The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (14 page)

Alexander sighed. ‘Sit down, man. I’m gonna cook that
again. Watch and learn.’

Brian, who was still hungry, sat down.

20

Ruby
came the next morning with Eva and Brian’s washing. It was ironed and folded
so immaculately in a raffia laundry basket that Alexander, who had arrived ten
minutes earlier to remove the carpet in Eva’s bedroom, was touched almost to
tears at the trouble she’d taken.

When Ruby asked, ‘Kids at school?’ he could hardly
answer.

He had spent the first ten years of his life in dirt
and chaos, getting up early enough to sift through the piles of clothes on the
bedroom floor so that he could wear the least dirty items to school.

When Ruby hobbled upstairs, Alexander laid his face
on the laundry and breathed in.

After
manoeuvring Eva’s bed around the room with her in it, Alexander almost lost his
patience, but all he said to her was, ‘It would be so much easier if you got
out of bed.’

She said, ‘If you can’t do it alone, shall I ask
Brian to help when he comes home from work?’

‘No,’ said Alexander. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

Eventually, after a lot of encouragement from Eva,
he managed to roll the carpet up, tie it securely and throw it out of the
window. He went downstairs and stuck a Post-it note under the string holding it
together.

It said: ‘PLEASE HELP YOURSELF.’

By
the time he’d made tea and toast and gone to the doorstep with an empty milk
bottle, the carpet was gone.

On the reverse of the note was written in biro: ‘THANK
YOU SO MUCH. YOU’VE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME.’

While
Alexander sanded down the old floorboards, Eva knelt on the bed and looked out
over the open sash window. She was wearing an industrial respirator, which soon
led to a rumour in the area — spread by Mrs Barthi, the newsagent’s wife — that
Brian had contaminated his wife with some kind of moon bacteria, and that she
had been confined to her room by the authorities.

Later that afternoon, Brian was mystified when the
queue in the newsagent’s melted away as he joined it.

Mr Barthi covered his nose with a handkerchief and
said, ‘Sir, you should not be out in our community spreading your unearthly
moon germ s.’

Brian spent so long explaining the situation at home
to Mr Barthi that the newsagent grew bored and longed for the bearded customer
to leave the shop. But then, to his dismay, Dr Beaver gave a lengthy dissertation
about the lack of germs on the moon, which somehow led to a monologue on the
moon’s lack of atmosphere.

Eventually, after many hints, which included yawning
in Brian’s face, Mr Barthi closed the shop early. ‘It was the only thing I
could do to make him go away,’ he told his wife.

She turned the OPEN sign to face the street again
and said, ‘So, why do you have tears on your face, you big fat booby?’

Mr Barthi said, ‘I know you will mock me, Sita, but
I was actually bored to tears. The next time he comes into the shop you can
serve him.’

Later, Brian came out of the butcher’s, where he had
been buying a piece of rump steak for himself and eight chipolata sausages for
Eva. He saw the lights in the newsagent’s flicker back on. He crossed the road
and headed towards the shop. Mr Barthi saw Brian approaching, and had just
enough time to turn the sign over and slide the bolt.

Brian banged on the door and shouted, ‘Mr Barthi!
Are you there? I forgot my
New Scientist.’

Mr Barthi was crouching behind the counter.

Brian shouted through the letter box, ‘Barthi, open
the door, I know you’re there!’

When there was no response, Brian aimed one kick at
the door, then turned away and walked back without his magazine to face the
chaos at home.

Mr Barthi only raised his head when five minutes had
passed.

Brian told Eva later that night that, in future, he
would have his scientific journals posted directly to the house. He said, ‘Barthi
is cracking up. He yawned in my face and then started to cry. He doesn’t
deserve our patronage.’

Eva nodded, though she wasn’t really listening. She
was thinking about Brian Junior and Brianne.

They knew she didn’t answer the phone any more, but
there were other forms of communication.

Ho
was in his room, writing to his parents using notepaper and a pen. He could
not email them such news, they must be slightly prepared — when they saw the
letter in his handwriting, they would know that he had something serious to
tell them. He wrote:

My Dearest
Mother and Father,

You have been
excellent parents. I honour and love you. It hurts me to tell you that I have
not been a good son.

I have fallen in
love with an English girl called Poppy. I have given her my love, my body and
everything I possess, including the money you both worked so hard for in the
Croc Factory to send me to an English university.

Poppy’s parents
are both in intensive care in a place called Dundee. She has spent all of her
money, so I gave her my money until I had none left. Yesterday I asked her when
she could pay the money back to me and she wept and said, ‘Never.’

Mother and
Father, I don’t know what to do. I cannot live without her. Please don’t judge
her too harshly. Poppy’s parents are rich important people who crashed their
light aircraft into the side of the White Cliffs of Dover. They are both in a
coma. Poppy says that doctors in England are corrupt, as they are at home. And
they will only keep her parents alive if they are paid enough. If not, they
will switch off the machines.

Will you please
send me more money? Are you still thinking about selling the apartment? Or
cashing in your pensions?

Poppy says an
international money order made out to Poppy Roberts would be best. Please help
me, my parents
—
if I lose her love, I will kill myself

I hope you are
both well and happy.

Greetings from
your son,

Ho

Ho went downstairs and posted the letter in one of
those red cylindrical structures that the English call a ‘box’. He was on his
way back to the accommodation block when he bumped into Brian Junior who was,
as usual, walking along the pavement while simultaneously reading a book of
equations and listening to an MP3 player through over-ear headphones. A snatch
of music could be heard faintly — it sounded to Ho like Bach.

