‘They told you?’
His voice hardens more than he means it to, but it is too late to add any warmth once the words have escaped his lips.
In a village where neighbours know each other’s business, the fact that it is everyone – milkman, postman, and now, printer – is too much to swallow. The idea that he cannot walk across the Green and not be accosted, buy a paper from the local shop or sit in church without pairs of knowing, sympathetic eyes following him, levels his skewed spirit.
This is why he can never live here; to stand aside and let his hard-earned freedoms be curtailed. How their ears will burn from village talk if they do. The barren couple with the lovely house and no children to fill it.
Once Claud is in the car tonight, he will drive and keep driving until they are taken into the city’s concrete arms. He will do his level best to stay away, think up any excuse, until he can feel like a stranger to them; a myth. This is the only way he can hold his head up. He is prepared to break Claud’s heart, and Liz’s and Sam’s, to make it happen.
Phil frowns in puzzlement, the first crack in an otherwise perfect demeanour.
‘I’m sorry, matey. I didn’t understand it was like that. I was just doing some work for them. They thought it was right to tell me in the circumstances.’
The parental broadcasting, like the pregnancy itself, gone rogue and out of his control.
‘I’m sorry too, mate, but it’s our news to share. Nothing personal. Seems like half the village knew before we did, almost.’
This virulent anger that flushes from his ears and deep into his chest should have been deployed when he was being toasted on the Green earlier in the afternoon. Only then he was chicken, reduced to spineless, simpering gestures. Too busy stuffing himself with stale cake to raise any significant objection.
One on one is different, however. One on one he can handle. He showed Sam, didn’t he? Raised his voice and laid his territory. It should be no different with this guy, friendly innocent or not.
They are both aware that the initial fraternity has darkened, though the strength of Amal’s malicious intent is bleached out by the renewed strength of the late-afternoon light. He is not jealous of physical types – too easy a shot – nor is he so insecure to be disabled by the toned, muscular presence standing close to the doorway.
A man as easy on the eye as Phil is not perfect, but he knows how to keep it simple. Where is the sorrow in those long, loose limbs; the summer-house tan; the boyish hair, and perfectly straight teeth? If anything he needs something of what this guy has: confidence; certainty. He wants to retrieve the ability to look Claud in the eye and speak with conviction, rather than this dance of downward eyes and verbal stumbling blocks.
They need escape, some California sunshine to reduce their pain to mere blight; a blip. They need tanned skin and clinically white teeth to hide their worry and regain some of their promise. Need red string bands around their wrists to ward off bad spirits, to convince themselves that everything happens for a reason. They need to believe in something, even if it is just the bare strands of their marriage.
‘You must excuse me if I’m acting like an idiot,’ he says finally. ‘My concentration’s been taken up with this thing. I needed to take it out on somebody.’
‘No need to explain, matey. You should see me when I’ve got my head stuck inside a carbon cartridge. I don’t come up for days.’
‘Can I get you a drink or something? Liz will never forgive me if she hears you called and I didn’t offer you anything.’
But a trace of flint still remains in his tone, suggesting a cup laced with poison, tea garnished with flob. He wonders if a return to the placid can ever be possible after this.
‘No, it’s fine. You’ve got enough on your plate by the look of it. Unless of course, you’re looking for an extra pair of hands.’
‘I don’t. Thanks.’
Manners regained, but he’s curt with it. If a promise of friendship ever existed, an escape from insular in-laws, a like-minded mate who could be as loyal as Hari, it is now lost. No matter. He has better things to be doing: punishing himself with the kitchen-work, making up with his wife.
After Phil has gone, he tears open the envelope left on the counter top. He needs to know how much Sam can afford to piss away on local bugbears at the expense of his future grandchild. Two thousand flyers design and print: £500. One hundred grandparent-shower invitations: £250.
Samples of each enclosed of which one interests Amal:
We’re having a baby!
We thought we’d waved goodbye to the sleepless nights and the nappy bin, and look what’s happened!
You are cordially invited to attend our Grandparent-shower to celebrate Claud and Amal’s forthcoming arrival, next Saturday at 3 p.m.
This is a celebration of all things Grandparent. Silver foxes and HRT patches welcome.
Kid-free zone! Plenty of booze! RSVP
Footsteps as he continues to bust his bollocks with the plumbing; light-footed, apologetic. And he had thought shifting the washing machine itself was the hard part, struggling to take the weight from the trolleys, taking care not to scrape the white rubber wheels against the gravel outside, and protecting the re-varnished kitchen floor inside. In keeping everything pristine, his brogues have taken the brunt of it, the leather across each toe cap gnarled and bashed-in. The yard is also the recipient of his frustration, littered with jettisoned plastic wrap and broken-up polystyrene. Small, almost triangular, piles of detached white crumbs make it appear as though synthetic snowfall has settled on the patio; an industrial winter wonderland to decimate all mention of the Herald of Spring.
He continues to be motivated by failure. Every misplaced effort of the day has led to this moment, stretching his left hand to breaking as he grapples to connect the cold water lead to the tap socket in an under-counter space only suited for a small child. If there is a simpler way to do things, he is not aware of it. All he knows is that the day will not be wasted if he does this one small thing. This one fiddly thing.
