The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (12 page)

Alexander nodded, and passed his children their coats.
As they struggled into them, he went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, ‘Bye,
Eva! See you tomorrow!’ He waited for a reply.

When none came, he shepherded his children to the
front door.

Brian followed. With Alexander and the children on
the doorstep, he said, ‘You bloody well won’t see her tomorrow. So, goodbye!
And have a nice life!’

17

Growing
up in Leicester, Brian had been a clever little boy. As soon as he was able to
manipulate his twenty-six alphabet blocks he began to arrange them into
patterns. Two, four, six, eight were his favourites. He then proceeded to
build — at first, a trembling brick tower which he never once knocked over.
Then, one day, just before his third birthday, to the amazement of everyone who
saw it, he spelled out the sentence ‘I am bored’.

His father, Leonard, began to teach little Brian
simple sums. The infant was soon adding, multiplying and dividing. Always in
silence. His father worked long hours in a hosiery factory and got home long
after Brian had been put to bed. Unfortunately, Yvonne did not speak to her
little son. She moved around the house with grim determination, a duster in one
hand, a damp cloth in the other. An Embassy Filter cigarette was permanently
stuck in the corner of her mouth. She was not a demonstrative woman, but
occasionally she shot Brian a look of such malevolence that he fell briefly
into a trance-like state.

On his first day of nursery school he clung to
Yvonne’s legs. When she bent down to peel his hands away, a large piece of burning
ash fell from her cigarette and on to his head. Yvonne tried to knock it off
but succeeded only in scattering the ash on to his face and neck. A piece smouldered
in his hair, so Brian’s first morning was taken up with first aid and an
enforced rest on a camp bed in the corner of the classroom. His teacher was a
pretty girl with golden hair who told Brian to call her Miss Nightingale.

It wasn’t until the afternoon, when the other children
were colouring with wax crayons on sugar paper and Brian was filling his piece
of paper with geometric shapes, using a freshly sharpened pencil, that Miss
Nightingale and the school discovered they had a prodigy on their hands.

Now,
after a great deal of manipulation of the automated appointment system, Brian
had managed to secure a face-to-face appointment with Dr Lumbogo. Brian had
made the appointment using his professional title, Dr Beaver. He found that it
often paid to flag his status pre-consultation. It put the bloody generalists
in their place.

He sat in the waiting room reading a tattered copy
of
The Lancet.
He was engrossed in a paper on the relative sizes of the
male and female brain. There was reasonable evidence that men’s brains were
ever so slightly larger. A female hand had written in the margin, ‘So, why can’t
the big-brained bastards use a toilet brush?’

‘Twisted feminist,’ Brian muttered to himself.

An elderly Sikh tapped him on the shoulder and said,
‘Doctor? Your turn, it has come.’

For a split second Brian thought that the
wise-looking Sikh was predicting his imminent death. Then he saw that the
electronic sign on the wall above the reception area was flashing ‘Dr Bee’ in
red.

He said to the man, ‘I don’t suppose you have this
flashing-light nonsense in Pakistan?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied the turbaned one. ‘I have
never been to Pakistan.’

Dr Lumbogo looked up briefly as Brian hurried
through the door. ‘Dr Bee, please take a seat.’

‘I’m Dr Beaver,’ said Brian. ‘Your system has been —’

‘So, how can I help you?’

‘It’s my wife. She’s taken to her bed and says she
intends to stay there for a year.’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘My colleague Dr Bridges has
already seen your wife. The tests say she is in excellent health.’

‘I know nothing of this,’ said Brian. Are we talking
about the same woman?’

‘Oh yes.” said Dr Lumbogo. ‘He found her to be of
robust health and —’

Brian said, ‘But she’s not of sound
mind,
Doctor!
She started to cook our evening meal with a bath towel wrapped around her! I
bought her an apron every Christmas, so why…?’

Dr Lumbogo said, ‘Let us stop there, and examine
this bath towel business more closely. Tell me, Dr Bee, when did this start?’

