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.
‘Now this,’ said his father, in front of another photograph, ‘was invented by a man who used to live not very far from here. Sir Henry Bessemer. He lived in Herne Hill. Do you know where Herne Hill is?’
‘No,’ said Megan, before Alexander could say ‘Near Camberwell.’
‘Between Camberwell and Dulwich,’ his father said.
Side by side the three of them looked at the picture of a huge bucket from which a burning liquid flowed.
‘What is it?’ Megan asked, and his father explained how steel was manufactured.
At every picture they stopped and listened as his father talked to them like a schoolteacher. They were standing in front of a photograph of a shipyard when Alexander heard Mrs Beckwith, standing a couple of yards behind him, say to his mother: ‘Sun’s coming out, Irene.’ Through a window Alexander saw a glow rise quickly on a wet concrete wall, turning it to the colour of chalk. The last raindrops of the exhausted shower sparkled against the dark gaberdine raincoat of a woman who stood with her back to him, her hand on the catch of her half-lowered umbrella.
‘Shame to squander it,’ said his mother, raising her voice slightly.
‘Right enough,’ agreed Mrs Beckwith.
‘We can’t leave yet,’ moaned Megan. ‘We haven’t seen half of it.’
‘You can’t see everything here,’ said Mrs Beckwith.
‘Why not?’ Megan demanded, with an eagerness that seemed overdone to Alexander and annoyed him.
‘Well, let’s work it out,’ said Alexander’s father. ‘How long have we been looking at this one?’
‘Half a minute,’ replied Megan.
‘More than that,’ Alexander interjected.
‘Let’s say half a minute,’ said his father, ticking off the first stage of the calculation on a little finger for Megan’s benefit. ‘There are twenty-five thousand photos here, it says. That’s twelve and a half thousand minutes. That’s more than two hundred hours. That’s more than a week. And we have less than one day.’
Disgruntled by this proof, Megan appealed to her aunt. ‘A bit longer?’
Mrs Beckwith looked at his father; his father smiled at Megan and rubbed his palms together as if limbering up for a tug-of-war.
‘The wives are playing truant, then,’ said his mother. ‘Outside in an hour?’
Megan and his father walked away, and Alexander followed his mother and Mrs Beckwith, who were not aware that he had decided to go with them. Arm in arm the women walked, like grown-up sisters, perfectly in step with each other, their foreheads almost touching as they talked. ‘Come on, Joan, tell me,’ Alexander heard his mother say, and he stopped on the carpet that ran to the door, to avoid eavesdropping on Mrs Beckwith’s reply. He would remember looking at the sharp tendons of their ankles as they moved away from him, and then looking at his mother’s face, which now was in perfect profile. She laughed and her eyes became huge with astonishment as her mouth formed a word like ‘No’. The vivacity of her expression was of a kind that Alexander had never previously seen in her face; it was mischievous and very young, more like Megan than his mother. With a vertiginous lurch he felt that he was seeing a moment from the life she had led before he existed, or her life as it would have been had he not been born, and he understood in that instant that she loved him out of choice. A curl of hair fell across her ear. He wanted to rush to her, but his legs were like iron. She turned, as if she had become conscious of the empty space behind her, and then noticed him standing on his own. ‘Catch up, Alexander,’ she called. He trudged to the door, encumbered by sadness. ‘Slowcoach,’ his mother said, with a look that told him she knew there was something on his mind but was not going to ask what it was.
‘You have a run about, so we can gossip,’ said Mrs Beckwith outside. ‘We’ll all go for something to eat soon.’
Alexander walked around the train that was parked on a short length of track nearby. He sat down on the pavement on the far side of the train, so that he could see his mother and Mrs Beckwith through the gap between the undercarriage and the track. Where the sun hit the rails there were red and blue grains in the steel. Tufts of grease glistened on the bolts of the rails; they were the colour of the jelly in a pork pie. Alexander touched a finger to one of them, and the smell of it made him close his eyes. He saw the fire station and remembered how, when he was younger, his mother used to lift him so that he could see through the panes in the folding red wooden doors. Pressing his palms to his temples he willed into sight the scarlet metal of the fire engines and the black gleam of their tyres, like varnished charcoal, and the firemen’s jackets and tall boots arranged around the walls like vestments. Across his eyelids flooded a red so profound it brought a taste to the air in his mouth, a sweet and elusive taste he could name only as the flavour of redness. Again he brought the greasy fingertip to his nose. Water sprang into his mouth as if out of hunger.
‘Are you all right?’ someone was asking.
Alexander opened his eyes, and saw that a tall elderly man with a white moustache was looking at him quizzically. The waxed tips of the man’s moustache stuck out of the bristles like prongs of chicken bone; these repulsive miniature horns would still be in his memory more than forty years later, though the face to which they had belonged would not, nor the place where he had seen that face.
‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you,’ said Alexander, and he peered under the train. His mother and Mrs Beckwith, arm in arm, were approaching. ‘I’m waiting for my mother. She’s coming now,’ he said, pointing.
‘Jolly good,’ said the man, and he doffed his hat to Mrs Beckwith and Alexander’s mother.