by Sue Townsend
Ruby didn’t know what to do. Jo was also conflicted; she didn’t like the way this was going. The lovely woman she saw through her lens was obviously terrified, but Jo was surprised by the starkness of the white room. The light was beautiful. She could not turn her camera off, so she adjusted the white balance, and carried on filming.
Eva scrambled under the duvet and shouted, ‘Mum! Mum! Phone Alexander! His number’s in the book!’
Jo managed to film a couple of seconds of the woman’s face before she scrambled under the white duvet.
Derek walked into the shot. He announced, ‘I’m in the bedroom of a woman called Eva Beaver — or, as tens of thousands of people are now calling her, “The Saint of Suburbia”. I was invited into the house by a Mrs Brown-Bird, Eva’s mother, but Eva is a shy, nervous woman who has requested that her face should not be filmed. East Midlands Tonight will honour that plea. She’s there. She’s the lump in the bed.’
Jo’s viewfinder showed a hump under the white duvet.
Eva shouted from under the duvet, ‘Are you still there, Mum?’
Ruby said, ‘Yes, but I can’t tackle them stairs for a bit.’
She plumped herself down in the soup chair. ‘I’ve been up and down like a bleddy pogo stick. I’m seventy-nine. I’m too old for this carry-on. I’ve got a cake downstairs I’m neglecting.’
Derek shouted, ‘Mrs Brown-Bird, we’re trying to film here! Please do not talk, whistle or sing.’
Ruby got out of the chair and said, ‘I’m not staying here, if I’m not wanted.’
She staggered to the banisters on the landing and leaned heavily against them until she felt able to go downstairs to the kitchen, where she began to look for Eva’s phone book. Alexander’s name was the first number in it, in his own handwriting. Ruby sat down at the kitchen table and laboriously pressed buttons on the phone.
He answered immediately, saying, ‘Eva?’
‘No, Ruby. She wants you to come round. There’s some television people here and she wants them gone.’
‘What? She wants a bouncer?’
‘Yes, she wants you to come and chuck them out of the house,’ said Ruby, expanding on Eva’s instructions.
‘Why choose me? I’m not a street-fighting man.’
Ruby said, ‘Yes, but people are more frightened of black men, aren’t they?’
Alexander laughed down the phone. ‘OK, I’ll be there in five minutes. I’ll bring my deadly paintbrushes, shall I?’
Ruby said, ‘Good, because I’m fed up with all this argy-bargy. I’m going home.’
She placed the phone carefully in its charger, put on her hat and coat, took her shopping bag from the back of the kitchen door and went out into the cold afternoon.
Eva had persuaded Jo to switch the camera off and was sitting up in bed with her arms folded, looking — in Derek’s eyes — like a modern Joan of Arc.
Derek said, ‘Now, are you going to be sensible, and give me a face-to-face interview in your own words, or do I have to speak on your behalf? If so, you may not like what I have to say.’
‘This is what I’ve got to say. Fuck off out of my house!’
‘I’m not happy with this,’ Jo said. ‘You’re bullying her, Derek, and I may have to inform Human Resources.’
Derek said, ‘It’s OK, we can lose anything you’re not happy about in the edit.’
‘But I’m not involved in the edit. All I’m allowed to do is point a camera.
‘You weren’t so high-minded when we doorstepped that grieving widow last week.’
‘Which one? There were two grieving widows last week.’
‘The one whose idiot husband fell into the industrial bread mixer.’
‘I wasn’t happy.’
Derek grabbed Jo by the shoulders and said, ‘But that was such an artistic end shot you took — the tears running down her face, that kind of rainbow effect you got.’
Jo said, ‘I shot her tears through a crystal vase. I’m not proud of it. I’m ashamed.’
‘We’re all ashamed in television, deary, but it doesn’t stop us doing it. Never forget, we give the public what they want.’
Derek dropped his voice and murmured to Eva, ‘By the way, can I say how sorry I am that your husband’s about to leave you? You’re probably devastated, aren’t you?’
Eva said, ‘Do you know the meaning of the word “devastated”?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘It means, “destroyed or ruined, shattered into a thousand pieces”. But here I am, sitting up in bed, in one piece. Now, please close the door behind you.’
As he stamped down the stairs, Derek said, ‘This is why I loathe working with women. They can’t think further than their fanny.’ In a falsetto voice that was meant to be female, he said, ‘Oh dear me, I’m getting emotional and my hormones are taking over and everything must be ethical and from a woman’s point of view!’
