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  There is no cooking daal and roti and leaving them in Tupperware boxes in the fridge, no unofficial, covert fertility blessings they can perform using only a bell and a stick of incense, then hurriedly airing the house before their departure. All they know is that their son and his wife are never around, becoming harder to reach, and that after three years of marriage there is still no grandchild.

  Neither subject can be brought up, and they have to rely on jibes from other distant relatives to do the job they do not have the stomach for. They feel too far away from their son to rock the boat. They are at the age where they only want to end phone conversations on a happy note, unsure of what the night will bring. And so they keep their tone as light as they can without breaking into hysteria, leaving Amal to read the neuroses behind every piece of weather observation and gossip.

  ‘It’s been cold, hasn’t it,’ typically conveys everything.

  He knows they were never disappointed in him marrying Claud. A man must pick the woman he wants. There is no alternative in this decade. Raise your children. Let them go. Choose your moments.

  Liz and Sam have seen them twice since they announced the news. His parents have not had the privilege of blessing the stomach, instead made to toast over the speakerphone due to a clashing working weekend, followed by their annual trip to Kolkata. The foremost guilt he feels is that they have been denied the sight of her, of the two of them, glowing with iron-rich supplements, and uncensored optimism. Some of the squealing down the phone expressed that, but not their hope. He still feels ashamed that he did not do enough to accommodate their seeing it. Taken a bloody day off. Gone out of his way. But there was plenty of time, went the rationale, close to a year of congratulations and microscopic study to come from the immediate family.

  ‘Let’s stretch it out a bit, the victory lap,’ Claud suggested at the time, not worried about holding back until amnio results and first scans, just wary of the weight of attention, and the likely threat of intrusion. She saw a similar display of the diplomatic back and forth that preceded their wedding, the collection of cells, its rooting inside her, acting as a reminder that family obligations were inescapable. His family, inexorable.

  Relaying the news by phone or skype to Kolkata, where aunts, uncles, and layabout cousins would most likely crowd around, effectively erasing all notions of privacy, did not faze him, for there was some comfort knowing that Ma and Puppa now expected his every emotional extreme to be delivered via phone lines. Whatever was not revealed would be passed on at a later date by Hari, a compulsive, unrepentant gossip.

  There was freedom in allowing them to hear the faintest marital spat as the state-of-the-art broadband line hissed and crackled, like bone-dry kindling being used to fire up a plus-size cauldron.

  ‘We are happy with whatever you want to do, so long as you make this baby a child of God, any God,’ they said, a week ago, fourteen days after the news had been broken. Broken, like it was a product launch, or international event.

  ‘Health and happiness are already accounted for. There is no excuse for a deficiency of either in this day and age. But spiritual plans must be consciously put into place. The child will lack a dimension in life if it lives without a God, any God.’

  ‘Like Aishwarya Rai? I hear they worship her in some parts of London.’

  ‘Don’t make a joke of this, Amal. We’re being serious.’

  ‘I know, Ma. This is something we’ll look into. There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘Look into? This is not the scouts or girl guides, Amal. These things have to be decided from the outset.’

  ‘Ma, Puppa, we will definitely not run away from this. Leave it to me to handle Amal.’

  They argued about it later, long after parental fears were eased in Kolkata and the speakerphone, shredded with effort, finally cut out. It was the only time during the twenty-one days that they raised their voices with one another over conflicting plans for the collection of cells.

  ‘Our baby should have dual teaching, not just made into a Hindu,’ Claud begins. ‘They haven’t got a right to put pressure on us this early. It’s precisely why I wanted to keep a lid on things for as long as possible. To avoid this kind of hoopla.’

  What she means is, Liz and Sam and no one else. He wants to shout at her simple-mindedness, this stupid, protectionist woman he has married.

  ‘This is all rubbish as far as I’m concerned, ’Mal. Neither of us have any interest in God, for a start. We’re a pair of healthy, rational atheists who wanted to get married in a great building. Same as everyone else our age.’

  ‘Who said anything about raising him a Hindu? Didn’t you hear them? One God, any God.’

  ‘Read between the lines, Amal. Are you really that stupid? This is about you becoming a Christian. It’s their way of getting back at me.’

  ‘That’s not true, Claud. Ma and Puppa aren’t like that and you know it. It hacks me off that you even said it. They have no issue with me being baptized. If anything I think they’re pleased that I’m actually showing an interest in religion.’

  ‘Not theirs, though. They’d rather you followed theirs.’

  She spoke like it was that easy; all that he had done. He had given up everything his parents taught him for three-quarters of an hour at a Victorian-built stone altar in Lewes.

  Churches fly past at every half mile, as if to needle him on what he has lost. For all the fuss, the importance made of it, they have not been inside one for worship since the wedding, Liz and Sam seemingly only interested in his membership, nothing more.

  An adult christening is easy to fake. He could have said he got done on a quiet Tuesday afternoon at the Episcopalian place on Richmond Green, or the forbidding-looking Scottish Presbyterian house tucked away in Kew. He knew enough graphic designers to knock up a certificate, if one was needed. As it was, the vicar who joined them barely raised interest in the confirmation of his conversion, almost talked over it in fact, so keen was he to reach the part of the conversation that concerned fees.

