The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

17

Growing up in Leicester, Brian had been a clever little boy. As soon as he was able to manipulate his twenty-six alphabet blocks he began to arrange them into patterns. Two, four, six, eight were his favourites. He then proceeded to build – at first, a trembling brick tower which he never once knocked over. Then, one day, just before his third birthday, to the amazement of everyone who saw it, he spelled out the sentence ‘I am bored’.

His father, Leonard, began to teach little Brian simple sums. The infant was soon adding, multiplying and dividing. Always in silence. His father worked long hours in a hosiery factory and got home long after Brian had been put to bed. Unfortunately, Yvonne did not speak to her little son. She moved around the house with grim determination, a duster in one hand, a damp cloth in the other. An Embassy Filter cigarette was permanently stuck in the corner of her mouth. She was not a demonstrative woman, but occasionally she shot Brian a look of such malevolence that he fell briefly into a trance-like state.

On his first day of nursery school he clung to Yvonne’s legs. When she bent down to peel his hands away, a large piece of burning ash fell from her cigarette and on to his head. Yvonne tried to knock it off but succeeded only in scattering the ash on to his face and neck. A piece smouldered in his hair, so Brian’s first morning was taken up with first aid and an enforced rest on a camp bed in the corner of the classroom. His teacher was a pretty girl with golden hair who told Brian to call her Miss Nightingale.

It wasn’t until the afternoon, when the other children were colouring with wax crayons on sugar paper and Brian was filling his piece of paper with geometric shapes, using a freshly sharpened pencil, that Miss Nightingale and the school discovered they had a prodigy on their hands.

Now, after a great deal of manipulation of the automated appointment system, Brian had managed to secure a face-to-face appointment with Dr Lumbogo. Brian had made the appointment using his professional title, Dr Beaver. He found that it often paid to flag his status pre-consultation. It put the bloody generalists in their place.

He sat in the waiting room reading a tattered copy of The Lancet. He was engrossed in a paper on the relative sizes of the male and female brain. There was reasonable evidence that men’s brains were ever so slightly larger. A female hand had written in the margin, ‘So, why can’t the big-brained bastards use a toilet brush?’

‘Twisted feminist,’ Brian muttered to himself.

An elderly Sikh tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Doctor? Your turn, it has come.’

For a split second Brian thought that the wise-looking Sikh was predicting his imminent death. Then he saw that the electronic sign on the wall above the reception area was flashing ‘Dr Bee’ in red.

He said to the man, ‘I don’t suppose you have this flashing-light nonsense in Pakistan?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied the turbaned one. ‘I have never been to Pakistan.’

Dr Lumbogo looked up briefly as Brian hurried through the door. ‘Dr Bee, please take a seat.’

‘I’m Dr Beaver,’ said Brian. ‘Your system has been -’

‘So, how can I help you?’

‘It’s my wife. She’s taken to her bed and says she intends to stay there for a year.’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘My colleague Dr Bridges has already seen your wife. The tests say she is in excellent health.’

‘I know nothing of this,’ said Brian. Are we talking about the same woman?’

‘Oh yes.” said Dr Lumbogo. ‘He found her to be of robust health and -’

Brian said, ‘But she’s not of sound mind, Doctor! She started to cook our evening meal with a bath towel wrapped around her! I bought her an apron every Christmas, so why…?’

Dr Lumbogo said, ‘Let us stop there, and examine this bath towel business more closely. Tell me, Dr Bee, when did this start?’

‘I first noticed it about a year ago.’

‘And do you remember, Dr Bee, what she was cooking?’

Brian thought. ‘I don’t know, it was something brown, bubbling in a pot.’

‘And the subsequent wearing of the bath towel? Do you remember the meals she was preparing?’

‘I’m almost sure they were some kind of Italian or Indian thing.’

Dr Lumbogo lurched across the desk towards Brian with his index finger extended, as though he were pointing a gun, and exclaimed, ‘Ha! Never salad.’

Brian said, ‘No, never salad.’

Dr Lumbogo laughed and said, ‘Your wife is afraid of the splashing, Dr Bee. Your aprons are inadequate for her needs.’ He lowered his voice dramatically. ‘I should not breach the laws of confidentiality, but my own mother makes our flat bread wearing an old flour sack. Women are mysterious creatures, Dr Bee.’

‘There are other things,’ said Brian. ‘She cries at the television news: earthquakes, foods, starving children, pensioners who’ve been beaten for their life savings. I came home from work one evening to find her sobbing over a house fire in Nottingham!’

‘There were fatalities?’ asked Dr Lumbogo.

‘Two,’ said Brian. ‘Kiddies. But the mother – single parent, of course – still had three left!’ Brian fought to control his tears. ‘She needs something chemical. Her emotions are up hill and down dale. The whole household is upside down. There’s nothing in the fridge, the laundry basket is chock-a-block, and she’s even been asking me to dispose of her body waste.’

Dr Lumbogo said, ‘You’re very agitated, Dr Bee.’

Brian began to cry. ‘She was always there, in the kitchen. Her food was so delicious. My mouth would water as soon as I got out of the car. The smell must have seeped out of the gaps in the front door.’ He took a tissue from the box that the doctor pushed towards him and mopped his eyes and nose.

The doctor waited for Brian to compose himself.

When he was calm again, he began to apologise. ‘I’m sorry I blubbed… I’m under a lot of strain at work. One of my colleagues has written a paper questioning the statistical validity of my work on Olympus Mons.’

Dr Lumbogo asked, ‘Dr Bee, have you taken Cipralex before?’ and reached for his prescription pad.