by Sue Townsend
‘My best pal! I’d sooner have an incontinent tramp with mental health issues as my “best pal” than that…’
Brianne could not properly articulate her loathing. She had come home to find her mother permanently in bed, in a stark-white box, obviously mad, and now her father expected her to share a room with that bloodsucking vampire, Poppy, who had ruined her first term at university.
The luggage was still on the landing when Poppy rang Brian to say that ‘an old man with a horribly scarred face’ had followed her from the newsagent’s where she’d been buying her Rizlas. She had called the police and was hiding from him in a park nearby.
Brian said into his mobile, ‘That’s almost certainly.
Stanley Crossley, he’s a lovely man, he lives at the end of our road.’
Brianne snatched the phone from her father. ‘His face is scarred because he was almost burned alive in a Spitfire. Or have you never heard of the Second World War? Phone the police now and tell them you’ve made a mistake!’
But it was too late. They could hear the sirens wailing outside. Poppy disconnected the call.
Eva punched the pillows in her rage and frustration. Her peace had been shattered. She didn’t want to hear raised voices outside her bedroom door, or sirens in the street. And she didn’t want that mad girl to spend another five minutes in her house. The Stanley Crossley she knew was a reserved and polite man who never failed to lift his hat when he and Eva passed in the street.
Once, only last spring, he had joined her on the wooden bench he had bought as a memorial to his wife, Peggy. They had exchanged banal observations about the weather. Then, out of nowhere, he had talked about Sir Archie McIndoe, the surgeon who had reconstructed his face, giving him eyelids, a nose and ears.
‘I was a boy,’ he had said. ‘Eighteen. I had been handsome. There were no mirrors in the Nissen huts where the other boys and I lived.’
Eva had thought that he might continue, but he had got up from the bench, tipped his hat and made his ungainly way to the local shops.
Now Eva lay back on the pillows. She could hear Brian Junior and Brianne bickering in the next room.
She had meant to visit Stanley, who only lived a hundred or so yards away. She had intended to invite him for tea. She imagined a white tablecloth, a cake stand, and cucumber sandwiches arranged in triangles on a china platter. But to her shame, despite passing his front door at least twice a day, she had issued no such invitation.
Eva was furious with Brian. Bringing Poppy into an already tense household was like introducing nitro-glycerine into a bouncy castle. She said, ‘Brian, go and find that malicious little cow. She is your responsibility.’
A couple of minutes later, she watched Brian hurrying in his carpet slippers towards the end of the road, where police cars, motorcycles and a dog van were trying to park.
Brian approached a thickset policewoman. He wondered who or what had given her such a very badly broken nose.
He said, ‘I think I can clear up this stalking nonsense.’
Are you the gentleman we are looking for, sir?’ asked Sergeant Judith Cox.
‘Certainly not! I am Dr Brian Beaver. ‘Are you here in a medical capacity, Dr Beaver?’
‘No, I am an astronomer.’
‘So, you are you not a medical doctor, sir?’
‘I believe a medical doctor trains for only seven years, whereas we professional astronomers are still in training until the day we die. New stars and new theories are born every day, Sergeant —’
‘Beaver, sir? As in “agile little dam-builder”?’
Before Brian could speak again, she added, ‘There is one question I’d like you to answer, Dr Beaver.’
Brian put on his professional, listening face.
‘I’m Aries. I’ve just been asked out by a constable of my acquaintance. My question is, he’s Sagittarius, are we compatible?’
Brian retorted angrily, ‘I said astronomer. Are you trying to provoke me, Sergeant?’
She laughed. ‘Only joking, sir! I don’t like being called a pig by the public either.’
Brian failed to see the comparison, but he went on, ‘I can personally vouch for the character of Stanley Crossley. He is a scholar and a gentleman, and I only wish that England had more like him.’
Sergeant Cox said, ‘That may be true, sir, but I believe Peter Sutcliffe’s exquisite manners are legendary in Broadmoor.’ She listened to the crackling of her lapel radio, said, ‘No, mine’s the beef chow mein with the oyster sauce,’ into it, raised her hand to Brian and went into the park to interview Poppy, the stalkee.
