The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (23 page)

Ruby enquired, ‘So, who’s she when she’s at home?’

Titania said, ‘Old lady, I have been Dr Brian Beaver’s
lover for many years.’

‘Lover?’ said Ruby. Brian was one of the people,
together with the Queen, who Ruby could not equate with any kind of sexuality.

Brian looked around his kitchen.

What had happened to his world? He seemed to
strongly dislike all the people in it. There was a man with a burned face
mixing a drink for Titania — a woman he used to desire. There was a little boy
in a ballet tutu and a seven-year-old girl who appeared to practise her own
school of Utilitarian philosophy, two old women who belonged in the Middle Ages
(or the mid-1950s), his twins who were cleverer than he was and had ostentatiously
turned their chairs and their backs to his lover, and an annoyingly
well-educated black man with hair that fell almost to his waist. And, to put a
tin lid on it, upstairs there was a wife who needed to
think
and was
taking her time over it.

Was he the only normal Homo sapiens left? Did the
ignorant public really expect to find people like themselves living on a planet
on the far side of the cosmos? It was highly unlikely that any of these aliens
wrote notes to the milkman or paid pet insurance. Didn’t these ignoramuses
understand that human beings were the real aliens?

He thought back to his childhood, when breakfast had
been at 7.30 a.m., lunch at 12.45 p.m. and their evening meal at 6 p.m. on the
dot. Bedtime was 7.15 p.m. until he was twelve, and 8 p.m. until he was
thirteen, when it increased by half an hour. There were no computers to
distract him then — though he had read about them in the comic
Look and
Learn.
For a treat his mother had taken him to see Leicester’s first
computer, which was housed in the offices of a hosiery factory and was twice as
big as his bedroom. Yet again, he began to mourn the fact that he would be dead
for certain in fifty years, and would not see the rise of nanotechnology,
quantum computing or the subsequent planetary consciousness. With his high
blood pressure he would be lucky to see the Mars landing.

Yvonne said sharply, ‘Brian!’

‘Yeah?’

‘You’re doing that thing again.’

What thing?’

‘That moaning thing you did when you were a boy,
looking at the sky.’

Brian aggressively cleared his throat, as though
there were some physical obstruction.

Ruby said, ‘I know I’m a bit old-fashioned, but is
it only me who thinks this whole situation is disgraceful?’ She glared at
Titania. ‘In my day, Brian, you’d have been beaten up by the woman’s husband.
You would have been lucky to keep your kneecaps. You should be ashamed of
yourself.’

Titania said, emphatically, ‘Brian has been
unhappily married for years.’ Then, addressing him, she said, ‘I’m going
upstairs to talk to your wife, Brian.’

Thomas asked, ‘Can I come?’

Titania gave one of her barking laughs and said, Why
not, little boy? You are not too young to find out that your sex is inherently
simple-minded and cruel.’

Alexander said, ‘Thomas, sit down.’

Taking her vodka with her, Titania stalked out of
the kitchen and shouted, ‘Eva!’

‘Up here!’

Eva’s
first thought on seeing Titania was that she looked like a funeral director, in
her black skirt and white shirt. The skin around her eyes was so puffy that she
had either developed a serious allergy, or the poor woman had been crying for a
very long time.

Titania said, ‘He didn’t tell me you were beautiful.
He told me you were a scrag-hag. Are you a natural blonde?’

‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘Are you a natural redhead,
Titania?’

Titania sat on the soup chair and began to cry,
again. ‘He promised he would leave you after Christmas.’

‘Perhaps he will,’ said Eva. ‘Boxing Day is still
Christmas. Perhaps he’ll leave me tomorrow’

‘My husband has thrown me out,’ said Titania. ‘I’ve
got nowhere to go.’

Eva was rarely malicious — she had a heart as soft
as her goose-down pillows — but she resented the eight years she had been lied
to. ‘Come and live here,’ she said. ‘You can join Brian in his main shed. There’s
plenty of wardrobe space. As we both know, Brian has no clothes to speak of.’

