The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (9 page)

She thought for a long time and finally came up with
the most efficient system.

The body would have to be redesigned to absorb the
entirety of its own waste. Eva thought this might be possible if somewhere in
the digestive system there was a spare organ. Apparently, the appendix was
lying around doing nothing. It had no function since humans had stopped eating
twigs and roots. Brian had told her that astronauts routinely had the appendix
removed before their first launch into space. Perhaps it could be commandeered
to help the body absorb every last drop of urine and every piece of faeces?

She was a little vague about the nature of the adaptation,
but the adapted organ would be required to burn the waste products internally
until the body had absorbed all food and liquid. There would probably be a
little smoke, but this could be routed to the anus and absorbed by a charcoal
filter held in the pants using Velcro. There were one or two details that would
need finessing, but weren’t British scientists leading the way in biotechnology?
How marvellous it would be if the human race was spared the burden of
excretion.

Meanwhile, thought Eva, she would have to dispose of
her waste products in a very unsophisticated manner. How would she manage to
squat over a funnel without putting her feet on the floor? There would be an
inevitable spillage in the bed, and even more complicated gymnastics would be
required to defecate into a freezer bag. She would have to get used to coming
face to face with her bodily waste, but she would still need another person to
remove the bottle and bags from her room.

Who loved her enough?

Eva
and Ruby were reconciled the next day, when Ruby brought round a home-made
ploughman’s lunch covered in cling film.

After Eva had eaten every morsel she said, ‘Mum, I’ve
got something to ask you.’

When she explained her vision for the funnel, bottle
and freezer bags, Ruby was horrified. She started retching, and had to run into
the en suite and stand over the lavatory bowl with a pad of tissues held to her
mouth.

When she returned, pale and shaken, she said, ‘Why
would a sane person prefer to pee into a bottle and pooh in a plastic bag when
they’ve got a beautiful Bathrooms Direct en suite next door?’

Eva couldn’t answer.

Ruby shouted, ‘Tell me why! Is it something
The
done?
Did I toilet-train you too early? Did I smack you too hard for wetting the bed?
You were frightened of the noise the cistern made. Did it give you a complex or
syndrome or whatever people have these days?’

Eva said, ‘I’ve got to stay in bed — if I don’t, I’m
lost.’

‘Lost?’ queried Ruby. She touched her gold —
earrings first, then the chain and locket around her neck, finishing with her
rings — straightening and polishing. It was a genuflection, Ruby worshipped her
gold. She had ten krugerrands sewn into a pair of corsets in her underwear
drawer. If England were invaded by the French, or by aliens, she would be able
to keep the whole family in food and firearms for at least a year.

To Ruby, invasion by aliens was a likely scenario.
She had seen a spaceship one night as she’d been taking her washing off the
line. It had hovered over her next-door neighbour’s house before moving off in
the direction of the Co-op. She’d told Brian, hoping he would be interested,
but he said she must have been at the brandy she kept in the pantry for medical
emergencies.

Now Eva said, ‘Mum, if I put one foot on the floor I’ll
be expected to take another step, and then another, and the next thing I know I’ll
be walking down the stairs and into the front garden, and then I’ll walk and
walk and walk and walk, until I never see any of you again.’

Ruby said, ‘But why should you get away with it? Why
should I, seventy-nine next January, be expected to baby you again? To tell you
the truth, Eva, I’m not a very maternal woman. That’s why I didn’t have another
kid. So, don’t look to me to cart your pee and pooh around.’ She picked up the
plate and the screwed-up ball of cling film and said, ‘Is Brian the cause of
this?’

Eva shook her head.

‘I told you not to marry him. Your trouble is, you
want to be happy all the time. You’re fifty years old —haven’t you realised yet
that most of the time most of us just trudge through life? Happy days are few
and far between. And if I have to start wiping a fifty-year-old’s bum, I would
make myself very unhappy indeed, so don’t ask me again!’

When
Eva paid a late-night visit to the lavatory, it felt as though she were walking
on hot coals.

She slept badly.

Was she actually going mad?

Was she the last to know?

13

The
sycamore outside the window was hurling its branches about in the wind. Yvonne
was sitting on the dressing-table chair, which she had dragged to the side of
the bed.

She had brought an advanced dot-to-dot book for Eva,
‘To pass the time.’

Under duress, Eva had finished the first puzzle.
After fifteen tedious minutes she had joined up ‘The Flying Scotsman’, complete
with a village railway station, a luggage trolley, booking office and a
station master with whistle and a raised flag.

Eva said, ‘Don’t think you have to stay.’

Yvonne sniffed. ‘You can’t be on your own when you’re
poorly.’

Eva raged inside. When would they accept that what
she told them was true — she wasn’t ill, she simply wanted to stay in bed?

Yvonne said, ‘You know it’s a symptom of being
mental, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Eva, ‘and so is an adult filling in a
bloody dot-to-dot book. Madness is relative.’

Yvonne snapped, ‘Well, none of my relatives are mad.’

Eva couldn’t be bothered to respond, she was weary and
wanted to sleep. It was exhausting, listening and talking to Yvonne — who, it
seemed to Eva, wilfully misinterpreted most conversations, and lived from one
grudge to another. Yvonne was proud of her straight-talking, though other
people had described her as ‘obnoxious’, ‘unnecessarily rude’ and ‘a total pain
in the arse’.

Eva said, ‘You know how much you value
straight-talking?’

Yvonne nodded.

‘I’ve got something to ask you … it’s difficult
for me …’

Yvonne said, encouragingly, ‘Come on then, cough it up.’

