by Sue Townsend
They tried the house phone. It rang and rang and rang and rang.
Brianne said, ‘Mum always answers the phone! We’ll have to phone Dad, at work. Anyway, she can’t know if she’s pregnant, you only met her a fortnight ago.’
‘I don’t think I impregnated her, either,’ said Brian Junior. ‘She got into my bed. She was upset about something.’
They were both aware of the hysterical crying coming from Brianne’s room. Concerned voices could be heard in the corridor.
Their father’s mobile rang eight times before the voicemail message clicked on: ‘Dr Beaver is not available to take your call. Please leave a message after the beep. Alternatively, email me on doctorbrian dot beaver at leic dot ac dot uk. If I think that your communication is sufficiently important, I will be in touch.’
When Brianne went back to her own room, she found a small crowd of students. He was sitting on the bed, cradling Poppy in his arms.
Ho said, ‘Brianne, I think you are not a good person! You are saying to Poppy she is slut and whore! And this day her mother and father crash their small plane and are taken to intensive care?’
The little crowd exclaimed sympathetically, then looked disapprovingly at Brianne.
Brianne said, ‘She hasn’t got parents. She’s an orphan.’ Poppy sobbed louder. ‘How can you say that? They’ve been better to me than any birth parents could ever have been. They chose me.’
Ho said, ‘Please go from this room, now!’ Brianne said weakly, ‘This is my room, and she’s wearing my bracelet and my mascara.’
A Korean student with a severe fringe and an American accent rounded on Brianne, saying, ‘Poppy has had so much tragedy in her life, and her adoptive parents are fighting for their lives and you insult her …’
Poppy struggled to be free of Ho’s arms and said, in a little girl’s voice, ‘I forgive you, Brianne. I know you lack emotional intelligence. I can help you with that, if you’ll let me.
16
Brian was angrily showing a group of disabled children around the Space Centre. He was sure that some of them were deliberately crashing their wheelchairs into the back of his legs. Each child had a teacher with them. Before the tour, he had addressed the children and their helpers.
‘I am Dr Brian Beaver and I work here as an astronomer and mathematician. I compile all the statistics to do with space, such as the distance of one star from another, and I protect you against fiery death from the impact of Near-Earth Objects. Now, I’m not going to patronise you. I expect there are several of you who are quite intelligent and are able to process information. The others who can’t will just have to try and keep up as best you can. It would be a great help to me if you could desist from waving your arms about. And please try to keep your heads still. And those issuing the strange noises, could you please stop — it’s extremely distracting.’
The teachers looked from one to the other. Should they say something to this man, who seemed not to understand that a new vocabulary was in use today?
Ms Payne, a teacher whose outfit included the grey version of the ubiquitous Ugg boots and a Palestinian scarf, could not remain silent. She said, ‘The children’s movements and noises are involuntary. Most of them have cerebral palsy. I’m afraid that your language is completely unacceptable!’
Brian said, defensively, ‘At the beginning, I said I wouldn’t patronise these unfortunate children, and I won’t. But it does them no good, madam, if you swaddle them with acceptable words. Now, shall we get on? I have extremely important work to do after you’ve gone. ‘Ms Payne said, ‘You should rewrite the brochure, Dr Beaver. It says school parties are welcome.’
One of the lifts was out of order. It took over half an hour before everybody was on the next floor.
When Brian came home from work, he found two black children — a boy and a girl — wearing primary school uniform, sitting at the kitchen table eating toast and doing homework.
Brian’s first instinct was to turn round and run to the front door — he was obviously in the wrong house. Then he saw his country-walk coat and one of Eva’s jackets hanging on the coat hooks in the hall. But who were these children? Was the boy a burglar and the girl his accomplice?
Then he saw Alexander coming down the stairs. ‘Thomas, Venus, say hello.’
The children turned round and said in unison, ‘Hello.’ Brian thundered upstairs and into Eva’s bedroom. It looked bigger and seemed to have more light. The dressing table, chair and chest of drawers were gone, as were the curtains.
