Black Bread White Beer (18 page)

She has not taken off her coat. He toys with the rim of his half-pint glass.

‘We can't be out too long. They'll be wondering where we are.'

‘You needed a drink.'

‘We have drinks at home.'

‘You know what I mean. Besides, I left a post-it. They'll probably join us before long.'

She looks around in appraisal, as if the place is new to her; sips her red wine with distaste.

‘So this is the new theory, is it? Getting drunk makes everything better?'

‘It can do. You're from the Home Counties. You should be well practiced.'

‘That's the second bastard thing you've said today. Don't know what's got into you this afternoon. You've been acting strange ever since you got back from the Herald.'

‘You're one to talk. Shut up and finish your drink.'

‘Shut up and finish yours. It's bitter, not a bloody cocktail.'

They laugh a little because the nagging seems so normal;
a flashback to three days ago; three weeks ago; a couple of hours after they met.

‘This is going to send me loopy. I'm still taking the painkillers they gave me for the cramps.'

‘You're still cramping?'

‘The body doesn't stop just because the baby's not there. Do you know anything about my physiognomy apart from the bits that help you get your rocks off?'

‘That's not fair.'

‘Why is it I seem to know everything about how your body functions and you know nothing about mine?'

‘I was only asking because you hadn't mentioned it before. Someone discharged themselves on their own. I lost my opportunity to ask any questions.'

‘There's the internet. You could have been using the internet instead of standing around with your mouth open.'

‘You think I've had time for the internet? Now you're the one who's in another world.'

There was a great vision they had for themselves. That their forties would be fatter and all the more contented for having a brood getting under their feet. Things would not always be easy, but at the very least there would be a couple of bare, harmonious strands holding them together. Like his parents. Hers. Now he does not see how they will get there at all.

Pubs are her environment, not his. A country girl, she
has been brought up in them; in this very one, in fact. Church, school, social centre, dating service and crisis support all housed under a modernized coaching inn. She should command presence here. The banquette should not need to support her back, in place of the iron rod that usually bears her. If anything, she looks frailer than before; the drink softening her into a rag, crumpled and ready to fade into the background, like furniture, inanimate and static.

‘You don't want to be here, do you?'

‘Here's as good as anywhere else.'

‘I'm sorry. I thought it would cheer you up.'

‘Cheer me up? This isn't a bad day at the office. Or is it, to you?'

‘No. I don't know. Just wanted to do something that made you happy. Relaxed, at least.'

‘It's going to take a long time before that happens so be prepared.'

He wants to shout that she has not prepared him for anything. The books have stayed in her domain. Her side of the bed. Everything he has been told has been on a need to know. Aware of how feeble that makes him sound, weaker than a girl with a sofa for a spine, he keeps his mouth shut. Aware too how the corners of his eyes crease heavily when he breaks into ineffectual protestation. She has hectored him enough times about its unattractiveness and instant ageing qualities.

Limbo dominates. He has been in freefall because he has lacked structure and the influence of third parties. What he longs for is a dry old sandwich in the café opposite his office and a lunch hour of talking bullshit with the guys on his team. The two-hour abyss from lunch until tea; then the final two-hour stretch, usually a meeting where he can daydream and count down the minutes until the metaphorical bell rings and the mass descent to the bar.

Free time works only when there is no crisis. He sees no end to this day, nor to the lowering of their postures. Tonight if they fall asleep at all, they will remain hunched, taut, stop and start.

‘I didn't mean it. What I said before. Of course I want to try again.'

There is nothing to say. He has to take her lead. He will only open his mouth for beer.

‘You got me when I'd just woken up. I'd been thinking about it in my sleep. It frightened me, the thought of what we'd have to go through. Awake, slightly pissed, I feel I can handle it. Raring to go, actually.'

‘Is this the right thing to do?'

‘As soon as possible. Tonight if we can.'

