The White Family (16 page)

‘I know. But Elroy, you’re not rich.’

‘God will bless me. I got enough, woman. I try to give to you, but you say you don’t need it –’

She went and put her arms around him. He was a proud man, easily hurt, and he wasn’t comfortable with her having money, especially since it came from Kojo. ‘You’re very good to me. I just worry … It’s as if they’re too interested in your money.’

‘Maybe you don’t like my church,’ he said. ‘Maybe you don’t like black people’s church.’

‘But I’ve said I’ll go with you every other week – I’m sorry. Let’s not argue about it.’ And they did go together on alternate Sundays, to Paddington Temple and St John’s in Piccadilly, where she had worshipped for sixteen years, since she lost her baby and had her breakdown.

She’d tried very hard to respect his church, although it was so different from what she was used to. But only last month May had come to tea and made the subject of church more fraught.

Shirley was out in the kitchen, getting out the cake-plates, and Elroy was taking off his coat in the hall. He had just come in, tired from work. May was pleased to see Shirley’s ‘new young man’; she had only met him half-a-dozen times. Elroy was pleased to see her, as well, though he remained wary; did she really like him? ‘Mum does like you,’ Shirley had told him, ‘because you are young and nice-looking. And not being Dad, you can’t boss her about.’

May picked up a booklet,
Paddington Temple: Impacting the City
, which Elroy had left lying on the dining-room table. ‘
Impacting the City
. What does that mean? Sounds like a bomb. Or a wisdom tooth.’

Shirley didn’t always listen to her mother, and Elroy was complaining about his hospital, which had all gone downhill since it became a Trust. ‘Seems like everything is rule by money … Last year the cleaning is privatize, this month they put the catering out to tender, and our people lose it because their bid is two thousand pound higher than the other … Two thousand lousy pound! In a budget of millions! And now they’re telling me this new lot is saying they can feed a man for seven pound a week. OK, right, if they feed them rubbish –’

‘That’s terrible,’ Shirley said. She knew he was upset. When he was upset he sounded more Jamaican. She was trying to listen, as she opened the oven.

But her mother was waffling unstoppably on. ‘This isn’t English. It’s American.
Discipling the Church to Impact the City
. Disciple is a noun, not a verb. Shirley never did care enough about English. Kingdom Economics? What is that?’

Elroy was suddenly listening to her. ‘It’s about giving, Mrs White,’ he said. Shirley knew she must shut her mother up, but she was trying to lift the sponge from the cake-tin without leaving half of it behind, and her face was too hot, and the gas was roaring.

‘This bit is a scream,’ Mum was saying. ‘“
Question
. Do I have to tithe on my gross or net income?
Answer
. That depends on whether you want to be blessed on your gross or net income.” Surely you don’t believe that, Shirley? Are you listening, dear? I’m talking to you. I mean, God isn’t an accountant, is he, sitting up there working out how much to bless you?’

‘
Mum
. That’s Elroy’s. Don’t be rude.’

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 the 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.’