‘Mum –’ said the voice. Quieter than usual. Chastened by the hospital.
And Shirley was there, big, florid, beautifully dressed, all whites and vanillas and an armful of lilies and a smart pale handbag and a goldy creamy enormous box of chocolates, and she smelled of something foreign, delicious.
‘Don’t get up. Is Dad all right?’
‘Yes. I’ll wake him –’
‘Don’t, if he’s sleeping.’
‘You smell good enough to eat.’
‘I’m sorry about the lilies. Not Dad, really, are they? Selfridges.’
‘Did you come all the way from Oxford Street?’
‘Yes. I was shopping.’ Shirley was always shopping. May thought, she should have a degree in shopping. ‘They hadn’t got anything more colourful. Pale colours are supposed to be smart.’
She had a purring voice. A bit like mine, thought May, only – richer. Sort of glossier. ‘I like your flowers, dear,’ she told her daughter, and she did, as well; so ivory-elegant. ‘I love your flowers.’ Because she wanted to be sure Shirley didn’t confuse her thoughts with Alfred’s. May had a brain, not that Alfred didn’t, but he was sometimes too set in his ways to use it.
And Alfred hasn’t behaved right to her.
‘You look lovely, Shirley.’ May touched her daughter’s wrist where a little ribbon of bare skin showed, between the camel coat and her gold watch-bracelet. Plump and cool and very soft. ‘You’re a good girl. You always make an effort.’ They stayed like that for a moment, close.
Then May saw Elroy, hovering, back in the shadows near the entrance of the ward.
‘You haven’t brought Elroy here!’ She was half on her feet, staring accusingly at her daughter. ‘Why has he come? Why did you bring him –?’
But Shirley’s face was uncomprehending, staring at May as if she was crazy, and briefly May wanted to kill her daughter. Did she have to upset him now when he was dying? (dying – my God, what was she thinking of? Why did that word flash up and stab her? Of course he wasn’t dying, she was going mad.)
And she was going mad. Shirley’s face said it. May looked again at the tall figure in the shadows in the small pool of darkness where the ward began, and as she looked, Elroy’s face dissolved into another’s, someone heavier, sadder, older than Elroy, and he walked down the ward to another bed where a young black woman lay and stared into space beside that flaring crown of red flowers.
‘It isn’t Elroy,’ Shirley snapped.
‘I’m sorry, love, I was just thinking of your father –’
‘You don’t half put your foot in it.’
May pleaded mutely to be forgiven. Shirley was so big, so fleshy, so … peachy. She had been lucky; love, money … Despite the awful things that have happened, she looks like a cat that’s had all the cream. Can’t she forgive me for being old and stupid?
Shirley was tugging off her beautiful coat, pale camel wool with a big shawl collar. She folded it, lining outermost, and tucked it at May’s feet, in the lee of the bed. She was a good girl still; clean, careful.
Shirley sank down gingerly on Alfred’s bed. She was heavier than May. (Should she tell Shirley not to sit on the bed? She didn’t want to annoy her further.) The metal frame creaked, and the two women stared at Alfred anxiously.
‘Is he going to wake up?’
‘Well I hope so. I’ve got all kinds of forms and doings for him to sort out.’
‘Why are we whispering then?’ asked Shirley.
‘I don’t know,’ said May. (They had always whispered, when the men were around. Trying not to disturb them. Not to upset them. Not to let them know what they were getting up to. But now they didn’t have to whisper any more. It was too late for whispering. He hadn’t time to sleep.)
‘Alfred,’ May whispered, then made an effort. ‘Alfred,’ louder. ‘Alfred, wake up.’
Sleeping like that, he was unprotected, naked as a baby despite his blue pyjamas, the fragile bony bridge of his nose, so near the skin, such taut red skin, the strands of white hair lying neatly as always like hanks of bleached rope across his naked crown.
She loved him completely for making an effort. Alfred would never let her down. He was probably ready hours ago, hair combed, clean pyjamas, shipshape bedclothes …
‘Your Dad is wonderful,’ she said to her daughter, as Alfred stirred, and coughed. Her heart swelled with love; Alfred, alive. Still there for them. Husband, father.
‘Hmm,’ said Shirley, half-rising, then sitting again, nervous, as ever, of being in the wrong, in the wrong place (which she was, of course, and her father would certainly let her know it) with the wrong clothes and the wrong boyfriend.
‘Why’s Dad so wonderful all of a sudden?’ she asked, and it came out louder than she meant.
May frowned at her. ‘Well he’s shaved,’ she said. ‘In his condition. All combed and shaved.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Shirley blankly. ‘Good for him.’
