The White Family

by Maggie Gee

  Elroy was bright, but not quick with words. He sat there pretending he didn’t mind. ‘Never mind Shirley. Just leave it.’

  ‘Oh dear, Elroy. Have I put my foot in it?’ Mum blushed red; she was quite crestfallen.

  ‘Yes,’ Shirley said. ‘You have. Well done.’

  He drove her to the underground, and when he came back he said no more about it, but the next Sunday – two Sundays ago – the day before Dad had his event – they got up as usual to go to church, and it was his church’s turn, they were going to Paddington Temple, but Elroy suddenly said, as he put on his tie, ‘We better go each to our own.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We don’t have to worship together.’

  ‘I know we don’t. But you like us to.’

  ‘Your mother thought our church was a joke.’

  ‘Oh Mum. What does she know? It was just the booklet. She’s always been like that. She laughs at things.’

  ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’

  ‘Oh lay off, Elroy. My mother is my mother – God would understand her.’

  ‘I don’t want no one to mock my faith.’ It was said with a wealth of bitterness, it was not about her, or Mum, or now, it was about all the times that Elroy had been mocked, because he was black, or because they were poor.

  ‘Elroy, I’d never laugh at your faith.’

  ‘Your mother did.’

  ‘No – she was laughing at me. She thought it was my booklet.’

  ‘She was laughing at the Word of God.’

  ‘No, she was laughing at the English in that booklet.’

  ‘You people think you own the language –’

  Elroy sounded more of a Londoner than her, unless he was excited or half-asleep. He didn’t come on like a Caribbean, unlike his mother and his older sister, and he usually insisted that there wasn’t an issue, so when he said You people, Shirley listened.

  ‘Elroy, I’m not white people, I’m me. Of course I won’t come, if you don’t want me.’

  But afterwards he came back upset and said his mother had asked after her, and please would she go next week instead?

  So tomorrow we both go to both churches, which is a bit over the top, in one day.

  But I do love Jesus. Because He forgave me – He heard my voice, He heard my cry. The cords of death entangled me …

  I do love God, because He saved me. I do love God, who made all things good … Jesus, who did not let me fall.

  Shirley went gliding on down into the basement.

  Here they kept China, Crystal, and Lighting, a cave of wonders next to food. As she moved, rainbows shot and glinted. An elderly man was shielding his eyes, while his wife blinked, startled, at a chandelier. Odd, all this brilliance, deep underground …

  I tried to kill myself on the underground. Seventeen years ago. There was nothing left to live for. I had given up my daughter, given up college, given up hope of getting better. I remember wanting to sink so deep. Deeper and deeper and never come up.

  My father was surprisingly good at first. He said something I’ve never forgotten. When I hate him most, I remember it. Because God is love. God is love …

  I had the ironing-board in the front room. It was only a few days after I’d come home. I had felt too bad to get dressed in the morning, and I came down in my nightie, which was simply not done, we were never allowed to walk around in our night-clothes. I must have been slightly mad, at the time. And I went and put up the ironing-board, in the front room, not the kitchen, which again was very odd, the front room wasn’t for working in. And I got all the washing. There was a huge pile, and I’d brought some home from the hospital.

  (They brought her to me to say goodbye. She had too many clothes; I couldn’t feel her body. I crushed her to me. ‘Don’t wake her,’ said the nurse, eyes on the baby. Flushed face, tiny hands lost in mittens. In a few seconds, she took her away. I stood there, frozen, then I followed them, slip-slop after them in stupid slippers, too late to get to them before the swing-doors. The nurse was taking her away downstairs. Her thin cruel back hid the baby from view, but I glimpsed a small crown with a whorl of pale hair, and one small hand, opening, closing.)

  It must have been a Sunday. Dad had had his breakfast. I think Mum had gone to the allotment. He came in with his Sunday Express, sat in his armchair and began to read. As if he hadn’t seen me, but he must have done. I’d begun with the underwear – most of it was mine. All of it went into a neat flat pile. Then I did his shirts, which I’ve never found easy. Thank God Kojo never made a fuss about his shirts. Then I got to the sheets. They went on and on. It made my arms hurt, stretching them out, and the bits you’d already ironed got crumpled again. And I was upset because the stain was still there, the stain on the sheets where I had my show, the little rose of blood that meant she was coming. My mum must have bleached it, but it was still there. I wept and ironed, ironed and wept.

