The White Family (26 page)

The girl flushed, and backed out swiftly. ‘Sorry sir, miss.’

‘Why do they employ idiots?’ he asked the air. Just before the door closed.

‘Shush,’ said Susie. ‘Because they’re cheap. But try to be polite, or she’ll nick our stuff.’

They carried on dressing in grumpy silence. The mock carriage clock on the mantelpiece hummed. The heating laboured. The hotel was loud. Feet came and went, of happy families, hateful imaginary happy families. Somewhere the lift groaned and thudded. Susie started to whistle, then stopped abruptly.

‘Look, let’s not row,’ he managed to say.

‘I’m not rowing,’ she hissed, crossly, then heard her own voice, and suddenly laughed. She came over and kissed him, once, twice, light and cool on his aching brow. ‘All right, I shouldn’t have mentioned your dad. Let’s go. I’ll put my mascara on.’

‘At least we’ve got each other, darling.’ He clung to her hand, so much smaller than his, smooth and brown in its hard bright rings, and one of them was his, the largest, the latest.
The last, I hope. Shall we stay together?
‘I couldn’t manage without you, Suze.’

‘I love you too.’

She sounded slightly reserved. Darren pressed her hand to his mouth, wincing slightly as his lips touched the point of her diamond. She was clutching her mascara wand. A small cool hand. ‘Does oo love me, Poopsie?’

‘Yes, Darren.’

‘Does oo?
Does oo?
’

She sighed very faintly. ‘Wuv oo, Flops,’ she said in his ear, put down her mascara, clasped her arms around him, and hugged him, firmly. Then patted his shoulders to indicate an ending.

He gazed at her adoringly. ‘You keep me sane, you wonderful woman.’

‘This is sane?’ she laughed, resuming her make-up.

‘Do you ever wonder what the point of life is?’

She stopped poking at her eyelids and focused on him. ‘Um – I used to think I’d be a doctor, in Africa. Don’t laugh. Imagine me, in the jungle … I realized I wasn’t cut out to be noble. I just do the best I can at things. I guess I’m a try-er. I’m not a bad person … You matter to me. My patients matter. What do you think the point of life is?’

‘Shit, I don’t know. Love. Money … Seriously, I’d have to say the kids. And you,’ he said hastily, seeing her lips tighten. ‘Kids are important, though. I’m not a bad father.’ He prided himself on being a good father, though naturally a lot of things got done by e-mail.

‘By the way, did you remember to ring Felicity this morning?’ Susie had a soft spot for Darren’s daughter.

‘Was it important? – Shit. Her concert.’ Women had diaries implanted in their brains, a genetic knack of remembering things – which came in useful, when you had kids. Whereas Darren’s strong point was the bigger picture. ‘I’ll ring tomorrow.’

‘I sent her flowers.’

‘You’re a genius. Did you charge it to the office?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Well done, darling.’ He smiled at his reflection in the mirror, and hers, blond, shiny, attentive, in the background. A man of substance. He suddenly felt happy. ‘I was a bit sharp with the chambermaid, wasn’t I?’

‘Oh leave her a tip, if you feel guilty.’

‘It gives life variety, having kids. My friend Thomas hasn’t got any –’

‘Does he regret it?’

‘Haven’t the faintest. He seems all right. Doesn’t say much.’

‘But isn’t he a bit of a failure?’ Susie asked, as they let themselves quietly out of their suite.

‘What do you mean?’ He felt annoyed. ‘Thomas likes to do his own thing.’

‘Writing one novel doesn’t make you famous. Whereas everyone’s heard of
you
, darling.’ She cocked her head, and snuggled against him.

‘Do you think so, Poopsie? Do you really?’ Waiting for the cab, they pressed very close.

‘Look maybe I’m wrong,’ she said, suddenly. ‘It’s not for everyone, confronting their fathers.’

He stared at her amazed, then laughed, and kissed the lacquered strength of her hair. ‘I thought you’d never stop banging on about it.’

‘It was for you I wanted it, Flops, not me. In fact, I was kind of charmed by your dad. One day we’ll come and bring the kids –’

‘All five of them,’ he whispered, slyly.

‘Four, darling … Oh.’ She fell silent, realizing.

Darren was blowing in her ear. ‘Let’s say six. We ought to have two. I don’t believe in only children – It isn’t right. Kids need playmates.’ (Some modern parents were incredibly selfish. He was writing a piece about it at the moment.)

