The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

51

Over the next week, Eva remembered more of what she had learned at her junior and secondary schools. The world’s longest river. The capital of Peru. Which countries constitute Scandinavia. The nine times table. How many pints there were in a gallon. How many inches in a yard. Britain’s principal manufacturing industries. How many soldiers were killed on the first day of the First World War. How old was Juliet. The poetry she had learned by heart: ‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky’, ‘Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!’, ‘Fools! For I also had my hour; / One far fierce hour and sweet’. And during this time, the crowd grew and became a constant background noise.

There were complaints from the neighbours about the inconvenience, and the parking problem escalated. But it wasn’t until some of the residents were unable to park in their own road and were forced to leave their cars half a mile or more away that the police became involved.

Unfortunately, Constable Gregory Hawk found it impossible to park anywhere near Eva’s house, and had to walk an uncomfortably long distance. When he finally reached the front door, he found Ruby sitting outside in the early spring sunshine, selling tea and slices of fruit cake from a trestle table in Eva’s front garden. She had put a daffodil in a posy vase on the table to help attract customers, and was charging variable rates which were entirely dependent on whether or not she liked the look of them.

PC Hawk was about to ascertain whether Ruby had a trading licence and a food hygiene certificate, and had completed the paperwork for a risk assessment, when he was diverted by an outside broadcast truck that was backing down the road, only narrowly avoiding the cars parked on either side. After informing the driver that there was nowhere legal to park, he returned to the trestle table in time to hear Ruby shouting, ‘Next for the toilets!’ and to see a man in Druid’s headgear and robes leave the house, while a woman with ‘Eva’ painted on her forehead entered.

PC Hawk tried to remember whether charging the public to visit a private lavatory was a civil or criminal offence.

When he approached Ruby, she said that the pounds she had in her anorak pockets were donations to the Brown Bird & Beaver Charity. PC Hawk asked if this charity was registered with the Charity Commission, and was told that the registration was ‘in the post’.

He then moved to the crowd of what he thought of as ‘weirdos’, warning them that if they didn’t stop singing, ululating, tinkling bells and chanting ‘Eva! Eva! Eva!’ he would charge them all with a breach of the peace.

An anarchist in an army greatcoat, camouflage trousers and a black polo-neck sweater had spent an hour writing ‘HELP THE POLICE – BEAT YOURSELF Up’ on his forehead. He shouted feebly, ‘We’re living in a Police State.’

PC Hawk’s hand twitched towards his Taser, but he was reassured when a bulky woman in a Noddy hat said, ‘England is the best country in the world, and our police are absolutely terrific!’

The anarchist gave a harsh laugh.

PC Hawk said, ‘Thank you, madam, it’s nice to be appreciated.’

He thought the whole set-up was a disgrace. There were Asian people everywhere he looked, some on their knees praying, some sitting on a blanket having what looked like breakfast, and a large gang of elderly Muslim, Christian and Hindu women had gathered under Eva’s window, clapping and singing. There were no crowd barriers, no surveillance team, nobody directing the traffic. He rang for reinforcements, then walked over to the two old women standing in the doorway of number 15.

He demanded of Yvonne that he be taken to see the householder.

Yvonne said, ‘My son, Dr Brian Beaver, is at work, saving the world from attack by meteorites. You’d better talk to Eva herself. She’s upstairs, second on the left.’

PC Hawk could not help but be a little thrilled that he was about to meet the Eva woman who’d been on the front of the paper, and all over the internet, and who he’d seen on the television news refusing to talk to good old Derek Plimsoll. This proved to him that she had something to hide.

Who wouldn’t want to be on television?

It was his ambition to be the police spokesman for a murder enquiry. He knew all the phrases and sometimes practised them inside his head when he was driving around, bored, on his way to caution a youth for riding a moped without lights.

He saw Eva before she saw him. He was startled by her beauty – she was supposed to be an old woman of fifty, wasn’t she?

Eva was shocked to see a gangly baby-faced boy in a police uniform. She said, ‘Hello, have you come to arrest me?’

He took out his notebook and said, ‘Not at this stage, madam, but I’d like to ask you a few questions. For how long have you been in bed?

Eva tried to do the maths inside her head, then said, ‘Since the nineteenth of September.’

The constable blinked a few times and said, ‘Nearly five months?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘And are you separated from your husband?’

‘No.’

‘Are you planning to leave your husband in the near future?’ he asked, emboldened by her frank response.

Eva had watched her fair share of police dramas on television, and thought she knew about police procedures. But as the interview progressed, she began to realise that PC Hawk’s questions were entirely centred on herself- and her willingness to be courted by a young policeman.

Their final exchange was particularly ludicrous. ‘What is your attitude towards the police?’

‘I think they’re a necessary evil.’ Would you ever consider dating a police officer?’

‘No, I don’t get out of bed.’

She was relieved when the blushing boy finally said, ‘One last question. Why won’t you get out bed?’

Eva answered, honestly, ‘I don’t know.’

When PC Hawk returned to the station, he asked his superior officer if he could act as a family liaison officer for The Woman in Bed.

‘She’s causing a lot of trouble, the residents are posh and there’s talk of a petition. And one of ‘em’s a solicitor, sir.’

Sergeant Price was wary of the middle classes. He’d once been involved in a court case for slapping a youth about in the cells. How was he to know that the youth’s father was a solicitor’s clerk?

‘Yeah, why not?’ he said to PC Hawk. ‘The family liaison officers are both off on maternity leave. And you’re the nearest thing we’ve got to a woman.

As PC Hawk walked towards his car, his soft cheeks blazed. He thought, ‘Yeah, I’m definitely growing a moustache as soon as my beard comes through.’

It was an off-duty policeman called Dave Strong who found Amber. She was begging at the base of the Gherkin with a seventeen-year-old youth called Timmo, known to his parents as Timothy.

PC Strong had acted on his intuition – he had thought it odd to see a young girl in a soiled school uniform with her hand out, beseeching indifferent office workers to, ‘Spare some change!’ accompanied by Timmo singing his desultory version of Wonderwall’.

However, when interviewed by the press, Amber’s mother attributed her daughter’s rescue to Eva, rather than to the policeman. ‘She has special powers,’ Jade told a sceptical journalist from the Daily Telegraph. ‘She can see things that we can’t.’

As a news item, it had everything – young love and possible underage sex in The Sun and (because Timmo had run away from his A levels) an article in the Guardian: ‘Are we pushing our young too hard?’

The press eagerly pounced on this nugget of new Eva information. The Daily Mail, who were about to go with ‘Eva is ex-librarian’, scrapped their front page and replaced it with ‘ESP Eva finds runaway’.