Читать книгу Black Bread White Beer - Niven Govinden - Страница 3

The two men squat tentatively in their dinghy, floating without enjoyment. There was trouble casting off in the meagre dawn light, one man slipping on shit-splattered cobbles and getting his foot in the water earlier than anticipated. His leg twisting up and out at a sharp angle as he struggled for balance, as if teaching his colleague a new dance move. He is still swearing now, like a teenager, loudly, no restraint; deities and mothers are named in vain. There is no one around to take offence because it is too early for anyone to be out in the park. No one, that is, except a sleepless Amal, sitting on a bench partly hidden by trees.

He watches their nervousness morph into confidence a few metres out, as they paddle with gloved hands towards their destination, the birdhouse in the centre of the lake. Their movements are losing their jerkiness and are becoming smooth and in tandem, a challenge to those Oxford and Cambridge boys who firmly believe that rowing is not a trick that can be learned in five minutes on a glorified duck pond. The man with the dry feet tells a joke that makes the other laugh dirtily. Council-issued fluorescent body-warmers shake with mirth.

But there is still enough grace to put paid to that. The water, algae-ridden but forgiving, absolves their earlier coarseness. Within a couple of minutes they are silent, allowing these unfamiliar sounds to form their new language: the swoosh of the craft, and the drip of their hands, as they plunge in and out. Amal, who cheers-on the boat race most years from a beer tent near Putney Bridge, whose armchair love of sailing extends to an occasional bit-part within the tourist gaggle which breathlessly applauds the arrival of yachts in European marinas, remains silent, unwilling to intrude. The three of them, absorbed with blending the peacefulness of morning to their differing agendas.

At the birdhouse, a bulky, unstable plywood construction turning black with rot, the men throw over a thick sheet of netting. Neither wishes to risk unsteadying the dinghy by getting to their feet, so the throw itself is generated from a position on their knees; one that is weakly weighted and only just lands on its target. Not cut to size, it snags on the pointed roof, and falls over the squat, low doorway. The bottom, knotted in places, frayed in others, trails into the water. There is no checking to see whether there are any visitors inside. There are feathers around the decking, and fast collecting in the net, but this means little to them. They are not Wildlife Protection, but Parks Maintenance, there to do the job asked of them, and no more. They look forward to coffee and bacon rolls in the van and a tick on the list that means they are closer to home.

The netting is of a very dark green, that will appear as black as the birdhouse itself once it weathers, rendering it almost invisible from a distance, from the air. It is also taut, and of a density that a beak would find impenetrable. If there is any concern that a duckling may still be inside, the men do not show it. There is no pause in either paddle movement or direction as they return to bank side, where the van is parked. Only in the final metres does the posture of the dry man shift. His head cranes as far sideways as the balance of the dinghy will allow, the furrow in his brow suggesting a rush job, something overlooked.

Amal, too, listens for a further layer of sound, over the whoosh and plunge – a crackle, a cry, to confirm all that he suspects. Long after the council van has gone, as he shakes his empty cigarette packet and heads for the park gate, he hears it: the tinny, metallic squall of a youngster, and a rustle of the net. He has the urge to look back, to possibly wade in, and attempt rescue, if rescue is needed, but buries it. Ducks are meat, when it comes down to it. No looking back. He walks away, towards the car, crunching the fag packet in his hand, his teeth repeatedly grazing his lower lip. He is learning that not every life can be saved.

He should clean the car. Have it cleaned. It must be spotless when he goes to collect her. Most of all, it must smell fresh. Already he is planning on leaving some flowers on the back seat to mask both the dry artificial scent of a new car and their own additions over the past day. Seat leather and metal mixed with her perfume was a heady combination that made the drive to work that much more pleasurable. He could sit through two hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the M25 with a smile on his face just breathing it in. But this new blend, with the additions of rapid, thick perspiration, and a few drops of urine, and blood, bond too heavily with the intoxicating top notes. With every breath he smells both of them; their fear distilled.

Next to the station is a twenty-four-hour multi-storey car park where two Polish guys offer a valet service from the basement. He has used it a couple of times on commuting days, when he was too late finding a parking space on one of the residential roads. Spotless work, but overpriced. But the car needs it. He feels the urgency of this one task, the stranglehold it seems to have on his guts. He must complete this one productive thing before he meets her.

He is surprised about the looseness of his wallet, how he has been spending so freely since it happened. Thirty pounds on dinner at a gimmicky steakhouse restaurant because he did not want to eat at home alone; twenty pounds at the petrol station off licence; ten pounds at Starbucks which included the purchase of a big band CD which now sits in the glove box, unopened, and finally the twenty-odd he would be charged at the valet place. Claud would tease him in perpetuity if she ever got wind of the spree, emptying out his pockets and looking for moths. Where are they, she would ask. What has happened to my tightwad husband? Is it your birthday? A leap year? She would have, then. Now, who knows?

The Pole is already hard at work waxing an Audi bonnet crisscrossed with blade scratches. Amal is relieved to see that he is the same guy from before, wiry and in his mid-thirties, attentive and eager to please.

‘Is no problem. Soon as I finish the Audi.’

As with all men of a certain age there is a brief, flickering appraisal of the state of each other’s bodies and hairline.

‘Any chance I can cut in? I’ll pay more if it’ll help.’

‘I don’t know, sir. I like to finish one car at a time. If I don’t use up the wax while it’s wet, I have to start the whole thing again.’

‘Please. I have to be somewhere . . . and it’s important that the car looks nice. Please.’

The last time he detected a pleading note in his tone was yesterday, something he does not like to remember. Both the timbre and the weakness it implies are detestable. It is a slippery slope. He can see that unchecked, how easy it would be lapse into the same sentiment in everyday situations, from cajoling an officious parking attendant, to queue jumping at the post office. Better to dirty himself with money, folding two twenties and pressing them into the waiting palm of the flexible Pole, only to find his bribery is unwanted.

