The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (42 page)

She was horrified at how quickly the tree was disassembled.
Soon there was only the trunk left. She had a small hope that her tree had only
been drastically pollarded and would sprout new growth in the spring of next
year.

The noise stopped. The machines had been turned off.
She could see into the front garden now that the branches had gone. The workmen
were drinking tea.

She knocked on the window and shouted, ‘Leave the
trunk, please leave the trunk!’

The men looked up at her window and laughed. What
did they think she was doing? Inviting them upstairs?

The machines started up again and in a short while
her tree trunk had been turned into logs. The light in the room was harsh after
the dappled green glow she had been used to.

She felt cold, though she was covered in sweat. She
climbed under the duvet and pulled it over her head.

In
the early afternoon, Eva heard a ragged cheer from the crowd and Peter’s ladder
appeared level with the lower window frame. She straightened her camisole, put
on the shrunken cashmere cardigan she was using as a bed jacket and
automatically ran her fingers through her hair.

Peter shouted through the glass, ‘Still here then?’

‘Yes!’ she shouted back, with forced good humour. ‘Still
here.’

Eva wondered how anybody could be so heartless. Didn’t
he care that her magnificent tree was gone?

‘Magnificent?’ he laughed, when she said this to
him. ‘It was a sycamore, they’re the weeds of the tree world.’ He added, ‘I don’t
want to be cheeky, Eva, but what’s happened to your face?’

Eva was not listening. ‘It was Brian,’ she said. ‘He
hated that tree. He said the roots were coming up through the pavement.’

‘They were,’ Peter confirmed. He wanted to move the
topic on from that bloody tree. ‘Only a hundred and twelve shopping days till
Christmas,’ he said, climbing into the room.

Eva could hear Sandy Lake screaming, ‘Eva, I’m getting
cross with you now! Why won’t you
see
me?’

Peter laughed. We’re getting Abigail a motorised wheelchair.
Well, us and Social Services.’

Eva asked, ‘Peter, would you do me a favour? Would
you help me to board the window up from the inside?’

In his opinion, she had gone downhill fast — in the
old days, they would have had a cup of tea and smoked a fag together. ‘Sure,’
he said.

Peter had learned, in his twenty years of window
cleaning, that the customers on his round were a bit eccentric, not one of them
was normal. The clothes people wore in bed! The unexpected squalor of their
houses! The weird stuff they ate! Mr Crossley — who had so many books he could
hardly walk between the rooms for them!

Barricading a window from the inside was no big deal
to Peter. He had suitable materials in the back of his van. He was often asked
to board up a window after a domestic or a football had shattered the peace. He
went back down the ladder to an ironic cheer from the crowd.

When Peter went to his van, Sandy Lake hovered
around the tailgate and interrogated him about Eva.

‘Can she hear me in her bedroom?’

Peter said, ‘She can hear you all right.’

Sandy thumped the side of his van and yelled, ‘I
have this very important message! It’s appertaining to the future of our earth!’

He turned his back to assemble the chipboard and
tools he would need. Sandy Lake saw her opportunity. She dashed across the road
and climbed up the ladder like a fifteen-stone mountain goat.

When Eva saw Sandy’s weather-beaten face in the
window, she pulled a pillow towards her as though it were a shield.

Sandy stared at Eva and said, Well, now I’m really
cross! What happened to you? You’re just an ordinary woman! You’re not special
at all! You shouldn’t have any grey in your hair or crow’s feet around your
eyes — and they’re not laughter lines!’

She tried to clamber over the sill, but the ladder
moved slightly. Sandy looked down, and further down, and then further down
still. Some say that Sandy swooned and fell, others that she caught the hem of
her maxi skirt under the heel of her ankle boot. Peter thought he had seen a
pale hand push the ladder away from the sill.

Eva imagined she felt the house move slightly when
Sandy fell into the overgrown lavender bush that Eva had planted years before.
There were screams of horror and of excitement. Sandy had landed in an ungainly
position, and the anarchist hurried to pull the maxi skirt down from around
her waist, where it had bunched. William sort of loved Sandy, but he had to,
obviously, kind of, be honest and tell it like it is and admit that the sight
of Sandy’s naked lower regions was totally inappropriate.

Sandy wasn’t dead. As soon as she recovered consciousness,
she rolled away from the spiky lavender and lay flat on her back. The anarchist
took off his leather flying jacket and put it under her head.

When the ambulance arrived, the female paramedic
chided her for climbing a ladder in a maxi skirt and high heels. ‘That’s an
accident
whimpering
to happen,’ she said, in disgust.

Eva
and Peter started to board up the window, to the sound of the crowd’s cheers
and shrieks of excitement and dismay. Now they could see Eva in her nondescript
clothes, with her unbrushed hair and bare face, they could not hold on to their
previous belief in her.

PC Hawk shouted, ‘If she was a true saint, she’d be
perfect
in every way!’

A man with binoculars shouted, ‘She’s got sweat
patches under her arms!’

A woman wearing a man’s suit and a dog collar said, ‘Female
saints do
not
sweat, I think that Mrs Beaver has been posturing.’

PC Hawk had been ordered to get rid of the crowd. He
shouted, ‘She’s been taken over by an evil spirit, and the spirit is in the
holy chapatti!’

Some followed him to view the chapatti, which had
been painted with preservative, varnished and was being exhibited in the local
library. Others started to pack their belongings. There were emotional leave-takings,
taxis came and went, until there was only William Wainwright sitting inside
Sandy Lake’s tent. He might try to visit her in hospital tomorrow — but then
again, he might not.

He was an anarchist, wasn’t he? And nobody could pin
him down.

