Maggie Gee - The White Family

‘Are you religious? — I suppose you are. Sorry, sorry. Sorry .’

‘Look I didn’t think about it, either.’ She still felt sleepy. She didn’t want to talk. It was curiously peaceful, lying there, in this unfamiliar place, with his face gazing down.

‘It’s moon madness,’ she said to him, running her finger along his collar-bone. To her he looked pale, compared to Elroy, but actually he was golden, olive, she remembered they called him dago at school, because he was part Italian (or Spanish).

So good to be close to another person. We’re close to so few people, in the course of a life … She held the moment in her hands. She wanted him to be happy too. ‘Don’t worry about the contraception angle. I was trying to get pregnant for over six years.’

‘Did I pressure you?’ he asked. ‘I probably did. I just — wanted you, Shirley. I mean, I don’t go round doing things like that.’

She laughed out loud. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. It’s the woman who’s supposed to say things like that. Just in case you don’t respect me.’

‘But I do respect you,’ he said at once, earnestly, how young he looked with his curls all crooked, a kind of soft halo round that big face, so different from Elroy’s lean, muscular head, which was beautiful as a panther was. Elroy would kill her — but he’d never know.

‘Look it was very nice. It was lovely.’ She nuzzled his arm and smiled at him. She wanted to lie a while naked together in the warmth of this unfamiliar room, this holiday from the rest of life. The time would be short, but that made it sweeter.

But Thomas ploughed on doggedly. ‘I’m not having sex with anyone else.’

Shirley suddenly thought things were going wrong. Was he promising her fidelity? ‘But you know I’m virtually married, don’t you? I mentioned Elroy. I love him, actually —’

And that made her realize she did love Elroy. She had always held back, could never say it, because it was hard to love anyone but Kojo. But as she spoke she was perfectly sure.

‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant, I won’t have infected you. But there is someone — there’s a girl I like —’

And they smiled at each other: conspirators. Two people who had crossed the line. And no one knew. No one knew .

Then he went on. ‘I haven’t slept with anyone for some time. You probably noticed. That’s why I was so quick — You could say I was celibate, in fact.’

‘Well that’s a waste,’ she told him. ‘You were very nice. Very nice indeed.’

‘And so were you. It was … delicious.’

He sounded like a boy who had eaten the tuck shop. ‘But you didn’t eat me,’ she said, to tease him, getting up off the sofa, stretching, yawning.

‘May I kiss your breasts?’ They had moved apart; he already had to ask her permission. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Be my guest, Thomas.’

He kissed her breasts, tenderly, slowly, first one then the other, reverently, and then moved down and kissed her belly, nuzzling over the globe of her belly, round and white, her moon-belly. Then ‘Thank you, Shirley,’ he said. ‘You’re really beautiful. Thank you.’

She looked at her glass. All the ice-cubes had melted. The pale gold liquid winked in the light. ‘What’s the time?’ she asked. ‘You took my watch off.’

It was nearly eleven. She was suddenly business-like. ‘Quick, get dressed and take me home. I’ve no idea when Elroy’s back.’

And everything became ordinary; a married couple getting dressed in a hurry. She never did finish that glass of whisky.

Outside the house where Elroy might be waiting, she turned and kissed him, swift, light. ‘Thank you for the lift, Thomas. Oh, and thank you, you know, for saving my life. And Mum’s the word.’

‘Yes … We’ll never know where those police cars were going.’

Back inside, she hugged herself.

And twelve hours later she was still doing it, hugging her body and its happy secret, the secret that helped her come that night when she woke from sleep with Elroy inside her, home from work, tense, exhausted, desperate to lose himself in her body. She came without him touching her, rose to his penis like a fish to the rod, swimming up, up through the waters of the night where she had been dreaming of sex with Thomas. And deep inside, his sperm joined Thomas’s.

All that life, deep deep inside her. Shirley loved life. If it could only live.

He drove back home through a city of props. The houses were scenery, shadowy, shallow. White pools of street-light waited for the actors.

Shirley and he had made love in a dream; it had nothing to do with before or after. He laughed aloud. Nothing made sense. Something so delicious, so undeserved.

She didn’t make me suffer, or beg, or wait. She didn’t even make me use a condom.

Jeanie always made him use a condom, though later he discovered she was on the pill. On the pill because she was unfaithful, and her lover was too selfish to use condoms.

God knows what I’d do if Shirley did get pregnant.

Maybe nothing. Just — not worry.

Maybe human beings are laughable, sitting in our offices, planning and worrying.

He realized he had parked too near the corner for safety. What the hell, he thought, I’m invulnerable, nothing is going to hurt me tonight. It was quarter to eleven; the moon still hung, white and expansive, overhead, trailing a halo of pearly cloud which fell away, as he looked, like a twist of pale scarf, leaving the planet calm and radiant.

Slipping his key into the outside Yale, he remembered, with a jolt, the yob and Melissa, slouched against the door, interrupted in a kiss.

Perhaps that will make her jealous, he thought. Then, don’t be ridiculous, I was the jealous one.

The yob had looked — rough. Young and brutish. What things could he be doing to the lovely Melissa?

And her husky young voice, floating after him. ‘Oh by the way, I’ve started your book —’ Did she say she liked it, or had he misheard? Such a sensitive girl, such a sensitive woman. And she hadn’t looked happy (did the yob mistreat her? Thomas would kill him if Melissa asked.)

Bounding upstairs feeling pleasantly superior, Thomas remembered he’d just fucked another woman and felt momentarily sheepish, because of course the one he wanted was Melissa, Melissa with her respect for his book and imminent appreciation of his greatness, Melissa of the sexy voice and large green eyes and heart-shaped face, Melissa with her wispy blond hair softening the collar of her leather jacket, Melissa the jogger, rosy on the pavement.

Was she upstairs now? Her hot little feet. He had always imagined her, mouse-feet, ballet-feet, skipping so lightly upon his ceiling. She appealed to his brain, his imagination.

But his body was drumming to a different beat.

His body had flared one nostril at the wind and made towards Shirley like a hunting dog, sniffing, eager, drooling with hunger.

When he was writing his book he completely forgot he had fangs and powerful hind-quarters. But when he was with Shirley, he was a dog. Panting with doggy happiness.

Thomas bounced around his living-room. It was here that he had her, here in this room … The pile of books on his desk had got knocked; half of them were splayed across his carpet. He started to pick them up, and close them. ‘The postmodern utterance of “I love” was masked by citationality …’

Suddenly it seemed like portentous nonsense. I love, thought Thomas, I love. I love .

Everyone heard. The whole ward heard.

(They had always been such a close family. And Darren was his pride and joy.)