Maggie Gee - The White Family

A large white van hove in through the gates. What was it doing? Cars were banned from the Park. A stranger waved peremptorily from the window. ‘Hoy there, you. Closing time.’ ‘All right,’ said Thomas, slightly affronted. ‘I didn’t hear the whistle blow.’ ‘There wasn’t a whistle,’ said the man, in a take-it-or-leave-it way. ‘So no one’s standing in for Alfred,’ said Thomas, partly to let the man know he was a regular, a man to be trusted, with powerful friends.

‘Alfred …? Oh yes,’ the man muttered. ‘No.’

‘What if he can’t come back for a bit?’

‘What if he never comes back at all?’ Thomas couldn’t see the man’s face in the gathering twilight, but his voice was almost mocking. ‘Costs a lot of money, a full-time Park Keeper.’

Thomas said nothing. He felt cold dread.

‘Best get on home,’ the man shouted, officious, and the ugly van snouted off across the Park.

Thomas walked towards the gate. That was quick, he thought. It doesn’t take long for things to disappear. I’ll ring the council tomorrow and find out what’s going on, I’ll write a letter to the local paper –

Or I’ll be too busy, and do nothing at all.

Besides, I’m over-reacting. Nothing will happen. Alfred’s too popular around here.

The path snaked past the public toilets, with their faded sign, The Premises Are Under Police Surveillance. Bollocks they are, he thought. The only surveillance they got was from Alfred. As he passed, he caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, and turned. A man in a leather jacket was standing in the shadows. Then he spotted another, with a brutal crewcut. The van had driven straight by without seeing them.

Up to no good, said a voice in his head. I think that those two were up to no good.

Nonsense, he thought, you’re turning into your mother. That loo is probably used for cottaging. Nothing wrong with cottaging.

But Alfred would know. And know what to do. As he knew where the meths drinkers hid their bottles, behind which bushes in which flower-beds, so they could climb back in after closing time …

Thomas glanced at the big notice-board as he left the Park: ‘Open From 8 a.m. Till Dusk’.

He remembered vanished evenings in the Park in summer, when he’d been engaged to Jeanie, so long ago. There were a few perfect weeks of late, scented light, dizzy with roses and tobacco-flowers. Alfred would be there every single night, doing his rounds, checking the bushes, making sure the lovers didn’t get out of hand and offend the old ladies walking their dachshunds.

He can never have got home till nearly eleven. And in summer, the Park gate opens at six. He’s spent nine-tenths of his life in here.

Of course he will have to retire one day. He must be past retirement age. But I want someone to hold the fort. Alfred’s a father figure for me.

(I wonder if he knows I once kissed his daughter? Gorgeous Shirley. Darren’s sister.

Was it over ten years since Thomas had seen her?)

‘Mum —’ said the voice. Quieter than usual. Chastened by the hospital.

And Shirley was there, big, florid, beautifully dressed, all whites and vanillas and an armful of lilies and a smart pale handbag and a goldy creamy enormous box of chocolates, and she smelled of something foreign, delicious.

‘Don’t get up. Is Dad all right?’

‘Yes. I’ll wake him —’

‘Don’t, if he’s sleeping.’

‘You smell good enough to eat.’

‘I’m sorry about the lilies. Not Dad , really, are they? Selfridges.’

‘Did you come all the way from Oxford Street?’

‘Yes. I was shopping.’ Shirley was always shopping. May thought, she should have a degree in shopping. ‘They hadn’t got anything more colourful. Pale colours are supposed to be smart.’

She had a purring voice. A bit like mine, thought May, only — richer. Sort of glossier. ‘I like your flowers, dear,’ she told her daughter, and she did, as well; so ivory-elegant. ‘I love your flowers.’ Because she wanted to be sure Shirley didn’t confuse her thoughts with Alfred’s. May had a brain, not that Alfred didn’t, but he was sometimes too set in his ways to use it.

And Alfred hasn’t behaved right to her .

‘You look lovely, Shirley.’ May touched her daughter’s wrist where a little ribbon of bare skin showed, between the camel coat and her gold watch-bracelet. Plump and cool and very soft. ‘You’re a good girl. You always make an effort.’ They stayed like that for a moment, close.

Then May saw Elroy, hovering, back in the shadows near the entrance of the ward.

‘You haven’t brought Elroy here!’ She was half on her feet, staring accusingly at her daughter. ‘Why has he come? Why did you bring him —?’

But Shirley’s face was uncomprehending, staring at May as if she was crazy, and briefly May wanted to kill her daughter. Did she have to upset him now when he was dying? ( dying — my God, what was she thinking of? Why did that word flash up and stab her? Of course he wasn’t dying, she was going mad.)

And she was going mad. Shirley’s face said it. May looked again at the tall figure in the shadows in the small pool of darkness where the ward began, and as she looked, Elroy’s face dissolved into another’s, someone heavier, sadder, older than Elroy, and he walked down the ward to another bed where a young black woman lay and stared into space beside that flaring crown of red flowers.

‘It isn’t Elroy,’ Shirley snapped.

‘I’m sorry, love, I was just thinking of your father —’

‘You don’t half put your foot in it.’

May pleaded mutely to be forgiven. Shirley was so big, so fleshy, so … peachy. She had been lucky; love, money … Despite the awful things that have happened, she looks like a cat that’s had all the cream. Can’t she forgive me for being old and stupid?

Shirley was tugging off her beautiful coat, pale camel wool with a big shawl collar. She folded it, lining outermost, and tucked it at May’s feet, in the lee of the bed. She was a good girl still; clean, careful.

Shirley sank down gingerly on Alfred’s bed. She was heavier than May. (Should she tell Shirley not to sit on the bed? She didn’t want to annoy her further.) The metal frame creaked, and the two women stared at Alfred anxiously.

‘Is he going to wake up?’

‘Well I hope so. I’ve got all kinds of forms and doings for him to sort out.’

‘Why are we whispering then?’ asked Shirley.

‘I don’t know,’ said May. (They had always whispered, when the men were around. Trying not to disturb them. Not to upset them. Not to let them know what they were getting up to. But now they didn’t have to whisper any more. It was too late for whispering. He hadn’t time to sleep.)

‘Alfred,’ May whispered, then made an effort. ‘Alfred,’ louder. ‘Alfred, wake up.’

Sleeping like that, he was unprotected, naked as a baby despite his blue pyjamas, the fragile bony bridge of his nose, so near the skin, such taut red skin, the strands of white hair lying neatly as always like hanks of bleached rope across his naked crown.

She loved him completely for making an effort. Alfred would never let her down. He was probably ready hours ago, hair combed, clean pyjamas, shipshape bedclothes …

‘Your Dad is wonderful,’ she said to her daughter, as Alfred stirred, and coughed. Her heart swelled with love; Alfred, alive. Still there for them. Husband, father.

‘Hmm,’ said Shirley, half-rising, then sitting again, nervous, as ever, of being in the wrong, in the wrong place (which she was, of course, and her father would certainly let her know it) with the wrong clothes and the wrong boyfriend.