The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (8 page)

Dr Bridges turned his attention back to Eva. ‘Your
mother tells me there is nothing wrong with you …’ He paused and added, ‘Physically.’
Then he continued, ‘I looked at your notes just now and I see that you haven’t
consulted me for fifteen years. Can you explain to me why you’ve been in bed for
a week?’

‘No, I can’t explain,’ Eva said. ‘I’m tired — but
everybody I know is tired.’

‘How long have you felt like this?’ the doctor
asked.

‘For seventeen years. Ever since the twins were
born.’

‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘the twins. They’re both gifted
children, aren’t they?’

Ruby said from the landing, ‘You should see my front
room, it’s full of the lovely maths trophies they’ve won.’

This came as no surprise to the doctor, who had
always thought that the Beaver twins belonged somewhere on the autistic spectrum.
However, Dr Bridges was a firm non-interventionist. If his patents were
uncomplaining, he left them alone.

Ruby, who was now pretending to dust the banisters
while looking through the gap in the door, said, ‘My blood pressure’s terrible.
The last time I had it took the black doctor at the hospital said he’d never
seen anything like it — it’s lower than a centipede’s arse. He took a photo of
the result with his phone.’ She pushed the door open and continued, ‘Sorry, but
I’ve got to sit down.’ She swayed towards the bed. ‘It’s a miracle I’m still
here. I’ve died two or three times.’

Eva said irritably, ‘So, how many times
is
it
you’ve died?
Two
or
three?
You shouldn’t be so casual about your
own death, Mum.’

‘Death’s not as bad as they make out,’ Ruby said. ‘You
just go down a tunnel towards the golden light, isn’t that right, Doctor?’ She
turned to Dr Bridges, who was preparing to take blood from Eva’s outstretched
arm.

He said, as he began to draw up blood with a
syringe, ‘The tunnel is an illusion caused by cerebral anoxia. Your brain’s
subsequent expectational processing supplies the white light and feeling of
peace.’ He looked at Ruby’s uncomprehending facial expression and said, ‘The
brain doesn’t want to die. It is thought that the bright light is part of the
brain’s alarm system.’

Ruby asked, ‘So, while I was in the tunnel I didn’t
hear James Blunt singing “You’re Beautiful”?’

Dr Bridges muttered, ‘A vestigial memory, perhaps.’
He decanted Eva’s blood from the syringe into three little vials. He labelled
each one and placed them in his bag. He asked Eva, ‘Have you have felt any pain
anywhere in the last week?’

Eva shook her head. ‘Not my own physical pain, no.
But, and I know this is going to sound mad, I seem to pick up on other people’s
pain and sadness. It’s exhaust-ing.’

Dr Bridges was mildly irritated. His surgery was
very near to the university. Consequently, he had more than his fair share of
new age patents, who believed that a piece of moon rock or crystals could cure
them of their genital warts, glandular fever and other maladies.

Ruby said, ‘There’s nothing much wrong with her, Doctor.
It’s that syndrome. Empty nest.’

Eva threw the pillow down and shouted, ‘I’ve been
counting the days until they left home from the moment they were born! It felt
as though I’d been taken over by two aliens. All I wanted to do was to go to
bed alone and to stay there for as long as I liked.’

Dr Bridges said, ‘Well, it’s not against the law’

Eva asked, ‘Doctor, is it possible to have
post-natal depression for seventeen years?’

Dr Bridges suddenly had an overwhelming desire to be
gone. ‘No, Mrs Beaver, it’s not. I’ll leave you a prescription for something
to minimise your anxiety, and you’d better wear surgical stockings for the
duration of your —’ he cast around for the right words and came up with ‘—
holiday.’

Ruby said, ‘It’s all right for some, eh, Doctor? I
wish it was me in that bed.’

Eva muttered, ‘I wish it was you in your own bed.’

Dr Bridges clipped his bag shut, said, ‘Good day to
you, Mrs Beaver.” and, with Ruby slowly leading the way, went downstairs.

