Sue Townsend - The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

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.

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.

He looked at it and laughed. ‘Yeah, I can see why you’d want to get rid of that. It’s like a wooden Stonehenge.’ He opened the doors and looked inside.

The wardrobe was still jammed with Brian and Eva’s clothes and shoes.

Are you going to empty it?’

‘No.” she said. ‘I have to stay in or on the bed.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you were ill.’

She said, ‘I’m not ill. I’m just retreating from the world… I think.’

‘Yeah? Well, we all have our own way of doing that. So, will you be staying in bed?’

She said, ‘I have to.’

And where do you want me to put the clothes and the shoes?’

It took hours to empty her side of the wardrobe.

They developed a system. Alexander got four large bin liners from the kitchen. One was for recycling, another for charity shops, a third for selling on eBay, and the last was to take to the vintage clothing shop that Alexander’s sister ran in newly fashionable Deptford. There was a separate bag for shoes.

It took a long time because each garment evoked a memory of time and place. There was her last school uniform – a grey pleated skirt, white shirt and green blazer trimmed with purple braid, which she had worn until she left school. The sight of it shocked Eva. She was sixteen again, with the heavy hand of failure on one shoulder and a weighty bag of textbooks and folders on the other.

It went into the eBay pile.

Alexander pulled out an evening dress. It was off the shoulder, black chiffon scattered with non-precious gemstones.

‘Now this I like,’ he said as he took it over to her.

‘My first Summer Ball with Brian at the university.’ She sniffed the bodice and smelled patchouli oil, sweat and cigarettes. She couldn’t make a decision as to where the dress should go.

Alexander did it for her. He folded it into the vintage bag. From then on, it was he who sorted the clothes.

There were the sundresses with halter necks that she’d worn at the seaside. There were many pairs of jeans: boot cut, straight leg, flared, white denim, blue, black. He refused to bag a cream chiffon evening gown she had worn at a dinner held in honour of Sir Patrick Moore, until she pointed out the large red stain on the bodice, caused by Brian’s clumsiness with his late-night cheese and beetroot sandwich.