Eva was kneeling on her bed, looking out of the window, when Stanley Crossley went by in a police car. She thought he might look at the house, so she waved, but he stared ahead. There was nothing she could do to help him, and there was nothing she could do to help herself. She was filled with a savage rage and understood, for the first time, how easy it would be to murder somebody.
Another police car passed the house. Poppy was sitting in the back, apparently weeping.
Eva watched Brian plodding up the road, his beard blowing in the wind, his head down against a flurry of snow She dreaded him coming upstairs and reporting what had happened.
‘In fact, at this moment,’ she thought, ‘I could happily murder him.’
Brian bustled into Eva’s dark room, looking like an eager, hairy, Hermes anxious to impart his message. He switched the overhead light on and said, ‘Poppy is distraught, suicidal and downstairs. I don’t know what to do with her.’
Eva asked, ‘How is Stanley?’
‘You know what these old servicemen are like — stiff upper lip. Oh Christ!’ Brian exclaimed. ‘I shouldn’t have said that, given that he actually has a stiff upper lip. What’s the politically correct way of referring to somebody like Stanley, I wonder?’
Eva said, ‘You simply call him Stanley.’
‘I have a message from him. He’d like to call and see you, before Christmas.’
‘Can you bring my chair up?’ Eva asked.
‘The soup chair?’
She nodded, and said, ‘I need to talk to people face to face, and with Christmas coming…’
29
The next morning, when Brian and Brian Junior carried the lovely chair in and set it at the side of the bed, Eva asked, ‘So, what’s Ms Melodrama doing now?’
‘She says she’s got pains in her belly,’ said Brianne, appearing in the doorway.
‘The police were quite rough with her, apparently,’ said Brian.
‘That could mean a police officer raised their voice to her. She doesn’t look like somebody who’s been roughed up in the cells.’ Brianne looked accusingly at Brian. ‘Send her away, Dad! Now!’
‘I can’t send a penniless young girl out into the snow a fortnight before Christmas, can I?’
‘She’s hardly the Little Match Girl! She’ll always land on her feet!’
Brian Junior agreed. ‘Poppy will always win. She believes that she is superior to everybody else in the world. She thinks we are subhuman, here only to serve her.’
Poppy appeared in the doorway, clutching her belly. She said faintly, ‘I’ve sent for an ambulance. I think I’m having a miscarriage.’
Brian moved forward and supported her to the soup chair.
She said, ‘I can’t lose this baby, Brian Junior. It’s all I have… now that I’ve lost you.’
Eva remarked, ‘The awful dilemma we have here, Brian, is that she might be telling the truth.’
Eva watched from her bed as Poppy was carried out to the ambulance. She was wrapped in a red blanket.
Snow was falling heavily now.
Poppy raised a hand and waved weakly to Eva.
Eva did not wave back. Her heart was as cold as the pavement outside. She wanted rid of the interloper.
At eleven o’clock that night, a hospital clerk rang to say that Poppy had been discharged, and could someone give her a lift home?
When Brian
arrived at the Accident and Emergency waiting room, he found Poppy lying across three plastic chairs, with a cardboard bowl in her hands and a wad of tissues held to her mouth.
She said, ‘Thank God you’re here, Dr Beaver! I was hoping it would be you.
Brian was touched by her pallor and the delicacy of her fingers holding the bowl. He put a hand beneath her shoulders and lifted her until she was upright. She was shivering Brian took off his fleece jacket and made her put it on. He borrowed a wheelchair and asked her to sit in it, though she protested, ‘I’m perfectly able to walk.’
The snow had coated the pavements and buildings, giving a gentle edge to the brutalist hospital blocks. When they got to Brian’s car, he unlocked the doors, picked Poppy up in his arms, lowered her gently on to the back seat and covered her with a blanket. He abandoned the wheelchair on the edge of the car park. Normally, he would have taken it back to where he found it, but he did not want to be away from her for too long.