Eva heard Ruby saying, ‘Her dad was given to melodrama.
He’d burst into the kitchen every night after work with some dramatic story. I
used to say to him, “Why are you telling me stories about people I don’t know,
Roger? I’m not interested.”‘

After the doctor had driven away in his
four-by-four, Ruby climbed the stairs again. She said, ‘I’ll go to the chemist
for your prescription.’

‘It’s all right, I’ve taken care of it.’ Eva had
ripped up the prescription and placed the scraps on her bedside table.

Ruby said, ‘You could get done for that.’ She turned
the television on, dragged the chair away from the dressing table next to the
bed and sat down. ‘I can come every day and keep you company.’ She took the
remote and Noel Edmonds appeared on the screen. He was doing something with
hysterical contestants that involved opening boxes. The screaming of the studio
audience and the contestants hurt Eva’s ears.

Ruby watched with her mouth slightly open.

At six o’clock the news came on. Eight- and
ten-year-old sisters had been taken from outside their house in Slough by a man
in a white van. A woman in Derbyshire had jumped into a swollen river to rescue
her dog and drowned, the dog turning up at her house four hours later,
unharmed. There had been an earthquake in Chile, thousands were trapped under
the rubble. Orphaned children wandered through what used to be streets. A
toddler was shouting, ‘Mamma! Mamma!’ In Iraq a suicide bomber (a teenage
girl) had detonated a nail bomb, killing herself and fifteen trainee policemen.
In South Korea 400 young people had been killed in a stampede when fire broke
out in a nightclub. A woman in Cardiff was suing an unlicensed tattoo parlour
after her fifteen-year-old son had come home with ‘HAT’ tattooed on his
forehead.

Eva said, ‘What a catalogue of human misery. I hope
that bloody dog is grateful.’

‘They must have done something wrong.’

‘Do you think that God is punishing them?’

Ruby said defensively, ‘I know
you
don’t
believe in God, Eva. But
I
do, and I think that those people must have
offended him in some way.’

Eva asked, ‘Is it the old-fashioned God you believe
in, Mum? Does he have a long white beard and live above the clouds? Is he
all-knowing, all-seeing? Is he looking down on you right now, Mum?’

Ruby said, ‘Look, I’m not getting into another argument
about God. All I know is that he looks after me — and if I step out of line, he’ll
punish me in some way.

Eva said gently, ‘But he didn’t save you from losing
your purse, tickets and passport when you were at East Midlands Airport last
year, did he?’

Ruby said, ‘He can’t be everywhere, and he’s bound
to be busy at peak holiday time.’

And he didn’t stop you from getting a cancerous
melanoma?’

Ruby said heatedly, ‘No, but it didn’t
kill
me,
did it? And you can hardly see the scar.’

Eva asked, ‘Can you imagine a world without God,
Mum?’

Ruby thought for a moment. We’d all be at each other’s
throats, wouldn’t we? As it is, we tick along nicely.’

Eva said, ‘You’re only thinking about England. What
about the rest of the world?’

Well, they’re mostly heathens, aren’t they? They
have their own way of carrying on.’

‘So, why did your God save a dog and drown a woman?
Perhaps he’s a dog lover?’ Eva grabbed the opportunity to amuse herself. She
asked her mother what breed of dog God would choose to keep in his celestial
kingdom.

Ruby said, ‘I can’t see God with one of them snappy
dogs what the Queen has. And I can’t see him with a daft little dog that you
can put in your handbag. I think God would choose a proper dog, like a golden
Labrador.’

Eva laughed. ‘Yes, I can see God with a golden Labrador,
sitting next to his throne tugging at his white robes, nagging for a walk.’

Ruby said, wistfully, ‘Do you know, Eva, sometimes I
can’t wait to get to heaven. I’m tired of living down here since everything
went complicated.’

Eva said, ‘But the woman who drowned, I bet she wasn’t
tired of living. I’ll bet when the water closed over her head she fought to
live. So, why did your God choose the dog over her?’