‘You have given me too much. Full valet is twenty. Here, go have coffee with the extra money.’

His thanks are conveyed through stutter, another bridge to yesterday, when he struggled to communicate with doctors and the nursing staff. He is also conscious of the Pole finding him a halfwit, and loathes that also. The brain is capable of remembering too much; there are too many links. He wants every action and impulse to differ from his behaviour yesterday. He needs everything to be normal, for both of them.

At the coffee shop he waits, second in line, before ordering double espresso and biscotti, as if he hadn’t taken enough comfort in carbs last night. The caffeine jumps starts him, frighteningly fast, making a mockery of his sluggish constitution. Whilst there are no free tables, there are seats dotted around the floor and along the side bar, but he is conscious of sharing the cramped space with strangers, fearful of the need he has to talk. Once he starts he will not be able to stop. No one has been told about Claud, and this is not the place to start.

He takes the biscotti and another espresso back for the Pole.

‘OK if I sit in the car? I’m a sad case with nowhere to go.’

There are places, across the road and closer to Richmond Green, but he is known; the price of three married years of melding into the community. The idea of bumping into someone, having to fall into pretence, to sign whatever petition is being championed that week, to care, almost makes him shit in his pants. All he wants to do is hide.

The Pole sees the humour of his situation. Makes a series of rubbing movements with a damp cloth across the windscreen.

‘Like you’re in the big machine carwash? Sure. I’m finished, anyhow.’

He has been gone twenty minutes and bar the wheels, the car is almost dry. He holds out the paper bag, shakes it towards the Pole with some urgency because he realizes he now longer wants to hold it, wants to be out of there.

‘You drink espresso, right?’

‘Where I come from, mothers raise children on hot milk. Tea sometimes, but mostly milk. Coffee is more of a luxury. I know people back home, the older people, who still keep jars of Nescafe hidden under their beds! It’s still that valuable to them. Our vodka runs like water, but coffee is hidden. Is it the same in your country?’

‘My parents come from a tea-growing part of the world. I wasn’t allowed to drink anything else.’

‘Ha! Thank you, my friend. This is appreciated. You were here before, I think? With the yellow Mini Cooper.’

‘My wife’s car.’

‘Wife, good. Mini is a fine car for a woman, but a man needs something . . .’

His lips broom-broom over the open espresso as he cools it. The noisemaking is as loaded as the coffee, macho-aggressive, but casually so, as basic a part of his constitution as the protons and neurons of his make-up. He imagines how easily this must be deployed in other situations, when chatting up a girl, and later, in bed, something only a man who still finds such posturing difficult to summon would recognize.

‘This BMW is a better car. It will impress people when you drive to your important meeting. They will say that this is the car of a successful man. And when they notice how clean it is, they will be even more impressed.’

‘I’m not working today. I have to collect my wife from the hospital.’

‘She is sick?’

‘We had a miscarriage. Yesterday.’

‘I am sorry to hear that, brother.’

‘Everything’s fine, well, she’s fine, now. They kept her in only because there was a spare bed. Monitoring her, you know. Procedure. It’s just been a shock.’

‘In my country, this is something we do not speak of. It is kept in the preserve of the women.’

‘My country too.’

Automatically, he bows to the Indian gene. Though he thinks of himself as educated and enlightened, it is always the pull of the genes that navigates him through crisis, as if there was a state of sense-making that comes solely from the combined force of his parental cells. Before yesterday, he did not think to analyse such superstition. Now, maybe, is the time for its reappraisal.

He is probably a couple of years older than the Pole but should know better. He thinks about telling him that the old ways do not work, that the preserve of women is self-denying crap, but does not wish to destroy the mythology of something he no longer has belief in. He does not have the balls.

His last call to the hospital yesterday was around 11 p.m. After that, he gave himself permission to get stinking drunk. The ward sister lacked her earlier seriousness, lightening his worry. He felt her smiling down the phone on hearing his name, as if she was dying to crack some jokes. He had felt their attention on him, the nurses, checking him out when they wheeled up her to the ward. He was weighed down with empathy.

‘Get some sleep, sir. She’ll need all the support you’ve got, tomorrow.’ The ‘sir’, tinged with West Country, and burnished with the weariness of the night shift.

He fell into a brief daydream, wondering at the sheer amount of work to ensure Claud’s bed-rest. The silent monitoring that takes place while she sleeps. He was reminded not to call until after eight the next morning because they would be busy with the medicine-giving and breakfast. But now he is anxious at not hearing from them during the night, and figures that half an hour earlier will not hurt.

The ward phone rings out for a good few minutes before the bureaucratic dance begins. A breathless nursing assistant picks up, who then has to summon someone senior because she does not have the recognized accreditations to divulge a patient’s condition. The woman does not put him on hold, instead leaving the receiver on the desk while she searches. All the background noises he hears are purely mechanical, rubber wheels on trolleys squelching on rubber-tiled floors, the clang of dropped cutlery, the repeated slamming of lift doors, the wheezy exhalations of a knackered Hoover. There are no human voices at all, as if they are all holding their breath, bound to silence until the receiver is replaced in the cradle.

The staff nurse he eventually speaks to is estuary accented, and irritated, though she remains factually precise. Claud was given a light sedative just after eleven to help her sleep through the night, she is having breakfast now, managing a sausage and a portion of beans, she will be discharged around ten o’clock once the doctor has made her rounds.

He is aware that he should be camping outside, as all good husbands are expected to do, and maybe he would, if the sheer scale of the building, its aura of benefaction and stoicism, did not cow him. Besides, there are practical domestic affairs he must attend to.

He stinks. Fags, booze, and fried food. No one will understand that he has not been celebrating, that this is his way of coming to terms. He brushes and scrubs like it is his first date. After his shower he passes the broom over the wood floors, and empties the dishwasher. She is unlikely to call the house a tip, will probably not even notice, but if he can do these little things, wipe down the fridge, sweep the path, some good may come.

