The White Family (19 page)

But it had begun. The familiar pattern. It sounded like next door, on the same level. First they would quarrel, rumbling on for hours, like an earth tremor passing from one room to another. Thomas almost managed not to notice it. But last night the man had started to shout, then the woman screamed, then the child started crying … Then it had died down for a minute or two. Then erupted again, only slightly quieter.

He was just wishing he could kill them – they were so fucking violent – when screaming broke out in terrible earnest.

There was a padding of feet on the stairs above. Someone was standing outside his door. A long pause. Then someone knocked.

Straightening his dressing-gown in case it was a woman, drawing himself up in case it was a man, he had gone to the door and flung it open.

Melissa was standing on the doormat. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Come in, Melissa.’

Night-time Melissa. A vision of wonder. She had been lying on her hair, which was flat to her head in some places, floating up in others, a strange little blond mouse’s nest, and two bright eyes, red from sleeplessness, or rubbing, and she wore pyjamas – Melissa in pyjamas, and in my flat! – the sweetest pyjamas he had ever seen, white cotton, rumpled, with small red ships, and bright red piping around the neck. A curved white neck. And she had breasts. Little round hills that softened the cotton.

‘Excuse the pyjamas, they’re ghastly,’ she said. ‘A Christmas present from my mother.’ She sounded normal, but she looked very pale. ‘Do you think we should call the police, Thomas?’

‘No, I think she’s quietening down. You wouldn’t like a cup of tea?’

‘Were you working?’

‘Oh, it’s just this, um, book thingy …’

He wanted to offer her a drink, but didn’t, because
drink
would sound like
sex
, which took up disproportionate space in his mind, looking at crumpled, half-naked Melissa.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a whisky?’ she said.

‘
Yes
–’

‘Is it true all writers drink whisky?’

Before he could answer, a single scream, more piercing than any of the others, tore through the walls, and they both stopped dead.

‘Oh God. We’d better go. Oh God.’

Then silence. The silence was very loud. In sudden panic, he had pulled his shoes on, grabbed a greatcoat to go over his dressing-gown.

‘Pour yourself a whisky. Call the police. Don’t come.’

Her jaw was determined. ‘I’m going to come.’

They suddenly heard a different sound, an animal roar, what horror would follow? Then Melissa, who had been standing by the door, slim shoulders hunched, straining to hear, suddenly relaxed, and sank into an armchair.

‘Oh can’t you hear, Thomas. They’re laughing. I swear they are.’

It was true. Now they were both screaming with laughter.

‘Bloody people,’ he said. And then, ‘Well, good.’

‘They must be drunks,’ she said. ‘That explains it.’

‘I’ll drink to that … Will you still have a whisky?’

The miracle continued. Melissa said ‘Yes.’

She was not a bit like he had thought. Softer, less glamorous, funnier. The pyjamas helped. And his dressing-gown. With the safety pin holding the tear together. You can’t help feeling friendly, in pyjamas.

I hardly touched her, but we had such fun. I poured her, at first, a most modest whisky, a whisky that said my designs were modest, a whisky that said I respected her. Except that she failed to read it right. ‘Are you afraid I’ll get drunk?’ she asked, holding the eighth-of-an-inch up to the light.

‘Of course not, of course not,’ I stuttered, muttered, swilling in another three-quarters of an inch.

‘I don’t often drink, so I might as well enjoy it.’ She smiled at me, a wonderful smile, the smile of a twenty-five-year-old woman expecting mostly good things from life.

What did we talk about? Everything; nothing. She was born in Sussex, on the south coast … Naturally Melissa was born in Sussex. She loved her job. ‘I love the kids, they break your heart, they’re just so sweet –’ Yes, I thought, you do, you are. But she gets so tired by the end of the day, she sometimes comes back and falls asleep, still with her coat on, on the bed. (That they should tire her is a disgrace, I told her I would write letters to the council – I think perhaps I overdid my attempt to prove I wasn’t mean when I sloshed our second glass.)

There was one of those moments when two people are quiet, two people who have never been so close before, and the membrane between them could almost be broken, I heard her breathing, she heard me breathing –

And then there was a great cry from next door. ‘Oh no,’ said Melissa, half-laughing, half-frightened, and the tension, the moment of silence was broken, we moved apart, we both stopped and listened – what followed was utterly electrifying. For the woman was crying in orgasm, running up the scale, getting faster and higher, a final yelp of excitement and then a purring release, small peaceful mewlings. Neither of us dared to look at each other. We listened in silence from first to last.

