The White Family (25 page)

As a teenager Dirk began to go with the lads. He didn’t much care about the football but he liked the buzz. All for one, one for all. An army of men who accepted him. Then sometimes when they took an end. Taking an end was the best feeling, when they drove the fans from the other side out of their favourite end of the stand. Just shoving on through, all fists and elbows, giving a good kicking to anyone who fell. A knee in the groin and they usually fell. When they took an end, then Dirk was a king.

But he’d hardly been to football for the last three years. Frigging George had stopped him. Always frigging ill. The frigging shop. He’d been a frigging slave, he’d been a frigging fool, an idiot –

Now he was free. He was free at last.

(
He had nowhere to go. He was nothing, no one
.)

Darren was a winner, unlike him.

It makes it harder for me, Dirk thought. My brother was a very good footballer. (I have to take that on trust, because I’ve never seen him. Being fifteen years older than me, of course. By the time I was old enough to have noticed he’d got too smart for it, hadn’t he? He was being very good at other things instead. But I heard about it. Oh, I heard about it. I’ve always heard about how good he is. When I went to secondary school there was a master who’d been stuck there for thirty years, he’d been there when it was a grammar school and Darren went there and won all the prizes and got a scholarship to sodding Oxford. All right, good for him, but a pain to me. Because old Plummer went on about Darren whenever he saw me. ‘You’ll never be the equal of your brother, White. Now there was a boy. Scholar, athlete.’)

Scholar, athlete
! What a wanker! Fuck off!

Which is not to knock my brother, of course. I’m proud of Darren. Course I am. And now he’s come back, we can really be brothers. He’ll stick around. We’ll hang out together.

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t like you. He thinks you’re a pain, like everyone else …
‘
You’ll never be the equal of your brother, White.’

You’ll never be the equal of your father, Dirk
.

Dirk took another swig from the can in his pocket to keep the hateful little voices away.

‘Oi, Dirk,’ yelled Ozzie. ‘Give us some of that.’

‘There y’are, mate.’

Ozzie was standing on the seat of the train, trying to freak out the girl sitting opposite, a stuck-up bitch in a tiny cream miniskirt who’d hidden her twitchy little nose in a book.

He’s a great guy, Ozzie. Everybody likes him.

Well, nobody likes him that much. But I do.

I think he’s great. He’s a real laugh, Ozzie. He comes from Australia. He’s got a broken nose. People pick on him because he’s six feet four. He’s got a good body. Muscly, hard. His family didn’t want to know him, and so he came here to work in England. He worked for a removals firm until this midget started picking on him, calling him a racist, et cetera, et cetera, just ’cos Ozzie’s got a bit of a crewcut and occasionally wears a Union Jack t-shirt. I mean everyone sometimes wears a Union Jack t-shirt.

If they’ve got one, granted. So a lot of people haven’t, but thousands of people have got short hair. Why should it be racist to get a haircut? Why should it be racist to show the flag?

What’s bloody wrong with being pro-British? You had to be pro-British, in the last war. Then it was OK to be patriotic.

When Dad got going on a subject like that, it was wonderful to hear him. Dad knew facts.

He has to get better. I’d be lost without him.

Ozzie is offering that blond bint my drink. Says she doesn’t want it, does she, bitch? Not good enough for her. Well I bloody want it.
I
bloody want it, so don’t give it to
that –

‘Ozzie, mate. I’d like that back. That tart doesn’t need it. Give it over –’

And he chucks it, doesn’t he. Joking, like. Just having a laugh, meaning no harm, but it sprays all over the slapper’s skirt, which was made of pale leather, like a whatsit, pelmet, the silly little thing at the top of the curtains. And she starts screaming, though nobody touched her, God’s my witness, we didn’t even touch her!

So then this animal sitting behind us – and
nobody
had been talking to him, it was none of his business, but he wanted to make trouble – and he was old, which makes it worse, he was probably forty, with a suit and tie – gets up and comes and stands in front of Ozzie and tells him to apologize.

Ozzie was provoked. So he gets him by the tie.

Then suddenly all hell breaks loose, everyone is picking on Ozzie and me and Terry and Flick, all these barmy old guys, all ganging up with the one with the tie on and going at us as if we were making trouble! They got Flick on the floor before he had a chance to get his knife out, and at the next station they sort of rolled him out the door, then pushed us after him.