They heard a key turn in the lock, and Alexander walked in carrying a large framed painting covered in bubble wrap.
‘Is it you who’s bothering Eva?’ he asked.
Derek said, ‘Are you the Alexander Mrs Brown-Bird’s been telling us about? Friend of the family, eh?’
Alexander said, firmly, ‘Please leave immediately, nobody wants you here.’
‘Look, sunshine, this is a big story in our neck of the woods. It’s not every day we find a saint in suburbia. We’ve got close-up shots of her in the window, we’ve got an interview with the mother, and Barry Wooton has told us his very boring, but very tragic story. All we need is Eva. Just a few words.’
Alexander gave a broad smile, reminding Plimsoll of the pregnant crocodile they’d recently filmed in Twycross Zoo.
‘You interviewed me at the opening of my first exhibition,’ he said. ‘I think I know your introduction by heart. “This is Alexander Tate, he’s a painter, not of the ghetto, not portraits of gang members, not edgy depictions of urban decay. No, Alexander paints watercolours of the English countryside …” Then cue the harpsichord music.’
Derek said, ‘I thought it was a nice little piece.’
Jo said, ‘Derek, you were patronising Alexander, and implying that painting watercolours was an unusual activity for black people.’
Derek said, ‘It is.’
Jo turned to Alexander. ‘My life partner is black. Do you know her — Priscilla Robinson?’
Alexander said, ‘No, funny that. I really ought to know the ten thousand black folk toiling in Leicester’s cotton fields.’
‘Don’t lay that shit at my door, Uncle Tom!’ Jo said, angrily.
Derek Plimsoll sat down heavily on the stairs and said, ‘This is the last time I do house calls. In future, everybody comes to me in the studio.’
Alexander looked down at Derek’s hairline. The white roots would need touching up soon, he thought. It was pitiful.
48
Eva watched Derek and Jo walk to the Mercedes van in silence. She kept watching until Jo had driven the van out of sight.
She quickly laid out the White Pathway. Every time she took a step on it, she imagined herself walking along the Milky Way, far beyond the earth and its complications. After peeing and washing her hands, she reached for her make-up. She wanted to look as good as she could. The expensive, shiny black pots and brushes she had accumulated over the years were talismans — the discreet gold logo protected her from harm. She knew she was being exploited, she could have bought the same contents for a sixth of the price, but she didn’t care, the overpricing had made her feel edgy and reckless, as if she were a circus performer about to traverse the high wire without a safety net.
She sprayed herself with the perfume she had used since she was a young librarian, and could not afford it. She had been very taken by the story of Marilyn Monroe who, when asked, What do you wear in bed?’ had replied, ‘Chanel No. 5.’
‘It probably wasn’t true,’ thought Eva now. Nothing was true for long. In time, everything was deconstructed. Black turned out to be white. The Crusa
ders were rapists, looters and torturers. Bing Crosby thrashed his children. Winston Churchill hired an actor to broadcast some of his most famous speeches. When Brian had told her all these things, she had said, ‘But they should be true.’ She wanted heroes and heroines in her life. If not heroes, people to admire and respect.
After making up her face, she returned to bed, pulled the white sheet up like a drawbridge, folded it carefully and put it under her pillows. She was proud that she had never once strayed from the White Pathway in nearly five months. Part of her knew it was a contrivance, but she felt that if she fell off the pathway and on to the wooden floor, she would spiral out of control, spinning, following the earth as it journeyed around the sun.
Halfway up the stairs, Alexander stopped. He shouted, ‘Is it OK to come up?’
Eva shouted back, ‘Yes.’
When he walked up two more steps, he could see Eva sitting on her bed. She looked very beautiful. There was flesh on her bones and the deep hollows in her cheeks had been filled.
He stood at her bedroom door and said, ‘You look well.’
She said, ‘What’s that under your arm?’
‘It’s a painting, it’s for you. A present. For the bare wall facing you.’
She said, softly, ‘But I like the bare wall, I like to watch the light move across it.’
‘I froze my bloody arse off painting this.’
Eva said, ‘I don’t want anything in here that interferes with my thinking.’
The truth was, she was very frightened that she might not like his work. She wondered if it were possible to love a man whose artistry she did not admire? Instead, she said, ‘Did you know that we haven’t said hello to each other yet?’
