Maggie Gee - The White Family

They were on their own. Panting in the darkness. Listening to this crazy woman screaming.

Dirk suddenly noticed he was shivering, shaking, although it was very warm for March.

So we legged it, didn’t we. Course we did. We had defeated the blacks. We had given them a kicking. Now we had to run before the police car came –

But we heard it in the distance, they’d been fucking quick, we heard the sirens wailing, and we split.

Fate took a hand — did God take a hand? She had never felt Jesus was a puritan. Because He’s young, and we see His body …

So many pictures of his naked body, although He was dying, his nakedness. Perhaps the Bible can’t admit He had sex because it would be complicated if He had children. Then there would be grandsons and granddaughters of God. Neither wholly human nor wholly divine.

(Maybe that was the truth of life on earth. We do wrong things. We do terrible things. But we do have sparks, moments, of goodness. Maybe we’re all God’s grandchildren.

She would never dare say that to a priest.)

As they sat in the café, Shirley was paged; there was hideous crackling, a blare of howl-round, ‘Mr Elroy King regrets he is prevented by work from picking up Mrs Shirley White.’ And Thomas said, ‘Then I’ll walk you home.’

It had grown dark, while they stood round the bed. The air was still fresh from the morning’s rain, but a warm wind, almost summery, completely wrong for the time of year, had blown most of the clouds away from the sky, and behind the silver edges of the last small cloudlets a calm white moon came into view, a moon that looked down on Shirley’s hurt heart and said, This is only one night among many, only one pain among so many, look at me, I am always here .

She had always loved the moon. So did Kojo.

‘Great moon,’ said Thomas. ‘I’m glad to be outside.’

‘You helped with Dad,’ she said to him, putting her hand upon his shoulder, which was rather broad, she couldn’t help noticing (what precisely had they done at Darren’s wedding? Danced, certainly. But kissed? — More?) ‘Thank you.’

‘I admire your dad.’

She wished he didn’t; she was glad he did.

It was Saturday, she realized, listening. The roads around the hospital were quiet, but she could hear odd shrieks in the distance, the young enjoying themselves in the moonlight … At least, she hoped they were enjoying themselves. Despite her sorrow, she felt oddly content, walking down the road with a different man, slightly taller and broader than the one she was used to.

‘Will Dirk be all right?’ asked Thomas. ‘He looked awful.’

‘He lives at home, it’s not much of a life.’

‘I see him nearly every day, you know. When I buy my paper. Don’t think he likes me.’

‘I’m sure he does,’ she cut in, firmly. She had a sudden urge to tell Thomas he was nice.

‘I can’t believe he’s lost his job,’ said Thomas. ‘Nothing ever changes, in that shop. He must get very bored, poor kid.’

Shirley always tried not to think about Dirk. Sometimes he seemed comic, like a bad cartoon … But all that anger. All that pain. ‘Yes, I think he’s always been bored. It’ll be worse than ever, if he loses his job.’

Talking in an easy, disjointed rhythm, as if they had known each other for ages (which they had, in a way, since they were both kids), they wandered on towards the Park.

They were about two streets away when they began to hear screams, which at first sounded like all the other Saturday night shouting. Playful shrieks that sounded like murder. Teenagers, off the leash, on the booze.

Shirley started to think the screams were getting louder.

But Thomas had just made her laugh, telling her something about the library, and she was telling him dribs and drabs of gossip about the end of Darren’s second marriage.

Then there was a moment when neither of them was talking, there was just the companionable tramp of their feet, and they both heard it very clearly, a high-pitched screaming, going on and on, a woman’s voice, surely, and a male voice, or voices. They stopped and listened, staring at each other, trying to read each other’s faces, pale and tense in the light of the moon.

Then suddenly Thomas broke into a smile. ‘Oh it’s OK,’ he said. ‘I think I know what that is. It’s just a couple rowing, I heard them last night —’

‘Couples can still kill one another —’

‘But then I heard them making love.’

He looked at Shirley; she looked at him. The thing he had said became very exciting.

‘We’re quite near my house, actually,’ he said, gesturing past the moon-touched shadows, the glitter and dark of the roadside puddles, a cat that shot out and retreated again. Thomas’s fingers brushed her shoulder.

But the screams went on. Shirley hated the sound. She wanted to muffle it in cloth. She wanted the comfort of his large warm body, but she knew she shouldn’t be thinking like that.

He touched her again. ‘Look would you like a coffee or a drink or something — before I take you home? You’ve had a ghastly day.’

‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’ (That was the authentic voice of her parents.)

Then the world exploded. The night tore apart down a blinding line of fluorescent blue and red and white, there was a deafening noise of sirens blaring, two police cars came tearing down the road and straight at the corner where they were stood, they were going too fast to corner properly and suddenly one was coming straight for her, its white eyes blazing out of the black, she couldn’t move, she was paralysed …

Then she was on her knees, half-stunned, in the darkness, the blaze had gone, the noise was retreating, my God, they had hit her, she was bruised but alive, her heart lurched and thudded against her breastbone –

‘Bastards! Bastards! You nearly killed me!’

‘Shirley, Shirley, are you all right?’

‘He drove straight at me —’

‘I pulled you over —’

‘You saved my life.’

‘They were going so fast.’

Thomas held her tight. ‘You’re shivering.’

But he was too. ‘Look, I will have a coffee.’

He helped her up. Her legs trembled. They walked the few hundred yards to his door with his arm lightly around her shoulders.

He turned the key, but the doorway was blocked by a couple standing with their arms around each other: a very pretty girl, rather red in the face, skinny and blond like Michelle Pfeiffer, and her boyfriend, a biggish, greasy-haired type, who leered at Shirley, and said, ‘Sorry — are we in your way? Just saying our goodnights.’

He somehow made the words suggestive. The girl looked annoyed or upset or nervous, but when Thomas said, ‘You all right, Melissa?’ she nodded and looked down at the ground.

Shirley and Thomas went upstairs. The skinny girl called up after him, ‘I’ve started your book. I really like it!’ But Thomas didn’t answer her.

Shirley looked around while he did things in the kitchen. His flat was crammed floor to ceiling with books, and big jungly plants, and photographs. One of the moon in the night sky. Thomas must have a romantic streak.

She could see the real moon, slightly smaller, sailing above the trees through the window, silver-white against the black of the sky. A true full moon. We nearly died … She tried to thank God, but she couldn’t pray.

She looked at his desk, which was covered in paper, and books propped open with envelopes and pencils. Thomas was a writer, of course he was. She peeked at something he had underlined, and ‘mourning’ caught her eye. Kojo, she thought.

‘Derrida’s contretemps of mourning — where the other’s death is always first and constitutive of my most proper Jemeinigkeit ; and where my “own” death is never actually my own … She stopped reading. It made no sense, it had nothing to do with actual mourning.