The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (27 page)

Later,
when they were in bed, talking about their childhoods and their first
conscious sight of the stars, Brian said, ‘It was when I was seven, lying on my
back in my grandmother’s garden in Derbyshire. It was dusk and the stars
started to appear, almost one by one. Then the sky slowly turned from deep blue
to black, until the stars seemed to be blazing. The next day at school, I asked
Mrs Perkins what kept them up. Why didn’t they fall down? She told me they were
all suns and that they were held up by something called gravity. I went into my
first reverie. At going-home time she gave me a book,
The Ladybird Book of
The Night Sky.
I’ve still got it. And I want to be buried with it — in
Death Valley, Nevada.’

‘For the seeing?’ asked Titania. She was rewarded
when Brian put his arm around her fleshy shoulder and held her right breast.
She continued, ‘I used to take a Milky Way wrapper out into the garden and try
to match the illustration with something in the night sky. I loved those
chocolate bars, because they were advertised as being something one could eat
between meals.’

Brian laughed. ‘On the rare occasions when the sky
was clear in Leicester, I saw the Milky Way, and I was overwhelmed. I felt very
small indeed.’ He went on, pedantically, ‘Although I wasn’t overwhelmed at
first. That only came when I actually understood that the Milky Way is one of
the spiral arms of our own galaxy.’

‘Galaxy!’ said Titania, who was emboldened by Brian’s
chumminess. ‘Another delish space-nomenclature chocolate bar! But the Milky
Way had the moral high ground. Our parents approved of it. The name “Milky Way”
would be a good replacement for your wife’s White Pathway.’

Brian was not listening to what he called ‘Tit’s burble’.
He was thinking about the Mars Bar. The war horse of chocolate bars.

Titania said, ‘Do you think she’s clinically mad,
Bri? There’s the sheet to get to the loo, and she’s started talking to herself
now. Because, if so, we should think about getting her diagnosed. And possibly
hospitalised — for her own sake.’

Brian didn’t like Titania’s use of ‘we’. He said,
irritably, ‘It’s hard to tell with Eva.’ He was loath to criticise his wife in
front of his lover. He thought of Eva’s lovely face, then looked at Titania.
There was no comparison in the looks department. He said, ‘She’s not talking to
herself, she’s reciting all the poems she learned by heart at school.’

Brian switched the bedside light off and they
settled down, ready for sleep.

Half
an hour later, they were still awake.

Titania was mentally organising her marriage to
Brian. She thought they would have a traditional wedding. She planned to wear
ivory silk.

Brian was wondering if he could stand to live with
Titania, a woman who got through a large bag of Maltesers
every
night.
He didn’t begrudge her buying them for herself, but he hated the way she rolled
several of them around in her mouth.

He could hear the tiny collisions with her teeth.

41

On
the 6th of January, before their return to Leeds, the twins were sitting in the
Percy Gee Building sipping Diet Coke.

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ said Brianne. ‘You’ve
never been in love.’

She and Brian Junior were waiting to take part in
the out-of-term maths competition held at the University of Leicester. The
Norman Lamont Cup attracted very few British entrants. The majority of the
other competitors did not have English as their first language.

Brian Junior said, ‘I may not have experienced romantic
love myself, but I’ve read books about it. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s
up to much.’

‘It’s a physical pain,’ said Brianne.

‘But only if it’s unrequited, like yours for
Alexander.’

Brianne banged her head on the plastic table. Why
can’t he love me back?’

Brian Junior thought for a long time. Brianne waited
patiently. They both respected the process of turning precise thought into
clear expression.

Eventually, Brian Junior said, ‘One, he’s in love
with Mum. Two, you’re not loveable, Brianne. And three, you’re not pretty
either.’

Brianne said, ‘It really is annoying that you’re the
one with Mum’s physical-beauty genes.

Brian Junior nodded. ‘And you’ve been given Dad’s
intimidating masculinity. I’d quite like that.’

