The White Family Read Online Free PDF Page B

to it brown hills of leaf-mould dwarfing the figure of a stooped Asian woman loading something into a child’s push-chair (loading compost … why was that?), then beyond the Park, the cemetery, stretching away like a petrified forest, acres of quiet white and cream, then behind it the gleaming ranks of roofs, tiling the earth to the smudged horizon, greying to nothing, becoming invisible, dimming away into a pall of fumes.
    He drew a deep breath, and the sun came out, very low and golden, tinged with red, skimming across the rows of houses, the factory roofs, the city windows, gilding, illuminating, planting shadows, burnishing cars and panes of glass, giving depth and life to the distant city.
    The wind knocked him, spun him round, and the Park was suddenly a thing of glory, radiant in the last of the sunshine, a green field lifted towards the sky, the black branches of the cherry-trees waving thick soft flurries of pale pink petals, the weeping willows whipping threaded beads of gold against the coming evening, the boy on rollerblades swooping like an angel, arms uplifted, down the hill, the poodle rocketing, mad with joy, after a lolloping yellow cocker-spaniel … All shall be well, a voice told Thomas. His flesh prickled with icy pleasure.
    Albion Park. It was a hundred years old, built in the spate of philanthropy that heralded the end of the nineteenth century, when the local hospital was built, and the library, both of them by the same local builder, who had a deft hand with stone and red brick and a love of detail; pediments, cornices. The drinking-fountain was a marvel, a spired, four-sided, stone creation modelled like a miniature Gothic cathedral. It was the focal point to which all paths led. Not far away the Park Keeper’s lodge was a solidly impressive Victorian pile, two-storey, detached, with fine large windows.
    I wonder why Alfred never lived there? I’m sure he’d have jumped at it, given the chance. Sold off, probably. Some shoddy deal. In the same way they tried to sell off the Rise’s branch libraries. But people wouldn’t have it. The public said ‘No’.
    They’d sell the Park too, given the chance. Build it all over with shops and offices. Then none of us would be able to breathe.
    Alfred had stood here most of his life. Or marched like the soldier he had once been, left-right, left-right, patrolling his fiefdom. Every so often he would pause for a second to gaze across the flower-beds at some offender.
    Here he had stood, and here he fell. ‘They get abusive when he catches them at it.’ That was May, grey-lipped, as she sat and cried, though Thomas said the black family weren’t to blame. ‘You have no idea what he puts up with,’ she insisted. At any rate, the row had done for Alfred. Thomas briefly saw him stretched flat on the ground. His cap had come off. It was horrible. Thin hanks of white hair flapping back from his bald patch … helpless, naked, pink with hurt life …
    Thomas had come to the Park since he was a child. He put out his hand and touched the drinking-fountain, the rough pores of the weathered white stone. It had stood there through rain and frost and pollution and been ready every summer to give water to the kids, some of them too small to reach the basins unaided, clutching their lollies, balls, sweets, clinging to the arms of their brothers or sisters.
    Thomas was glad to see a gardener stooping dutifully over the bed by the fountain, trowel glinting in the sun as he dug.
She
dug, he corrected himself; a middle-aged woman in a navy mack he had mistaken for overalls, digging the crescent-shaped bed which was already a riot of tulips and daffodils.
    ‘Cold, isn’t it?’ he greeted her, passing close by, a semi-automatic courtesy, one human being acknowledging another, together in the struggle against dark and disorder.
    She whirled round instantly, craned anxiously upwards. He saw she held a bulb in her trowel. It had already sprouted a tight pink bud and a