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

Brian thought, ‘I wonder if it has been scientifically proven that Homo sapiens can actually expire from a surfeit of love? If so, I’m a dying man.’

Poppy gritted her teeth, and thought, ‘C’mon, Poppy, come on, girl, it’ll all be over in five minutes. Close your eyes and think of Brian Junior.’

After the little struggle on the bed was over, and Brian lay on his back gasping for air, Poppy looked down at him and thought, ‘He looks like an overfed, dying goldfish.’ She said, Wow! That was awesome! Wow! Wow! Amazing!’

Brian thought, ‘Eva never once responded to my lovemaking like Poppy does.’

Poppy climbed off him and went back into the bathroom. He heard the shower over the bath running, and for a moment he thought about joining her. But his knees had been giving him gip lately and he wasn’t sure if he could lift his legs over the side of the bath. He suspected arthritis, it was in the Beaver family genes.

Poppy stayed in the shower for a long time. She spent most of it sitting in the bath and watching the hot water spiralling down the plughole.

When she got out, Brian was in a deep sleep. She found £250 in his wallet and, on the ‘personal details’ page of his Letts Diary, the code to his debit card. After checking his trouser and jacket pockets, she found £7.39 in small change and his phone. She scrolled through some of his photographs, they were mostly boring stars and planets. However, there was one of Brian with his wife and kids, taken in front of a gigantic rocket.

Brian and the twins looked like dorks, but Eva was beautiful. Poppy’s throat tightened. She knew she wasn’t beautiful or nice or famous like Eva, but she had something that Eva would never have again, her youth. Her own flesh was smooth and tight, and men like Brian would pay heavily to touch it.

As she dressed, she composed a plan. She grabbed the little pencil and pad that the hotel provided and sat down at the desk to write.

Start going to lectures.

Prostitute self with more old men.

Seduce married lecturer, tell him after one month I’m pregnant.

Accept payments towards cost of baby.

Go on holiday to Thailand when baby nearly due (disguise bump from airline).

Have baby.

Sell baby.

Return from holiday in mourning.

Show photo of pretty deceased baby to all three lovers.

When she was dressed, and the flower had been put back behind her ear, Poppy took Brian’s phone and texted:

dear Brian I taken ur £ to buy baby

clothes and equipment. got to rush.

essay to write on Leonard Cohen.

his part in America’s post Vietnam

melancholia, let’s meet again sooner

than soonest. as the yanks say, missing

you already! love, your little Poppy. p.s.

taken ur card for taxi.

Alexander heard a police siren, but he carried on painting. He had waited for the sun to rise over the far corner of the cornfield. He had almost given up before he had properly begun. The loveliness of the corn as it responded to the breeze was, given his limited skills, too fine to capture with a brush and watercolours.

Almost an hour passed before he stopped. He unwrapped the tinfoil from his cheese sandwiches, and unscrewed the lid of his Thermos flask. Why did coffee always smell better than it tasted?

As he ate and drank, he was conscious that he was happy. His children were well, he had no serious debts, his paintings were beginning to sell – slowly. And now that his locks were gone, he could go into a shop without the shopkeeper hovering over the panic button.

He forced himself not to think about Eva, who he had not seen for what seemed like an eternity.

He and Eva had never sat at a table together and shared a meal. They had not danced together. He didn’t know her favourite song, and now he never would.

Ruby was glad she had Stanley to talk to. She told him about Eva’s increasingly erratic recent behaviour, singing and reciting poems and making lists. She also confided that Eva wanted her door to be boarded up, apart from an aperture that would enable food and drink to be passed through.

Stanley said, ‘I don’t want to alarm you, Ruby, but that does sound fairly mad.’

Peter had boarded the door up, with Eva passing him the nails. By the time Ruby came back from tea at Stanley’s house, the job was done.

There is nothing Eva can do now but sort out her memories, and wait to see who will keep her alive.

There is a chink of light in Eva’s room. It comes from the badly boarded-up window It shines on to the wall opposite. Eva lies in bed and watches the intensity of the light. Just before the sun goes down, the light puts on a show of orange, pink and yellow The colours of confectionery. The chink of light is vital to her. She has put it there herself and now she is terrified that somebody will take it away.

She wants to be a baby and start again. From the stories Ruby tells about Eva’s infancy, she has concluded that it was grim: she was pushed to the bottom of the garden to scream. Ruby’s voice came to her when the twins were babies. ‘Don’t pick them up when they cry, you’ll mollycoddle them. They need to know who’s boss from the start.’

Whenever Eva tried to cuddle the twins, their little bodies would go rigid and two sets of eyes would stare into her own without even the ghost of a smile.

In the world outside, the Sun headline blared, ‘EVA STARVES!’ And there was a quote within the front-page story:

Mrs Julie Eppingham, 39, said, ‘The last time I saw her, I was horrified. She is obviously anorexic. But she won’t talk to me or look at my new baby. She obviously needs medical attention.’

Nurse Spears was walking through the surgery waiting room when she saw a copy of The Sun that had been discarded by a patient. She picked it up and read the front page. Her first thought was for her career. She should have visited Mrs Beaver more often to check for bedsores and muscle atrophy – and her mental health.

She drove round to Bowling Green Road and sat outside in her car, reading Eva’s full notes.

Sandy Lake knocked on the driver’s window with her good hand. The other was encased in plaster. As yet nobody had written on it. William didn’t do writing on plaster.

She asked, ‘Is Eva poorly?’

Nurse Spears wound the window down and said, ‘I can’t disclose information about my patients.’

She wound the window up, but Sandy Lake was beyond shame and continued to ask questions. Nurse Spears felt intimidated by the woman in a silly knitted hat. She was relieved when she saw a policeman. She parped the horn and PC Hawk walked towards the car.

He didn’t believe in hurrying, he was always solemn and purposeful. He bent down at the driver’s window, and Nurse Spears asked if he would escort her to number 15.

Sandy Lake demanded to accompany Nurse Spears.

PC Hawk said to her, ‘You’re supposed to be five hundred metres away.’

Sandy said, ‘I’m going further than that soon. William and I are going to live in a squat.’

Nurse Spears said, ‘That’s shocking.’

Why? It’s my own house.’

PC Hawk looked at Nurse Spears, and waggled his forefinger at his temple.

Nurse Spears snapped, ‘I’d already worked that out.’

Upstairs, in the pitch dark of her bedroom, Eva was nearly through the gentle exercise regime she’d copied from PE lessons at school over thirty-five years ago. Eva hated any lesson that involved communal showers. She was amazed that some girls stood around naked, talking to the PE teacher, Miss Brawn. Eva was ashamed of her towel, which was not big enough to wrap around her body, and was grey and musty because she repeatedly forgot to take the thing home to wash.