‘I first noticed it about a year ago.’

‘And do you remember, Dr Bee, what she was cooking?’

Brian thought. ‘I don’t know, it was something
brown, bubbling in a pot.’

‘And the subsequent wearing of the bath towel? Do
you remember the meals she was preparing?’

‘I’m almost sure they were some kind of Italian or
Indian thing.’

Dr Lumbogo lurched across the desk towards Brian
with his index finger extended, as though he were pointing a gun, and
exclaimed, ‘Ha! Never salad.’

Brian said, ‘No, never salad.’

Dr Lumbogo laughed and said, ‘Your wife is afraid of
the splashing, Dr Bee. Your aprons are inadequate for her needs.’ He lowered
his voice dramatically. ‘I should not breach the laws of confidentiality, but
my own mother makes our flat bread wearing an old flour sack. Women are
mysterious creatures, Dr Bee.’

‘There are other things,’ said Brian. ‘She cries at
the television news: earthquakes, foods, starving children, pensioners who’ve
been beaten for their life savings. I came home from work one evening to find
her sobbing over a house fire in Nottingham!’

‘There were fatalities?’ asked Dr Lumbogo.

‘Two,’ said Brian. ‘Kiddies. But the mother — single
parent, of course — still had three left!’ Brian fought to control his tears. ‘She
needs something chemical. Her emotions are up hill and down dale. The whole
household is upside down. There’s nothing in the fridge, the laundry basket is
chock-a-block, and she’s even been asking me to dispose of her body waste.’

Dr Lumbogo said, ‘You’re very agitated, Dr Bee.’

Brian began to cry. ‘She was always there, in the
kitchen. Her food was so delicious. My mouth would water as soon as I got out
of the car. The smell must have seeped out of the gaps in the front door.’ He
took a tissue from the box that the doctor pushed towards him and mopped his
eyes and nose.

The doctor waited for Brian to compose himself.

When he was calm again, he began to apologise. ‘I’m
sorry I blubbed … I’m under a lot of strain at work. One of my colleagues has
written a paper questioning the statistical validity of my work on Olympus
Mons.’

Dr Lumbogo asked, ‘Dr Bee, have you taken Cipralex
before?’ and reached for his prescription pad.

18

The
district nurse, 42-year-old Jeanette Spears, had been very disapproving when Dr
Lumbogo asked her to visit a healthy woman who wouldn’t get out of bed.

As she drove her little Fiat car towards the
respectable district where Mrs Eva Beaver lived, small tears of self-pity
misted her spectacles, which looked as though they had been dispensed by an
optician sympathetic to the Nazi aesthetic. Nurse Spears did not allow herself feminine
embellishment — there was nothing to soften the hard life she had chosen for
herself. The thought of a healthy woman wallowing in bed made her sick, it
really did.

Jeanette was up, showered, uniform on, bed made,
lavatory Harpic’d, and downstairs by 7 a.m. Any later and she began to panic —
but, sensibly, she kept brown paper bags in strategic places, and after a few
inhalations and exhalations she was soon tickety-boo again.

Mrs Beaver was her last patient. It had been a
difficult morning: Mr Kelly with the severely ulcerated legs had begged her for
some stronger pain relief but, as she had told him time and time again, she
could not give him morphine. There was a clear and present danger that he could
become addicted.

Mr Kelly’s daughter had shouted, ‘Dad’s ninety-two!

Do you think he’s going to end up in a squat,
injecting heroin into his fucking eyeballs?’

Jeanette had snapped her nursing bag shut and left
the Kelly household without dressing his legs. She would not be sworn at, nor
would she listen to a patient’s relatives telling her how to do her job.

She used fewer palliative care drugs than any other
district nurse in the county. It was official. Written down. She was very proud
of that fact. But she couldn’t help thinking that there ought to have been a
ceremony with a plaque or cup handed to her by a VIP from the Regional Health
Authority — after all, she must have saved them tens of thousands of pounds
over the years.