  I realized Dad was watching me. Down at his paper, then up at me, then just staring at me, kind of helplessly. And then he got up and came towards me, raised his arm and I flinched away, because I knew I was doing the wrong thing, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. ‘Shirley,’ he said, but he couldn’t speak. Then he took the iron from my hand. ‘You’ll tire yourself out. Your dad’ll have a go. Come on, give it here. You have a sit down.’

  ‘You don’t know how to do it,’ I protested, but I did sit down, I think I would have fainted. He sized up the job, slowly, methodically, re-folded the sheet, began to work. He didn’t have a clue, but he did the job. ‘I was a soldier, girl. We looked after our kit.’ He ironed in silence, frowning, smiling. I sat and watched him. It was like a dream. Just before he finished, he spoke to me. Staring at the iron running over the cotton, his eyes never lifting, his voice breaking. ‘You’re a good girl, Shirley. I know you are. You know what they say? It’s the good girls get pregnant. The good girls get pregnant. So don’t take on.’

  He did love me. And I must love him. Somewhere underneath all the anger and resentment, somewhere where all of us might have been different. A lost place, somewhere, I don’t know … I think Dad wished that he could have been different.

  He couldn’t keep up the kindness, of course. Quite soon he thought I ought to pull myself together. Actually I think he was afraid that if I drifted on like that I would end up in a loony bin. Nothing like this had ever happened in our family, or so they kept on telling me (of course it must have done. Shamed into silence.)

  They were very upset when I didn’t go back to college. Dad, of course, could only express it through anger. First a great roaring, when I made up my mind, then endless rumblings of discontent. ‘I hope you don’t think I can keep you … You had a great chance … You’re wasting your life … Pull yourself together! Haven’t you got any backbone? … Look at you, Shirley. You’ve let yourself go.’

  It was true, I had. Even my mother noticed, my mother who never noticed people’s clothes. ‘I could wash that cardigan,’ she offered. ‘You could wear something else.’ ‘Leave me alone.’ She arranged an appointment at the hairdresser, but I didn’t go, and she was annoyed, Mum who rarely got annoyed. ‘You’re a pretty girl, Shirley, it’s a shame.’

  My shame was deeper than anyone knew. I had let my daughter go deep underground, to a place from which there was no return.

  One day I got up before nine o’clock, which pleased my mother. ‘Shirley, dear. You must be feeling better.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, but I ate no breakfast. ‘I’m going for a walk.’ ‘Comb your hair.’ I stared at her. She lived far away, behind the glass, breathing different air.

  I walked down the road with my hair uncombed. I’m not sure I knew where I was going, but I remember walking quickly through the rain to the underground station, where I didn’t buy a ticket, because I didn’t know where I was going. I stood and shivered by the queue for tickets.

  And then I knew there was nowhere to go. I went down to the platform of the north-bound trains. Going down t
he steps I met Ruby Millington, just coming back from her morning job, I think she was a lollipop lady at the school. Mum pitied her because they didn’t have children. (Perhaps that’s why she and George got so huge.) ‘Shirley,’ she said, ‘are you all right?’ ‘Fine,’ I told her. ‘You’re soaked,’ she said. ‘You haven’t got a coat.’ ‘Oh, I like rain.’ Her mouth opened again, but I pressed on down through the unfamiliar bodies, people who didn’t know my name, people who wouldn’t call me back from the special place where I was going.

  I stood on the platform in a veil of rain. I looked into the tunnel. Which train would it be? Yellow eyes. They have yellow eyes. Thundering out of the underworld, thundering back down into the dark. It would be easy, a falling, an ending, gliding down where I could sink no further.

