The White Family

by Maggie Gee

  We were howling for them. Coloureds, darkies. We were up for it. We wanted blood.

  The only trouble was, Dirk couldn’t actually see them, but he knew they were there, in the thick of it, so he just piled in, kicking, punching, he didn’t feel fear, he didn’t feel pain, he was like invincible, one of Dad’s words, one of Dad’s words for the British army, and he was a soldier, he was like Dad –

  Until some crazy bint started screaming. Some woman started screaming, not very far off, Police and Murder and Help and everything, and then they knew the game was up, she was screaming as if her house was burning down, though they weren’t hurting her, it was nothing to her, they could see this little figure in a lit-up window in one of the houses alongside the Park, screaming, ‘What are you doing? Murder, murder!’ Some crazy woman. Some trouble-maker. Sounded Paki, to Dirk, sort of singsong, foreign, so why was she bothering to stick up for niggers?

  The screams were so loud. They like cut into his ears. She’d have everyone opening their windows and gawping. So they more or less stopped. One of his ribs felt broken, or else one of the bastards had winded him. (But at least he felt it. His feeling was back. He had a headache, but he wasn’t so drunk.) Funny thing was, he never saw the buggers plainly, it was like they disappeared in a puff of smoke … It was almost like the lads had been fighting each other.

  They were on their own. Panting in the darkness. Listening to this crazy woman screaming.

  Dirk suddenly noticed he was shivering, shaking, although it was very warm for March.

  So we legged it, didn’t we. Course we did. We had defeated the blacks. We had given them a kicking. Now we had to run before the police car came –

  But we heard it in the distance, they’d been fucking quick, we heard the sirens wailing, and we split.

  39 • Shirley

  Fate took a hand – did God take a hand? She had never felt Jesus was a puritan. Because He’s young, and we see His body …

  So many pictures of his naked body, although He was dying, his nakedness. Perhaps the Bible can’t admit He had sex because it would be complicated if He had children. Then there would be grandsons and granddaughters of God. Neither wholly human nor wholly divine.

  (Maybe that was the truth of life on earth. We do wrong things. We do terrible things. But we do have sparks, moments, of goodness. Maybe we’re all God’s grandchildren.

  She would never dare say that to a priest.)

  As they sat in the café, Shirley was paged; there was hideous crackling, a blare of howl-round, ‘Mr Elroy King regrets he is prevented by work from picking up Mrs Shirley White.’ And Thomas said, ‘Then I’ll walk you home.’

  It had grown dark, while they stood round the bed. The air was still fresh from the morning’s rain, but a warm wind, almost summery, completely wrong for the time of year, had blown most of the clouds away from the sky, and behind the silver edges of the last small cloudlets a calm white moon came into view, a moon that looked down on Shirley’s hurt heart and said, This is only one night among many, only one pain among so many, look at me, I am always here.

  She had always loved the moon. So did Kojo.

  ‘Great moon,’ said Thomas. ‘I’m glad to be outside.’

  ‘You helped with Dad,’ she said to him, putting her hand upon his shoulder, which was rather broad, she couldn’t help noticing (what precisely had they done at Darren’s wedding? Danced, certainly. But kissed? – More?) ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I admire your dad.’

  She wished he didn’t; she was glad he did.

  It was Saturday, she realized, listening. The roads around the hospital were quiet, but she could hear odd shrieks in the distance, the young enjoying themselves in the moonlight … At least, she hoped they were enjoying themselves. Despite her sorrow, she felt oddly content, walking down the road with a different man, slightly taller and broader than the one she was used to.

  ‘Will Dirk be all right?’ asked Thomas. ‘He looked awful.’

  ‘He lives at home, it’s not much of a life.’

  ‘I see him nearly every day, you know. When I buy my paper. Don’t think he likes me.’

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ she cut in, firmly. She had a sudden urge to tell Thomas he was nice.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s lost his job,’ said Thomas. ‘Nothing ever changes, in that shop. He must get very bored, poor kid.’