Brian said, ‘That furniture was a family heirloom. I wanted to hand some of it down to the twins.’
‘Alexander took it away for me. He’s going to paint the walls, floor and ceiling white.’
Brian opened his mouth like a goldfish. Then closed it. Downstairs, Ruby let herself into the house and screamed when she saw Alexander buttering toast.
‘Don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m a pensioner with angina and bad legs.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Alexander. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Well, yes.’
Ruby was staring at the children. Alexander introduced them and she sat down heavily at the table.
‘I’m Mrs Brown-Bird. I’m Eva’s mother. Are you a “friend” of Eva’s?’ she asked.
A new friend,’ he said. ‘I’m her man with a van.’
‘Oh, you’re him,’ said Ruby. ‘She told me about you. She didn’t say you were a coloured chap.’
Alexander cut two slices of toast diagonally and arranged the triangles on a geometrically patterned plate. He found a white napkin and a small tray. He poured the tea into a china cup with a matching saucer.
Ruby said, ‘It’s a bit of a kerfuffle for a cup of tea and a bit of toast, in’t it?’
‘You gotta look after the small things in life, Mrs Brown-Bird. There’s nothing we can do about the big stuff.’
‘That’s very true,’ Ruby said. We’re all in the hands of fate. Look at Eva. I see her one week and she’s as happy as a sandboy. Look at her now! Lolling about in bed like the Queen of Sheba … and she says she doesn’t know when she’s getting up! I didn’t bring her up to be a lazy cow My girl had to be up and dressed by half past seven on a school day and eight sharp at the weekend.’
Alexander said, ‘It would be a boring world if we were all the same.’
Ruby said, ‘It would suit me fine if we were all the same.’ She sucked her teeth in, not realising that Alexander’s mother used exactly the same non-verbal gesture to show her disapproval.
When Alexander took the tray up to Eva, he walked into a strained silence. It was as if Brian and Eva were fencing with invisible swords.
Brian was perched on the window sill, pretending to look out of the window There was nothing much to see apart from a few straggling school kids and the occasional car obeying the 30 mph sign. There were trees, but Brian had never been much of a fan of trees. He had signed a petition to have the trees cut down, which would have made more parking available. He’d said to Eva, ‘Those trees are two hundred years old. They’ve had a good run for their money.’
Now rain and low cloud were forecast, which meant that Brian wouldn’t be stargazing tonight. This was not an unusual occurrence in England — Brian had often bemoaned the fact that Eva would not agree to move to an Australian desert where the skies were huge and clear, and there was no incessant English cloud.
Alexander asked Brian if he could get him anything. ‘Tea? Coffee?’
‘No!’ Brian snapped. ‘All I want, chap, is to see you and your offspring leave my premises.’
Eva said to Alexander, ‘I’m so sorry, but he has had an awful lot to take on in the past couple of weeks.’
Alexander said, ‘I’m working for Eva,’ and got back to work, prising staples out of the carpet.
All that could be heard was Eva crunching on toast. Brian wanted to knock the toast out of Eva’s mouth. She picked up her cup and unintentionally made an inelegan
t slurping noise. Brian could not control himself any longer. He walked up and down the bedroom floor, swerving past Alexander, who was still on his hands and knees.
‘What is this bloody obsession with beverages? Do you know how many units of heat energy are squandered on making a single cup of tea? Well, you wouldn’t understand, but I’ll tell you, it’s a lot! Multiply that by sixty-four million, which is the population of Great Britain, and it’s even more! And don’t even talk to me about the time wasted waiting for kettles to boil, the drink to cool down and the sipping time. Meanwhile, in the workplace, machines are turned off, there’s nobody to fill the supermarket shelves, lorries are parked up on their bays. And what about our trade union brothers? Their tea breaks are enshrined in law! Who knows how many objects we’ve missed at the Space Centre because some bloody telescope operative has turned his back on the screen just as an important piece of space junk goes by! And all because somebody wanted to drink an infusion of leaves or beans during working hours! It’s a national disgrace!’
