The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (26 page)

Eva and the security men had followed her. The overweight
security men were soon out of breath. It was Eva who caught up with her. Jill
had thrown herself face down on the grass and was holding on to the tufts, saying,
‘Help me! If I let go of the grass, I’ll float away.

Eva thought the kindest thing would be to sit on
Jill’s back and pin her to the ground. When the panting security men
approached, Jill had started to scream and struggle again. A police car had
driven across the park at high speed, with its siren screaming. Eva could do
nothing more to help her friend. The policemen and the security men finally
managed to restrain her, and the car had taken Jill away.

When Eva was finally allowed to visit Jill in the
psychiatric unit, she did not at first recognise her. She was in a featureless
room, sitting on a plastic chair, rocking slightly. The other patients scared
Eva. The noise of the television was intolerable.

‘This is bedlam,’ she thought. ‘It is actually
Bedlam.’ As she walked through the hospital grounds, she thought, ‘I would
rather be dead than be sent to a place like this.’

Years later, she had seen an amateur production of
Marat/Sade
performed by The Faculty Players. Brian had been a very convincing lunatic.
For some weeks afterwards, she had been haunted by the thought that madness
could be lurking just around the corner, waiting to sneak inside your head
while you were sleeping and engulf you.

Eva
did sleep for a while. When she awoke, she was startled to see Julie, her
neighbour, sitting in the soup chair.

Julie said, ‘I’ve been watching you sleep, you were
snoring. I came to wish you a happy New Year, and to get out of that madhouse I
call home. I’m at breaking point, Eva. They don’t listen to me now. They’ve
lost all respect for me. We spent a fortune on their Christmas presents. Steve
bought the eldest boys a PlayStation each, and a television for Scott so he can
watch his cartoons as he goes to sleep. They all had a big sack from Santa,
full of toys, and half of them are already broken. Steve can’t wait to get back
to work, and neither can I.’

Eva, who was feeling irritable due to lack of food,
said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Julie, if they play you up, you confiscate their
bloody PlayStations! Lock them away until they learn some respect. And remind
Steve that he’s an adult male. That cajoling tone he uses with them isn’t
working. Can he actually raise his voice?’

‘Only at the football on the telly.’

Eva said, ‘You and Steve are scared to discipline
them because you think they won’t love you any more.’ Then she roared, ‘You’re
wrong!’

Julie jumped and started fanning her fingers in
front of her eyes.

Eva regretted shouting so loudly, but neither of
them knew what to say next.

Julie looked critically at Eva’s hair. Want me to
give you a trim, and do your roots?’

When the boys are back at school, eh? I’m sorry I
shouted, Julie, but I’m so hungry. Will you fetch me some food, please? They
keep forgetting I’m here.’

‘Either that, or they’re trying to starve you out!’
said Julie.

When
Julie had gone back to her anarchic household, Eva felt a surge of self-pity,
and almost wished she was downstairs grazing the buffet. She heard Brian shout,
“‘Brown Sugar”! C’mon, Titania.’

When the music started, she imagined them strutting
in the kitchen and singing along with The Rolling Stones.

39

It
was New Year’s Day. Brian and Titania had been making love for most of the
afternoon. Brian had ingested Viagra at 2.15 p.m. and was still going strong.

Every now and again, Titania moaned, ‘OMG!’ But the
truth was that she’d had enough. Brian had explored most of her orifices and
she was glad he appeared to be having a good time, but she had things to do,
people to see. She drummed her fingers on his back, absentmindedly. But this
only served to spur him on and before she knew it he had turned her upside down
so that she was almost suffocated by the duck-feather pillows gathering around
her face. She had to fight for air. ‘OMG!’ she shouted. ‘Are you trying to kill
me?’

Brian stopped to get his breath back for a few
moments, and said, ‘Look, Titania, can you go back to shouting “Oh my God!”? OMG
does nothing for me.’

Titania, who was still upside down with her legs
leaning against the wall, said, ‘We’re like two water buffalo yoked together,
endlessly turning a bloody wheel. How many Viagra did you take?’

‘Two,’ said Brian.

‘One would have been sufficient,’ complained
Titania. ‘I could have finished your ironing by now’

Brian made a superhuman effort, summoning up images
that had served him well over the years: the cleavage of Miss Fox, who had
taught him physics at Cardinal Wolsey Grammar; French women lying topless on a
beach near St Malo; the woman eating a cream horn in the back of the bakery,
the cream on the end of her tongue.

Nothing worked. They battled on and on.

Titania kept looking at her watch. Her head and
torso were now hanging over the end of the bed. She saw a rolled-up pair of her
socks she had thought were lost under the chest of drawers. ‘OMGIH!’ she
shouted. ‘How much longer?’

Brian whispered, ‘Let’s have angry sex.

Titania said, ‘I’m already having angry sex, I’m
totally pissed off! If you don’t get off me soon, I’m going to —’

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. Brian ejaculated
so violently and noisily that Ruby, who was in the garden standing over a drain
and rinsing the fetid head of an old-fashioned mop with a garden hose, thought
that he had started keeping wild animals in his shed.

Nothing could surprise her any more. She’d once
thought that paying L’ .70 for a bottle of water from Iceland was about as daft
as you could get — especially when there was nice cold water in the tap. But
she’d been wrong.

Somehow, while her attention had been elsewhere,
everybody in the world had gone mad.

Alexander
let himself into Eva’s house — the door was usually on the latch these days —
and shouted, ‘Hello!’

Nobody apart from Eva answered.