Titania said, ‘I don’t sense that this is an
altruistic gesture.’

Eva admitted, ‘No, it’s not. He likes his solitude.
He will hate having somebody else living full-time in his precious shed.’

The two women laughed, though not companionably.
Titania said, ‘I’ll finish my drink, then I’ll get my stuff out of the car.’

Eva said, ‘Tell me something. Do you fake your
orgasms?’

‘There usually isn’t time, he’s finished in a couple
of minutes. I sort myself out.’

Eva said, ‘Poor Brian, in the football league of
lovers, he’s Accrington Stanley.’

Why has nobody told him?’ said Titania.

‘It’s because we pity him,’ said Eva, ‘and we’re
stronger than him.’

Titania confided, ‘When I was invited to CERN to
work on the collider, he said, “Really? They
must
be in trouble.”‘

Eva said, ‘When I first showed him the embroidered
chair that I’d worked on for two years, he said,
“I
could learn to
embroider, if I put my mind to it. It’s only cloth, needle and thread, isn’t
it?”‘

Titania ran her hands over the arms of the chair,
and said, ‘It’s exquisite.’

When she’d gone, Eva knelt at the window and watched
Titania struggle to bring in what looked like the contents of a small
household.

35

In
the kitchen, Titania and Brian started to row over his reluctance to carry her
belongings down to the shed. The others drifted away from the kitchen table and
sat on the stairs, not knowing where to go or what to do.

Eva heard their subdued voices echoing in the hallway,
and invited them into her room.

Ruby lowered herself into the soup chair, Stanley
perched on the end of the bed, using his walking stick as a support, and the
others sat cross-legged on the floor, with their backs against the walls.

Alexander caught Eva’s gaze, and held it for a
moment. Thomas and Venus began to play Cruel Russian Ballet Teacher, a game
they had perfected over Christmas. When Venus ranted at Thomas that his
arabesque was ‘rubbish’, and threatened to beat him with an imaginary stick,
Alexander sent them downstairs to play.

Brian Junior’s mobile rang.

It was Ho.

Brian Junior said, ‘Yes?’ into the phone.

Where do I go to collect government money?’ asked
Ho.

Brian Junior was momentarily confused. ‘I’m not with
you. Explain.’

Ho said, ‘I have no money left for food. And I am hungry.
I have phoned Poppy, but she does not answer. So, do you know the location of
the government money office in Leeds?’

Brian Junior explained, ‘It won’t be open today. And
they won’t give you any when they do open — you’re a full-time student.’

Ho asked again, ‘Where will I get money?’

Brian Junior said, ‘Ho, I can’t help you. I haven’t
got room in my head for somebody else’s problems.’

‘If I go to one of your churches, and ask one of the
priests for money, will they give me some?’

‘Probably not.’

‘But if I tell them I am very hungry, and have not
eaten for two days and two nights?’

Brian Junior squirmed and said, ‘Please, this is
making me feel ill.’

‘But I am like your Jesus in the desert. Sometimes
he had no food.’

Brian Junior passed the phone to Brianne, who had
been listening closely.

Brianne said angrily to Ho, ‘Now you’ve made three
of us miserable.’

Ho said, ‘The phone is telling me that I have low
credit power.’

Brianne said, ‘This is what you do. You put on your
coat and your red scarf, and you go to the Sikh temple. It’s on the main road
at the rear of our building There are orange flags flying outside. They will
give you food. I know, because a boy in my seminar group blew his loan on a
second-hand motorbike and a drum kit in the first week of term, and the Sikhs
had to feed him for a month. Now, repeat back the instructions I have just
given to you,’ she said, sternly. She listened for a moment, then said, ‘Right
— coat, scarf, keys. Go now,’ and switched the phone off.

Alexander murmured, ‘Another Nazi in the house.’

Eva said, ‘Why is the poor boy in such a state?’

Brianne said, ‘He gave Poppy most of his money.

Stanley observed, ‘All roads lead to Poppy. What’s
to be done with her?’

