The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (2 page)

She had screamed so loudly that her throat hurt. She
shouted downstairs and asked Brian to bring her a glass of water.

Brian said, ‘Hang on, Mummy. Eva wants a glass of
water.’

His mother hissed down the phone, ‘Don’t you dare
fetch her that water, Brian! You’ll be making a rod for your own back if you
do. Tell her to get her own water!’

Brian didn’t know what to do. While he dithered in
the hallway his mother said, ‘I could do without this trouble. My knee has been
playing me up. I was on the verge of ringing my consultant and asking him to
chop my leg off.’

He took the phone into the kitchen with him and ran
the cold tap.

His mother asked, ‘Is that water I can hear running?’

Brian lied again. ‘Just topping up a vase of
flowers.’

‘Flowers! You’re lucky you can afford flowers.’

‘They’re out of the garden, Mummy. Eva grew them
from seed.’

‘You’re lucky to have the space for a garden.’

The phone went dead. His mother never said goodbye.

He went upstairs with the glass of cold water. When
he handed it to Eva, she took a small sip, then put it on the crowded bedside
table. Brian hovered at the end of the bed. There was nobody to tell him what
to do.

She almost felt sorry for him, but not enough to get
out of bed. Instead, she said, Why don’t you go downstairs and watch your
programmes?’

Brian was a devotee of property programmes. His
heroes were Kirstie and Phil. Unbeknown to Eva he had written to Kirstie,
saying that she always looked nice, and was she married to Phil or was their
partnership purely a business arrangement? He had received a reply three months
later, saying ‘Thank you for your interest’ and signed ‘Yours, Kirstie’.
Enclosed was a photograph of Kirstie. She was wearing a red dress and showing
an alarming amount of bosom. Brian kept the photograph inside an old Bible. He
knew it would be safe there. Nobody ever opened it.

Later
that night, a full bladder forced Eva out of bed. She changed from her day
clothes into a pair of pyjamas that she had been keeping for emergency hospital
admittance. This was on her mother’s advice. Her mother believed that if your
dressing gown, pyjamas and sponge bag were good quality, the nurses and doctors
treated you better than the scruffs who came into hospital with their shoddy
things in a Tesco’s carrier bag.

Eva got back into bed and wondered what her children
were doing on their first night at university. She imagined them sitting in a
room together, weeping and homesick, as they had done when they first went to
nursery school.

2

Brianne
was in the communal kitchen and lounge of the accommodation block. So far she
had met a boy dressed like a girl, and a woman dressed like a man. They were
both talking about clubs and musicians she’d never heard of.

Brianne had a short attention span and soon stopped
listening, but she nodded her head and said ‘Cool’ when it seemed appropriate.
She was a tall girl with broad shoulders, long legs and big feet. Her face was
mostly hidden behind a long straggly black fringe which she pushed out of her
eyes only when she actually wanted to see something.

A waiflike girl in a leopard-print maxi dress and
tan Ugg boots came in with a bulging bag from Holland & Barrett which she
stuffed into the fridge. Half her head had been shaved and a broken heart
tattooed on to her scalp. The other half was a badly dyed lopsided green
curtain.

Brianne said, ‘Amazing hair. Did you do it yourself?’

‘I got my brother to help me,’ the girl said. ‘He’s
a poofter.’

The girl’s sentences had a rising inflection as
though she were permanently questioning the validity of her own statements.

Brianne asked, ‘Are you Australian?’

The girl shouted, ‘God! No!’

Brianne said, ‘I’m Brianne.’

The girl said, ‘I’m Poppy. Brianne? I haven’t heard
that before.’

‘My dad’s called Brian,’ said Brianne tonelessly. ‘Is
it hard to walk in a maxi?’

‘No’, said Poppy. ‘Try it on if you like. It might
stretch to fit you.’

