The End of the Alphabet (3 page)

 

Ambrose Zephyr's father toiled as a wordsmith for one of the more popular broadsheets of the day. Not long after writing his son's wedding notice, he had taken an early retirement. Enough reading about it, he told his wife.

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.