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  His has been a three-year period of preparation, of making mistakes and learning to correct them. Of forgetting those lessons and messing up again, before seeking new ways to avoid discord, such as the most recent one: staying out of the house; leaving work and spending half the night listening to music in the car because it made things easier than talking back to hormonal barb wire.

  During his introductory lessons to Christianity, the young reverend coaching him (earnestly and in detail, as if he were counting down to a school exam) remarked with some envy on the freshness of one’s early marriage years when everything about each other was still not known. That he would find beautiful mystery in the mundane everyday situations that drove the world. It was a sensible notion that should have stuck with him more than any of the Church teachings if he had not been so caught up with discussing bloody frescos. Even as a child he had always liked a mystery. But there have been three years of mysteries on both their parts and he is tired of it. Tired from not enough sleep, and from this constant process of learning. When do the lessons end? When can they finally settle into their marriage and start to be happy?

  There is something resolute in Liz’s manner that gives him hope. Claud has Sam’s bossiness but in every other way she is Liz’s mirror, a time-tunnel to her sixth decade: the slight frame that has thickened with age without turning to fat; the jawline that continues to defy gravity by curving to a gentle point under the mouth; the hair, of a darker copper than her daughter, but still with the same thickness and lustre. He watches her as she playfully creeps up behind Sam and pinches his bum whilst he is in mid-spiel to a group of tourists who have put down their cameras and cakes to listen to a five-minute lecture on local concerns. Sam jumps at the suddenness of the move, at which everyone ham-fistedly stifles giggles, as if this is some regional theatre being acted out before them. But he remains as is, not turning round once until he has finished his point. There is no need. He recognizes the touch like a fingerprint. So close to him, it is virtually his own. Now their hands are locked, her nestling closer to him, his body slightly curving to accommodate her, and as if connected to the same battery, she too starts to speak on the perils of the proposed centre. Whether husband or wife, one must always be ready to welcome the other and speak with their voice. That is his lesson for today. Amen.

  Left to his own devices, he finds himself doing a Sam and wandering alone around the Green. Passing a bench one of the older WI woman calls him to sit down.

  ‘Come and have a rest. Too many children here.’

  ‘Yes. Noisy, isn’t it? I won’t stop, though. I’m walking-off my cake.’

  ‘People should only have one each, like they do in China. They’re exhausting the planet with these screaming monsters. Some shouldn’t have any at all. It’s overrated, parenthood.’

  He makes several laps as if he is being sponsored for his efforts. At every turn making sure he now avoids the old woman, whose words rattle him, he is drawn to the presence of the pole, no less phallic and authoritative than earlier. If there is any dormant belief left inside he should feel the gifts of pagan fertility bestowed upon him; some tiny seed to convince him that it is worth trying again.

  That what they have suffered is a minor hiccup in the history of their future family. His ears close to the sound of bells being jangled from a nearby table, rattling and ringing, an amateur medley to mark the Herald of Spring, where every farm animal and villager is primed and aching to reproduce. Just not them.

  He takes refuge in the church. The crowd has begun to leave their activities at the fringes of the Green and converge towards its centre. From the corner of his eye he expects to see the tug-of-war rope being coiled out, and suitable men conscripted into one side or other. Teeth-clenching rivalries between country houses and workmen’s cottages have long since lost their validity in the wake of the mass exodus of the late ’60s and ’70s. Now they are lucky to muster an army fit enough for a game that pits country versus visiting townies or, if the ranks have swelled, the village versus the rest of Sussex.

  We are scared of no man! Normans, Saracens, County Councils! We will take all comers!

  He hurries past the Green and down the path that leads to the cemetery gates before he is spotted and volunteered. He has taken the bearings of the in-laws, both distracted with other matters; Sam now holding court at the pub steps; Liz helping with the litter patrol. Already his excuse is mapped out should he be found and questioned: he was taking a long shit in the pub on account of the berry flan.

