The White Family (9 page)

And then there was what they called the Irish Question, which arose every morning with the daily papers. The
South Irish Recorder
was so popular that it had to be kept at the Inquiry Desk, and issued only in exchange for a deposit. The arguments, sometimes actual tussles, arose when two punters asked to read it at the same time, or when someone was late returning it, or when the object offered as a deposit cost less than the price of the paper … Thomas had been handed, in the past two weeks: one glasses case, mended with sellotape; one pack of tooth-picks, three-quarters empty; one handkerchief, soiled with recognizable fluids; a bag of boiled sweets; one wrinkled green pepper. When he objected to this last item, the woman who offered it got in a rage. ‘It’s … unsuitable,’ he said, firmly. ‘Well what
is
suitable?’ she asked, red-faced. But he merely knew he’d reached the end of some line. ‘Not greengrocery. Sorry, madam.’

Fortunately Thomas was the stock librarian, so he spent much of his time at the back, at his desk, in the pleasant shared office, out of public view, leafing in a warm leisurely daze through the approval lists for possible acquisitions. His budget was small, but he still enjoyed spending it. He had to balance whim with service to the public, so he dutifully checked on past issue figures. He needed guaranteed crowd-pleasers to disguise the odd book on postmodernist theory … Because the accountants did have a point – they had to keep the usage figures up. And the usage figures were going down, slowly but surely, year by year.

Suneeta Patel was fifty, easily, broad and soft, though she sometimes talked and acted like a hippy teenager. He liked her sibilant, caressive whisper, and her round golden arms, indeed most of her, though she teased him for being a ‘book-man’, which meant, in new library parlance, ‘dinosaur’. She had worked here since the eighties, though she wasn’t a qualified librarian, but she knew more than anyone else about the information side of things, the whereabouts of nursery schools, doctors’ surgeries, Job Shops, yoga classes, sports centres, aromatherapy … All the touching hopes for self-betterment that the public brought to the library. She came and perched distractingly on his desk, which pushed out the rounded curve of her flank. (He hadn’t had sex for … months? years? His thoughts slipped fleetingly across to Melissa. He usually saw her several times a week, either in the street or on the stairs, but for some reason this week had been a desert.)

‘Thomas. Did that crazy come in for his notes? The one who wrote all that heavy stuff about race?’

‘Oh. Yes. W King. He was young. Good-looking. Bit scary, to be honest. He’s ordered all this stuff about lynchings.’

She widened her eyes, in a parody of fear, and squeezed his hand, which he found stirring, despite the pain as her rings dug in. ‘Watch yourself, Sweet Pea,’ she purred. ‘Just call Suneeta. Suneeta will protect you … By the way, how’s your friend who had the thingy?’

After a pause, he realized whom she meant. ‘Alfred? Went to see him yesterday,’ he answered. ‘In hospital. He didn’t seem too bad. The family all came.’

‘That’s very good,’ she said, nodding approvingly. ‘Family just has to be there for you.’ Her almond eyes were elongated with an upflick of jet black eyeliner that looked as if you could peel it off whole; her lips were crimson, cushiony, with little soft lines of tiredness at the edges. ‘My daughters’, she continued, ‘are education-mad. We wanted them to be graduates, yes. But they forget what matters in life: family, innit?’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ He didn’t know what to answer. He was an only child, and his parents were dead.

‘Too right I’m right. Have a peppermint.’ And she sashayed away, smiling seductively over her cushiony shoulder.

Sighing, for Suneeta had been married for three decades, had seven children, and would never be for him, Thomas trudged downstairs to look at the shelves in the History Section, which were getting tight. Triage was part of Stocks as well, and he sorted titles, to go for disposal almost automatically, thinking of the Whites.

It wasn’t exactly happy families, last night. Darren White, the People’s Friend, blowing his top at that poor woman on the counter, and snapping at his wife as if she was a servant. Poor little Dirk, with his four sugars …

Shirley had changed for the better, though. So –
bien dans sa peau
. So confident. And glossy, and pretty, and prosperous. She seemed so – calm. When all the others were nervous. I felt I wanted her to – be my friend (oh be honest, I wanted to sleep with her).

Her breasts were nice. Her cheeks were nice. Her skin was soft and nice like May’s, nice, nice, the niceness of women … Later, May’s face, looking down on Alfred. The shine of a woman who loves a man.

I would like that. I’ve never quite had that. I had a wife, but she didn’t light up.

