Free The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend Page A

bottle and bags from her room.
    Who loved her enough?
     
    Eva
and Ruby were reconciled the next day, when Ruby brought round a home-made
ploughman’s lunch covered in cling film.
    After Eva had eaten every morsel she said, ‘Mum, I’ve
got something to ask you.’
    When she explained her vision for the funnel, bottle
and freezer bags, Ruby was horrified. She started retching, and had to run into
the en suite and stand over the lavatory bowl with a pad of tissues held to her
mouth.
    When she returned, pale and shaken, she said, ‘Why
would a sane person prefer to pee into a bottle and pooh in a plastic bag when
they’ve got a beautiful Bathrooms Direct en suite next door?’
    Eva couldn’t answer.
    Ruby shouted, ‘Tell me why! Is it something The done?
Did I toilet-train you too early? Did I smack you too hard for wetting the bed?
You were frightened of the noise the cistern made. Did it give you a complex or
syndrome or whatever people have these days?’
    Eva said, ‘I’ve got to stay in bed — if I don’t, I’m
lost.’
    ‘Lost?’ queried Ruby. She touched her gold —
earrings first, then the chain and locket around her neck, finishing with her
rings — straightening and polishing. It was a genuflection, Ruby worshipped her
gold. She had ten krugerrands sewn into a pair of corsets in her underwear
drawer. If England were invaded by the French, or by aliens, she would be able
to keep the whole family in food and firearms for at least a year.
    To Ruby, invasion by aliens was a likely scenario.
She had seen a spaceship one night as she’d been taking her washing off the
line. It had hovered over her next-door neighbour’s house before moving off in
the direction of the Co-op. She’d told Brian, hoping he would be interested,
but he said she must have been at the brandy she kept in the pantry for medical
emergencies.
    Now Eva said, ‘Mum, if I put one foot on the floor I’ll
be expected to take another step, and then another, and the next thing I know I’ll
be walking down the stairs and into the front garden, and then I’ll walk and
walk and walk and walk, until I never see any of you again.’
    Ruby said, ‘But why should you get away with it? Why
should I, seventy-nine next January, be expected to baby you again? To tell you
the truth, Eva, I’m not a very maternal woman. That’s why I didn’t have another
kid. So, don’t look to me to cart your pee and pooh around.’ She picked up the
plate and the screwed-up ball of cling film and said, ‘Is Brian the cause of
this?’
    Eva shook her head.
    ‘I told you not to marry him. Your trouble is, you
want to be happy all the time. You’re fifty years old —haven’t you realised yet
that most of the time most of us just trudge through life? Happy days are few
and far between. And if I have to start wiping a fifty-year-old’s bum, I would
make myself very unhappy indeed, so don’t ask me again!’
     
    When
Eva paid a late-night visit to the lavatory, it felt as though she were walking
on hot coals.
    She slept badly.
    Was she actually going mad?
    Was she the last to know?

 
     
    13
     
     
     
    The
sycamore outside the window was hurling its branches about in the wind. Yvonne
was sitting on the dressing-table chair, which she had dragged to the side of
the bed.
    She had brought an advanced dot-to-dot book for Eva,
‘To pass the time.’
    Under duress, Eva had finished the first puzzle.
After fifteen tedious minutes she had joined up ‘The Flying Scotsman’, complete
with a village railway station, a luggage trolley, booking office and a
station master with whistle and a raised flag.
    Eva said, ‘Don’t think you have to stay.’
    Yvonne sniffed. ‘You can’t be on your own when you’re
poorly.’
    Eva raged inside. When would they accept that what
she told them was true — she wasn’t ill, she simply wanted to stay in bed?
    Yvonne said, ‘You know it’s a symptom of being
mental, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Eva, ‘and so is an