She pulled the maxi dress over her head and stood
revealed in a wispy bra and knickers. They both looked as though they had been
made from scarlet cobwebs. She seemed to have no inhibitions whatsoever.
Brianne had many inhibitions. She hated everything about herself: face, neck,
hair, shoulders, arms, hands, fingernails, belly, breasts, nipples, waist,
hips, thighs, knees, calves, ankles, feet, toenails and voice.

She said, ‘I’ll try it on in my room.’

‘Your eyes are amazing,’ said Poppy.

‘Are they?’

‘Are you wearing green contacts?’ asked Poppy. She
stared into Brianne’s face and pushed the fringe away.

‘No.’

‘They’re an amazing green.’

‘Are they?’

‘Awesome.’

‘I need to lose some weight.’

‘Yeah, you do. I’m a weight loss expert. I’ll teach
you how to be sick after every meal.’

‘I don’t want to be bulimic.’

‘It was good enough for Lily Allen.’

‘I hate being sick.’

‘Isn’t it worth it to be thin? Remember the saying: “You
can’t be too rich or too thin.”’

‘Who said that?’

‘I think it was Winnie Mandela.’

Poppy followed Brianne to her room, still in her
underwear. They met Brian Junior in the corridor as he was locking the door to
his room. He stared at Poppy and she stared back. He was the most beautiful man
she had ever seen. She threw her arms above her head and affected a glamour
girl pose, hoping that Brian Junior would admire her C cup breasts.

He said under his breath, but loud enough to be
heard, ‘Gross.’

Poppy said, ‘Gross? It would be really useful to me
if you would elaborate. I need to know which bits of me are particularly
repellent.’

Brian Junior shifted uncomfortably.

Poppy walked up and down past him, did a twirl and
rested one hand on a bony hip. She then looked at him expectantly but he did
not speak. Instead, he unlocked the door to his room and went back inside.

Poppy said, ‘He’s a baby. A rude, mind-blowingly awesome-looking
baby.’

Brianne said, ‘We’re both seventeen. We took our A
levels early.’

‘I would have taken mine early but I had a personal
tragedy…’ Poppy paused, waiting for Brianne to ask about the nature of the
tragedy. When Brianne remained silent, she said, ‘I can’t talk about it. I
still managed to get four A*s. Oxbridge wanted me. I went for an interview but
quite honestly I couldn’t live and study somewhere so old-fashioned.’

Brianne asked, Where was your interview — Oxford or
Cambridge?’

Poppy said, ‘Do you have auditory defects? I told you,
I was interviewed in
Oxbridge.’

‘And you were offered a place to study at
Oxbridge
University?’ Brianne checked, ‘Remind me, where
is
Oxbridge?’

Poppy mumbled, ‘It’s in the middle of the country, ‘and
went out.

Brianne and Brian Junior had been interviewed at
Cambridge University, and both of them had been offered a place. The Beaver
twins’ small fame had gone before them. At Trinity College they were given what
looked like an impossibly difficult maths problem to solve. Brian Junior went
to a separate room with an invigilator. When they each put down their pencil
after fifty-five minutes of frenzied workings-out on the A4 paper supplied, the
chair of the interviewing panel read their workings as if they were a chapter
of a racy novel. Brianne had meticulously, if unimaginatively, worked her way
straight to the solution. Brian Junior had reached it by a more mysterious
path. The panel declined to ask the twins about hobbies or pastimes. It was
easy to tell that they did nothing outside of their chosen field.

After the twins had turned the offer down, Brianne
explained that she and her brother would follow the famous professor of
mathematics Lenya Nikitanova to Leeds.

‘Ah, Leeds,’ said the chairperson. ‘It has a remarkable
mathematical faculty, world class. We tried to tempt the lovely Nikitanova here
by offering her disgracefully extravagant inducements, but she emailed that she
preferred to teach the children of the workers — an expression I have not
heard since Brezhnev was in office — and was taking up the post of lecturer at
Leeds University! Typically quixotic of her!’

Now, in Sentinel Towers student residence, Brianne
said, ‘I’d sooner try the dress on in private. I’m shy about my body.’

