Maggie Gee - The White Family

‘We could be together,’ I whispered to her.

‘Not until I’m married,’ she said, quite sharp, I remember she didn’t understand, she thought I was suggesting something improper, which I’d never have dared to, with an English girl.

‘I’ll marry you, May,’ I said, ‘if you’ll have me.’

‘Well ask me then,’ she said, but she was smiling, she was smiling at me with that slightly wicked dimple, and I realized with a sense of complete amazement that May Hill was going to say ‘Yes’, that she hadn’t noticed I was poor and ugly, or how much better than me she was. Or perhaps she had, but she still said ‘Yes’. In the middle of the dancers, a crowd of happy people, in the middle of the Park, under the evening sky, while the band played ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ my darling girl said ‘Yes’ to me.

After that we always called it ‘being together’, it became our joke, our little secret.)

‘— I proposed to her, that first weekend. But I was amazed when she accepted.’

‘Very romantic,’ said Thomas, smiling.

But his generation is so different, thought Alfred. Are they ever together, really, like we were? Do they stay together through thick and thin?

My children. Will they end up alone?

May sat in the garden for half an hour. There was a blanched wooden seat minus one of its bars, and she sank down on to it gratefully. The bushes had grown wild in the absence of a gardener.

(If Alfred goes …

When Alfred goes …)

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall …

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath

And after many a summer dies the swan.

She sat and thought about their life together. His dependability, which made him sound boring, but really it was miraculous, to do the same job for fifty years, to love the same woman, to live in the same place. And always do it with a will. Faithful Alfred. Her loyal man. Even when the council let him down; even when they sold off the Park Keeper’s lodge that he’d always expected to be his, he wouldn’t complain: ‘I expect they have their reasons.’ That stubborn, closed look which Dirk had inherited. Alfred would never criticize.

They took away the uniforms; they took away the dogs; they took away the good men who worked with him. They left him there unprotected, on his own, they wouldn’t even spend a few tenners on a mobile, and all he could do was walk a little faster, always hurrying, she’d seen him, these last few years, whenever she popped in for a chat, a driven man, you might call him, now, his white head sprinting along the pale paths that crossed the Park from corner to corner, for all of it was his territory, these days, the whole responsibility was his, his duties growing larger as he grew smaller, his drive growing stronger as he grew weaker — For now she could admit it, she knew he’d grown weaker. She had seen the effort, sometimes, when he pulled on his shoes, standing on one leg, as he always did, balancing pluckily on one leg and pulling on his work-boots with the opposite hand, rather red in the face, concentrating too intently where once the absurd procedure had been easy, once he’d balanced like a dancer, graceful, automatic.

But he never gave up.

He never slackened.

He never made life easy for himself.

She admired him with every bone in her body. His high standards, his fierceness …

There were holly-bushes here that had grown into great trees, nearly berry-less, now, in March, the red beads eaten by the birds, but the thicket of sharp leaves were glassy bright in the sun that caught them halfway up their height, so they were half black, half glittering. And beside the bench were the larger, longer-toothed, spiky leaves of a Mahonia, and now she identified the slow sweet smell that had come to her nose as she sat and wept: long yellow tassels of densely-set flowers, it was a Mahonia ‘Charity’, one of Alfred’s favourites, though he wouldn’t know the name –

I helped him with words, he helped me with things. We made a good pair, the two of us together. We’re still a good pair. I’m strong. I can help him –

…Tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are.

She could feel the cold increasing as she sat, she saw the sun’s slow retreat up the holly, but she breathed in the air that the trees made sweet.

His sweetness to me. And his fierceness.

He adored his kids, yet he made them wretched.

If they totted it up, how would he come out? I know he is a good man. I have no doubt. If there’s any justice, God will let him in. God will tell St Peter to let him in. Because Peter’s job is a bit like Alfred’s, he was the man with the key to the Gates.

(But was there any justice? — May wasn’t sure.)

Perhaps in heaven — if there was a heaven — but there must be a heaven — she hoped — she prayed … She hadn’t prayed in a church for so long.

(Shirley, of course, was always on her knees, as if we had given her a lot to pray about.)

It felt so awkward. May squeezed her eyes shut.

Take care of Alfred, Lord, because he’s tried … he has been a good man, haven’t you noticed? … Stay near him now in his hour of need … Don’t let him down, like the council did —

But it wasn’t any good. She was arguing with God. Arguing against the contradictory voices,

the little rift within the lute

That by and by will make the music mute …

It couldn’t be denied he was bad to Shirley.

He felt — mortally threatened, I know he did. He thought that Shirley chose Kojo to spite him. Perhaps she did, because he hurt us, when he lost his temper he hurt all of us, I try and forget it but I know it’s true. Even me, one hot summer when the café in the Park had been broken into and he came home desperate, I accidentally cooked the wrong thing for supper and he got up and hit me across the mouth, and my denture broke, and my cheek swelled up, and I told myself I would never forgive him, and Dirk was crying, his little white face …

But it went away, when the children did. He hasn’t hit anyone for years and years. And he can’t say sorry. Lord, he can’t. But I know he’s sorry. I know he is.

Lord, forgive us, take care of us .

She sat there, shivering up at the sky, the rectangle of blue, growing deeper, more distant.

If only we could live with just the best in us. The best of Alfred was heroic, marvellous. No one was braver, no one more true. He would have died for me, for the Park, for the kids.

It must count more than the — unpleasantness.

Dirk had moved beyond unpleasantness. Dirk had moved beyond failure, or pain. Dirk had swigged down four cans of Special Brew in half an hour, and was off to the game. There was a match between Hillesden Wanderers and the Dublin Demons, and the lads were going, and so was Dirk, though he hadn’t got a ticket. With the beer inside him, he knew he’d get in. When he’d had a few drinks, he was — invincible. He was more than himself. He was enough, at last.

(The trouble was, it always faded, leaving him worse, leaving him less.)

But today would be brilliant. Seeing off the Irish. Bloody Catholics, bloody bombers –

Dirk and the lads barrelled on to the train.

He wasn’t as keen on football as his dad had once been. As a boy, he’d gone to matches with Dad and loved it, sitting there together and yelling for their team. Dad used to stick an Aero chocolate bar in his pocket, and Dirk tried to eat at the same pace as Dad, one section at a time, very slowly, bursting the bubbles but he always finished first, it was harder for a kid.