The End of the Alphabet Page 2

  Mr Zephyr died five days later. His heart had stopped as he walked to the corner shop for milk and the day’s papers. There was no good reason, said the coroner.

  Ambrose’s mother called her son at the offices of D&C. When Ambrose rang off, he threw his collection of antique type blocks across the room. They shattered the window separating him from the creative department. He sat there, surrounded by bits of glass and stared at by the younger talents in the office, for most of the morning.

  In the months that followed, Mrs Zephyr took to calling her son at all hours, moaning about this ache or that pain. She began complaining about her tea, convinced someone had changed the mixture after two hundred years and how dare the bastards. She whined about the Queen.

  On the good days Ambrose would offer, as pleasantly as he could, to take his mother to the National Gallery. Too crowded, she said. What’s on the telly? Not that tea.

  One Sunday afternoon, Ambrose stopped by for a visit. He found his mother sitting on the floor in her kitchen, surrounded by a week’s worth of newspapers, whimpering at the mess around her.

  I can’t remember his face, she said.

  A neighbour called Ambrose the next day to say his mother had passed quietly in her sleep. That evening, for the first time since he was old enough to read, Ambrose Zephyr did not look at a newspaper. There were other things happening in the world.

  Ambrose Zephyr sat dumb and frozen on his front step. He may have seen something like the elderly man from number twelve carrying his tiny dog around the park. Or number eighteen returning from work, her children bouncing on the pavement and brandishing their day’s art. Or the neighbourhood stray rousing from its spot on the window ledge and strolling defiantly towards the birds.

  Ambrose and Zipper made something like love that night. It was rough, frantic, tearful, quick. Ambrose rolled away and went downstairs without saying a word. Zipper lay perfectly still, staring at the ceiling. Tears trickled into her ears. She thought she could hear her husband shaking in the dark.

  Ambrose Zephyr began life a loved if overshadowed baby. Mrs Zephyr’s labour started while she was listening to the radio: the King was dead and his daughter, now a young and sad Queen, was returning from Kenya. Mr Zephyr was delayed at the office—a new Queen did not come along every day—and could not meet his son until the special edition had started coming off the presses.

  Not so many years later, on a Saturday evening, Mr Zephyr took young Ambrose to the newspaper’s offices. He showed his son the collection of retired wood and lead typefaces on display in the lobby. Young Ambrose liked the way the small type blocks felt large and heavy in his hand. He liked the tidy way each type was organized—one letter, one cubby—in a large flat wooden drawer. At the same time, he was angry that Z lived in such a small space compared to A. It isn’t fair, he said with a dark scowl.

  His father tut-tutted. Such is the manner of alphabets, he said. Some types are luckier than others. A may have more space in the drawer, but Z is no less important, particularly when it comes to words like zebra.

  Or Zephyr, said Ambrose, straightening his small back.

  Or Zanzibar, said his father. A place very far away.

  A place with two z’s?

  Indeed. And two a’s.

  I think I would like that place, said Ambrose.

  Mrs Zephyr worked as a junior art appraiser for a large and prestigious auction house. The art she usually appraised was neither. When her son was eight or perhaps nine she took him on his first visit to the National Gallery. To see the proper stuff, she said.

  She explained all that they saw: who the artist was, where the painting had come from, how old or new it was, who the people on the canvases were. Ambrose found some of the paintings boring, particularly those with snobby children in satin suits and silly collars. He liked the paintings that featured a lot of blood. Or people dying. This preference he kept from his mother.

  Ambrose also noticed quite a few paintings of naked women. Lying on beds, wrestling with naked men, holding haloed babies, admiring themselves in mirrors. Ambrose wondered whether artists ever got erections as they painted these women. This question he also kept from his mother.

  When Mrs Zephyr started talking about the school of this or the ism of that, Ambrose stopped listening. To him what he saw was what it was. Some paintings made him wonder, some made him giggle, some made him squirm. The Dutch Master with his floppy clown hat and thin beard and bright eyes, the chubby girls with their chubby dogs, the giant sunflowers drooping out of their pot like alien plant people with one bulging green eye.

