Maggie Gee: The White Family

‘It’s your circulation,’ said May. ‘That’s nothing new. That was always bad.’ She didn’t want some alarming new game.

‘Well it is new,’ he said, staring hard at her, one huge white eyebrow twitching upwards like the feathers of the ostrich in the zoo where they’d gone with the two older ones, thirty years ago. ‘Being found out cold on my back is new.’

‘So are they going to give you drugs, or what?’

May frowned at her daughter, who didn’t notice. (Why did she keep on bothering her father? If he wanted to tell them, he would tell them. If he knew, that is, if the doctors had told him, and she hoped they wouldn’t tell him things to frighten him. It was she who should know. May would ask the doctors.)

‘I’m rattling with pills already,’ said Alfred.

‘Stop questioning your father,’ said May.

‘I don’t mind people taking an interest. They’re doing a test on my brain,’ he said, once more unable to suppress a note of pride. Medicine had ignored him for seventy-odd years; now important doctors were testing his brain.

‘Must have been a stroke then,’ said Shirley, satisfied. ‘I mean, I’m afraid it must have been a stroke,’ catching her mother’s indignant glare. ‘But lots of people get better from strokes.’

‘How do you know so much about medicine all of a sudden?’ May asked her.

‘I don’t,’ she said. And then, foolishly ‘Well Elroy does work in a hospital, so I suppose I have picked up a bit from him —’

‘You’ve picked it up from bloody Elroy, have you?’ her father demanded, stung into life, cranking up his head several inches from the pillow. ‘This is medicine according to Elroy, is it? Well thank you very much, I want English medicine, English medicine from English doctors.’

‘Elroy is English,’ said Shirley. ‘Well — British. Elroy is as British as me or you.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Alfred, now alarmingly red, blue eyes alight, clawing at the bedclothes. ‘He’s about as British as bananas, is Elroy.’

Shirley was trying very hard to keep calm. ‘He is British, but I’m not going to argue. Thing is, you should know what’s the matter with you. You have a right. All patients do.’

‘He’s not bloody British!’ Veins bulged in his neck and his head poked forward like a tortoise.

‘He was born in Peckham!’ Now they were both shouting.

‘Will you leave it?’ said May. ‘People are looking at us.’ This wasn’t true, but it had an effect. ‘Can you stop upsetting your father?’

‘Thinks she knows it all,’ said Alfred, subsiding, suddenly tired, smaller, paler.

Shirley sat and stared at the floor. ‘I’ll fetch a vase, then I have to be going,’ she said, standing up, not looking at them, flouncing down the pale clinging hem of her skirt.

They watched her swaying down the ward again. Now most of the beds had collected visitors, clustered round the bedheads, helpless, eager. Amateurs at this, all of them.

May and Alfred looked at each other. Neither had meant to quarrel with Shirley. They needed them now, their large, strong children, now they were growing older, weaker. ‘You didn’t have to go and upset her —’ he muttered.

‘You’re the one who riled her. Saying Elroy isn’t British.’

‘I don’t intend to waste time talking about Elroy.’

‘You’ve only got one daughter,’ said May.

Her mild voice sparked him off again. ‘I know that. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t want to see my grandchildren? No chance of that, till she settles down.’

Alfred was deluding himself, as usual. All through Shirley’s marriage he had pretended that Kojo was a temporary fling. May had never told him about Shirley’s miscarriages, had begged her daughter not to talk about them. Partly to protect him from pain. Partly to protect herself from his reaction, for May had longed for Shirley and Kojo to have children, no matter if they were black or white or striped, she knew she would love her daughter’s children and hoped that Alfred would have loved them too, it would have mended everything, brought them all together … But the babies had died. Two in a row. In Shirley’s well-fed, healthy body.

Shirley reappeared with a fountain of white lilies that turned her into a goddess from May’s childhood encyclopedia … Newnes’ Encyclopedia , was that it? Straight out of one of those shiny pictures where all the gods were blond and tall. Shirley was a goddess of fruit and flowers — Ceres? Or was that fertility? Goddess of spring, Proserpina. How could they not be proud of her, and yet she still wouldn’t meet their eyes, lowering the shining lilies down on the grey Formica of his bedside table among the dim clutter of water, clock, glasses –

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me …

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up

And slips into the bosom of the lake …

May gazed at her, half-hypnotized.

‘Help her, then,’ said Alfred, testily. ‘Can’t you see she can’t do it on her own?’ May heaved herself round in the chair. ‘You could get up,’ he harried his wife. ‘You could do something. I can’t get up.’

‘It’s all right, Dad.’ Shirley couldn’t bear them arguing. ‘I’ve got to go, in any case. Enjoy the chocs.’

‘You shouldn’t spend your money on me.’

‘I like to spend money on my parents.’

‘You don’t want to go short.’ He always worried.

‘Dad, I’m all right. I — was left well looked after.’

He knew she was avoiding saying Kojo’s name. ‘You’re a good girl, coming to see me.’

‘Don’t give the nurses a hard time.’

‘Me?’ He winked, looking suddenly youthful. ‘I’m the perfect patient. You ask Sister.’

‘I’ll come and see you again tomorrow.’

‘Darren might have got here by tomorrow —’

‘Well … I’ll believe it when I see it.’

‘Of course he’s coming,’ said Alfred. ‘He’s been talking about coming for over a year … It’s his work. The pressure. Pressure of work.’

‘But now you’re ill —’ said May.

‘Now I’ve had this spot of trouble, he’ll come.’

Shirley took pity. ‘Of course he’ll come.’ She touched May’s hand, bent heavily to pick up her coat (and May suddenly saw she was middle-aged, that stately slowness as she stooped, then wrapped herself round in the pale wool as if she were hurt, as if she were damaged, and blew a grand stage kiss at them, a kiss for onlookers to see, and was gone, sailing off down the ward again, wind in her sails, unstoppable. At the end she turned and raised her hand, a flag of truce, a flag of forgiveness.)

She’s middle-aged, our Shirley Temple .

May stared after her, uncomprehending. One final flash of her curls in the light. Our golden girl. Our pretty baby. Soon she’ll be too old to have children … But how can our children be too old for anything?

I haven’t been a good mother to her. I didn’t stand up for her enough over Kojo. I didn’t tell Alfred he was being a fool.

But why has she turned out so different from us? Why does she want such different things? And Darren — he lives in hotels and planes, and has huttuttupp thingies, and dotcoms , and divorces — (Shirley had a point. Darren did let them down. Those last-minute phone calls, to say he wasn’t coming, when she’d cleaned the house from top to bottom and his dad had turned the mattress in the spare room. He’d be off to Hawaii, or Bali, or Greenland. Of course he couldn’t come, but all the same they felt it. ‘Enjoy yourself, lad,’ was all Alfred ever said.)

But where does it all come from? Lap-tops, jacuzzis? Out of the future. The glittering future. And we two are slipping back into the past.