The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (7 page)

Brian wanted something named after him, and any old
star wouldn’t do. After all, you could name one for f 50 and give the
certificate to your wife for Christmas. Brian had given Eva such a certificate
on her fortieth birthday. She hadn’t looked as thrilled as he had hoped
—especially when he told her that Eva Beaver, the star, more usually known as
SAO 101276, had died 380 million years ago and that it was only the ghostly
light that could be seen from the earth.

No, Brian wanted something truly remarkable to bear
his name, something that would bring him respect from the worldwide
astronomical community. When he was a little boy of ten, he had watched some of
the Nobel Prize awards ceremony on television with his mother.

She had said, ‘If you work hard at your science,
Brian, you could win the Nobel Prize. That would make Mummy very happy.’

Brian had taught himself to say, in Swedish, ‘I
could not have discovered [blank] without the backing of my mother, Yvonne
Beaver.’

Swedish was a very difficult language. He wasn’t
sure about his pronunciation, and was unable to check. Real Swedish people were
thin on the ground in Leicester in those days.

Brian had worked so hard at school that he had alienated
his fellow pupils, but he soared academically. Now, in late middle age, he had
hit the ground and come to the cruel realisation that he was no longer
especially gifted, was one of many clever scientists whose name the public
would never know, and that he had been a fool to imagine that he could ever win
the Nobel Prize.

He went to his sheds every night at eight thirty and
every weekend afternoon.

Brianne had once said to Eva, ‘For years I thought
Dad was going to a place called Inished.’

Only recently — without Eva’s knowledge — Brian had
knocked two of the smaller sheds through and installed a new, supremely
comfortable king-sized bed, two armchairs, a fridge and a small dining table,
making a compact but stylish garden flat.

Titania often joined him, unlocking the garden gate
that led on to the jitty at the back of the house, and tiptoeing through the
open door of one of the sheds. The twins and Eva knew never to disturb him when
the red light went on above the mother-shed doors and he was ‘working’.

Now Eva lay awake in the dark.

‘Working,’ she said to herself. ‘All those hours,
all those years, and he chose to spend them with a stranger called Titania.’

10

Brian
Junior was waiting outside the seminar room where Professor Nikitanova was due
to meet her new students.

Brianne had just said, ‘Butch up, our kid. Promise
me you won’t run away when I’ve gone.’

Brian Junior said, ‘Our kid? Why are you talking
like a
Coronation Street
actor?’

Brianne said, lowering her voice and turning away
from the other students, ‘Bri, we’ve got to
normalise.
Use a few more
colloquialisms. You know? Like “cool.”, “random”, “chill out”, “dude”, “you
guys”, “devastated”, “amazing”, “sick’, …’

Brian Junior nodded.

When Brianne tried to leave for her own tutor meeting,
he grabbed the leather sleeve of her jacket and said, ‘Brianne, stay with me,
my hands and feet have gone numb. I think I may have compromised my nervous system
and suffered permanent neurological damage.’

Brianne was used to this manifestation of Brian Junior’s
anxiety when faced with a new experience. She said, ‘Do your primes, Bri, and
try to relax.’

There was a confusion of noise and people at the end
of the corridor. Professor Nikitanova strode towards her students on
peacock-blue five-inch heels, followed by the Vice Chancellor and her team of
teaching assistants.

Brianne took in the bouncy blonde hair, the black
jumpsuit, the scarlet mouth from which hung a forbidden lighted cigarette, and
marvelled. She had met the rest of the Astrophysics faculty. It was headed by
Professor Partridge, a man in a cardigan his wife had knitted with hair
belonging to various family pets.

Nikitanova gave Brian Junior the keys and, while he
fumbled at the lock, she said, ‘Darling, slow down! Two years we have together,
unless I tire of you.

She laughed, and Brian Junior remembered the internet
rumour — that Nikitanova’s husband was a cultured oligarch who had ex-KGB
Special Forces operatives guarding his brilliant, beautiful and good-natured
wife. The operatives knew that should anything —
anything
—untoward
happen to her, then they would die screaming (but grateful that their ordeal
would soon be over).

Later
that night, Brian was lying on his bed trying to find a solution to a problem
Nikitanova had given her group —’To give exercise to the brains’ — when
somebody rapped on the door.

It was Poppy.

She started talking before she was even in the room.
‘I can’t sleep, so I’ve come to dialogue with you … sweet Jesus, it’s hot in
here?’

She was wearing a winceyette nightgown, similar to
the one traditionally worn by the wolf in
Little Red Riding Hood.
To
Brian Junior’s alarm she dipped down, took hold of the hem in both hands,
peeled the nightgown off and threw it into a corner.

The only naked women Brian Junior had seen before
were in pornographic magazines and internet videos, and the bodies in these
were the colour of lightly roasted chicken and devoid of body hair, so it was a
shock to see the wild black thatch of hair between her sinewy white thighs and
the tufts under her arms.

Brian Junior sat on the side of his bed and began to
run through the potentially infinite list of prime numbers in his head:

2,
3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73,
79, 83, 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, 127, 131, 137 …

Poppy’s breasts were thin and pendulous as she
roamed around the tiny room, moving his toiletries and the equipment on his
desk.

Brian Junior could not think of a single word to
say. He wanted to climb back into bed and go to sleep. He felt that something
very terrible lay ahead.

She came and sat cross-legged on the floor at his
feet. ‘You’re a virgin, aren’t you, my darling?’

Brian Junior scooted to the end of the bed and began
to straighten the desk, lining up pens, pencils and high-lighters. Alongside
his laptop and notebooks his hand moved over a transparent box of paper clips,
wondering where to place them satisfactorily. He tipped them out of their box
and started to group the paper clips together in lines of ten.