  Shirley always tried not to think about Dirk. Sometimes he seemed comic, like a bad cartoon … But all that anger. All that pain. ‘Yes, I think he’s always been bored. It’ll be worse than ever, if he loses his job.’

  Talking in an easy, disjointed rhythm, as if they had known each other for ages (which they had, in a way, since they were both kids), they wandered on towards the Park.

  They were about two streets away when they began to hear screams, which at first sounded like all the other Saturday night shouting. Playful shrieks that sounded like murder. Teenagers, off the leash, on the booze.

  Shirley started to think the screams were getting louder.

  But Thomas had just made her laugh, telling her something about the library, and she was telling him dribs and drabs of gossip about the end of Darren’s second marriage.

  Then there was a moment when neither of them was talking, there was just the companionable tramp of their feet, and they both heard it very clearly, a high-pitched screaming, going on and on, a woman’s voice, surely, and a male voice, or voices. They stopped and listened, staring at each other, trying to read each other’s faces, pale and tense in the light of the moon.

  Then suddenly Thomas broke into a smile. ‘Oh it’s OK,’ he said. ‘I think I know what that is. It’s just a couple rowing, I heard them last night –’

  ‘Couples can still kill one another –’

  ‘But then I heard them making love.’

  He looked at Shirley; she looked at him. The thing he had said became very exciting.

  ‘We’re quite near my house, actually,’ he said, gesturing past the moon-touched shadows, the glitter and dark of the roadside puddles, a cat that shot out and retreated again. Thomas’s fingers brushed her shoulder.

  But the screams went on. Shirley hated the sound. She wanted to muffle it in cloth. She wanted the comfort of his large warm body, but she knew she shouldn’t be thinking like that.

  He touched her again. ‘Look would you like a coffee or a drink or something – before I take you home? You’ve had a ghastly day.’

  ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’ (That was the authentic voice of her parents.)

  Then the world exploded. The night tore apart down a blinding line of fluorescent blue and red and white, there was a deafening noise of sirens blaring, two police cars came tearing down the road and straight at the corner where they were stood, they were going too fast to corner properly and suddenly one was coming straight for her, its white eyes blazing out of the black, she couldn’t move, she was paralysed …

  Then she was on her knees, half-stunned, in the darkness, the blaze had gone, the noise was retreating, my God, they had hit her, she was bruised but alive, her heart lurched and thudded against her breastbone –

  ‘Bastards! Bastards! You nearly killed me!’

  ‘Shirley, Shirley, are you all right?’

  ‘He drove straight at me –’

  ‘I pulled you over –’

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘They were going so fast.’

  Thomas held her tight. ‘You’re shivering.’

  But he was too. ‘Look, I will have a coffee.’

  He helped her up. Her legs trembled. They walked the few hundred yards to his door with his arm lightly around her shoulders.

  He turned the key, but the doorway was blocked by a couple standing with their arms around each other: a very pretty girl, rather red in the face, skinny and blond like Michelle Pfeiffer, and her boyfriend, a biggish, greasy-haired type, who leered at Shirley, and said, ‘Sorry – are we in your way? Just saying ou
r goodnights.’

  He somehow made the words suggestive. The girl looked annoyed or upset or nervous, but when Thomas said, ‘You all right, Melissa?’ she nodded and looked down at the ground.

  Shirley and Thomas went upstairs. The skinny girl called up after him, ‘I’ve started your book. I really like it!’ But Thomas didn’t answer her.

  Shirley looked around while he did things in the kitchen. His flat was crammed floor to ceiling with books, and big jungly plants, and photographs. One of the moon in the night sky. Thomas must have a romantic streak.

  She could see the real moon, slightly smaller, sailing above the trees through the window, silver-white against the black of the sky. A true full moon. We nearly died … She tried to thank God, but she couldn’t pray.

  She looked at his desk, which was covered in paper, and books propped open with envelopes and pencils. Thomas was a writer, of course he was. She peeked at something he had underlined, and ‘mourning’ caught her eye. Kojo, she thought.

