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

As soon as the mourners were gathered inside the hall, they heard Eva singing a familiar tune. ‘I stood upon the shore, And watched in sweet peace, The cheery fish’s bath, In the clear little brook.’

Titania whispered to Ruby, ‘It’s Schubert, “The Trout”.’

Ruby said, ‘Why are people always telling me things I already know?’

When Eva switched to German, Ruby joined in. ‘Ich stand an dem Gestade, Und sah in süβer Ruh, Des muntern Fischleins Bade, Im klaren Bächlein zu .’

The group looked at each other and smiled, and Brianne said, ‘Yeah, go G’ma.’

Ruby said, without modifying her voice, ‘She practised that bleddy song in English and German for weeks on end. It nearly drove me mad.’

Eva shouted down the stairs, ‘Yes, and where’s my gold medal now, Mum?’

‘Oh, not that bleddy medal again! Get over it, Eva!’

Ruby said to Stanley, ‘She knew I hated clutter. She should have put it away somewhere safe.’

Stanley smiled, he was a tidy man himself.

She hobbled to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up, ‘It weren’t real gold anyway!’

Much later, when Eva asked Brianne how the funeral had gone, she said, ‘Brian Junior made a dick of himself giving the eulogy, but it was OK. Nobody cried, except Dad.’

‘Couldn’t you have squeezed a tear out, Brianne? Surely it’s only good manners to cry at a funeral.’

Brianne said, ‘You’re such a hypocrite! I thought you were all for truth and beauty, and all that nineteenth century shit.’

Brianne was angry and disappointed that Alexander had paid her such little attention. He had spent no more time with her than he had with the rest of the family. OK, so he didn’t love her. But he ought to have acknowledged that they had a close bond. She had managed to sit next to him in the church, but she could have been a sack of old potatoes for all he cared.

He had disrespected her. She was upset. She needed to tell her online friends how she felt. She went into Brian Junior’s bedroom, and fired up her laptop.

He was already online, posting to Twitter. He typed:

Gran y = worm bait. She rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ towards non-existent Jesus.

He switched tabs to the Facebook group set up in honour of his mother. Using one of his troll accounts, he began to slag off the crowd outside his house, with particular reference to Sandy Lake. He ended his diatribe by updating the troll account status to ‘Anybody got a spare grenade?’

Brianne was on the same site, using her own name. She typed:

There’s a skanky black wasteman outside my front door. He thinks he’s a doorman, but he should impose a dress code on himself cos his locks are rank like dead donkey’s tails. Cut ‘em off, granddad.

Alexander was standing on the doorstep, illuminated by the porch light. He was wearing his navy-blue Crombie overcoat and smoking a cigarette.

There were several desperate cries, people begging to see Eva before the evening deadline. She had started to give an audience to five people each day. Who she saw was determined by Alexander, who picked a surprisingly varied bunch of representatives from the crowd.

This afternoon’s consultations had included a 5 7-year-old whose mother wanted to marry a man in his seventies – how could she stop her?

Eva had said, ‘You don’t stop her, you buy her a bottle of champagne and give them your blessing.’

The second was a feather enthusiast who believed that Eva was hiding a fine set of wings. Eva had turned round, pulled her T-shirt up to her neck and showed the enthusiast her unadorned back.

There was a teenage girl who told Eva that she wanted to die and join Kurt Cobain in his crib in heaven. And there was a super-obese American man who had flown from New Orleans, having paid for two Business Class seats, to tell Eva that she was a reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, and he would like to ‘conversate’ with her.

And, of course, there were the recently bereaved who could not bear the harsh reality that they would never see their loved ones again. They sent notes and photographs, asking Eva to speak to their dead and relay messages from them to the living. Eva worked hard to damp down the emotion in her room. She began to turn away if there were tears.

Alexander ground his cigarette out under his boot and threw it into the gutter. He spoke quietly to Sandy, saying, ‘That’s it for tonight. Listen to your good side. No shouting to Eva tonight. Have some respect. There’s been a funeral here today.’

That night, when Alexander had settled Venus and Thomas in their beds in Brian Junior’s old room, he looked out of the window before getting into bed himself. He saw that the only person left on the opposite pavement was Sandy Lake, sitting outside her tent.

She had made herself as comfortable as possible, supplementing her Karrimat with a cardboard and newspaper mattress. With the aid of a head torch, she was reading a magazine dedicated to angel-worshipping celebrities.

Alexander pushed the window sash up a little to let in some air. Sandy looked up immediately, and there was something about her stillness that disturbed him. He closed the window and locked it.

Sandy was down in the dumps tonight. Penelope had abandoned her and gone home to nurse her bronchitis. Sandy had been here for the longest, and still hadn’t had a proper audience with Eva. She needed more than a ten-minute session. Eva had been promising her another consultation, but for some reason it kept getting postponed, and Sandy was losing her patience. She needed to tell Eva her life story – how unkind people had been to her throughout her life, and how, when she went to the shops around the corner and talked to Mr Barthi about Eva and the angels, he would refuse to listen.

He had said to her recently, ‘Your nonsense is lost to me. I am an agnostic.’

It was Alexander’s fault. It was he who was keeping her from Eva. He was jealous, because Sandy had become the world’s self-appointed expert on the Eva phenomenon. Her scrapbooks had more press clippings than any of the other Eva fans, and she could recite, by heart, the highlights of Eva’s rise to celebritydom. Her iPad had links to every Eva-related site and blog, and she was proud of the efficiency of her news alerts, which constantly searched for Eva updates.

She was the main source for the dissemination of, and misinformation about, Eva’s supposed spiritual powers. Sandy was prone to exaggeration, describing a fictional audience with Eva as being, ‘In the presence of an unworldly being. She has an ethereal beauty that cannot be matched in the whole of the world. And every word she speaks is wise and true.’

When pressed by newcomers to the crowd to reveal what Eva had said that was so impressive, Sandy would wipe her eyes and say, ‘Sorry, I always mist up when speaking of Eva…’ Then, after what her audience found to be an infuriatingly extended pause, she would say, ‘Eva spake unto me and the words she did say were for my ears alone. But when I was backing out of her room, I saw her rise from the bed and hover there for a few seconds. She was giving me a sign! It was Eva’s way of telling me that I have been chosen.’

When cynics questioned Sandy and asked, ‘Chosen for what?’ the chosen one would reply, in sanctimonious tones, ‘I’m waiting for another sign, it will come from the sky.’

Sandy needed Eva to address the world and tell all the countries that were at war to stop. And to help all the kiddies who had no water or food. She was sure that the world would listen to Eva, and then there would be joy in angel heaven, and there would be no more fighting, no floods or famines or earthquakes. There would be peace and joy and love throughout the world, so it was imperative that she talk to Eva.