Brian Junior acknowledged Ho’s presence by blinking
his eyes rapidly and grunting an approximation of, ‘Hello.’

Ho looked up at Brian Junior and wished he was as
tall as him and had such a handsome face. He would also like that thick blond
hair, and those teeth! And how was it possible that Brian Junior’s cheap shabby
clothes looked so good on him?

If Ho had been English, he would have worn the
clothes of a gentleman. Burberry tweeds and shirts from Savile Row Shoes from
Church’s. His parents had bought him clothes to wear at his English university,
but the clothing they’d chosen was that of the proletariat. It was most
difficult wearing a Manchester United football shirt in Leeds. Strangers
accosted him and called him names. It was good that he had Poppy to love him.

He said, ‘Brian Junior. Could I speak to you about
money?’

‘Money?’ repeated Brian Junior, as though he had
never heard the word before. Brian Junior had never spent a day worrying about
money, and he assumed —was absolutely certain — that he would be independently
wealthy one day.

Ho said, ‘I think you have money. And I do not. So,
if you give me some of the money you have, we will both be happy, yes?’

Brian Junior mumbled, ‘Cool.’ Then he turned round
and walked back in the direction he’d just come from, his face blazing with
embarrassment. He couldn’t bear Ho’s humiliation.

Later
that night, there was a knock on Ho’s door.

It was Brian Junior, clutching a handful of
banknotes. He shoved them at Ho and ran back to his room.

Ho counted the notes on his bed. There was £70. It
was nothing, nothing!

It would buy rice and vegetables for him, but what
about Poppy?

How could he tell her that he had no money for the
corrupt English doctors?

21

Eva
was entranced by her all-white room. Alexander had worked all day and into the
evening, painting the ceiling, the walls, the woodwork around the window and
the floorboards eggshell white. Eva had asked him to leave her bed up against
the window From there she could see along the road and beyond, to the faint
shadow of hills, the smudge of evergreens and the bare branches of deciduous
trees.

The smell of fresh paint was overpowering when Brian
eventually came home from work. He walked around the house, opening windows. He
opened the door to what he was now trying to call ‘Eva’s room’. He was
temporarily blinded by the dazzling whiteness of the space.

Eva said, ‘Don’t come in! The floor’s still wet!’

Brian’s right foot hovered over the sticky floor,
but he managed to regain his balance.

Eva apologised. ‘Sorry!’

What are you sorry for?’ asked Brian.

‘I didn’t mean to be sharp with you.’

‘Do you think a few sharp words from you are going
to hurt me, when you have already destroyed my life and our marriage?’ Brian
was choking on his words.

A vision of orphaned Bambi came to him, and he
almost lost control of his emotions.

Eva said, ‘I’ve got one word to say to you …’ She
mouthed the ‘T’, but then bit it back. She knew that she was partly to blame
for the situation they found themselves in.

She had known Brian intimately for neatly thirty
years. He was part of her DNA.

Eventually, Brian said, ‘I’m dying for a pee.’

He looked longingly at the en suite, but the wet
paint lay between them, like half-frozen water between two icebergs. Eva pulled
the cord to turn the ceiling light off, and he left to use the family bathroom.

She turned towards the window.

There was almost a full moon, shining through the
skeleton of the late autumn sycamore.

Brian
sat downstairs in the sitting room. What had happened to the lovely
comfortable home he had once enjoyed? He looked around the room. The plants
were dead, as were the flowers still standing in slimy stinking water. The
lamps which had once given the room a golden glow were also dead. He couldn’t
be bothered to turn them on. There was no fire in the grate, and the colourful
jewelled cushions that had once eased his comfort when he watched
Newsnight
at
the end of the day were stacked on either side of the fireplace.

He looked up at the framed family photograph on the
mantelpiece. It had been taken at Disney World. They had called in at Orlando
after two weeks in Houston and he had bought Single Day Tickets. He’d been
disappointed at Eva and the twins’ lacklustre response when he had revealed
them, and had mimed playing and singing a trumpet fanfare.

Inside the theme park, when a giant Mickey Mouse had
asked in a squeaky voice if they’d like a photographic memento of their visit,
Brian had agreed and handed over twenty dollars.

They had struck a pose while Brian told Eva and the
twins, ‘Give bigger smiles!’

The twins had bared their teeth like frightened chimpanzees,
but Eva had looked steadily ahead, wondering how Mickey Mouse could manipulate
the camera with his large, gloved pseudo-hands.

After the last shot, Goofy had approached, dragging
his feet on the hot asphalt. Speaking through a gap between his flying-buttress
teeth, he’d said to Mickey, ‘Man, I just fuckin’ quit.’

Mickey had answered, ‘Jeez, dude! What the fuck happened?’

‘That fuckin’ bitch, Cinderella, just kicked me in
the fuckin’ balls again.’

Brian had said, ‘Do you mind? I’ve got my children
with me!’

‘Children?’ scoffed Goofy. ‘You gotta be fuckin’ kidding
me! They look old, British man. They got teeth like broken rocks!’

Brian had said to Goofy, ‘You can bloody talk — look
at your bloody teeth! They’ll be on the fucking floor if you carry on insulting
my children!’

Mickey had placed himself between Brian and Goofy,
saying, Whoah! Whoah! Come on, this is Disney World!’

Brian got up and looked closely at Eva’s face in the
photograph. Why hadn’t he noticed before that she looked so unhappy? He took
his handkerchief out of his pocket and dusted the glass and the frame, then put
it back where it had stood for six years.