Ghost MacIndoe. Jonathan Buckley

he had heard. Her dress tightened across her ribs and creased as she sighed.

      They all ate in the Regatta Restaurant, where the door handles were shaped like hands, and the plates were thicker and heavier and whiter than the plates at home, and they were served by a woman who said ‘Oh yes’ after every order, as if she had guessed perfectly what each of them was going to say.

      ‘What did you do, Eck?’ Megan asked as she chopped at her food.

      ‘Just wandered,’ Alexander replied.

      ‘So what did you find out?’

      Alexander glanced at Mrs Beckwith, who was comparing the contents of her plate with his father’s. ‘This and that,’ he said.

      Megan fidgeted dismissively. ‘Mr MacIndoe explained such a lot of things,’ she said to his mother. ‘We’re going back to the Dome after this.’

      ‘Are we now?’ his mother asked his father.

      ‘It would appear so,’ he said. ‘Alexander, are you a member of the expedition?’

      Megan was fiddling with one of her hair clips. ‘These are a nuisance,’ she complained. ‘Help me out, Eck.’

      The clip jumped like a cricket into Alexander’s hand. ‘Are we all going?’ he asked.

      His mother said they were, but before they left the restaurant she changed her mind. ‘We’ll join you in a bit,’ she said to his father as she stood up. Alexander took hold of Mrs Beckwith’s arm.

      ‘Latching on to us, are we?’ teased Mrs Beckwith.

      ‘You don’t want to listen to our chatter, Alexander,’ said his mother.

      ‘I won’t listen,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk behind.’

      ‘In front, so we can keep an eye on you,’ Mrs Beckwith ordered, and the three of them went one way while his father and Megan went the other.

      Alexander led his mother and Mrs Beckwith from pavilion to pavilion, through rooms of new furniture and electric machines and wallpaper that was covered with patterns of crystals, and all the time he was holding the hairclip tightly in his palm. He was still holding it when Megan and Mrs Beckwith left, but the following day he decided to take it back, having convinced himself that it would not be wrong to go to Megan’s house, now that she and Mrs Beckwith had spent a day with him and his parents.

      Because his parents did not know John Halloran’s parents, he made out that he was going to John’s house. It began to rain, and he ran to the Beckwiths’ house, where he paused at the gate to inspect the building. It appeared that nobody was in. He swung the gate back and advanced, cautiously, halfway up the path. Through the living room window he could see a newspaper lying in damp light on the arm of an empty settee. Alexander took the clip from his pocket and eased the letterbox open like a trap. He looked into the hallway; every door inside was closed. He was about to drop the clip when a sound to his left made him jump and the steel flap clacked shut. Mr Beckwith was standing at the end of the path that went down the side of the house. He was holding a trowel in one hand and something black in the other fist, and his white cotton shirt was clinging to his ribs, which showed like gills through the fabric. His bony knees looked like hammer-heads under the wet cloth of his trousers.

      Alexander had seen Mr Beckwith many times in the previous year, always alone, always walking steadily with his peculiar padding gait, facing straight ahead. He had never seen him speak to anyone, nor even exchange a greeting with anyone, nor stop at any shop. Mr Beckwith was always moving, and now he looked at Alexander as if the boy had brought him to a standstill and he did not know what to do.

      ‘Hello, Mr Beckwith,’ said Alexander timidly.

      Mr Beckwith looked meaninglessly at him, and his jaw moved rapidly up and down in a silent stammering.

      ‘I didn’t mean to disturb anybody,’ Alexander apologised.

      Mr Beckwith looked at the front door as if it were a third person waiting for him to speak. ‘No one in, lad,’ he said. His voice was very low, like the voice of a fat man, and the words seemed to buzz in his throat.

      ‘I was only going to give this back,’ said Alexander, unfurling his fingers from the clip.

      Mr Beckwith gazed uncomprehendingly at the piece of plastic. ‘Oh,’ he said, as if rebuking himself.

      ‘Is that all right?’ asked Alexander, but Mr Beckwith appeared to hear nothing. ‘Is that all right?’ he repeated. ‘If I put it through?’

      ‘Put it through,’ said Mr Beckwith, and with the trowel he made a posting action. Black water was dripping from the underside of his left hand. ‘Are you Alexander?’ he asked, stretching his narrow neck as if looking through murk.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ Alexander replied. ‘Alexander MacIndoe.’

      Mr Beckwith considered what Alexander had said. ‘At school with Megan, are you?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Yes,’ echoed Mr Beckwith. Seeming to have nothing more to say, he watched a car go past the house. His head swung back to face Alexander. ‘My name’s Harold,’ he remarked at last, and he transferred the trowel to a windowsill so that he could offer a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. His fingers were cold, and rolled in Alexander’s hand like a sheaf of short sticks. ‘It’s raining. Do you want to shelter inside for a while?’

      ‘I should go home,’ said Alexander.

      Mr Beckwith looked at the sky. ‘No,’ he told him with a grave shake of his head. ‘It’ll get worse before it gets better. Come with me,’ he said, and he picked up the trowel and turned back down the side path.

      Ignoring the door to the kitchen, Mr Beckwith led Alexander into the garden. It was as neat as a garden in a magazine, and there were more colours in it than in any garden Alexander had ever seen. The lawn was an oval, not a rectangle like at his own house and every other house he knew, and close to its centre was an oval bed, in which only white flowers grew. In one part of the garden was a bed of yellow flowers; in another part every bloom was a shade of purple; at the end of the garden stood a wooden shed, with a row of red flowers along its wall. Every plant and bush seemed perfect in its shape, as if a smoothing hand had moulded the body of the foliage in one long caress, and there was not so much as a single stray petal to mar the darkness of the soil beneath the leaves.

      Mr Beckwith opened the shed door, and they stepped into air that was warmer than the air outside and smelled of creosote and grass and newly cut wood. Their tread made the floor bend and croak. A rack of seed packets hung on one wall, above a tower of yellow newspapers. In a corner stood a stack of clay pots, next to a tool box and below a saw and a pair of shears that hung from the same nail. By the window was a high bench that was cross-hatched with blade marks, with a vice bolted to one end.

      ‘Look at this,’ said Mr Beckwith. He put his left hand on the bench and opened his fingers to expose the ball of wet soil that he had been carrying. ‘Blackleg,’ he stated. ‘See?’ He turned his wrist, revealing the limp stem of a flower drooping from one side of the clod. He stuck the point of the trowel into the dark stringy pulp at its base. ‘There’s nothing you can do about this. Incurable, blackleg. You have to burn it and go back to square one.’ With a foot he dragged a bucket out from under the bench. ‘Look at that,’ said Mr Beckwith. Half a dozen flowers lay on a bed of sludge in the bottom of the bucket. ‘All of them ruined with it,’ Mr Beckwith said. His teeth were as long as a dog’s, Alexander noticed, and the skin of his cheeks seemed as thin as a leaf. Mr Beckwith looked at Alexander abruptly, as if he had asked him a question. ‘Do you know what this flower is?’ he asked. Alexander shook his head. ‘No? Not to worry. It’s a geranium. They’re all geraniums.’ Mr Beckwith lowered the clod and its diseased stem into the bucket, as if it were a small sleeping animal. ‘Got a garden, have you?’ he demanded suddenly.

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Nice one, is it?’

      ‘Yes,