The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

39

It was New Year’s Day. Brian and Titania had been making love for most of the afternoon. Brian had ingested Viagra at 2.15 p.m. and was still going strong.

Every now and again, Titania moaned, ‘OMG!’ But the truth was that she’d had enough. Brian had explored most of her orifices and she was glad he appeared to be having a good time, but she had things to do, people to see. She drummed her fingers on his back, absentmindedly. But this only served to spur him on and before she knew it he had turned her upside down so that she was almost suffocated by the duck-feather pillows gathering around her face. She had to fight for air. ‘OMG!’ she shouted. ‘Are you trying to kill me?’

Brian stopped to get his breath back for a few moments, and said, ‘Look, Titania, can you go back to shouting “Oh my God!”? OMG does nothing for me.’

Titania, who was still upside down with her legs leaning against the wall, said, ‘We’re like two water buffalo yoked together, endlessly turning a bloody wheel. How many Viagra did you take?’

‘Two,’ said Brian.

‘One would have been sufficient,’ complained Titania. ‘I could have finished your ironing by now’

Brian made a superhuman effort, summoning up images that had served him well over the years: the cleavage of Miss Fox, who had taught him physics at Cardinal Wolsey Grammar; French women lying topless on a beach near St Malo; the woman eating a cream horn in the back of the bakery, the cream on the end of her tongue.

Nothing worked. They battled on and on.

Titania kept looking at her watch. Her head and torso were now hanging over the end of the bed. She saw a rolled-up pair of her socks she had thought were lost under the chest of drawers. ‘OMGIH!’ she shouted. ‘How much longer?’

Brian whispered, ‘Let’s have angry sex.

Titania said, ‘I’m already having angry sex, I’m totally pissed off! If you don’t get off me soon, I’m going to -’

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. Brian ejaculated so violently and noisily that Ruby, who was in the garden standing over a drain and rinsing the fetid head of an old-fashioned mop with a garden hose, thought that he had started keeping wild animals in his shed.

Nothing could surprise her any more. She’d once thought that paying L’.70 for a bottle of water from Iceland was about as daft as you could get – especially when there was nice cold water in the tap. But she’d been wrong.

Somehow, while her attention had been elsewhere, everybody in the world had gone mad.

Alexander let himself into Eva’s house – the door was usually on the latch these days – and shouted, ‘Hello!’

Nobody apart from Eva answered.

He walked upstairs, rehearsing what he was going to say. It was a long time since he had declared his love for a woman.

Eva said, ‘Happy New Year. You look cold.’ He said, ‘I am… and Happy New Year too. I’ve been on Beacon Hill, painting. I’ve never tried a snowscape before. I didn’t know how many shades of white there are in snow I made a dog’s dinner of it. I passed Ruby on the main road and gave her a lift. She said that Brian and Titania were doing very noisy animal impressions in his shed.’

‘I can hear the neighbours sharpening their pencils for the petition.’

They both laughed.

Eva said, ‘I’m mystified by their relationship.’

‘At least they’ve got a relationship.’

‘But they don’t seem to like each other.’

Alexander said, ‘I like you, Eva.’

Eva said, holding his gaze, ‘I like you, Alex.’ There was a fragility to the space between them, as though their breath had frozen and could easily shatter if the wrong word were said.

Eva knelt at the window to check on the snow ‘Fresh drifts… good for snowmen, sledging. I’d love to -She stopped herself, but he was quick to jump in and say, ‘You could, Eva! You could speed down a hill with your arms around my waist, I’ve got a sledge in the back of the van.’

Eva said, ‘Don’t you start trying to get me out of bed!’

Alexander said, ‘A few years ago, I was working hard to get a woman into bed.’

She smiled. ‘I think my first New Year resolution is to avoid having a new man in my life.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve come here to tell you that I love you.’

Eva moved from the middle of the bed to the edge, pressing herself against the wall.

Alexander asked, ‘Have I got it wrong?’

She said carefully, not wanting to hurt his feelings, ‘Perhaps I gave out the wrong signals. As the sacked railwayman said.’

‘Perhaps we both gave out the wrong signals. Shall I just say what I feel?’

She nodded.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I want to live with you for the rest of my life. You wouldn’t have to get out of bed. I’d push you round Sainsbury’s in it, take you to Glastonbury.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want to hear this. I will not be responsible for another person’s happiness. I’m no good at it.’

Alexander said, ‘I’ll look after you. We can still be together. I’ll sit in bed with you. I’ll be Yoko to your John, if you like.’

‘You have children, and I have children,’ she said. ‘And you must know that Brianne is in love with you. I wouldn’t want her as a love rival.’

‘She’s a kid, it’s just a crush. The love of her life is Brian Junior.’

‘I’ve finished the daily routine of looking after small children.’

He said in amazement, his voice going up an octave, ‘You don’t like my kids?’

‘They’re lovely, funny kids,’ Eva said. ‘But I’m finished with child-rearing. I can’t bear to watch their disillusionment when they find out what sort of world they live in.’

Alexander said, ‘Shit happens, but it’s still a fantastic world. If you’d seen the sun shining on the snow this morning… and the trees, with the ice falling off them like silver rain…’

Eva said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Can I lie down next to you?’

‘On top of the duvet.’

He took his wet boots off, and put them on top of the radiator. Then he lay down next to her.

There were no lights on, and the sun had gone down, but the luminous snow outside made it possible to see the outline of the room. They held hands and looked at the ceiling. They talked about their previous lovers, about his dead wife and her present husband. The room was warm, and the light was low, and soon they were asleep, side by side like marble effigies.

When Brianne returned from spending her John Lewis gift tokens on a bound watercolour artist’s notebook for Alexander, she pushed open Eva’s door and saw that her mother was asleep on top of the duvet.

There was a note on the pillow. She took it on to the landing to read. It was from Alexander. It said:

Dearest Eva,

I had one of the best days of my life today. The snow was magical, and lying next to you this afternoon was the happiest I’ve been for many years.

We do love each other, I know this for certain. But I will stay away.

Why is everything connected with love so painful?

Alex

Brianne took the note into her own room, ripped it into tiny pieces and hid the fragments inside an empty crisp packet she retrieved from the bin.