The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (22 page)

‘Define goodness!’ Brian Junior said to Venus.

Yvonne chided him, ‘The child is only seven years
old, Brian Junior!’

Venus put her hand up and looked urgently at Brian
Junior, who nodded.

She said, ‘Goodness means telling good lies, so that
people won’t get hurt by true words.’

Brian said, ‘Venus, I would like to know your
opinion on the meal that I cooked and you have just eaten.’

Venus asked, ‘Daddy, do I have to be good?’

‘No, just tell the truth, sweetheart.’

Venus placed her napkin on the table. She unrolled
the white cotton square, revealing a burned stuffing ball, a charred chipolata,
a fat-logged roast potato, three overcooked Brussels sprouts and an
undercooked Yorkshire pudding.

There was a shout of laughter, and Alexander hid his
face in his hands. When he looked through his fingers, he saw Brianne mouthing,
‘I love you.’ He shook his head and quickly looked away.

Brian said, ‘I see that you managed to eat the
turkey, Venus.’

Thomas adjusted his nurse’s cap and, speaking for
the first time, said quietly, ‘She threw the turkey under the table.’

There was another burst of laughter.

Alexander was surprised and horrified to realise
that he had forgotten Eva. Lately, she seemed to be constantly on his mind. ‘Did
anybody feed Eva?’ he asked.

There was scandalised laughter as each of them realised
they had forgotten her. There were only a few leftovers. Even the turkey had
been well picked over. But Alexander managed to gather enough to make a decent
plateful. He placed it in the microwave and turned the dial to three minutes.
Then he made some fresh gravy, poured it into a little jug and went in search
of another box of crackers that Brian said were in the house somewhere.

The other guests were reluctant to move from the table.
More drinks were poured and conversation was easy. There were frequent
outbursts of laughter. Even Stanley and Brian were talking.

Brian was just saying, ‘Yes, Stanley, I think a
five-tog duvet is all anyone needs for winter,’ when the kitchen door burst
open and Poppy almost fell into the room, announcing in the little-girl version
of her voice, ‘They’re dead. Mummy and Daddy are dead!’

The laughter stopped.

Ruby said, ‘Your main and dad have died?’

Yvonne said, ‘You poor kid! And on Christmas Day.’

Brianne sneered, ‘Yeah, well, I’ll believe it when I
see the death certificate.’

Yvonne said, ‘Brianne, what a thing to say! I’m
ashamed of you.’

Poppy looked at Brianne defiantly and said, ‘Well,
it hasn’t been issued yet.’

‘Until I see an official death certificate, I’m not
going to show you the slightest bit of sympathy, OK?’ said Brianne. When did
they die? Yesterday? Today?’

Poppy said, ‘This morning.’

‘And you were there?’

‘Yes, I was with them until the end.’

‘They died at precisely the same time, did they?’

‘Yes,’ said Poppy. ‘I was holding both their hands.’
Brianne looked around the table at the fascinated audience and said, ‘Now, that
is the most amazing coincidence I’ve ever heard. That is spooky.’

Poppy declared, with the spasm of a triumphant smile,
‘Their machines were switched off at the exact same time, at my request.’

Brianne ploughed on. At what time did they die?’

‘At ten o’clock this morning,’ said Poppy.

‘In Dundee?’ checked Brianne.

‘Yes,’ said Poppy.

‘So, how did you manage to get from Dundee to
Leicester by six thirty on Christmas Day? There’s no public transport, is
there?’

‘No,’ said Poppy. ‘I caught a cab.’

Brianne, sounding increasingly like Inspector Morse,
said, ‘In deep snow? There are blizzards up there. Whiteouts.’

Poppy said, ‘We must have been lucky with the weather.’

‘Did you stop to eat?’ Brianne hectored.

‘No, I’m starving,’ said Poppy. ‘I feel quite faint.’
She gave a little stagger and sat down on a vacant chair at the end of the
table.

Brianne said, ‘What did you really do with the money
my parents gave you to fly to Dundee?’

Brian snapped, ‘That’s enough now, Brianne!’