Under the table, his legs shudder involuntarily at the thought. He will hug but cannot touch her in that way. Needs to be anywhere but. The tension in his jaw resumes. His whole head frozen with it.

Men, Hari says, will fuck anything. If it's on the rag, they'll fuck it; if it's asleep, they'll fuck it; if it has two heads and a mouth like a bag full of spanners, they'll have a go.

He does not know why her words suddenly bring him back to this nasty, bachelor mindset. Perhaps his nervousness. He giggled when Puppa told him his grandfather had died. Same territory; his mind spanning to previously unthinkable tangents. Still, it is disgusting. In his so-called heyday he never got anyone. Never laid claim so indiscriminately the way Hari did. He had too much deference.

Is this what he thinks of his wife? Former pedestal royalty humbled into doggy style in the sewer? To be humiliated in the way of Hari's damaged women? Truth: he wants to hold her, but does not want to lie with her. Comfort her, but not touch her. Revive her, but still forsaking the act.

Maybe she is talking over her truth: that it might be best to call it a day after their one shot failed. No shame in that. Save themselves the heartache, something that will leave deeper scars if, as he is starting to suspect, the next pregnancy goes the way of the first.

He thinks of all the great things that couples can do without the burden of children. How their lives could remain an abundance of spontaneity and disposable income. They could buy a holiday home abroad. Two. One on each
hemisphere if that is what would make her happy. He racks his mind to think of the childless couples they know – not the kids from the office; guys their age and older – but cannot dredge any up. In their immediate circle, there are no trailblazers, only conformists. No matter. They are taste makers, she and him. They can set the precedent.

There are all those hotels advertising breaks ‘just for adults'. The supermarket shop can be done online. Gyms hit before work. Multiplex cinemas eschewed for Arthouse. Theatre replacing bars and the occasional nightclub. Everything in their life can be tailored, shaded, trimmed to the point where children become like the dodo – rarely sighted, and then finally, extinct.

They can find a way back to sex, just not now. He is not the man to take advantage of the wounded, the dead. These things must come back in their own time no matter how loud her hormonal alarms. He realizes how it will be seen: as the ultimate revenge for being treated like a mating machine, but he cannot help his feelings. He will withhold. He must.

But only in his head is he the leader of anything. Leaning forward, she grabs his forearm and shakes it urgently.

‘If we mark a start tonight, we could be pregnant in a few weeks. I won't conceive tonight, I know that. We just have to believe that we can. No one need know.'

He laughs harder than he means to, both incredulous and frightened by her tunnel vision.

‘I think they'll work it out when the pregnancy spans ten or eleven months.'

‘Some babies stay in the womb past their due date. What were you telling me about your cousin's wife?'

‘She was three weeks late. But she was also obese. The sprog had to push through all the fat. Why do you care what people think all of a sudden? When our kid comes it'll be the right time. Call it destiny, it doesn't sound too mystical. Nothing to do with fear of losing face, looking stupid.'

He is harsher than he needs to be. Hates himself for it, the pain that crinkles her forehead; the determined shake that banishes it away. The hand that retreats from its place on his arm back to the fold of her lap. Wounded crustacean, preyed upon, crawling back to its shell.

Someone has to be logical. Show leadership. This is probably what they advise in the counselling leaflets they left behind at the hospital. They can give in to their imaginations but not to fantasy. Nothing good can come of such indulgence. As the husband, it is down to him to be the tough guy. No one else can be trusted to give her these firm truths.

He will be the captain of their ship, sailing with a steady hand. There will be a need for steadfastness but he will be fair with it, just until the waters settle and she sees
that desperation is not the route they need to take. Thirty-four may not be the same as twenty-four, but they still have all the time in the world if they can keep their heads.

‘Please 'Mal. Please, let's do this.'

The steel in her eyes ready to level him to dust. The note in her pleading, chills. It promises harmful consequences if he does not adhere. Unable to hold her gaze he goes to the bar. Let the alcohol flood the desperation out of her. Wash the need away.