For all the modernity of their house, a shrine to an architect’s vision of what can be done to Edwardian glass and brick, they often cannot wait to be away from it. Whenever they have free time they rush into the arms of the outdoors, they, the unadventurous, as if unwilling to acknowledge it was the wrong house in the first place, that no amount of renovation could make it otherwise.

Past the opening round of house-warming parties, they have seldom used the place for celebration. Every birthday, weekend, festival, is spent abroad or down at her parents’ house in Sussex, a nineteenth-century farmhouse, with its half-acre of mature gardens and a kitchen hearth as wide as a football pitch. It decimates the competition, mocking the faux-authentic picture-book efforts of more suburban homes.

Claud has tried to make their home a warped twin of Liz and Sam’s house in the village outside Lewes, turning the reclaimed carriage door into a table, juxtaposing the dominant metallic and stone of the kitchen; the argyle knitted rugs thrown over wooden floors; and deco mirror sets in the bedroom, above each nightstand, and across her dressing table, as if, like her mother, she is unconsciously playing the part of a silent movie star, the aspiring city girl trapped by marriage in the country, with only her glamorous trinkets to remind of more sophisticated times.

That is not to say the house has no warmth. All the homes that line the street have a similar square-fronted handsomeness, and theirs is no different. It is cluttered and lived-in. Radio, television, and the iPod docks do their part in filling space. There is nothing forbidding about the 50’s-style welcome mat on the front step, all sunrise and exclamation point, nor the silver-framed Om hanging above the door in the hall, exuding Eastern peace and radiance. Indeed, he has hurried home most nights, yearning for the sofa and the feeling of Claud cuddling into the nook of his arm and shoulder. But something is missing; they both know it. The arrival of an intangible object or presence that will make sense of their choices and hard work.

The pile of magazines cries out for the recycling box. He takes them out, having a final smoke as he does so, lifting one from the packet stashed amongst the upturned ceramic pots that litter the patio’s far reaches. It is the unwritten rule of twenty-first-century gift-giving, that a guest should never arrive without a token for the garden. They have more pots than they know what to do with, filled with plants that need little maintenance, woody herbs and tall reedy bamboos, and neatly patterned around the plot, like a super-sized, organic solitaire. The unwanted remainder should be dumped in the garage by rights, a job that continues to escape his mind, until the point when he’s hiding and retrieving fags. Claud often jokes that they should recycle them as gifts, if only they knew which person had given which pot.

Ordinarily, when hopes are not being lost he smokes one, two cigarettes a day. It helps. He likes to think that he’s unashamed of needing a crutch, but still goes to pains to conceal it, not wanting her to think that he hasn’t agreed whole-heartedly with her plans: organic food, chemical-free detergents, regular, moderate exercise. Conception is something to be taken seriously, needing as much preparation as a marathon.

‘We’re in our thirties, Amal. I’ve messed-up my periods with over-dieting. Your metabolism is slowing to a stop with all that pizza. We’re not single people any more. We have to get a grip of ourselves, make changes.’

He has read the many printouts she leaves on the kitchen counter, that say an abundance of fish, and Brazil nuts are good for his sperm. Many cloves of raw garlic, too. His breath is pungent enough to wither vine fruits, forcing a dependency on extra-strong mints in the office. Other than red wine, alcohol, particularly beer, is banned. So is masturbation. Bread is gluten free, dairy limited. A glass of water must be drunk every hour; supplements are taken twice a day: a multi-vitamin, iron, selenium, omega 3, and aspirin. His piss is sent off for analysis, his stools discussed most mornings whilst he cleans his teeth, something he never thought he would be doing with a white woman. They spend four weeks on this treadmill before she lets him near her, the time it takes to convince that they have eliminated the worst of their collective toxins. Penance for their self-absorbed, shag-around twenties. He leaves her printouts too, which go unread: studies which show how excessive ejaculation can lead to prostate cancer.

‘We can worry about your prostate later. We can leave it to our kids to take care of us.’

All that matters is the here and now: the diet, sticking to the plan. She wants to make a baby with the best cellular development, with the cleanest, tox-free constituent elements. She does not want to leave anything to chance.

Now, while he waits for ten o’clock, he is intent on toxing-up, filling his boots with carcinogens. Fag in mouth as he finally shifts the pots into the garage like she has been asking for weeks, months. Do your bit, boy. Move your arse. The clean way has not worked, so maybe this will be better. Even before she returns, he feels the disappointment, self-blame, hanging in the air, but it does not seem irreparable. It is nothing that faith cannot fix.

He is parking up at the hospital when Hari calls him. It is close to ten and there has been no word from the hospital. He figures he should muscle in on the ward so he can be present when the doctor arrives. He has pulled himself together. Looks respectable. His shoulder is steady, ready to take her weight.

‘You’ll have to be quick, mate. I’m about to go into a meeting.’

The work brush-off is a default setting they are attuned to, nothing that can be picked up on. His tone is curt, and vaguely irritated. They all behave like this between nine and six.

‘Oh. I thought you’d be at the hospital.’

‘Why would I be at the hospital?’

‘Because of Claud. You called me last night, remember?’

It feels as if someone has drawn a curtain, making the hint of a secondary unease – headache to a bellyache – tangible. He remembers the close noise of the steakhouse restaurant, a birthday party on the table next to him, of having to move towards the revolving doors and still shouting to be heard. He remembers gabbling about how scared he was. Crying. What he cannot recall is Hari’s voice, or pulling up his number. He could have been talking to anyone.

‘I probably shouldn’t even be calling, but I just wanted to see if you guys were ok. If there’s anything I can do.’

