Flying Under Bridges (37 page)

‘You,
you… murderer.’ Eve thought for a minute she was going to grab Inge by the
throat but the onslaught was verbal and fierce. Venom spat from her lips.

‘She
never would have got sick … down … there… if it wasn’t for you. You are
evil. The devil is manifest in you. I hope you get cancer and die. Don’t smile
at me, you hussy, don’t you dare…’

Mrs
Andrews launched herself at Inge so that Eve had to step between them and push
the older woman away. Inge sank down on to the linoleum floor and stared at her
lover’s mother. Mrs Andrews returned to her seat as if no interruption had
occurred. She didn’t go into Kate’s room but just sat there. Eve took Inge away
to calm her down and not once would Mrs Andrews catch anyone’s eye. She just
sat reading and rereading the wall poster on stress and related heart disease.

Inge
was ranting in the cafeteria. Everyone was looking. This was, after all, Inge
Holbrook, television personality and newly discovered lesbian. Eve tried to get
her to quieten. ‘Fucking woman, fucking woman. Maybe I’ll go back there and
seduce her. Shall I? Isn’t that what we do? Aren’t we so persuasive that anyone
put under the slightest pressure will turn gay? Isn’t that right, Eve?’

‘I don’t
know anything about it. It’s your choice—’

‘My
choice? My
choice?’
Inge’s voice rose in anger. ‘Why the hell would I
choose to be something that horrifies my parents, that could ruin my career,
that my religion condemns and that could cost me my life if I dared to walk
down the street holding hands with my partner? My choice? To live in the
closet. To watch everything you say, everything you do, making sure no one
guesses the truth till you’re exhausted and frightened and think you’re going
to lose your mind. Why would anyone choose that?’

‘I don’t
know.’

Inge
stopped shouting and sat down. She reached for Eve’s hand and held it tight. ‘Because
you don’t choose who you fall in love with.’ And they sat holding hands.

When
they came back from the cafeteria, a young doctor had just appeared carrying
Kate’s notes. He was new on the ward. Until now the doctors had given Inge all
the information they could about Kate’s condition. Now she was ignored.

‘Mrs
Andrews?’ the young intern enquired. Mrs Andrews nodded, entirely composed. ‘I’m
afraid your daughter’s condition is deteriorating. Are you the only family?’

‘Yes, I
am.’

‘I
wonder, could you sign these forms?’

As they
busied themselves about the papers, Inge slipped into Kate’s room. She reached
for her hand and was there when the heart monitor faded to a single tone. Mrs
Andrews appeared in the doorway.

‘She’s
dead, isn’t she?’

These
were not words either Inge or Eve could form in their minds. A mobile phone
rang. Mrs Andrews pulled it from her bag.

‘Hello,
Harold. Yes, I’ll be home soon. I’ll tell you when I get home. Goodbye dear.’

Chapter
Twenty-four

2
February

Holloway
Prison for Women

London

Dear Inge,

Maybe
Not Mensa but Tenser

I have looked out on everything I have made

and behold it is very good.

(GENESIS
1.31)

They let me have all the
papers in here and some of the stories are bizarre. I mean, what people get up
to. What they spend their time on. A group of Dutch scientists have discovered
that people with warm feet fall asleep thirteen minutes quicker on average than
people with cold feet. I have cold feet and I don’t sleep. I miss sleeping with
Adam. Hearing his little noises and knowing he’s there if I have to say ‘What
was that noise?’ in the middle of the night.

There
are also several fairly thrilling developments in the world of communications —
a Professor David Premack of the University of Pennsylvania has developed an
experimental language enabling him to teach chimpanzees to ‘talk’ and
communicate with him. We could do with that for some people.

Then a
Boston Television station, WBGH, has developed a system for blind people to
watch TV. They get a special stereo channel that transmits a description of the
action and the sets, narrated during pauses in the dialogue. Why not just
listen to the radio? There’s so much I don’t understand. If dogs are so intelligent,
why can’t they walk themselves? In Victorian times you used to be able to buy a
dog-driven sewing machine. Apparently it was marketed in the 1 870s and
actually used in some English households. There was this special set of wheels
which were moved by a little dog on a leash. The dog trotted round and round a
movable disc, pretty much the way asses and horses used to move mill-wheels,
and that ran the sewing machine. You see— ‘Eve! Eve!’ The psychiatrist is
losing patience with me. The trial is soon and he still doesn’t know what to
say. We must concentrate. He has his reputation to think of.

‘I’m
sorry. I think too much without being very clever. It’s a terrible combination.’
I put down my sewing and try to concentrate.

‘What
did you feel when the boy killed himself?’

‘I don’t
know. Angry, confused. I was starting to feel angry about so many things. Not
all the time, you understand. I mean, some days I was really good. I did all my
duties — looked after Mother, cooked for Tom and Adam, smiled at my neighbours,
didn’t buy leylandii hedging, and then sometimes I would just be in such a
temper. I felt so … outraged at … everything. And then Kate died and I did
know how to help Inge. It was in all the papers. Close-up pictures of her
outside the hospital, at home. Everyone pretending to be nice but shocked, you
know. Shocked about Kate. About the whole gay thing.’

‘What
did you do?’

‘The
first thing was that I got on with my mission — raising the money for the
refugees to come to Edenford. I thought I didn’t have the nerve but the morning
after the news about Patrick I was out early, banging on doors and asking for
donations for my Eve Marshall’s Mission to the Children. Then I cleared out the
garage to store everything and got Mr Ozbal to agree that I could have all his
old cardboard boxes the next time he went to the Cash and Carry. I collected
quite a lot of things straight away. You see, I think the mistake Susan
Lithgood made was waiting in the shop for people to bring things. If you go to
people’s houses instead you get loads more stuff.’

