The White Family (17 page)

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Why not? Of course you could. We’ve no kids of our own. We’d love to have you. Besides. I understand. I felt like you. A few years ago, I tried to do what you did, I took half a bottle of sleeping pills. It must have been fate, my meeting you. I saw it in your eyes, what you were going to do.’

It wasn’t fate, though. Jesus saved me. He sees each sparrow as it falls.

I sobbed like a baby, and Ruby listened, and took me home, and let me weep, and didn’t tell me to pull myself together. I think some part of her liked me weeping. Because of the tears locked up inside her, because I could cry for both of us, and then she could mother me, comfort me.

Jesus saw me. Not a sparrow falls …

I know that God sent Ruby to save me.

Though her ankle was sore, and one palm was grazed, May found that her fall had left her in good spirits, so far as she could be, with Alfred ill. That nice young man had cheered her up, and Mr Varsani was concern itself, finding her a plaster behind his counter, and giving her new forms to fill in for the pension. Now the money, thank God, was safe in his till, though she’d kept twenty pounds, on a sudden impulse, to buy a few bits and pieces on the Rise. Very concerned about Alfred, he was. Though Alfred never had a good word for him.

That’s what we’re here for, to help each other. I’m not a good Christian, but I do think that. And that’s what that young man was doing. I blame the light, for the misunderstanding. My eyes aren’t good, but I’m not prejudiced. I never have been. Unlike poor Alfred.

What goes around, comes around, Darren likes to say. Maybe one day I shall return the favour. Do something good for one of his people. May found she had forgotten the young man’s name.

She daydreamed, wandering on down the high street, further south than she ever went, about saving a pretty black toddler from a river … But she couldn’t swim, so it wasn’t very likely. She changed it, plunging in front of a car to snatch a black infant from the jaws of death. The mother wept and hung round her neck. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ May smiled to herself.

The sun was coming out, flickering, steadying, coming in lances through the dull grey cloud, and as it came out, life came back. The red brick bloomed, and even the road had a sheen of bluey-purple petrol. A red-and-white, feathery, luxurious cat came delicately picking its way across it. May shook the water off her sleeves.

She was looking for the other off-licence which used to exist near the end of the high street. She couldn’t face going back to the one with the bored young girl who smelled of whisky.
She’d think that I was no better than she is
.

What she found, below the traffic lights, was a whole new world coming into existence. As upper Hillesden had been decaying, lower Hillesden was on its way up. She nearly walked into a chair on the pavement, and thought, confusedly, was it a junk-shop? But then she saw another one, two, three, and a half-caste youth setting up small tables, it was a café, for goodness sake, a pavement café like they had in Paris. She peered at the menu; it was all in French. She thought the young man was looking at her oddly, so she said, with a smile, trying to be friendly, ‘My daughter would like this. She likes French things,’ but he gawped at her as if she was crazy.

Suddenly there were more people around. May took her time, enjoying it. Something new to tell Alfred about. Young people lived in lower Hillesden, girls with crewcuts and boys with dark glasses, their hair all the colours of the rainbow, carrying computers in little flat cases like the one Darren had when he last came home. Some of them had frayed flared trousers and tangled hair and looked like beggars, but some of them had that glossy look, and the confident voices that meant they had money. There were cars, too, frivolous cars, a yellow one shaped like a cigar and a silver one like a shiny beetle. Brand-new cars, parked carelessly.

And she dimly recalled what Shirley had told her, which May refused to credit, at the time, that young people liked Victorian houses and turned up their noses at modern ones. Which explained why lower Hillesden’s slummy little houses, where May and Alfred would have blushed to live, funny red terraces with fussy patterned windows, were suddenly sprouting ‘For Sale’ signs, and some of them, she saw, when she looked more closely, had already grown expensive lace curtains, not the old grey nets they used to have, and window-boxes, and fancy knockers.

This off-licence was not like the other one. Instead of the bored girl, there were two smart young men, chattering and laughing in caressing voices. They had shelves of red wine costing more than ten pounds, and the fridge cabinet was full of champagne, not beer and white wine, like the other shop. When she asked for whisky, they pointed to a section with kinds of whisky she had never heard of, all of it from places with choking names that sounded like Dirk being sick after the pub, but really they belonged to tiny islands in Scotland. She chose three miniatures, judiciously. Something different; he might like that, though the price they rang up nearly made her faint.