  There would be the moment of impact. I flinched. But then, I already knew about that, the moment when something very hard and heavy crashes into something breakable, and once it has happened it will happen again, it will never stop happening till the smash-up is final. I wanted it over, I wanted to go. I heard the echo of the train approaching, the first small tremors, then the gathering roar. I looked it in the eyes. I walked to the edge. My mind was perfectly blank and final. At last I should be released from myself, just a little step forward, it was coming, it was here –

  Then something lunged at me, from the side, grabbed me, winding me, knocked me over, I felt myself fall and was suddenly praying: please God, no, I’m not ready … Jesus, save me. Jesus, save –

  A big face was staring down at me, upside down, frantic, familiar. I was lying on the platform, bruised, shocked, with Ruby Millington hovering above me, saying, ‘Shirley, Shirley, are you all right? I didn’t mean to knock you over, but what were you doing? Shirley, love. You were right on the edge. I saw you, I saw you.’

  Everyone else had got on to the train, and the train was moving out of the station. If they saw the two of us, they thought I had fainted, but I think that no one but Ruby saw me. No one but Ruby would ever have seen me.

  I didn’t try to deny what she’d seen. I was too grateful, because as I fell I had finally found out I didn’t want to die.

  We sat on a bench and wept together. She kept her big fat arm around me. We had never been close, but she was Mum’s friend, and she had known me since I was a baby. She smelled of sweat. Of warmth, and kindness.

  ‘Oh Shirley,’ she said, ‘you’re much too young. I know you’ve been in trouble, dear. Your mother told me. It’s all right, I don’t judge you.’

  I had turned into a helpless baby again. ‘No one loves me. No one wants me. I’m no good to anyone. I’ve been driving Mum and Dad crazy …’

  She held my head against her shoulder. Then she said slowly, ‘I want you. We want you. George and I. Come and stay with us. Just till things get easier.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not? Of course you could. We’ve no kids of our own. We’d love to have you. Besides. I understand. I felt like you. A few years ago, I tried to do what you did, I took half a bottle of sleeping pills. It must have been fate, my meeting you. I saw it in your eyes, what you were going to do.’

  It wasn’t fate, though. Jesus saved me. He sees each sparrow as it falls.

  I sobbed like a baby, and Ruby listened, and took me home, and let me weep, and didn’t tell me to pull myself together. I think some part of her liked me weeping. Because of the tears locked up inside her, because I could cry for both of us, and then she could mother me, comfort me.

  Jesus saw me. Not a sparrow falls …

  I know that God sent Ruby to save me.

  23 • May

  Though her ankle was sore, and one palm was grazed, May found that her fall had left her in good spirits, so far as she could be, with Alfred ill. That nice young man had cheered her up, and Mr Varsani was concern itself, finding her a plaster behind his counter, and giving her new forms to fill in for the pension. Now the money, thank God, was safe in his till, though she’d kept twenty pounds, on a sudden impulse, to buy a few bits and pieces on the Rise. Very concerned about Alfred, he was. Though Alfred never had a good word for him.

  That’s what we’re here for, to help each other. I’m not a good Christian, but I do think that. And that’s what that young man was doing. I blame the light, for the misunderstanding. My eyes aren’t good, but I’m not prejudiced. I never have been. Unlike poor Alfred.

  What goes around, comes around, Darren likes to say. Maybe one day I shall return the favour. Do something good for one of his people. May found she had forgotten the young man’s name.

  She daydreamed, wandering on down the high street, further south than she ever went, about saving a pretty black toddler from a river … But she couldn’t swim, so it wasn’t very likely. She changed it, plunging in front of a car to snatch a black infant from the jaws of death. The mother wept and hung round her neck. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ May smiled to herself.

  The sun was coming out, flickering, steadying, coming in lances through the dull grey cloud, and as it came out, life came back. The red brick bloomed, and even the road had a sheen of bluey-purple petrol. A red-and-white, feathery, luxurious cat came delicately picking its way across it. May shook the water off her sleeves.

  She was looking for the other off-licence which used to exist near the end of the high street. She couldn’t face going back to the one with the bored young girl who smelled of whisky. She’d think that I was no better than she is.