Men do not have best friends the way women do. It is too co-dependent a state, one that can overwhelm the basic masculine need for secrets and freedoms. But if pushed, he would admit that Hari falls somewhere in that area, solid and omnipotent. Hari brought him and Claud together in the first place. Match-made his new work colleague with his university buddy, something that seems to have given him a vested interest in their marriage. Makes him wonder now, about the crying, whether it was actually Hari’s he remembers, and not his?

He showered Hari with thanks in those early days. Thanks for working with this amazing woman he couldn’t keep his hands off. You’re a mate. Thanks for weaning him off those shady nightclub girls he fruitlessly chased for most of his twenties. He gave thanks for every time she laughed at him and his badly constructed jokes which still remain all incidentals and no punch-line. When she applauded his cooking, and for not assuming he made curry every night of the week.

He thanked her for the pawing and growling that came after dinner, and often before. For the little sounds she made. The little sounds he made. For being obsessed with her red hair, especially the way it looked when it caught the lamplight in the bedroom, deep, concentrated, as if her head had already been cast in bronze, timeless and luminescent. For not wanting to be away from her, for needing to catch every word she said, whether flighty stream of consciousness or good, plain sense. He thanked him for hooking him up with a girl who was cleverer, who was on a faster career path and earned more. Who spoke with experience when she said that it was better to sit things out with his firm than look to be the big fish in smaller ponds. Who did not shy away from talking about money, but equally did not allow it to become the elephant in the room. Thanked him for the energy, the whirlwind. Days speeding past towards languid, dreamy weekends, a perfect mix of domesticity and fantasy. Thanked him for her silliness, that she was a goofball for all her careerist seriousness. That she was always up for a spontaneous water fight, and karaoke, but drew the line at descending into sickly baby voices with him. But most of all, he thanked Hari for putting her in his universe, wondering how he could have previously existed without her. He was soppy with love, then.

When he was finishing his master’s during his early twenties, he was smacked around the head by a group of kids at the bus stop, suffering a broken nose and fractured eye socket. The kids hauled a mere twelve pounds and a prehistoric mobile phone, which he was about to get rid of anyway. He thinks about the phone call he made to Hari from the hospital, his voice as cracked as his face, and the discomfort this brewed in him. He does not want to be viewed with compassionate eyes for a second time, nor any further prying into the state of their marriage. They do not need help. They are fine.

Privacy is needed. Ignorance. Hari’s compassion is simply the first wave, the ripple along the surf. They will be drowned many times over before others have finished expressing their sympathy.

‘Does anyone else know?’

‘I haven’t had time to think. Not even our parents know yet.’

‘I can ring around if it’ll make things easier.’

‘No. This is Claud’s shout. Something we need to keep to ourselves for the time being.’

He has a feeling when the signal fails, fortuitously, the phone masts banished from the hospital’s immediate radius, that he will be avoiding Hari for a very long time, now seeing the point of distance between friends.

This is not the plan. She has already been discharged. He sees her, unexpectedly, as he walks up the ramp towards the entrance and works hard to keep his face from crumbling. She is sitting on a bench, reading a leaflet, her overnight bag wedged between her feet. Even from this distance he sees what change the night has brought, how she seems to have shrunk by degrees, her wraparound coat, a recent prized buy, now appearing several sizes too big for her. No longer following the contours of her body, its bagginess gives her a wizened quality, the double knot tied at the waist making her appear swaddled. Bleached out by sunlight, she is so pale as if to emphasize her blood loss, though the bed curls and the detailed embroidery across the coat breast give her a gothic quality; a vampire in urgent need of food. Her eyelids are red with lack of sleep, in spite of the staff nurse’s earlier report. Sockets are marginally sunken and bags more pronounced. As she lifts her hand to turn the pamphlet, he notices a series of angry blotches floating across her hand, suggesting that every part of her body is suffering the loss. Only the glow of her hair remains defiant, refusing to mourn.

‘I thought the doctor wasn’t seeing you until later. They told me not to get here until ten.’

‘They’ve a busy day in theatre. Wanted to get me out of the way.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Same as yesterday. Please can you take me home, now?’

She will not be kissed; rises and walks down the ramp before he has a chance to tell her where the car is. The leaflet, ditched on the bench, is for counselling. He too chooses to leave it.

The drive is difficult. She does not want to talk. Does not want the radio. They had talked on the drive up yesterday. Reassuring talk that willingly ignored the sudden blood loss in the bathroom. Useless, ignorant talk that pooh-poohed the writings of medical practitioners, and played for her trust. Now there is no right to speak unless spoken to. He feels her tightening up against him, watches the tautness of her mouth as she keeps it all in. It is as if the easiness they once shared, the ability to be comfortable with one another has been lost with the baby.

The bunch of sunflowers he believed to be casual and not loaded with meaning are registered briefly, then ignored. Nor does the grey angora blanket thrown over the passenger seat please her.

‘Worried about messing the car? Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

Her laugh is grim and pained.

‘I thought you might be cold.’

‘I’ve got this coat. Don’t need wrapping up in cotton wool.’

Why are you holding it then, he wants to ask, stung. He is expecting her to bite but is still unprepared for it when the sharp words come, so busy was he in his head to make everything right. He must not let her behaviour cloud his judgement or feeling. What has happened has been harder on her than he could ever imagine. The doctor said as much last night. Anger, guilt, and blame must be compassionately received. Only then will she open up.

He can do it if he tries. See past the scorn manifest on her face, and the strangulation in her voice each time she addresses him; even if its tension is like a single wire held firm at the base of his neck, ready to slit his throat at the first thoughtless remark. For the first time in their marriage he is frightened and aware that he does not know her. But he can forget that, fear crushed under Pirelli tyres, when her breath loses its shallowness and becomes deeper, bringing some warmth into the frozen cabin; when she touches his shoulder lightly and says, ‘Can we take a drive though Richmond Park? I’m not ready to go home yet.’

‘Sure. What do you want, hills or deer?’

‘Deer, I think.’

‘Why not? We can take the route we took the other week. That way we get some hills too. Best of both worlds.’