Poppy crawled up to him, wrapped her arms around his
legs and began to cry. ‘I loved you the moment I saw your face.’

Brian Junior was left with a single paper clip. This
was bad. One paper clip could not be allowed to exist. It did not fit in with
the groups. It grabbed all the attention — it was selfish, thinking only of
itself. Brian Junior looked at his face in the mirror above the desk. He knew
he was unusually handsome. It was very annoying He also knew that Poppy had
stolen and misquoted her declaration of love from a song by Roberta Flack. It
was one of his mother’s favourites. She had sung it to him and Brianne when
they were little kids.

He looked down at her and said, ‘Ewan MacColl composed
it in 1957. Roberta Flack recorded it in 1972. Coldcut used the Joanna Law a
cappella in
70 Minutes of Madness.
Mixed with Luke Slater and Harold
Budd.’

Poppy wondered when he would stop going on and on
about the stupid record.

He looked down at her again and said, with some animation,
‘It’s the greatest mix tape ever made.’

Eventually, she lifted her head, took his hand and
placed it over her left breast. She looked into his face and said, ‘My love, it’s
like the beating throat of a cag-ed bird.’

Brian Junior was repulsed and quickly removed his
hand. Some of her hair was stuck to the snot above her top lip. He could not
bear to look at it. He took the strands and tucked them behind her left ear.

She said, ‘I think our joy will fill the earth and
last till the end of time.’

Brian Junior said, ‘I know it won’t.’

Poppy asked, ‘What won’t?’

Brian Junior said, ‘Our joy. We have no joy to fill
the earth and last till the end of time. In addition, both of these things are
impossibilities. Joy cannot fill the earth. And neither can joy last till the
end of time. Since time can never end.’

Poppy mimed an extravagant yawn.

He wanted to ask her to leave but didn’t know how He
did not want to hurt or offend her, but he was desperate for escape and sleep.
He got up, extricated himself from her and picked up her nightgown. It was cold
and damp.

He handed it to her and said, ‘I want to show you
something.’

Poppy stopped crying.

He held out a hand, pulled her to her feet and indicated
the rows of paper clips, then picked up the single one and said, ‘Where would
you place this?’

She stared down at the paper clips, then back up at
his face. And then, in a voice he had not heard before, she said, ‘I’d stick it
up your fucking arse!’

She let herself out into the corridor, still naked.

Brian heard her banging on the door of the next room
where Ho, the Chinese boy, lived. Brian had exchanged a nervous smile with Ho
that first afternoon, when they were unpacking their food into the large fridge
and their allocated cupboards. Now he heard him open the door, then he heard
Poppy sobbing.

He went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. He had the
single paper clip in his hand and he twisted it into a tiny spear. He knew
that, unless he placed it somewhere, he would be awake until daybreak.

He opened the window as far as it would go and
flicked the twisted paper clip into the cold night. Before he closed the window
he looked up at the clear sky, where hundreds of stars were shining down on
him. He looked away quickly — before he had time to start identifying them, or
could think too deeply about the billions that remained invisible.

Brian
Junior woke at dawn, feeling agitated. He got out of bed and went outside to
look for the paper clip. It didn’t take long to find it. When he came to the
main door, he couldn’t get back inside. He had forgotten his key, as he had
done at least twice a week since he was thirteen.

He sat on the cold concrete doorstep, and waited.

It was Ho who let him in and volunteered the information
that he had been sent down by Poppy to buy breakfast for her. A double latte
and an Early Bird Breakfast. Then, from the newsagent, twenty Silk Cut,
Hello!
and
The Sun.
I make joke with Poppy. I say to her, “Cannot buy Sun.”.
She say, “Why not?” Then — this is my joke — I say, “Nobody can buy Sun, it too
far away and too hot!”‘

Ho’s round face beamed.

He was delighted with his joke, until they heard
Poppy shouting through the crack in Ho’s window, ‘Yo! Ho! Get a fucking move
on!’

Ho let Brian Junior into the building, then broke
into a run as he headed for the shops.

11

After
Eva had been in bed for a week, Ruby sent for Dr Bridges.

Eva could hear her mother talking to the doctor as
they ascended the stairs.

‘She’s very highly strung. Her dad used to say that
you could play a violin concerto on her nerve endings. My legs are very bad,
Doctor. The veins on my inner thighs look like a bunch of purple grapes.
Perhaps you could have a quick gander at them before you go?’

Eva didn’t know whether to lie down or sit up. She
was anxious that Dr Bridges would think she was wasting his time.

‘Here’s the doctor. You walked through the snow when
she was ten and had meningitis, didn’t you, Dr Bridges?’

Eva could see that Dr Bridges had tired of Ruby’s
imagined intimacy years ago. She sat up and hugged a pillow in front of her
chest.

Dr Bridges loomed over her. With his tweed cap and
Barbour jacket, he looked more like a gentleman farmer than a GP. He said, in
his booming voice, ‘Good morning. Your mother tells me that you have been in
bed for a week, is that right?’

Eva said, ‘Yes.’

Ruby sat on the side of the bed and held Eva’s hand.
‘She’s always been a healthy girl, Doctor. I breastfed her for two and a half
years. She ruined my poor boobies. They look like them balloons what have lost
most of their air.’

Dr Bridges examined Ruby with a professional eye. An
overactive thyroid,’ he thought, ‘and a red face —probably a drinker. And that
black hair! Who does she think she’s fooling?’ He said to Eva, ‘I’d like to
take a look at you.’ Then he turned to Ruby. ‘Would you mind leaving the room?’

Ruby was hurt and disappointed. She was looking forward
to giving the doctor the details of Eva’s medical history. She reluctantly went
out on to the landing. ‘There’ll be a cup of tea waiting for you when you’re
done, Doctor.’