The White Family (28 page)

Up at the top, the view opened up. Turning east was the graveyard, grey and final. He could hang himself by his belt from a tree. It would not be so terrible, maybe, up here, with the view of the city and the children’s playground, and the golden light bathing everything in kindness. Then he turned west and looked over the roof-tops, their hard, unforgiving regularity, the way they marched on to the edge of vision …

The hills could crumble into the sea. The gardens could dry and become a desert. The rooks on the plane-trees could burn to ash. This cruel city could come to dust, the people of the city run gnashing and weeping, their children’s children wither away –

But Winston’s family would never accept him. Never accept that he was gay.

He could hate himself, hang himself, hang himself. He could punish his sin, as they would wish. He looked at the branches of the nearest tree, thick and strong, but salted with green, where the leaves were coming, slowly, unstoppably –

Would they grieve? They would come and grieve. He saw ghosts of flowers underneath the tree, bunches of bitter flowers, drying. He saw his mother with her thin frail arms, clutching the trunk, being pulled away –

He turned back, and saw in the middle distance two men idling near the aviary.

Life was better than death, he knew it.

Lying was better than endless nothingness.

Could he make use of his wound, like Baldwin? For the root of suffering, the dark smothered root, was also the root of everything that lived, reaching up shining and straight into the sunlight –

Making up his mind, he left the Park, but he knew before long he would be back.

Thomas came up to the ward with her. It felt comforting not to be alone as she searched nervously down the line of pale imprisoned faces for her father’s familiar Roman nose. (All her life there’d been that pang in the pit of her stomach when she was expecting to see her dad. What would it be like not to fear your father?) She patted the bag with the glass figurine.

Dad was sitting up. He was chatting away to the painted woman in the bed next door. Where’s Mum? thought Shirley. She won’t like that. But Alfred was flushed and animated.

‘Hello, Dad.’

‘Hello, my duck.’ – She rested her present on the bedside table. Had he ever had the slightest use for ornaments? But
duck
was his most tender endearment. ‘What’s Thomas doing here again? Not chasing my daughter, are you Thomas?’ Thomas said nothing, for a second, looking big and bashful under the fluorescent.

‘Don’t be silly, Dad,’ said Shirley, embarrassed, but the two men were grinning at each other.

Beside Thomas her father was so small and fierce. Red as a little bantam cock, with his thin white hair and his thin shiny skin. Whereas Thomas looked almost Mediterranean, with those corrugated waves of healthy black hair.

A thought, irrelevant, flew in through the window –
If we had children, they’d have really curly hair
.

(He’s childless too. That failed marriage.)

I was always sure I would have three kids. We schoolgirls used to sit and talk about the future. Three seemed just right. Two boys and a girl, but close together, not like me and Dirk and Darren. They would run down the street, with me behind them, running into sun, with the light on their curls. Me calling them back, in case they got lost …

Shirley had had dreams of huge relief, where she hadn’t forgotten, after all, to have children, they were there all along, all three of them. And maybe her childless life was the dream, and one day she would wake forever in the brief night world where she felt so happy.

‘She’s gone all dreamy,’ her father continued, winking – positively winking – at Thomas!

‘
Dad
!’

‘You missed something this morning,’ said Thomas hastily, changing the subject. ‘Your father was talking about the Park. About the old days.’

‘Oh, she’d have been bored,’ said Alfred, but cheerfully.

‘No,’ she protested, she wouldn’t let him down in front of Thomas, and she bent to kiss his cheek. ‘You look better, Dad.’

‘That’s down to your friend Thomas here. Coming to cheer an old man up. Your mother’s gone off to look for Darren and whatsherface and get us both a cup of tea –’

‘Susie,’ said Shirley.

‘Not much to look at. Skinny little thing. She’s got herself a catch, with Darren.’

Thomas and Shirley exchanged glances, trying not to laugh. ‘She’s your daughter-in-law, Dad,’ Shirley reproved him.

‘I know. But she’s the third one he’s brought home.’

The cheery chappy, smiling and twinkling. Only the family saw his other side.

And yet, he loves us. It’s us he loves best.

‘I don’t know how Darren finds time for it all,’ said Thomas, looking almost laddish.

But Alfred had already lost interest. He was leaning back on his pillow again. ‘It’s all different now,’ he remarked to himself. ‘May and I have been married for over forty years. Your mother’s never looked at another man.’

