The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

60

Brian’s sheds were still filled almost to overflowing with Titania’s possessions. He had forbidden her to bring anything else from the house she had once shared with her husband, but there were certain things she could not do without: her autumn and winter wardrobe, the Welsh spinning wheel she had picked up in Florida, the postmodern cuckoo clock from Habitat, the Victorian chaise longue she had bought for £50 from a stallholder who she thought of as gullible (only to find it was riddled with woodworm and cost her £500 plus VAT to be restored and recovered).

Brian was manoeuvring his bulk around Titania’s stuff in the extension shed they called the ‘kitchenette’. Titania looked up irritably from the book she was reading, Hadrons and Quark-Gluon Plasma. She had just noted in the margin, ‘Not according to Prof Yagi. See his paper ref: JCAP Vol. 865, 2 (2010).’

She said, ‘Brian, you’re tutting like a village gossip. I know it’s inconvenient to have my things here, but I can’t store them at the old house, can I? Not now he’s renting it.’

Brian said, forcing himself to sound reasonable, ‘Tit, I admit I’m a little annoyed that I’m sharing my space with the culmination of the junk you’ve collected over the years, but have I once complained? No. Will I be pleased when it’s gone? Yes.’

Titania said, ‘Please! If you ask a question and answer it yourself again, will I go mad and do you serious harm? Yes, yes I will!’

They lapsed into sullen silence, each knowing that, if certain words were said, it would be like leaving the comparative safety of a muddy trench at Ypres and going over the top to the carnage of the battlefield.

In the long, tense silence, Titania reassessed their affair. It had been quite exciting, at times, and what other man would understand and sympathise when the particles were not behaving themselves and refused to correspond to her theories?

Brian knocked his ankle bone on the Welsh spinning wheel. He shouted, ‘The fucking thing!’ and kicked out at it, hard.

He was not to know that the spinning wheel represented Titania’s bucolic retirement – she and Brian would keep hens, and there would be a good-natured dog with a black patch over one eye. They would take Patch to the village shop to pick up Nature and Sky & Telescope. She would buy bags of wool from the cooperative sheep farm, spin it and knit Brian a sweater in a pattern of his choice. She couldn’t knit or sew, but there were classes she could take. It wasn’t rocket science. The seeing would be good in the Welsh hills. There was a tiny Spaceguard outpost at the 24-inch reflector observatory in Powys. They would link up with the scientists there, and Brian would advise them and carry out consultancy work. He was a well-known and highly respected astronomer. They could easily avoid the peak hours for school tour groups.

Titania saw the spinning wheel rolling towards her, the wooden spokes clattering as it turned. She screamed, as though the wheel were an errant heat-seeking missile. She shouted, ‘Go on! Why not kick all my lovely things to pieces! You’re nothing but a bully!’

Brian shouted back, ‘You can’t bully furniture, woman!’

Titania yelled, ‘It’s no wonder Eva’s mad and lives in a room with no furniture at all! You drove her to it!’

To her amazement, Brian wove through her possessions, took a couple of boxes off the chaise longue, lay down and started to sob.

She was bewildered by the drama of it all, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Brian, but I cannot live like this. I want to settle down in a house with proper designated rooms. Henry Thoreau may have been happy living in a shed, and three cheers and multiple gold stars for him, but I want to live in a house. I want to live in your house.’

She was pleading now. Their honeymoon period of living together in the sheds was long over. She was looking forward to being a seasoned and contented couple.

Brian whined, ‘You know we can’t live in my house. Eva wouldn’t like it.’

Titania felt a switch click inside her head. It was raging jealousy kicking in. ‘I’m sick of hearing about Eva and I hate the sheds! I can’t stand to live in them for a minute longer!’

Brian shouted, ‘Good, go home to Guy the fucking Gorilla!’

She screamed, ‘You know I can’t go home! Guy has rented it out to the Vietnamese cannabis farmers!’

She ran out of the shed complex, across the lawn and into the main house.

Brian had a fantasy that Titania would run through the middle of the house, out through the open front door, and then down the street and round the corner. She would carry on running: through back gardens, on to minor roads, on cart tracks, on a winding path up the hills, down the hills and far away.

Brian wished that Titania would vanish, just vanish.