Maggie Gee - The White Family

‘Why’s Dad so wonderful all of a sudden?’ she asked, and it came out louder than she meant.

May frowned at her. ‘Well he’s shaved,’ she said. ‘In his condition. All combed and shaved.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Shirley blankly. ‘Good for him.’

When they least expected it, one of his eyes opened, surprising as the eye of a waking elephant, liquid and glistening in its helmet of leather, large, war-like, shot with blood.

‘Not a rest-camp,’ he said, indistinctly. ‘Not a bloomin’ rest-camp, is it?’

‘Well there’s a café if you want something,’ gasped May, who had been getting deafer for years, on her feet in an instant, taking his hand. ‘It’s not exactly a restaurant, but it will do. Shirley’ll go for you. She’s young.’

Now he was fully awake, stretching up, irascible, grasping the aluminium frame of the bed, finding he couldn’t do it squarely and turning away from May and Shirley to pull himself up from the right-hand side, clutching the metal with stiff red knuckles that whitened with the effort, panting, straining, and surely his hands were too thin, like claws, his giant beak like a wounded eagle –

He clasps the crag with crooked hands

Close to the sun in lonely lands …

‘I said, it’s not a rest-camp here,’ he repeated, looking accusingly at the two women. ‘My daughter doesn’t seem to know that.’

‘She’s come all the way from the West End,’ May rushed in, nervous, protective. ‘She’s brought you some chocolates from Selfridges.’

‘Well,’ he said, more forgivingly. ‘All the same, she’s got to get off the bed. These beds are meant for ill people.’

‘She’s come all this way,’ May repeated, stubbornly. ‘It’s a long way. She’s a good girl.’

His pale blue eyes, watery, sharp, the eyeballs caught in a net of red veins, veered briefly across to the neighbouring bed before he said, as if nothing had happened, ‘Aren’t you going to kiss your old father, then?’

Perhaps he sensed heads turning towards her from other, lonelier beds alongside, drawn to the full-blown, sheeny glamour of the daughter who was mysteriously, definitely his — a delicate version of his eyes, his mouth — though none of the rest of the family was like her. She bent towards him; waves of perfume.

She’s squashing him, May thought, distressed. There was so much of her. Fleshy. Wealthy. They’ll overwhelm us, these giant children. Growing larger as we grow smaller.

I haven’t had a chance to kiss him properly myself. Once we were lovers. He was my love …

But he had disappeared under the billows of their daughter.

O love, we two shall go no longer

To lands of summer across the sea.

Once we were young and took the ferry to France and we stood on the sunny deck and held hands and he told me, ‘Don’t be frightened, silly, the Channel ferry will never go down,’ and I said, ‘I love you no matter what’ but I never knew if he had heard me, the wind blew everything away –

May clutched the thin shoulder of her book for comfort.

Can Shirley be ours? Did she come from us? Why is she here, so tall, so pretty, smelling of countries where we’ve never been, flowers we couldn’t even imagine, men her father can’t stand the sight of — He must be drowning in her smell. How do they bear it, today’s young men? I suppose I’ve always been a modest woman.

Then it was over. ‘Good girl,’ he grunted. ‘Now pop down there and ask the nurses for a chair.’ And off she sailed; surging, gleaming, a glossy galleon down a narrow channel. May saw he was happy to be released. He smiled a sheepish smile at her.

Left alone, they were suddenly intimate, restored to the state where they spent most of their lives.

‘Has she put on weight?’ asked Alfred, eyes darting after her, blue, suspicious, and he stretched out his hand to hold May’s plump white one, tucking them together on the hard brown blanket.

‘Pity they don’t have eiderdowns or anything,’ May said, touching the bare fibres doubtfully.

‘I shan’t be here long enough to miss that,’ said Alfred. ‘Are the peonies out yet? They make a good show.’

‘Too early,’ said May. ‘And it’s been chilly. You’re well off in here. Cosy in here.’

She was thinking, his hand is thinner than mine. It’s bigger than mine, of course it is, he’s always been half a head taller than me, but it somehow feels smaller. Colder.

A moment of fear as their eyes met. They hadn’t practised being here. Then he smiled at her, her cheery Alfred. ‘I’ll be out in time for Easter, May. They’ll fix me up so I’m as good as new.’ But his voice was gruff, a little uncertain, and her answering smile was uncertain too. In this hospital ward they were helpless strangers –

But not to each other. She clung to his hand, feeling its pulse, which was fast but steady, the comforting knot of flesh and blood.

‘I’ve got forms for you to sign,’ she said, shyly. ‘So I can get money from the bank.’

‘Oh yes?’ he said, at once suspicious. ‘ I always get the money, May.’

‘But you’re in here.’

‘I’ll be out in a day or two. Still if you can’t wait …’ And he took the forms, hardly read them, signed.

She felt a stab of guilt. Was she giving up on him, acting as if he was nearly dead? Wasn’t it as good as killing him? And she loved him so.

Alfred, Alfred .

‘Can you believe she’s our daughter?’ May whispered, watching Shirley return with the extra chair. She had walked two paces, in her honey-coloured wool, a woman large enough to make the chair look small, her movements graceful, indolent, when a middle-aged man in a group around a bed broke away from his family and touched her arm, ‘May I help you?’, and as Shirley’s face flashed into a charming smile he took the chair from her with a flourish, preparing her way like a courtier. ‘She’s got … an air, hasn’t she? She’s … somebody.’

‘Queen of Sheba,’ Alfred hissed at the last moment, but he winked as he said it, and May knew he was happy.

‘Now we’re all right,’ said Shirley. ‘Do you want to have a look at your chocolates, Dad?’

‘I’d better get a vase for those lilies,’ said May, stirring.

‘The nurses’ll do that,’ said Alfred, sharply. ‘Don’t you move. That’s what they’re paid for.’

This was plainly untrue, but May realized that Alfred didn’t want to be left alone with his daughter.

‘I’ll go,’ said Shirley, getting up again.

‘Just everyone sit still for a moment,’ he snapped. ‘You’ve only just come in, and you can’t wait to leave.’

They sat in silence, suddenly uneasy, the bundle of lilies in their gilt-stamped paper becoming bigger, less comfortable, louder, rustling every time Shirley breathed, and May thought suddenly of arum lilies, flowers for a wreath, flowers for a funeral.

She only just got here, and she can’t wait to leave. Life’s like that, all rush, and then over .

‘Isn’t anyone going to ask how I am?’ he demanded, grimacing his lips over his teeth where they sometimes slipped and made him look foolish.

‘You were asleep. She did ask me,’ said May, humbly, don’t be cross with me .

‘How are you, Dad?’ asked Shirley, brightly.

‘Can’t complain. I don’t really think there’s much wrong with me.’

‘Was it a heart attack?’ Shirley pressed, and May wanted to shush her, for it wasn’t right to talk of such things in loud voices.

‘They keep calling it an event ,’ he said, with a certain amount of satisfaction.

‘I think that’s a stroke,’ said Shirley.

‘It was an event ,’ he said, displeased. ‘They think I might have another one.’