  The church, originally Norman, with Saxon, Victorian, Edwardian and Silver and Golden Jubilee additions, stands at the bottom of the lane overlooking the cemetery, and beyond that, the Green and the pub. The path is a cut-through from one side of the village to the other, one that avoids the worst of the hill; the building itself is a local point of pride, with well-tended gardens and a row of highly polished slatted benches, but otherwise it is ignored bar Sunday ritual. Loved, but hurriedly attended to, like a long-standing pet slowly on its way out.

  On previous visits, smug with newfound knowledge, he would take a detour whilst Claud and her parents meandered over misshapen vegetables at the organic market. His head rang as high and clear as that marvellous iron construction in the bell tower, devouring ornamental woodwork; dark, circular hymn tables and coved placards honouring mothers’ unions. Relishing the cool air of the chancel; feeling the smoothness of the stonework, and tracing his fingers over the deep-set engraving that adorned it.

  The Tudors were ahead of the village’s origins by a few hundred years, but everything here is in praise of the rose and more meadow flowers, as if, drunk on the beauty of the Downs, the stonemasons felt an obligation to incorporate the bucolic landscape within worship.

  From a succession of furtive visits – a thirty-minute detour when work meetings were booked anywhere off the M25 – he has come to the conclusion that villages most often got the churches that they deserved. Half the reason he converted was not to pray within the sometimes handsome, but often utilitarian red-brick boxes of the modern towns. He appreciated a beautifully embroidered kneeler, but did not approve of an array of soft furnishings scattered across pews, or worse, rows of richly upholstered chairs in red or hunting-green gauze that smelt depressingly similar to the municipal furniture of conference centres or service stations. The no-nonsense stained-glass, thrifty in spirit and lacking in decoration, suited those streets lined with post-war semis and their Tudor gables and tightly paved driveways.

  He can never admit to Ma and Puppa that it is architectural snobbery that has convinced him of a specific Christ, hardily worshipped from such taken-for-granted splendour as here. If Claud’s family had come from Milton Keynes he would have put up more of a fight, found a way to argue out of converting; treating the cultural clash like a structured debate with reasons for and against. There would be no emotional element, no epiphany or pull from his guts to illustrate his mindset; just blatantly taking advantage of those who disagreed with each other on how strength of belief should be measured.

  Often he comes here, bored, angry, though those feelings never linger for long; not when there is so much to look at. Put him anywhere holy and he has the eyes of a newborn, constantly registering and filtering the surroundings.

  It was the very serious curate leading his conversion who was to blame, developing his studied appreciation for something that had previously been passed off as a curiosity. A cursory forty minutes was spent at each class checking that he had done his homework. The remainder of the ninety minutes was taken with a series of antique art books with enlarged colour plates.

  Christopher’s subject of interest was Russian icons. Probably the closest he would get to camp, he thought, during their discussions on religious art. English and Italian Formalists versus ostentatious works composed almost entirely in gilt. Now, as is usual, his attention is first taken with the imposing painted cross suspended at the head of the altar, a surprisingly Catholic touch for so English a
village. A Norman souvenir, it stands five foot by three; a pleasingly severe depiction of sufferance and benediction. Austerity aside, as perhaps a reflection of their being in the country, lush and lazily bountiful, he looks for the slightest smirk across Christ’s tight lips.

  None of you have it hard the way I do.

  Many times he has sat in the twelfth pew – further enough away from the door to deflect conversation with flower-changing busybodies, and the nearest he can get to fully appreciate the crucifix in all its severe, glossy detail without craning his neck. Sat open-mouthed, like stone, willing the one who died for our sins to absorb his petty frustrations: a sore cock and balls from Claud’s shagging schedule; wanting to spend his weekends anywhere else other than a village tucked into the hills.

  There were certain pictures of Shiva, Ganesh, and Lord Krishna that had the same effect up in Leicester, but he had never shared this with his parents. There, worship was domestic, visiting temples something that was done while in India or during the bigger festivals. His experience of home worship was all backroom incense, and pins and needles from sitting an hour cross-legged.

