What Becomes by A. L Kennedy Page B

that?
    Would I think like that?
    When I take their arms, do the leading, get them over the road, I don’t like to talk to them, not really, does that mean I’m racist? If they were white, would I tell them when they’re covered in crumbs they can’t see, would I point out their different types of disarray?
    Or do I say nothing because they’re blind?
    Am I prejudiced in that way, too?
    Am I a bastard?
    I think I am.
    Quite possibly.
    A total bastard.
    And my wife would agree.
    Is that a positive – because we agree?
    Tom needs a coffee, but suspects he can’t drink any more – not without actually having a heart attack. Still, he would enjoy the smell of it and folding his hands outside the mug, that warmth. Before he’s checked if his tone will sound all right, he discovers that he’s already asked Elaine, ‘Would you like a coffee?’
    â€˜I don’t know. You would?’ Her tone isn’t all right.
    â€˜Don’t do that.’ Nor is his. Again.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Then, if I say yes, it’s like I’m making you have a coffee and everything has to be about what I want and if I say no, it’s like I’m not letting you have one when you do want one – you just . . . I want to sit down somewhere warm.’
    â€˜Okay.’ Elaine intended to say something else – something like
no
– or,
stop reading things into every bloody word I say, Jesus, if I started reading things into you, I’d be busy, I’d have a full-time job on my hands, I’d have to take evening classes – instead of evening work to make up for the job you don’t have any more
– but even preparing the shapes of that for her tongue feels exhausting and she is, in any case, worn back to the sense that she is hungry and cold, that she also needs to sit down somewhere warm. ‘We could have lunch. Tom? We could do that.’ She is simple, just very simple inside herself.
    Tom’s eyes are pinkish, distressed. She isn’t sure how long they’ve been this way. He hasn’t cried, not today – not as far as she knows – but he does look awful, wrung out, and she is a bad person for making no effort to support him. Bad wife. And he is a bad husband for forcing her to conclude that she’s a bad wife.
    He’s not a bad man, though. It wasn’t his fault he lost the job – not his mistake. That’s half the trouble, they barely did make a mistake: only these little tiny wrong judgements: but they’re ruined all the same. They might as well have been careless.
    â€˜Yes. Yeah. Why not.’ His voice is flattened now, blanked.
    Which should make her sympathetic, only today she resents him for hiding what he feels. She hates it when he’s secretive.
    They both swing slightly too quickly in towards the next restaurant they see, which is Japanese – they aren’t all that fond of Japanese – and which they know will be expensive. The whole avenue up this high is expensive – glistening shops and men in overworked shoes and dandy overcoats, women with immobile hair, immobile faces, aggressive jewellery. Tom and Elaine find themselves surrounded by an atmosphere of fussy cleanliness, of demands pending and important expectations that should be met. This, in addition to their own atmosphere – the one which is more like a migraine, or a bereavement – the one which means they are about to spend more money they can’t afford, because the new worry this will give them – such a manageably small cause for concern – this will be a distraction, almost a type of joke.
    Tom opens the restaurant door. Rubbing up against the hot curve of his skull comes –
this is Elaine, a person you used to like.
    Out of habit, he lets her go before him and start to climb the narrow stairs.
    Time was, you’d have enjoyed this. You’d have wanted to watch her arse. This is Elaine’s