The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

69

In the early hours of the 19th of September, Eva woke to darkness. She immediately broke into a cold sweat. She was afraid of the dark. The house was quiet, other than the small noises that all houses make when their occupants are out.

She tried to control her rising panic by talking to herself, asking why she feared the dark. She said aloud, ‘There was an army greatcoat on a coat hanger on the back of my bedroom door. It looked like a man. I lay awake all night, staring at the coat. I thought I’d seen it move – imperceptibly, perhaps, but it definitely moved. I felt the same terror when I walked by Leslie Wilkinson’s house. When he saw me coming, he would stand in my path and demand money or sweets before he let me go. I would look towards his house for help, and saw and heard Mrs Wilkinson singing as she washed up at the sink. Sometimes she would look up and wave while I was being tormented.’

Eva told herself the story of how she had fallen into a deep ditch lined with ice and snow and couldn’t escape. How her friend had gone home and left her there most of the night, still trying to find a foothold that would enable her to clamber out. It had taken three blankets and two counterpanes before she stopped shivering.

The day a man, a stranger, had called her ‘a big ox’ when she trod on his toes in the scrum of Christmas shoppers outside Woolworths. She had taken his voice with her into every changing room since.

Once, she had found a decomposing human hand in the reeds of the canal bank. The school had not believed her and had punished her for being late and, again, for lying about the hand.

She didn’t want to think about the baby she had miscarried in Paris, to whom she had given the name Babette, and how she had returned from the hospital to the spacious apartment to find him gone, taking his elegant possessions and her young heart with him.

She wanted to cry, but the tears were stopped somewhere in her throat. Her eyes were desert dry, and there was a ring of ice around her heart, which she feared would never melt.

She spoke to herself again, harshly this time. ‘Eva! Far worse things have happened to other people. You have been happy in your life. Remember the snowdrops in the birch wood, drinking from the brook on your way back from school, running downhill into sweet velvety grass with the edible stalks. The smell of baking potatoes as they cooked in the embers of the bonfire. Your earliest memory – opening a horse chestnut with help from Dad and finding a shiny brown conker inside. A miraculous surprise. Defying the “No Trespassing” signs and dancing in the ballroom of an abandoned mansion. And the books! Laughing in the middle of the night reading P. G. Wodehouse. And in summer, lying on a cool bedcover reading, with a bag of sherbet lemons by my side. Yes, I have been happy. Listening to my first Elvis LP with my first boyfriend, Gregory Davis – both equally beautiful.’

She remembered watching surreptitiously as Brian tenderly fed the twins, in the middle of the night. It was a lovely sight.

When she was half asleep she surveyed her happy memories and found that cruel reality kept crowding in on them. The birch wood had been replaced by an estate of tiny houses, the brook was full of tipping waste. The hill had been flattened, there was a One Stop Centre in its place, and Brian had never again fed the twins in the middle of the night.

Alexander was in a late-sown barley field with the permission of the farmer. They had exchanged emails, and the farmer had waved from his tractor when they saw each other in the middle distance.

He was using oil paints now, and was trying to convey the importance of every blade of barley, the feeling that without one there would not be a hundred or a thousand or however many millions of barley stalks there are in a seven-acre field.

He felt his phone vibrate against his heart. He answered it reluctantly. He had just reached a place where his brush had become an extension of his body. He didn’t recognise the number but answered anyway.

‘Hello.’

‘Is that Alexander Tate?’

‘It is, and you are?’

‘It’s Ruby! Eva’s mother.’

‘How is she?’

‘That’s why I’m ringing. She’s gone downhill, Alex. They’re sending a -’ Ruby glanced down at a scrap of paper and read ‘- a “mental health professional” with a “Section Four”. He’s bringing the police with a battering ram.

Alexander quickly packed his painting equipment and ran with it to where his van was parked on a grass verge. He drove along the country roads at speed, recklessly cutting corners and impatiently overtaking slow-moving vehicles. He used the horn so many times that he reminded himself of Mr Toad.

Parp! Parp! Parp!

He pulled up outside Eva’s house and was dismayed to see that the tree she was so fond of had gone. He ran to the front door, and realised that the crowd had gone, leaving nothing but a few stains on the pavement.

Stanley and Ruby came to the front door together. Alexander could tell from Ruby’s face that there was something very wrong. The three of them went into the kitchen and Ruby recounted what had happened since Alexander had last seen Eva.

‘That tree coming down was the last straw,’ she said.

Alexander looked around the kitchen. There was a patina of grease and dust on the surfaces, upturned cups were stuck to the draining board. He declined Ruby’s offer of tea, and ran upstairs.

He saw Eva’s door and, through the slot, the darkness within. He called to her. ‘Eva! Listen, my love, I’m going to my van. I’ll be less than two minutes.’

Inside her room, Eva nodded.

Life was too difficult to travel alone.

He returned with his toolbox. He said, through the slot, ‘Don’t be scared, I’m here.’

He began to kick at the door to the sound of splintering wood. He used a crowbar to remove the remaining nailed-in pieces. When the door was fully open, he saw her on the bed hunched against the boarded-up window.

She had set herself the task of facing up to all the unhappiness and disappointments in her life.

Ruby and Stanley hovered behind him.

He asked Ruby to run a bath for Eva and find her a fresh nightgown. To Stanley he said, ‘Turn all the lights off, will you, Stan? I don’t want her to be dazzled.’

He stepped over the decaying food and splintered wood and went to Eva. He took her hand and held it tight.

Neither of them spoke.

At first Eva allowed herself a few polite tears, but within seconds she was crying open-mouthed and without restraint for all three of her children and her seventeen-year-old self.

When Ruby shouted, ‘Bath’s ready!’ Alexander scooped Eva up, carried her into the bathroom and lowered her into the warm water.

Her nightgown floated to the top.

Ruby said, ‘Let’s take it off. Put your arms up, there’s a good girl.’

Alexander said, ‘I can take over now, Ruby.’

Eva said, ‘No, let Mum.’

Eva slid down and allowed herself to dip her head under the water.

Downstairs, in the sitting room, Stanley was building a log fire.

It wasn’t a cold day, but he thought Eva would like it after being shut in for so long.

He was right.

When Alexander carried her in and put her on the sofa in front of the fire, she said, ‘It’s kindness, isn’t it? Simple kindness.’