When they least expected it, one of his eyes opened, surprising as the eye of a waking elephant, liquid and glistening in its helmet of leather, large, war-like, shot with blood.
‘Not a rest-camp,’ he said, indistinctly. ‘Not a bloomin’ rest-camp, is it?’
‘Well there’s a café if you want something,’ gasped May, who had been getting deafer for years, on her feet in an instant, taking his hand. ‘It’s not exactly a restaurant, but it will do. Shirley’ll go for you. She’s young.’
Now he was fully awake, stretching up, irascible, grasping the aluminium frame of the bed, finding he couldn’t do it squarely and turning away from May and Shirley to pull himself up from the right-hand side, clutching the metal with stiff red knuckles that whitened with the effort, panting, straining, and surely his hands were too thin, like claws, his giant beak like a wounded eagle –
He clasps the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands …
‘I said, it’s not a rest-camp here,’ he repeated, looking accusingly at the two women. ‘My daughter doesn’t seem to know that.’
‘She’s come all the way from the West End,’ May rushed in, nervous, protective. ‘She’s brought you some chocolates from Selfridges.’
‘Well,’ he said, more forgivingly. ‘All the same, she’s got to get off the bed. These beds are meant for ill people.’
‘She’s come all this way,’ May repeated, stubbornly. ‘It’s a long way. She’s a good girl.’
His pale blue eyes, watery, sharp, the eyeballs caught in a net of red veins, veered briefly across to the neighbouring bed before he said, as if nothing had happened, ‘Aren’t you going to kiss your old father, then?’
Perhaps he sensed heads turning towards her from other, lonelier beds alongside, drawn to the full-blown, sheeny glamour of the daughter who was mysteriously, definitely his – a delicate version of his eyes, his mouth – though none of the rest of the family was like her. She bent towards him; waves of perfume.
She’s squashing him, May thought, distressed. There was so much of her. Fleshy. Wealthy. They’ll overwhelm us, these giant children. Growing larger as we grow smaller.
I haven’t had a chance to kiss him properly myself. Once we were lovers. He was my love …
But he had disappeared under the billows of their daughter.
O love, we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer across the sea.
Once we were young and took the ferry to France and we stood on the sunny deck and held hands and he told me, ‘Don’t be frightened, silly, the Channel ferry will never go down,’ and I said, ‘I love you no matter what’ but I never knew if he had heard me, the wind blew everything away –
May clutched the thin shoulder of her book for comfort.
Can Shirley be ours? Did she come from us? Why is she here, so tall, so pretty, smelling of countries where we’ve never been, flowers we couldn’t even imagine, men her father can’t stand the sight of – He must be drowning in her smell. How do they bear it, today’s young men? I suppose I’ve always been a modest woman.
Then it was over. ‘Good girl,’ he grunted. ‘Now pop down there and ask the nurses for a chair.’ And off she sailed; surging, gleaming, a glossy galleon down a narrow channel. May saw he was happy to be released. He smiled a sheepish smile at her.
Left alone, they were suddenly intimate, restored to the state where they spent most of their lives.
‘Has she put on weight?’ asked Alfred, eyes darting after her, blue, suspicious, and he stretched out his hand to hold May’s plump white one, tucking them together on the hard brown blanket.
‘Pity they don’t have eiderdowns or anything,’ May said, touching the bare fibres doubtfully.
‘I shan’t be here long enough to miss that,’ said Alfred. ‘Are the peonies out yet? They make a good show.’
‘Too early,’ said May. ‘And it’s been chilly. You’re well off in here. Cosy in here.’
She was thinking, his hand is thinner than mine. It’s bigger than mine, of course it is, he’s always been half a head taller than me, but it somehow feels smaller. Colder.
A moment of fear as their eyes met. They hadn’t practised being here. Then he smiled at her, her cheery Alfred. ‘I’ll be out in time for Easter, May. They’ll fix me up so I’m as good as new.’ But his voice was gruff, a little uncertain, and her answering smile was uncertain too. In this hospital ward they were helpless strangers –
But not to each other. She clung to his hand, feeling its pulse, which was fast but steady, the comforting knot of flesh and blood.
‘I’ve got forms for you to sign,’ she said, shyly. ‘So I can get money from the bank.’
‘Oh yes?’ he said, at once suspicious. ‘I always get the money, May.’
‘But you’re in here.’
‘I’ll be out in a day or two. Still if you can’t wait …’ And he took the forms, hardly read them, signed.
She felt a stab of guilt. Was she giving up on him, acting as if he was nearly dead? Wasn’t it as good as killing him? And she loved him so.
Alfred, Alfred.