  What she found, below the traffic lights, was a whole new world coming into existence. As upper Hillesden had been decaying, lower Hillesden was on its way up. She nearly walked into a chair on the pavement, and thought, confusedly, was it a junk-shop? But then she saw another one, two, three, and a half-caste youth setting up small tables, it was a café, for goodness sake, a pavement café like they had in Paris. She peered at the menu; it was all in French. She thought the young man was looking at her oddly, so she said, with a smile, trying to be friendly, ‘My daughter would like this. She likes French things,’ but he gawped at her as if she was crazy.

  Suddenly there were more people around. May took her time, enjoying it. Something new to tell Alfred about. Young people lived in lower Hillesden, girls with crewcuts and boys with dark glasses, their hair all the colours of the rainbow, carrying computers in little flat cases like the one Darren had when he last came home. Some of them had frayed flared trousers and tangled hair and looked like beggars, but some of them had that glossy look, and the confident voices that meant they had money. There were cars, too, frivolous cars, a yellow one shaped like a cigar and a silver one like a shiny beetle. Brand-new cars, parked carelessly.

  And she dimly recalled what Shirley had told her, which May refused to credit, at the time, that young people liked Victorian houses and turned up their noses at modern ones. Which explained why lower Hillesden’s slummy little houses, where May and Alfred would have blushed to live, funny red terraces with fussy patterned windows, were suddenly sprouting ‘For Sale’ signs, and some of them, she saw, when she looked more closely, had already grown expensive lace curtains, not the old grey nets they used to have, and window-boxes, and fancy knockers.

  This off-licence was not like the other one. Instead of the bored girl, there were two smart young men, chattering and laughing in caressing voices. They had shelves of red wine costing more than ten pounds, and the fridge cabinet was full of champagne, not beer and white wine, like the other shop. When she asked for whisky, they pointed to a section with kinds of whisky she had never heard of, all of it from places with choking names that sounded like Dirk being sick after the pub, but really they belonged to tiny islands in Scotland. She chose three miniatures, judiciously. Something different; he might like that, though the price they rang up nearly made her faint.

  She walked back up the road in the strengthening sunlight. There was a Sushi Bar – imagine it! – with narrow windows and queer blue light, and a girl peering out had half-moon eyes but the boy she was w
ith was very black. There were three Indian restaurants, side by side, which made you wonder how they could survive. The Star of the East, just fancy, in Hillesden! There were two shops advertising ‘Cheap International Phone Calls’, and another one selling those uncomfortable beds with wooden bases and thin flat mattresses. But lovely colours: bright blue, bright green, and as life and hope ran through May’s veins she thought, If only Alfred were here, if only Alfred was home again. We’d come for a stroll, the two of us. May patted the bag with his whiskies for comfort.

  Hillesden isn’t dying. It’s coming up.

  24 • Shirley

  Shirley was still in China and Crystal, looking for a present for her father.

  Something nice. He won’t be here forever. (Or else Dad will beat around our hearts forever. Maybe the Africans are right about that, God forgive me for thinking it.)

  It isn’t easy, buying presents for fathers. Particularly my father.

  Something English would be a good present (but what is there that’s English, these days?)

  ‘Can I help you, madam, or are you just looking?’ The salesman was young, with an insinuating manner. ‘Some people find it a bit overwhelming.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Shirley, giving him a look.

  His smile faltered, and then recovered. ‘Are you buying a gift?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought as much.’ He looked pleased with himself.

  ‘For my father.’ As she said it, her eye fell on a defiant little figure of John Bull with a squat glass bulldog beside him. The man’s face was a cross between a baby’s and a butcher’s, made rounder by his low flat topper, his waistcoat an engraved Union Jack, straining across a sturdy pot-belly. ‘That’s quite nice.’ It wasn’t, to her, but it was small enough for a bedside table.

  ‘Would you like a closer look, madam?’

  The thing had a small square pedestal, engraved at the front with ‘Land of Hope And Glory’ and at the back ‘John Bull Esq’. Although Dad looked nothing like him, of course, there was something about the way John Bull stood, braced to the world, feet splayed, shoulders back, jaw pushed out towards the foreigners – Shirley had seen Alfred stand like that, back to the flower-beds, arms sternly folded, glaring across at some Asian children wondering whether to play ball on the grass.