top of the stairs there was a door of ribbed glass through which Alexander could see something pink and conical. ‘Please enter’ he read from a card that was attached to a sucker on the wall. His mother let him turn the handle, and as the door opened he saw a fat little girl in a pink frilly dress, holding the hand of a woman with a fierce fat face. A very short man with wide braces over his dirty white shirt was writing something in one of the squares of a calendar that hung above a filing cabinet. That he was not the man in the panama hat both relieved and confused Alexander.
‘Goodbye, Elizabeth. Mrs Gordon,’ said the short man.
‘Thank you, Mr Stevens,’ replied the woman rapidly, and she pushed past Alexander without acknowledging him or his mother.
‘Mrs MacIndoe and Alexander,’ said the man, looking at them appreciatively, with his hands on his hips. ‘Ha ha,’ he exclaimed. ‘Sounds like a music-hall act, doesn’t it?’ His eyes were perfectly circular and his brow wrinkled, which made him look as if he’d just heard something that had surprised him pleasantly. Flakes of white skin, like the fraying skin of a mushroom, stuck to the sides of his nose. ‘Harold Stevens,’ he said, and smiled widely. Not one of his teeth was at the same angle as any other. ‘Alexander?’ he enquired, with the look of a delivery man estimating a parcel’s weight. ‘Who else could it be?’ Mr Stevens answered himself. ‘This won’t take much of your time, Mrs MacIndoe. All has been arranged, has it not? The quid pro quo, as it were?’
‘It has,’ said Alexander’s mother.
‘Excellent,’ said Mr Stevens. ‘Follow me, if you’d be so good.’
Sunlight sparkled on the floor of the inner room, most intensely in front of the platform that was built against the wall on their right. On the platform, in front of a placard of plain black paper, there was a brand new stove with a smooth yellow door that looked like a huge half-melted slab of butter and had the word ‘Bovis’ in sloping silver letters above the handle. At the far end of the room stood a big black camera on a tripod, its concertina lens pointing towards a young man who was hurling plump blue cushions onto a settee. ‘Colin, my assistant,’ said Mr Stevens, gesturing at the young man. Like a cymbals player Colin banged two cushions together, raising a smoulder of dust from each. Mr Stevens aimed his hand at a door beyond the platform. ‘Colin will get you ready, Alexander. Colin, if you’d be so good? I am grateful. Mrs MacIndoe, if you’d follow Colin too?’
‘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