridor. The fingers of Mick Radford’s right hand furled into a fist, then opened out again as he cackled. ‘An hero, Monty,’ he said. ‘Proud of you, pal.’

Mr Owen did not return after the summer holiday, and by many of the boys it was taken as a fact that his departure was due to his punishment of Alexander MacIndoe. ‘That’s what made the boss twig he was a loony,’ said Lionel Griffiths on their first day back. ‘It’s obvious.’ A note in Paul Malinowski’s handwriting was glued to the underside of his desk’s lid: ‘By his sacrifice we were redeemed.’ Throughout the winter term and into the spring, boys to whom he had never spoken would acknowledge him with the password of his name. ‘MacIndoe,’ they hailed him, clenching a fist and raising it to shoulder height. He was being acclaimed for something he had not intended to do, but which had become a story, he told himself, a story like a garment that had been put over him. ‘MacIndoe,’ the boys pronounced defiantly, and he would be obliged to act in a manner befitting the figure he had become, nodding like an officer to his off-duty men.

11. The girls’ party (#ulink_ce1f0f9e-b54e-59fb-9ac2-8fd37045261d)

The Gattings moved into their house before Coronation Day. Of this Alexander would always be certain, because he would remember the way the street looked for the party: the bunting slung so low that he could touch it when he stood on his chair, and the house in which the new family lived standing out from the others in the terrace, with its windowframes freshly painted white and the front door a blue-grey colour that was like a pigeon’s plumage. He would remember helping to set the trestle tables down the centre of the road, as they had done for the VJ party, and the paper plates coloured red, white and blue. He would remember that he had tried to picture the makeshift stage on which his mother had sung eight years before, and had succeeded in hearing her voice for an instant, like the voice of someone trapped. This he would recall, and the car – a black Jowett, with one front wheel removed – that was parked exactly where Gisbert had sat. He would not remember, however, that it was over Liz Gatting’s bent back that he had looked to see where Gisbert had been. Alexander would have no recollection of Liz Gatting that preceded a birthday party the following year, a week after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile.

It was because he was a friend of Megan’s that he was invited, but he walked to the house on his own, and she took no notice of him when he arrived. Sitting on one of the rugs that had been spread on the lawn, she was taking a plate of sandwiches from the mother of the girl whose birthday it was. ‘Feeding time,’ the mother called out, and each of the girls who were sitting in a ring around Megan reached over to grab from the plate.

The mother carried a plate to a second group of girls sitting on another rug, in front of a juniper bush. Her husband came out of the kitchen, bearing a pie in a fish-shaped dish. Balls of sweat were threaded onto the hair at his temples, and ovals of pale skin were disclosed between the buttons of his straining shirt. ‘A gooseberry are you, son?’ he remarked to Alexander in passing, as he swivelled the dish high above his head. Only then did Alexander realise that, apart from himself, there were just two boys in the garden.

‘Find yourself a place,’ said the mother. ‘This lot’ll eat every last crumb in five minutes.’

A tortoiseshell cat with matted fur butted its head on Alexander’s shins. Turning away from the girls, he knelt on the grass to rub the animal’s throat. A pair of crepe-soled sandals appeared beside the cat. Crumpled white cotton protruded through the gaps between the straps, like peaks of mashed potato, Alexander thought, and he almost laughed.