  ‘Derrida’s contretemps of mourning – where the other’s death is always first and constitutive of my most proper Jemeinigkeit; and where my “own” death is never actually my own … She stopped reading. It made no sense, it had nothing to do with actual mourning.

  Then she saw something else. On the mantelpiece. A moon-faced figure, unmistakable, long trunk of a body, small hills of breasts – it was an Akua’ba, surely. A Ghanaian figure. But why was it here? Her flesh prickled, remembering the bitterest days with Kojo, when endless cousins seemed to come from Ghana.

  All of them teased us about having babies, until they saw that something was wrong.

  Then they began to offer advice. Most of it seemed to be aimed at Shirley, they always assumed that Kojo was fertile (and she sometimes wondered now, did they know he was? Did he really have children already at home, as his cousin Gifty had tried to tell her? – She would always love him. It didn’t matter.) ‘I could bring Shirley an Akua’ba doll. Never mind if it’s old-fashioned, it works.’ If childless women held the dolls, it was meant to help them to have their own babies. But Kojo refused, laughing angrily. ‘She’s a modern woman. She doesn’t need witchcraft.’

  Shirley had seen one in his second cousin’s flat. Like babies, Akua’maa, little black babies, rounded necks, big eyes, high foreheads. Wooden dolls you could hold in your arms.

  She picked up Thomas’s Akua’ba.

  Thomas came in with two mugs of cocoa ‘to warm you up’. And a bottle of whisky.

  She didn’t drink whisky, she didn’t drink spirits –

  But she felt she could do anything, anything at all, because she had come so near to death.

  She heard her heart. Still loud, still jumping. She felt very wild; her father was dying, the rigid pin at the centre of the world.

  ‘You still look shaken,’ Thomas said, glugging a whisky into a glass. ‘Is that too much?’

  ‘Yes … No – Thomas, where on earth did you get this?’ (Cradling the Akua’ba.)

  ‘My moon goddess? In Canada. Isn’t she pretty? I just bought her in a shop.’

  ‘She’s Ghanaian …’ Shirley shivered, remembering. She didn’t want to explain it to Thomas.

  ‘You’re still trembling. Those maniacs.’

  She tried to pull herself together. ‘Mum always says they’re just off for their tea.’

  ‘They nearly killed you. We should complain.’

  ‘And get nowhere. Well you might get somewhere, Thomas.’ Because she felt they owned the world, people like him, with degrees, and good jobs.

  ‘No one takes notice of librarians … Journalists are a different matter. Your brother, for example. We should tell him.’

  Shirley took a deep draft of her drink. The fire ran straight to her throat, her cheeks. ‘Darren’ll soon be on his way back to New York, as soon as he’s seen his trendy friends. He doesn’t care about us in England. He writes his column, but he couldn’t give a toss. He said that to me once, twenty years ago, when those American bombs were coming to England. Cruise missiles, weren’t they. And Darren said, “I write pieces saying it’s an outrage, but the truth is, no one in America cares. The British Isles are just so small. No one would care if they sank into the sea.” Darren wouldn’t care if we were blown to buggery.’ Shirley swore rarely, but now she enjoyed it.

  Thomas was watching her with odd intensity. ‘We could both have been wiped out, just now. In one split second. Who would have cared? I wouldn’t even get an obituary.’

  Shirley thought, we’re living on a different planet. Thomas wants his life to be written about. Whereas mine is so little. So ordinary.

  And yet she liked him, all the same. He had a wistfulness she related to. As if the surface had been chipped away. She tried to remember about his marriage. The wife had red hair. Almost certainly left him.

  They were sitting on his sofa, quite close together. ‘But you’re bleeding,’ Thomas suddenly said. ‘Look.’ And he put his hand on the side of her knee, and she saw there was a big hole in her tights and a black patch of skin traced with lines of red. His hand was large and white against the blackness. She wasn’t used to large white hands. His finger was tracing the edge of the nylon, the delicate edge where clothed became naked.