The microwave pinged.

Alexander took Eva’s plate of food out and put it at
the end of the table, then turned to find a tray. Poppy pulled the plate in front
of her, reached for a clean knife and fork and said, ‘Thank you.’

Everyone watched in horrified silence for a moment,
as she began to cram food into her mouth, then they all shouted at once that it
was Eva’s food. Poppy picked up the plate and hurried out of the kitchen.

Alexander shouted after her, ‘I hope you’re taking
that up to Eva!’

Brian Junior said quietly, ‘Why did she come back?
She’s going to spoil everything again.’

Alexander ran upstairs.

Eva was lying with her face to the wall. She turned
to him and, seeing he was empty-handed, turned away again and said, ‘I’m so
hungry, Alexander. Have I been forgotten?’

Alexander sat on the edge of the bed and said, ‘Not
by me. I think about you all the time. Feel my heart.’ He took her hand, placed
it over his white shirt front and said, ‘Hear the rhythm? It’s saying “Eva”.

Eva said, trying to lessen his intensity, ‘I could
eat your heart right now — with ginger, garlic and chillies.’ She thought, ‘Oh
no, now there’s a
situation,
and I’ll have to manage it.’

He turned her hand over and kissed the palm.

She examined his face, noting the age spots around
his eyes and the grey stubble on his cheeks. She said, ‘All I can think about
is food.’

He got up abruptly. ‘Turkey sandwich?’

When he got downstairs, he saw Poppy in the sitting
room. She was cramming the last of the food into her mouth with her fingers.

34

At
lunchtime on Boxing Day, Brian laid a big wooden tray on Eva’s lap. On it was
the Beavers’ traditional Boxing Day meal.

He said, ‘It’s like fucking Groundhog Day down
there. Same faces, only the food is different. They’re all Billy No Mates with
nowhere else to go.

Brianne had invited Alexander and the children back,
despite Brian’s disapproval, and Alexander had accepted because he wanted to spend
as much time with Eva as possible before he went to visit his ex-mother-in-law.

Stanley was there at Ruby’s invitation. She said it
made a change to have a gentleman in the house.

Only Poppy was missing. She had left early in the
morning to ‘feed the poor’, she said, at a warehouse run by Crisis at Christmas
in the city centre.

Brian said, ‘That kid has got a heart of gold.’ The
twins had simultaneously put their fingers down their throats.

Eva said, ‘This salad looks lovely.’

‘My mother pillaged Sainsbury’s this morning,’ said
Brian. ‘There was no flesh left on that turkey.’

Eva looked down at her plate, which was layered in
cold meats. ‘It all looks very pretty.’

‘Your mother was fart-arsing about with it all morning,’
said Brian, contemptuously.

There was a small bowl of salad arranged in concentric
alternating circles of tomato, cucumber, beetroot, large radish and bumper
spring onions. In another bowl was a huge steaming baked potato, cut with a
cross, revealing in the centre a quickly melting slab of butter. A small oval
dish held a tiny peaked mountain of grated orange cheese. Two slices of pork
pie were flanked by carrot sticks and crooked half-moons of green pepper. An
egg cup was full of HP sauce. Her napkin had been folded into a fan. Eva was pleased
to see a large glass of rosé wine.

Brian said, ‘Alexander’s boy is wearing a pink tutu,
but nobody has mentioned it yet.’

‘Your mum told me that after you’d seen
The
Wizard of
Oz you wanted a pair of Dorothy’s red shoes,’ said Eva.

Brian said, in a resentful tone, ‘But I didn’t get
them, did I?’

When
Brian went downstairs to join the others, Alexander asked him, ‘Eva all right?’

Brian said, ‘Why shouldn’t she be all right? She’s
waited on hand and foot. If she’s not careful, she’ll lose the use of her
limbs.’

Yvonne put a wafer-thin roll of ham in her mouth and
said, ‘Now, I don’t agree with most of what you have to say, Brian, but I’m in
full agreement with you about Eva. It’s sheer laziness. What would happen to
her if we stopped feeding her? Would she starve to death, or would she come
downstairs and feed herself?’

