From Maggie Gee: The White Family, pp. 97-100

Introduction:
Maggie Gee's eighth novel explores the "problem" of race as it originates and festers in the minds of present-day white Britons. 'The White Family' is an audacious, groundbreaking condition-of-England novel that delves for the roots of xenophobic (=ausländerfreindlich) hatred and violence in the English hearth.

May= Mother White
(In this excerpt May remembers the good old times when she would go shopping and know all the shopkeepers personally. Now almost the shops are closed down and have been substituted by supermarkets)
Alfred = her ill husband.
(Alfred White is the keeper of Albion Park. An army veteran, he has mounted a 50-year campaign to enforce park rules, keep order and "hold the fort". If it were left to him, the park in Hillesden Rise - a fictitious part of London reminiscent of Willesden or Hackney - would have stricter rules: "This was England. If in doubt, keep them out."
Shirley = their daughter

Excerpt:
We used to have everything here, she thought, Hillesden Rise was like a village. We used to have a bank; that went in ninety-four (=1994). And a building society. That vanished soon after. And the chemist - that went six months ago. She'd seen it coming; Mr Frost had been depressed, especially since the incident last year when two drug addicts beat him with the butt of a gun. She wouldn't say it to Shirley, but both of them were black ... The most innocent remarks offended her daughter. Two flower-shops; both of them had gone under. Served them right for charging too much, though she missed the great lilies and the golden chrysanthemums waving at her behind the glass. Two shoe-shops; gone. Where she bought the kids' shoes. Their first tiny sandals, their sensible school-shoes. Now there was just a man who did repairs, an Indian, a gruff old thing who reminded her of her own father, sitting in the dark all day, hammering and sticking, helped by shrill-voiced women who were daughters or grand daughters. (You wouldn't catch an English family doing that, these days, though I helped my father, when I was a kid.)

Once we had a bakery-cum-cake-shop. She used to buy gingerbread¹ men for the kids, and a sponge² on Saturdays, since hers always sagged. It was - an ornament to the high street, the cake-shop, a sign of the prosperity that came with the fifties. May used to like sniffing the air outside: eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla. But the shop changed hands some time in the eighties; they brought in rubbish baked in Kilburn. By the time they folded, no one much cared ... There was a solicitor's³ where May and Alfred had made their wills twenty years ago, when it seemed like a joke that they would ever need them. That only survived the bank by a year. Electrical Goods; went in ninety-six. Hardware store; ditto. Jewellers; late eighties. May missed the jewellers; it was romantic, looking in at the second-hand rings and lockets and lucky charms, gleaming on the velvet. She had liked old Hymie, who also mended watches, and never minded getting things out of the window even though he knew May was only looking. (He was . . . partial to her, when she was younger, when they were both young; a lifetime ago.) But he got too nervous, after three or four break-ins, the last one with him present, in broad daylight. He didn't resist, but they still broke his jaw. 'My wife says, "Hymie, it's just not worth it." '

We had two or three butchers - three, after the war. They used to dress up properly, in blue striped aprons. Then later with little white trilby⁴ hats. Then the windows started to look a bit patchy, because butchers needed to have lovely full windows, gleaming chops and ribs and legs, not grey lumps eked out⁵ with plastic parsley⁶. Last November the one surviving butcher closed. 'We had hoped to keep going till Christmas, Mrs White. I don't like to let the customers down.' His face had been pallid as the chicken-legs. 'Don't worry, we'll go down to Gigamart,' said a stringy young woman with a bright yellow crewcut⁷, dragging her toddler out of the shop. May wanted to kick her, but she did have a point. If they'd had a car, she would have done the same. May had been keen to drive, at one stage, when Ruby and George had got their first motor, but Alfred was always too busy to learn, and he thought he'd look silly being driven by a woman. And now l'll be stranded, she thought resentfully, then realized that meant if Alfred dies.....

There used to be a fish-monger's with marble slabs⁸ on which beautiful blue and pink bodies gleamed. She used to buy roes⁹, and do them on toast ...

When we were first married. It was Alfred's favourite. His eyes were so blue when he smiled at me. And kippers¹⁰, for breakfast. And the odd bit of plaice¹¹. He thought fish was healthy, though the smell was awful, and I bought it regularly, twice a week, but what good did it do him, what good, what good?

May stopped, found her hanky, pulled herself together. She couldn't go crying in the street at her age.

She passed the betting-shop. She rarely looked in through the plateglass windows with their crude graphics. It seemed like catching men at something shameful; they went in looking furtive¹², came out looking sad. In the past ten years it had doubled in size, to three time; the size of a normal shop. May had bet twice in her life, both times on the Derby, both times when the names of the horses seemed lucky, 'Early Sherbet', which reminded her of Shirley, and 'King Alfred', which of course - of course. And she lost the money, naturally. It was a sort of sink, soaking up people's money. But all sorts of betting was popular, these days. The paper-shop she favoured did the Lottery. A huge yellow sign beckoned from the window. Whereas George had turned down the chance to have the Lottery. 'Ruby says it's taking people's money for nothing. They don't have a lot to spare, round here.'

They did. She saw them. A tenner at a time, and the poorest people were the worst of the lot. A tenner¹³ on Saturday and 'instants' on week days. Betting and boozing, as other things dwindled. Till all that was left would be the pub and the betting-shop. Nowhere for people like May to go.

The shop keepers all used to know my name ... They knew our kids. Looked out for them. Shirley never went out without being given toffees. And the mothers all used to meet up in the shops. We stood there talking and blocking up the gangways till the shopkeepers started giving us looks. But it wasn't bad for business, not really. The local shops were like a club. If you asked, they would get things in just for you. They even cashed cheques when the bank was closed. It was like a dream now, all that bustle and variety, people who smiled and knew your name ... In Gigamart, the staff all looked like robots. Stacking shelves by numbers, in nylon uniforms.

It was all going faster than May had realized. Almost trotting down the street, her blue coat clutched around her, she saw that more than half the shops were boarded up, or had their fronts covered with aluminium shutters, which rattled coldly in the winter winds. 'To Let', the boards said, hopefully, but no one new came except charity shops, and they already had three, full of wrong-coloured garments¹⁴. So the boards got battered¹⁵, and looked grimy, guilty, each one a confession of failure and emptiness. It was over, Hillesden Rise was over, over, and May found the tears welling up again, and realized she was crying for herself and Alfred and the silly young couple they had once been.
We liked it here. It was our - El Dorado. Once upon a time, it had all we needed.
1199 words

Annotations:
1. gingerbread - Lebkuchen
2. sponge - Biskuitkuchen
3. solicitor - Notar, Jurist
4. trilby - Filzhut
5. to eke out - aufbessern
6. parsley - Petersilie
7. crewcut - Bürsten(haar)schnitt
8. slab - Steinplatte
9. roes - Rogen (Fisch)
10.kippers - geräucherter Hering
11.plaice - Scholle
12.furtive - verstohlen
13.tenner - Zehnpfundschein
14.garments - Kleidungsstücke
15.to batter - zerschlagen


Assignments:
1. What is it that May likes most about life before the eighties?
2. Corner shops vs. 'gigamarts'. What are their advantages and disadvantages respectively?
3. Characterize May from what you can read in this excerpt?
4. Do you think that British people living in the 1950s and 60s were happier than they are today?