The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

The house was dead now that Eva had gone.

22

Brianne was sitting on her narrow bed, staring at the wall opposite. Alexander had left half an hour earlier, leaving the bookcase and the jewellery, but unwittingly taking Brianne’s previously unused heart with him. She was filled with the most amazing joy.

She said out loud, ‘I love him.’

She wished now that she had bothered to make some friends. She wanted to ring somebody and tell them her good news. Brian Junior would not be interested, Poppy would turn news to her advantage and her mother had gone mad. There was only him she could tell.

She picked up his business card and reached for her mobile. He answered immediately and illegally – he was doing 75 mph and was in the middle lane of the M1, going South.

White Van Man.’

‘Alexander?’

‘Brianne?’

‘Yes, I forgot to thank you for bringing Mum’s stuff up. It was very kind of you.’

‘It wasn’t kindness. It was work, Brianne. I’ll get paid for it.’

Where are you?’

‘I’ve just turned on to the motorway. I’m trapped between two lorries. If the front one brakes, I’m mincemeat.’

Brianne exclaimed, ‘Alexander, you must turn the phone off at once!’

She could imagine his mangled body on the motorway, surrounded by emergency vehicles. She could clearly see a helicopter hovering above him, waiting to take him to a specialist unit somewhere.

She said, ‘You will take care of yourself, won’t you? Your life is precious.’

He did as she had asked and switched his phone off. He didn’t know the girl had such strong feelings – she had shown very little emotion when he had handed over her mother’s jewellery.

Brianne went outside and walked briskly up and down in front of the accommodation block. It was a cold night and she was not dressed for the outdoors, but she didn’t care. The possibility of love had softened her face and straightened her back.

How could she have lived so long without knowing of his existence?

All that love stuff that she had once despised: the hearts, the songs, moon/June, the flowers. She wanted him to give her a white teddy bear clutching a plastic rose. Before today she could take men or leave them, most of them were spoilt man-boys. But he – he was worthy of worship.

He looked like a black prince.

She had never allowed a man to touch her breasts, or what she called her private bits. But as she paced in the cold she could feel her body melting, dissolving. She yearned for him. She was incomplete without him.

Poppy looked out of her window and was astonished to see Brianne walking up and down in her pyjamas, her breath visible, like ectoplasm. She rapped on the window and saw Brianne look up, wave and smile. Poppy wondered which drug she had been taking. She threw on the red silk kimono she had shoplifted from Debenhams, and hurried downstairs.

23

It was the day before Guy Fawkes Night, but some premature fireworks were being let off as Brian and Titania joined a hastily convened staff meeting at the National Space Centre.

Titania’s husband, Guy Noble, known as ‘Gorilla’ to his friends, had written to Professor Brady complaining that his wife was having ‘a torrid sexual affair at work with that buffoon Dr Brian Beaver’. Titania had confessed to having sex in the Clean Room, which housed the next generation of moon probe. It was called Walkers on the Moon, after their main sponsor, a local crisp manufacturer.

All the staff were in the meeting, including the cleaners, the maintenance crew and the groundsman. It was part of Professor Brady’s (aka Leather Trousers) management philosophy that his team be ‘inclusive’. They were seated in the planetarium, which added an epic universal edge to their discussion.

Leather Trousers said, ‘I don’t care who you shag, Dr Beaver. The issue is that you chose to do it in the Clean Room. You could have polluted the atmosphere, corrupted the instrumentation and jeopardised the whole project. And ultimately defiled the surface of the moon.’

Brian asked defiantly, ‘Well, have we?’

Leather Trousers admitted, ‘No, the readings are clean. But it has taken thirty-six man and woman hours to verify – time we do not have. We are already behind schedule.’

Titania, who was hiding behind a long fringe of red hair, put her hand up and said, ‘Can I just say, in my own defence, that the sex was indeed “torrid”? But the danger was minimised – we were both wearing steriles, and it was all over in ninety seconds.’

Their colleagues laughed and looked at Brian.

Various veins throbbed in his head and neck.

He was quick to retaliate. ‘It was nothing but a quick leg-over.’ He looked around, hoping the company would find this amusing.

There was a sharp intake of breath, and one of the cleaners squeezed Titania’s hand.

Brian continued, not realising that he had volunteered to dig his own grave, “‘Turgid” would better describe our affair these days.’

One of the clerical staff rushed towards the door with a handkerchief pressed to her face.

Leather Trousers said, ‘C’mon, guys, let’s cool it, we’re all professionals, yeah? Even the cleaners, right?’ He smiled at the group of cleaners to show that he valued them and their work.

Titania sobbed. ‘Sex with the Gorilla went on a bit, but once he’d stumbled over my clitoris we both had good times.’

There was an appalled silence, and the cleaner withdrew her hand from Titania’s.

A technician whispered to his neighbour, ‘I like to experiment, but I draw the line at bestiality. That sounds bloody dangerous to me.’

Titania was surprised by Brian’s obvious and public contempt for her. She arranged her fringe so that it hid the lines on her forehead, and rummaged through her handbag for the lipstick she thought took ten years off her face.

She said, in a voice that threatened to crack, ‘Anyway, Brian, our lovemaking is quite often torrid.’ Turning to the assembled staff, she confessed, ‘Only last week he was tickling my nipples with his wife’s hairbrush, and shouting that I was a dirty whore, and he was going to punish me by tying me to the large telescope and have Professor Brady take me from the rear.’

Brian jumped up and shouted, ‘Not from the rear! I did not say the rear!’

Wayne Tonkin, the groundsman, laughed out loud.

Professor Brady said angrily, ‘Listen, Beaver, do not include me in your sicko fantasies!’

Titania looked around the meeting and said, ‘He’s used you all at some time.’

Some of Brian’s colleagues were repulsed by this revelation, but most were secretly pleased.

Professor Brady was in a dilemma. Could he suspend or otherwise discipline Dr Beaver for using his colleagues as sexual stimulants? Did sexual fantasies come under the heading of ‘sexual harassment in the workplace’? Was there anything in their contracts that implied they had been abused by Beaver’s thoughts?

Mrs Hordern straightened her overall and said, ‘It’s his poor wife I feel sorry for. I’ll bet she’s looking everywhere for that hairbrush.’

Titania said, ‘Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for Eva Beaver, Mrs Hordern, she’s a mere lump in the bed.