She drew up outside Eva’s house and sat for a
moment. She could tell a lot from the exterior of a patient’s home. It was
always encouraging to see a flourishing hanging basket.

There was no hanging basket in Eva’s porch. However,
there was a bird feeder with splodges of bird droppings underneath on the black
and white tiled floor. There were unrinsed milk bottles on the step. Leaflets
for pizza, curry and Chinese takeaways had been blown into the corners together
with dead sycamore leaves. The coconut-fibre mat had not been shaken for some
time. A terracotta plant saucer had been used as an ashtray.

To Nurse Spears’ disgust the front door was slightly
open. She rubbed the brass doorknob with one of the antibacterial wipes she
always carried in her pocket. She could hear male and female laughter coming
from upstairs. She pushed the door open and went in. She climbed the stairs and
headed towards the laughter. Nurse Spears could not remember the last time she
had laughed aloud. The bedroom door was ajar, so she knocked and went straight
in.

There was a glamorous woman in the bed, wearing a
grey silk camisole and pale-pink lipstick. She was holding a bag of Thorntons
Special Toffee. A younger man was sitting on the bed, chewing.

Jeanette announced, ‘I’m Jeanette Spears, I’m the
community nurse. Dr Lumbogo asked me to call. You
are
Mrs Beaver?’

Eva nodded. She was trying to free a lump of toffee
from a wisdom tooth with her tongue.

The man on the bed got to his feet. ‘I’m the window
cleaner,’ he said.

Jeanette frowned. ‘I see no ladder, no bucket, no
chamois leather.’

‘I’m not on duty.” he said, with difficulty — due to
the toffee. ‘I’ve come to see Eva.’

And bring her a gift of toffee, I see,’ said Nurse
Spears.

Eva said, ‘Thank you for coming, but I’m not ill.’

‘Have you undergone medical training?’ asked Nurse
Spears.

‘No,’ said Eva, who could see where this exchange
was leading. ‘But I’m fully qualified to have an opinion about my own body, I’ve
been studying it for fifty years.

Nurse Spears had known that she would not get on
with anybody in this household. Whoever put those unrinsed milk bottles on the
step was clearly a monster.

‘Your notes tell me you intend to stay in your bed
for at least a year.’

Eva could not take her eyes off Nurse Spears, who
was buttoned up, belted, shiny clean and looked like a wizened child in school
uniform.

‘I’ll get out of your way. Thanks for listening, Eva.
I’ll see you tomorrow I know you’ll be in,’ Peter said, laughing.

When he’d gone, Nurse Spears unbuttoned her navy
gaberdine coat. ‘I’d like to examine you for pressure sores.’

Eva said, ‘There are no sores. I apply cream to the
pressure points twice a day.’

What do you use?’

‘Chanel body lotion.’

Nurse Spears could hardly conceal her contempt.
Well, if you want to throw your money away on such an extravagance, go ahead.’

‘I will.” said Eva. ‘Thank you.’

There was something about Nurse Spears that disturbed
Eva. She sat up straight in bed and tried to look cheerful.

‘I’m not ill,’ she said again.

‘Not physically ill, perhaps, but there must be something
wrong with you. It’s certainly not
normal
to
want to stay in bed
for a year, chewing toffees, is it?’

Eva had a couple of chews on her toffee and said, ‘Forgive
my bad manners, would you like some?’ She proffered the bag of Thorntons.

Nurse Spears hesitated, then said, ‘Perhaps a small
piece.’

After a thorough physical examination — during which
the nurse ate two more quite large lumps of toffee (it was unprofessional of
her, but she had always been comforted by confectionery) — she carried out a
mental health evaluation.

She asked, What is today’s date?’

Eva thought for a moment, then admitted that she
didn’t know.

‘Do you know what month we’re in?’

Are we still in September, or is it October?’