He downs a double whiskey chaser at the bar whilst waiting for his pint, not caring whether or not she notices. She has had the luxury of sleeping pills. He needs this. Usually he would turn to face her whilst the bar girl is getting the drinks together, both of them indulging in this distant perspective on the other; seeing how strangers might see them. Not today. That he feels her crumbling in her seat is enough.

The shot puts him on the wrong side of sober. He is a sorry excuse for a husband. An overnight stay at Liz and Sam is no longer a flight of fancy, but a necessity; once he gets to the bottom of that pint glass a very obvious one. No matter. There are greater things to worry over.

She has moved to a new table in the centre of the room where he must join her. Here stools take preference over chairs, as if her intention is to force them both to rediscover their backbone. She sits dead straight in a Finishing School posture. In Sussex they learn these rules
almost by osmosis. He puts a fresh glass in her hand, noticing now that the old one remains barely touched on the other table.

‘Two forty.'

‘What?'

‘I've been doing some mental arithmetic. Two hundred and forty.'

‘I don't get you.'

‘You realize I've been having periods since I was fourteen? Twenty years of it. Twenty times twelve. That's two hundred and forty opportunities to have a baby and almost every one of those passed up.'

‘You have to stop this, Claud. You're not being fair on yourself.'

‘This has nothing to do with feeling sorry for myself. I'm stating biological facts. I've had over two hundred chances and I ignored them. What's that they say about listening to your body? It's true, isn't it?'

‘We have jobs that we love . . .'

‘Trust you to make it worse than it already is. My career's to blame, is it?'

Through the muddle of alcohol, he is still flooded with a sweet sense of familiarity. These are traps he regularly falls in, where he stitches himself up with thoughtless attempts at empathy. He says the wrong thing whether she has had a bad day at work or been short changed at the dry cleaner. Nothing can be the matter if they are treading down these well-worn paths. He is comfortable in this
province of trip-ups and hashed apologies. Quells the fear of earlier when everything was uncharted, unexplained.

‘I've said it wrong, as usual.'

‘If I'd have given in that night of the Christmas Fayre. Dropped my knickers instead of giving him a hand job.'

‘I'm sorry. I should learn to listen more.'

‘I could be the mother of a sixteen-year-old child.'

‘I've missed something. Who are you talking about?'

‘That guy at my sixth form who wanted to burn down Battle. Rory. Wasn't just the Castle he was into.'

He takes her hands, the first time all day, he realizes. Cups them to his lips. It is the closest he'll get to kissing her on the brow, cheeks, mouth.

‘You can't keep torturing yourself like this, Claud. What you're talking about is just mathematics. It doesn't have any relevance to real life.'

‘Who are you to say what's real to me?'

Outrage in her eyes, but no power to her voice.

‘You never had one hundred and fifty chances to get pregnant, or whatever it was. You're a flesh-and-blood woman, not a sodding battery chicken or breeding heifer.'

A flash of a smile: bitter, powered by guilt.

‘This from your plan to cheer me up, is it?'

‘Look around this place. We've had some good times here, haven't we?'

She has danced on this floor with her shoes off. The soles of her feet blackened with dirt and, before the smoking ban, fag butts. Toes caked with broken crisps and
other stray bits of food. Every milestone leading to her thirty-four years has been marked with a loosely choreographed shimmy, same as everyone else who has bred here.

They have danced on this floor together. With abandon. His first Christmas away from Leicester, enjoying the freedom but riddled with nerves; and her, face reddened with a mulled wine and Bacardi mix, seeking to lead him out of it.

She rooted through the catalogue of CDs on the jukebox and pulled up the song from
Dirty Dancing
. One moment he had gone for a piss. The next, she was singing to him across the bar, enthusiastically, tunelessly, until there was no choice but to be Patrick Swayze to her Baby. Groins in step but feet out of kilter. Laughing the whole time. Unable to believe she liked that mushy crap. Cheers from their side of the Snug, as her mates willed them along.