The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

40

Brian and Titania were eating a late-night supper after a long session of stargazing. The conditions were perfect, and they had seen wonders and marvels in the cold cloudless sky. They never failed to be moved by the reality of what they saw through an actual telescope. The computer screens at work could not convey the true beauty of the universe.

As Brian chewed on a cold lamb cutlet he said, ‘You were rather wonderful tonight, Tit. You kept your mouth shut for most of the time, and you spotted that variable star, which I’m pretty sure hasn’t been logged yet.’

Titania forked a stuffed olive out of the jar. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d been as happy as this. She wanted Brian to go forward and do great things. His dedication to his work was total. Titania felt that, in the past, Eva had held him back by expecting him to take on his share of the child-rearing. Poor Brian had not been able to finish his book, Near-Earth Objects, because of Eva’s demands on his time. Did Mrs Churchill insist that her husband set the table before attending to the war?

She reached a hand out.

Brian said, ‘What?’

Titania whispered, ‘Hold my hand.’

Brian cautioned, ‘I should warn you, Tit, that I’m still half in love with my wife.’

Titania withdrew her hand. ‘Does that mean you’re half in love with me?’

Brian said, ‘For over twenty years, my synapses have been attuned to living with Eva Beaver. You’ll have to give them a chance to adapt to you, Tit.’

Titania thought, ‘I’ll make him love me. I’ll be the perfect lover, colleague and friend. I will actually iron his fucking shirts.’

Later, when they were in bed, talking about their childhoods and their first conscious sight of the stars, Brian said, ‘It was when I was seven, lying on my back in my grandmother’s garden in Derbyshire. It was dusk and the stars started to appear, almost one by one. Then the sky slowly turned from deep blue to black, until the stars seemed to be blazing. The next day at school, I asked Mrs Perkins what kept them up. Why didn’t they fall down? She told me they were all suns and that they were held up by something called gravity. I went into my first reverie. At going-home time she gave me a book, The Ladybird Book of The Night Sky. I’ve still got it. And I want to be buried with it – in Death Valley, Nevada.’

‘For the seeing?’ asked Titania. She was rewarded when Brian put his arm around her fleshy shoulder and held her right breast. She continued, ‘I used to take a Milky Way wrapper out into the garden and try to match the illustration with something in the night sky. I loved those chocolate bars, because they were advertised as being something one could eat between meals.’

Brian laughed. ‘On the rare occasions when the sky was clear in Leicester, I saw the Milky Way, and I was overwhelmed. I felt very small indeed.’ He went on, pedantically, ‘Although I wasn’t overwhelmed at first. That only came when I actually understood that the Milky Way is one of the spiral arms of our own galaxy.’

‘Galaxy!’ said Titania, who was emboldened by Brian’s chumminess. ‘Another delish space-nomenclature chocolate bar! But the Milky Way had the moral high ground. Our parents approved of it. The name “Milky Way” would be a good replacement for your wife’s White Pathway.’

Brian was not listening to what he called ‘Tit’s burble’. He was thinking about the Mars Bar. The war horse of chocolate bars.

Titania said, ‘Do you think she’s clinically mad, Bri? There’s the sheet to get to the loo, and she’s started talking to herself now. Because, if so, we should think about getting her diagnosed. And possibly hospitalised – for her own sake.’

Brian didn’t like Titania’s use of ‘we’. He said, irritably, ‘It’s hard to tell with Eva.’ He was loath to criticise his wife in front of his lover. He thought of Eva’s lovely face, then looked at Titania. There was no comparison in the looks department. He said, ‘She’s not talking to herself, she’s reciting all the poems she learned by heart at school.’

Brian switched the bedside light off and they settled down, ready for sleep.

Half an hour later, they were still awake.

Titania was mentally organising her marriage to Brian. She thought they would have a traditional wedding. She planned to wear ivory silk.

Brian was wondering if he could stand to live with Titania, a woman who got through a large bag of Maltesers every night. He didn’t begrudge her buying them for herself, but he hated the way she rolled several of them around in her mouth.

He could hear the tiny collisions with her teeth.