  …painted by a troubled young man, Mrs Zephyr was saying,…cut off part of his own ear…

  Ambrose went back to looking. What he saw didn’t need his mother going on about symbols and meanings and madness and genius, he thought. She knew a lot, but she didn’t know when to stop complicating things. The sunflowers were like none he had ever seen, ear or no ear, troubles or not.

  Ambrose Zephyr liked what he liked and didn’t like what he didn’t like.

  It was as simple as that.

  Zipper woke to what felt like something heavy being dragged from under her, mingled with the sound of her husband’s whispers.

  Must go now…leave today…no time…no waiting…arrangements…places to be…a list…A is for…

  Ambrose was naked. Sweat dripped off him as he rummaged under the bed. The large suitcase snagged on the bedsprings. He pulled it free and in the same motion threw it on the bed.

  Austria?…no…B for Belize?…no…people to see…things must be done…make a list…have a plan…go now…C is for…

  It was a square and handsome case: oxblood leather, reinforced corners, brass hinges. A thick handle. A man’s handle. It looked like it had never been used for anything other than storage.

  As a boy, Ambrose Zephyr was considered by the neighbours to be well mannered, agreeable and quiet. Average was a word often used. That is, they said, aside from the travel brochures. And the alphabets.

  He spent days alone in his room, compiling addresses for every embassy, mission and consulate in London. He wrote letters, in his best hand, to each ambassador or commissioner or consul explaining that he was planning to visit their country in the very near future and would Sir or Madam be so kind as to possibly forward any and all information concerning their fine country at the earliest possible convenience yours very sincerely Master Ambrose Zephyr Esq. He worked for hours perfecting the proper amount of swoosh to his Z’s.

  On one wall of his room he had taped a large map (which the Prime Minister’s office had forwarded after Ambrose had enquired about the nations of the Commonwealth and was there, Mr Prime Minister, Sir, a particular reason why each was shaded pink). Ambrose stuck redheaded pins in the places that replied with the glossiest literature. Within a few weeks, Switzerland became a small red hedgehog popping from the top of an Italian boot.

  When he wasn’t corresponding with dignitaries, Ambrose Zephyr was drawing. A’s through Z’s. In the hundreds. Twenty-six at a time, plus punctuation, numerals and ampersands.

  Some of his alphabets were illustrated with less popular members of the animal world: A is for anaconda, B is for booby, C is for codfish. Some depicted the world on his map: D is for a Beach in the Dutch Antilles, E is for the Windy Coast of Elba, F is for Palm Trees in Florida. Some combined the two themes: G is for Geckos in the German Woods, H is for Hellenic Capybaras in a Taverna, I is for Italian Bats in the Vatican Belfry. When his father asked why A wasn’t apple or B wasn’t bird or C wasn’t cat, young Ambrose explained that things didn’t always have to be the way you’d expect.

  Everybody does apples and birds and cats, he said, and it’s boring to do what everybody else does and I’m not much good at drawing cats anyway I can never get the feet right.

  A list of what? said Zipper.

  …Calcutta…sorry? whispered Ambrose. List? Yes. What?

  Come back to bed.

  Places…things…


  What things?

  Places…A is for…

  Zipper pulled the duvet and her knees to her chin and watched her husband empty the suitcase. Scores of brochures, advertisements, maps, booklets, supplements, catalogues and flyers spilled onto the bed. Together with hundreds of drawings: some childish and faded, others by a more accomplished hand. All of them letters. A through Z. Everything formed a small mountain on the bed and spilled onto the floor.

  Where? said Zipper.

  Things, said Ambrose.

  Like?

  Places. A to Z equals twenty-six. A month equals thirty. The doctor said as much. Or is it twenty-nine? What year is this? Twenty-eight? A month, give or take.

