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

Brianne wanted to rid the world of Poppy, and spent the journey planning in detail how it could be done.

As they turned off the motorway at junction 21 Brian tried to prepare the twins for the ‘changes in our domestic arrangements’.

He told them, ‘Mum’s been a bit off colour.’

‘Is that why she hasn’t phoned us for three months?’ said Brianne bitterly.

Poppy turned her head and said, ‘That’s shocking – a mother not ringing her children.’

Brian said, ‘You’re right, Poppy.’

Brian Junior said to Brianne, ‘We could have kept trying.’

Eva was longing to hold the twins in her arms, especially since she wouldn’t have to clean their rooms or put clean sheets on their beds, and somebody else would be responsible for their meals and buying their Christmas presents. And perhaps it was Brian’s turn to be irritated by their sloth and mess.

‘Yes,’ she thought. ‘Yes, let somebody else grovel under their beds and retrieve the cereal bowls with the dried-on milk and sugar, and the mugs and plates. The brown apple cores, dried banana peel and the dirty socks.’ She laughed out loud in her pure, white room.

Brianne and Brian Junior were shocked when they saw their mother sitting up in bed in the white box that used to be their parents’ bedroom. Eva held her arms wide open, and the twins shuffled into them.

She could not speak. She was overcome with the pleasure of holding them, of feeling their bodies – which had perceptibly changed in the three months since she had last seen them.

Brianne needed her hair cutting. Eva thought, ‘I’ll give her sixty quid, so she can go somewhere decent.’

Brian Junior was agitated – Eva could feel the tightening of his muscles – and unusually he had allowed several days’ worth of stubble to grow on his face, which she thought made him resemble a blond Orlando Bloom. However, Brianne’s black facial hair cried out for a waxing appointment.

They pulled away from her and sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed.

Eva said, ‘Well, tell me everything. Are you happy at Leeds?’

The twins looked at each other, and Brianne said, ‘We are, apart from -Eva heard somebody downstairs exclaim, ‘Wow, I already feel at home!’

The twins exchanged another look, and they got up and hurried out.

Brian shouted upstairs, ‘Twins, help me with this luggage!’

There was a thundering of footsteps on the stairs and landing, and then a strange-looking girl in a tatty cocktail dress, which she wore with an old man’s dressing gown, the cord of which she had wound around her head Gaddafi-style, threw herself into Eva’s arms. Eva patted her back and shoulders and noticed that the girl’s white bra straps were filthy.

‘Bob Geldof has been keeping a twenty-four-hour vigil at the side of my parents’ beds,’ announced the extraordinary girl.

Eva asked, ‘Why?’

‘You don’t know?’ the girl said. ‘I’m Poppy. I’m Brianne and Brian Junior’s best friend.’

Eva could hear Brian Junior and Brianne grunting as they staggered up the stairs with Poppy’s luggage, and was startled when Poppy shouted, ‘I hope that’s not my luggage you’re throwing about. There are precious objets d’art in those cases.’ She got up from Eva’s bed and went into the bathroom, where she left the door ajar.

A few seconds later, Eva heard Poppy’s one-sided conversation.

‘Hello, Peaches Ward, please.’

Silence.

‘Hello, is that Sister Cooke?’

Silence.

‘I’m very well. I’m staying with friends in the country.’

Silence.

‘How are Mum and Dad?’

Silence.

‘Oh no! Should I come up?’

Silence.

‘Are you sure? I could easily -’

Silence.

‘How long do you think they’ve got? Tell me, I need to know!’

Silence.

‘No! No! Not six weeks! I wanted them to be there when I graduated.’

Silence.

‘It breaks my heart when I think that this will be their last Christmas! [Pause] Thank you, Sister, but I only do what any loving daughter would do for her dying parents.’

Silence.

‘Yes, I wish I had the money to visit them over the Christmas holiday, but I am penniless, Sister. I’ve spent my money on rail fares and, er… grapes.’

Silence.

‘No, I am an only child and I have no living relations. My family were wiped out in the last Chicken Flu epidemic. But, hey ho.’

Silence.

‘No, I’m not brave. If I were [sob] brave [sob], I wouldn’t be crying now.’

Eva slid down the pillows and pretended to be asleep. She heard Poppy come back into the bedroom, give a tut of annoyance and stomp out in her workman’s boots, which she wore without laces. The boots clumped down the stairs, out of the front door and into the street.

Brian, Brianne and Brian Junior were on the landing, discussing whose room they should take Poppy’s luggage to.

Brian Junior sounded uncharacteristically vehement. ‘Not mine, please, not mine.’

Brianne said, ‘You invited her, Dad. She ought to sleep in your room.

Brian said, ‘Things are bad between me and Mum. I’m sleeping in the shed, at Mum’s request.’

Brianne said, ‘Oh God! Are you getting a divorce?’

Brian Junior asked, at exactly the same time, ‘So, will we be buying two Christmas trees this year. Dad? One for us in the house, and one for you in the shed?’

Brian said, ‘Why are you wittering on about divorce and bloody Christmas trees? My heart is breaking as we speak here. But never mind about silly old Dad! Why should he enjoy the warmth and light of the house he’s still bloody paying for?’

He would have liked his children to give him a comforting hug. He remembered watching The Waltons on television, when he was young. His mother would be making up her face, preparing to go out with whoever was the latest ‘uncle’. Brian remembered the smell of her powder and how deft she was with the little brushes. The last scene, when the whole family said goodnight to each other, had always brought a lump to his throat.

But instead, Brianne said angrily, ‘So, where do we put the mad cow’s luggage?’

Brian said, ‘She’s your best pal, Brianne. I naturally assumed that she would sleep in your room.

‘My best pal! I’d sooner have an incontinent tramp with mental health issues as my “best pal” than that…’

Brianne could not properly articulate her loathing. She had come home to find her mother permanently in bed, in a stark-white box, obviously mad, and now her father expected her to share a room with that bloodsucking vampire, Poppy, who had ruined her first term at university.

The luggage was still on the landing when Poppy rang Brian to say that ‘an old man with a horribly scarred face’ had followed her from the newsagent’s where she’d been buying her Rizlas. She had called the police and was hiding from him in a park nearby.

Brian said into his mobile, ‘That’s almost certainly.

Stanley Crossley, he’s a lovely man, he lives at the end of our road.’

Brianne snatched the phone from her father. ‘His face is scarred because he was almost burned alive in a Spitfire. Or have you never heard of the Second World War? Phone the police now and tell them you’ve made a mistake!’

But it was too late. They could hear the sirens wailing outside. Poppy disconnected the call.

Eva punched the pillows in her rage and frustration. Her peace had been shattered. She didn’t want to hear raised voices outside her bedroom door, or sirens in the street. And she didn’t want that mad girl to spend another five minutes in her house. The Stanley Crossley she knew was a reserved and polite man who never failed to lift his hat when he and Eva passed in the street.