When Eva was finally allowed to visit Jill in the psychiatric unit, she did not at first recognise her. She was in a featureless room, sitting on a plastic chair, rocking slightly. The other patients scared Eva. The noise of the television was intolerable.
‘This is bedlam,’ she thought. ‘It is actually Bedlam.’ As she walked through the hospital grounds, she thought, ‘I would rather be dead than be sent to a place like this.’
Years later, she had seen an amateur production of Marat/Sade performed by The Faculty Players. Brian had been a very convincing lunatic. For some weeks afterwards, she had been haunted by the thought that madness could be lurking just around the corner, waiting to sneak inside your head while you were sleeping and engulf you.
Eva did sleep for a while. When she awoke, she was startled to see Julie, her neighbour, sitting in the soup chair.
Julie said, ‘I’ve been watching you sleep, you were snoring. I came to wish you a happy New Year, and to get out of that madhouse I call home. I’m at breaking point, Eva. They don’t listen to me now. They’ve lost all respect for me. We spent a fortune on their Christmas presents. Steve bought the eldest boys a PlayStation each, and a television for Scott so he can watch his cartoons as he goes to sleep. They all had a big sack from Santa, full of toys, and half of them are already broken. Steve can’t wait to get back to work, and neither can I.’
Eva, who was feeling irritable due to lack of food, said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Julie, if they play you up, you confiscate their bloody PlayStations! Lock them away until they learn some respect. And remind Steve that he’s an adult male. That cajoling tone he uses with them isn’t working. Can he actually raise his voice?’
‘Only at the football on the telly.’
Eva said, ‘You and Steve are scared to discipline them because you think they won’t love you any more.’ Then she roared, ‘You’re wrong!’
Julie jumped and started fanning her fingers in front of her eyes.
Eva regretted shouting so loudly, but neither of them knew what to say next.
Julie looked critically at Eva’s hair. Want me to give you a trim, and do your roots?’
When the boys are back at school, eh? I’m sorry I shouted, Julie, but I’m so hungry. Will you fetch me some food, please? They keep forgetting I’m here.’
‘Either that, or they’re trying to starve you out!’ said Julie.
When Julie had gone back to her anarchic household, Eva felt a surge of self-pity, and almost wished she was downstairs grazing the buffet. She heard Brian shout, “‘Brown Sugar”! C’mon, Titania.’
When the music started, she imagined them strutting in the kitchen and singing along with The Rolling Stones.
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.’