They drive though Richmond Gate, whose imposing presence, tall and unencumbered by trees or outbuildings, always seems to dwarf and belittle all who enter, then left, towards sparser areas of the park, Ham, Sheen, and Pen Ponds, away from walkers and anywhere where there may be groups of mothers and small children. He has driven in a roundabout way from the hospital, taking a series of back roads to avoid two primary schools for this very reason.

He sees her looking for where the deer converge. Her eyes intently study thick growths of bracken and fern, craning her neck across both sides of the road as she peers through dark, mature copses for any sign of movement. He wonders whether it is the creatures themselves she wants to see, or just a confirmation of their camouflage, that maybe she too wishes to hide.

But there are no deer to be seen on their tour, only a panorama of discarded water bottles and a trail of tanned cyclists, Australian or South African, streaming through the foliage. He watches as her eyes lock onto the cyclists’ wheels weaving along the dust track, taking in the lightness of those machines, and the speed and the agility of those powering them. The BMW is an unwieldy beast by comparison, a useless lump of metal, leather and angora, pitifully unable to fly her away.

‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ he says, uselessly, unable to bring himself to mention the cyclists, spectacularly male and thundering with sun-nurtured virility.

‘Not without the wildlife. It looks like a giant garden otherwise.’

‘I thought rabbits were meant to be lucky, not deer,’ he says, and immediately realizes it is the wrong thing to say, that luck should not be brought into anything, should never be mentioned again.

‘I tell you what, Claud. I’ll get some venison in for dinner if we don’t see any. Knock-up one of my specials. How does that sound?’

The hand on the shoulder again. A softening.

‘Amal, you don’t have to do anything special because you think it’ll cheer me up. I’m fine.’

‘Really? You’re fine.’

‘Yes. I am. I will be. Stop worrying.’

On the second stage of their honeymoon, a weekend at a country house on the edge of Dartmoor, a late-Victorian decompression chamber following three weeks in Mexico, their suite had been studded with several stag heads won from various county hunts. Claud had tried to hang from one of them whilst he was eating out of her. There was no chandelier in the room so this was the next best thing. They were adventurous, then. Sun-spoilt and happy, he remembers her laughing with fear that she would fall, with a ten-weight of antlers bearing down upon her, before giving in to a deeper, more localized pleasure. Now he could not get her to eat venison. They were in trouble.

‘We can’t have supper at home, anyway. I told Mum and Dad we’d go round.’

‘When was this?’

‘Few minutes ago, whilst I was waiting for you. You know how they like to call first thing on Friday before they do the weekend shop. I said we were treating ourselves to a day off, which is why she caught me on the mobile.’

‘You didn’t tell them?’

‘Their washing machine’s packed up and Dad needs help fitting the new one. Too tight to pay for delivery and installation. It’s been sitting in the boot of his car since Tuesday, Mum said. They were waiting until the weekend to ring us.’

‘I’ll pay for someone. You need to rest, Claud, not go racing down to Sussex. One day’s rest, at least. Please.’

‘Sleeping isn’t going to make anything come back, Amal. It’s an afternoon and possibly some supper, that’s all. I’ve been resting since we found out I was pregnant. I’m sick of lying down.’

‘What are you going to tell them?’

‘Nothing. As far as they’re concerned, I’m still pregnant.’

‘Look, I . . .’

‘This isn’t up for discussion. I’m not ready, all right?’

He feels the cheese-cutting wire again, sliding back and forth across his throat, making it impossible to argue. Understanding the secrets of marriage is knowing when to pick your battles. This is not the time to be charging forth, discussing the merits of getting everything out in the open. She will not tolerate any of that. Though still weak from the blood loss, she remains capable of eating him alive. He is simply there as muscle, nothing more.

‘Stop the car! There! See him?’

For the lightness it momentarily brings to her face, he is prepared to see anything. Nestled within a copse at the foot of the hill leading to Ham Gate, he sees a wall of browning ferns and their manipulation by the wind, nothing more. If, as she says, there is indeed a pair of brown eyes hidden within, he is either too short-sighted, or too thick-headed to find them. His silence is taken for zoological studiousness, something he does little to correct. If this is what makes her happy, let her be happy. They sit there together, seeing differently, finally comfortable.

She is hungry. They share a bacon roll and a choc ice from the van trading in the car park. The salt from the bacon and the sweet from the ketchup fill every pocket of the car, imbibing a sense of homeliness and safety which shows up the poor work of the wilting sunflowers.

‘If something like this doesn’t give you the excuse to eat junk food, I don’t know what does,’ she says, mid-mouthful. A drop of ketchup wobbles on her cheek. Ordinarily he would lick it off.

Claud has not touched pork for over two years. Not even long weekends in Grenada or Barcelona, touring time-worn Jamon bars could persuade her to accompany her glass of Olorosso with a slice of Serrano, Iberico, or Chorizo. She worried about the effect of too much red meat on their future offspring even then.

‘Mmm. This is great, love. Good thinking.’

Amal does not confess to his lapse at last night’s trashy restaurant, not wishing to break the fragile equilibrium. He paid with cash so she never need know. She devours her half of the roll in a flash, and then eats the bulk of his, making him buy another so that they can further indulge in the goodness of hot food. Pre-empting her, he comes back with doubles, piled with onions and extra condiments.

He needs to keep feeding her, he realizes. Fill her up with food. Stuff her guts until she has to sleep sitting up, too shot with cholesterol and bad sugars to think about the other cavernous spaces in her body. Claud is a fine cook, has looked after him well, but he is just as good when he gets on the stove. The range is the only gadget that really interests him, other than his iPhone. It is back to the Indian gene, the one that believes the kitchen is the heart. He will cook until food is coming out of her gullet, absorbing everything, including the need to feel.