Brianne said, ‘I would happily see her walking away from
our house, barefoot and dying in the snow.’

Eva held her head in her hands and said, ‘Brianne,
please don’t talk like that. It makes you sound so callous.’

Brianne shouted, ‘You know nothing about her or the
damage she’s caused! Why do you allow her to stay in our house? You know that
me and Bri hate her guts!’

Ruby said, ‘Well, I for one feel sorry for the poor
kid. Her main and dad have just died! I had a long talk with her yesterday.
They’re bringing the bodies back to Leicester, and I told her to use the Co-op
funeral service. They did a lovely job for your granddad. It wasn’t their fault
they went to the wrong house to pick the body up. Fair-tree Avenue does sound
like Fir Tree Avenue.’

Brianne knelt at the side of the soup chair and
said, very slowly and deliberately, looking into her grandmother’s face, ‘Gran,
why would the Dundee authorities bring her parents’ bodies back to Leicester?
When, according to Poppy, they lived in a house in Hampstead, surrounded by
their rich relations and celebrity friends. Hugh Grant was her next-door
neighbour.’

Ruby said, impatiently, ‘I know that! Poppy told me
that they used to give him rides in their plane. He took over the controls
once, when Poppy’s dad fell ill at the wheel. He had to make an emergency
landing on Hampstead Heath. A policeman was slightly hurt.’

Brianne shouted, ‘You stupid old woman! Everything
she’s told you has been a complete lie!’

Ruby’s face crumpled. ‘I’m surprised at you,
Brianne. Talking to your elders in such a way. You used to be such a nice quiet
girl. You’ve changed since you went to that university.’

Brianne leapt up. ‘There are no bodies coming back
to the Co-op! Her parents are alive and living in Maidenhead! Her mother was
on Facebook this morning, telling her “friends” that she’d had an electric
blanket for Christmas!’

Eva said, ‘How can you possibly know that?’

Brianne and Brian Junior exchanged a look, and Brian
Junior said, ‘We’re good with computers.’

Brianne put her arm around Brian Junior’s shoulder
and said, ‘She isn’t Poppy Roberts. Her name is Paula Gibb. Her parents live in
a council house. They don’t own a private plane. They don’t even have a car or
central heating.’

Alexander said, ‘At least they’ve got an electric
blanket.’ He looked around the group.

Nobody but Eva was laughing.

Stanley asked, ‘How long have you known?’

Brianne said, ‘A couple of days. We saved it. There’s
never anything to do on Boxing Day, is there?’

Yvonne remarked, ‘I think it’s disgusting
personally, myself. The two of your big brains against that little grieving
girl.’

Brianne said, calmly, ‘Bri, time to fetch the Poppy
files.’

Brian Junior got up, stretching his arms in an
attempt to relax his rigid muscles, as if imploring Brianne to show him more
respect. Heaving a deep sigh, he went into his bedroom.

When he returned with a large green box file,
Brianne said, ‘Hand the papers round.’

‘What, like, at random?’

She nodded.

He dispersed the official-looking papers, some stapled,
all printouts.

There was silence for a few moments, as people read
the opening paragraphs of the documents they had been handed.

Ruby said, ‘Well, I’ve read this first bit of mine
twice and I still don’t understand it.’

Yvonne asked, ‘Are we to be tested by the Big
Brains?’

Brianne said, ‘You’ve got the birth certificate,
Yvonne. Read it to us.’

‘Stop talking to me as if I’m a dog, a mongrel dog.
When I was a girl —’

Brianne interrupted, ‘Yeah, when you were a girl,
you were writing on a slate with a piece of chalk.’

Eva ordered her daughter, ‘Apologise to Granny.’

Brianne muttered ungraciously, ‘Soz.’

‘Well, it says here, this is the birth certificate
of a child called Paula Gibb, born on the 31st of July 1993, her dad was Dean
Arthur Gibb, car park attendant, and her mum was Claire Theresa Maria Gibb,
bowling alley assistant.’