64

The
twins were working on Brianne’s newly acquired desktop computer. They were
exploring the labyrinthine corridors of the Ministry of Defence, after a failed
attempt to destroy their father’s credit rating. It was hot in Brianne’s room
and they were sitting in their vests and pants. Flies buzzed over half-eaten
sandwiches.

From the open window they could hear students calling
to each other, enjoying the Indian summer. A group of them were sitting on the
grass outside Sentinel Towers, laughing and drinking from cans of cider.

A girl’s fragile voice sang ‘Summer Is Icumen In’.

Brianne muttered, ‘Fucking Performing Arts, don’t
they ever stop performing?’

The girl’s voice was joined by others until each
voice was weaving an intricate vocal pattern.

From a room where politics students had gathered to
drink Polish vodka and condemn every known political system came the sound of
bombs falling and machine-gun fire. They were remarkably good impressions —
evidence of long hours of practice and, conversely, of the few hours spent in
lectures or writing essays.

Brianne said, looking at the screen, ‘How many
years, Bri?’

It was their private joke, short for, ‘How many
years in prison?’

Their hacking was motivated as much by curiosity as
it was by the accumulation of money.

Before Brian Junior could reply, there was a
shocking crash and the door to the room fell in on them, followed seconds later
by the sound of Brian Junior’s door collapsing. He tried to reach the computer
to wipe the hard drive, but his wrist was chopped by a black-gloved hand. There
was roaring shouting confusion.

Brianne was handcuffed, then Brian Junior. They were
told to step over the splintered door, sit on the bed and keep quiet. Brian
Junior could not work out who the people in the black overalls and smoked-glass
helmets were.

It pained them both to see their computer, laptops,
smartphones, cameras, notebooks and MP3 players packed carefully into evidence
bags and cardboard boxes.

Brianne said, ‘You must know that we’re only
eighteen.’ A woman’s voice said, ‘Yes, and playtime’s over, children. You work
for us now So, if you wouldn’t mind removing your underwear and spreading your
legs.’

When the twins’ orifices had been thoroughly examined,
and they had been put into white forensic suits, they were led away. The other
students in the block had been told to stay in their rooms and keep the main
entrance clear.

Two people carriers with blacked-out windows waited
for them at the kerb, their engines running. They were not allowed to speak
before they got into separate cars, but Brianne communicated to Brian Junior
that all would be well, eventually. And as Brian Junior was turned away from
her, she shouted, ‘I love you, bro!’

Ho
was lying in his own bed, kissing Poppy’s pregnant belly. He spoke to the baby,
asking if it was a boy or a girl.

He should have been dissecting the cadaver he had
been allocated, a Mrs Iris Bristol. She had donated her body to medical science
because she’d spent her funeral money on a 46-inch 3D television. Ho was
thinking that he ought to go back to Mrs Bristol and replace her intestines,
which were strewn across the dissecting table.

Poppy had sent him a text:

Come at once

He had removed his gown, mask and boots and hurried
to Poppy’s side.

She needed money again. She explained why to him,
but it was a complicated story and Ho’s English was not top notch. Sometimes he
thought the English textbooks he had used in China were a little out of date.

Since he had been in England, he had not heard a single
person say, ‘Top hole!’

Poppy smirked at the memory of Brianne and Brian
Junior being led away, in silly white suits and handcuffs. She was glad she had
made the phone call. The person on the other end had asked her to keep an eye
on the rest of Professor Nikitanova’s students, and she’d said delightedly, ‘It
would be a pleasure.’

65

Brian
was watching the repeat of
Loose Women
in room twelve of a Travelodge in
a suburb near Leeds. He didn’t know what the Loose Women were talking about.
And he had never heard of the orange man with the grotesquely white teeth and
sticky black hair. The man was being interviewed about the county where he
lived, Essex, but all he could say about this location was, ‘It’s
reem.
’

Brian tried to apply formal logic to the problem.

Could he decode it given the paucity of the information?

Earlier, he had stopped off at a retail park and
bought a blue paisley one hundred per cent acetate dressing gown. He had
debated with himself whether or not to buy some matching slippers. He looked
around for some assistance. He needed a woman’s point of view He had approached
a young woman in Marks & Spencer’s uniform who was newly returned after
five weeks of sick leave due to stress.

He said, ‘I’m a mere man …

What Kerry, in her nervous state, heard was, ‘I’m a
merman.’ She tried to remember what a merman
was,
then it came to her —
a merman was a mermaid’s partner.

Brian continued, ‘And as a hapless male, I’d like
some advice. I have a lady friend who’s more or less your age. Can you tell me
what’s cool on the street regarding dressing gowns and slippers?’

When Kerry didn’t answer, he prompted, ‘Would a
dressing gown and slippers be considered sophisticated bedroom wear or, as the
kids say, “a turn-off”?’

Kerry, who was only passing through men’s shoes on
her way to her tea break, hesitated. Her inability to make a decision had been
a large part of her problem. She stammered, ‘I don’t know I can’t help you.’
Then she fled, knocking into a male mannequin dressed in discounted Late Sun
pastel beachwear.

Brian was disgusted. M&S were féted for the
quality of their shop assistants.

He had taken his dressing gown and slippers to the
Food Hall where he bought a large baguette, French butter, cheese and a bottle
of cava. Champagne was wasted on a young girl, he thought. On an impulse, he
had grabbed a bag of multi-coloured lollipops. As he stood in the queue he was
in a state of mild sexual arousal. He was looking forward to his early evening
assignation.

He had been careful over the summer — each time they
had met in a different hotel. Brian hadn’t seen Poppy since their last meeting,
at the Palace Hotel in Leeds.