The choc ices have been dredged from the bottom of the freezer where they have frozen solid, but after the greasy bacon they are still needed and devoured. Their taste is grainy and synthetic, recalling something conceived in laboratories rather than the cute provincial dairy pictured on the wrapper. If this is the kind of crap they feed kids, then theirs has had a lucky escape. God! If he had said that aloud, there would have been a repeat of last night, a series of choked sobs in the car after the restaurant. Him making a fool of himself in front of her; just what he has been trying to avoid. Jesus, it is hard. His foot is on the gas before he has finished his final mouthful. A bounce of the chassis as the wheels lightly skid over the gravel. It is better to drive than remember.

The house welcomes them. Mid-morning sunlight pours from windows and seeps through brick, making what was previously cold appear golden and pleasantly holiday-burnt. Maybe they are carne-drunk with the bacon and visions of feral deer, but it suddenly feels like a place worth staying in; their previous criticisms fading with every degree on the sundial. They are both pleased to be there.

The sun-blush makes her admit the obvious, that she is exhausted, and he is left to potter in the kitchen whilst she has an hour’s nap upstairs. He busies himself on the tasks he thoughtlessly missed earlier: hosing out the dustbin and cleaning the oven, though he questions how else he can distract himself once the house is completely clean.

England is playing India in the second Test. The commentary from the radio on the kitchen counter is low, making every exclamation and cry of disbelief sound halfhearted and whispered. He resists the lulling effect of hearing bat against ball, the slide of shoe across the crease, and the hoot and stagger of short, concentrated runs. England are having a good day, driving mercilessly at the Indian advantage. The team is working methodically, tirelessly, attempting with every duck and strike to erase the fortune and legacy of their hosts. They need to keep up this batting pace and level of attack for the rest of the day if they are to cause any great upset. The determination that is reported to him via the leathery-throated commentator and his mangled euphemisms suggests that this will be the case.

He thinks about Sam listening to the match down in Sussex, from the car probably, as he jealously guards his cheapest-of-the-range washing machine, and wonders whether he too will be drawing the same conclusions. In spite of his ignorance about what has happened to the baby, will he enjoy the sportsmanship of the first Test, or will he only think of what is happening on an Indian field as a reflection of his feelings towards Amal, a desire to drive him out?

She comes downstairs after half an hour, her face clouded with a familiar anxiety that sets his mind racing to yesterday.

‘We need to change the upstairs toilet. I can’t use that bathroom until we do.’

‘I can do that.’

‘I mean it. I can’t go there. Our baby died there.’

‘It’s ok. I’ll sort it. Soon as we get back from Lewes. Use the downstairs in the meantime.’

Like a child he trundles her in the direction of the second bathroom, inexplicably situated off the downstairs hall. When they bought the house they laughed at the planner’s logic of it, a whirlpool bath and bog just across from the living room when there was ample and more discreet square footage towards the back of the house. But they agreed about its practicality in anticipation of visiting in-laws and other guests. Situated almost centrally and therefore catching both morning and evening light, it would have made a fine office, or even a boys room, where they could have placed a dark leather sofa, a shamefully tacky beer fridge, and installed one of those pull-down screens to play games or watch DVDs. Now he is thankful that they did not.

He has a case of delayed reaction, flinching every time she talks about the baby. His moves are discreet, whilst she is behind the toilet door, or as now, once she is tucked-up in bed with a kiss on the forehead. This is the first time she has allowed his lips to touch her. Even in the hospital at her most fearful, she was only comfortable with the firm grip of his hand crushing hers, as if the connection between them was no more tenuous than neighbour, work colleague, or passer-by. But safely away from her he flinches, unguarded, like the holder of a nervous tic. The certainty of her words seems to visibly play before him as he waits for the plumber’s website to open on his laptop. He tries hard to concentrate, thinking that whatever he orders now can be delivered, installed even, by the time he gets back, so long as he leaves the keys next door and is able to persuade Claud that a night spent over in Lewes is the best medicine. But everything is overshadowed by b-a-b-y.

Unlike her he has no clarifying definition for what they have lost. Something which is not yet a baby but more than a cluster of cells, a mere six weeks of growth, and is responsible for an unseen, immeasurable emptiness. They themselves have only known for sure these past three weeks, so how can so much hope grow in that time? How does the work of twenty-one days so effectively decimate all the hurdles that stand before their vulnerability?

A complete miscarriage, the doctor called it, pleased with its neatness and lack of invasive surgery required. A complete miscarriage, more common than realized in the early stages of the first trimester: as if that explained everything, closed the lid on their bewilderment. But concrete fact, the overbearing weight of statistics, is a poor cover for soft tissue. It holds no weight against the physical ache he sees in Claud as well as the tightness he tries to ignore in his own chest. How does ten centimetres of cell and pliable bone get to do that?

Though it is not yet midday he has a good swig from one of the bottles in the cupboard, white rum or a flavoured vodka, cloudy but citrusy sharp, before forcing himself to swallow the remainder of the salmon and fennel salad in the fridge. Crisp, peppery, and heavy with garlic, it obliterates all evidence of his alcohol-driven weakness.

He has never been a big drinker. It is one of the things Claud liked about him from the start.

‘I only want to get serious with a guy who isn’t going to blow his salary on buying rounds for the boys, under the pretext of entertaining clients. I’ve been with twits like that before.’

This is another thing to mull over at a later date, how easy it is to take comfort in drink. Tomorrow he can repent, today he needs haziness for the drive, a slight, numbing touch to ease the pressure of two hours on a cramped A-road. She needs him to protect her. He needs vodka to make that a possibility, if only he had the bottle to be that kind of man.

Claud is persuaded to take half a sleeping pill so she can sleep most of the way. The siesta time in the house has been a failure. There was no way she was going to relax once she got upset about the toilet. He hears her talking over the cricket, where the wiliness of the subcontinent’s bowling technique crushes the now pedestrian bulldog effort, in a swift display of shock and awe. In spite of the pleasure this gives him, thinking of the blow it must deliver to Sam’s spirit, he still wants England to win. Fuck the cricket test theories, England is his team, is all.