  It was an act on all their parts. There was no element of Christian teaching from his twelve evening sessions at a library room in Chiswick that resonated with him. No clear belief in the presence of Christ. Only a heightened awareness of the paraphernalia, and a new-found fascination for religious paintings, whether the gold-leafed Russian icons at the Victoria and Albert, or the gaudier, Hallmark-inspired depictions hung in the shops along Shepherd’s Bush Road. He did it because it was the one thing she asked of him. Only after the wedding when his smug easiness lapsed into headache, similar to coming down from the most extreme sugar highs only more intense, did he see the folly of it, respecting his parents even more for not pointing it out.

  Distance makes him a lousy son. He needs to be better, especially since he is about to become a father. Only . . .

  Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Anglican, First Adventist, and United Reformed architecture stand guard as he trips himself up, those good thoughts somehow leaving his brain and catching hard in his throat. Bunting streams from every lamp post as if to celebrate his amnesia. He can remember how one obscure B-road leads to the next, but not what has happened to their future child. It is pathetic how easily the collection of cells escaped him for those brief moments, like it was never there, seduced as he was by everything that makes the Sussex countryside so smart: the well-tended farmland, the villages with their lead into aspiration, and the essence of simple faith amplified by the collection of churches.

  It must be a pang, an ache no deeper than a three-week crush. He feels better to think it away like this. Better than staring at a sleeping Claud, and wishing for the return of something that is no longer there. His crush on the supermodels as a teenager hurt more than this. He dry-humped the mattress imagining Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Stephanie Seymour in the three months leading up to his exams. What is twenty-one days? How much can it mean, really?

  He winds the window down a fraction to begin waking her. The breeze, gently pu
lling her out of her pill-induced sleep, has a lightness of touch he lacks; no heavier than fingertips removing a stray eyelash. She has ten miles to banish all that is groggy and incoherent. He was given a similar prescription last year when he pulled his knee at the gym. Knows the time it takes to lose the muddy speech and the feeling that the brain’s pathways are connected by fuzzy felt.

  But her face is not the blank canvas of a Mickey Finn. It is the countryside that has relaxed her; she is calmed by being in the world of Hawkhurst, Robertsbridge, and Burwash. His lack of presence in her history is coming to the fore, Sussex providing the comfort blanket he is unable to replicate. The day has been all about highlighting his deficiencies as a husband.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Outside Battle. We’ll be there before long.’

  ‘I need to do my make-up. If they see me looking like this, they’ll know something’s up.’

  ‘Get a quick cup of tea by the Abbey? I could do with shaking my lettuce.’

  It is her first laugh, loud and warm, as if something in the combination of sleeping pill and countryside has lowered her barriers, made laughter a possibility. It cannot be because his jokes are funny; he comes from the cabaret school of bad gags. The car does not rock with mirth but pleasure somehow reaches both of them, flushing cheeks, suggesting a way to draw her out. Laughing will not make everything better, but it may make her stronger. It opens new avenues for his usefulness.

  ‘I think you’re bigging it up too much, ’Mal. It’s not so much a lettuce, more a little gem.’

  The abbey, rising at the far end of the high street, delivers an almost blasé sense of awe, as if the chintziness of the local stores has stripped it of its foreboding. It stands fully preserved and complete, unlike some of its cousins along the coast at Hastings and further east towards Kent. It has always been their gatepost, the final marking on the road home. Today, it is wrapped in ribbons of white bunting, as if to confirm that they have crossed the finish line. He wonders whether their future will always be tied to Sussex, spending their days fractious in plastic raincoats, still tiptoeing around what they really want to say.

  They take an outside table at the tea shop overlooking the entrance where they can watch the trickle of silver tourists clutching their anoraks and guidebooks. The couples are predominantly women, murmuring agreeably in anticipation of one more landmark being crossed off their list. Aware of the statistics, he is still always surprised to see that it is more women than men happily taking the strain on the hill as they join the queue trailing from the admission booth. It is as if the threat of a late sentence stranded with their wives visiting empty spaces is too much to contemplate, has killed them off.

  Pensioner is not a dirty word in their home. They have talked more about pension provision than they have about children because breeding is a given. It is one of the main points of getting married in their middle thirties; to use up the sperm and the eggs before they dry up, trail off, drop off. Financial planning for later life is not assumed in the same way, when other factors such as the stupidity of the husband are brought into account.

  It came up on their first date, a forced meeting in a city bar arranged by Hari, who subsequently ditched them because he was so sure they would click. He cannot remember now what either of them was wearing, only her shoes, black patent Mary Janes, whose overt childishness was a marked contrast to her interrogating tone, somewhat Mary Poppins but with better lipstick.

  ‘I read somewhere that first dates are essentially interviews with cocktails. Might as well go with that thought.’

  ‘I thought we were just having a drink.’

  ‘Shut up and answer the questions. Please confirm that you’re in full-time employment, preferably something that is neither in the arts sector or a McJob.’

  ‘I can indeed confirm that. Wouldn’t you rather sit down, or is towering over me part of the “thing”?’

  ‘I take it you’re solvent?’

