The White Family

by Maggie Gee

  The trouble is, I was – afraid. I don’t remember being so afraid, since I was young, in Palestine. You need time, to be brave. And I wasn’t ready. When the big battle comes, I want to be ready. I shan’t be short with anyone, then.

  I was short with Shirley yesterday too. If I have a fault, it’s a touch of temper. A man gets tired, a man with a job, a man who is doing a difficult job. With the various pressures that job entails. May understood. She’s a good woman. May knew a man has to let off steam.

  I wasn’t the easiest man at home. I tried to be fair, I was hard but fair – I hope I was fair. I did my best. Things happened I’m not entirely proud of, now. Still a father has to take the lead. And boys get cocky, and their heads get swelled. Need to be taken down a peg or two. It was all quickly over. Over and done with. None of our family ever bore a grudge.

  But I think I was remiss in hitting Shirley. Never hurt her, of course. But hitting a girl …

  I never lost my rag in the Park, all the same. In the Park I had to be calm as Job. (I think it was Job. May would know.)

  Those flowers. Shirley thought I wouldn’t like the whiteness. I remember the Park, covered with snow. The perfect place. Suddenly perfect. Everything clean and shining bright. Not a mark on it, first thing in the morning. And the café turned into a magic palace.

  Kids think they know you. When they don’t at all. They can’t get to know you, because they’re bored. They think they know the answers, so they don’t ask questions. They go deaf if you talk about anything that matters to you … They’re afraid you’ll go on about it, you see. They’re afraid that you’ll embarrass them. (Though Dirk was a bit different. That boy could listen.)

  The flowers in the Park were always a joy. Very bright, of course, all the colours of the rainbow. We didn’t go in for white, in the Park. You have to make a show, it’s a different thing. That’s probably what Shirley was thinking of. As if the Park was me, which it isn’t.

  (Funny thing is, that’s been said to me. And I do confess to a certain pride. More than once, by a member of the public. ‘You are the Park, Alfred. Can’t imagine it without you.’ But I know the truth. I’m not irreplaceable. Any good man could hold the fort. That’s what they need. When all’s said and done. They could train someone up alongside me. I’d be happy with that. Life goes on. I’m already over age. It stands to reason … And it’d be nice to have company. Like the old days when we went out in pairs. You had someone to have a chat and a laugh with. They’re good men, in the Parks Service. Better than average. The cream of the crop. Probably because it’s a job to be proud of. Serving the public, maddening as they are. Even if they’re coloured, even if they’re barmy, even if they’re like the unfortunate woman who came and sat in my hut for a chat and the next thing I knew she had taken her blouse off – I had to cover her up double-quick. It takes a good man to cope with things like that.)

  The flowers in the Park are a little bit special. Lovely reds and pinks and blues, tulips, geraniums, hyacinths … And yellow primroses and golden polyanthus and hundreds of daffodils in February. ‘Yellow Gold’. That was one of May’s poems. She was shy about them, but it was one of her best. It was after she’d seen the daffs in the Park. I’d forgotten my flask, and she brought it in, and when she saw the lines of daffodils, she just said, ‘Ooh. Ooh, that’s lovely.’ And went away and wrote her poem.

  I found it that evening on the Basildon Bond. She liked to have a nice pad to write on. I always told her she should publish them, but she laughed at me, and said I knew nothing about it. Which wasn’t very nice; I can have my opinion. But she always thought herself better than me, better than all of us I suppose, with her books and her reading and her poetry.

  I suppose I’ll see the daffs next year. A sudden uprush of choking fear. But of course I’m going back to work. That’s the good thing about them not operating. I ought to get back to work a lot sooner.

  I might have years. People have years. People go on for years with cancer.

  Most things turn out all right in the end. We won the war, coming from behind. I got the job I always wanted. May married me, which I thought she never would. We had three kids, all of them healthy. Shirley got over her childhood asthma. I’ve always been fit. It’ll help me now. If anyone’s got a good chance, it’s me.