He drove home carefully. The main roads had been gritted, but the snow was falling so fast that the grit was soon covered in fresh snow.
Every now and then, Poppy whimpered.
Brian turned his head as far as it would go and said, ‘Not long now, little one. We’ll soon have you home and in bed.’ He wanted to ask her if she had miscarried the baby, but he recognised that he knew very little about women and their emotions, and he was nervous about discussing gynaecological mechanics.
Soon he was driving through a blizzard. He opened his window but could not see the verge of the pavement. He carried on for a few minutes and then, only a hundred yards from the house, he stopped the car but kept the engine running.
Poppy sat up and said weakly, ‘I love the snow, don’t you, Dr Beaver?’
Brian said, ‘Please, call me Brian. It’s certainly a fascinating substance. Did you know, Poppy, that no two snowflakes are the same?’
Poppy gasped, though she had known this about snowflakes since she was at infants school. ‘So, each is unique?’ she said, with wonderment in her voice.
Brian recalled, ‘The twins played snowflakes in their first nativity play. The imbecilic teacher had made them identical costumes. Nobody else in the audience noticed, but I did. It spoiled the whole thing for me.’
Poppy said, ‘I was always Mary.’
Brian looked at her intently. ‘Yes, I can see why you were chosen.’
‘Do you mean you can tell that I’m the chosen one?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Brian.
Poppy reached forward, took Brian’s hand off the steering wheel and kissed it. She manoeuvred herself into the front of the car, over the gearstick, and sat on his lap. She said in her little-girl voice, ‘Are you my new daddy?’
Brian remembered the last time Titania had sat on his knee. She’d put on weight recently and the experience had been rather painful. Now he wanted to push Poppy Into the passenger seat, before his todger came to life, but she had her arms around his neck and was stroking his beard and calling him ‘Daddy’.
He found all of this to be irresistible. He did things that were, as everyone said these days, ‘completely Inappropriate’. And he was flattered to think that such a lovely young innocent girl could be attracted to a 55-year-old fool like himself.
He wondered if Titania would be waiting for him in the shed. Perhaps the snow had prevented her from making her usual journey — he hoped not, because he needed a woman tonight.
When the blizzard had abated, and it was a mere snowstorm, Brian and Poppy got out of the car and walked to the house.
Eva saw them arrive at the gate.
Brian was beaming, and Poppy was whispering something in his ear.
Eva knocked so fiercely on the window that one of the panes broke. Snow rushed in like water through a dyke, then melted slowly in the heat.
30
The next morning, Eva was sitting cross-legged on the bed as Alexander replaced the broken glass, squeezing putty around the pane like she used to squeeze pastry around the edge of a pie to make a fluted pattern.
She said, ‘Is there anything you can’t do?’
‘I can’t play the saxophone, I don’t know the rules of croquet, I can’t remember my wife’s face. My navigation is crap. I can’t pole-vault, and I’m hopeless at fist-fighting.’
Eva admitted, ‘I can’t tune a digital radio. I gave up after a day with my smartphone. On my computer the Microsoft wouldn’t engage with the internet, and neither could I. I couldn’t watch a film on an iPad — and why should I, when there’s a cinema half a mile away? I should have been born a hundred years ago. I can’t download on my MP3 machine. Why do people keep buying me these gadgets? I’d be happier with a simple radio, a television with knobs on the front, a Dansette record player and a phone like we had when I was a child. Something important that stood on the hall table. It rang so loudly that we could hear it all over the house and garden. And it only rang when there was something important to say. Somebody was ill. An arrangement had to be changed. Or the person who had been ill had died. People ring now to say that they’ve arrived in McDonald’s and are about to order a cheeseburger and fries.’
Alexander laughed. ‘You’re a technophobe like me, Eva. We’re happier with a simpler way of life. I should go back to Tobago.’
Eva said, vehemently, ‘No! You can’t!’