Alexander said to Brian, ‘So, I take it you don’t want a hot drink?’
Eva said, ‘There’s more to a cup of tea than hot water and leaves. You’re such a reductionist, Brian. I remember the night you said, “I don’t know why people get so hot and bothered about sex. It’s only the insertion of a penis into a nearby vagina.”‘
Alexander was gathering his tools together and laughed. ‘Nice to know romance ain’t dead. Shall I still come tomorrow, Eva?’
‘Please.’
Eva waited until she could hear Alexander’s laughter in the kitchen, then said, ‘Brian, do you still love me?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘Would you do anything for me?’
Well, I wouldn’t wrestle a crocodile.’
‘No, but I’ve been wondering if you would sleep in your shed for a while.’
‘How long is “a while”?’ asked Brian aggressively.
‘I don’t know,’ said Eva. ‘It could be a week, a month, a year?’
‘A year? I’m not sleeping in the bloody shed for a year!’
‘I can’t think with you in the house.’
He said, ‘Look, can we stop fart-arsing around? What have you got to think about?’
‘Everything. Do elephants sweat? Is the moon a construct of songwriters? Were we ever happy together?’
Brian said, softly, ‘I’m the Mensa member. I can do your thinking for you.’
‘Brian, I can hear you breathing through the wall.’
He said, coldly, ‘So, if you won’t get out of bed, how will you feed yourself? Because I’m not feeding you. Are you hoping that a fluffy mummy bird will keep you supplied with worms, if you cheep loudly enough?’
She didn’t know who would feed her, so she said nothing.
He combed his beard and then left the room, banging the door so loudly that the frame shook. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he could no longer hold on to his temper, and shouted, ‘You’re bloody mad! You need medication! I’m ringing the surgery for an appointment! It’s time they heard my point of view’
A few minutes later, the smell of frying bacon stole up the stairs.
Eva’s mouth watered. Brian knew her weakness for bacon, it was the reason she was a lapsed vegetarian. She had gone as far as buying bacon by post from a prestigious pig farm in Scotland. There was a little speech she gave whenever somebody found out that Eva paid for bacon by direct debit. She would say, ‘I don’t drink or smoke [a lie] and I spend nothing on myself [untrue], so I think I’m entitled to a few rashers of bacon.’
She lay in bed, watching the light fade, and noticed one dying leaf still attached to a branch of the sycamore. She came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t make the bacon speech again. It was banal and boring — and it wasn’t true, anyway.
Downstairs in the kitchen Brian confronted Alexander. Will you please stop feeding my wife? You’re encouraging her to stay in bed. And I can tell you now, it’ll end in tears.’
Venus and Thomas looked up from their homework. Ruby, who was at the sink, turned, alerted by the confrontational tone in Brian’s voice.
Alexander held his arms open and said, quietly, ‘I can’t leave her hungry and thirsty, can I?’
‘Yes! Yes, you can!’ shouted Brian. ‘Perhaps then she would drag her lazy arse downstairs and into the kitchen!’
Alexander said, ‘Hush, keep your voice down, man, my kids are here.’ He continued, ‘Eva’s on a sabbatical. She needs to think.’
Well, she’s not thinking about me, is she? I don’t know what’s happened to her. I think she’s going mad.’
Alexander shrugged and said, ‘I’m no psychiatrist. I drive a van, and I’m taking your wife’s carpet up tomorrow.’
‘You’re bloody well not! If you try to come back to this house, I’ll call the police!’ said Brian.
Ruby said, ‘Steady on, Brian. We’ve never had a policeman cross this threshold, and we’re not starting now’ She said to the children, ‘If I were you, duckies, I’d put your coats on. I think your daddy’s ready to go.’
Alexander nodded, and passed his children their coats. As they struggled into them, he went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, ‘Bye, Eva! See you tomorrow!’ He waited for a reply.
When none came, he shepherded his children to the front door.
Brian followed. With Alexander and the children on the doorstep, he said, ‘You bloody well won’t see her tomorrow. So, goodbye! And have a nice life!’