We ought to try it,’ said Ruby.

Alexander said, ‘Don’t try it for the next week,
because I’m going away.’

Brianne was alarmed. Where are you going?’ Venus
answered, We’re going to see my mummy’s mummy.’

Thomas said, ‘And we’re going to put some flowers at
the place where our mummy’s under the ground.’

Yvonne turned to Alexander and said, ‘You’re not
dragging these little children around graveyards, are you?’

Alexander said, unsmilingly, ‘No, only the one.’

Brian Junior was tweeting to the worldwide
twitterati:

Worst
xmas dinner evar. It was actually carbon, dudes. Now boxing day, bored —
sitting with living dead, desire zombie apocalypse.

He said to the room, ‘At the moment, mine and Brianne’s
priority is getting rid of Poppy.’

‘The child is ill,’ said Brian, in Poppy’s defence. ‘I
spoke to her this morning. She offered to leave this afternoon, but I said she
must stay until she feels able to cope on her own.’

Ruby said, ‘It took me years to get over my main’s
death. I used to think about her hanging out the washing on a windy day. Let’s
hope that poor little Poppy has a lovely memory of when her main and dad were
fit and well.’

Venus said to Stanley, ‘Your face is getting better.’

‘I’m very pleased to hear that,’ said Stanley.
Turning to the others, he asked, ‘On the subject of Poppy, did anybody else
notice that she has a swastika tattoo underneath that gaudy ring she wears? I
wonder if she realises the significance of such an emblem.’

Brian said, ‘Young people flirt with all kinds of
shock imagery, it doesn’t make her Eva Braun. She’ll have a place in this house
for as long as I’m living here.’

Stanley said, ‘You surprise me, Dr Beaver. Are you
not offended by fascist symbols? I wouldn’t have marked you down as a Nazi
sympathiser.’

‘A Nazi sympathiser!’ retorted Brian. ‘She’s
eighteen years old, flirting with different philosophies.’

The doorbell rang. Thomas climbed down from his
chair and went to answer it.

‘Ahh, bless his little heart,’ said Ruby, ‘he won’t
be able to reach.’

Thomas stretched up and, with both hands, pulled
down on the front-door handle.

Dr Titania Noble-Forester was surprised to see a
small black boy wearing a pink tutu and ballet shoes.

Thomas said, ‘Have you been crying?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I have.’

‘I was crying in the car for ten minutes.’

‘Why?’

‘I had nothing else to do,’ said Thomas. ‘How long
were you crying?’

‘All night, and an hour or two this morning.’ She
added, ‘Is that bastard Dr Beaver at home?’

Thomas said, ‘Yes,’ and remained standing in front
of the door.

‘I’d like to speak to him. Would you move away from
the door, please?’

Titania could hear raised voices coming from the
back of the house. One of them was Brian’s. He was shouting something about
Norse mythology, pagan symbolism and Odinism.

‘Do you want to come in?’ asked Thomas.

‘Yes, please,’ said Titania.

Thomas led Titania into the kitchen.

Brian almost choked on the skin of his baked potato.
Titania announced, ‘He’s thrown me out, Brian. I can’t go to my mother’s, it
would kill her. And I can’t go to my sister’s. I wouldn’t give that bitch the
satisfaction. You said you would leave Eva after Christmas. Well, it’s after
Christmas now.’

There was a general gasp of surprise from everybody
except Brian. He propelled his heavy bulk from his chair, as though he’d been
shot from a cannon. He landed at Titania’s side, the floor joists groaning
suddenly under his weight. He tried frantically to push her out of the kitchen,
but she stood her ground.

Stanley Crossley, who had risen to his feet when
Titania first came in, said, ‘Madam, you look distressed. May I offer you a
drink?’

Brian roared, ‘It’s my bloody house! I’ll decide who
drinks in it!’

Titania crossed her arms and planted her feet. She had
not moved from the doorway. She said, ‘I would like a double vodka, diet tonic,
a slice of lemon and half a handful of crushed ice, with a pink drinking straw,
if you have one. Thank you.