Maggie Gee - The White Family

And something else. Something very exciting.

Melissa has borrowed my book from the library .

Shirley White, the Wankers’ Friend. What did she do to deserve my sperm? I suppose she’s just desirable. Of course completely wrong for me, but the sort of woman who — knows what’s what.

I almost felt she fancied me, when we sat in the café, before the others came. And perhaps it’s not impossible. Perhaps I’m more of a man than Jean thought. Thank you, Shirley.

Sorry, Shirley.

Bloody hell, what would Darren say?

He doesn’t even know I once kissed his sister …

We hadn’t really talked in over two decades. All I’d had to go on were appearances. He smiled a lot more, looked more successful … no longer kept in touch with me. He’d made some kind of effort at the hospital, said we must ‘hang out’ while he was here, even pretended he might come and see me — as if he would bother, after all this time.

In the first few years he had mailed me his cuttings. Perhaps I didn’t praise them enough. We had started primary school together; learned to swim by nearly drowning each other; fallen in love with the same blond plaits; had our first kiss at the same party, though I was the first to get my tongue inside; started a school magazine called Tall … I was the editor, Darren was features. I got to write the editorial, which was grand, scornful, and very short. Darren wrote most of the rest of the contents, but I, as the editor, edited him.

(But Darren always came top in exams. And he was good at sport, whereas I was lazy. Now he had outstripped me at life, as well. Not that it mattered; Melissa liked me.)

By twelve midday I was flagging again as I called up book titles on the screen. I went across the road to the Italian café.

We call it Italian, because of the owner, Mario, who comes from Milan — he fell in love with an English girl and got stuck here long ago. Actually it couldn’t be more English, with its salty, fatty, stewed-tea smell. I’m never quite certain where I come from (with a rugby team of genes on my father’s side — Jewish, Scottish, Italian, Spanish? There was even a rumoured great-grandma from Barbados) but walking in here I know I’m British.

Stale cigarette smoke, Formica-covered tables, eggs and beans and Nescafé. I ordered double fried eggs on toast, and sat by the window, away from the kitchen. There I could watch the cars go by, and the women doing their Saturday shopping, women too poor to drive to Quicksave, their push-chairs hung about with carrier-bags. Shouting children; sun and wind. Perhaps I could drive Melissa to Tesco’s –

My father never shopped in his life. A teacher’s son with pretensions to more who at one point was quite a successful bookie, until he gambled the money away. Mum feared his gambling and hated his drinking. In the end they had moved into a rented flat, and my mother sat staring at the radio. I longed for parents like May and Alfred. Alfred-and-May. May-and-Alfred. But Darren didn’t seem to have learned much from it –

I looked up from my second mouthful of toast to see a madman tear across my field of vision, almost knocking down a woman with a paper bag of plantains, her orange African head-dress swivelling to watch him, talking to himself, mouthing, grimacing — There was something about the shape of his head.

‘Darren!’ I shouted, through the deaf plate-glass, and ran out after him, and tapped him on the shoulder. To my surprise, he turned straight towards me, like a drowning man, flung his arms around me.

‘Darren. Well met!’

‘Thomas. Thank God. I was looking for you. They said you were in the Italian café. I couldn’t bloody see any Italian café.’ His voice was thick, emotional. I pulled back a few inches and looked at his face. He was ten years older now, by daylight, than the rugged film star I’d seen in the hospital. His eyes were bloodshot, his features blurred.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. No.’

I smelled his breath. Whisky, in the morning. Maybe it meant we could cut the crap. (Did I want to be friends? — He was my friend. After thirty years there was no going back.)

‘Come and keep me company?’ He was dragging me away. I don’t think he had much clue where he was going. ‘Drink,’ he insisted. ‘Let’s go have a drink.’

‘Well — actually I haven’t finished my lunch. Come back and have some lunch with me. They aren’t licensed, I’m afraid.’

‘Do I want to drink coffee? Maybe I should.’ He made an effort to sound sober. ‘I had a few drinks already this morning. Just had a tremendous row with my wife. Marriage — why the fuck do I keep doing it!’

I ordered him All Day Breakfast. Darren sat in the window, chewing his nails. ‘It stinks of smoke in here. That’s so English.’ (I prayed that Mario just heard the last bit, but Darren was shouting, deaf with drink.) ‘I fucking miss it. Susie made me give up. Wouldn’t bloody live with me until I did. I smoked like a chimney. Sixty a day … Helps when you’re in a hotel on your own.’

Perhaps smoking explained the lines. He looked older than me, or I hoped he did (but better dressed. The suit, the trench-coat. The quiet, definite print of money.)

‘Susie seemed, well, very nice,’ I said. Tactfully. Or nosily. ‘And she’s a therapist, is she?’

‘Fucking therapists,’ said Darren, furious. ‘She drives me fucking mad. Always trying to understand. Usually things she knows nothing about. D’ya know any therapists? So fucking arrogant.’

‘Didn’t seem arrogant.’

‘They’re all bloody experts at other people’s pain. Though she has her own problems. Abused, bulimic. Everyone’s fucking abused these days.’ He tried to get a grip on himself. ‘I mustn’t tell you all Susie’s problems. They’re only therapists because they have problems. She thinks I should fucking confront my father. She doesn’t know my father! She should try it! You know Dad, what a bastard he is —’

My jaw dropped open. Alfred? A bastard? ‘How do you mean, confront your father? Sorry, not with you. What about?’

‘About the way he wrecked my life. And Shirley’s life. And Dirk’s probably. I know sod all about Dirk’s life, except that he’s a little fascist … and all his opinions come from Dad. Dad terrified us. Appalling temper. It’s taken me years to admit it. Years . I used to be in awe of him. Working-class hero, and all that crap.’

I strained to see it from his point of view. ‘I suppose he did get stroppy, sometimes … My dad was never around to get cross. At least you knew where you stood, with yours.’

Darren shook his head, vigorous, dismissive, waving his hands, short jerky movements. Mario plumped down the breakfast in front of him, flinching away from Darren’s flying arms. ‘Wan brea’fast,’ he said, with his usual huge smile, inviting the customer to wonder at the marvel, but Darren didn’t seem to see him. He seized the knife and fork and plunged in, wordlessly hacking at a very large sausage.

‘We were always on tenterhooks, when he came home. We had to be quiet. Things had to be just right. It affected the men, their time in the forces. If anyone touched his kit, he went mad.’

‘My father was unfit for National Service —’ Or feigned unfitness, my mother had hinted.

Darren’s thin furious mouth was working. ‘Don’t you remember what happened that time I borrowed his army knife without asking, when we went to scout camp, in Storrington? That bayonet thing we boys were so thrilled with? He was waiting on the doorstep when they brought us back. Half-crazed with rage. He boxed my ears, and kept on shouting it was dangerous . But he was dangerous, he was the dangerous one, living with Dad was fucking dangerous!! He even hit Shirley — He even hit Mum. Well once, I remember. At least once.’