The White Family

by Maggie Gee

  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?)

  9 • May

  ‘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.

  ‘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.’

  ‘It’s your circulation,’ said May. ‘That’s nothing new. That was always bad.’ She didn’t want some alarming new game.

  ‘Well it is new,’ he said, staring hard at her, one huge white eyebrow twitching upwards like the feathers of the ostrich in the zoo where they’d gone with the two older ones, thirty years ago. ‘Being found out cold on my back is new.’

  ‘So are they going to give you drugs, or what?’

  May frowned at her daughter, who didn’t notice. (Why did she keep on bothering her father? If he wanted to tell them,
he would tell them. If he knew, that is, if the doctors had told him, and she hoped they wouldn’t tell him things to frighten him. It was she who should know. May would ask the doctors.)

  ‘I’m rattling with pills already,’ said Alfred.

  ‘Stop questioning your father,’ said May.

  ‘I don’t mind people taking an interest. They’re doing a test on my brain,’ he said, once more unable to suppress a note of pride. Medicine had ignored him for seventy-odd years; now important doctors were testing his brain.

  ‘Must have been a stroke then,’ said Shirley, satisfied. ‘I mean, I’m afraid it must have been a stroke,’ catching her mother’s indignant glare. ‘But lots of people get better from strokes.’

  ‘How do you know so much about medicine all of a sudden?’ May asked her.

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. And then, foolishly ‘Well Elroy does work in a hospital, so I suppose I have picked up a bit from him –’

  ‘You’ve picked it up from bloody Elroy, have you?’ her father demanded, stung into life, cranking up his head several inches from the pillow. ‘This is medicine according to Elroy, is it? Well thank you very much, I want English medicine, English medicine from English doctors.’

  ‘Elroy is English,’ said Shirley. ‘Well – British. Elroy is as British as me or you.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Alfred, now alarmingly red, blue eyes alight, clawing at the bedclothes. ‘He’s about as British as bananas, is Elroy.’

  Shirley was trying very hard to keep calm. ‘He is British, but I’m not going to argue. Thing is, you should know what’s the matter with you. You have a right. All patients do.’

  ‘He’s not bloody British!’ Veins bulged in his neck and his head poked forward like a tortoise.