for her to call him. The pianist played a few notes and stopped. Alexander leaned forward to find his father, but could not see where he was. His mother was looking at her shoes. Mrs Beckwith stood up and moved a couple of steps away from him, towards the stage. The pianist played the same tune again, and this time Alexander’s mother began to sing. It was the song about the bluebirds that she sang, and she sang it in a voice that was not like the voice with which she used to sing at home. Her eyes were closed as if she were singing for herself alone, but her voice was stronger than he had ever heard it, so strong that all the people around began to sing with her one by one, and when the chorus came he could barely hear her above their shouting. The pianist took one hand off the keyboard and made a scooping motion; all the adults who had been sitting rose in front of Alexander, excluding his mother from view. Hands went threading under elbows; backs swayed against backs.
Unnoticed, Alexander eased his seat back from the table. The stray was lying close by, under a tail of tablecloth. Crumbling a piece of cake on the road to entice the dog, Alexander wandered off, in the opposite direction from the stage. There was another chorus, even louder than the first, and when it was finished everyone sang it again. And as the first line began again, Alexander glanced up from the dog to see a man sitting with his back against the shelter at the top of the road. He was a thin man, doubled over as if he were made of folded card, and he had hair that was the colour of the dog’s hair. The man was looking at Alexander but he was not singing. He had eyes like the sky and a big thin nose.
Stretching his long legs into the gutter, the man put his hands on the sides of the dog’s head and looked at its face as if it was a cup that was cracked. ‘He is yours?’ he asked, in a voice that was peculiar, and sounded as though he was telling him something rather than asking. His jacket was inky blue and made of stuff like the felt Alexander’s mother put on the sideboard to stop the vase from scratching. ‘Not yours?’ the man asked, to which Alexander shook his head. ‘What is his name?’
‘He doesn’t have a name.’
‘But you have a name,’ the man responded, but Alexander did not reply. ‘My name is Gisbert,’ said the man. ‘My name is Gisbert. G-I-S-B-E-R-T,’ he recited. At the bottom of the street the piano made a booming sound and everybody laughed. ‘Now you tell me your name.’
‘Alexander.’
‘Alexander what?’ asked Gisbert.
‘Alexander MacIndoe.’ His name sounded strange when he spoke it to this stranger, as if he had been labelled like a bottle in the kitchen.
‘Where do you live, Alexander?’
He pointed to the placard. ‘The house with the writing,’ he said.
‘Welcome Home, George,’ Gisbert read, but he said the last word so it sounded like ‘judge’.
‘Where do you live?’ asked Alexander.
The man stood up; he was much taller than Alexander’s father, and the cuffs of his jacket did not cover his wrists. A bony forefinger indicated the rooftops. ‘Today I live on the Shooters Hill,’ he explained. ‘But my home is a longer way.’
‘Over the hill?’ asked Alexander.
‘Yes. A long way over the hill. A long way.’ Gisbert made his brow wrinkle, and scratched the side of his nose. ‘I will go there soon. Tomorrow perhaps. Next week perhaps.’ Then he smiled so widely that the gums showed above his back teeth.
‘Is it like here?’
‘No, not like here,’ said Gisbert, and he petted the dog as though the dog had asked the question. ‘There are big mountains, big forests, big lakes. Everything green. Not like here.’
Alexander would always remember Gisbert’s name, the fabric of his jacket, his chilly eyes, and these words that conjured for him a scene in which Gisbert walked over the rise of Shooters Hill and down a long slope to a vast green forest, a forest he imagined as being just beyond his sight when, some five months later, his father and mother took him past the crest of the hill for the first time.
‘Here is something for you, Alexander MacIndoe,’ said Gisbert as he reached into his jacket. He extracted a button, breathed on it and rubbed it on his sleeve. Alexander extended a palm to receive the gift. Raised on the button was a wonderful and mysterious sign, a pair of wings with no body. Holding it by the little loop of metal on the other side, Alexander breathed on the button too, and slipped it into his pocket. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You are welcome,’ said Gisbert. ‘But I think you must leave, Alexander,’ he added, in the same moment as Alexander heard Mrs Beckwith’s voice.
‘Away, Alex,’ she shouted. ‘Come here. Come away. Here.’ She tugged him towards her and bent over to get close to his face. ‘You mustn’t talk to him,’ she said. Alexander looked back to see Gisbert shrug his shoulders at him and raise his left hand. Mrs Beck with tapped the boy’s chin to make him turn.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘Because I say so.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you shouldn’t be talking to him, that’s why. He’s not one of us,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Don’t be contrary, Alex,’ Mrs Beckwith told him.
‘One of who?’ Alexander persisted.
‘Us, Alex. You and me and your parents and your friends,’ she stated. ‘He shouldn’t be here.’
At the table she pushed the chair into the backs of his knees. His mother was moving towards him, cradling a dish of custard. Alexander craned his neck to see if he could see Gisbert, but he had gone back to the hill. He repeated inwardly the letters of Gisbert’s name, the first name he ever made an effort to remember.
Five hours more the party lasted, but only one moment from those hours was to endure in Alexander’s mind as long as Gisbert’s name and Gisbert’s forest. It was at the end of the night, and he alone was left sitting at the table. He was inhaling the tangy smoke from the candles that his mother and Mrs Beckwith had blown out, when he heard the sound of a footfall he recognised as his father’s. A firework slid up the sky with a shush and sprayed new stars on the sky. His father leaned over him to pick him up. ‘Little Lord Weary,’ his father said to his mother. Alexander watched a red dot of burning tobacco chase around the rim of his father’s cigar. He looked at the fire below the flower of grey ash and then he saw his father kiss his mother on her mouth, which he had never seen him do before.
The hedge at the front of his grandmother’s house was so high that even his father could not see over it, and instead of a front gate she had a proper door of dark wood, around which the leaves grew in a solid arch. The metal numbers on the door – 122 – were held in place by screws that had gone furry with rust. A spoon-shaped thumb-pad protruded through the keyhole on the right side of the door, and when it was pressed the catch always screeched. Inside there was a slab of greenish concrete on which the underside of the door would scrape, then three steps made of red bricks that had crumbled into a shape like a half-filled sack. From the steps a path of crazy paving zigzagged across the grass, passing a rose bush that grew so few