‘I can’t use the en suite any more. I can’t put my
feet on the floor. And I was wondering if you would help to get rid of my
waste.’

Yvonne paused, computing the information, then gave
a shark’s smile and said, Are you asking
me,
Eva Beaver, to dispose of
your wee-wee and poopy? Me? Who’s fastidious about such things? Who gets
through a giant bottle of Domestos
a week?’

Eva said, ‘OK. I asked, and you said no.’

Yvonne said, ‘I warned Brian not to marry you. I
foresaw all this. I saw at once that you were neurotic. I remember when you
and Brian took me on holiday to Crete and you would sit on the beach wrapped in
a big towel, because you had “issues” with your body.’

Eva flushed. She was tempted to tell Yvonne that her
son had been sleeping with another woman for the last eight years, but she was
too weary to manage the aftermath. ‘You were very cruel to me after the twins
were born, Yvonne. You used to laugh at my stomach and say, “It looks like a
Chivers jelly.”‘

Yvonne said, ‘Do you know what your problem is, Eva?
You can’t take a joke.’ She picked up the dot-to-dot book and the pen. ‘I’m
going downstairs to clean your kitchen. The salmonella must be rife in there.
Rife! My son deserves better than you.

When she’d gone, Eva felt as though the furniture
were crowding in on her. She pulled the duvet over her head and was comforted.

She thought, ‘No sense of humour? Why would I want
to join in laughing when Brian and his mother find it hilarious that somebody
has suffered an accident or misfortune? Should I have laughed when Brian
introduced me by saying, ‘And this is the trouble and strife — she spends my money,
but she’s mine for life.’

She was glad that her mother-in-law had refused her
request. The thought of Yvonne criticising the colour and texture of her stools
was intolerable. Eva felt that she’d had a very narrow escape. She started to
laugh until the duvet fell away from her and slid on to the floor.

That
night, Eva dreamed that she saw Cinderella running down a red carpet, hurrying
back to the pumpkin coach. As she woke, she imagined that the carpet was white
and led from her bed to the bathroom. Within a second the carpet had turned
into Eva’s pure-white bed sheet, folded and draped and transformed into a rippling
pathway which led from her bed to the adjoining bathroom. If she kept her feet
on the white pathway she could, she thought, with a leap of imagination, still
be in bed.

She knelt on the bed and pulled the bottom sheet
free, threw it on to the carpet and then brought the sides of the sheet
together, tucking the ends under the mattress. She stepped out and, working
carefully, brought the edges together with a series of narrow folds until the
sheet was ridged, like an expensive crisp.

The cotton pathway was a foot or so short of the
toilet. Eva pulled a white towel from the rail in the bathroom, folded it and
laid it down as an extension.

She felt that if she stayed on the sheet she would
be safe — though from what, she didn’t know.

When she had finished on the toilet, she leaned
across to the washbasin and washed her body down with warm water. After
cleaning her teeth she emptied then refilled the basin and washed her hair. She
then crept back along the white pathway and on to the safety of her bed.

14

On
Saturday, Eva woke late and the first thing she saw was Brian placing a cup of
tea on the bedside table.

The second thing she saw was the huge freestanding
wardrobe. It seemed to loom over the bed like a dark, sinister cliff face
sucking air and light out of the room. Sometimes, when a heavy lorry drove by
the house, the wardrobe trembled. Eva felt that it was only a matter of time
before it crashed down on to the bed, squashing her to death.

She had mentioned her fears to Brian and suggested
that they buy two white louvred replacements, but he had looked at her with
incredulity.

‘It’s a family heirloom.” he’d said. ‘My mother gave
us that when she updated her hanging space. My father bought that wardrobe in
1947, and it served my parents well.’

‘So, why did your mother palm it off on us,’ Eva had
muttered.

Now the phone rang. It was for Brian.

He said, ‘Alex, my man! How’s it hanging, bro?’ He
mouthed to Eva, ‘It’s Alexander, the man with the van.’

Eva wondered why Brian had affected such a strange
accent. She could not tell from the following conversation what Brian’s
relationship with Alexander was. She gathered that Alexander was going to call
round later that day and remove something for Brian from one of his sheds. Eva
wondered if Alexander would be strong enough to dismantle and remove a heavy
wardrobe without assistance.

She asked Brian to show Alexander upstairs when he
had finished with him, saying, ‘There’s something I would like to move.’

She
heard the van pull up outside the house later that morning. She had heard it
approaching for at least a minute. It sounded like a cartoon vehicle — as if the
exhaust pipe were scraping on the floor — and there was obviously something
wrong with the engine. It took four slams before the driver’s door would close.
She knelt on the bed and looked out of the window.

A tall, slim man with scruffy greying dreadlocks
reaching halfway down his back, wearing well-fitting clothes in muted colours,
was reaching for a tool bag from the rear of the van. When he turned round, she
saw that he was very handsome. She thought that he looked like African
nobility. He could have modelled for the sculptures in the front window of the
ethnic shop in the town centre.

He rang the bell.

She heard Brian’s voice, loud and jovial, asking
Alexander to come round the side entrance and, ‘Ignore the mess, man, the
missus is pulling a sickie!’

When Alexander disappeared, Eva raked her hair with
her fingers and pushed it about, trying to give it extra height. She got up
quickly, spread the sheet on the floor again and walked into the bathroom,
where she applied her make-up and sprayed herself with Chanel No. 5.

Then, after reaching her bed, she pulled up the
sheet, remade the bed and waited.

When Eva heard Alexander’s voice in the hall, she
shouted, ‘Upstairs, second on the right.’

He smiled a greeting when he saw her. Am I in the
right place?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and indicated the wardrobe.