Maggie Gee - The White Family

I remembered the graveyard. It’s fucking enormous. No one would find me, if I hid in there.

I’d never go in there, not normally. I must have been well pissed to do it. I’ve always had a nasty feeling about dead people, as if they might come back to get me. Like wriggling up from their graves, half-rotten. Like in an old movie, only real –

(Maybe I’ll be frightened of my dad forever. Even when he’s dead, I’ll still be frightened — Not frightened , of course. He’s a great dad. It said it on the card Mum gave him on Father’s Day; Thank you for being a Great Dad . I don’t think any of us kids remembered. I dunno why not, there were cards in the shop. I don’t mean scared , but sort of — in his shadow. As if he might give me a piece of his mind. As if he might give me a slap on the head –

I couldn’t wait to get out of that Park.)

It was damp and brambly and chilly, in the graveyard. A cat shot out and half-scared me to death. Fat black moggy, screeching and yowling as if I’d stuck a fag up its arse.

I will do, one day, ’cos it gave me a fright.

The sirens stopped dead. They had parked, somewhere. I heard them, shouting, over the hill, and a short-wave radio, blaring and crackling.

There was a low flat grave between two other ones as big as houses, Victorian jobs. This one was modern, it felt like marble, ice-cold, sort of shiny, slippery. If I lay right along it on my belly and poked my head a bit to the left I got a not-bad-view of the Park. The voices went on, but no one came. After a bit, my neck got tired. I rested it on my arms for a moment …

Next thing I knew, it was already light. The birds were singing, it was deafening, like thousands of them on different notes, maybe millions of them in a fucking great choir, all singing down on me, endlessly, they were hiding in the trees, their little bird eyes, little glass eyes all staring and flickering, sharp little heads peeking out of the leaves, and the leaves were sharp too, pricking and shaking, so many points even I could never count them, and I was all on my own, in pain.

I was practically frozen to the fucking gravestone. My head felt as if it had been split with an axe. Whenever I moved, the pain rolled back. My eyes were golfballs, sticking out of their sockets. My tongue had glued itself to my mouth. Sort of furry glue. Gasping. Desperate.

I didn’t want to live. I felt like death.

I got up like a fucking geriatric, sort of unbending myself bit by bit.

And I was cold, but the morning was warm. The sun was, like, blinding. The grass was shiny. The Park looked perfect, as if Dad had tidied it.

Dad’s got cancer, was my first real thought.

Dad’s got cancer. Dad’s going to die.

And then I remembered about my job.

Then I remembered the football match.

Then I remembered how I got the brush-off from Darren and Shirley at the hospital.

Then I remembered the barney in the pub.

Then I remembered the fight in the Park.

It was like bombs bursting, one by one, one after another, inside my head. I was twitching and wincing. Every time I winced, the pain in my head got twice as bad. As if my brain was connected to my feelings. Which can’t be true. Or maybe it is.

I wanted to cry. Then I didn’t any more. I wasn’t a wimp. I wasn’t weak.

I looked across the Park. It was green and sort of — yes. Green as a table-tennis table. Greener. More like a snooker table. Blank and shining in the sunlight.

My dad’s whole life had been spent in that Park …The hairs on my arms all stood on end. (Mind you, I was chilly, but that wasn’t the reason.)

It was beautiful, yes, that was the word. It was beautiful, and it belonged to us. Like the pubs, and the shops, and the streets, and the graveyard. Our people built them, and — fought the war for them. The sun was so bright, I could hardly bear to look at it. Blurry and flashing, my eyes were watering –

If so it was fucking tears of courage. Tears of fucking courage, you snotty bastards, all of you bastards, laughing at me, Shirley and Darren and Mum and the teachers. I stood there, making a fucking vow (but I wanted to sit down, I needed my breakfast, I had to get Mum to wash my clothes, there was a long yellow tongue of sick down my jacket) –

I stood there and made a fucking vow.

No more running. No more retreats.

Stand and fight, now. Stand and die.

Crouched on top of the wall between the graveyard and the Park, Dirk looked at his watch. It was nine fifteen. Nine fifteen on Sunday morning. The sun was out; it felt warm as summer. The grass was wet, as if the world had been washed. It made him feel dirtier. Thirstier.

Normally Dad would have been doing his rounds.

Dirk wished he could see him. Walking at the double across the hill, in his flat cap, waving. Or waving at someone who was doing something wrong. He was fearless, Dad. He would tackle anybody. If Dad was there, everything would be all right.

Everything might have been all right.

But Dad wasn’t there, and Dirk had a sudden horrible feeling he would never come back.

And at the very same moment he realized that he was perched on the wall like a thief or a mugger, and if Dad was there he would have blown his whistle, so Dirk dropped to the ground, the soft green ground, the English ground of Albion Park.

This morning, no one would have opened up.

And then he saw a little figure in the distance, a small dark figure in the very far distance, at the foot of the hill, walking between the trees. Dirk turned on his heel and began to make off towards Leeson Road, guiltily, hurriedly.

And then he thought, no, I’ve done nothing wrong. I made a vow not to run away. It was probably just a temporary Park Keeper, and Dirk could have a chat with him about his father. Dirk walked towards him, straightening his jacket and scratching at the long scab of sick as he went.

No, it definitely wasn’t a policeman.

Was it one of the animals they’d chased last night? They come here and try and walk on our faces. And that Paki, yesterday, laughing at me —

How he hated them. How he hated himself. His filthy clothes, his disgusting mouth, tasting of sick and beer and decay.

I’ll die if I have to go down the Job Shop . Queueing with all the losers and coloureds.

They took my job. They took my future.

‘Fuck you, fuck you,’ he said under his breath, then louder, angrier, ‘Fuck you all!’, aiming a sudden kick at a tree, kicking the tree and hurting his foot.

When he looked up again, the man wasn’t there, and then he was there, but at a different angle, walking away from Dirk, past the playground, and then Dirk was sure that he wasn’t white. Fuck you, fuck you . His heart began to beat. He stopped behind a tree and watched for a moment.

Dirk saw that the man was looking at him. He had stopped as well, and was looking at Dirk. It was too far away to see his expression. In the bright sun, his face looked blank and curiously pale, but he wasn’t white, he couldn’t be white, he was certainly a nigger or else a Paki. Dirk stared at him and saw Dinesh Patel, he saw his tormentor, he burned, he swelled, he shook with excitement, trembled with anger.

Fuck you, fuck you. I’ll fuck you for this .

He followed the man between the trees. He kept on staring;

Dirk stared back. Dirk saw he was making for the toilets.

I’ll kill him, he thought. He was almost calm. I’ll use my knife. My bayonet. Dad’s knife, yes. The thing he gave me. The thing I took, because I’m his son. I’ll stick it in him. Into the heart. I’ll get rid of them all. I’ll clean the Park. I’ll show them they can’t come barging in here, taking over everything, going where they feel like. Looking at me as if I was dirt –