  Besides, I’m – needed. The Park needs me. Until they’ve trained up another man. There used to be six of us. Unbelievable. They cut the jobs down one by one. Now there’s just me. And if I go – I’ve sometimes wondered if they’d ever replace me.

  They’d soon find out. What every Park Keeper knows. Given half a chance, it goes back to jungle. Fences get broken. Flowers get picked. Disgusting things get dumped in the shrubbery. Girls get frightened. Windows get smashed. People can be nice, they can be very nice, but give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. There’s good and there’s bad, but the bad will win if men like me don’t keep a look out.

  To say any different is lazy rubbish.

  You have to be tough. You have to be strong. That’s how the British got their empire. And maybe we’ve lost it by going soft. Just like the fall of the Roman Empire. The best of the Romans died at their posts. Died fighting for what they believed in. Too few Romans, there were by then, and great dark hordes pouring over the walls …

  They’ve kept cutting down, the council have, they’ve gone on weakening us, year by year. The new idea is, authority is bad. The new idea is all softly softly. ‘For fear of upsetting people,’ they say. For fear of upsetting the coloured people. That’s who they mean; call a spade a spade. That’s why they took the dogs away. The whole of the building at the back of our yard used to be kennels for the Alsatians. We used to patrol the Park in pairs, and each pair had an Alsatian with them. But no, they said people were getting upset, they said people felt we looked like policemen. They meant coloured people were getting upset. It’s coloured people who don’t like policemen, and ask yourself why? Why don’t they like policemen? If you don’t like the police, you’ve got something to hide.

  The bloody coloureds, that’s all they care about, down at the town hall these days. It’s because of them they took our uniforms away. We had proper uniforms, till a few years ago, uniforms you would call uniforms, nice black serge, very warm in winter, with silver buttons and a decent peaked cap and the badge of the Parks Service on the front. Those uniforms were a godsend to us. One look and people could see what was what. So they didn’t argue the toss, did they?

  The old days. The good old days.

  There weren’t any coloureds when I was a kid. It was just a normal part of London. We were all the same. We were all one. No one was rich. We stuck together …

  May says I do too much looking back. But sometimes I don’t like to think about the future.

  Sometimes I think our world is ending. All the things we believed in, gone.

  But it’s me that’s ending. Me that’s going.

  Nonsense. I’ll be back in the Park next week. Make sure the gardeners haven’t been slacking. Good boys, all of them. Decent boys. When I started in the Park, I was young, so young. Younger than these young boys I work with.

  Alfred still felt as young as any of them. He still walked fast, you had to walk fast to keep the whole Park covered on your own (would he still walk fast when he got out of here? Of course he would; in his head he did; in his head he walked up and down the ward, keeping an eye on things, touching his cap.) He still felt young, when there was no one around he would even have a little dance, in his hut, when the radio played one of the good old tunes – but he knew his children didn’t think he was young. Parents were people who had never been young.

  (I wish I’d had more time to play with the kids.

  I wish I hadn’t been so hard on them.)

  I was young, and hopeful that the world would get better. We were sure there would be miracles, after the war. I thought we’d all walk into a golden future.

  Where did it go? What happened to our future, t
he one so many people suffered and died for? There was something wonderful we all meant to share, after going through so much together. But it just … evaporated. That was it. The free orange juice, the milk, the ration-books, the things we had in the nineteen fifties. The National Health spectacles; they were free, little round wonky ones that sat on people’s noses. Pale blue and pink ones for the kids. The National Health. It was for everybody. That was a miracle, we all thought so. Nit shampoo and aspirin when you needed them. And then they began to charge for prescriptions, pennies, at first, then just a few bob, and now they come asking for paper money, and most people just do without. And yet it’s still here. Just about still there. The National Health Service, waiting for me. Even if I’ve left it a bit late to ask.

  Was it to this ward that my life was pointing?