By the time he had finally reached Alfred’s bedside, the ward had been closing down towards night, and a nurse came round with a chinking trolley. ‘Do you want something to help you sleep?’

May had said, ‘Horlicks. He always likes Horlicks.’

The nurse ignored her. ‘Mr White, Alfred, would you like something?’

‘He doesn’t like
pills
, if that’s what you mean. Alfred never has sleeping pills.’

‘Hang on,’ said Alfred, eyes suddenly wide open. ‘I will have something. I did last night.’

‘Alfred,’ May protested. ‘You could never stand pills.’

‘He moans,’ said Alfred, pointing down the ward. ‘Every hour or so, he starts this moaning. And there’s a woman who wanders about. You wouldn’t get a wink of sleep in here.’

May said nothing as nameless pills rattled into a tiny plastic beaker, but when Alfred took them, she caught Thomas’s eye, mouthed ‘Tranquillizers’, as someone might say ‘Heroin’, and winked, to comfort them both. ‘You’re looking tired, Thomas. Working too hard with the books, I suppose.’

It was gratifying
someone
knew libraries meant work. Wonderful May. She was often at the library. And she had quite a collection of her own books, too. Once she had showed him her Tennyson. The bookplate said ‘May Hill, IVA. For Promising Work. Form English Prize.’

May’s smile. ‘Your mother would be proud of you. Alfred is pleased you’ve come to see him. He’s just a bit sleepy. Exciting day.’

Alfred opened his eyes, frowned, concentrated. ‘I’m not asleep. I’m not tired …’

‘Thomas, dear,’ whispered May. ‘I think I’ll pop and have a word with the doctors.’

‘Not tired,’ Alfred muttered, doggedly, but furred with sleep, slurring slightly. ‘Ni’, Darren. Good boy …’ His eyelids sagged.

‘Thomas,’ he had gently corrected him, but May frowned,
shush
. Then she bent over and kissed Alfred’s hand, very lightly, as if it were precious. ‘Wait here a mo’,’ she said suddenly to Thomas, and darted off after a passing doctor.

But Alfred, Thomas saw, was asleep, so he went to fill the water-jug. In the kitchen, though, he got trapped in conversation with a little man with an infected hip who was desperate to talk about the Queen Mother. ‘She was up and walking the very next day. They get a different quality of care, you know.’

Thomas was half-jogging down the corridor, eager to get out into the clean night air, when he bumped into a body, someone soft, in the shadows, someone he realized was quietly weeping –

It was May, with her hands covering her face. May, with the tears streaming down between her fingers.

Thomas wanted her to stop, very much, very badly. There was a smell of disinfectant, and the sluice room gurgled, gurgled in the distance.

‘I just saw his doctor,’ she said, when she could speak. ‘I don’t think the news is very good. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell the children.’

Oh euphemism, oh sad non-speech.

‘May, can I walk home with you?’

‘I don’t want to be a nuisance, but Dirk’s already gone.’

They walked through the wind not saying very much. Thomas took May’s arm, feeling she might blow away in the darkness … But he knew that no one could make things right, no one could lift the terrible weight that had swooped in one awful second, landed.

May had said goodbye at the clanking gate outside the little terraced house in the thirties street, the mean street, where they had lived for most of their lives. It was not unlike his parents’ street, though the latter had been gentrified; loft extensions, magnolia-trees, obsession with restoring the original details, whereas May and Alfred’s street was still tearing them out. Little brilliant florets of thirties’ stained glass, sweet-shop red, sweet-shop green, still shone in May and Alfred’s hall window, but the front door had been replaced by an aluminium horror with two dazzling slabs of glass. May stood in its glare and turned grey-white.

‘Thank you, Thomas. Now you get off home.’

‘Shall I come in and make you a cup of tea?’

‘I don’t want to be a trouble to anyone.’

That was always their fear, that they’d be a trouble. ‘No trouble,’ Thomas said, and followed her in.

It was very warm, and smelled of washing, which was spread across all the radiators, burnt toast, and polish, and age, and damp, and other hints; fruit drops? Earth? It smelled of old people, to Thomas.

‘Coo-ee,’ she called, ‘anyone home?’

He appeared before them at the top of the stairs, hands spread out in mock benediction, bright blond bristles catching the light, a thuggish Christ waving a bottle of beer. Completely different from the sullen child Thomas saw behind the counter in the newsagent’s. He didn’t look wimpish. He looked – what? – vicious. Thomas felt, I mustn’t leave her with him. Which was ridiculous, of course.