‘Why don’t you just, like,
say
I’m big and
butch?’ said Brianne.

There was a loudspeaker announcement: ‘The participants
of Level One are asked to make their way to the David Attenborough room.’

The twins remained seated. They watched as the majority
of competitors shuffled towards the examination room, much as First Class passengers
watch disdainfully as Economy Class passengers traipse towards the boarding
desk with their cheap suitcases and grizzling children.

It was a moment the twins always savoured. They
said, ‘Sick!’ and slapped a high five.

Their remaining opponents looked up nervously from
their laptops. The Beaver twins were a formidable team.

Brianne asked her brother, ‘Do you think we’ll ever
find some randoms to love us, Bri?’

‘Does it matter? We both know we’ll be together for
life, like swans.

42

It
was three o’clock in the morning. A time when frail people die. Eva was keeping
watch on her territory. She saw the foxes casually crossing the road, as though
they were shoppers in a village high street. Other small mammals that she
couldn’t identify were out and about.

She watched as a black cab turned into the road
opposite and then turned again to park outside her house. She watched the
driver get out; he was a big man. He rang the doorbell.

Eva thought, ‘Who in this house has rung for a cab
at this time of the morning?’

After a moment, the bell rang again.

She heard Poppy running along the hallway to open
the door, shouting, ‘OK, OK, I’m coming!’

There was an altercation on the doorstep — Poppy’s
high voice and a man’s deep rumble.

Poppy shouted, ‘No, you can’t come in, she’s asleep!’
The man insisted, ‘No, she isn’t. I’ve just seen her at the window I’ve gotta
talk to her.’

Poppy said, ‘Come back tomorrow’

‘I can’t wait until tomorrow,’ the man said. ‘I need
to see her now.’

Poppy screamed, ‘You can’t come in! Go away!’

‘Please,’ the man begged. We’re talking life and
death here. So, if you wun’t mind, get out of my way.’

‘Don’t touch me, don’t touch me! Take your hands off
me!’

Eva was rigid with fear and guilt. She must go downstairs
and confront the man herself but, although she swung her legs out of the bed,
she could not lower her feet on to the floor. Not even to save Poppy. She wondered
if she could have run downstairs if the twins were exposed to a similar danger.

‘Sorry, sorry, but I’ve got to see her.’

Eva heard a heavy tread on the stairs. She swung her
legs back into the bed and pulled the duvet around her neck, like a child might
after a nightmare. She braced herself for the man’s entrance.

Suddenly he was there, in her room, blinking in the
bright light. He had a night-shift worker’s exhausted face. He needed a shave
and his hair was lank as he pushed a few locks out of his eyes and behind his
ears. His clothes looked rumpled and neglected. He was breathing heavily.

Eva thought to herself, ‘I mustn’t antagonise him. I
must try to keep calm. He’s obviously in a state.’ She looked to see if he was
carrying anything that could be construed as a weapon. His hands were empty.

‘You’re Eva Beaver, aren’t you?’

Eva lowered the duvet a little and asked, ‘What do
you want?’

‘The other drivers were talking about you. They don’t
know who you are, but they see you sometimes in the window through the night.
Some of them think you’re a prostitute. I never thought that. But then one of
Bella’s brothers told me that you’d helped ‘em out.’

‘Bella Harper?’ said Eva.

‘Yeah,’ said the man. ‘He said that you gave free
advice twenty-four seven. He said you were a saint.’

Eva laughed. ‘Your informant was wrong.’

Poppy had run into the twins’ bedrooms and woken
them up. They stumbled into Eva’s room, Brian Junior holding his old cricket
bat, wide-eyed with fear. Brianne stood behind him with a martyred screwed-up
expression on her face, yawning and blinking.

Brian Junior said viciously, ‘Get out of my mother’s
bedroom!’

‘I’m not going to hurt her, son,’ the taxi driver
said. ‘I just need to talk to her.’