She walked back up the road in the strengthening sunlight. There was a Sushi Bar – imagine it! – with narrow windows and queer blue light, and a girl peering out had half-moon eyes but the boy she was with was very black. There were three Indian restaurants, side by side, which made you wonder how they could survive. The Star of the East, just fancy, in Hillesden! There were two shops advertising ‘Cheap International Phone Calls’, and another one selling those uncomfortable beds with wooden bases and thin flat mattresses. But lovely colours: bright blue, bright green, and as life and hope ran through May’s veins she thought, If only Alfred were here, if only Alfred was home again. We’d come for a stroll, the two of us. May patted the bag with his whiskies for comfort.

Hillesden isn’t dying. It’s coming up.

Shirley was still in China and Crystal, looking for a present for her father.

Something nice. He won’t be here forever. (Or else Dad will beat around our hearts forever. Maybe the Africans are right about that, God forgive me for thinking it.)

It isn’t easy, buying presents for fathers. Particularly
my
father.

Something English would be a good present (but what is there that’s English, these days?)

‘Can I help you, madam, or are you just looking?’ The salesman was young, with an insinuating manner. ‘Some people find it a bit overwhelming.’

‘I don’t,’ said Shirley, giving him a look.

His smile faltered, and then recovered. ‘Are you buying a gift?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought as much.’ He looked pleased with himself.

‘For my father.’ As she said it, her eye fell on a defiant little figure of John Bull with a squat glass bulldog beside him. The man’s face was a cross between a baby’s and a butcher’s, made rounder by his low flat topper, his waistcoat an engraved Union Jack, straining across a sturdy pot-belly. ‘That’s quite nice.’ It wasn’t, to her, but it was small enough for a bedside table.

‘Would you like a closer look, madam?’

The thing had a small square pedestal, engraved at the front with ‘Land of Hope And Glory’ and at the back ‘John Bull Esq’. Although Dad looked nothing like him, of course, there was something about the way John Bull stood, braced to the world, feet splayed, shoulders back, jaw pushed out towards the foreigners – Shirley had seen Alfred stand like that, back to the flower-beds, arms sternly folded, glaring across at some Asian children wondering whether to play ball on the grass.

‘How much?’ she asked the salesman, rather curtly.

‘Just seventy-five pounds,’ he grinned, bold as brass. ‘It’s a very fine piece. The Americans like them. It reminds them of the war, and Winston Churchill.’

Shirley hated to admit something cost too much. It mattered to her that people knew she could afford things.

‘It’s made in Britain, of course?’

‘Without a doubt.’ But he sounded shifty.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said, hardly missing a beat, flicking out her quiver of credit cards, signing.

Turned, and someone was beaming at her. A keenly smiling face, narrow, shining, with wide red lips, pulled right back over large white teeth.

‘Sorry, I don’t know –’

‘Susie Flinders.’

She couldn’t link the name to the beaming face.

‘We met yesterday! Darren’s wife!’

‘Of course. Forgive me.’ Shirley thought, do I kiss her? She’s my brother’s wife, but I hardly know her.

‘So wonderful to meet you!’ Susie was all animation, yet her cheeks were gaunt, and her eyes did not look happy. ‘I’m just hunting down a few things for Darren. The food department next door is so great. They’ve got gluten-free, vegan, macrobiotic, and all the special English things … Darren, poor darling, is exhausted today.’

‘Travelling –?’

‘Oh no, he lives his life on planes. The emotional shock, you know. Your father.’

‘We knew Dad was bad a week ago.’

‘The shock of seeing him like that.’

Well Darren didn’t break a leg getting here
. Shirley found it hard to look her in the eyes. Her fizz, her loudness, her overload of scent; Giorgio, was it? The American choice.

‘So what are you shopping for, Shirley?’

Shirley made an effort. ‘A present for Dad.’

‘You’ve been a great daughter, Darren says. It all falls on the ones who stay behind, doesn’t it?’

Shirley thought, I’m a doormat, to her. ‘I’ve hardly been a model daughter. I married a black man, which outraged my father.’

‘Darren says he tried to give you support.’

