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

Leather Trousers said, ‘It might be good if you checked your Australian data again, Dr Beaver, before the eyes of the world are upon us. It’s kinda important that we get this right.’

Brian said, ‘I’m almost certain. But the computer models don’t all agree.’

‘Almost!’ bellowed Leather Trousers. ‘Do we wake the Prime Minister, the Secretary General of the United Nations and the President of the United States and tell them that we’re almost certain that the earth is fucked?’

Brian explained pedantically, ‘You don’t wake the President. The call will go to the NASA Political Liaison officer in Washington.’ Then he continued weakly, ‘It could be that the metadata from the star maps is corrupted. We’ve always known that our database integration was potentially suspect. And I trusted Dr Abbot’s interpolation techniques -’

Leather Trousers shouted, ‘And where is she when we need her? On fucking maternity leave up her precious Welsh mountain, suckling that moon-faced dribbler, with no landline, no mobile signal, and the most high-tech thing she’s got in that mould-filled hovel she calls a cottage is a fucking Dualit toaster! Get hold of the leek-muncher!’

Several hours later, when Mrs Hordern passed the office again with the electric polishing machine, she looked in warily through the half-open door and saw a small crowd of people laughing and shaking hands. The scene reminded her of Skippy, the television kangaroo, when he and his human friends had overcome their difficulties at the end of each episode.

Brian was sitting apart, with his hands linked together, staring down at the floor.

As Mrs Hordern left work, she passed Wayne Tonkin. He was polishing his new sit-on lawnmower.

He stopped and said, ‘So, the world ain’t finishin’ next week. Dickhead Beaver got his sums wrong. That asteroid’s gonna miss us by twenty-seven million miles.’

‘I was sort of looking forward to there being no Christmas,’ said Mrs Hordern. ‘It’s such hard work. No bugger lifts a finger in my house, ‘part from me.’

Wayne rolled his eyes and turned the lawnmower engine on. He was longing to use it, but the bastard weather wouldn’t let him for a few months yet.

Brian Junior and Brianne were not quite sure how Poppy came to be in their dad’s car when he drove them back from Leeds to Leicester for the Christmas holiday. Neither of them wanted her in the car, or in their house, and the prospect of spending four weeks with her appalled and horrified them both.

Poppy had been told that Brian was expected and she hung about in the lobby downstairs, waiting to introduce herself to him. She had overheard the twins laughing about their father’s abysmal dress sense – and she had seen a photograph she knew to be Dr Beaver, in which his face was lurking behind a straggling black beard – so she knew what to look for. Several likely candidates walked through the lobby before Dr Beaver appeared.

When Brian pressed the button to summon the groaning lift, Poppy slipped in beside him and said, ‘This lift’s awfully slow. I sometimes think that I’m in a Samuel Beckett play.’

Brian laughed. He had played Lucky in a student production of Waiting for Godot and had won praise for his ‘frenetic energy’.

While they slowly ascended to the sixth floor, Poppy told Brian that her parents were in a coma at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. It was the first time she would be alone at Christmas, she told him.

Brian thought she might cry. His heart went out to her.

Poppy had a quick flash of memory. It was the Ninewells Hospital Wikipedia page. She gave him a big brave smile and said, ‘But Mum and Dad are lucky, in a way. They’re in the first Frank Gehry building in Britain. Bob Geldof opened it. I can’t wait to tell them…, when they wake up.’

‘Yeah, I like Gehry’s work,’ said Brian. ‘Very space age. It’s much like the module we intend to build, well, on the moon.’ When she asked him what he did for a living, he said, ‘I’m Dr Brian Beaver, I’m an astronomer. ‘Poppy squealed and clapped her hands together.

‘Wow!’ she said. ‘That’s what I want to be! What an amazing coincidence!’

Brian agreed, and said, ‘It is, indeed, amazing.’

Then she slapped her hand over her mouth and said, ‘OMG! You must be Brianne’s dad, he’s an astronomer!’

‘Guilty as charged,’ said Brian. He thought Poppy was a sweetheart, enchanting, with her wild hair and pale skin. Her sinewy, exotic sexuality diverted him from asking any further questions about her unlikely astronomical aspirations.

‘So, what will you do for Christmas?’ he asked. ‘Where will you go?’

‘Oh, I’ll just stay here and go out for walks. I’ve no money. I’ve spent it all visiting Mum and Dad,’ she explained, wistfully.

There was a companionable silence for a moment.

‘So, you know Brianne?’

‘Know her? We’re the best of friends. I can’t bear the thought of being apart from her for four whole weeks.’

She smiled bravely, but Brian could see that the poor kid was crying inside. He didn’t take long to decide. When they got out of the lift, he told her to pack a bag and gave her his car keys.

‘When you’re ready, go and sit in the silver Peugeot Estate. It’ll be a fantastic surprise for the twins.’

Poppy fell on his neck, uttering thanks and other appreciative sounds that were not quite words.

Brian held her tight, laughing at first, but as she continued her iron grip around his neck he began to take notice of her young, firm flesh and the musky perfume she wore. He instructed himself to think about the gristly meat he had been forced to swallow at school dinners – it usually did the trick.

The twins travelled down in the lift, leaving their father to use Brian Junior’s en-suite lavatory in preparation for the hundred-mile journey back to Leicester.

Brianne said, ‘Four weeks without that crazy cow.’

Brian Junior smiled one of his rare smiles. Before the lift door opened, they unsuccessfully executed a high five.

Brianne said, ‘Brian Junior, you never get the timing right! How many have we practised? You must be hopeless in bed. You have absolutely no sense of rhythm.’

‘I had enough to impregnate Poppy.’

‘You can’t make a woman pregnant if you keep your underpants on and don’t get an erection.’

‘I know that! I also know that if you don’t let the sperm out, your balls explode.’

They left the warmth of the building and emerged into a confluence of harsh winds and snow flurries. They approached their father’s car and saw somebody sitting in the front passenger seat.

As they neared the car the front passenger door opened, and Poppy shouted, ‘Surprise!’

The journey was horrible.

The boot was full of Poppy’s suitcases and black bin liners bulging with her mad clothes and customised boots and shoes. Brianne and Brian Junior sat uncomfortably with their own luggage jammed in around them.

Poppy talked all the way from Leeds to Leicester. If he hadn’t been driving, Brian would have sat at her feet -as if she were Homer and wise beyond her years.

He thought, ‘She’s the daughter I should have had, a girl whose shoe size is smaller than mine. Who takes forever in the bathroom, titivating herself- unlike Brianne, who sounds like a grunting pig when she washes her face and is out of the bathroom in two minutes.’

Brian Junior thought about the tadpole baby inside Poppy’s womb. He couldn’t remember what had happened on the night she came into his bed. The images he summoned up were a tangle of arms and legs and heat and a fish-finger smell, the clash of teeth, of rapid breathing, and an unimaginably wonderful feeling of falling away out of his mortal body and into an unexpected universe.