‘At three a.m.?’ said Brianne, sarcastically. Why?
Is it the end of the world? Or something more important?’

The man turned to Eva with such a forlorn look that
she said, ‘I don’t know your name.’

‘I’m Barry Wooton.’

‘I’m Eva. Please, sit down.’ Then, to the twins, ‘It
will be all right, go back to bed.’

Brian Junior said, ‘We’re not leaving.’

Barry sat down in the soup chair and closed his
eyes. ‘I can’t believe I’m here.’

Poppy, who was desperately trying to ingratiate herself
with Eva, asked, ‘Can I get anybody a cup of tea?’

Brianne said, ‘I sometimes think Dad’s right about
this bloody country and tea.’

‘I’ll have one,’ said Eva.

‘Yeah, me too,’ said the driver. ‘Not much milk, two
sugars.’

Brian Junior said, ‘Green tea, and I’ll have it in
here.’ He leaned against the wall and swung the cricket bat into the palm of
his right hand, making a smacking sound.

Brianne was wearing a pair of her father’s pyjamas.
They fitted her well. She sat down on the bed and put her arm protectively
around her mother’s waist.

Poppy said, ‘Should I tell Brian and Titania?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Eva.

Barry looked around at the four strangers and said, ‘I
don’t usually carry on like this. I’m surprised at myself. I’ve been wanting to
talk to you, Mrs Beaver. Every time I’ve passed your house, I’ve wanted to stop
the cab and knock on your door.’

Why tonight?’

‘I suppose I wanted to talk to somebody before I do
myself in.’

Brianne said, ‘Oh, how lovely. You must surely know,
Barry, that my mother, whose heart is as soggy as Romney Marsh, will try to
talk you out of it.’

Brian Junior said in a monotone, ‘You’ve no
intention of killing yourself, Barry.’

Brianne asked, ‘Have you posted it online?’

‘What?’ said Barry.

‘It’s almost obligatory now, Barry. You have to go
on the net and join the queue with the rest of the attention whores.’

Eva looked at her children. What had happened to
them? Why were they so heartless?

Barry shifted in the chair. He felt that he could
easily die of embarrassment. His tongue was huge in his mouth. He thought that
he would not be able to speak again. Water started to drip from his eyes. He
was glad when the weird-looking girl came in with three mugs of tea and handed
one to him. He had never seen anybody dressed in such extravagant bits of cloth
before. He slurped on his tea and burned his mouth, but he said nothing about
the pain.

The silence was oppressive.

Eventually, Eva said, ‘Why do you want to kill yourself?’

Barry opened his mouth to speak, but Brianne interrupted
him. ‘I think I’ll take myself off to bed now I cannot bear the thought of all
the clichés that are presently stirring inside Barry’s head, and their
imminent arrival at, and escape from, Barry’s voice box.’

Brian Junior said, ‘You’re Out of your element,
Barry.’ Brianne drew her dressing gown tightly around her and went haughtily
back to bed.

Eva said, ‘Poppy, you go to bed now’

Poppy sulked out of the room.

Barry couldn’t work out whether he had been insulted
or not by the tall, chunky black-haired girl. He hadn’t expected other people
to be there when he talked to the woman, Eva. He had made things worse for
himself, he thought. He had almost certainly been disrespected, he had burned
his mouth, he’d lost fares, and he’d forgotten until now that the first
high-speed train that he was planning to throw himself under didn’t leave
Sheffield until 5 a.m. So he had three hours to kill.

‘As usual,’ he thought, ‘I’ve mucked everything up.
I’ve done it all my life: lost stuff, broken stuff, stolen stuff, been caught
with stuff.’ He felt that he had never learned the rules of life, whereas every
other man, woman, kid and animal knew them. He was always lagging behind —
sometimes literally — shouting, ‘Wait for me!’ He’d only ever been able to
court the dregs of women that his mates had discarded.