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

What could be more important?

She looked up at Eva’s lighted window, said a prayer and climbed inside her tent, where William Wainwright was sleeping like a baby on barbiturates.

It seemed to Eva that every time she looked out of the window, she saw Sandy Lake looking up at her with a beatific smile. The woman had ruined her view of the world outside.

Earlier that evening, Eva had cursed and said to Alexander, ‘Does that crazy woman never sleep?’

Alexander said, ‘Even when she does sleep, she keeps her eyes open. But don’t worry, I’m next door. Just knock on the wall if you need me.’

In late February, after the twins had returned to Leeds, they settled back into Sentinel Towers with relief- it was impossible to do any serious work in Bowling Green Road. According to Brian Junior, the doorbell rang on a mean average of 9.05 times per hour.

They decided that they would work together from now on. Each would help the other with their essays and assignments, leaving them more time to spend on their Special Projects.

They started with their finances and sold their mother’s gift of jewellery in a Cash Generator in the city centre. They agreed that in future they would not allow sentiment to influence their plans.

In the second week of their second term, they had successfully hacked into the university’s accommodation records and changed the status of their accounts from ‘Rent Arrears’ to ‘Rent Paid in Full until 2013’. The day after this triumph, which brought each of them an extra £400 a month, they went shopping for clothes.

They sat down on a sofa opposite the changing rooms in Debenhams and talked for a long time about their lives and what they wanted in the future.

Brianne confessed that if she couldn’t have Alexander, she wouldn’t have any man.

Brian Junior told Brianne that he would never marry. ‘I’m not sexually attracted to women or to men,’ he said.

Brianne smiled and said, ‘So, we stick together for life?’

Brian Junior agreed. ‘You’re the only person I can stand to be with for more than four minutes.’

When they had tried their new clothes on, they came out of their respective changing rooms and were astonished at how similar they could look. They were both wearing black and, after a few negotiations, and going back and forth to the rails, they ended up with a uniform. It was all black apart from a leopard-skin belt and the silver accessories on their black cowboy boots.

Mindful of their new and certain future wealth, they left their old clothes in the changing room. As they walked arm in arm through the shopping centre, they began to work on synchronising their steps.

A colourist at Toni & Guy obeyed their instructions and dyed their hair magenta red. After a stylist had given them both a severe geometric cut, they left the salon and headed to the best tattoo parlour in South Yorkshire.

When the operative asked them if they were related to the woman in the bed called Beaver, they responded, ‘No.’

He was disappointed. ‘She’s cool,’ he said.

They were given a rudimentary test for allergies and, while they waited for the results, they sat outside a coffee bar so they could smoke. Nihilists like them felt it was their duty to smoke.

They lit their cigarettes and smoked contentedly before Brian Junior said, ‘Will we ever go back to Bowling Green Road, Brianne?’

What, and have to interface with those awful people we used to call Mum and Dad? Or, as we now know them, The Great Adulterer and his wife, The False Prophet.’

Brian Junior said, ‘I used to love them when I was little – and you did too, Brianne, you can’t deny it!’

‘Little kids are idiots, they believe in the fucking Tooth Fairy, Santa, God!’

‘I believed in them,’ lamented Brian Junior. ‘I believed they’d always do the right thing. Tell the truth. Control their animal desires.’

Brianne laughed. ‘Animal desires? You’ve either been reading the Old Testament or D. H. Lawrence.’

Brian Junior said, ‘Disneyland hurts me. The thought that while we were queuing with Mum for the It’s a Small World ride, Dad was back at the hotel paying for a prostitute with his credit card.’

Brianne said, ‘We’ll say a final farewell to them, shall we?’

Neither of them had a piece of paper. Who used the stuff these days? Together they erased every parental reference from their laptops. Then, Brianne put a virtual fire on screen, and typed in ‘Eva Beaver’ and ‘Brian Beaver’. Brian Junior put his index finger on top of Brianne’s, and together they pressed the key that would cause their parents’ names to burn, and eradicate their memory for all time.

They discussed the tattoo they would each have.

It would be two halves of an equation that together made one perfect sum.

After they left the tattoo studio, they attracted a great deal of attention – but nobody, not even the lowlife who hung around town in the middle of the day, dared to comment.

Brian Junior drew strength and confidence from his sister. In the past, he had walked down the street with his gaze on the pavement. Now he stared straight ahead and people moved away, out of his path.

Eva had watched the leaves of the sycamore unfurl. For the first time, it was possible to have the window open. She was on her back doing exercises on her bed, slowly raising two legs until she could feel her abdomen tightening. She could tell that Alexander was on the door from the wisps of cigarette smoke drifting up through the open window.

She had heard him arguing with Venus and Thomas earlier that morning. Neither of them knew where their school shoes were. Eva had laughed when she heard Alexander ask, ‘Where did you put them last?’

He was following the unofficial parents’ script, she thought.

For how many thousands of years had children been asked the same question? When did children start to wear shoes, and what were they made of? Animal skin, or woven vegetation?

There were so many things she didn’t know.

She had also heard Alexander say, ‘Finish your food, there are children starving in Africa.’

It had been Chinese children starving when she was a girl, thought Eva.

He had answered Thomas’s question, ‘Why do children have to go to school?’ with the terse reply, ‘Because they do.’

If it hadn’t been for the crowd opposite, she would have liked to watch them leaving the house, Alexander dreadlocked and elegant in his navy overcoat, the children in their red and grey uniforms.

Her mother had complained to her that the children’s paintings and drawings were ‘taking over the bleddy house’. She had added, ‘I wouldn’t mind, but they’re all rubbish.’

Eva could tell that her mother was baking today. The room was full of the sickly sweet smell of the cakes that Ruby would sell later to the crowd.

Eva had asked her not to do this. ‘You’re encouraging them to hang about, and you’re exploiting them.’

But Ruby had bought herself a new living-room carpet with the proceeds of her tea and cake sales. She had refused to stop, saying, ‘If you don’t like it, get out of bed. They’ll soon go away when they see that you’re just a very ordinary woman.’

Eva turned her head during her neck exercises and saw a pair of magpies fly past with bits of straw clamped in their beaks. They were nesting in a hollow in the sycamore trunk. She had been watching their comings and goings with great interest for a week.

‘Two for joy,’ she thought.

She wondered if it were possible for a man and a woman to be completely happy together.

When she and Brian had, at his insistence, thrown dinner parties, the married couples had usually begun the evening with conventional good manners. But, by the time Eva was serving her home-made profiteroles, there was often one couple who were transformed into bickering pedants, questioning the veracity of their partner’s anecdotes and contradicting them in tedious detail. ‘No, it was Wednesday, not Thursday. And you were wearing your blue suit, not the grey.’ They left early with faces as set as Easter Island statues. Or stayed on and on, helping themselves to strong liquor, and falling into a drunken morass of depression.