He hears her on the phone before they leave the house. Her voice is low but has lost the dead tone of before. Whoever is on the other end has dragged lightness out of her, something he has had over twenty-four hours to perfect and was unable to accomplish. When he walked down the church aisle three years ago, a newly baptized Christian – a page note to the cricket test, a secondary gesture to please Liz and Sam – he married not just her, but her girlfriends as well; those ready to jump in and complete all the things that he cannot do.

This is his turn to feel the b-a-b-y, a collection of cells ripped from him, no longer their precious secret, but a story to be gossiped about over sweetish cocktails and wine coolers. There was a bitter yet muddled sense of disloyalty after sharing it with Hari, but there is something more agonizing about the permanence of girl talk. With every detail spilled down the phone he feels their child slipping from an imaginary grasp, and disappearing like a dream.

‘I told Jen. She texted me and it all came out.’

‘It’s good that you’re talking about it,’ he says, angry with himself that he is unable to stop feeling betrayed. ‘Jen’s a good person to have around.’

‘I couldn’t stop talking once I started. Sorry.’

‘Nothing to apologize about. It helps to share it.’

‘You should talk to someone too. Ring Hari.’

So talking is advocated, championed, in fact, so long as they do not do it with each other. They sit side by side at the breakfast counter unable to look each other in the eye.

‘I don’t need to speak to anyone. I’m fine.’

Her passive aggression weighs heavily on his shoulders, creeping across his front in a choke-hold. He resists. All too often has she used the same tactic.

I’ve told Clare about the engagement. Do you want to tell someone? Hari? Mum wangled it out of me that we’re trying for a baby. You might as well tell your parents now so that we’re in sync. Or maybe Hari if you don’t want to tell them straight away. But you should tell someone.

It is the most comfortable, easy-reaching tool in her box of tricks, so he understands why she still clings on to it, the way the collection of cells should have stayed attached to her insides.

Her reliance on these things is admirable, how she expects him to call Hari right away, while she is still there, so that every nuance of the conversation can be analysed, then corrected. She was the same last week when he called the service people to get the digital TV box looked at. Bossiness has propelled her through higher education and a fast-track in her career. It gets results. Why should she be any different now? But it should be. Some things should be different between them. He sees how such a move can bang nails into a coffin further down the marriage. His parents. Liz and Sam.

She is crying again as he packs the car. He knows her tears come more from a frustrated place, because he ignored her attempts to call Hari, than anything to do with the lost collection of cells. Office cynicism does not stay in the office. It is a part of every aspect of their home. The muffled package of sniff and sob resonates as loudly as any wailing for the way it follows him outside, but he carries on with packing the car. He speaks quietly to the neighbour about the plumber, and goes about his business; not going to her, knowing she is still not ready to be touched.

Again there is nothing to listen to. She should not be woken on the journey, aside from a gentle tap on the shoulder when they wind up the drive in Lewes. Their story has been concocted. There is no reason to discuss it endlessly. They are making the most of a well-earned long weekend. She is pregnant. They are happy.

Driving through the country will hurt with its constant reminders of plant in bud. Everything has the ability to reproduce but them. He prefers it on the motorway where concrete has killed all life. Black and grey, miles of it, make everything better. It is time to reaffirm his faith in hard, physical objects: the road, his BlackBerry and iPhone. There is nothing to be had in believing in organics.

Six-lane traffic, its smoothness and gentle contours has a blank, hypnotic quality. Something about the road erases, forgives. He sees now why men drive and the attraction of long distances. How two hours on a clear road is probably more therapeutic than a year’s worth of visits to any shrink.

The hospital offers counselling the way doctors hand out pills, automatically, by the handful. How much time did women in the past spend with a psychologist between their pregnancies and miscarriages? Were they given the luxury of a week-off from housework and radio silence from relatives in order to recuperate? People got on with things, then. Everything about their own upset, the clawing in his gut, her muffles, is by comparison lazy, self-indulgent, and most likely, deserved.

But maybe it is in the nature of women to dust themselves down and carry on. He can see her back in the office next week, glued to the BlackBerry, allowing herself no time to reflect. Maybe it is only the men who have let the modern age weaken their resilience, crying into baked goods and wallowing into beer. But everything about her knotted sleep in the car makes that a lie. She feels it all.

Trouble comes when he stops for a toilet break at a Road Chef a couple of miles before the A21. She wakes and follows him, half-running across the car park to catch up, which generates a pang of fear that something might be wrong with her insides.

‘I need to change the dressing. Nothing for you to worry about.’

It is the first he has heard about dressings. All this time he has avoided looking at her abdomen, as he fears this will wound her, though he badly wants to; to study the contours of her body, and look for evidence of smoothness where a bump was once imagined and fussed over. But she is on to him, reads the unsophisticated voyeurism knotted across his brow, and keeps her hands folded over her tummy as she walks. Fingers locked, elbows straight, her moves are geisha, doll-like. She wears a t-shirt and the patterned mohair cardigan he bought her for Christmas. Mohair on mohair. The whole car park knows about it. When she made to get out of the passenger seat, the static squeal bounced from one vehicle to the next.

Ignoring the tightness in his bladder, he stands at the entrance to the Ladies, as he is trained to do. He sees aqua tiles from floor to ceiling and detects the same family of smells as those from the hospital. He does not know what he is waiting for. All the damage has already been done. Besides, he is exhausted with having to be the man of the relationship. He is unsure how much reserve he has left if he is called upon for the second time.

There is a reason Claud discharged herself before he arrived. She wanted to keep all the medical details between herself and the doctor. The dressing is only one secret they share. He suspects others.

‘Wives keep secrets from their husbands,’ said his best man on his wedding day. Hari is the expert, shagging one frustrated wife after another; a Lone Ranger, regularly pulling up in his Land Rover at the cafés most of them use after the school run.