  Alfred closed his eyes against the glare of the lights. Visiting time would soon be beginning. He mustn’t drift off, he looked up again, but he couldn’t lie staring at the bar of fluorescent, he turned on his side for a moment’s respite, propping his eyelid on the slope of the pillow, closing the eye that faced the light, but the pillow was blinding, too soft, too white, he’d liked a flat pillow ever since the war when they’d slept on the concrete floor of the shelter, but that was all over, things had gone soft, softer, softness, sucking him down …

  And Alfred slept, despite himself. Slept until a quiet coughing woke him.

  He was rather put out to see Thomas Lovell. ‘I thought you’d be May,’ Alfred said. ‘Are you early, lad? If visiting’s started, May would be here.’

  He didn’t like the feeling of being looked down on. They all came gawping, once you were ill. And he wanted May. He wanted her badly. What the hell was she playing at, not being here? He craned his neck round to look at the doors. Typical woman, never there when you needed them. Though to be fair, she had always been there, ever since they were little more than kids together. When he lost his mum. When his brother got cancer. May nursed his brother until he died … But now, when Alfred needed her more than ever, she’d skipped off and left him. Damn her, damn her –

  Just at that moment the doors flapped heavily and May hurried through, screwing up her eyes, looking for him, peering, anxious, breaking into a beam when she saw his face, and all his anger leaked away into relief. She was wearing her smart blue coat for once. Then he saw how pale and tired she was.

  He hadn’t any time to make her welcome. There was something vital to talk about. He couldn’t leave it to the doctors to tell her. Why ever did he think he would? – In any case, he needed comfort. Only May could comfort him.

  ‘Thomas is here,’ he said fretfully, as if she couldn’t see that for herself. ‘I thought you’d get here early, May.’ But they took each other’s hands, like magnets, halves of a whole springing back together.

  ‘I’ll leave you for a moment,’ said Thomas, after a pause. ‘I’ll take a stroll along the ward.’

  ‘Thomas,’ said May. ‘You’re a good boy.’

  And he was gone; tall and young. Leaving the ward with that casual ease. How Alfred longed to follow him.

  They looked at each other, and both guessed at once the other knew what there was to know.

  ‘Have they told you, then –?’Alfred began, and May at the same moment stumbled through ‘Did they say anything? Did the doctor come –?’

  She sighed slightly with pain as she rotated her arm, the one which had the worst arthritis, to put it gently round his shoulders, and she stroked his head, she touched his bare scalp, she had never got used to the bareness of his scalp, how naked it felt, how intimate.

  ‘They told me Thursday,’ she said. ‘On my way out. I haven’t slept a wink since. Oh Alfred, love … I can’t believe it.’

  He lay there unable to speak for an instant. Their two skulls touched; they were one in grief. Their hands squeezed gentle and unconscious as a heartbeat. Somehow her love would keep him alive. But then he thought, nothing can keep me alive, if the doctors give up and say I’m a goner. She was sniffling, quietly, like a little dog, a heartbreaking sound like the puppy they had when they were first married, a black-and-white mongrel which got run over. He’d had to carry it into the house. He was the man. It was up to him.

  I don’t want to leave her, he thought, suddenly, it’s nonsense, how ever could we say goodbye? But he brushed the thought away. He had to be strong.

  ‘What are you crying for?’ he asked her. ‘People will look,’ and from the corner of his eye, he saw Pamela clutching on to someone’s armchair, concentrating on her balance, one stop on her long hard journey back. Not that he cared about Pamela. Liked her, yes, no more than that; but you had to keep up appearances. He didn’t want May to let herself down.

  ‘Oi up, my darling,’ he said more kindly. ‘We haven’t got anything to cry about yet. I could go on for another ten years –’

  But he saw from her face that she didn’t think so. Perhaps they told her more than me. That thought injected a brief spurt of anger.

  ‘It’s just that I – I need you, Alfred … I don’t want to be alone.’

  Which moved him, because all their life together he’d known she longed to be alone. To get away from him and the kids and the housework and read her books and write her poems. But now in the end it seemed she didn’t. Which softened his fear, unreasonable, real, that secretly people would, well, be glad. That the kids didn’t like him, and nor did May. That he was somehow a burden to them.

