The White Family (39 page)

She sat a long time. He leant back on the pillow. Slowly, he swung his legs back up on the bed. She covered him, tenderly. Was he getting thinner? His shins felt sharp beneath the cotton. They both waited. Then she began.

‘Are we in this together?’ she asked him, very quietly. ‘The family’s what matters, isn’t it, Alfred?’

‘What do you mean? Of course it is.’

‘Yes, but it matters more than anything? Anything at all?’

‘Yes, yes.’ He didn’t understand. ‘Get on with it.’

‘Dirk … the child.’ He had always been the child. ‘He didn’t come in on Saturday night.’

‘What? I can’t hear you –’

She could hardly get it out; she was sobbing with terror. ‘
He came in Sunday morning, at half eleven.
’

‘Well that’s happened before. He got drunk again.’

‘He was covered with blood.
He was covered with blood.
’ It was a whispered scream, a terrible sound, and she clutched at her own hair, as she said it, her thin white hair, she would tear it out –

‘Fighting?’

‘Alfred. His jacket was soaked.
His jacket was soaked with blood. And his shirt.’

She saw understanding, then disbelief, then helpless horror cross his face. His jaw worked, but nothing came out. He cleared his throat, tearing, grinding.

‘You think – it was him. You think – he did it.’ He was shaking his head, as he spoke, refusing, shaking his head against the dark. ‘Of course it wasn’t. You stupid woman.’

‘Alfred, Alfred –’ She had nothing to say. He looked at her. They looked at each other. When he spoke again, his voice was stronger. ‘Did you tell the lad to go to the police? So they could clear him … explain himself.’

‘He’s my son, Alfred.
He’s our son
.’

‘
May, this was days and days ago.’

‘He never said a word, Alfred. Just stripped off his clothes and went to bed. I was frightened, Alfred. I was afraid.’

(He would never understand how she was afraid.)

‘But what did you do? What did you say?’

‘He’d put them in a plastic bag. I soaked them all in salty water. It’s the only way you get blood out –’

‘You’ve a duty,’ he said. ‘You’ve a public duty.’

‘I’m his mother,’ she said, and she looked him in the eye. ‘I gave birth to him. I’ll never do it.’

Just then, the curtains were tentatively drawn, and the smiling black face of a nurse looked in. ‘I’ve got to do your blood pressure and temperature, Alfred,’ she said. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs White. How are you today?’

‘A bit upset.’ May tried to smile. Would she guess something? But of course, tears were normal in their situation.

‘Would you like to have another talk to Doctor?’

‘Not just now. Thank you, dear.’

Once the blood pressure was done, the nurse automatically drew back the curtains, so they could no longer talk in private.

They didn’t talk at all, in fact. They sat there, shaken, their glances sometimes meeting, mostly not, miles apart. Pamela, next door, had gone to sleep, head propped on a book, like a painted wax-work.

Or else she was dead. They were all dying, here.

Was it so terrible, then? One more dead person?

How could Alfred be so sure that it mattered?

‘He was black,’ May whispered, after a long while. ‘Did you see? The man that died … He was black.’

‘Doesn’t make any difference.’

‘He was black, Alfred. You could never stand them.’ She knew what she was saying. She didn’t care. It was family that mattered. ‘You agreed, remember. Family comes first.’ He looked at her remotely. ‘Blood’s thicker than water,’ May insisted.

But he said nothing, no longer listening.

‘He did it, didn’t he. My fault,’ he moaned. ‘I am the Park Keeper. I am the Park Keeper. My fault, May. I left my post.’

They sat there quietly as it grew darker, as the shadows lengthened down the ward, as the lights flickered on and pinned them to their places, smaller than before, pale, stunned.

That night was the longest of Alfred’s life. He could not sleep: he had refused the tablets. He had to think. He had to plan. He remembered the night when he was demobbed, the night he came home to his mother’s house and sat up on the sofa all night long, unable to believe he had gone off duty, unable to believe the long fight was over.

Now he was on active service again.

It wasn’t hard getting off the ward. The agency nurse was talking on the phone, as she always did, nineteen to the dozen, but who could she be talking to, before six a.m.? Probably another continent, he thought. And the National Health would be paying for it. He slipped past her like a ghost, invisible, his old army greatcoat covering his pyjamas.

