Maggie Gee - The White Family

‘They haven’t caught anyone?’

‘Don’t know. But the way they dress, all hoods and woolly hats, their own mothers couldn’t tell them apart.’

Naturally George assumed the killer was black. I didn’t have the energy to take it up — In any case, he was probably right.)

Melissa’s request, when it came, was easy. Would I come into school and talk to the children? Her own class and the ill woman’s. She wants me to talk about the history of writing. ‘I know you could make it exciting for them. Some of them just don’t see the point. They’d love to meet a real writer.’

A real writer . Yes, I am! Not a journalist like Darren. Not an advertising hack. Not just a librarian. I actually write books .

They’ve been working on Egypt. Ancient Egypt. She’s told them I’m like an Egyptian scribe –

But I mustn’t look out of date to these children. Don’t want them to be bored before I even start.

Jeans? Orange shirt? Leather jacket?

But five minutes later Thomas caught a glimpse of himself in the harshly-lit bedroom mirror. He tried a smile. It wasn’t any better. The orange shirt-collar made his teeth look gruesome. They were usually fairly white, he thought. (But Shirley hadn’t complained, had she? When he smiled again, he looked all right.)

He poured milk on his cereal, for calcium, and drowned his tea with more of the same. As he ate, he flicked through the History of Egypt he’d hastily picked off the library shelves.

I’ll tell them, writers are time-travellers. Sending messages from six thousand years ago –

There was a picture there of Thoth, god of writers. He looked physical, and active, with strong legs and body below the profile of a curious bird — physical, yes. Thomas wanted to be physical. If he did more fucking, would he write better books?

Ring Ring!

He jumped, and ran to the door.

It was Melissa, letting in a gust of fresh air.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling, laughing. ‘Are you ready to go?’

‘One moment,’ he said, and ran off to clean his teeth.

He returned to see, with a jolt of horror, that she’d picked up a page of Postmodernism . She waved it at him cheerfully.

‘I got all excited for a moment — thought it must be your new book. But it’s someone else’s, isn’t it?’ She read out a bit before he could stop her. ‘This is so phony, it’s about The Simpsons. “Hyper-irony, and the meaning of life … Simpsonian hyper-ironism is not a mask for an underlying moral commitment.” Who wrote this stuff? He’s so up himself.’

‘Not me,’ Thomas gabbled, and thank God, it wasn’t. ‘It’s just, you know, a silly quote … you see, I got interested in, er … I got interested in the death of, uhn, meaning …’

But she had lost interest: she was smiling at him. ‘You look terrific.’

‘Not too scruffy?’

‘Extremely smart.’

‘I thought I’d better not embarrass you.’

And they stood and smiled, a mile of smiles, till they were embarrassed, in a pleasant way, and Thomas shocked himself by thinking, I shall drop that manuscript in the bin.

The school was a pile of blackened red brick, four storeys high. ‘Hillesden Green Church of England School’ was carved in relief in bold Victorian lettering. The building was solid, rectangular, capacious, with a stalwart look, as if it would survive. (It would probably have to; no money to replace it.) The decorative panels over the front door looked familiar.

‘That’s rather attractive,’ he said, pointing.

‘Yes, isn’t it? Local builder. He did the hospital around the same time … and the Park Keeper’s lodge in the Park, as well. Late nineteenth century. They took pride in these things.’

‘Civic pride. Not any more.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s whatever’s cheapest.’

And inside, the school did look badly run down, full of makeshift materials that hadn’t aged well, yellowing plastic, buckled aluminium, paint in layers like peeling skin.

The children, however, looked in tip-top condition. They were leaving the playground in jostling lines. He was surprised by how many of the children were black, a mixture of Afro-Caribbean and Asian. Surely there were more black than white. ‘You have a lot of children from the ethnic minorities,’ he whispered to Melissa, who looked away. (What was wrong with ‘ethnic’? He thought it was OK. But then, the words were always changing. Was it ‘minorities’ that annoyed her?) ‘Such pretty girls,’ he tried again, and this time she nodded at him, and smiled. There were tiny Asian girls with thick waterfalls of hair, West Indian girls with heads like flowers, covered with bobbing stamens of beads, all crowding in through the door from the playground, bright-eyed, bright-skinned, arms around each other.

Though most of the teachers he saw were white. Nearly all women; it must be the pay … None of them, of course, was as lovely as Melissa. He followed her reverently into the hall where her own giggling troupe was assembled, waiting.

‘Thirty-three children,’ she said to Thomas. ‘That’s three too many. Even thirty is big. And the classes keep growing.’

‘Really?’ he said. He wasn’t listening. He was thinking to himself, if I’m a hit with her class, she’ll think I’m good with children — Women love men who are good with children.

Melissa was starting to sound heated. ‘Rich people send their kids to private schools, with ten or a dozen in a class, max —’

A new Melissa. Flushed, scornful.

‘That’s awful,’ he said. (She was beautiful.) ‘That colour really suits you,’ he whispered. They were walking upstairs, following the dancing heads of the children, who kept turning round, staring at him.

‘I’m trying to tell you something,’ she said.

‘Oh. Yes. Sorry,’ he gabbled.

‘Most of the teachers do their best. But everyone hates us. The government, the papers —’

He looked at her amazed, trotting beside him, sweet Melissa become fiery and forceful, green eyes staring straight ahead of her. ‘I don’t hate you,’ he said, truthfully.

‘Hillesden is a poor area. It matters what we do. Schools matter.’

‘I know you’re right,’ he mumbled, embarrassed. ‘Of course you’re right. Schools, hospitals’. He knew he had to do better than that. If she wanted indignant, he’d give her indignant –

But Melissa had to brush her anger aside, to walk into the classroom and take another lesson, to think of the children’s immediate needs. ‘Sorry to go on about it,’ she said suddenly, ‘It’s just that our school is so desperate for money,’ then, ‘Quietly, children,’ as she opened the door, and to Thomas, in a last private aside, ‘I get so frustrated .’

And then she blushed. And the children poured through, and pushed them apart.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, coming into her classroom, beautiful, beautiful, yes, and frustrated …

She’d made a palace from a room like a jail. A shoal of coloured fish swung from the roof, all shapes and sizes, catching the sunlight, and the walls were a mosaic of brilliant paintings that all but obliterated their dull yellow. Close up, he saw they were strips of hieroglyphics, long fish-shaped eyes, crouched figures, bird-heads, and a gallery of half-human gods. By the long narrow window, larger than the others, Thoth, god of writers, presided serenely, the head of an ibis on a muscular torso.

‘Settle down,’ she called. ‘Settle down, children. This is Mr Lovell. He’s a published writer —’

‘Is he famous?’ a girl asked.

She hesitated. ‘Yes.’

He began to demur; Melissa quelled him with a look.