‘Can you believe she’s our daughter?’ May whispered, watching Shirley return with the extra chair. She had walked two paces, in her honey-coloured wool, a woman large enough to make the chair look small, her movements graceful, indolent, when a middle-aged man in a group around a bed broke away from his family and touched her arm, ‘May I help you?’, and as Shirley’s face flashed into a charming smile he took the chair from her with a flourish, preparing her way like a courtier. ‘She’s got … an air, hasn’t she? She’s … somebody.’
‘Queen of Sheba,’ Alfred hissed at the last moment, but he winked as he said it, and May knew he was happy.
‘Now we’re all right,’ said Shirley. ‘Do you want to have a look at your chocolates, Dad?’
‘I’d better get a vase for those lilies,’ said May, stirring.
‘The nurses’ll do that,’ said Alfred, sharply. ‘Don’t you move. That’s what they’re paid for.’
This was plainly untrue, but May realized that Alfred didn’t want to be left alone with his daughter.
‘I’ll go,’ said Shirley, getting up again.
‘Just everyone sit still for a moment,’ he snapped. ‘You’ve only just come in, and you can’t wait to leave.’
They sat in silence, suddenly uneasy, the bundle of lilies in their gilt-stamped paper becoming bigger, less comfortable, louder, rustling every time Shirley breathed, and May thought suddenly of arum lilies, flowers for a wreath, flowers for a funeral.
She only just got here, and she can’t wait to leave. Life’s like that, all rush, and then over.
‘Isn’t anyone going to ask how I am?’ he demanded, grimacing his lips over his teeth where they sometimes slipped and made him look foolish.
‘You were asleep. She did ask me,’ said May, humbly, don’t be cross with me.
‘How are you, Dad?’ asked Shirley, brightly.
‘Can’t complain. I don’t really think there’s much wrong with me.’
‘Was it a heart attack?’ Shirley pressed, and May wanted to shush her, for it wasn’t right to talk of such things in loud voices.
‘They keep calling it an event,’ he said, with a certain amount of satisfaction.
‘I think that’s a stroke,’ said Shirley.
‘It was an event,’ he said, displeased. ‘They think I might have another one.’
‘It’s your circulation,’ said May. ‘That’s nothing new. That was always bad.’ She didn’t want some alarming new game.
‘Well it is new,’ he said, staring hard at her, one huge white eyebrow twitching upwards like the feathers of the ostrich in the zoo where they’d gone with the two older ones, thirty years ago. ‘Being found out cold on my back is new.’
‘So are they going to give you drugs, or what?’
May frowned at her daughter, who didn’t notice. (Why did she keep on bothering her father? If he wanted to tell them, he would tell them. If he knew, that is, if the doctors had told him, and she hoped they wouldn’t tell him things to frighten him. It was she who should know. May would ask the doctors.)
‘I’m rattling with pills already,’ said Alfred.
‘Stop questioning your father,’ said May.
‘I don’t mind people taking an interest. They’re doing a test on my brain,’ he said, once more unable to suppress a note of pride. Medicine had ignored him for seventy-odd years; now important doctors were testing his brain.
‘Must have been a stroke then,’ said Shirley, satisfied. ‘I mean, I’m afraid it must have been a stroke,’ catching her mother’s indignant glare. ‘But lots of people get better from strokes.’
‘How do you know so much about medicine all of a sudden?’ May asked her.
‘I don’t,’ she said. And then, foolishly ‘Well Elroy does work in a hospital, so I suppose I have picked up a bit from him –’
‘You’ve picked it up from bloody Elroy, have you?’ her father demanded, stung into life, cranking up his head several inches from the pillow. ‘This is medicine according to Elroy, is it? Well thank you very much, I want English medicine, English medicine from English doctors.’
‘Elroy is English,’ said Shirley. ‘Well – British. Elroy is as British as me or you.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Alfred, now alarmingly red, blue eyes alight, clawing at the bedclothes. ‘He’s about as British as bananas, is Elroy.’
Shirley was trying very hard to keep calm. ‘He is British, but I’m not going to argue. Thing is, you should know what’s the matter with you. You have a right. All patients do.’
‘He’s not bloody British!’ Veins bulged in his neck and his head poked forward like a tortoise.
‘He was born in Peckham!’ Now they were both shouting.
‘Will you leave it?’ said May. ‘People are looking at us.’ This wasn’t true, but it had an effect. ‘Can you stop upsetting your father?’
‘Thinks she knows it all,’ said Alfred, subsiding, suddenly tired, smaller, paler.
Shirley sat and stared at the floor. ‘I’ll fetch a vase, then I have to be going,’ she said, standing up, not looking at them, flouncing down the pale clinging hem of her skirt.