Aware of the clock working against him, he ignores the sharp pang he feels across his tendons as he twists the plastic stopper over the tap using thumb and forefinger. He needs to vacuum the outside mess and to make everything pretty before they return.
He does not turn to look at her until he is certain that the lead is secure and not liable to break free from the tap under the pressure of running water. It has taken him twenty minutes to get to this point, during which time his anger has only amplified. Anything she wants to say will have to wait.
‘Perfect timing. Give me a hand with the broom if you’re up to it?’
‘That was a bastard thing to say, upstairs. You wouldn’t have dared say that if there was anyone else in the house.’
She has changed into something that makes her look less volatile: jeans and one of Sam’s Aran jumpers.
‘If I was angry enough, I would.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. You’re too weak.’
Anything can happen in this house: photos can be buried; wounds twisted open. Also, the freedom to shout, from not having to worry about what the neighbours will think. He replays the tone in his head, patronizing and designed to hurt. Knows it is one never used at home, where their tempers are as manicured as the topiary on the front step; where one is happy to creep around the other. Explosions only ever seem to happen in the car – something about the combustibility of the engine activates their intolerance mechanisms – or here.
‘You didn’t seem to be hearing me. I didn’t know what else to do. I read somewhere that speaking sharply can bring people out of uncommunicative states.’
‘You’re pathetic.’
‘What happened is no one’s fault, Claud. The doctor said . . .’
‘I was there, thank you. It wasn’t my hearing that was lost, just . . . something else.’
‘Claud . . .’
‘He feels calling me a geriatric will make his explanation clearer. I’
m thirty-four. In whose world does that make me a geriatric?’
She may as well have never read the pile of books that sat on her bedside table. As if poring over pages and pages of the stuff in the last year had prepared her for nothing.
‘It’s only a medical term. You know that. They have to have some basis of classification otherwise how can they be expected to know how to treat everyone?’
‘Thanks for that, ’Mal. You’re doing a really good job of making me feel better.’
He cannot rise to her challenge to crush her to powder. He will not destroy her by saying what is on his mind. He was meaning to be helpful in his tone. The doctor’s explanation had little to cling onto, but there were threads. . . and if she was disbelieving in the threads, hard medical facts, why did they go the hospital in the first place?
‘I’ve connected the washing machine. A couple of final pushes and it’ll be in place.’
‘No one’s going to be placated with a Bosche, ’Mal. They’d rather have a grandchild over clean clothes.’
‘They’re going to get a grandchild. Just a little later than they think.’
‘In your dreams. I’m dead in the water. I can feel it.’
‘We’re not giving up.’
‘You can be as hopeful as you like. It’s not going to happen.’
She says what he is thinking: that this is it. Their one chance blown. It is the stark finality of the decision that has been thundering in his chest, he realizes, not the rising panic on how quickly her mood has changed.
What are they doing wanting children in the first place? When did they both agree that this was the right thing to do?
There were plenty of comments made at the wedding by both sets of relatives, and from friends with brats of their own; fraudulently selling the dream the way hawkish dealers push timeshares onto the weak and uncertain. On a day that looked forward to a happy and fulfilled future, these friends pounced on the unequivocal hope in their eyes, with a carefully choreographed presentation of tidily dressed, cake-filled children, adorable and exceptionally behaved. The little monsters were their show homes, high-spirited, lightly argumentative, but essentially perfect. Who would not want to be in the market to buy after that?
The hustling was to be expected. A biologically geriatric bride and groom shuffling towards the marriage bed whilst there was still enough opportunity for sluggish eggs and weak sperm to fuse and root down; begin life. But they had never had that specific conversation. Never sat on the sofa, or in bed, or anywhere else, to discuss why the actual mixing of their genes needed to be brought into the world. Did they think about other ways of addressing the emptiness: hobbies where they spent more time together; a dog? Everything about the collection of cells had been implicit. Their eyes lied, so they read the need in each other’s body language. Even when it felt like they were at their closest, physically all-consuming, somewhere, in the crook of an arm, a cavity in their pumping hearts, was a final gap waiting to be filled.
So at the wedding, she looked at the show homes and lapped it up with a never-ending thirst. He was put on a diet as soon as they returned from honeymoon.
‘You don’t mean that. It’s still the shock talking.’
Fears can be banished. Difficult, near-impossible procedures tried again. Medical assistance can be sought. Money paid. He no longer believes what has been running through his head since he saw the burial box in the garden: that there is no place in the world for a meeting of the Sussex and Kolkata gene. He wants a child with Claud more than anything. It is the natural order of things.
‘All these books I’ve read. Months reading these books. And I’m still not prepared for how shitty I feel.’
‘Books can’t teach you everything, Claud. Don’t apologize for the way you’re feeling.’
This will pass. Like the way she stands with her back to the door ready to run if he tries to touch her; the pinkness around the eyes, raw and inflamed, telling of the battle raging in the space behind there; the twist he feels in his cheeks from keeping his mouth straight, avoiding both its crumble into tears and a sometime desire to let rip and curse everything that lives, including his wife. All things will pass.
