The Amateur Science of Love by Craig Sherborne

yourself in your condition.’ In me, however, some indecent door had opened and in had walked all the wrong crowd.
    I watched her pick the knots and swear at the roof for being so scorching with sun. I watched her stand and heave the spare out of its ties. She knelt to roll it from the roof edge. It occurred to me that if she fell now it might bring on a miscarriage. Not a serious fall: I wouldn’t want a serious fall that broke a limb or got anywhere close to maiming her. Just a fall where the bump and shock of it churned her insides. It would be better than an abortion, wouldn’t it? A more natural process. It would spare her something more medical. The strain she was putting into taking the tyre’s weight in one hand and dangling it for passing to me might be enough to do the deed. It was my job to reach up and take the tyre from her. I should have. But I didn’t.
    Tilda grunted and wriggled further to the edge. The rack rail must have been jagging into her pelvis but she didn’t make a moan. She held the hanging tyre as if a test of strength, eyes and mouth slitted from the hurt of what she was doing.
    She unslit an eye and stared at me. I could see exactly what that eye said. It said: Are you watching? Are you seeing that I am thinking the same as you? She let the tyre drop and roll into the ditch.
    Her eye did say it; I wasn’t dreaming. She had the miscarriage idea too. She was willing it. How else can the rest of that day’s trip be explained? We didn’t share a word for 100ks. No hostilities either; not a tear or cross word. She drove without one reckless jerk of emotional steering. Her bottom lip was pushed up over her top in concentration.
    There was one sentence, Tilda’s, but with no obvious sub-meaning: ‘Cigarette, please. Can you light it?’ There was a ‘ta’ from her once I’d passed it to her mouth. I wasn’t about to ask, ‘What are you thinking?’ It might have been viewed too warmly as trying to bridge the distance between us. I was getting away with breaking her heart too well to risk that.

Chapter 29
    Or so I thought.
    On the futon above the Fitzroy lighting shop that night we congressed. No, we fucked. There was no tender playfulness to warrant congressed . We did not kiss as such, more a light grazing of two limp tongues. It was all body, as you’d have with fleetings. I would swear she was willing that baby dead, as if there was something wrong with it now, because there was something wrong with us: we drank two bottles of wine, Tilda going two glasses to my one. She chain-smoked a whole pack of Dunhills. You don’t do that and want good health for your unborn. She said, ‘I have such a desperate need to be entered, hard.’ I did as she wanted. It took place in the dark—we had dark to look into instead of each other’s faces. Not once but three times before finally we turned our backs to each other for sleep. Of all the perversities, I wouldn’t have guessed the lash of wanting a miscarriage was an aphrodisiac. The lash kept us at it all week. But no miscarriage came.
    On the seventh night Tilda went to bed with her clothes on, didn’t even let out the belt to loosen her jeans. When my fingers tried to do it, she said, ‘No more entering.’
    ‘Why not?’ I reached out to the belt again.
    ‘Don’t touch me.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Let me lie still and not be touched. Don’t touch.’
    I sat up and kicked the blanket down to my knees. I was naked and expected that if I pushed and rubbed against her she would want touching. She put her elbow into my side to keep me off her.
    ‘I want this out of me,’ she said. ‘This is not how a child should be born. We are not what it should have. I want it out of me.’
    I pulled the blanket back up, as if that was more dignified given what she was saying. I kept silent in case my relief in what she was saying showed in my voice. It’s her decision , I told myself. That frees me from being responsible. Or shares it between us.