He laughed again. ‘Take it easy, Eva. I’m going nowhere. It costs a lot of money to have a slower pace of life, and I had my one shot at that.’
She asked, ‘Do you ever talk about your wife?’
‘No. Never. If the kids ask, I lie and say she’s gone to heaven. My children believe that she is up there in the arms of Jesus, and I ain’t gonna disabuse them of that comforting picture.’
‘Was your wife beautiful?’ Eva said, quietly.
‘No, not beautiful. Pretty, elegant — and she looked after herself. Her clothes were always good, she had her own style. Other women were a bit afraid of her. She never wore a tracksuit, didn’t own a pair of trainers. She didn’t do casual.’
Eva glanced at her ragged nails and slid them under the duvet.
The door opened abruptly, and Brianne said, ‘Oh, Alex, I didn’t know you were here. Would you like a cup of tea, or a drink perhaps? It is nearly Christmas, after all.’
‘Thank you, but I have to work and drive.’
Eva said, ‘I’d love a cup of tea.’
Brianne’s expression changed when she looked at her mother. Well, I am busy, but I’ll try to bring you one up.’
There were a few moments of awkwardness between the three of them.
Brianne said to Alexander, ‘Bye then. See you downstairs?’
He said, ‘Maybe,’ and turned back to the window ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea, Eva, when I’ve finished this.’
There was an uneasy atmosphere in the house over the next week.
There were silences and whisperings and slammed doors. The women circled around each other. Eva tried to interest them in decorating the house and stringing up the fairy lights, and they would agree with her that it should be done — however, nobody actually did anything.
Poppy had made her base in the sitting room. She had commandeered every item of furniture for her possessions and clothes, so the Beavers had taken to sitting in the kitchen. Whenever Brian and Poppy met accidentally in the house, they managed to touch each other briefly, and both enjoyed the conspiracy. Brian particularly relished the contact — especially on the nights when Titania was waiting for him in the shed.
On the evening of the 19th of December, Brian asked Eva, What are we doing for Christmas?’
Eva said, ‘I’ll be doing nothing at all.’
Brian was shocked. ‘So, you’re expecting me to do Christmas?’ He rose from the soup chair and walked up and down the room, looking like a prisoner on Death Row waiting for the dawn.
Eva forced herself to stay silent as Brian faced the awful fact that he might have to be responsible for Christmas, the
Becher’s Brook of family festivals. Many good women, and a few men, have fallen due to the weight of expectation that rests on their shoulders.
‘I don’t even know where you keep Christmas,’ he said, as though in previous years Eva had deposited Christmas inside a locked container at an out-of-town storage depot, and all she had to do was pick Christmas up and take it home before December the 25th.
‘Do you want me to tell you how to do Christmas, Brian?’
‘I suppose so.’
Eva advised him, ‘You may want to take notes.’
Brian took out of his pocket the little black notebook with moleskin covers that Eva had bought for him as compensation for fading his motorcycle exam. (He had argued with the examiner over the precise meaning of the phrase ‘full throttle’.) He unclipped his fountain pen (a school prize) and waited.
‘OK,’ said Eva. ‘I’m going to talk you through. Stop me at any time.’
Brian sat back down in the soup chair with his pen poised above his notebook.
Eva took a breath and started.
‘You’ll find the Christmas card list in the bureau in the sitting room, together with stamps and unused cards. Write them tonight, before you go to bed. After work tomorrow, drive around garden centres and garage forecourts looking at Christmas trees. In your mind’s eye you are seeing a perfect tree, lushly green and aromatic, rounded at the bottom and rising in ever-decreasing circles until topped with a single branch. However, there are no such trees. You drive around all week and fail to find one. At nine p.m. the day before Christmas Eve, just as Homebase is closing, you will panic and push through the doors and snatch at the nearest tree. Do not be too disappointed when you end up with a tree a social worker would describe as “fading to thrive”.’
Brian said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Eva, stick to the bloody list!’
Eva closed her eyes and tried to discipline herself to keep to the bare facts of how she had prepared for Christmas 2010.