Maggie Gee - The White Family

‘Not at all. It was good.’

He cleared his throat, and looked embarrassed. ‘Um, I do love Susie, actually. Although I give her a hard time. She’s — the best woman I’ve ever been with.’

I looked at the table. This was new. Darren and I had never talked about love. Women, yes, but not about love. ‘Good,’ I said. It was all I could manage.

‘Will you come and stay in the flat in New York?’

‘Yes, if you like. If you really mean it.’

‘Don’t wait too long. We’re all getting older. That’s what Susie says; what if Dad dies?’

‘I’ll walk with you to the underground.’

He didn’t pay. Perhaps he hadn’t got much sterling. Mario was listening to opera very quietly, smiling and nodding at his radio, and he winked as I paid the bill for two, with a tiny nod in Darren’s direction that perhaps meant Mario thought he was a loony. ‘Nice to see you, John.’ He always called me John. After seven or eight years, it was too late to correct him.

Darren and I said goodbye by the Catholic church with its grill of ornate painted iron-work, towering above us, the patterns repeating, up and up into the cold blue sky, then sunlit thunderheads, one above another … He turned to walk down the steps to the tube, then without a word came back and embraced me.

It wasn’t comfortable. He had a briefcase, and I was clutching a newspaper. But we held each other, awkwardly. Sons, brothers.

‘See you at the hospital later, maybe.’

‘You’re good to visit him,’ said Darren.

‘It’s easy for me. I’m not his son.’

Alfred lay shivering slightly in bed. Sister had opened a lot of windows. Someone had died five beds down the ward. Bad news travelled fast, in hospitals …

At least it’s not me. But is it coming closer?

Alfred knew he was too young to die. Too young to be lying in hospital.

I never expected to be here .

And his arm moved restlessly towards his cupboard. Were his boots and greatcoat still safe in there?

Funny, isn’t it, how life turns out. Hospitals were always for other people. Other people got ill and died. Other people took time off work. I never did. I never would. I suppose I despised people who got ill. Except for May when she had her babies. She was a good woman, and she nearly died.

The courage women show in childbirth … there’s a lot of courage around, in life. They don’t put it in books or films any more, but I’m sure it’s still there. Ordinary courage.

I never had to think about my body. It always did everything I asked of it. No problems in the romantic department, not right up until I was sixty-five. No problems with the waterworks. And on my feet, day after day, all day and every day, in all weathers. Yet I never got coughs or colds or flu.

And my feet are pretty miraculous. No call for Dr Scholl’s or the chiropodist. May’s got corns and an ingrown toe-nail. Probably because they wear daft shoes. Women always wear daft shoes, bless them. I’ve always kept as close as I could to the boots I wore for National Service. They carried me through the deserts of Palestine, they’ll carry me through whatever life brings –

I’ll put them on again, of course. My boots will carry me out of here. Shuffling about in slippers, well, it’s not my style, though I’m not complaining.

I mustn’t complain. Life’s been good to me.

But I’m only seventy-one. That’s not old, is it? Not old for nowadays, at least. And I’m still in harness. Still a hundred per cent. They’ve extended my contract because I deserve it. I’m over-age by my birth certificate, but they know I do the work of six men …

I’m only seventy-one. Too young to die. I thought I could manage another ten.

It doesn’t seem right, when I’ve always been fit, always eaten healthy, and kept on my feet. A drink or two, in the past a smoke –

Nothing that could explain getting cancer. I thought unhealthy people got cancer. It can’t be cancer, they’ve made a mistake.

But when the consultant had come round this morning, what he said seemed to leave no room for doubt. Except the great window of unbelief where Alfred knew he would live forever, patrol the Park forever more, tipping his cap to white-haired ladies who would always, somehow, be older than him. Of course he’d keep going. He always had, ever since he finished his National Service –

But the doctor stood there, tall and thin, a gentleman with a thin kind voice, a bit of a weed, Alfred might have thought once. And as he spoke, the whole world shifted. A cold weight of fear Alfred hadn’t felt since he was first shot at in Palestine and suddenly knew he wasn’t immortal, landed on his belly, and he started praying. Please Lord no may it not be true oh please Lord no may it not be true —

‘Mr White? Do you understand me?’

But Alfred hadn’t heard a word he said after the first few deadening sentences.

‘The results of the tests have come back now.’ He had paused, and looked up at Alfred over his glasses, seeing if Alfred was compos mentis ; or just making sure he was listening.

‘Were they OK then?’ Alfred sounded too breezy, he knew it before the words had left his lips.

‘We-ell,’ said the consultant, carefully. ‘They were not entirely what we had expected.’

Which meant death.

But Alfred had dismissed the thought as quickly as it fell through the air.

‘We had assumed your problems were circulatory — That is to say, we thought you’d had a stroke.’

‘Didn’t I, then? Is that good news?’ But he already knew it was not good news.

There was a pause. The thin man had looked at the nurse, as if her face would give him strength. ‘I’m afraid we have discovered some obstructions in the tissues of the brain. We shall therefore pursue a different course of treatment.’

That sounded all right; but it wasn’t all right. Alfred waited, but nothing was forthcoming.

‘Do you have any questions you’d like to ask, Mr … Er?’ He had already forgotten Alfred’s name.

‘Well I’m not going to die, am I?’ Alfred laughed, making a joke of it, as you must. It was serious, yes, but as long as it wasn’t fatal –

‘We shall do our very best for you,’ the doctor replied, not meeting his eyes.

‘I don’t mind being operated on,’ said Alfred, hearing his voice sounding hoarse, desperate, not his voice at all, a frightened voice.

(But he refused to be frightened. Even of the knife. He had had his appendix out after the war. Nothing to it, really. He had woken up singing an army song, which was the effect of the gas. He’d been good as new, after that. And the surgeons were wonderful, nowadays.)

‘We don’t think an operation would be helpful.’

Another punch of cold ice in his stomach.

‘You’d better tell me what’s going on. The full whack. Go on, I can take it.’

And the thin cold voice, perhaps trying to be kind, awkward, scientific, reluctant, told him what was the matter with him. But Alfred couldn’t listen. After ‘a number of small tumours’ he heard no more.

Until the consultant talked himself to a standstill.

Then Alfred swallowed, and fixed him with his eye. The doctor was looking at the lino. ‘So it’s cancer, you’re saying. And you can’t operate.’

‘We don’t think an operation would be helpful.’ He repeated himself, politely, firmly. Alfred said nothing. ‘At your age, you see …’

‘So I’m a goner because of my age. You’re going to throw me on the scrap-heap, are you?’ A brief spurt of temper made Alfred feel better.

The doctor and nurse both looked embarrassed. ‘Not at all, Mr White, I do assure you. We’ll do everything we can to make you comfortable.’