Then he turned to Shirley, with a sentimental nod, and the faintest hint that she could learn from them.

As if I was less faithful than Mum. Whereas I’d have followed Kojo to hell and back
. She looked away. How come he could still hurt her? But she had to make an effort; he was old; he was ill. ‘How are you?’ she asked, frightened of the answer.

He shook his head slightly. ‘Well not too bad.’ He obviously didn’t want to expand.

‘I’d better be going,’ Thomas said. ‘Leave you two to talk to each other.’

‘No rush,’ said Alfred, and ‘Don’t go,’ Shirley added.

Then Darren and Susie came striding down the ward, with May in their wake. She was walking very slowly, clutching two cups of tea.

The others seemed to come from a different planet. Darren looked like a man on an assignment, a successful man with things to do, shoulders back, trench-coat swinging, wielding a smart black shoulder-bag that might have looked better on a woman. Susie walked like someone twenty years younger trying to get a job at the Paris collections. Smiling at air, tossing her hair, pushing her narrow hips forward. And then came May, looking tired and old.

‘I met them in the corridor,’ May announced. ‘Darren lost his handbag, and so they got late.’ Did she give a little smile as she said the word ‘handbag’?

‘Darren,’ said Shirley, getting up to greet them, and ‘Susie – Did you finish your shopping?’ She stared at Susie’s long, thin dieter’s face with its sideways slash of lipsticked smile, the ravenous teeth, the expanse of gum.

‘Have I got
crème brûlée
on my nose?’ said Susie.

‘I was just admiring your suit,’ Shirley lied.

‘Freebie from
Bazaar
. With the cutest mink gilet –’

‘Not something to boast about,’ said Darren, irritated.

‘It’s just the way of the world, my darling.’

‘Not in Hillesden,’ Thomas interjected.

And May began to laugh, at the back of them, a peal of disrespectful, youthful laughter. At moments like this Shirley loved her mother.

There were too many people round the bed. ‘Dad, I’m going to love you and leave you,’ Shirley said. ‘I’ve got a little present for you … Mum, come here and sit down in my chair.’

But she didn’t. May hardly ever seemed to sit down, at least when the family were around, as if she had to stand there waiting to serve them.

There was no alternative to giving the glass John Bull in front of everybody, so Shirley went ahead. ‘I shan’t stay while you open it.’ She laid it on the blanket by his weathered hand.

‘We tell her not to waste money on us,’ Alfred announced to all and sundry. She knew he liked to have a well-off daughter who chose to spend her money on them. He didn’t open it, but left it lying there, even more impressive with the wrapping still on. ‘Thank you, my duck,’ he said graciously.

And that was two ‘ducks’ in only one day. Shirley thought, he’s enjoying this, his family all round him, and he’s on the mend – But was he? she wondered.

‘I’m off,’ she said. And then remembered that Susie and Darren were flying back. ‘Am I going to see you two before you go?’

Darren’s charming smile looked slightly evasive. ‘We’ve got an early dinner-date with Christopher Ritchie.’

‘I meant, before you leave the country.’

‘They’re not leaving the country,’ said Alfred sharply.

So easy to forget people, when they’re horizontal. The silence that followed was uncomfortable.

‘They’re flying back to New York tonight,’ said a little voice from the back of the group. It was May, who always liked knowing things, Mum, who enjoyed knowing more than Dad.

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Darren, sounding insincere, ‘I – we don’t want to leave you, when we’ve only just got here –’

‘You’ve only just got here,’ Alfred echoed, but flat, barely indignant, looking suddenly pale. ‘I’ve hardly exchanged two words with you.’

‘Still it’s been a great relief to me to see you,’ said Darren. ‘When I got the phone call, I thought you were at death’s door.’ He laughed; it rang hollow. ‘Now you’re almost yourself again.’

Alfred looked at Darren levelly. ‘The news isn’t very good, in fact.’

The family went quiet. Was this something momentous? ‘I wasn’t going to tell you. Your mother didn’t want it. But the tests aren’t quite what they ought to be.’

‘But you’re doing very well for a man who’s had a stroke,’ Darren said, indignant.

