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.
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.
‘That’s Nelly’s cat,’ said a girl’s voice. ‘His name’s Willow, but her dad calls him Zeppelin. I’m Liz. Who are you?’
‘I’m Alexander,’ he said. ‘Megan’s friend.’
‘Only got one, has she?’ Liz replied. The gap where a tooth had come out at the side of her mouth increased the jollity of her smile, and there was something amusing, too, about the way her hair was done, in ringlets that bent on her shoulders, like the hair of a much younger girl. The collar of her blouse was sticking up, as if she had pulled it over her head. Awaiting Alexander’s answer, she tucked her thumbs behind the big rectangular buckle of her belt. Her missing tooth and this buckle, covered with grass-green hessian, would be what Alexander would continue to remember of her appearance that afternoon.
‘She’s got a lot of friends, I think,’ said Alexander.
‘You think?’
‘No, she does,’ said Alexander. ‘Don’t you?’ he asked Megan, who had left her group and was coming towards him.
‘Don’t I what?’ Megan asked.
‘Have lots of friends.’
‘What are you talking about, Eck?’ said Megan. She gave the cat’s head a quick scratch then looked impatiently at Alexander. ‘Come over here if you want anything to eat,’ she told him, hauling him by a shirt-sleeve.
When the food was finished they all went indoors to play games. In the hall Liz Gatting jabbed him in the small of his back and demanded: ‘We too boring for you, then?’
A girl in a pink cardigan rested her chin on Liz’s shoulder to stare at him. ‘Yes. More fun with your Megan, is it?’ asked the girl.
‘Stick with his Megan,’ said Liz to her companion, smugly.
‘Alexander’s Megan’s friend,’ said the girl in the pink cardigan, putting on a haughty face.
‘Goodbye, Megan’s friend,’ taunted Liz.
The two girls went into the living room, but Alexander stayed in the hall until Megan joined him.
‘You know Liz?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you get on with her?’
‘Sort of,’ said Megan.
‘So you don’t?’
‘So I do.’
‘So why are they being like that?’
‘Like what?’ she asked, and Alexander repeated what they had said. Megan looked at him for a moment, searching for something in his face. ‘You don’t know?’
‘No. If I knew I wouldn’t ask you.’
Water filled the inner corners of Megan’s eyes; she put her right hand firmly on his shoulder. ‘Eck, sometimes you really are slow, you know that?’
‘What do you mean?’ Alexander asked.
‘I mean, there is a mirror in your house somewhere, isn’t there?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Good grief, Eck. It’s perfectly simple. She wanted you to sit with them, not with me.’ She raised her hands to her face in mockery of his surprise.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Alexander.
‘No, Eck. “I don’t think.” That’s what you should say.’
‘She doesn’t even know who I am,’ he protested.
Megan pulled her socks up tight to her knees. ‘What a nit,’ she said to her shoes, and she left him in the hall.
For an hour or so they played charades. Embarrassed by the perpetual blush that he could feel on his skin, Alexander sat on the floor in a corner of the room, trying to hide behind the other two boys, who sat upright on adjacent straight-backed chairs. ‘One of the boys should have a go,’ the mother decreed, and the two on the chairs simultaneously looked back at Alexander, as if passing the blame for something.
Encircled by the girls, Alexander could think of nothing except his awkwardness. Megan was sitting under the keyboard of the piano, her chin on her knees, waiting for him. ‘Do The Cruel Sea,’ the mother told him. Alexander ground his teeth on the mouthpiece of an imaginary pipe and made a visor with his palm. Heroically he scanned the room’s horizon, facing the terrible waves. Decisive as Jack Hawkins, he gave wordless orders to his men and directed their efforts. Nobody guessed what he was doing.
‘That’s not how you do it, you nit,’ said Megan after he had given them the answer. With a mad grin she flailed at the carpet, then serenely made wave shapes with a fluttering hand. ‘That’s how you do The Cruel Sea. You do “cruel” and then you do “sea”.’ She smiled at him for a long time, however, and it was Megan who took the satin scarf to blindfold him for the last game of the party, and spun him around three times. ‘Behind you,