The injustice! We’d paid our fare! For once we had paid our fare in full! Six of them, there were, all on to us, and the women screaming rude names as well, it was like the whole carriage was against us! It took a bit of time for them to shove us out. I had got my fingers up one old guy’s nostrils, and tears were streaming down his face, that served him right for treating us like dirt, my whole fucking life I’ve been treated like dirt …

(
Dirt White that’s who you are Dirt White
.)

I was kneeling on the platform as the train went out. Shaking my fist at the people in our carriage.

You wouldn’t believe the way they were going on. All sort of smiling and patting each other. I swear they’d never met each other before. Now they were thick as anything, through kicking us out!

We had to wait twenty minutes for the next one. So we got to the Gate late. It wasn’t our fault. With a load of other stragglers who I must admit I might have had my doubts about, two of them coloured, but Hillesden supporters, so I didn’t have a go at them –

The bastards wouldn’t let us in. I had good money. I had fucking earned it, I earned it the hard way, but they wouldn’t even look at it. ‘No tickets, no admittance, that’s the rule,’ the bastard told me, smug as anything. ‘You need a photocard and a pre-paid ticket. How long is it since you last went to a game?’

So here was yet another thing I couldn’t get in to. Every fucking thing has been closed to us. Jobs, football games, everything that matters. Girls, women, they’re closed to us. Not that I care, they stink of minge, but why should they think they’re better than us? We need money or photocards or qualifications or pass-words that we can never learn. We need skills or languages or posh bloody accents or cars or computers or ties or suits –

Or a black face. The two niggers got in. They said they had tickets, but I don’t believe it.

It didn’t stop Ozzie and Flick and Terry. We went round the back, we were steaming mad, no way were we going to take this lying down.

‘I know a good place,’ Terry said. ‘I’ve climbed over before. I know we can do it.’

And he got a leg-up on a wheely-bin, clung by his fingernails, inched his way over, tearing his coat on the barbed-wire at the top and disappearing with a dirty great yell that either meant he was hurt or happy. We were all well rotted. I don’t think we cared.

But when it came to my turn, and they were all in, I couldn’t get my fingers on the top of the wall. I was just too short. I tried jumping. It was hopeless. They shouted a few times. Then they forgot me. And they had gone. They had done it. They were in. And I was left outside, on a stinking rubbish bin. I was outside in the cold on my own –

(
Dirt White Dirt White just a dirty little dosser
)

I’m not a bloody wimp. I’m not a bloody woman. I knew I could get in there by will-power.
You can
, I told myself.
You can fucking do it
.

So I launched myself at the top of the wall, and caught with one hand but missed with the other, swung round hard and crashed my face on the brickwork, smash in the cheek on the cold wet brickwork, and lost my grip, and fell
whoomp
on the ground.

That was the end. Then I knew I had to kill them. It didn’t matter who, I would have to fucking kill them.

Kill

Kill

Fuck

Fuck

Kill

‘Thank God I’ve got you,’ said Darren, solemnly, lying beside her on the hotel coverlet they’d just anointed with a small dark stain. Their suite at the Inn on the Park was quite poky, just bedroom, sitting-room, jacuzzi-less bathroom, but it had the advantage of a king-size bed. ‘I’d go mad, you know. If I were quite alone. My little brother’s barking, I suddenly realized. Last night he was going on about the Jews –’

Susie lay naked, her small bright hip-bone catching the harsh light from the wall. ‘He’s just projecting,’ she said, idly. ‘Darren, darling. So glad you’re back. Hate it so much when we fight.’

‘I hate it too.’ He stroked her thigh. He loved the hollow between her thighs, two shallow brackets that lithely enclosed him when they were happy, when he was home. ‘Suze, let’s never fight again.’

‘Love you,’ she said. ‘What’s the time, honey?’

‘Oh, three, four, plenty of time.’

‘We’d better check.’ Her voice sharpened up. ‘Oh sugar – three thirty – I guess we should leave.’

‘Let me just hold you. Need to hold you.’ But she had stiffened in his arms. ‘Is oo my baby?’ he asked, demanded. ‘Does oo love me, Poopsie?’

‘You’re my baby,’ she said, swiftly, and pressed him to her bony breast. ‘But we have to get up.’

‘We were silly again,’ he said, in a little boy, a baby voice, and took her finger, and traced the dark stain.

‘Hell, I forgot.’ A sharp intake of breath. ‘And I’m right in the middle of my fertile time.’