  I know what the doctor said. Are you all right?

  Fine.

  Then come back to bed.

  What would you do?

  What?

  DO. What. Would. You. Do.

  About what?

  Time, time, time. Thirty days. No time. Weren’t you listening?

  Don’t ask me that.

  Tea came and went as Zipper reviewed her husband’s list. Places…Things. 1) A is for a Portrait in Amsterdam…. There was no mention of putting affairs in order, no alternative remedies, no sprinkling of ashes under an anonymous willow in Kensington Gardens. Zipper’s mind spun. This was not her Ambrose, she thought at first. But then, apparently, it was.

  Paris being so far down the list and what happened after Zanzibar and why was X blank and how and what with and what if and are you mad and should we and shouldn’t we and how could you and don’t do this don’t be this don’t go without me don’t go at all were thoughts Zipper fought to keep down.

  Instead, she frowned and suggested that Andalusia might be nicer this time of year.

  Habitually (in blind panic, she would later admit), Zipper edited. She pencilled a stroke through Valparaiso, a place she had never heard of, and in the margin wrote Venice.

  The love they made that morning was tender, lingering and generous. She before he.

  After, they talked of the Bridge of Sighs.

  A.

  The ferry from Harwich crossed a rough and cold sea. The passage did not agree with Zipper and she spent most of it below decks. Ambrose, waved off for useless hovering, spent most of it at the railing watching the lights along the European shore grow brighter on the horizon. They ate lunch the next day in a café at the edge of a pretty square in Amsterdam.

  Ambrose was dressed in his linen travel number: hastily pressed, pocket-squared. Zipper in a white cotton blouse and black trousers cut in a capri style. Ambrose had always admired the way her back moved in that outfit. Her shoes were comfortable. Red.

  Amidst sips of coffee and suggested itineraries, Zipper remembered a conversation.

  Lovely, she said.

  Sorry. What? Ambrose said.

  The Velázquez.

  Sorry? Yes.

  They had been married most of a year. Having coaxed Ambrose into taking her on one of his usually solitary visits to the National Gallery, Zipper had done some reading beforehand.

  Venus at Her Mirror, Zipper said.

  The Rockeby Venus, said Ambrose.

  The model was somebody’s mistress?

  The king of Spain. Philip, I think.

  Had a thing for black taffeta sheets.

  The king?

  The mistress. And didn’t a suffragette attack her with a knife?

  The mistress?

  The painting. Are you listening?

  Right. Yes.

  It’s the sheets, Zipper said. They highlight the form. Her form. And Velázquez painted her hazy reflection in the mirror on purpose. Forces the eye to the form. Sorry, her form. Critics said the reflection looked unfinished. The optics were wrong. We should be seeing her torso reflected in the mirror. How am I doing?

  Sorry. Yes. Lovely.

  What, precisely, is so lovely?

  Her. This. The Velázquez.

  Why?

  Because it is.

  That’s it?

  I think so. Yes.

  You’re impossible, Zipper said. All I know is what I’ve read. All I’d like to know is what you know. What you think.

  About what?

  About why, damn it. Why the sheets and the optics and the mistress and the unfinished reflection? Why love it so much? Why her?

  It is what it is, said Ambrose. Lovely.

  You’re exhausting.

  Fine. If you insist, it reminds me of you.

  Really. My backside is not nearly so lovely.

  I wasn’t looking at her backside.

  Really.

  I was looking at her front. The slope of the neck. Curve of the breasts, the smooth stomach. The gentle hollow around the navel. Her face.

  You’re imagining things.

  Isn’t that the point?

  They thought better of visiting the Rijksmuseum together.

  Zipper said she wasn’t sure how she would spend the day. Ambrose did his best to reassure. There was, he said, no need to worry. They kissed and Ambrose set off to find a portrait he had seen before. But long ago and from very far away.

  A younger Ambrose arrived behind his time, having spent most of the previous day in the pub with Freddie Wilkes.

