The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

He went out, leaving the door wide open, as though he couldn’t even be bothered to slam it.

Eva picked up the list and read it. She was annoyed to see that Alexander had commented on some of the entries.

Married man – has gay lover. (So what?)

Canteen assistant – showed me bruises. Made by husband.

Detective Sergeant, Drug Squad – addicted to amphetamines. Has frightened himself with crystal meth.

Sheet-metal worker – multiple internet betting accounts. Lost ?1 5,000, plus credit card limit of ?5,000. Wife doesn’t know. Is still betting, ‘chasing losses’.

Full-time mother of six, Ipswich – strongly dislikes her fifth child.

Carpenter – being evicted tomorrow.

Classroom assistant – is frequent successful shoplifter. Wants to stop.

Retired bricklayer – refuses to disclose problem.

Adolescent boy – is cruel to insects, dogs and cats. Is he ‘normal’? (For a psychopath, yes.)

Bus driver – drinks at the wheel.

Personal assistant – should she marry man she doesn’t love? (No! No! No!)

Baker – spits in dough. (Find out where he works.)

Fourteen-year-old schoolgirl – can she get pregnant if she has a shower after sex? (Yes.)

Married couple – both in late seventies. Wife has cancer of the womb. Will you administer lethal dose of insulin to both? (Dear Eva, please don’t agree to murder them, this is going too far, love Alex.)

Schoolgirl aged thirteen – being sexually, physically and emotionally abused by family member. (ChildLine: 0800 11 11. Police.)

Muslim girl – hates burka. Feels ‘suffocated’.

Audio typist – married to A, still in love with B, but having affair with C.

Failed financier, lapsed Rastafarian, struggling painter – captivated by bed-bound slightly older woman. Wants to share bed and take her for a walk in countryside. (This problem is urgent, suggest you see this man by appointment soon.)

She smiled as she read the last item, then stopped as she heard Sandy Lake shout, ‘I’m back! I’m here! I would die for you, angel Eva! I’ll never leave you! They can’t separate us! You are my other half!’

Eva wished that Sandy Lake would die. She didn’t want her to feel any pain, only to die in her sleep. She wanted to tell somebody that Sandy Lake frightened her, but she did not want to appear weak and needy.

When Alexander returned with a plate of sandwiches, Eva took one, bit into it, then immediately spat it out.

She shouted, ‘I asked for bread and cheese or bread and jam, not all three! Who eats all three at the same time?’

Alexander said, quietly, ‘Somebody eccentric perhaps? Somebody who can’t, or won’t, get out of bed? Somebody who is besieged by her fellow eccentrics?’

Eva pulled the slices of cheese out of the sandwiches and tore at the bread and jam, not stopping until the plate was empty. She licked her jammy fingers clean.

Alexander watched.

He said, ‘I’m going to fetch the kids from school, then I’m going home. I’ll say goodbye.’

Eva said, ‘You make it sound so final.’

‘I can’t do it, Eva. It’s like caring for an ungrateful baby.’ He bent down and kissed her on the cheek.

She turned her back on him. She heard the sounds of his departure, his feet on the hall floor, the front door opening and closing, the shouts and whistles from the crowd as he passed them, the sound of his engine, the gear change as he turned the corner, then nothing.

She was alone.

She missed him immediately.

60

Brian’s sheds were still filled almost to overflowing with Titania’s possessions. He had forbidden her to bring anything else from the house she had once shared with her husband, but there were certain things she could not do without: her autumn and winter wardrobe, the Welsh spinning wheel she had picked up in Florida, the postmodern cuckoo clock from Habitat, the Victorian chaise longue she had bought for ?50 from a stallholder who she thought of as gullible (only to find it was riddled with woodworm and cost her ?500 plus VAT to be restored and recovered).

Brian was manoeuvring his bulk around Titania’s stuff in the extension shed they called the ‘kitchenette’. Titania looked up irritably from the book she was reading, Hadrons and Quark-Gluon Plasma. She had just noted in the margin, ‘Not according to Prof Yagi. See his paper ref: JCAP Vol. 865, 2 (2010).’

She said, ‘Brian, you’re tutting like a village gossip. I know it’s inconvenient to have my things here, but I can’t store them at the old house, can I? Not now he’s renting it.’

Brian said, forcing himself to sound reasonable, ‘Tit, I admit I’m a little annoyed that I’m sharing my space with the culmination of the junk you’ve collected over the years, but have I once complained? No. Will I be pleased when it’s gone? Yes.’

Titania said, ‘Please! If you ask a question and answer it yourself again, will I go mad and do you serious harm? Yes, yes I will!’

They lapsed into sullen silence, each knowing that, if certain words were said, it would be like leaving the comparative safety of a muddy trench at Ypres and going over the top to the carnage of the battlefield.

In the long, tense silence, Titania reassessed their affair. It had been quite exciting, at times, and what other man would understand and sympathise when the particles were not behaving themselves and refused to correspond to her theories?

Brian knocked his ankle bone on the Welsh spinning wheel. He shouted, ‘The fucking thing!’ and kicked out at it, hard.

He was not to know that the spinning wheel represented Titania’s bucolic retirement – she and Brian would keep hens, and there would be a good-natured dog with a black patch over one eye. They would take Patch to the village shop to pick up Nature and Sky & Telescope. She would buy bags of wool from the cooperative sheep farm, spin it and knit Brian a sweater in a pattern of his choice. She couldn’t knit or sew, but there were classes she could take. It wasn’t rocket science. The seeing would be good in the Welsh hills. There was a tiny Spaceguard outpost at the 24-inch reflector observatory in Powys. They would link up with the scientists there, and Brian would advise them and carry out consultancy work. He was a well-known and highly respected astronomer. They could easily avoid the peak hours for school tour groups.

Titania saw the spinning wheel rolling towards her, the wooden spokes clattering as it turned. She screamed, as though the wheel were an errant heat-seeking missile. She shouted, ‘Go on! Why not kick all my lovely things to pieces! You’re nothing but a bully!’

Brian shouted back, ‘You can’t bully furniture, woman!’

Titania yelled, ‘It’s no wonder Eva’s mad and lives in a room with no furniture at all! You drove her to it!’

To her amazement, Brian wove through her possessions, took a couple of boxes off the chaise longue, lay down and started to sob.

She was bewildered by the drama of it all, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Brian, but I cannot live like this. I want to settle down in a house with proper designated rooms. Henry Thoreau may have been happy living in a shed, and three cheers and multiple gold stars for him, but I want to live in a house. I want to live in your house.’

She was pleading now. Their honeymoon period of living together in the sheds was long over. She was looking forward to being a seasoned and contented couple.

Brian whined, ‘You know we can’t live in my house. Eva wouldn’t like it.’

Titania felt a switch click inside her head. It was raging jealousy kicking in. ‘I’m sick of hearing about Eva and I hate the sheds! I can’t stand to live in them for a minute longer!’