Maggie Gee - The White Family

She drew the curtains. Thomas slipped into the dark.

‘Death is part of life, my darling,’ Suneeta said, when he complained about having to get rid of books. It was always tempting to send them to Purgatory — the ‘Reserve Stacks’, three dingy portakabins somewhere north of Utterley Road — rather than direct to the fires of hell, sealed in a black plastic rubbish bag. ‘Death is part of life,’ he silently assured the small sad faces of the banished authors. Once the shelves got tight, of course there had to be disposals. All the same, today it seemed — barbarous. History of the Empire. Part One: Expansion … Ethics in Post-War British Business … Into the Future With Hope: The Welfare State in Post-War Britain . Thomas felt shifty and shamefaced, carrying the heavy bag through the library. Was he a barbarian, like those he dreaded?

He had felt afraid, on the streets last night, startled not far from Alfred’s gate by a mob of white skinheads in leather and chains, jostling, giggling, surging onwards like a knot of oiled seals diving over and under, looking for someone, blaring with laughter, barking for someone, he hoped not him — past the phone-boxes with the smashed glass walls still lying in tiny chunks of ice on the pavement, past the Methodist church whose strip-lit noticeboard was covered with black hieroglyphic graffiti, yelling on down towards the Park, a pack in full cry, baying for blood, boys who didn’t know the rules, vandals who tore up the rules … Yobs, but they roared like murderers.

Thomas hefted the bag right out of the library, though normally he’d leave it for the cleaners to dispose of. Doing my own dirty work, he thought. I’m not a bad person. I do contribute. He dropped the heavy weight in the skip. Some kind of animal scuffled in the shadows. Cats, rats –

( That was it. Mice . The thing about Dirk he had tried to forget. Dirk was eight or nine, May had asked Thomas to lunch. Alfred was at work, as usual. She was showing him her seedlings in their dark shed. Then they spotted two tiny pink blobs on the floor. They glistened faintly in the light from the door. ‘Is that nestlings?’ she asked, frowning, stooping. ‘Poor little things, has a cat got them?’ But it was two mice with their skins half-removed. Dirk had found them in her mouse-traps, and cut them with a penknife. ‘He’s just a child,’ she had said to Thomas. ‘You won’t say anything to his father? Alfred can be a bit strict with him. Boys will be boys.’ But her eyes looked frightened.)

Head hurts. Head hurts. Hangover. Sod. Sod. Sod the mornings. Nothing good, forever and ever. Nothing gets better. Nothing any good. Dad, Dad. She wouldn’t say, but there’s something bad. Something — worse.

I don’t believe it. The water’s cold. What has she done, the stupid woman? She’s gone and switched it off, that’s what. Old and muddly. Old and mad. She cried, last night. Just sat there crying. Wouldn’t explain, just sat and cried. Saying over and over ‘Your dad — Your dad —’

She talks to me like I’m a little kid.

I hate it when my mother cries.

I might have — given her a hug or whatever. But she hasn’t liked it, since I’ve been big. (Did she like it when I was small? Dunno.) She sort of shrinks when I try to touch her. That’s women, isn’t it? They don’t like men.

I hate living with old people. Why should someone young and strong like me have to live with old people? My Mum was ancient when she had me. Forty-seven years old, which is disgusting, still doing that at nearly fifty. I heard her tell Ruby Millington that I was a mistake, which made me mad. One day they’ll die and I’ll be happy …

Oh sod, I’m crying, oh shit, oh shit, Dad can’t die, not possible.

Half past five is the shit-work time. The hour when shit-workers start work, and everyone else lies snoring. Pigging themselves with pigging sleep. Two to a bed, pigs in a trough.

I pass their windows every morning, knowing they lie asleep inside. Hundreds of smug curtained windows. And I’m out here in the pouring rain, with water running down inside my collar and water bubbling up through my shoes. I want to throw stones and smash in their windows, and they’d see me standing there, pointing and jeering, it’s me, it’s me, I’m here every morning, but none of you know I fucking exist –

But I know them. I think about them. Nobody notices, no one ever did, but I’m sensitive, a thinker. A — philosopher. Even Mum and Dad never knew I was smart, but I am, I am. And now I’ve got friends.

My brother’s a thinker. They’re proud of him. He’s famous for thinking, and sounding off. I could do that. I’ve got my opinions.

I’m proud of him too. He’s my claim to fame. I told him that in the hospital yesterday. ‘Darren, you’re my claim to fame.’ ‘Oh I’m not famous, not really famous …’ He is, of course. He’s on TV, and in the papers every other day. I told him so. ‘You’re a famous writer.’ He liked that a lot. He got a funny look … What I would call an eager look. So I said it again. ‘You are, Darren. You are quite famous.’ ‘Do you read my pieces?’ He was pricking up his ears, keen as anything. ‘I see your picture, and your name’ — I couldn’t actually say I’d read them. And that wanker was listening, Thomas Lovell, and he smiled a funny kind of smile. Which Darren noticed, and his face fell.

‘I saw you on Newsnight ,’ I told him. ‘You were good. You stood up to Paxman. He’s a ponce.’

‘Which time was that? Was it recently? The piece about American abortion clinics?’

‘Something about some women,’ I said. ‘But, you know, it was good. And your suit was cool. You walked rings around Paxo, in that suit.’ That is the very phrase I used. It just came to me. I was pleased with it. And he was smiling. I’d said the right thing.

I’ll be frigging soaked through before I get to the shop, it just keeps coming, like a tidal wave. I used to wish for a tidal wave, to wash us away. The house and everything. Mum and Dad, and Shirley and me, especially after Shirley went funny …

But now Dad’s ill, I feel different about it. I want things back the way they were. Now it’s as if my whole life might change before I’ve had a chance to think about it. When you’re the youngest, you never get asked. The wave is coming, we’ll be swept away …

Mum’s cracking up. She’s not herself. She’s a different person when Dad’s not there. I thought last night, she’s going mental. My own mother, cracking up. She wanted me to sit with her. I mean, I never sit with her. And I couldn’t, could I? I was upset.

She’d had a talk to one of the doctors. For some reason she’d talked to a woman, but perhaps the senior doctors were busy. ‘What if he never goes back to work,’ she kept on muttering to herself. The tears were streaming down her cheeks, I didn’t know what to do with myself. ‘If he never goes back to work it’ll kill him.’

‘Course he’ll go back to work, stupid. He told me himself he’s feeling much better.’

‘That’s not what this doctor said.’

‘Talk to his proper doctor tomorrow. She was probably just a woman, panicking.’

Mum told me off for ‘funny ideas’. She said this doctor was his real doctor. She said that women were real doctors.

But Dad’s like me. We have the same ideas. They’re men’s ideas, of course they are. Men and women are different, aren’t they? That’s probably why Darren keeps getting divorced. Like coloured people are different from whites, only Shirley’s too thick to notice it.

We go down the pub and talk about them. Unless George is there, in which case they ignore me, Dad and him treating me like a kid, going on and on about the past, what Hillesden was like when they were boys. Which was before coloured people came, of course. Which happens to be of interest to me, but they leave me out of it, as if I’m too young to understand.