He walked upstairs, rehearsing what he was going to
say. It was a long time since he had declared his love for a woman.

Eva said, ‘Happy New Year. You look cold.’ He said, ‘I
am… and Happy New Year too. I’ve been on Beacon Hill, painting. I’ve never
tried a snowscape before. I didn’t know how many shades of white there are in
snow I made a dog’s dinner of it. I passed Ruby on the main road and gave her a
lift. She said that Brian and Titania were doing very noisy animal impressions
in his shed.’

‘I can hear the neighbours sharpening their pencils
for the petition.’

They both laughed.

Eva said, ‘I’m mystified by their relationship.’

‘At least they’ve got a relationship.’

‘But they don’t seem to like each other.’

Alexander said, ‘I like you, Eva.’

Eva said, holding his gaze, ‘I like you, Alex.’
There was a fragility to the space between them, as though their breath had
frozen and could easily shatter if the wrong word were said.

Eva knelt at the window to check on the snow ‘Fresh drifts…
good for snowmen, sledging. I’d love to —She stopped herself, but he was quick
to jump in and say, ‘You could, Eva! You could speed down a hill with your arms
around my waist, I’ve got a sledge in the back of the van.’

Eva said, ‘Don’t you start trying to get me out of
bed!’

Alexander said, ‘A few years ago, I was working hard
to get a woman into bed.’

She smiled. ‘I think my first New Year resolution is
to avoid having a new man in my life.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve come here to tell you
that I love you.’

Eva moved from the middle of the bed to the edge,
pressing herself against the wall.

Alexander asked, ‘Have I got it wrong?’

She said carefully, not wanting to hurt his
feelings, ‘Perhaps I gave out the wrong signals. As the sacked railwayman
said.’

‘Perhaps we both gave out the wrong signals. Shall I
just say what I feel?’

She nodded.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I want to live with you for
the rest of my life. You wouldn’t have to get out of bed. I’d push you round
Sainsbury’s in it, take you to Glastonbury.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want to hear this.
I will not be responsible for another person’s happiness. I’m no good at it.’

Alexander said, ‘I’ll look after you. We can still
be together. I’ll sit in bed with you. I’ll be Yoko to your John, if you like.’

‘You have children, and I have children,’ she said. ‘And
you must know that Brianne is in love with you. I wouldn’t want
her
as a
love rival.’

‘She’s a kid, it’s just a crush. The love of her
life is Brian Junior.’

‘I’ve finished the daily routine of looking after
small children.’

He said in amazement, his voice going up an octave, ‘You
don’t like my kids?’

‘They’re lovely, funny kids,’ Eva said. ‘But I’m
finished with child-rearing. I can’t bear to watch their disillusionment when
they find out what sort of world they live in.’

Alexander said, ‘Shit happens, but it’s still a
fantastic world. If you’d seen the sun shining on the snow this morning … and
the trees, with the ice falling off them like silver rain …’

Eva said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Can I lie down next to you?’

‘On top of the duvet.’

He took his wet boots off, and put them on top of
the radiator. Then he lay down next to her.

There were no lights on, and the sun had gone down,
but the luminous snow outside made it possible to see the outline of the room.
They held hands and looked at the ceiling. They talked about their previous
lovers, about his dead wife and her present husband. The room was warm, and the
light was low, and soon they were asleep, side by side like marble effigies.

When
Brianne returned from spending her John Lewis gift tokens on a bound
watercolour artist’s notebook for Alexander, she pushed open Eva’s door and saw
that her mother was asleep on top of the duvet.

There was a note on the pillow. She took it on to
the landing to read. It was from Alexander. It said:

Dearest
Eva,

I
had one of the best days of my life today. The snow was magical, and lying next
to you this afternoon was the happiest I’ve been for many years.

We
do love each other, I know this for certain. But I will stay away.

Why
is everything connected with love so painful?

Alex

Brianne took the note into her own room, ripped it
into tiny pieces and hid the fragments inside an empty crisp packet she
retrieved from the bin.

40

Brian
and Titania were eating a late-night supper after a long session of stargazing.
The conditions were perfect, and they had seen wonders and marvels in the cold
cloudless sky. They never failed to be moved by the reality of what they saw
through an actual telescope. The computer screens at work could not convey the
true beauty of the universe.

As Brian chewed on a cold lamb cutlet he said, ‘You
were rather wonderful tonight, Tit. You kept your mouth shut for most of the
time, and you spotted that variable star, which I’m pretty sure hasn’t been
logged yet.’

Titania forked a stuffed olive out of the jar. She
couldn’t remember a time when she’d been as happy as this. She wanted Brian to
go forward and do great things. His dedication to his work was total. Titania
felt that, in the past, Eva had held him back by expecting him to take on his
share of the child-rearing. Poor Brian had not been able to finish his book,
Near-Earth
Objects,
because of Eva’s demands on his time. Did Mrs Churchill insist
that her husband set the table before attending to the war?

She reached a hand out.

Brian said, ‘What?’

Titania whispered, ‘Hold my hand.’

Brian cautioned, ‘I should warn you, Tit, that I’m
still half in love with my wife.’

Titania withdrew her hand. ‘Does that mean you’re
half in love with me?’

Brian said, ‘For over twenty years, my synapses have
been attuned to living with Eva Beaver. You’ll have to give them a chance to
adapt to you, Tit.’

Titania thought, ‘I’ll make him love me. I’ll be the
perfect lover, colleague and friend. I will actually iron his fucking shirts.’