  It was the oldest lecture theatre on campus: a cavernous circular space with graceful plaster-work, smelling of mould and varnish and nervous sweat. The few windows it had were small, painted forever shut, and set high behind tiers of hard benches worn by a century or two of first-term buttocks.

  Ambrose found a seat in the back rows and consulted his schedule. The Place of the Portrait. Below him the professor paced the dais, a small man gesturing with a long pointer at his latest slide: a Rembrandt, late in the artist’s career. The reproduction was poor. The slide was scratched from years of projection, the contrast blown, the detail flattened to blobs.

  It was a group portrait. The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, announced the professor. Painted in 1642. You may, if you must, call it The Night Watch.

  Captain Cocq’s company—by the professor’s pointed count—consisted of thirty-five adults, two children, one chicken and one dog, as well as various lances, spears, pikes, walking canes, drums, flags and muskets.

  The professor rambled at length about dynamic magnetism and profound insight and asymmetric composition. NOTE IF YOU WILL, he kept yelling…the significance of this…symbolism of that…transcendence of genre…portrait of genius…

  Ambrose raised his thick head and stared at the projection. Not once had the professor mentioned a shadowed half-face, hardly visible behind the painted crowd, peeking back at Ambrose with a pair of bright and smiling eyes.

  In a grand and old department store Zipper wandered from floor to floor. Here a blouse held to her chest and re-hung on its rack; there the silk of a scarf, fingered and left folded. She sampled a lipstick that matched, precisely, the colour of her shoes. Assistants asked if madame required help. Zipper felt her eyes water and managed no thank you. She left the store without buying anything.

  She came across a small bookshop in a tilted narrow building. A sign in the window advertised Gently Read Literature, Items for Composition and Correspondence Within. Zipper shuffled around the shop, finally settling on a small leather journal, rounded at the corners. An envelope for keeping reminders and receipts and bits of things was bound inside the back cover, a thick elastic band held all in place. The proprietor was still counting change as Zipper ran out of the shop.

  She struggled to catch her breath, needed to sit down, went cold, thought she was going to vomit. She found a bench overlooking a canal and sat on her hands to hide the tremors. She stared at a passing tourist barge, her eyes filling with panic as those on board practised ducking under footbridges yet to come.

  The shaking stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Zipper had nothing to wipe her eyes. Flustered, she used the sleeve of her blouse. She stood, unsure of her knees, and heade
d off to meet her husband at the train station.

  Ambrose Zephyr reviewed the departures board, confirmed the overnight train would be leaving on time and made his way to the platform to meet his wife. If someone were no wiser, he might have looked as content as a man on holiday.

  Zipper watched her husband approach. Relieved at his relaxed way, she closed her journal. A souvenir postcard—a garish reproduction of a group portrait by Rembrandt—peeked from the envelope inside the cover. Ambrose paid no attention. He was too busy telling his story.

  …bigger than I expected. Enormous. More like a company of giants…There he was, behind the watchmen, the children, the chicken, the dog, the lances and spears and pikes and canes, the drums, the flags, the muskets…the master himself, peeking over a shoulder with those laughing eyes, I swear they winked…

  Ambrose flailed and paced like an awkward conductor.

  …and sweep and swirl and banners and action and such a good Rembrandt and luscious and bold and warm and thick with amazing outfits…the lieutenant in yellow of all things…

  Ambrose caught his breath.

  …and the genius?

  Zipper ventured a guess. His use of light?

  Work for hire, said Ambrose. Commissioned and paid for by the Captain et al. Hah! There’s your genius. There’s the art.

  Zipper smiled. Until then, she had always assumed the Rembrandt was what it was.

  On the night train to Berlin, Ambrose slept as well as anyone sitting upright on a train might. Zipper sat clutching the journal until her hands went clammy. She tried opening it a few times. A thousand words flew through her head but she couldn’t manage to land any on the page.

  After a while she gave up and watched the dark grey countryside speed past her reflection in the window.