  Ma and Puppa would often equate the rolled eyes and the sulking at having to put aside the bike, computer game, long-planned dalliance with a girl to his godlessness. It was not the act he was fighting, more a sense of suffocation; his inability to take prayer seriously, when just yards away from the front step he had stubbed out an illicit cigarette the night before, having to creep down at 6 a.m. to scrub it clean for fear of detection. His attention was most often taken with what was directly above his head, his bedroom, which offered a more alluring and pleasurable array of distractions. (His temple was under the duvet. It was the same for all the lads in his class.)

  Up until he married his experience of life was cramped. Home: small rooms; university halls: small rooms; rented studio: small room; first one-bedroom flat: small, low rooms. The spatial dimensions of the church are what hook him. The fact that he can sink into the pew and feel insignificant and no longer aware of himself; so taken is he by sensations of fascination and fear. The city temple north of Birmingham gives a similar feeling, but what puts the church forward is the fact that he is often the only person there. Ten minutes alone in there and it becomes his own place; God’s House on a temporary let.

  But there are things to put a cap on his sentimentality, namely the understanding that staring at the face of Christ is unable to take him back in time to prevent what was lost. That the Crucifixion is no adequate shoulder for the ache that fills him, the size of a boulder settled in the place where a baby should be. He does not feel the oncoming lightness often attributed to a pensive posture facing the altar; nor can he understand how those who find themselves in unexpected, dire circumstances, can leave this building after a few minutes, an hour, and claim to be healed.

  The stillness is a comfort. Perhaps it is the coolness of the interior, and the silence, that pushes him into a state where comfort is felt: a starting point for prayer. There is stillness in the house in Richmond too, but here the rooms are overwhelmingly personal, shell-firing memories at every turn to the point where only methodically sweeping the front drive or hosing the bins can block them.

  Except, there isn’t complete silence. The louvres have been pulled open, allowing the pulse of the Herald to intrude with every heartbeat. Distracted now, he turns his head to catch it. Too close to be dismissed as white noise, his overactive brain is no longer capable of filtering it out. Voices ringing, high and in unison; soaring sharply over claps and cheers.

  It is not the tug of war that has brought them together, he realizes, but the school choir. They are singing the song ‘You’re beautiful’ to an accompaniment from a couple of guitars and a flute. Another strange display of village insularity and narcissism, he thinks, until the penny drops, and he remembers how most of them were dressed in daffodil yellow and crocus white.

  The voices are young, nervous, and wilfully attention-seeking. They bring the reality of the Herald, and a vision of what Sam wishes for his grandchild. He can see his kid, four, five years from now, standing plaited and clad in Barbour in a country field somewhere, singing the same kind of songs. He sees, even before his baby has breathed his first, this scheming for ownership; how they will take his child away from him.

  Ma and Puppa have the same plans, though their tongues are loose to the point of stream of consciousness. Too excited to hold anything back, they have no secrets; itself an admission that they have waited too long for this moment, their first grandchild made real.

  ‘We’ve told Auntie Ginny to get permission to extend the house at the back, so we can all come over next year after rainy season. It will be warm but not uncomfortable. Perfect for a toddler.’

  There is more than just hopefulness in their voices. Under the pragmatism lies excitement, and middle-aged mischief that comes from asking Puppa’s lazy sister to get her arse in gear and fix the Kolkata house up. The urgency is there too, of course. The urgency never leaves them. Baby’s foot must touch his blood soil whilst he is still in an underdeveloped, inarticulate state. The mish-mash of his origins can be taken for granted, so long as everyone starts off on an equal footing.

  In-laws on all sides are ready to lay down their food-grabbing arms if they can all get a little of what they want in those first twelve months. After that, it is for the parents themselves to decide.

