Black Bread White Beer by Niven Govinden Page A

the other customers shake their teacups nervously, relieved that what she has been waiting for has finally arrived.
    â€˜â€™Mal, don’t.’
    â€˜What d’you mean, don’t? Is this acceptable food? Are you happy paying seven pounds for this?’
    â€˜This is the way we serve food down here, my dear. No other person has complained about so-called stale cakes to my knowledge. So if you don’t like it, I suggest you clear off.’
    He hears Claud talking to him in a low, vehement tone but does not respond, feeling his genomes putting every single cell into a chokehold. The untutored Indian gene has been allowed to grow rotten within him, ready to fight hostility with hostility. He is ever alert for signs of discord in the day-to-day world, willing to pounce upon sources of hate with their upturned lips and sloppy service until they are ripped to shreds. Others are evolved and can look past milk skin and stale cake, but not him, Neanderthal in his emotional drive. When he suddenly stands up and pushes the offending plates towards the waitress’s face, he acts on impulses that cannot bede-programmed. He is a genetic warrior. He will fight to the death to remove all unwanted aggression.
    When the row is taken indoors, to the kitchen entrance away from the bulk of customers, he is fired-up and feels more alive than he has been all day, alert and ready for a show of strength. The manager is a thin-lipped southern European with a thick carb-fed gut who only wants to diffuse the situation. He looks at the waitress like she is a liability, not needing to hear from any witnesses that she was the first person to start swearing. He only has to look at Amal, arguing to the point of tears, as if every fibre of his being is backing him up. He wants to fight now cry later, but one does not come without the other. In the privacy of the kitchen, away from a waiting Claud, the manager and lippy waitress watch a grown man fall to pieces over two-day-old cake. The bill is waived.

    A dog is crapping outside the gift shop. Its owner, an old girl with thick round sunglasses, tells him to fuck off when he asks her to pick up the mess.
    â€˜Mind your own business,’ she says. ‘I don’t tell you how to do things in your country.’
    Claud is looking for something else for Liz. The tartan blankets have been discarded.
    â€˜They’ll have to go in the next charity collection. Whydid you let me buy that tat? That’s how they get you, the service stations, luring you with their combinations of pretty displays and bad lighting.’
    â€˜Is Liz really going to appreciate a Battle tea towel? She’ll have hundreds. We should get going, shouldn’t we?’
    â€˜Just wait a minute, Amal. I know you’re still hot and bothered from the café, and want to get out of here, but you’ll have to wait. I need something for my mother.’
    â€˜We resolved everything, actually. I’m not worried about being stoned out of town.’
    â€˜Your face is red.’
    â€˜It was one of those professional kitchens. You know how hot they get.’
    Claud’s face is reddish too; a combined disgust with both him and her defunct motorway purchase. The flush is a good thing, means that her blood is running through her, means strength, although he does not feel that she will welcome the news. Strength equals getting better equals back to normal: mid-thirties, childless, living in a soulless house.
    She takes to a corner that holds the local art; jugs and pots, polka-dotted and looking falsely nautical in their blues, whites, and greens. His time in Battle so far does not share the same bucolic peace advertised by these rough and ready crafts. He cannot help thinking that each flask, tile or pot should have a nail driven through it, or a painted missive saying FROGS OUT, WOGS OUT.
    He is being oversensitive, and a prick; a troublemaker, looking to make ignorant, peaceful lives rattled