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

She was horrified at how quickly the tree was disassembled. Soon there was only the trunk left. She had a small hope that her tree had only been drastically pollarded and would sprout new growth in the spring of next year.

The noise stopped. The machines had been turned off. She could see into the front garden now that the branches had gone. The workmen were drinking tea.

She knocked on the window and shouted, ‘Leave the trunk, please leave the trunk!’

The men looked up at her window and laughed. What did they think she was doing? Inviting them upstairs?

The machines started up again and in a short while her tree trunk had been turned into logs. The light in the room was harsh after the dappled green glow she had been used to.

She felt cold, though she was covered in sweat. She climbed under the duvet and pulled it over her head.

In the early afternoon, Eva heard a ragged cheer from the crowd and Peter’s ladder appeared level with the lower window frame. She straightened her camisole, put on the shrunken cashmere cardigan she was using as a bed jacket and automatically ran her fingers through her hair.

Peter shouted through the glass, ‘Still here then?’

‘Yes!’ she shouted back, with forced good humour. ‘Still here.’

Eva wondered how anybody could be so heartless. Didn’t he care that her magnificent tree was gone?

‘Magnificent?’ he laughed, when she said this to him. ‘It was a sycamore, they’re the weeds of the tree world.’ He added, ‘I don’t want to be cheeky, Eva, but what’s happened to your face?’

Eva was not listening. ‘It was Brian,’ she said. ‘He hated that tree. He said the roots were coming up through the pavement.’

‘They were,’ Peter confirmed. He wanted to move the topic on from that bloody tree. ‘Only a hundred and twelve shopping days till Christmas,’ he said, climbing into the room.

Eva could hear Sandy Lake screaming, ‘Eva, I’m getting cross with you now! Why won’t you see me?’

Peter laughed. We’re getting Abigail a motorised wheelchair. Well, us and Social Services.’

Eva asked, ‘Peter, would you do me a favour? Would you help me to board the window up from the inside?’

In his opinion, she had gone downhill fast – in the old days, they would have had a cup of tea and smoked a fag together. ‘Sure,’ he said.

Peter had learned, in his twenty years of window cleaning, that the customers on his round were a bit eccentric, not one of them was normal. The clothes people wore in bed! The unexpected squalor of their houses! The weird stuff they ate! Mr Crossley – who had so many books he could hardly walk between the rooms for them!

Barricading a window from the inside was no big deal to Peter. He had suitable materials in the back of his van. He was often asked to board up a window after a domestic or a football had shattered the peace. He went back down the ladder to an ironic cheer from the crowd.

When Peter went to his van, Sandy Lake hovered around the tailgate and interrogated him about Eva.

‘Can she hear me in her bedroom?’

Peter said, ‘She can hear you all right.’

Sandy thumped the side of his van and yelled, ‘I have this very important message! It’s appertaining to the future of our earth!’

He turned his back to assemble the chipboard and tools he would need. Sandy Lake saw her opportunity. She dashed across the road and climbed up the ladder like a fifteen-stone mountain goat.

When Eva saw Sandy’s weather-beaten face in the window, she pulled a pillow towards her as though it were a shield.

Sandy stared at Eva and said, Well, now I’m really cross! What happened to you? You’re just an ordinary woman! You’re not special at all! You shouldn’t have any grey in your hair or crow’s feet around your eyes – and they’re not laughter lines!’

She tried to clamber over the sill, but the ladder moved slightly. Sandy looked down, and further down, and then further down still. Some say that Sandy swooned and fell, others that she caught the hem of her maxi skirt under the heel of her ankle boot. Peter thought he had seen a pale hand push the ladder away from the sill.

Eva imagined she felt the house move slightly when Sandy fell into the overgrown lavender bush that Eva had planted years before. There were screams of horror and of excitement. Sandy had landed in an ungainly position, and the anarchist hurried to pull the maxi skirt down from around her waist, where it had bunched. William sort of loved Sandy, but he had to, obviously, kind of, be honest and tell it like it is and admit that the sight of Sandy’s naked lower regions was totally inappropriate.

Sandy wasn’t dead. As soon as she recovered consciousness, she rolled away from the spiky lavender and lay flat on her back. The anarchist took off his leather flying jacket and put it under her head.

When the ambulance arrived, the female paramedic chided her for climbing a ladder in a maxi skirt and high heels. ‘That’s an accident whimpering to happen,’ she said, in disgust.

Eva and Peter started to board up the window, to the sound of the crowd’s cheers and shrieks of excitement and dismay. Now they could see Eva in her nondescript clothes, with her unbrushed hair and bare face, they could not hold on to their previous belief in her.

PC Hawk shouted, ‘If she was a true saint, she’d be perfect in every way!’

A man with binoculars shouted, ‘She’s got sweat patches under her arms!’

A woman wearing a man’s suit and a dog collar said, ‘Female saints do not sweat, I think that Mrs Beaver has been posturing.’

PC Hawk had been ordered to get rid of the crowd. He shouted, ‘She’s been taken over by an evil spirit, and the spirit is in the holy chapatti!’

Some followed him to view the chapatti, which had been painted with preservative, varnished and was being exhibited in the local library. Others started to pack their belongings. There were emotional leave-takings, taxis came and went, until there was only William Wainwright sitting inside Sandy Lake’s tent. He might try to visit her in hospital tomorrow – but then again, he might not.

He was an anarchist, wasn’t he? And nobody could pin him down.

The twins were working on Brianne’s newly acquired desktop computer. They were exploring the labyrinthine corridors of the Ministry of Defence, after a failed attempt to destroy their father’s credit rating. It was hot in Brianne’s room and they were sitting in their vests and pants. Flies buzzed over half-eaten sandwiches.

From the open window they could hear students calling to each other, enjoying the Indian summer. A group of them were sitting on the grass outside Sentinel Towers, laughing and drinking from cans of cider.

A girl’s fragile voice sang ‘Summer Is Icumen In’.

Brianne muttered, ‘Fucking Performing Arts, don’t they ever stop performing?’

The girl’s voice was joined by others until each voice was weaving an intricate vocal pattern.

From a room where politics students had gathered to drink Polish vodka and condemn every known political system came the sound of bombs falling and machine-gun fire. They were remarkably good impressions – evidence of long hours of practice and, conversely, of the few hours spent in lectures or writing essays.

Brianne said, looking at the screen, ‘How many years, Bri?’

It was their private joke, short for, ‘How many years in prison?’

Their hacking was motivated as much by curiosity as it was by the accumulation of money.

Before Brian Junior could reply, there was a shocking crash and the door to the room fell in on them, followed seconds later by the sound of Brian Junior’s door collapsing. He tried to reach the computer to wipe the hard drive, but his wrist was chopped by a black-gloved hand. There was roaring shouting confusion.