‘Would we be good parents?’ Susie mused, staring out of the window of the taxi at blank bright buildings rushing past. ‘By the way, did you remember that tip?’

He didn’t hear her, dreaming of the future. ‘You’d have to stay home a bit more,’ he said. ‘Which I would like. I like you being home. We could get a Filipina nanny. The Websters’ Filipina was brilliant … Couldn’t do enough for them. Sweet little thing. And Poopsie would be a lovely Mummy. Wovely wovely Mummy, Poopsie.’ He looked at her with a rush of love, her narrow shoulders, her teensy hips. ‘I want a little girl just like you.’

‘When I’m sure we’re ready.’ Her lips closed tight.

He smiled, remembering the stain on the coverlet.

Thomas had stayed longer than he meant to with Alfred. He hurried back to the library. It was warm for March; the wind had dropped.

It was quarter to three when he arrived, uncomfortably aware he’d had a very long lunch-break. A little crowd of people was milling about.

Saturday film, he realized. He was surprised to see Suneeta among them, with a tall Indian girl in jeans.

‘Thomas. Are you coming to
The Price of the Ticket
?’ (Yes, he remembered. James Baldwin. A biopic about the novelist.) ‘It’s supposed to be excellent,’ she continued.

‘I’m on duty –’

‘So am I. But there’s hardly anyone upstairs. Razia and Ingrid are on Inquiries. And film only lasts hour and a half.’

‘I think it’s a bit specialized for me,’ said Thomas, steering away from her with a smile. ‘What I really need is a large black coffee.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked abruptly. He was suddenly aware of an atmosphere. ‘What does this mean? Specialized?’

She managed to corner him, against the creche, so no one else could hear what they were saying. ‘Baldwin is a wonderful writer. Have you read him?’

‘I didn’t know
you
had … Years ago.’ He thought about it. Perhaps he hadn’t. Though he’d definitely bought
Another Country
.

Her large brown eyes did not entirely believe him. ‘You need, what do you call it, a refreshment.’

‘Refresher,’ he said, evading her, sliding around in the direction of the stairs.

‘Thomas!’ You didn’t ignore Suneeta. He had seen her get angry once or twice in the ten years that he had known her. She was looking hard at him, slightly flushed. ‘Come and meet my older daughter, Thomas.’ She indicated the girl in jeans, who he now saw was a taller, thinner version of her mother.

Aisha shook hands; she looked amused, patrician. Thomas began to feel smaller and less solid, just as he did when talking to Alfred. The girl was inspecting the exhibition of Turkish paintings along the walls.

‘Aisha is completing a doctorate in cultural studies at SOAS. Thomas is writing a book, Aisha, something very clever, too clever for us all. Tell Aisha why you will not go to the film.’

Her elegant profile swivelled towards him.

‘Oh really, Suneeta, I don’t know,’ Thomas protested, embarrassed. ‘I haven’t decided. Perhaps I will.’

‘Go and buy your ticket,’ Suneeta said, pushing him gently towards the box office.

He found himself queueing for a ticket. (Bossy cow. It was a damn nuisance. He had a backlog of work to clear. This was one of the special cultural events the cinema ran in association with the library, and he and Errol had helped work out the programme, but surely this film was Errol’s province. He could see Errol chatting and smiling by the door, his matt black curls now salted with grey.)

Turning round, Thomas was suddenly face to face with Shirley. A wonderful summery smell of vanilla. He breathed it in. Her neck was round and smooth. Her lips were moist and slightly parted.

‘Shirley! What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Waiting for someone,’ she said, with a smile. She looked

– stunning. Creamy, glowing, and she smiled at him as if she was really glad to see him. ‘I’m going to the film about James Baldwin.’

‘Oh. Why?’ he asked, without thinking.

She stared at him a moment. ‘Because someone asked me. Writers are interesting, anyway.’

‘Of course they are,’ he said hastily. He felt slightly jealous she was meeting someone.

‘Film will begin,’ called Suneeta, imperious.

‘See you inside,’ he said to Shirley.

He sat with Suneeta and her daughter. Aisha started telling him about her doctorate. Her mother still seemed to be keeping one eye on him as if he might escape at the last minute.

As the lights went down he turned round and looked for Shirley, but she wasn’t among the scattering of faces.

Then someone came in, and as the blue dark engulfed the cinema, his nerve-ends prickled. Tall, black, with those light strange eyes and an intense way of gazing across the room, as if he felt he had been chosen by fate – It was the worrying young man from the library. The one who had ordered
One Thousand Years of Lynchings
.