Poppy said, ‘No, I’m coming in with you. I can help
you.’

Brianne felt suffocated by Poppy. She did not want
to let her inside her room. She did not want her as a friend but, despite her
feelings, she unlocked the door and let Poppy inside.

Brianne’s suitcase was open on the narrow bed. Poppy
immediately began to unpack and put Brianne’s clothes and shoes away in the
wardrobe. Brianne sat helplessly on the end of the bed, saying, ‘No, Poppy. I
can do it.’ She thought that when Poppy had gone, she would arrange her clothes
to her own satisfaction.

Poppy opened a jewellery box decorated in tiny pearlised
shells and began to try on various pieces. She pulled out the silver bracelet
with the three charms: a moon, a sun and a star.

The bracelet had been bought by Eva in late August to
celebrate Brianne’s five A*s at A level. Brian Junior had already lost the
cufflinks his mother had given him to commemorate his six A*s.

‘I’ll borrow this,’ Poppy said.

‘No!’ Brianne shouted. ‘Not that! It’s precious to
me.’ She took it from Poppy and slipped it on to her own wrist.

Poppy said, ‘Omigod, you’re such a materialist.
Chill out.’

Meanwhile, Brian Junior paced up and down in his
shockingly tiny room. It took only three steps to move from the door to the
window He wondered why his mother had not rung as she had promised.

He had unpacked earlier and everything had been
neatly put away. His pens and pencils were lined up in colour order, starting
with yellow and finishing with black. It was important to Brian Junior that a
red pen came exactly at the centre of the line.

Earlier that day, once the twins’ belongings had
been brought up from the car, their laptops were being charged, and the new
Ikea kettles, toasters and lamps had been plugged in, Brian, Brianne and Brian
Junior had sat in a line on Brianne’s bed with nothing to say to each other.

Brian had said, ‘So,’ several times.

The twins were expecting him to go on to speak, but
he had relapsed into silence.

Eventually, he cleared his throat and said, ‘So, the
day has come, eh? Daunting for me and Mum, and even more so for you two — standing
on your own two feet, meeting new people.’

He stood up and faced them. ‘Kids, make a bit of an
effort to be friendly to the other students. Brianne, introduce yourself, try
to smile. They won’t be as clever as you and Brian Junior, but being clever isn’t
everything.’

Brian Junior said, in a flat tone, ‘We’re here to
work, Dad. If we needed “friends” we’d be on Facebook.’

Brianne took her brother’s hand and said, ‘It might
be good to have a friend, Bri. Y’know, like, somebody I could talk to about…’
She hesitated.

Brian supplied, ‘Clothes and boys and hairdos.’

Brianne thought, ‘Ugh! Hairdos? No, I’d want to talk
about the wonders of the world, the mysteries of the universe.’

Brian Junior said, ‘We can make friends once we ye
obtained our doctorates.’

Brian laughed, ‘Loosen up, BJ. Get drunk, get laid,
hand an essay in late, for once. You’re a student, steal a traffic cone!’

Brianne looked at her brother. She could no more
imagine him roaring drunk with a traffic cone on his head than she could see him
on that stupid programme
Strictly Come Dancing,
clad in lime-green
Lycra, dancing the rumba.

Before Brian left, there were some badly executed
hugs and backslaps. Noses were kissed instead of lips and cheeks. They trod on
each other’s toes in their haste to leave the cramped room and get to the lift.
Once there, they waited an interminable time for the lift to travel up six
floors. They could hear it wheezing and grinding its way towards them.

When the doors opened, Brian almost ran inside. He
waved goodbye to the twins and they waved back. After a few seconds, Brian
stabbed at the Ground Floor button, the doors closed and the twins did a high
five.

Then the lift returned with Brian its captive.

The twins were horrified to see that their father
was crying. They were about to step in when the doors crushed shut, and the
lift jerked and groaned itself downstairs.

‘Why is Dad
crying?’
asked Brian Junior.