He remembered Dirk vaguely as a whiney baby whom Shirley carried around like a doll. (Was there another memory? Something unpleasant.)

‘Dirk, dear,’ said May. ‘You’re home.’

‘Yeah … jus’ got back.’ He was out of breath. His tiny mouth panted.

‘I’ll make us cocoa,’ she said to him. Thomas suddenly sensed it was her son she wanted. The sorrow, the secret of the sorrow, was for him. It was family business. They would draw the curtains –

She drew the curtains. Thomas slipped into the dark.

‘Death is part of life, my darling,’ Suneeta said, when he complained about having to get rid of books. It was always tempting to send them to Purgatory – the ‘Reserve Stacks’, three dingy portakabins somewhere north of Utterley Road – rather than direct to the fires of hell, sealed in a black plastic rubbish bag. ‘Death is part of life,’ he silently assured the small sad faces of the banished authors. Once the shelves got tight, of course there had to be disposals. All the same, today it seemed – barbarous.
History of the Empire. Part One: Expansion
…
Ethics in Post-War British Business … Into the Future With Hope: The Welfare State in Post-War Britain
. Thomas felt shifty and shamefaced, carrying the heavy bag through the library. Was he a barbarian, like those he dreaded?

He had felt afraid, on the streets last night, startled not far from Alfred’s gate by a mob of white skinheads in leather and chains, jostling, giggling, surging onwards like a knot of oiled seals diving over and under, looking for someone, blaring with laughter, barking for someone, he hoped not him – past the phone-boxes with the smashed glass walls still lying in tiny chunks of ice on the pavement, past the Methodist church whose strip-lit noticeboard was covered with black hieroglyphic graffiti, yelling on down towards the Park, a pack in full cry, baying for blood, boys who didn’t know the rules, vandals who tore up the rules … Yobs, but they roared like murderers.

Thomas hefted the bag right out of the library, though normally he’d leave it for the cleaners to dispose of. Doing my own dirty work, he thought. I’m not a bad person. I do contribute. He dropped the heavy weight in the skip. Some kind of animal scuffled in the shadows. Cats, rats –

(
That was it. Mice
. The thing about Dirk he had tried to forget. Dirk was eight or nine, May had asked Thomas to lunch. Alfred was at work, as usual. She was showing him her seedlings in their dark shed. Then they spotted two tiny pink blobs on the floor. They glistened faintly in the light from the door. ‘Is that nestlings?’ she asked, frowning, stooping. ‘Poor little things, has a cat got them?’ But it was two mice with their skins half-removed. Dirk had found them in her mouse-traps, and cut them with a penknife. ‘He’s just a child,’ she had said to Thomas. ‘You won’t say anything to his father? Alfred can be a bit strict with him. Boys will be boys.’ But her eyes looked frightened.)

Head hurts. Head hurts. Hangover. Sod. Sod. Sod the mornings. Nothing good, forever and ever. Nothing gets better. Nothing any good. Dad, Dad. She wouldn’t say, but there’s something bad. Something – worse.

I don’t believe it. The water’s cold. What has she done, the stupid woman? She’s gone and switched it off, that’s what. Old and muddly. Old and mad. She cried, last night. Just sat there crying. Wouldn’t explain, just sat and cried. Saying over and over ‘Your dad – Your dad –’

She talks to me like I’m a little kid.

I hate it when my mother cries.

I might have – given her a hug or whatever. But she hasn’t liked it, since I’ve been big. (Did she like it when I was small? Dunno.) She sort of shrinks when I try to touch her. That’s women, isn’t it? They don’t like men.

I hate living with old people. Why should someone young and strong like me have to live with old people? My Mum was ancient when she had me. Forty-seven years old, which is disgusting, still doing that at nearly fifty. I heard her tell Ruby Millington that I was a mistake, which made me mad. One day they’ll die and I’ll be happy …

Oh sod, I’m crying, oh shit, oh shit, Dad can’t die, not possible.

Half past five is the shit-work time. The hour when shit-workers start work, and everyone else lies snoring. Pigging themselves with pigging sleep. Two to a bed, pigs in a trough.

I pass their windows every morning, knowing they lie asleep inside. Hundreds of smug curtained windows. And I’m out here in the pouring rain, with water running down inside my collar and water bubbling up through my shoes. I want to throw stones and smash in their windows, and they’d see me standing there, pointing and jeering, it’s me, it’s me, I’m here every morning, but none of you know I fucking exist –