He began to kiss her, her cheek, her neck, her scooped-out collar-bones, her delicate ribs. ‘Mummy,’ he mumbled. ‘Do you want to be Mummy? … Mmm, mmm … Poopsie could be Mummy …’

She was caught halfway between laughter and panic, struggling up and away from him. ‘I’m not ready – we’re not ready –’

Susie would be forty-one next month.

‘Let’s start again. Everything new. A new family. You’d be brilliant with babies.’

‘I’m not so sure.’ But she flushed with pleasure as she pulled on her sports bra, supple, elastic. ‘I would love babies. You know I would.’

‘So why –?’ he said, faintly truculent, wandering over towards the bathroom. The hum of the fan disrupted his words. ‘You want them. I want them. Let’s do it.’

‘We’ve already discussed it.’

She chose the neat-jacketed blue Chanel suit which made her look like an air-hostess, crisp, efficient – not a good sign. Not a good sign at all, thought Darren, glancing over his shoulder as he shaved. ‘Is it still all this stuff about my family?’

‘I hear your anger,’ Susie said. ‘I hear you, Darren. We’ve already discussed it.’

‘I talked about it to Thomas,’ he said. ‘I gave him your spiel about confronting Dad. He didn’t actually say so, but he thought it was shit. He dotes on my father, actually.’

She didn’t rise to the bait, though she hated swear-words; it was one of the ways he could get to her. She looked at him steadily, coolly. ‘It’s your feelings that matter, not his.’

(She was always telling him about his feelings. Was it his feelings, or her feelings?) Darren sighed, and changed the subject. ‘The trousers of this suit are tight.’

‘Back to the gym as soon as we’re home,’ she said, and flashed him a brilliant smile. ‘I like you slim. I love you slim.’

‘Don’t you love me anyway?’ he pleaded.

‘You’re my
husband
,’ she said. ‘You know I love you.’

‘But not enough to have my babies.’ (She was painting her lips, a wide slick of orange. She should talk less, and love him more.)

‘We’ve been through it,’ she said. ‘Must I explain again?’

(As if she was a teacher, and he was a child.)

The silence between them was heavy with resentment and the steady burr of the bathroom fan, tirelessly working to clear the air, to remove the smell of age and pain, the alcohol in Darren’s urine, the taint of Susie’s seafood lunch, most of which she’d sicked up again. She wasn’t ill; it was part of her diet.

If I got pregnant, she thought, I would stop.

‘I’d like another drink,’ he muttered to the glass, his face in the mirror, puffy, flushed.

If we had a baby, I know I’d cut down
.

‘You don’t need one,’ she said, very definite, clicking her heavy snake handbag shut. ‘We’ve talked about this. You don’t need to drink.’

‘Fuck off,’ he exploded, furious, and his cuff burst away from the Dior cuff-links she’d given him as an engagement present, which he’d always suspected of being a freebie from an advertorial she’d done on designer shirts. ‘You don’t know everything. You’re not my keeper. I’m forty years old. I do what I like –’

‘Is it me you’re angry with? Or is it your father?’

‘That’s
it
,’ he said. ‘That’s the last time. Get this into your head. Once and for all. I shall never, ever confront my father. I don’t want to. Don’t need to. It’s some cock-and-bull notion you therapists have got, that everything is solved by
expressing our anger …
It’s such bullshit. Such a load of crap. He’s an old man. He’s probably dying –’

‘Precisely,’ she said, with infuriating calm. ‘If you’re ever going to tell him, now is the time.’

‘Leave it!’ he shouted. Then heard himself shouting. And stopped, unnerved. She hated shouting. He hated it too. His father shouting. (The bloody old bastard. And he never said sorry.)

‘Sorry,’ said Darren, gruff, sheepish.

‘Fine,’ she said. It sounded like ‘Die.’

There was a timid knock. They both froze, embarrassed. ‘Who the fuck?’ said Darren. But they had to answer it. ‘Are you decent?’ he asked, then shouted ‘Come!’

It was the chambermaid. She was a small, pretty girl, perhaps South American, with golden skin and broad Indian features. She said something in a soft, singsong voice.

‘Speak up,’ said Susie. ‘We can’t hear a word.’

‘Is everything OK with room?’ she asked. ‘OK I turn your bed down now?’

‘You can see we’re half-naked,’ said Darren. ‘Go away.’