‘And
what did Adam think of all this?’

‘Not
much. He had stopped campaigning for the council. I think he hoped to keep
quiet about the security thing and get re-elected on his past record. It
mattered terribly. All he did was go to the office in the day and work on his
Shirley Bassey routine at night. We hardly spoke except when he tried to stop
me going up to watch them building the bypass in Bluebell Wood.’

‘You
shouldn’t go up there,’ he said, ‘it’s not safe.’

‘Don’t
start with that ridiculous “safe” thing again, Adam. I don’t want to walk up to
the new bypass and keep looking over my shoulder to see if some rapist is
behind me.’

‘Eve,
you are not to go up there. It isn’t safe.’

‘Don’t
start, Adam.’

‘I am
not starting, I am finishing. I know about these things, Eve. I know about
security. How do you think I paid for the dinner we just had?’

That
was when William and Pe Pe dropped in for coffee. They didn’t seem to know it
was late and popped round to have an argument of their own. They’d started
having counselling at something called Relate. It seemed mainly to involve
relating all their problems to me. Pe Pe wanted them to move back to her home
in Australia. I tried to make encouraging noises but I didn’t think it was
going to happen.

William
kept pacing up and down. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he kept saying, and then, ‘Look,
we all know it will be fine when Pe Pe gets pregnant.’ Pe Pe looked at me and
smiled.

Mother
woke up and for a moment I thought I heard her call ‘William, William!’

‘She’s
calling you,’ I said. ‘Please go to her.’ But he wouldn’t so I told him, ‘I don’t
know how much longer I can cope. She doesn’t seem to be getting any better. It’s
not fair, William.’

We have
to go home now,’ he said. ‘Pe Pe!’

‘William!’
Mother and I called together.

He
turned and muttered over his shoulder, ‘Now is not a good time.

Woman’s
Work

A good wife…
is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in
scarlet.

(PROVERBS
31.21)

I tried to talk to Shirley
but she had gone sort of gooey and ridiculous. Not like her at all.

‘My
friend Jane, from school, is getting married,’ she said, while I washed and
washed Mother’s fading clothes in the kitchen sink. ‘She’s having an all-white
wedding with six page boys.’

‘That’s
nice,’ I said.

‘She’s
so happy. She just glows. Isn’t that nice?’ Shirley continued.

‘That’s
nice,’ I said.

Shirley
had come round to help with Mother but actually she just sat reading
Brides
magazine
while I dealt with what needed to be done. Mother had been with us for months.
There seemed to be no movement from the social services, William was utterly
preoccupied and Martha had already left for Bangkok.

I
wanted to travel. I dreamt about it all the time. Maybe, if I ever get out of
here, I’ll never go back to Edenford. Would you travel with me, Inge?

Come with me, we shall
set
off
with a
light heart, a heavy purse and a merry companion to go amongst the Mohammedans
and Barbarians. I shall pack a Gladstone bag for it straps easily to the back
of a mule.

I want
to be an unescorted and independent person — a lady traveller. I want to be
like Lady Anne Blunt who rode two thousand miles as a Bedouin from the shores
of the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, or Ella Sykes who passed through
Persia riding side-saddle and wearing a golden silk handkerchief that covered
her head and fell about the chest and shoulders to the waist. I want to try
everything. I shall even eat sweetbreads if they are offered. They say the
testes, thymus and pancreas all have the reputation of sharpening your mind and
body. (Testes, apparently, are usually skinned then sliced and sautéed in
butter. I’ve sent the recipe anonymously to the Centurions.)

I
pulled Mother up in her bed and tried to smooth the sheets while Shirley
carried on talking from the kitchen.

‘Of
course, the whole bridesmaid thing has changed. The dresses are so much nicer
and you can get shoes dyed any colour to match.’ (The wedding magazines were
full of ads for handmade shoes in any size so I sent off for a catalogue for
Adam. He loved it, but I warned him, ‘Don’t get too high a heel. You don’t know
how long you’ll have to stand for.’)

Mother’s
ribs poked into my hand as I tried to lift her. She ate nothing but soup now.
Soup that I hand-fed her. There was nothing of her, but my back hurt from the
endless turning and lifting to make her comfortable. Shirley was jabbering on
when out of nowhere Mother looked at me and said quite clearly, ‘I hate this.’

We
looked at each other and I nodded. ‘I know. Me too.’ It only lasted a moment
and then she was gone again but I knew something had to be done. Adam was continuously
occupied with his Bassey impersonation. He firmly believed this was going to be
the route back into the hearts of the community, or if not the community then
at least the golf club. I was glad he had an interest because what with Mother
and my mission I was too busy to keep worrying about him. I needed to be busy.
It was when I stopped that I thought too much.

My
mission had only been open a few days and already I was being flooded with
things. To be honest, I think people give tins of rice pudding and so on not so
much to help but because they want you to go away. I’d been sorting boxes for
about a week when Adam said he couldn’t rehearse in the garage any more.
Apparently there wasn’t room for his arm movements so he spent all his spare
time upstairs in the back bedroom giving his all as the Tigress of Tiger Bay.

He was
up there belting out that he was what he was and what he was needed no excuses,
when Horace Hoddle came to call. I tried to call Adam but the music was too
loud and I didn’t want to let Horace upstairs in case he found out about the
surprise.

‘I’m
afraid Adam is a bit busy just now.’

Horace
eyed the jumble I was in the middle of sorting. ‘I came to see you actually,
Eve.’