The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (41 page)

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!’

Brian shouted, ‘Good, go home to Guy the fucking
Gorilla!’

She screamed, ‘You know I can’t go home! Guy has
rented it out to the Vietnamese cannabis farmers!’

She ran out of the shed complex, across the lawn and
into the main house.

Brian had a fantasy that Titania would run through
the middle of the house, out through the open front door, and then down the
street and round the corner. She would carry on running: through back gardens,
on to minor roads, on cart tracks, on a winding path up the hills, down the
hills and far away.

Brian wished that Titania would vanish, just vanish.

61

Alexander
carefully let himself out of his mother’s small terraced house in Jane Street.
He did not want to wake her, she would ask him where he was going and he didn’t
want to tell her.

He was nervous about leaving the kids in her sole
care — she was too frail now to pick them up and, being an old-school
disciplinarian, she was not sympathetic when Thomas screamed with the night
terrors or Venus cried for her mother.

He crept along the pavement until he was out of earshot
of the house, then he quickened his pace. He could tell from the cool night air
and the faint smell of decay that autumn was waiting to take its place. The
streets were quiet. Cars were sleeping next to the pavements.

He had three miles in which to rehearse what he was
going to say to Eva about their relationship. Although perhaps he should first
establish whether or not they
had
a relationship?

Back in the day, after Alexander had returned from
Charterhouse with an alien upper-class accent that even his mother had laughed
at, he had spent many hours in his room with an old-fashioned tape recorder,
trying to minimise his vowels and slacken his jaw He kept well away from the
local gangs, the Northanger Abbey Crew and the Mansfield Park Boyz. Alexander
wondered if Miss Bennet would have liked Mr Darcy more, or less, had he
strolled through the Pump Room with his arse hanging out of his baggy jeans,
showing the label of his Calvin Klein underwear?

Now all Alexander could hear were his own footsteps
echoing in the moonlit streets.

Then he heard a car approaching, its sound system
booming out gangster rap. He turned to look as the old BMW passed him. Four
white men, short hair, over-muscled. A tin of gym supplements on the back
window. The car stopped just ahead of him.

He braced himself and, hoping to appear friendly,
said, ‘Evening, guys.’

The driver of the car said to his front-seat passenger,
‘Do me a favour, Robbo, get the toolbox out the back, will you?’

Alexander didn’t like the sound of the toolbox. All
he had to defend himself with was his Swiss Army knife, and by the time he’d
found a suitable blade …

He said, Well, I’ll wish you goodnight then.’ Fear
had forced him to drop his street accent, and revert back to Charterhouse.

The four men laughed, but without humour. At a gesture
from the driver, the three remaining men got out of the car.

‘Lovely plaits,’ said the driver. ‘How long you had
them then?’

‘Seventeen years,’ said Alexander. He was wondering
if he could outrun them, though his legs had turned to mush.

‘Be a relief to get rid of ‘em won’t it? Nasty,
dirty, filthy things hanging down your back.’

Suddenly, as if they’d rehearsed it, the three men
pushed him to the ground. One sat on his chest, the other two held down his
legs.

Alexander allowed his body to go limp. He knew from
experience that any show of defiance now would bring a beating.

He
let himself into Eva’s house with the key she had given him. He took his shoes
off and carried them upstairs, together with his shorn dreadlocks.

When he got to the landing, Eva called, ‘Who’s
there?’

He walked softly to her doorway, and said, ‘Its me.’

She said, ‘Can you put the light on?’

He said, ‘No, I want to lie down next to you in the
dark. Like we did before.’

Eva looked up at the moon. ‘The man in the moon has
had work done on his face.’

Alexander said, ‘Botox.’

She laughed, but he didn’t.

She turned to look at him, and saw that his
dreadlocks were gone. ‘Why have you done that?’

He said, ‘I didn’t.’

She put her arms around him.

He was rigid with an old rage. He asked, ‘What’s the
most important quality a person could have, something that would benefit us
all? Even the bastards who cut off my hair.’

Eva stroked his hair while she thought about his
question.

Eventually, she said, ‘Kindness. Or is that too
simple?’

‘No, simple kindness, I’d vote for that.’

In
the early hours, he allowed Eva to level his remaining locks.

When she was finished, he said, ‘Now I know how
Samson felt. I’m not the same man, Eva.’

Alexander had been thinking for some time about what
was important.