‘Suneeta –’ he tried to attract her attention, but she shushed him, staring ahead at the screen.

By the time the lights went up again he had forgotten his moment of fear. Baldwin’s voice, caressive, teasing, rising to biblical peaks of anger but more often lucid and to the point, had seemed to be talking to him, Thomas. ‘I went to the library at least three or four times a week and I read every single book in the library …’

Thomas had forgotten why libraries mattered. He’d almost forgotten that he loved books. Baldwin’s clear intelligence made him feel embarrassed by the quotations on the file-cards stuffed in his pockets. ‘A sign is interpreted into a different sign, an interpretant, which can be interpreted into a different sign, and so on
ad infinitum
…’ Was it just waffle,
The Death of Meaning
? Did the book he was writing express his own numbness?

What was the wonderful thing Baldwin said? ‘Books taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me to everyone who was alive and who had ever been alive.’

Thomas had tried to forget his awful divorce. He’d tried to forget the hellish months when his parents were dying, in separate hospitals, on different sides of London, with him going between them. Avoiding pain, he had become cut off. Then Melissa had come to knock on his door … Perhaps he could rejoin the human race.

Watching the footage near the end of the film when Baldwin, huge-eyed, faun-faced, grey, thin as a blade of grass from cancer, flittered like a dying butterfly through his sun-flecked garden in the South of France, through bushes burning pink and gold for the camera – a few seconds from one last hot summer day – Thomas felt acutely, in his whole body, how precious life was. How bright, how short.

Whatever life offers, I shall take.

The audience sat quiet as the lights went up. Somewhere at the back, a few people clapped. After another minute, Thomas touched Suneeta’s arm. ‘Thank you, Suneeta. Magnificent.’

‘
Specialist interest
,’ she chaffed him. ‘Ha!’

‘Suneeta,’ he said. ‘I am sometimes stupid.’

She said something to her daughter in Gujarati, and they laughed at him, but without malice.

Then he remembered Shirley, and got up, quickly.

He was just in time to see her leave, her halo of bright blond curls under the lights, through the exit on the other side of the cinema. Somebody was with her, his arm round her shoulder. He was black, Thomas saw first, and then, unbelieving, he realized it was the strange young man. With a short sharp intake of breath, he followed them.

Sitting by Winston in the half-empty cinema through that extraordinary film, Shirley was aware of his excitement. He hooted with laughter at a clip of Baldwin replying to a fat Irish critic: ‘You are black, impoverished, homosexual – you must have said to yourself, Gee, how disadvantaged can I get?’ ‘No, I thought I’d hit the jackpot.’ Winston laughed so loud that other people turned round. But later she was almost certain he was crying. Or perhaps he just had early hay fever.

At the end of the film, he put his arm round her shoulders. ‘I loved it,’ she said to him, before he could speak. ‘You know I don’t read. But I want to read him.’

‘I’ll lend you
Giovanni’s Room
,’ he said. ‘Shirley, you’re a special lady.’

He was half-bending over her under the light between the cinema exit and the foyer when Thomas Lovell bumped into them, obviously half-blinded from the dark inside, because he practically pushed between them.

‘Hey, Thomas,’ Shirley said. ‘This is Winston – Thomas Lovell.’

‘Hi,’ said Winston. ‘I know you, don’t I?’

For some reason Thomas hardly smiled. Could he be jealous? Surely not. ‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘I see you in the library.’ He was noticeably slow taking Winston’s outstretched hand.

‘Winston and I were going to get a coffee. Would you like to –?’

‘I’ve got work to do –’ Then he seemed to change his mind, and stood there, frowning. ‘So what did you think of the film?’ he asked her.

‘It made me cry,’ Shirley said. ‘I thought that Baldwin was – wonderful.’

(She knew she would never be able to explain it, but everything he’d said seemed to be about her. She couldn’t remember it word for word, but something about the point of suffering. That the things that made you suffer most were the ones that linked you to other people. Connected you to everyone who’d ever been alive … So it wasn’t for nothing, she suddenly thought. They weren’t for nothing, her lost children.)

‘I liked it too,’ said Thomas, but he didn’t seem to be listening. He had turned his body to exclude Winston. She glanced at Winston apologetically, and Thomas seemed to realize what he had done. ‘Did you like it, uhm?’ he threw in Winston’s direction, but he had apparently forgotten his name.