He was clear in his mind; completely clear. He knew he couldn’t risk putting all his clothes on, standing there fussing and mucking about. Even that lazy cow would have noticed. But he had to wear something to inspire respect, so he’d knotted his tie, his old army tie which he’d found in the pocket of his army greatcoat, in the neck of his pyjama jacket.

It was nothing to him, being up at this hour. All his life, he had been up at this hour. Staying in bed was a penance, to him. But the greatcoat felt heavy, after light pyjamas, and his feet felt enormous, blockish, in boots. It wasn’t a bad feeling, though. It felt – more real. Tied him to the ground, like a real living person, not floating about like a bloomin’ water-lily.

He stared at his feet. He watched them go.

I need you, boys. Go for it
.

He remembered the Arabs, in Palestine. At pilgrimage time, the time of the hajj. You would see them coming in the distance, and the first thing you’d notice was the size of their feet, great huge feet like kangaroos, because they used to bind ’em up with blankets. They didn’t have boots, or else they didn’t believe in them … Weird beliefs. They weren’t really human. They’d walk thousands of miles to worship God. You had to hand it to them, looking back, though it struck him as comic, at the time, these little figures with enormous plates-of-meat, plodding like donkeys across the desert. Never giving up, though some must have snuffed it, with the shooting and dirt and exhaustion and flies, and sometimes he’d heard their feet went septic. It didn’t matter. They were –
pure spirit.
Spirit kept you going when the body failed.

For the past three weeks, the most exercise he’d got was the walk down the ward from his bed to the lav, but he’d walked all his life, and you didn’t lose that. It would stand him in good stead, now he needed it.

Going downstairs he felt almost young, trotting neatly, swiftly, down, as usual, for he prided himself on never walking on stairs. There was no one about. It was a ghost hospital.

Turning into the immense modern foyer built at huge expense not so long ago, he found only a cardboard, hand-lettered notice: Reception Closed After Nine p.m.

So that was a bonus. He had made it to the door. Automatically, sweetly, it opened for him, and Alfred tramped out into the freezing air, but fresh, so fresh after the air inside, the air he loved, the air of London, with the faint green edge that spoke of the Park, not far away, his place, his home …

He tried to straighten up. He was on a mission.
Carrying essential information
.

He was walking through familiar country now, not enemy country, his own dear land, but he knew that he was in very great danger, perhaps the worst danger he had ever known. There were enemies everywhere, hiding, dodging, nurses, doctors, treacherous women.

Maybe he had enemies now at Brent council. Enemies, now, among his own men.

And then there was the enemy within. The queer changes within his own body. The false cells creeping, weakening him (but he would not weaken; he would never weaken. He’d keep going by will-power till his mission was done.)

In any case, he needn’t believe the doctors. Perhaps they had said it to bring him down. Black propaganda, he told himself. Alfred wasn’t born yesterday.

He went straight as a die down All Souls’ Road. The street-lights were still on, but the sky was flecked with pink, the sky, he thought, he was back beneath the sky, the sky he had lived under most of his life, back outside, where a man should be, it was no kind of life, cooped up inside, he could never have worked all his life in an office –

So must I die in a hospital?

No, he thought, I’m going home.

I’ve had a good life. A life in the open. I have been lucky. I can’t complain …

These streets hadn’t changed since he was a boy, the little terraces, neat and tidy, six or eight of them joined together, sometimes a whole long street of houses, sleeping, now, dark, immobile, the line of the roofs like a long low backbone. We’re tough, round here, he thought, we survive. We’ve lived through a lot, the people of Hillesden. Those of us who made it through the war. Those of us who stayed the course.

Here was the pub they always drank in. Always known it, since he was sixteen. He and George still went to the Admiral Nelson of an evening. And every Sunday while the lunch was cooking. It had been modernized badly, ten years ago, a box-like, ugly front added on and a glaring plastic sign, which had bust, only lasted three weeks or so before it bust, but the two of them kept on drinking there, it was people that mattered, not bloomin’ designers. Wankers. Nancy-boys. What did they know? And underneath, you could see the old building, the old red brick of it wearing through.

He stood and watched, briefly, as the light increased. Remembering, remembering. He and George. So many good evenings. Would he ever walk in through the door again, cheerful, mouth watering for the cool of the beer, his week’s work done, money in his pocket? Thank you, he thought, my friends, mine host. Thank you for standing at the bar with me. (For when all’s said and done, a man needed friends, and however much he loved her, May was a woman.)
Goodnight, all. Toodle-oo, goodbye.

