Maggie Gee - The White Family

‘Thomas. Did that crazy come in for his notes? The one who wrote all that heavy stuff about race?’

‘Oh. Yes. W King. He was young. Good-looking. Bit scary, to be honest. He’s ordered all this stuff about lynchings.’

She widened her eyes, in a parody of fear, and squeezed his hand, which he found stirring, despite the pain as her rings dug in. ‘Watch yourself, Sweet Pea,’ she purred. ‘Just call Suneeta. Suneeta will protect you … By the way, how’s your friend who had the thingy?’

After a pause, he realized whom she meant. ‘Alfred? Went to see him yesterday,’ he answered. ‘In hospital. He didn’t seem too bad. The family all came.’

‘That’s very good,’ she said, nodding approvingly. ‘Family just has to be there for you.’ Her almond eyes were elongated with an upflick of jet black eyeliner that looked as if you could peel it off whole; her lips were crimson, cushiony, with little soft lines of tiredness at the edges. ‘My daughters’, she continued, ‘are education-mad. We wanted them to be graduates, yes. But they forget what matters in life: family, innit?’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ He didn’t know what to answer. He was an only child, and his parents were dead.

‘Too right I’m right. Have a peppermint.’ And she sashayed away, smiling seductively over her cushiony shoulder.

Sighing, for Suneeta had been married for three decades, had seven children, and would never be for him, Thomas trudged downstairs to look at the shelves in the History Section, which were getting tight. Triage was part of Stocks as well, and he sorted titles, to go for disposal almost automatically, thinking of the Whites.

It wasn’t exactly happy families, last night. Darren White, the People’s Friend, blowing his top at that poor woman on the counter, and snapping at his wife as if she was a servant. Poor little Dirk, with his four sugars …

Shirley had changed for the better, though. So — bien dans sa peau . So confident. And glossy, and pretty, and prosperous. She seemed so — calm. When all the others were nervous. I felt I wanted her to — be my friend (oh be honest, I wanted to sleep with her).

Her breasts were nice. Her cheeks were nice. Her skin was soft and nice like May’s, nice, nice, the niceness of women … Later, May’s face, looking down on Alfred. The shine of a woman who loves a man.

I would like that. I’ve never quite had that. I had a wife, but she didn’t light up.

By the time he had finally reached Alfred’s bedside, the ward had been closing down towards night, and a nurse came round with a chinking trolley. ‘Do you want something to help you sleep?’

May had said, ‘Horlicks. He always likes Horlicks.’

The nurse ignored her. ‘Mr White, Alfred, would you like something?’

‘He doesn’t like pills , if that’s what you mean. Alfred never has sleeping pills.’

‘Hang on,’ said Alfred, eyes suddenly wide open. ‘I will have something. I did last night.’

‘Alfred,’ May protested. ‘You could never stand pills.’

‘He moans,’ said Alfred, pointing down the ward. ‘Every hour or so, he starts this moaning. And there’s a woman who wanders about. You wouldn’t get a wink of sleep in here.’

May said nothing as nameless pills rattled into a tiny plastic beaker, but when Alfred took them, she caught Thomas’s eye, mouthed ‘Tranquillizers’, as someone might say ‘Heroin’, and winked, to comfort them both. ‘You’re looking tired, Thomas. Working too hard with the books, I suppose.’

It was gratifying someone knew libraries meant work. Wonderful May. She was often at the library. And she had quite a collection of her own books, too. Once she had showed him her Tennyson. The bookplate said ‘May Hill, IVA. For Promising Work. Form English Prize.’

May’s smile. ‘Your mother would be proud of you. Alfred is pleased you’ve come to see him. He’s just a bit sleepy. Exciting day.’

Alfred opened his eyes, frowned, concentrated. ‘I’m not asleep. I’m not tired …’

‘Thomas, dear,’ whispered May. ‘I think I’ll pop and have a word with the doctors.’

‘Not tired,’ Alfred muttered, doggedly, but furred with sleep, slurring slightly. ‘Ni’, Darren. Good boy …’ His eyelids sagged.

‘Thomas,’ he had gently corrected him, but May frowned, shush . Then she bent over and kissed Alfred’s hand, very lightly, as if it were precious. ‘Wait here a mo’,’ she said suddenly to Thomas, and darted off after a passing doctor.

But Alfred, Thomas saw, was asleep, so he went to fill the water-jug. In the kitchen, though, he got trapped in conversation with a little man with an infected hip who was desperate to talk about the Queen Mother. ‘She was up and walking the very next day. They get a different quality of care, you know.’

Thomas was half-jogging down the corridor, eager to get out into the clean night air, when he bumped into a body, someone soft, in the shadows, someone he realized was quietly weeping –

It was May, with her hands covering her face. May, with the tears streaming down between her fingers.

Thomas wanted her to stop, very much, very badly. There was a smell of disinfectant, and the sluice room gurgled, gurgled in the distance.

‘I just saw his doctor,’ she said, when she could speak. ‘I don’t think the news is very good. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell the children.’

Oh euphemism, oh sad non-speech.

‘May, can I walk home with you?’

‘I don’t want to be a nuisance, but Dirk’s already gone.’

They walked through the wind not saying very much. Thomas took May’s arm, feeling she might blow away in the darkness … But he knew that no one could make things right, no one could lift the terrible weight that had swooped in one awful second, landed.

May had said goodbye at the clanking gate outside the little terraced house in the thirties street, the mean street, where they had lived for most of their lives. It was not unlike his parents’ street, though the latter had been gentrified; loft extensions, magnolia-trees, obsession with restoring the original details, whereas May and Alfred’s street was still tearing them out. Little brilliant florets of thirties’ stained glass, sweet-shop red, sweet-shop green, still shone in May and Alfred’s hall window, but the front door had been replaced by an aluminium horror with two dazzling slabs of glass. May stood in its glare and turned grey-white.

‘Thank you, Thomas. Now you get off home.’

‘Shall I come in and make you a cup of tea?’

‘I don’t want to be a trouble to anyone.’

That was always their fear, that they’d be a trouble. ‘No trouble,’ Thomas said, and followed her in.

It was very warm, and smelled of washing, which was spread across all the radiators, burnt toast, and polish, and age, and damp, and other hints; fruit drops? Earth? It smelled of old people, to Thomas.

‘Coo-ee,’ she called, ‘anyone home?’

He appeared before them at the top of the stairs, hands spread out in mock benediction, bright blond bristles catching the light, a thuggish Christ waving a bottle of beer. Completely different from the sullen child Thomas saw behind the counter in the newsagent’s. He didn’t look wimpish. He looked — what? — vicious. Thomas felt, I mustn’t leave her with him. Which was ridiculous, of course.

He remembered Dirk vaguely as a whiney baby whom Shirley carried around like a doll. (Was there another memory? Something unpleasant.)

‘Dirk, dear,’ said May. ‘You’re home.’

‘Yeah … jus’ got back.’ He was out of breath. His tiny mouth panted.

‘I’ll make us cocoa,’ she said to him. Thomas suddenly sensed it was her son she wanted. The sorrow, the secret of the sorrow, was for him. It was family business. They would draw the curtains –