The White Family

by Maggie Gee

  And so his life became a net of secrets. He had to go with girls, or his family would suspect him, but after he’d had two or three girlfriends, and had sex with them adequately, but with little pleasure, he told his brother that he had decided to follow the teaching of the Church.

  ‘Winston,’ said Elroy, who was in his mid-twenties, still working, then, at the Leisure Centre, where his smile and his six-pack was a hit with the world-a-girls. ‘I feel that way once a month as well. Lasts me ten minutes after the service.’

  ‘I mean it,’ said Winston, and he did. Though Elroy playfully beat him up.

  Then Elroy had gone through his own bad times when his baby mother Desree got another man and said she never wanted to see him again, and Elroy changed completely, pining for his son, starting to retrain with the NHS, going to the Temple every other week.

  Not that it had lasted, Winston thought. His brother might be crazy for Shirley now, his brother might even want to marry that girl, but he still went clubbing and saw the sistas. One or two sistas in particular. As far as he could see, Shirley knew nothing. And Elroy seemed to almost believe his own propaganda, reformed man, pillar of the Temple …

  But now he’d started getting at Winston again, nudging him to come down the club with him, asking him things about his sex life. ‘Why you so close, man?’ he’d asked last week, running into Winston in the supermarket car park. ‘Reckon you running a baby mama somewhere. Now you got to make a honest woman of her.’ But underneath the jokes, was he on to something?

  Winston knew his family could never accept him, never in a thousand years. So he had started to avoid them. But James Baldwin said, ‘You don’t ever leave home. You take your home with you.’ Terrible but true. He stared at the pleasant green hill before him, crowned with its ring of waving trees.

  He began to walk up the side of the hill, past a bed of red tulips blazing red in the sun, stiff as soldiers, with sooty black centres. Danger; anger. He had to be himself. But they’d never, ever let him be himself.

  And Elroy thought his life was complicated …

  Brother, brother. Winston needed a brother. But the bredrins all hated battyboys. To think it was still actually illegal in Jamaica!

  This Park had changed forever one day. He was – fourteen? Fifteen? It was high summer. There had been a row in school that day. There was an Asian boy whose name he had forgotten, perhaps because he didn’t want to remember – Ramesh, yes. The shame, the shame … He had been seen walking in the playing-fields at lunch-time with the R E teacher. The boys had suspicions of Mr Webster already. Someone had seen him buying food with a man. A dozen or so boys trapped Ramesh by the toilets after school and, with Winston watching, shoved him inside. At the last moment before he was dragged out of sight, his eyes seemed to meet Winston’s in desperate appeal, saying, please, Winston, are you like me? – and Winston could neither deny what he telegrammed, nor find the courage to answer it. He stood fixed to the spot, sweating, wincing, till the screaming started and he ran home.

  Later that evening he had come into the Park and sat alone on the seat near the gates. He was going to kill himself, that was clear. He’d felt better, he remembered, having made that decision. But a young white man in jeans and a black singlet came and sat beside him. They looked at each other. Then Winston got up and followed him.

  It was a kind of pattern, for the next six years. Except it lacked the beauty of regularity. And Winston could never tell his family. So he had to travel on in the shadow of the lie. And part of him went on hoping he would change. He might fall in love with – anybody. He might suddenly find he was in love with a girl, and the cramped knot of falsehood would resolve, in an instant, everything would be free and easy –

  But it never happened. He knew it never would.

  So he had resolved they would have to know. They would have to know, or he’d never be free. Even if they rejected him (but his worst fear was simply of hurting his mother; of watching her sit and shake and cry). He felt pity for her, then burning rage, because why should he always feel pity for others? – why should he think about his family’s feelings when they cared as little about his feelings as if he had just dropped down from the moon –?

  He would tell them even if it killed him. He thought, in the end I would rather die –

  His life for six years had been horribly lonely. Endless deceptions. Constant watchfulness. And he had grown weary. Too weary to bear it. They did not know him. So did not love him. They refused to know him, so could not love him. Lies, lies and loneliness.

  He had tried with hints, small acts of daring. Choosing Baldwin, for example, for his third-year thesis. But his family were too ignorant to take the hint. What they did not want to see, they could not see.

  So he’d asked them to the film last week. Surely Elroy or one of his sisters might come. They might see in a flash what he’d been trying to tell them. But only Shirley took up his invitation. He had still been hopeful. Would she understand? If so, maybe she would talk to his brother … He had nerved himself to tell her everything, although she was white, although she was a woman. There was something about her he almost trusted. As if she had been hurt, so would not hurt him.

  Then that fule fule librarian had come along. And there was no more chance of saying anything.

  He felt lonelier than ever, as he came up the hill with the low afternoon sunlight dazzling his eyes. He couldn’t see where he was going; dogs barked, birds sang, he walked blindly onwards.

  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.

  37 • Shirley

  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-c
alled 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.)