‘I don’t know. The woman must have done something to
incur his wrath.’

Eva laughed, ‘Wrath?’

Ruby said, ‘Yes, he’s very wrathful, and that’s how
I like it. It keeps the riff-raff out of heaven.’

Eva said, ‘Riff-raff like lepers, prostitutes, the
poor?’

‘That was Jesus,’ said Ruby. ‘He’s another kettle of
fish.’

Eva turned away from her mother and said, And God
watched his only son die in agony on a cross and did nothing to help him when
he shouted, “Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?”‘ Eva didn’t want to
cry, but she couldn’t stop herself.

When she was eight, she had fainted in assembly
during the headmistress’s graphic description of the crucifixion.

Ruby collected her things, put her coat and hat on, wrapped
her bright—pink scarf around her neck and said, ‘Jesus must have done something
wrong. And if you don’t believe in God, Eva, why are you getting into one of
your states?’

Eva calmed herself down enough to say, ‘It’s the cruelty.
When he cried out, “I thirst!” they gave him vinegar.’

Ruby said, ‘I’m going home to
my
bed.’

Ruby’s
home was a thin end-of-terrace. The front door opened on to the quiet street.
It was only three-quarters of a mile away from Eva’s, but to Ruby it felt like
an epic journey. She had to stop several times with the pain in her hip and
lean against anything that would support her.

Bobby, her svelte black cat, was waiting for her. As
Ruby unlocked the door, he insinuated himself around her legs and purred with
what Ruby thought was pleasure to see her.

When they were both inside the immaculate front
room, Ruby said to Bobby, ‘I wish I was you, Bobbikins. I don’t know if I can
cope with looking after our girl for much longer.’

Ruby put three Tramadol on the back of her tongue
and washed them down with a glug of syrup of figs. She went into the kitchen
and took two willow-patterned mugs down from the shelf, then remembered and put
one back. While the kettle boiled she looked through her wall calendar with the
picture of the Angel of the North on the front. Next to it was a scaled-down
year planner with the Christian festivals written in black marker pen:

Advent
Season, Christmas, Epiphany, Shrove Tuesday, Lent, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday,
Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, Harvest Festival, All Hallows

Ruby spoke them aloud, like a litany. They were the
scaffolding of her life. She felt sorry for Eva.

Without them, Ruby would not know how to live.

12

Later
that night, when Eva had watched two television comedies without laughing, she
got up and reluctantly went into the bathroom. It felt wrong when she put her
feet on the floor, as though the carpet were a lagoon with piranha fish waiting
to nibble at her toes.

When Brian found her coming out wrapped in a white
towel, he said, Ah, Eva, glad to see you on your feet. I can’t get the door of
the washing machine open.’

She sat on the side of the bed and said, ‘You have
to hit it hard, twice, with the side of your hand, as though you were trained
to kill.’

Brian was disappointed when his wife changed into a
pair of pink gingham pyjamas and climbed back into bed.

He said, ‘The washing machine.’

She said, ‘The jugular.” and made a chopping movement
with her right hand.

He said, ‘There’s no food left.’

‘You’ll find some in Sainsbury’s.” she said. And
when you go —He interrupted. When I go?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘when you go to Sainsbury’s. Will
you buy a large funnel, a two-litre plastic bottle and a box of giant freezer
bags? And from now on collect the plastic carrier bags for me? Will you do
that? I’ll be needing all those things to get rid of the waste.’

What waste?’

‘My body waste.’

He said, incredulously, ‘There’s a fucking en suite
next door!’

She turned on her side and faced her husband. ‘I can’t
walk those few steps to the en suite, Bri. I was hoping you’d help me out.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ he said. ‘I’m not messing about
decanting your piss and dumping your shit!’

‘But I can’t leave this bed again, Brian. I can’t
make that little walk to the bathroom. So, what can I do?’

When Brian had gone, she listened for a while to him
cursing and thumping the washing machine. She thought about all the problems
caused by bowels and bladders, and wondered why evolution had not constructed
something better for disposing of the body’s waste products.