Their baby has gone. Someone somewhere is to blame: a rogue blood cell or free radical; bacteria from food. An external factor: sudden motion such a lift shuddering when it should not have, or an idiot at the supermarket not watching where he was going and bumping her trolley. Her body has reacted to a previous action. That much is certain. Now, he realizes, he needs to find out what it was.
There is silence all the way to the pub, but one that is comfortable, as if, whilst an understanding is still a long way off, there is at least the possibility of a stalemate. They will not tear chunks out of one another. She will not stare at him with hatred for not having a body that can hold a child; he will try and look at her without apportioning blame.
The pub is dead aside from a scattering of old men drinking alone around the bar. The Herald has finished everyone else off. An atmosphere of weariness pervades the village. Even the trees in the car park bow their heads, exhausted.
They take a table where they won’t be disturbed or have to socialize. Again they share a tacit agreement in this. Claud has paid no attention to the head-count, walking blankly though a succession of glazed doors that lead to the Snug, as if it was reserved solely for their purpose. Amal remains spatially aware, looking to see whether he recognizes any of the soaks from the afternoon’s festivities, or if they have been rooted to the same spot since opening; they too looking for a place to hide.
Alcohol loosens them a little. In the past, they would cosy up on the cushioned love seat against the window, if not loved-up, then at least in minor thrall to one another. Hands casually resting on thighs, fingers brushing cheeks and the side of necks. Tired of conception sex perhaps, but still aware of the magnetism of the other’s body. The force of the magnetic pull outweighing freshly realized tics, flaws and other disappointments. Now she sits alone on the love seat. He takes a stool and places it opposite; the round, high table between them giving further protection. A border for their personal space.
She has not taken off her coat. He toys with the rim of his half-pint glass.
‘We can’t be out too long. They’ll be wondering where we are.’
‘You needed a drink.’
‘We have drinks at home.’
‘You know what I mean. Besides, I left a post-it. They’ll probably join us before long.’
She looks around in appraisal, as if the place is new to her; sips her red wine with distaste.
‘So this is the new theory, is it? Getting drunk makes everything better?’
‘It can do. You’re from the Home Counties. You should be well practiced.’
‘That’s the second bastard thing you’ve said today. Don’t know what’s got into you this afternoon. You’ve been acting strange ever since you got back from the Herald.’
‘You’re one to talk. Shut up and finish your drink.’
‘Shut up and finish yours. It’s bitter, not a bloody cocktail.’
They laugh a little because the nagging seems so normal; a flashback to three days ago; three weeks ago; a couple of hours after they met.
‘This is going to send me loopy. I’m still taking the painkillers they gave me for the cramps.’
‘You’re still cramping?’
‘The body doesn’t stop just because the baby’s not there. Do you know anything about my physiognomy apart from the bits that help you get your rocks off?’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Why is it I seem to know everything about how your body functions and you know nothing about mine?’
‘I was only asking because you hadn’t mentioned it before. Someone discharged themselves on their own. I lost my opportunity to ask any questions.’
‘There’s the internet. You could have been using the internet instead of standing around with your mouth open.’
‘You
think I’ve had time for the internet? Now you’re the one who’s in another world.’
There was a great vision they had for themselves. That their forties would be fatter and all the more contented for having a brood getting under their feet. Things would not always be easy, but at the very least there would be a couple of bare, harmonious strands holding them together. Like his parents. Hers. Now he does not see how they will get there at all.
Pubs are her environment, not his. A country girl, she has been brought up in them; in this very one, in fact. Church, school, social centre, dating service and crisis support all housed under a modernized coaching inn. She should command presence here. The banquette should not need to support her back, in place of the iron rod that usually bears her. If anything, she looks frailer than before; the drink softening her into a rag, crumpled and ready to fade into the background, like furniture, inanimate and static.
‘You don’t want to be here, do you?’
‘Here’s as good as anywhere else.’
‘I’m sorry. I thought it would cheer you up.’
‘Cheer me up? This isn’t a bad day at the office. Or is it, to you?’
‘No. I don’t know. Just wanted to do something that made you happy. Relaxed, at least.’
‘It’s going to take a long time before that happens so be prepared.’
He wants to shout that she has not prepared him for anything. The books have stayed in her domain. Her side of the bed. Everything he has been told has been on a need to know. Aware of how feeble that makes him sound, weaker than a girl with a sofa for a spine, he keeps his mouth shut. Aware too how the corners of his eyes crease heavily when he breaks into ineffectual protestation. She has hectored him enough times about its unattractiveness and instant ageing qualities.
Limbo dominates. He has been in freefall because he has lacked structure and the influence of third parties. What he longs for is a dry old sandwich in the café opposite his office and a lunch hour of talking bullshit with the guys on his team. The two-hour abyss from lunch until tea; then the final two-hour stretch, usually a meeting where he can daydream and count down the minutes until the metaphorical bell rings and the mass descent to the bar.
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