And Alfred pulled himself up in bed. It was as if he wanted to savour the moment, a moment when he still had power over them. Perhaps he felt himself slipping away from the world of busy people who strode down the ward, or flew halfway round the world after dinner. ‘I never said I had a stroke. It was an
event
, the doctors said. Apparently I had another one last night. A stroke’s just something with your circulation. They can fix that –’

‘– Of course they can fix it,’ Darren affirmed, to no one in particular.

‘– but that’s not the problem. They’ve found some blockages. Lots of small blockages in my brain –’

‘Blood-clots?’ asked Darren, over-helpfully. He’d started to sound like an interviewer, Shirley thought, why can’t he just shut up? She was frightened, suddenly. Sharply frightened.

‘In plain English, they think I’ve got cancer. The so-called
events
are kind of fits. They look like strokes, but they’re not.’

All Shirley could think was
he’s going to die
. Dad was trying to tell them he was going to die. Poor Mum. Poor Dirk (and where was Dirk, anyway? Poor Dirk, he always got left out)
– But it was impossible. It couldn’t be true
. ‘But Dad,’ she burst out. ‘I can’t believe it. You’ve lived outdoors, you never smoked –’

‘It’s secondaries,’ he said, with a certain relish. ‘They don’t know where the primary is.’

‘He did smoke, actually,’ May put in. ‘He loved his smokes, when we were courting.’ Shirley saw none of this was news to her. She looked grave, but not shocked, whereas the children were dumbstruck. ‘You did smoke, dear, didn’t you?’

‘Oh never mind that,’ cried Alfred, furious. ‘That was years ago, woman. It’s not to do with that.’

Now it was Darren’s turn to put his foot in it. ‘It’s not exactly brain cancer, if it’s secondaries. The primary might well be lung.’

‘So you’re all doctors, are you?’ Dad fumed on his pillow. ‘And it’s my fault, is it, because I smoked?’

This scene was going terribly wrong. Shirley saw he was fighting with himself. He wanted to be brave, and dignified, but his wife and children weren’t letting him.

She felt a surge of simple pity. For he was a brave man, in his way. If there were shouts in the street, he would always go out. She had watched him chasing yobs from the Park, louts who were six inches taller than him. ‘You’re a fighter, Dad,’ she found herself saying. ‘You won’t be beaten. I know you won’t.’

‘Of course I shan’t give up,’ he snapped, but slightly appeased. He looked at her, suddenly, his pale blue eyes seeming to see her properly, as if they might be together in this. ‘You’re a good girl, Shirley … a good girl.’ He pushed himself up again with one thin arm, and made an effort to smile at his family. ‘I am a fighter. I’ve always been a fighter.’

(But that was the trouble with Dad, of course. Fighting made their lives miserable.)

‘When are they operating?’ asked Darren.

‘He doesn’t know,’ said Mum disapprovingly, as if all this openness had gone too far. As if once they let death come into the room, it would stay with them always; no going back. No going back to their normal bickering.

(But Mum was always so afraid of change. She was a coward, really, though Shirley adored her. Because just possibly, Shirley felt then, if we knew Dad was dying, if everything was spoken, we could find something different. An openness. A new way of being together. A new way of being with my dad. As if fear and lying could finally end –

He might be sorry. We might be sorry. All of us might become less frightened.)

‘They’re not going to operate,’ Alfred said. He stared at them, defiant. ‘They say they can’t operate.’ This was his moment. He waited for what he had said to sink in.

‘OK,’ said Darren, stupidly smiling. Perhaps her brilliant brother was stupid. Susie had put her arm around him, her thin arm in its bright blue jacket, three gold cuff buttons, five red nails, but under it all she offered human comfort. Shirley wished that Elroy were here. She too needed an arm around her. Darren’s mouth opened, and closed again. Then Thomas was beside him too, bearing him up.

‘People are listening,’ said May, very quietly. ‘I don’t want everyone to know our business.’

Shirley realized she meant the raddled red-head on the bed next door, who was listening avidly, not trying to pretend. She met Shirley’s eye, and did not look away, her veined eyes glittering with terrible hunger. Shirley felt a kind of senseless horror, as if it was death, lying waiting for them, and told herself,
but she’s just lonely. No one ever seems to come to see her
. She wriggled past Darren and Susie to her mother, and put her arm protectively around her shoulders (
I’m sure I never used to be so much taller
). ‘Doesn’t matter, Mum. Never mind …’