  ‘Some of the time. I’m playing, don’t take it so seriously, Claudia.’

  ‘Claud. It’s Claud. Just answer the questions. No adlibs.’

  ‘Sir! Yes sir!’

  ‘Married? Attached?’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘Have you joined a pension scheme or made adequate provision for pensionable age?’

  ‘I have. It’s buried under the bed.’

  ‘Are you a homeowner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Close to your family?’

  ‘Close enough. Do you want a top-up? Looks like you’re running empty there.’

  ‘Later. Any history of mental illness?’

  ‘Only in agreeing to come out tonight.’

  ‘Do you like being questioned by slightly scary women made even scarier by three cocktails on an empty stomach?’

  ‘I love it. Give me more.’

  She does not drink her latte until it is nearly cold. The milk has formed a thick skin whilst she works on her face, and when finally disturbed, it hangs off the side of the cup in a thick bandage, like rope, as she brings it to her lips. He takes it from her in a swift movement, both to draw her attention to the ugliness that adorns her glass, but also to stop him from gagging.

  ‘Leave it. I can get you one fresh.’

  ‘No need. It’s just to wet the whistle. Couldn’t have finished it anyway.’

  ‘You wetting your whistle, me shaking my lettuce. We could go on tour with these phrases. Make a show out of it.’

  She is not as amused as before. Though she has finished applying lipstick, her mouth stays fixed in a grimace, the mirror of him a minute ago when faced with crinkled, knotted milk skin. He stutters his way out of it.

  ‘I-I-I-I’m hungry. Maybe I should get a sandwich or a cake.’

  ‘Mum will have made lunch. She’ll be offended if you don’t make a go of it.’

  ‘I’m eating for strength. I can’t shift a washing machine on an empty stomach.’

  ‘You don’t need extra strength. Just use the bulk around your gut. Dad doesn’t hold excess weight the way you do, otherwise he’d be on it himself.’

  This is everything he has brought into the marriage: brawn over brain, and lacklustre sperm.

  Her eyes, coloured on and around the lids, heavily coated with mascara, roam around their gatepost, as she cranes her head around his newly crowned bulk to settle upon the abbey.

  ‘We used to hate it when we were kids. Thought it symbolized everything smug and bourgeois. There was a guy in sixth form who had this idea of burning it down on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘What was the point of that?’

  ‘To ruin Christmas for everyone. To get the TV cameras down here. Try and get on the news as an anxious bystander. We were attention-seeking buggers at that age. Real terrors.’

  He has seen the picture albums and the home video footage, hours of it, but can still not imagine Claud as a child. He does not have the curiosity he has seen in other husbands because to him she has never been anything other than fully formed. So to think of her that way, formative and vulnerable, jars. Seeing her as she is now, damaged, unsure, takes him to the same place.

  ‘B-bloody rich kids. Spoilt brats, the lot of you. What’s with all the bunting, by the way? All the other villages we passed were decked out too.’

  ‘Herald of spring, probably. Usually about this time of year. I’d forgotten all about it.’

  She shudders, at the thought of any festival, pagan or otherwise, that celebrates fertility. The look in her eyes yearns for winter and the invisibility and numbness that comes with it.

  ‘Do you think we can do this, ’Mal? I’ve never lied to my parents before.’

  ‘I’m not calling the shots here. We’ll do whatever you want. Whatever gets you through the day.’

  ‘How do you lie? What can I say to make it sound convincing?’

  ‘Like I’m the expert?’

  ‘Men lie. It’s in your DNA.’

  ‘You do realize that I’m not like those g
uys. Where has this come from?’

  ‘Don’t get mad. I’m just having second thoughts.’

  ‘You can do this, Claud. You just need some help. Keep it simple. Let them do the talking. If you can’t keep it up, tell them.’

  The waitress, like everyone they see in Battle, is unaware of their situation. So cheerfully ignorant that he wants to take it out on her, strangle her.

  ‘Will be with you in a sec, my dears,’ she calls after a hurried swish from tables to back counter, her second sight homing in on his hand as it trembles over the laminated menu card.

  ‘This is why Rory wanted to torch the place. Reckoned it was making fogies out of us. Look at her, twenty years old and speaking like a granny.’

  He cannot look at the waitress, past the pasty freckled hand as she grabs the menu post-order, and the sideways glance kitchenwards, alerting the staff that an Asian is on the premises; experience teaches him this, not self-indulged paranoia. He has no time to invest in her comings and goings, the way her back has stiffened, wary of possible complaint, sure of haggling over the bill and a withholding of the service charge. Ordinarily, these nuances would preoccupy him and ruin the snack. Today he is too busy looking at his wife.

  She must have been an uncomplicated girl, the master of the universe even then. Other than growing pains she has had nothing to worry about. Her family has no history of serious illness. They have been good with their money. Her grandparents are still alive and living independently. The household pets, two overfed cats, were spared a descent into the indignity of old age after both were catnapped over two successive months. There has been no uncertainty in her life, nothing that has forced her to reflect. Try asking an Indian family what they have been spared and prepare for your ears to sting all the way back to the subcontinent as your jugs are pulled from your head.