Alexander said, ‘Be nice, Ruby,’ as though he were talking to a recalcitrant toddler.
Eva said, dutifully, ‘Your lump is probably a cyst, Mum. Why didn’t you tell me to my face?’
‘I hoped it would go away. I told Yvonne, she knew everything about me.’ She turned to Brian. ‘And she told me everything about you.’ This was an implicit threat.
Brian said, ‘I blame you for my mother’s death. If you hadn’t bought those ludicrous kangaroo slippers, she’d be alive today.’
Ruby shouted, ‘So, you’re blaming me for Yvonne’s passing?’
Titania said, ‘I know I’m not strictly family, but -’
Alexander interrupted her. ‘Titania, I think we should keep out of this.’
A gang of teenage girls in school uniform had joined the crowd and were encouraging them to chant, ‘Eva! Eva! Eva!’ Somebody was keeping their finger on the doorbell. Eva clapped her hands over her ears.
Ruby said, ‘And don’t expect me to answer that door. That was Yvonne’s job. I wondered where she’d been for the last three days. She liked people. Me, I can take them or leave them, but mostly leave them. Yvonne was a big help to me. I can’t deal with those people over the road on my own. There’s more every day.’
Titania said, hurriedly, ‘I have my work. And a life to run.
Brian stood at the end of Eva’s bed and snarled, ‘And now, as usual, we’re talking about Eva. I should have listened to my dear dead mother. She advised me to move out of this house, and reminded me that my marriage is over. So, my contribution to Eva’s care ends here. As a bereaved son, and now an orphan, please allow me to mourn for my mother.’
Ruby ploughed on, regardless, ‘And there’s the funeral to think about. And it’s February. I could catch pneumonia. What will happen to Eva, if I’m in hospital, on oxygen?’
Alexander said, ‘I’ll look after Eva. I’ll open the door. I’ll decide who comes in. I’ll cook, I’ll wash her linen.’
‘The flowers, Alexander, they are perfect,’ said Eva. ‘Thank you. But you can’t look after me, you have your own work.’
‘I’ve just been paid for a commission. I’ll be OK for a few weeks.’
What about your kiddies?’ asked Ruby. ‘You can’t drag them out of their beds at night.’
Alexander looked into Eva’s face. ‘No, we would have to live here.’
Brian turned to Alexander. ‘My mother is dead, and you take the opportunity to move yourself and your family into my house. Do you think you’re going to live here rent free, using my electricity, my hot water, my fibre-optic broadband? Well, sorry, chummy, but there’s no room at the inn.’
Titania said, ‘Bri, it’s awful, ghastly, dreadful beyond words, that Yvonne is dead, but it could be advantageous to all of us if Alexander was on hand.’
Ruby said, ‘In Blackpool, that gypsy, she said there’d be a tall dark man.’
Brian finally lost his temper. What in God’s holy name are you blathering about? My mother is dead! Will you just shut your bloody trap, woman! As to your earlier lamentation, I too wonder why my loving, unselfish mother was taken and you – with your fatuous observations and antediluvian brain – were left behind!’
Ruby cried, ‘I didn’t murder your main!’ and threw her hands up to cover her face.
Eva shouted, ‘Don’t call my mother stupid! She can’t help how she is!’ She felt so enraged that she began to shuffle on her knees towards Brian, who was sitting at the end of the bed.
There was a loud cheer and some screaming when the crowd saw her pass the window for the first time in several days.
Eva felt a rage build up and then burst out of her body, transforming itself into words of anger and recrimination. ‘You lied to me every day for eight years! You told me that you finished work at six thirty every evening because of your passion for your moon project. But your real passion was for Titania Noble-Forester! I always wondered why you were so exhausted and ravenous, and able to eat a three-course meal.’
Titania yelled at Brian, ‘So, that’s the reason you would never take me for dinner, is it? You couldn’t wait to get home to wifey’s prawn cocktail, pork chop and plum duff!’
Brian said, quietly, ‘I have never stopped loving my wife. I thought it was possible to love two women. Well, three women, including my poor mother.’
‘You’ve never said that you loved me before,’ said Titania, her rage dispersed. She spoke into Brian’s ear. ‘Oh wow! That is such an aphrodisiac. Why don’t we have some “us” time, Squirrel? C’mon, we’ll go to the shed.’
The doorbell rang as though a mad person were desperate to gain entry to the house.
After a few moments, when nobody moved, Alexander looked at Brian and asked, ‘Shall I go?’
Brian snapped, ‘Please your bloody self.’
Alexander asked, ‘Eva, shall I?’
She nodded. He was a good man to have around when there was a maniac at the door.
He gave her an ironic salute and went to answer it.
Titania passed the package of letters she was holding to Eva. ‘Half of it’s junk, the rest are all for you.’ She led Brian by the hand, as if he were a small child.
Eva said, ‘Squirrel?’
She looked at the package of letters with dismay. They were mostly addressed to ‘The Woman in Bed, Leicester’. A few from the United States said, ‘To the Angel in Bed, England’. One from Malaysia said, simply, ‘Eva UK’. After the first three, Eva pushed the bundle away.
Each letter contained pain and false expectation.
She could not help people, and the weight of their suffering was too much for her to bear.
She often distracted herself by compiling lists inside her head, and now she stared at the white wall until her eyes were out of focus, and waited for a topic to emerge. Today it was pain.
Worst pain
1. Giving birth to twins
2. Falling from high branch on to concrete
3. Fingers slammed in car door
4. Ulcerated milk ducts
5. Falling into bonfire
6. Bitten by pig at Farm Park
7. Tooth abscess on Bank Holiday
8. Trapped by wheel – Brian reversing car
9. Drawing pin in knee
10. Sea urchins in feet, Majorca
53
There was pain of a different sort the next day, when Brian Junior emailed Eva via Alexander’s phone. Alexander printed it out using a complicated chain of Wi-Fi devices, and brought it up to her with a cup of real coffee.
Mother, I do not find it agreeable to speak on the phone, and shall not do so again. In future, I may occasionally communicate with you by use of electronic means or even risk the vagaries of the postal system.
‘Pretentious little shit,’ said Eva. ‘Who does he think he is – Anthony Trollope?’
She continued to read her son’s message.
I hear from my father that my paternal grandmother is dead. It would be hypocritical of me to affect sadness, since I feel indifferent to her fate. She was a foolish old woman, as was proved by the farcical manner of her dying. However, I shall attend her funeral on Thursday. (I cannot speak for Brianne, she has a tutorial on that day with visiting God-tier professor Shing-Tung Yau. It is rare for a first-year undergraduate to be so honoured. Although I fear he will be less than ecstatic when he hears what she has to say about Calabi-Yau manifolds.)
Eva broke off. ‘I pity the poor man. Do you know, Alexander, I don’t understand my children at all. I never have.’
Alexander assured her, ‘Eva, none of us know our children. Because they are not us.’
She turned back to the email with less enthusiasm.
Since we won’t be meeting at the graveside, you may be interested to know that my paper proving that the Bohnenblust-Hille inequality for homogeneous polynomials is hyper conductive has been accepted by Annals of Mathematics for possible publication in the September issue, and that I have been offered a scholarship to St John’s College, Oxford. However, I may turn the latter down. It is hardly Cambridge, and my present location is agreeable to me. There is a café nearby that provides a full English breakfast at a price I can afford. This sustains me throughout the day. Then all I require in the late evening is a little bread and a lump of Edam cheese.