And then Melissa began to giggle, sipping her whisky and giggling happily. ‘I don’t think she needed us after all,’ she said, and laughed, and choked on her whisky, and coughed until she was red in the face, and even red in the face she was pretty.

At half-past four, she was falling asleep, curled up in my chair, her eyelashes drooping, fair, unmascara-ed against her pink cheek. I saw her upstairs, Mr Responsible.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, stumbling a little, ‘I’ve had too much whisky. I’ve stayed too long. I’ve been having such a lovely time …’

She was having such a lovely time! She was having a lovely time with me!

I was King of Hillesden as I took her hand, her small firm hand which clutched her keys, and helped her direct them into the keyhole.

‘Goodnight, Melissa.’

‘Oh Thomas. Thanks. I’m awfully sorry to have stopped you sleeping. I promise not to disturb you again.’

On impulse, I reached up and kissed her cheek. ‘Melissa,’ I said, ‘disturb me again.’ The smile I got in return was brilliant. Some time this morning, between six and seven, I lay in bed, remembering Melissa, imagining unbuttoning her cotton pyjamas, running my finger along the red piping, so easy to imagine her kissing me, liking me, and yet there are women who make you feel that everything about you is hateful, too big, too loud, too rough, too rude, and your cock a monster, put it away, back to the kennel, you slobbering brute, slink away like a beaten dog to tug all night at your chains in the yard … Jean, you cow, you threw me out, I stayed in the cold for years and years …

Innocent, really, how I thought of Melissa, the little games we played together, I stroked her breasts, she let me suck them, two puppy-noses, pink and damp, we lay on the bed in each other’s arms.

But when it was time to come at last or I should never go to sleep, someone slipped in through another door, someone kind, someone sturdy, someone who knew just what a man likes, at first I didn’t see her face though her flesh was firm and warm in my hands, her heavy breasts, her comfortable belly, a woman moving on top of me, then she was slipping down my body, oh bliss, to take my cock in her mouth, the warm wetness of that special place where Jeanie never in a decade put me, opening, opening to take me in, taking me, oh loving me, a woman loved me and I came at once – and just as I came I opened my eyes and saw her face, and saw it was Shirley. Shirley White! Thank you, Shirley.

Half an hour later I woke again. Spring was coming, because, because …

I remembered it in a rush of joy. Melissa appeared in the middle of the night. Melissa had asked for help, for comfort. Melissa had almost suggested a date.

I walked to the bathroom patting myself.

Oh, but Shirley … I’m rather shocked. Shirley, Alfred White’s daughter, a respectable widow, a hospital visitor –

Melissa, darling, there’s no competition, honestly, dearest, you are the one. The name that’s singing in my brain, Melissa, Melissa, over and over. For yesterday we came so far, we came from nowhere at all to somewhere.

And something else. Something very exciting.

Melissa has borrowed my book from the library
.

Shirley White, the Wankers’ Friend. What did she do to deserve my sperm? I suppose she’s just desirable. Of course completely wrong for me, but the sort of woman who – knows what’s what.

I almost felt she fancied me, when we sat in the café, before the others came. And perhaps it’s not impossible. Perhaps I’m more of a man than Jean thought. Thank you, Shirley.

Sorry, Shirley.

Bloody hell, what would Darren say?

He doesn’t even know I once kissed his sister …

We hadn’t really talked in over two decades. All I’d had to go on were appearances. He smiled a lot more, looked more successful … no longer kept in touch with me. He’d made some kind of effort at the hospital, said we must ‘hang out’ while he was here, even pretended he might come and see me – as if he would bother, after all this time.

In the first few years he had mailed me his cuttings. Perhaps I didn’t praise them enough. We had started primary school together; learned to swim by nearly drowning each other; fallen in love with the same blond plaits; had our first kiss at the same party, though I was the first to get my tongue inside; started a school magazine called
Tall
… I was the editor, Darren was features. I got to write the editorial, which was grand, scornful, and very short. Darren wrote most of the rest of the contents, but I, as the editor, edited him.

(But Darren always came top in exams. And he was good at sport, whereas I was lazy. Now he had outstripped me at life, as well. Not that it mattered; Melissa liked me.)

