The White Family by Maggie Gee Read Free Book Online

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