17
Growing up in Leicester, Brian had been a clever little boy. As soon as he was able to manipulate his twenty-six alphabet blocks he began to arrange them into patterns. Two, four, six, eight were his favourites. He then proceeded to build — at first, a trembling brick tower which he never once knocked over. Then, one day, just before his third birthday, to the amazement of everyone who saw it, he spelled out the sentence ‘I am bored’.
His father, Leonard, began to teach little Brian simple sums. The infant was soon adding, multiplying and dividing. Always in silence. His father worked long hours in a hosiery factory and got home long after Brian had been put to bed. Unfortunately, Yvonne did not speak to her little son. She moved around the house with grim determination, a duster in one hand, a damp cloth in the other. An Embassy Filter cigarette was permanently stuck in the corner of her mouth. She was not a demonstrative woman, but occasionally she shot Brian a look of such malevolence that he fell briefly into a trance-like state.
On his first day of nursery school he clung to Yvonne’s legs. When she bent down to peel his hands away, a large piece of burning ash fell from her cigarette and on to his head. Yvonne tried to knock it off but succeeded only in scattering the ash on to his face and neck. A piece smouldered in his hair, so Brian’s first morning was taken up with first aid and an enforced rest on a camp bed in the corner of the classroom. His teacher was a pretty girl with golden hair who told Brian to call her Miss Nightingale.
It wasn’t until the afternoon, when the other children were colouring with wax crayons on sugar paper and Brian was filling his piece of paper with geometric shapes, using a freshly sharpened pencil, that Miss Nightingale and the school discovered they had a prodigy on their hands.
Now, after a great deal of manipulation of the automated appointment system, Brian had managed to secure a face-to-face appointment with Dr Lumbogo. Brian had made the appointment using his professional title, Dr Beaver. He found that it often paid to flag his status pre-consultation. It put the bloody generalists in their place.
He sat in the waiting room reading a tattered copy of The Lancet. He was engrossed in a paper on the relative sizes of the male and female brain. There was reasonable evidence that men’s brains were ever so slightly larger. A female hand had written in the margin, ‘So, why can’t the big-brained bastards use a toilet brush?’
‘Twisted feminist,’ Brian muttered to himself.
An elderly Sikh tapped him on the should
er and said, ‘Doctor? Your turn, it has come.’
For a split second Brian thought that the wise-looking Sikh was predicting his imminent death. Then he saw that the electronic sign on the wall above the reception area was flashing ‘Dr Bee’ in red.
He said to the man, ‘I don’t suppose you have this flashing-light nonsense in Pakistan?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied the turbaned one. ‘I have never been to Pakistan.’
Dr Lumbogo looked up briefly as Brian hurried through the door. ‘Dr Bee, please take a seat.’
‘I’m Dr Beaver,’ said Brian. ‘Your system has been —’
‘So, how can I help you?’
‘It’s my wife. She’s taken to her bed and says she intends to stay there for a year.’
‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘My colleague Dr Bridges has already seen your wife. The tests say she is in excellent health.’
‘I know nothing of this,’ said Brian. Are we talking about the same woman?’
‘Oh yes.” said Dr Lumbogo. ‘He found her to be of robust health and —’
Brian said, ‘But she’s not of sound mind, Doctor! She started to cook our evening meal with a bath towel wrapped around her! I bought her an apron every Christmas, so why…?’
Dr Lumbogo said, ‘Let us stop there, and examine this bath towel business more closely. Tell me, Dr Bee, when did this start?’
‘I first noticed it about a year ago.’
‘And do you remember, Dr Bee, what she was cooking?’
Brian thought. ‘I don’t know, it was something brown, bubbling in a pot.’
‘And the subsequent wearing of the bath towel? Do you remember the meals she was preparing?’
‘I’m almost sure they were some kind of Italian or Indian thing.’
Dr Lumbogo lurched across the desk towards Brian with his index finger extended, as though he were pointing a gun, and exclaimed, ‘Ha! Never salad.’
Brian said, ‘No, never salad.’