  Ordinarily he is hardened to children’s singing. He finds choirs twee and emotionally manipulative. At the first sign of them in shopping centres or rugby matches he heads the other way, self-satisfied with his verisimilitude. He despises the way cutesiness is deployed to cream cash from innocent shoppers. Donations of ten pounds to vaguely explained charities is mugging at its worst. Kids brainwashed into doing good works, even at a young age, dazzled by the lure of garish costumes and guaranteed attention.

  They have not talked of specifically how they will raise their child. Still overtaken with relief, the unspoken understanding is that common sense will dominate over interfering parents and exacting manuals. There has already been too much of both.

  Theirs would not be paraded about like Sussex show ponies. There were plenty of cool, funky children they could take as their template. Ones that were fully engaged with other children without dance competitions and singing around bonfires. Claude had exactly that kind of upbringing throughout her primary years. That was how he knew she wanted the complete opposite.

  But the children in the choir have been coached well. For all the wonder of the song, they play upon its sense of melancholy, conjuring shades of grey they have no right to know about. Choral coercion. A sadness snaking under the church door, coiling around his arm and twisting it behind his back. Twisting to the point of tears. More tears.

  He has not come to church to cry. The wetness sitting on his cheekbones becomes as familiar as the stillness that envelopes him. It floats around him in thick bubbles, like humidity; something that cannot just be physically felt, but grabbed, captured.

  Bastard children. Even at this distance they have the power to paralyse him. His legs are glued in their cross position, as frozen as Claud’s impenetrable eggs.

  His phone buzzing in his pocket sends his left leg into spasm. Hari.

  ‘Your family is seriously screwed up, man.’

  ‘Watch your language. I’m sitting in a church.’

  ‘Bad choice of words. Unlucky, is what I meant. A real case of bad timing.’

  Now that he is over the shock, and embedded deep in their duplicity, Hari has reverted to his trusted self: dramatist, stirrer.

  ‘Your call is the thing that’s bad timing, son. I really have to go.’

  In spite of the rabble-rousing tone, something in Hari’s voice centres him; perhaps the same element that comes from the altar cross, whatever that unspeakable element may be. He is hooked on stillness, an addict, clinging on to those that can anchor him.

  Maybe this is the point of prayer. Like an entry po
int. An invisible door located deep in this silence. You just have to keep your mouth shut and your thoughts together long enough to work out where it is. If this is the case, I have become a believer, he thinks, shying away from nothing. I believe in the power of prayer . . . so long as it can get me what I want: patience, a time-machine, a stronger cellular structure, the ability not to apportion blame.

  ‘You’re right. I agree with you absolutely,’ he says, aware that Hari’s voice has risen in volume and pitch, and hoping this cover-all masks his wandering. Hari’s only venture inside a church was down to his best man duties. He once boasted of taking a piss outside the convent on Westbourne Grove during his student days as ‘a laugh’.

  ‘You’re sounding very distant, ’Mal. Otherworldly. Have they made you saint in there? Has Jesus performed his magic?’

  ‘Don’t take the piss, Hari.’

  ‘Ha! That’s mature. So it’s all right for you to swear, is it?’

  ‘Acceptable in the circumstances. I’m defending the faith.’

  ‘You only like it down there because it’s pretty. You wouldn’t be so fast to wave a tambourine down some community centre in Peckham if that was the only option. You can’t fool me the way you do them.’

  ‘And even that I do badly.’

  ‘Ha! That’s my boy!’

  ‘What are you even doing calling me? They say a respectful distance in these situations is always best.’

  ‘Like a priest to his flock.’

  Hari can proclaim heresy to his heart’s content, so long as it keeps him on the phone. Nonsense acting as sound barrier between him and the kids choir; him and the continual rolling in his chest; the weak, hollow feeling in his teeth and the new, sudden itchiness of his skin, that makes him want to shed his outer form and start again, light and unburdened. But more than that, it is the skin-tone that binds them. Family. He would never speak this way to anyone else.