Your Father Sends His Love by Stuart Evers

child he named after me. James Mason was born in Huddersfield. Rish has seen things that I will never see, and has felt things that I can never share.
    Outside a delivery from the Camden Hells brewery was in progress. Rish watched it. I watched it too.
    â€˜This place has twenty-seven beers on draught,’ Rish said, his eyes on the kegs and casks rolling down into the cellar. ‘But only one toilet.’
    â€˜The toilet’s upstairs too,’ I said. ‘Up those narrow stairs.’
    â€˜I’m amazed it’s allowed,’ Rish said. ‘What with Health & Safety and all.’
    â€˜How was your flight?’ I asked.
    â€˜Don’t fly American,’ he said. ‘Never fly American. Seriously. The stewards are the most miserable bastards. And the movies are shit. Never again.’
    The Tap has twenty-seven beers on draught. Twenty-seven beers on draught and only one toilet. This is something to say.
    Yes.

SUNDOWNERS
    He is still talking. She sits, wrapped in a green towel, underwear in her right hand. She catches part of a sentence – ‘And this is what people don’t understand; you’re right, Evelyn, it’s exactly as you said . . .’ – but Ross does not explain what Evie has said, or he has already explained it and she has not heard, and she smiles though he is not exactly looking at her. On the dressing table is her hairbrush, wooden-handled, a present from her husband.
    Evie brushes out her hair, caramelized at the root, pale ale at the tip. She brushes out her hair and wrinkles her feet. The carpeting is thin and she can feel the boards beneath. There is dust on the mirror, a fine sheen, not quite enough to sign her name.
    He doesn’t wash the towels. He has never washed the towels, this she has recently realized.
    â€˜. . . bastards just don’t get it—’
    â€˜Ross?’ she says.
    â€˜. . . it’s all coming down and they’re all just—’
    â€˜Ross?’ she says. ‘Please can you please just stop ?’
    He looks away from whatever imagined audience he’s been addressing and turns to her; he pushes his spectacles up the bridge of his nose, a tic to pause time.
    â€˜Are you okay?’ he asks.
    He wears his struck-dumb face, his how-have-I-offended-you? face, his this-is-the-face-of-a-penitent face. Such a sensitive flower. Such a stupid, clever boy. Once, early on, she told him she could listen to him talk all day and all night. That he had liked.
    â€˜You really need to clean this place,’ she says. ‘Wash your towels. And your sheets. Everything really.’
    â€˜What?’ he says. The springs of the long-rented bed twang as he stands. He looks around. The open wardrobe, the broken lamp on the bedside table: the view as imagined by an impartial observer.
    â€˜It’s not so bad,’ he says, his hand leaning against the window sill. ‘It’s just cosmetic is all.’
    â€˜I’m not arguing with you,’ she says. ‘Clean this place up or I’m not coming back.’
    She gives her hair one last violent brush and Ross nervously laughs. His curls bounce; his white teeth visible, framed by a scrub of beard.
    â€˜I mean it.’ When she says this, she hears her mother-voice.
    â€˜It’s never bothered you before,’ he says. The spread ofdark hair across his chest converges in a line down to his penis. His nipples are tiny, like a boy’s.
    He walks over to her and puts his hands on her shoulders, rubs up and down her arms, crouches to meet her eyes.
    â€˜Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll clean up.’
    She knows he will lean his forehead against hers. This is when he asks her, always now.
    â€˜Don’t,’ she says. ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t know. I’ll call you when I can.’
    â€˜Will I need to provide evidence that I’ve cleaned?’ His smile is tentative and is left unmet.
    â€˜I’ll just walk