Amal is unsure that secrecy can exist in a marriage as close as theirs. When he has every breath pattern and face pore memorized, predicting how she will toss and turn in her sleep – right then left, curl and back; in the midst of urgent, concentrated sex, in sync, when the concept of possession is anathema, to the point where he feels that he actually becomes her; and when, as he cooks, he knows how each particular food will taste for her, where are the secrets? Where in their airy, uncluttered house can they be held?

He was stupid to think that cleaning was the priority, obsessed as he was with staying busy with his hands. He should have camped outside the hospital, greeting the doctor with chair sweat and a furry tongue. He should have left no opportunities for secrets, not because he is possessive, but because he knows that secrets will hurt them. They have had to make the conscious effort to be transparent with one another. It is one of the essential requirements of a marriage such as theirs, to avoid misunderstandings and the breeding of corrosive resentment. It means therefore that any gripes are put down to superficial, bachelor selfishness, laziness, or lapses in judgement; trifles that can be rowed over and then quickly resolved.

His plan is to wheel her back to the car as soon as she reappears, avoiding the McDonalds concession, KFC, and the children’s play area. The precautions, should he have to explain them, are ridiculous. There is no emotional meltdown waiting to happen in the space between the mechanical fire engine and giant revolving tea cup. She is too empty to do that. He only wants to hide these things from her for as long as he can. Pretend that there are no children in the world, that they are as rare as baby eagles or panda cubs. Make it seem like it is a miracle for everybody.

But something about the new dressing energizes her. She is not to be shaken off, wanting to visit the shop to pick up a token for Pat. The gift store, opposite all that he wishes to disappear, is as claustrophobic and depressing as any he has encountered on the side of the motorway. Still, there is a shine to Claud that the flat strip-lighting cannot diminish; perked up by the piles of outdated CDs and tartan car blankets.

‘Two for £25 it says. I could use one in the car now and give the other to Mum.’

‘It’s terribly made. Look at the label. Says it’s a wool-poly blend. Listen to how it crinkles up. It’s like plastic.’

‘I like them. They’re pretty.’

‘Since when have you been into tartan?’

‘It’s not a question of being into. Tartan’s something everyone’s brought up with in Britain.’

Those final two words, randomly chosen to put him in his place. His parents were not born in England. He wouldn’t understand. It is something from Sam’s repertoire, picked up so thoughtlessly, used so often. She does not know that she is even doing it; does not know what it means.

‘It might not seem like a big deal, but we cannot do Sunday lunch without Yorkshires. Bring that dinner out from an English pub kitchen and they’d have your balls on a plate . . . Yes, I know it sounds like the cast of Billy Smart’s circus, but my daughter really does need four ushers, two page boys, and two flower girls. That’s how it’s done in this part of the world.’

Bigots do not raise ugliness in their daughters, just a certainty of where their place is, and what is right. For all her education, wit, compassion, Claud is guaranteed to fall into the tartan setting every once in a while, usually when they are snappy and close to argument. It is as natural as temper, right as rain.

He thinks of some of Puppa’s friends from the ’70s, and their marriages. A stream of white wives crying in Ma’s kitchen surprised at being beaten for similar displays of indigenous expression. There are one or two husbands he remembers in particular, chubby Indian beefcakes, stinking of the card table and taking no shit. Filthy tempers. The kind of men who would think nothing of giving the woman a slap beside the lopsided pile of wool-poly tartan blankets.

Slapping is not an option, inconceivable, but there are other forms of cruelty. He can protect her until she is smothered by concern, for example. Or, more easily, he can throw her to the wolves, leaving her to fend for herself once he remembers that he still needs a slash. A party of school kids are stampeding towards the crisp aisle. Thirty of them, fresh from the cramped hire coach and ready to use their feet.

‘See you at the car. Probably easier.’

He watches as she takes a deep breath, kidding himself that it is the choices between blanket colours which is making her cheeks flush and her arm imperceptibly wobble. Red-green, red-yellow, blue-green, blue-yellow, red-black. He waits only until the first of the children stream around her in their quest for confectionary, seeing how she almost has to force her head to stay directed on the job in hand.

The options are St. Leonards or villages. She chooses villages, knowing where the roads will lead: the cottage outside Robertsbridge where they spent their first weekend together, the antique market at Rye where they chose her engagement ring, the church overlooking Lewes Common where they married. All the significant points in their relationship have taken place in her part of the country. There was never any validity to spending time in Leicestershire.

Up there, in the Midlands, they are all aware of what is happening, how sons are lost after marriage, cruelly appropriated into the wife’s family; the opposite of what occurred to their subcontinental forebears. It is the price paid for marrying English girls, in spite of their vehement protestations to the contrary. But it is a phenomenon not simply restricted to skin tone. Amal’s other friends, white-skinned and robbed of voice, are also in the same boat: pussy-whipped. Life is good so long as the missus is happy.

He has lost count of the key events that he has missed: the wedding of a second cousin which clashed with the opportunity for a free long-weekend in Milan, the puja at his auntie’s new house to banish spirits being cancelled out because Liz and Sam needed help looking for a new car. It is a long list of incompletes.

It is not that Claud lacks interest in his family – the euphemism for culture, because to call it culture would be to admit there are more than cute gaps between the sexes causing difficulties in their marriage – she keeps a better calendar of events than he does. She reads books about Empire, Partition and fundamentalism, drags him to every shitty Bollywood film that plays at the multi-screen, and calls his mother independently at least once a week. The problem lies in their absence, them not being available the way other people’s children are; those who made the decision to stay in around Leicester. Ma and Puppa feel robbed of the opportunity to arrive at their son’s house unannounced, to use spare keys to fiddle and poke around whilst they are at work, and to summarily summon one or the other during the onset of perceived indigestions and illnesses.

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.