He said, We all of us — the fools, the geniuses, the
beggars, the A-listers — we all need to be loved, and we all need to love. And
if they’re the same person, halleluyah! And if you can live your life and avoid
humiliation, you’re blessed. I didn’t manage to do that, people I didn’t even
know humiliated me. My dreads
were
me. I could face anything with them.
They were a visible symbol of my pride in our history. And, you know, my kids
would hang on to them when they were babies. My wife was the only person I
allowed to wash and retwist my dreads. But I would have let you. Whenever I
thought about my old age, I pictured myself with white dreads,
long
white
dreads. I’m on the beach, in Tobago. There’s a travel brochure sunset. You’re
back at the hotel, washing sand and confetti out of your hair. Eva, please get
out of bed, I need you.’

Out of all his seductive words — Tobago, beach, sunset,
confetti — the only word Eva heard clearly was ‘need’.

She said, ‘I can’t be needed, Alex. I would let you
down, so it’s better if I stay out of your life.’

Alexander was angry. What
would
you get out
of bed for? The twins in danger? Your mother’s funeral? A fucking Chanel
handbag?’

He didn’t wait around for her to see him cry. He
knew her attitude to tears. He went downstairs and sat in the back garden until
dawn.

When
he left for the long walk home, Ruby was out early cleaning the front porch and
doorstep with disinfectant and a soapy mop. When she saw Alexander, she gave a
delighted little scream and said, ‘A new hairdo. It really, really suits you,
Alexander.’

He said quietly, ‘It’s my late summer cut.

Ruby watched him walk down the road.

He had lost his easy movements. From the back he
looked like a stooped, middle-aged man.

She wanted to call him back, she would make him a
cup of that bitter coffee he liked. But when it came to it, she tried and tried
but she couldn’t remember his name.

At
daybreak, Eva watched the sky change from sludgy grey to opalescent blue. The
birdsong was heartbreakingly optimistic and cheerful.

‘I should follow their example,’ she thought.

But she was still angry at Alexander.
He
couldn’t
be needy.
She
was the one who needed support, food and water. Sometimes
she had to drink out of the tap in the en suite. Her care rota had almost
broken down since Ruby’s memory lapses had intensified.

But how could she complain? All she had to do was
get out of bed.

62

Eva
was lying flat on the bed, staring up at a crack that meandered across the
ceiling like a black river running through a white wilderness.

Eva knew every millimetre of the crack — the backwaters,
the moorings. She was at the helm of a boat as it journeyed, seeking peace and
pleasure for those on board. Eva could see Brian Junior, motionless, staring
into the deep water. Next she saw Brianne, trying to light a cigarette against
the wind. Alexander was standing at the wheel with his arm around the shoulder
of the helmswoman, and Venus was there, attempting to draw what was undrawable
— the speed of the boat, the sound it makes as it pushes through the water. And
look at Thomas, trying to wrest the wheel from Eva’s hands.

She didn’t know where they were going. The crack
disappeared under the plaster cornice. Eva had to turn the boat and journey
against the wind and the flow of the river. Sometimes it was moored against the
bank, and the passengers disembarked and trekked in the wilderness, on soft
white sand.

But there was nothing for them there.

When they walked back to the boat, Eva gave the wheel
to Brianne, saying, ‘Care about something, Brianne. Take us home and keep us
safe.’

The clouds rolled across the ceiling, the wind blew
in their faces. Brianne held firm and took them home.

63

At
eight o’ clock precisely, Eva was shocked awake by an atrocious noise from
outside. She sat up and knelt at the window. Her heart was beating so rapidly
she found it a struggle to breathe.

There was a man standing on a branch of the sycamore
wearing a safety harness and a hard hat and goggles. He was cutting at an
adjacent branch with an electric saw. She watched in horror as the branch broke
and was lowered to the ground by a rope. Other workmen were waiting to free the
branch from the rope, to remove smaller branches and twigs and feed them into a
racketing shredder.

Eva banged on the window and screamed, ‘Stop! That’s
my tree!’

But such was the din outside that her voice could
not be heard. She opened the sash window and was immediately hit in the face
by a spray of splintered bark. She closed the window quickly. Her face was
stinging, and when she touched her cheek she had blood on her fingers. She
continued to shout and gesticulate at the workman in the tree. She caught his
eye once, but he turned his back on her.