By twelve midday I was flagging again as I called up book titles on the screen. I went across the road to the Italian café.

We call it Italian, because of the owner, Mario, who comes from Milan – he fell in love with an English girl and got stuck here long ago. Actually it couldn’t be more English, with its salty, fatty, stewed-tea smell. I’m never quite certain where I come from (with a rugby team of genes on my father’s side – Jewish, Scottish, Italian, Spanish? There was even a rumoured great-grandma from Barbados) but walking in here I know I’m British.

Stale cigarette smoke, Formica-covered tables, eggs and beans and Nescafé. I ordered double fried eggs on toast, and sat by the window, away from the kitchen. There I could watch the cars go by, and the women doing their Saturday shopping, women too poor to drive to Quicksave, their push-chairs hung about with carrier-bags. Shouting children; sun and wind. Perhaps I could drive Melissa to Tesco’s –

My father never shopped in his life. A teacher’s son with pretensions to more who at one point was quite a successful bookie, until he gambled the money away. Mum feared his gambling and hated his drinking. In the end they had moved into a rented flat, and my mother sat staring at the radio. I longed for parents like May and Alfred. Alfred-and-May. May-and-Alfred. But Darren didn’t seem to have learned much from it –

I looked up from my second mouthful of toast to see a madman tear across my field of vision, almost knocking down a woman with a paper bag of plantains, her orange African head-dress swivelling to watch him, talking to himself, mouthing, grimacing – There was something about the shape of his head.

‘Darren!’ I shouted, through the deaf plate-glass, and ran out after him, and tapped him on the shoulder. To my surprise, he turned straight towards me, like a drowning man, flung his arms around me.

‘Darren. Well met!’

‘Thomas. Thank God. I was looking for you. They said you were in the Italian café. I couldn’t bloody see any Italian café.’ His voice was thick, emotional. I pulled back a few inches and looked at his face. He was ten years older now, by daylight, than the rugged film star I’d seen in the hospital. His eyes were bloodshot, his features blurred.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. No.’

I smelled his breath. Whisky, in the morning. Maybe it meant we could cut the crap. (Did I want to be friends? – He
was
my friend. After thirty years there was no going back.)

‘Come and keep me company?’ He was dragging me away. I don’t think he had much clue where he was going. ‘Drink,’ he insisted. ‘Let’s go have a drink.’

‘Well – actually I haven’t finished my lunch. Come back and have some lunch with me. They aren’t licensed, I’m afraid.’

‘Do I want to drink coffee? Maybe I should.’ He made an effort to sound sober. ‘I had a few drinks already this morning. Just had a tremendous row with my wife. Marriage – why the fuck do I keep doing it!’

I ordered him All Day Breakfast. Darren sat in the window, chewing his nails. ‘It stinks of smoke in here. That’s so English.’ (I prayed that Mario just heard the last bit, but Darren was shouting, deaf with drink.) ‘I fucking miss it. Susie made me give up. Wouldn’t bloody live with me until I did. I smoked like a chimney. Sixty a day … Helps when you’re in a hotel on your own.’

Perhaps smoking explained the lines. He looked older than me, or I hoped he did (but better dressed. The suit, the trench-coat. The quiet, definite print of money.)

‘Susie seemed, well, very nice,’ I said. Tactfully. Or nosily. ‘And she’s a therapist, is she?’

‘Fucking therapists,’ said Darren, furious. ‘She drives me fucking mad. Always trying to understand. Usually things she knows nothing about. D’ya know any therapists? So fucking arrogant.’

‘Didn’t seem arrogant.’

‘They’re all bloody experts at other people’s pain. Though she has her own problems. Abused, bulimic. Everyone’s fucking abused these days.’ He tried to get a grip on himself. ‘I mustn’t tell you all Susie’s problems. They’re only therapists because they have problems. She thinks I should fucking
confront
my father. She doesn’t know my father! She should try it! You know Dad, what a bastard he is –’

My jaw dropped open. Alfred? A bastard? ‘How do you mean, confront your father? Sorry, not with you. What about?’

‘About the way he wrecked my life. And Shirley’s life. And Dirk’s probably. I know sod all about Dirk’s life, except that he’s a little fascist … and all his opinions come from Dad. Dad terrified us. Appalling temper. It’s taken me years to admit it.
Years
. I used to be in awe of him. Working-class hero, and all that crap.’