Black Bread White Beer Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 theyhave 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.
    â€˜I only want to get serious with a guy who isn’t going toblow 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