  ‘You’re still trembling,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring a bowl. We ought to wash it.’ His face was absolutely fixed on hers, stricken, tender, a kind of rawness as if they had been through fire together, and it seemed quite natural, inevitable for her to reach out and touch his cheek, his big man’s cheek, which was warm and rough – Elroy shaved twice a day, religiously. All her nerve ends felt near the surface.

  And after all, he had saved her life, God had sent him to save her life, she could never have moved, it came so quickly – it was Thomas who pushed her out of the way.

  What happened next seemed equally natural, he took her hand that was stroking his cheek and pressed it to his mouth, kissed it, sucked it. Why did she think of a child feeding? He was older than her, but he needed comfort, they all needed comfort, hungry men. Men without sex. She could always tell. She felt his hunger; it excited her. And yet he was also comforting her, and she needed comfort, she was sore, she was bleeding, she had faced death two times that day. Now he was stroking her knee again, in a kind of wondering, hypnotized way.

  He seemed like all men and all boys to Shirley. He was like the boys she had grown up with, his whiteness, the softness of his hair, but too big and too gentle to be her father, thank God she had never had men like her father, and she took him in her arms, he took her in his arms, they were holding each other and kissing, suddenly, trying to suck out each other’s centres, trying to eat each other like fruit.

  Taking their clothes off felt easy and simple, as if they had always been naked together.

  They were very quick, as if it was essential, as if they had to steal what they wanted before death came and took it away, as if they were teenagers hiding from their parents instead of the middle-aged people they were. But they weren’t shy, and they weren’t guilty, though Thomas had a look of stunned delight as if he was half-afraid of waking up.

  But his erection was real, and solid, his beautiful, smooth, heavy penis, the weight and swing of his big male body, she had always been moved by men’s nakedness, by the way their passion shows so clearly, their huge hunger, their desire to come in.

  And she wanted him. She needed him. She could hardly wait to pull him inside her, and they lay on the sofa, side by side, one of her legs between his two, and he pushed inside with a groan of pleasure, she held his hair, it was thick in her hands, she stroked the naked back of his neck, she moved her hips and they moved together and his face had an expression of bliss as if everything in the world was right. One of his hands was holding her breast, pulling gently on the nipple. ‘Beautiful breasts,’ he whispered to her, ‘Your beautiful breasts, you’re so lovely, Shirley, why didn’t we do this years ago?’ She put her finger upon his lips and soon they were moving in rhythm togethe
r, their breath getting faster, they were panting, moaning, she wanted him, oh she wanted him, she wanted this, it was racing through her, nothing could stop it, she came, she came – she came with a great deep moan of pleasure that seemed to go on and on around him, and then he changed rhythm and began to groan and came with a shuddering, shouting roar and then stopped moving, deep inside her.

  They were exhausted. They lay as one.

  Shirley realized she had been asleep, for Thomas was staring down at her, leaning on one elbow, his face anxious. ‘Shirley,’ he said. ‘Are you all right? My God, Shirley. I don’t know what happened … I didn’t even think about contraception.’

  She couldn’t help smiling at his rueful face. ‘Well you don’t have to blaspheme about it.’ She was half-joking, but he looked depressed.

  ‘Are you religious? – I suppose you are. Sorry, sorry. Sorry.’

  ‘Look I didn’t think about it, either.’ She still felt sleepy. She didn’t want to talk. It was curiously peaceful, lying there, in this unfamiliar place, with his face gazing down.

  ‘It’s moon madness,’ she said to him, running her finger along his collar-bone. To her he looked pale, compared to Elroy, but actually he was golden, olive, she remembered they called him dago at school, because he was part Italian (or Spanish).

  So good to be close to another person. We’re close to so few people, in the course of a life … She held the moment in her hands. She wanted him to be happy too. ‘Don’t worry about the contraception angle. I was trying to get pregnant for over six years.’

  ‘Did I pressure you?’ he asked. ‘I probably did. I just – wanted you, Shirley. I mean, I don’t go round doing things like that.’