They watched her swaying down the ward again. Now most of the beds had collected visitors, clustered round the bedheads, helpless, eager. Amateurs at this, all of them.
May and Alfred looked at each other. Neither had meant to quarrel with Shirley. They needed them now, their large, strong children, now they were growing older, weaker. ‘You didn’t have to go and upset her –’ he muttered.
‘You’re the one who riled her. Saying Elroy isn’t British.’
‘I don’t intend to waste time talking about Elroy.’
‘You’ve only got one daughter,’ said May.
Her mild voice sparked him off again. ‘I know that. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t want to see my grandchildren? No chance of that, till she settles down.’
Alfred was deluding himself, as usual. All through Shirley’s marriage he had pretended that Kojo was a temporary fling. May had never told him about Shirley’s miscarriages, had begged her daughter not to talk about them. Partly to protect him from pain. Partly to protect herself from his reaction, for May had longed for Shirley and Kojo to have children, no matter if they were black or white or striped, she knew she would love her daughter’s children and hoped that Alfred would have loved them too, it would have mended everything, brought them all together … But the babies had died. Two in a row. In Shirley’s well-fed, healthy body.
Shirley reappeared with a fountain of white lilies that turned her into a goddess from May’s childhood encyclopedia … Newnes’ Encyclopedia, was that it? Straight out of one of those shiny pictures where all the gods were blond and tall. Shirley was a goddess of fruit and flowers – Ceres? Or was that fertility? Goddess of spring, Proserpina. How could they not be proud of her, and yet she still wouldn’t meet their eyes, lowering the shining lilies down on the grey Formica of his bedside table among the dim clutter of water, clock, glasses –
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me …
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up
And slips into the bosom of the lake …
May gazed at her, half-hypnotized.
‘Help her, then,’ said Alfred, testily. ‘Can’t you see she can’t do it on her own?’ May heaved herself round in the chair. ‘You could get up,’ he harried his wife. ‘You could do something. I can’t get up.’
‘It’s all right, Dad.’ Shirley couldn’t bear them arguing. ‘I’ve got to go, in any case. Enjoy the chocs.’
‘You shouldn’t spend your money on me.’
‘I like to spend money on my parents.’
‘You don’t want to go short.’ He always worried.
‘Dad, I’m all right. I – was left well looked after.’
He knew she was avoiding saying Kojo’s name. ‘You’re a good girl, coming to see me.’
‘Don’t give the nurses a hard time.’
‘Me?’ He winked, looking suddenly youthful. ‘I’m the perfect patient. You ask Sister.’
‘I’ll come and see you again tomorrow.’
‘Darren might have got here by tomorrow –’
‘Well … I’ll believe it when I see it.’
‘Of course he’s coming,’ said Alfred. ‘He’s been talking about coming for over a year … It’s his work. The pressure. Pressure of work.’
‘But now you’re ill –’ said May.
‘Now I’ve had this spot of trouble, he’ll come.’
Shirley took pity. ‘Of course he’ll come.’ She touched May’s hand, bent heavily to pick up her coat (and May suddenly saw she was middle-aged, that stately slowness as she stooped, then wrapped herself round in the pale wool as if she were hurt, as if she were damaged, and blew a grand stage kiss at them, a kiss for onlookers to see, and was gone, sailing off down the ward again, wind in her sails, unstoppable. At the end she turned and raised her hand, a flag of truce, a flag of forgiveness.)
She’s middle-aged, our Shirley Temple.
May stared after her, uncomprehending. One final flash of her curls in the light. Our golden girl. Our pretty baby. Soon she’ll be too old to have children … But how can our children be too old for anything?
I haven’t been a good mother to her. I didn’t stand up for her enough over Kojo. I didn’t tell Alfred he was being a fool.
But why has she turned out so different from us? Why does she want such different things? And Darren – he lives in hotels and planes, and has huttuttupp thingies, and dotcoms, and divorces – (Shirley had a point. Darren did let them down. Those last-minute phone calls, to say he wasn’t coming, when she’d cleaned the house from top to bottom and his dad had turned the mattress in the spare room. He’d be off to Hawaii, or Bali, or Greenland. Of course he couldn’t come, but all the same they felt it. ‘Enjoy yourself, lad,’ was all Alfred ever said.)
But where does it all come from? Lap-tops, jacuzzis? Out of the future. The glittering future. And we two are slipping back into the past.
I shall go with him, if Alfred goes.
That thought brought May a queer kind of comfort. The new things were probably not meant for them. It would be too much, too fast, too loud.
Probably it’s rich people live long lives.