But he mustn’t hang about. He had to get on. It was harder than before, getting started again, as if his limbs had lost some essential information, as if the morning air had grown colder, as if part of his lungs was dead, frozen … But of course it was cold, out here in the desert, what did they expect, what was the point of moaning, had they forgotten the blaze of midday in Palestine, when the sun was highest, when they were young, in the bright blue heat, the lords of creation – had they forgotten the larks, the fun? If he paid for it now, he would never complain.

(Poor Dirk, he thought, poor boy, poor child, he never played sport, never fought, never travelled – never had a girlfriend, or a decent job … The young today, there was nothing for them. And the other lad, too. He was only twenty. And his name was Winston, like Winston Churchill.
My fault, my fault.
But he had to keep going.)

The houses he was passing were about as old as he was, 1920s, 1930s, the same three windows, the same front door, the little side window with modest stained glass – a bit fussy, he’d thought, when he and May bought theirs, a bit old-womanish, though May had liked it, and he had replaced the door with aluminium, and later regretted it, but never said so – never admitted as much to May.

I’m sorry, May
, he thought, suddenly. For all the times I never said sorry. I am a proud man. It doesn’t come easy.

I’m sorry, May. I shall cause you grief. All our life together, I’ve caused you grief, though sometimes I think I made you happy – Sometimes I know I made you happy. But now I have to cause you grief.

And a quiet voice, May’s voice, spoke in his ear. Please, Alfred. If you love me at all. Don’t be pig-headed. You were always pig-headed. You don’t have to do this, Alfred, please.

But he brushed her aside; he kept on walking, though one of his feet had begun to drag, he was picking them up at the old steady pace but parts of his body weren’t quite working. It didn’t matter. Most of him was. He kept on going as the sun rose.

Because in the end, there’s right and wrong. He argued with her; she had to understand. You and I don’t matter (she mattered so much. Nothing mattered as much as his own dear wife. His own dear woman.) But you see, we’re just little … We’ll die, in the end, and the mess will be left. I must do my best.

It rose above the houses, glorious, a ball of fire, a ball of red. So bright, so strong, how do we bear it? All that glory over our heads. He kept a weather eye for enemy planes, but the ones that streaked over this morning hadn’t seen him, they curved round steeply into the dawn, ploughing a track of fine pink foam.

I always meant to take May on a plane. Now I suppose I shan’t manage it. May deserved to fly on a plane.

He’d been walking, for a bit, on automatic pilot, so it was with a surge of shock and sorrow that he realized he was limping down his own road, the long narrow road to his own dear home, and there it was, in the first rays of the sun, sleeping, still, but touched with gold, its rough white walls, the pale pebble-dash he’d put on to cover the faults in the brickwork, the curtains closed, and hidden behind them …

She would be sleeping. She would be there, curled on her left side, rosy, comfy. Not fifty yards away, now, not thirty …

And the boy. His boy. The child. His child. His youngest child, whose life had gone wrong. I’m sorry, Dirk, he thought, I’m sorry.

Ten yards. Five. The gate was half-open, why couldn’t they shut it, the dogs would get in? He laid his hand on the iron of his gate, his own front gate, and he felt the cold, the cold came shuddering through to his bones, in the early light he was blue with cold, his old man’s hand with the raised blue veins, and the whitewashed body of the house still beckoned, how warm it would be, how welcoming, how easy just to walk up the path and ring on the door and slip inside, and no harm would be done, he would have harmed no one –

Quick march, he told himself. At the double. He pushed the gate shut, to keep them safe.

Now every step had become an effort, every step was an effort of will. Not far now. At most, a mile. Around him, the world was waking up, curtains were twitching, the postman passed him, gave him a smile that he tried to return, if he’d had the strength Alfred would have saluted, both of them were servants of the people, both of them took pride in their uniform – and then he remembered, the uniform was gone, gone years ago. He stood there in pyjamas. It didn’t matter. His greatcoat protected him. He wandered on, feeling his step become more ragged, one of his boots was bothering him, rubbing at his ankle, the rats gnawing, he kicked at them to scare them away and nearly fell,
Get on with it, man
–