The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

‘No!’

He flinched at the ferocity in her voice.

She saw from the stricken look in his eyes that after twenty-five years of marriage his familiar domestic world had come to an end. He went downstairs. She heard him cursing at the disconnected phone then, after a moment, stabbing at the keys. As she picked up the bedroom extension her mother was laboriously giving her phone number down the line, ‘0116 2 444 333, Mrs Ruby Brown-Bird speaking.’

Brian said, ‘Ruby, it’s Brian. I need you to come over straight away.

‘No can do, Brian. I’m in the middle of having a perm. What’s up?’

‘It’s Eva -’he lowered his voice ‘-I think she must be ill.’

‘Send for an ambulance then,’ said Ruby irritably.

‘There’s nothing wrong with her physically.’

‘Well, that’s all right then.’

‘I’ll come and pick you up and bring you back so you can see for yourself.’

‘Brian, I can’t. I’m hosting a perm party and I’ve got to have my own personal solution rinsed off in half an hour. If I don’t, I shall look like Harpo Marx. ‘Ere, talk to Michelle.’

After a few muffled noises a young woman came on the line.

‘Hello… Brian, is it? I’m Michelle. Can I talk you through what would happen if Mrs Bird abandoned the perm at this stage? I am insured, but it would be extremely inconvenient for me if I had to appear in court. I’m booked up until New Year’s Eve.’

The phone was handed back to Ruby. ‘Brian, are you still there?’

‘Ruby, she’s in bed wearing her clothes and shoes.’

‘I did warn you, Brian. We were in the church porch about to go in, and I turned round and said to you, “Our Eva’s a dark horse. She doesn’t say much, and you’ll never know what she’s thinking…”‘ There was a long pause, then Ruby said, ‘Phone your own mam.’

The phone was disconnected.

Eva was astounded that her mother had made a last-minute attempt to sabotage her wedding. She picked up her handbag from the side of the bed and rooted through the contents, looking for something to eat. She always kept food in her bag. It was a habit from when the twins were young and hungry, and would open their mouths like the beaks of fledgling birds. Eva found a squashed packet of crisps, a flattened Bounty bar and half a packet of Polos.

She heard Brian stabbing at the keys again.

Brian was always slightly apprehensive when he called his mother. His tongue couldn’t form words properly.

She had a way of making him feel guilty, whatever the subject of the conversation.

His mother answered promptly with a snappy, ‘Yes?’

Brian said, ‘Is that you, Mummy?’

Eva picked up the extension again, being careful to muffle the mouthpiece with her hand.

‘Who else would it be? Nobody else phones this house. I’m on my own seven days a week.’

Brian said, ‘But… er… you… er… don’t like visitors.’

‘No, I don’t like visitors but it would be nice to have to turn them away. Anyway, what is it? I’m halfway through Emmerdale.’

Brian said, ‘Sorry, Mummy. Do you want to ring me back when the adverts come on?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it over with, whatever it is.’

‘It’s Eva.’

‘Ha! Why am I not surprised? Has she left you? The first time I clapped eyes on that girl I knew she’d break your heart.’

Brian wondered if his heart had ever been broken. He had always had difficulty in recognising an emotion. When he had brought his First Class Bachelor of Science degree home to show his mother, her current boyfriend had said, ‘You must be very happy, Brian.’

Brian had nodded his head and forced a smile, but the truth was that he didn’t feel any happier than he had felt the day before, when nothing remarkable had happened.

His mother had taken the embossed certificate, examined it carefully and said, ‘You’ll struggle to find an astronomy job. There are men with more superior qualifications than you’ve got who can’t find work.’

Now Brian said, mournfully, ‘Eva’s gone to bed in her clothes and shoes.’

His mother said, ‘I can’t say I’m surprised, Brian. She’s always brought attention to herself. Do you remember when we all went to the caravan that Easter in 1986? She took a suitcase full of her ridiculous beatnik clothes. You don’t wear beatnik clothes at Wells-Next-The-Sea. Everybody was staring at her.’

Eva screamed from upstairs, ‘You shouldn’t have thrown my lovely black clothes into the sea!’

Brian hadn’t heard his wife scream before.

Yvonne Beaver asked, ‘What’s that screaming?’

Brian lied. ‘It’s the television. Somebody’s just won a lot of money on Eggheads.’

His mother said, ‘She looked very presentable in the holiday wear I bought her.’

As Eva listened, she remembered taking the hideous clothes out of the carrier bag. They had smelled as if they had been in a damp warehouse in the Far East for years, and the colours were lurid mauves, pinks and yellows. There had been a pair of what Eva thought looked like men’s sandals and a beige, pensioner-style anorak. When she tried them on, she looked twenty years older.

Brian said to his mother, ‘I don’t know what to do, Mummy.’

Yvonne said, ‘She’s probably drunk. Leave her to sleep it off.’

Eva threw the phone across the room and screamed, ‘They were men’s sandals she bought me in Wells-Next- The-Sea! I saw men wearing them with white socks! You should have protected me from her, Brian! You should have said, “My wife would not be seen dead in these hideous sandals!”‘

She had screamed so loudly that her throat hurt. She shouted downstairs and asked Brian to bring her a glass of water.

Brian said, ‘Hang on, Mummy. Eva wants a glass of water.’

His mother hissed down the phone, ‘Don’t you dare fetch her that water, Brian! You’ll be making a rod for your own back if you do. Tell her to get her own water!’

Brian didn’t know what to do. While he dithered in the hallway his mother said, ‘I could do without this trouble. My knee has been playing me up. I was on the verge of ringing my consultant and asking him to chop my leg off.’

He took the phone into the kitchen with him and ran the cold tap.

His mother asked, ‘Is that water I can hear running?’

Brian lied again. ‘Just topping up a vase of flowers.’

‘Flowers! You’re lucky you can afford flowers.’

‘They’re out of the garden, Mummy. Eva grew them from seed.’

‘You’re lucky to have the space for a garden.’

The phone went dead. His mother never said goodbye.

He went upstairs with the glass of cold water. When he handed it to Eva, she took a small sip, then put it on the crowded bedside table. Brian hovered at the end of the bed. There was nobody to tell him what to do.

She almost felt sorry for him, but not enough to get out of bed. Instead, she said, Why don’t you go downstairs and watch your programmes?’

Brian was a devotee of property programmes. His heroes were Kirstie and Phil. Unbeknown to Eva he had written to Kirstie, saying that she always looked nice, and was she married to Phil or was their partnership purely a business arrangement? He had received a reply three months later, saying ‘Thank you for your interest’ and signed ‘Yours, Kirstie’. Enclosed was a photograph of Kirstie. She was wearing a red dress and showing an alarming amount of bosom. Brian kept the photograph inside an old Bible. He knew it would be safe there. Nobody ever opened it.

Later that night, a full bladder forced Eva out of bed. She changed from her day clothes into a pair of pyjamas that she had been keeping for emergency hospital admittance. This was on her mother’s advice. Her mother