Shirley felt her smile go even stiffer. ‘Did he? Well … at a distance.’ (So Darren thought he was noble, did he, coming to the wedding and then Kojo’s funeral?)

But Susie beamed on, not noticing the chill. ‘So. I’ve got my Earl Grey tea-bags and my Thick Cut marmalade and my Gentleman’s Relish and my Bath Olivers … Darren has a passion for things from home. The only thing I miss is the NHS.’

‘There’s not a lot of it to miss, any more.’

‘You’ve got to fight for it. It’s unique, isn’t it?’

‘You’re preaching to the converted.’

‘Have you seen any of the pieces Darren’s done about what’s happening to the NHS?’

‘I don’t need to read Darren’s pieces. I know about it first-hand, thanks. I live here. And my boyfriend’s a Patient Care Officer.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way –’ There was an awkward pause, then Susie grinned again. ‘I do hope we can all get together some time.’

Shirley managed to meet her eyes, and smile back. ‘His name is Elroy. He can’t come to the hospital. Dad would have a fit. He’s black.’

‘Your dad really has a problem with that?’

‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’

‘Shirley, I’m so sorry.’ Susie touched Shirley’s arm.

(Everything she did was frenetic, overdone, as if she was an actress from a faster film. Shirley sensed she was already bored, already halfway out of the door – And yet there was something sympathetic about her. At least she tried. You could feel the effort.)

‘I’d love to talk further with you, Shirley, but I left my umbrella in Quarantino’s –’

‘Quarantino’s … that’s posh, isn’t it? At least, I’ve read about it in the papers.’

‘Probably because it’s a journalists’ watering-hole. We tend to eat there when we come to London.’

When we come to London
. As if they often do. Perhaps they did, and never got in touch. It felt like a small sharp kick in the stomach. ‘Do you always travel with Darren, then?’

‘Oh no. You know, I have my own assignments.’

‘Assignments? Aren’t you a therapist?’

‘I trained as a therapist. But I’m a journalist also. It pays better!’

That curious mixture of English and American … All those -ists. She could pick and choose. If you had an education, you could pick and choose. But Shirley refused to be jealous of her. ‘Maybe you and Darren could come for a meal. I guess you’re going to be around for a bit.’

An awkward silence. ‘In fact – Darren’s planning on flying back tomorrow night. Your father seems to be doing OK –’

‘So this is the classic flying visit.’ It sounded more bitter than Shirley meant.

‘Darren has a lot of problems with your father. It isn’t easy for him, coming home.’

‘None of us finds my dad very easy.’

‘Darren’s holding on to a lot of anger. He has to work through it. Work with it. I’ve told him frankly I think we should stay.’

There were two furrows of tension in Susie’s wide brow, as if she felt guilty, as if she worried – But what was all this about Darren’s anger? Poor old Dad, thought Shirley, suddenly. He loved Darren so; Darren was his favourite. ‘It’s just that Dad really likes to see him,’ said Shirley, but she didn’t want to rub it in. She continued, ‘In any case, he’s seen him, hasn’t he? So that’s OK.’ (Why must she always be nice?)

‘Shirley, it’s been great meeting with you. I hope we can talk again properly. Really.’ Susie was already tapping her feet, waisted heels as sharp as knives, shiny black shoes, almost blue-black, curving sheerly into her instep. Shoes for a quick neat getaway – She bent like a dancer, kissed Shirley’s cheek, giving her no time to return the gesture.

She was gone, with a shake and a stroke of her hair, her shiny, healthy, American hair, narrow hips whipping through the flashing displays, turning for a last swift wave of her hand, white light on her teeth as she mouthed ‘Bye’.

Leaving Shirley standing there wondering. How could Susie be so different from her? Faster, slicker, brighter, sharper. Therapist, journalist, talker, world traveller …

But maybe I would have been like her. If I had finished my education. Is that what makes women lean and quick? Instead I stand here. Solid. Slow.

She’s a fly-by-night. I suppose I’m a stayer.

Upstairs, Shirley found the sun had come out, sweeping across through the glass swing-doors and catching the jewellery in its nets, flashing and glinting from gilded counters, the middle-aged customers warmly lit, floating along through deep golden valleys where sun-warmed scents of rose and vanilla, oranges, musk, peaches, lemons, wafted on balmy winds from Perfumes.