  ‘I’m not going to leave you, May, darling. You’re …’

  He struggled. Now words had to be said, for May loved words. She needed them. When things had gone wrong in their life over the years, she had sometimes looked at him – ‘Say something, Alfred’ – with the eyes of someone staring out at the desert, hoping against hope that something would come, but all too often he had left her thirsty, hating himself and pitying her. Then the only thing he could do was be angry – ‘Talking won’t mend it,’ he would snap at her. So how was she to guess he would have loved to talk if the words hadn’t locked themselves away? That was why she needed the other Alfred, he thought to himself, her secret lover – and he smiled at her with old affection, and gave up the thing he could never quite say.

  ‘You should have been married to Alfred Tennyson. What good have I ever been to you? You deserve better, with your books and your poems.’ But it wasn’t enough. She didn’t smile back, and her big blue eyes were full of pain, not so different, he thought, from when she was a girl, their rounded lids, their funny pale lashes. A surge of emotion lifted him up. ‘You’re … a good wife, May. A lovely wife. No one could have been a better wife.’

  He had never said such a thing before. To his slight alarm, she turned her face so it couldn’t be seen from the ward around them, turned her face against his neck, and leaned against him, she was quite a weight, she felt bigger than he was, now he was brought low, and the tears ran down and soaked his pyjamas.

  The fear left him, then. For she must really love him, a thing he had known for over forty years, but always needed to know again. He realized she would never leave him. He’d thought all their life that she might leave him, because he’d gone bald, because he wasn’t handsome, because he had never got the Park Keeper’s lodge where they’d dreamed of living when they first got married, because he lost his temper with the kids (and all right it sometimes went further than that, but he wasn’t a brute, there were far worse than him), because she was pretty (though she wasn’t vain and didn’t often make the most of herself), because she was sensitive and a lady, not by birth but in every sense that mattered, because she was educated and refined, because he farted whenever she cooked cabbage, because she had to wash his underpants. And now he saw that she would not leave him, would never leave him, now, till he died, and with that knowledge a great fear was conquered, a fear as strong as the fear of death, and for a few brief moments he felt safe and warm, for a few brief moments they were both quite happy, each clutching the gift that the other had
given.

  I’ve been a good wife, after all.

  If I die first, I shan’t be alone.

  After a few moments, May sat up and blew her nose, briskly, modestly, still turned away from the sight of the ward.

  ‘We’ve been through a lot, together, Alfred,’ she said, and her voice was firmer now, the old crisp May, putting strength into his bones, fire in his belly. ‘We’ve been through a lot, and we’ll come through this. Together we’re … unbeatable.’ Her voice went funny when she said ‘unbeatable’, but then she managed to smile at him, as if life was a joke, it’s all right, Alfred, as if they could laugh at it together.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘That’s right, my duck ….’ He patted her hand. It would all pan out.

  ‘Are you going to tell the children?’ she asked. ‘We don’t want to upset them, do we?’

  ‘Maybe not Dirk. Dirk’s too young.’

  ‘He’s not as young as we think, you know. But I don’t see the point of upsetting them yet. It might all come to nothing, Alfred.’

  ‘Do you think the doctors are making it up?’ He dropped her hand, suddenly annoyed. Sometimes her mouth was not connected to her brain. ‘The children have a right to know. For instance, Darren might decide to stop home. He might even bring my grandsons to see me –’

  ‘– not forgetting your granddaughter,’ May put in, correcting him in the way he hated.

  ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten her. “Grandsons” obviously included Felicity.’

  For a second he could see she was ready to bicker, but then her softer side prevailed. ‘It would be nice to see them, wouldn’t it? Better than photographs at Christmas.’

  ‘He does his best,’ Alfred said staunchly. ‘The pressures of fame –’

  ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it?’ May said, softly. ‘That one of our children is actually famous.’ Their hands sneaked across the blanket again and held each other, held and squeezed.

  ‘When you think how poor we were. We didn’t do badly with those kids. You were always a good manager.’