Maggie Gee - The White Family

Then she saw something else. On the mantelpiece. A moon-faced figure, unmistakable, long trunk of a body, small hills of breasts — it was an Akua’ba, surely. A Ghanaian figure. But why was it here? Her flesh prickled, remembering the bitterest days with Kojo, when endless cousins seemed to come from Ghana.

All of them teased us about having babies, until they saw that something was wrong.

Then they began to offer advice. Most of it seemed to be aimed at Shirley, they always assumed that Kojo was fertile (and she sometimes wondered now, did they know he was? Did he really have children already at home, as his cousin Gifty had tried to tell her? — She would always love him. It didn’t matter.) ‘I could bring Shirley an Akua’ba doll. Never mind if it’s old-fashioned, it works.’ If childless women held the dolls, it was meant to help them to have their own babies. But Kojo refused, laughing angrily. ‘She’s a modern woman. She doesn’t need witchcraft.’

Shirley had seen one in his second cousin’s flat. Like babies, Akua’maa, little black babies, rounded necks, big eyes, high foreheads. Wooden dolls you could hold in your arms.

She picked up Thomas’s Akua’ba.

Thomas came in with two mugs of cocoa ‘to warm you up’. And a bottle of whisky.

She didn’t drink whisky, she didn’t drink spirits –

But she felt she could do anything, anything at all, because she had come so near to death.

She heard her heart. Still loud, still jumping. She felt very wild; her father was dying, the rigid pin at the centre of the world.

‘You still look shaken,’ Thomas said, glugging a whisky into a glass. ‘Is that too much?’

‘Yes … No — Thomas, where on earth did you get this?’ (Cradling the Akua’ba.)

‘My moon goddess? In Canada. Isn’t she pretty? I just bought her in a shop.’

‘She’s Ghanaian …’ Shirley shivered, remembering. She didn’t want to explain it to Thomas.

‘You’re still trembling. Those maniacs.’

She tried to pull herself together. ‘Mum always says they’re just off for their tea.’

‘They nearly killed you. We should complain.’

‘And get nowhere. Well you might get somewhere, Thomas.’ Because she felt they owned the world, people like him, with degrees, and good jobs.

‘No one takes notice of librarians … Journalists are a different matter. Your brother, for example. We should tell him.’

Shirley took a deep draft of her drink. The fire ran straight to her throat, her cheeks. ‘Darren’ll soon be on his way back to New York, as soon as he’s seen his trendy friends. He doesn’t care about us in England. He writes his column, but he couldn’t give a toss. He said that to me once, twenty years ago, when those American bombs were coming to England. Cruise missiles, weren’t they. And Darren said, “I write pieces saying it’s an outrage, but the truth is, no one in America cares. The British Isles are just so small. No one would care if they sank into the sea.” Darren wouldn’t care if we were blown to buggery.’ Shirley swore rarely, but now she enjoyed it.

Thomas was watching her with odd intensity. ‘We could both have been wiped out, just now. In one split second. Who would have cared? I wouldn’t even get an obituary.’

Shirley thought, we’re living on a different planet. Thomas wants his life to be written about. Whereas mine is so little. So ordinary.

And yet she liked him, all the same. He had a wistfulness she related to. As if the surface had been chipped away. She tried to remember about his marriage. The wife had red hair. Almost certainly left him.

They were sitting on his sofa, quite close together. ‘But you’re bleeding,’ Thomas suddenly said. ‘Look.’ And he put his hand on the side of her knee, and she saw there was a big hole in her tights and a black patch of skin traced with lines of red. His hand was large and white against the blackness. She wasn’t used to large white hands. His finger was tracing the edge of the nylon, the delicate edge where clothed became naked.

‘You’re still trembling,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring a bowl. We ought to wash it.’ His face was absolutely fixed on hers, stricken, tender, a kind of rawness as if they had been through fire together, and it seemed quite natural, inevitable for her to reach out and touch his cheek, his big man’s cheek, which was warm and rough — Elroy shaved twice a day, religiously. All her nerve ends felt near the surface.

And after all, he had saved her life, God had sent him to save her life, she could never have moved, it came so quickly — it was Thomas who pushed her out of the way.

What happened next seemed equally natural, he took her hand that was stroking his cheek and pressed it to his mouth, kissed it, sucked it. Why did she think of a child feeding? He was older than her, but he needed comfort, they all needed comfort, hungry men. Men without sex. She could always tell. She felt his hunger; it excited her. And yet he was also comforting her, and she needed comfort, she was sore, she was bleeding, she had faced death two times that day. Now he was stroking her knee again, in a kind of wondering, hypnotized way.

He seemed like all men and all boys to Shirley. He was like the boys she had grown up with, his whiteness, the softness of his hair, but too big and too gentle to be her father, thank God she had never had men like her father, and she took him in her arms, he took her in his arms, they were holding each other and kissing, suddenly, trying to suck out each other’s centres, trying to eat each other like fruit.

Taking their clothes off felt easy and simple, as if they had always been naked together.

They were very quick, as if it was essential, as if they had to steal what they wanted before death came and took it away, as if they were teenagers hiding from their parents instead of the middle-aged people they were. But they weren’t shy, and they weren’t guilty, though Thomas had a look of stunned delight as if he was half-afraid of waking up.

But his erection was real, and solid, his beautiful, smooth, heavy penis, the weight and swing of his big male body, she had always been moved by men’s nakedness, by the way their passion shows so clearly, their huge hunger, their desire to come in.

And she wanted him. She needed him. She could hardly wait to pull him inside her, and they lay on the sofa, side by side, one of her legs between his two, and he pushed inside with a groan of pleasure, she held his hair, it was thick in her hands, she stroked the naked back of his neck, she moved her hips and they moved together and his face had an expression of bliss as if everything in the world was right. One of his hands was holding her breast, pulling gently on the nipple. ‘Beautiful breasts,’ he whispered to her, ‘Your beautiful breasts, you’re so lovely, Shirley, why didn’t we do this years ago?’ She put her finger upon his lips and soon they were moving in rhythm together, their breath getting faster, they were panting, moaning, she wanted him, oh she wanted him, she wanted this, it was racing through her, nothing could stop it, she came, she came — she came with a great deep moan of pleasure that seemed to go on and on around him, and then he changed rhythm and began to groan and came with a shuddering, shouting roar and then stopped moving, deep inside her.

They were exhausted. They lay as one.

Shirley realized she had been asleep, for Thomas was staring down at her, leaning on one elbow, his face anxious. ‘Shirley,’ he said. ‘Are you all right? My God, Shirley. I don’t know what happened … I didn’t even think about contraception.’

She couldn’t help smiling at his rueful face. ‘Well you don’t have to blaspheme about it.’ She was half-joking, but he looked depressed.