‘I don’t need you to say hello to me, you’re always with me. You never leave.’
‘I don’t know you,’ Eva said, ‘but I think about you constantly. I can’t take the painting, but I’d love the bubble wrap.’
This wasn’t what Alexander had hoped for. He’d thought she would be wild about the painting, especially when he pointed to the tiny figure of Eva on the brow of a hill with her blob of yellow-blonde hair. He’d seen her flying into his arms. They would kiss, he would cup her breasts, she would gently stroke his belly. At some stage, they would climb under the duvet and explore each other’s bodies.
He didn’t expect to find himself sitting on the side of her bed, popping little transparent mounds in the bubble wrap. He said, between satisfying pops, ‘You need a gatekeeper. Somebody to decide who’s allowed in the house and who isn’t.’
‘Like Cerberus,’ she said, ‘the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance, to the cave where somebody — I can’t remember who — lived. There was something about a pomegranate and a seed, but no … I can’t remember.’
There was a timid ringing of the doorbell.
Eva froze.
Alexander said, ‘I’ll go.’
After he had left, Eva thought hard about the first time she had heard of the dog Cerberus.
She was in a classroom, rain was battering the long windows. She was worried because she had forgotten her fountain pen again, and at any moment the class would be asked to write something down. Mrs Holmes, her English teacher, was telling thirty-six twelve-year old girls a story.
Eva could smell the teacher’s scent — it was a mixture of Evening in Paris and Vicks vapour rub.
Alexander reappeared. ‘There’s a woman downstairs who read about you on the internet and is desperate to see you.
‘Well, I’m not desperate to see her,’ snapped Eva.
‘Her daughter has been missing for three weeks.’
‘But why would she come to me? A woman who can’t get out of bed?’
‘She’s convinced you can help her,’ said Alexander. ‘She’s driven from Sheffield. The kid is called Amber, she’s thirteen years old —’
Eva cut in, ‘You shouldn’t have told me her name or her age, I’ve got the child inside my head now’ She picked up a pillow and screamed into it.
Alexander said, ‘So that’s a no, is it?’
49
Amber’s mother, Jade, had not allowed herself to bathe, shower or wash her hair, and she had not changed her clothes since her daughter’s disappearance. She was still wearing the baby-pink tracksuit, now grey with dirt, that she had been wearing on the day Amber went missing.
‘Amber was a happy, bubbly girl. I would normally have driven her to school but we got up late, I wasn’t dressed. We didn’t have time to make her a packed lunch. I was going to make it up and take it to her later. She wouldn’t have been abducted … she’s not pretty enough. She’s big-boned. She’s got awful hair. She’s got a brace on her top teeth. She wouldn’t have been abducted … these perverts go for prettier girls on the whole, don’t they?’
Eva nodded, then asked, ‘When was the last time you slept?’
‘Oh, I mustn’t sleep or have a shower, and I can’t wash my hair until Amber is back. I lie down on the settee at night with the Sky news on, in case there’s word about her. My mother blames me. My husband blames me. I blame me. Do you know where Amber is, Eva?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Eva. ‘Lie down next to me.’
When Alexander brought tea up for Eva and Jade, he found them fast asleep, side by side. He felt a painful stab of jealousy, Jade was in his place. He started to back out of the room but Eva heard a floorboard creak and opened her eyes.
She smiled when she saw him, and carefully slid from under the duvet to the end of the bed, where she sat with her legs dangling.
Alexander noticed that her toenails needed cutting and that the pink varnish on them had almost vanished. Without speaking, he took out the Swiss Army knife his wife had given him. It had many tools within it, and was a bulky weight, but Alexander kept it close to him at all times. He took Eva’s right foot, put it on his lap, and whispered, ‘Pretty feet, but the toenails of a slut.’
Eva smiled.
Jade was still sleeping. Eva hoped that she was dreaming of Amber, that they were together, in a place where they had been happy.
When Alexander had carefully trimmed all of Eva’s toenails, he pressed the clippers back into the body of the knife and pulled out a small metal file.
Eva laughed quietly as he began to run it across her newly clipped toenails. ‘Do you think Jesus was the first chiropodist?’
‘The first famous one,’ said Alexander.
‘Is there a celebrity chiropodist today?’ asked Eva.
‘I dunno. I cut my toenails myself, over a page torn from the London Review of Books. Doesn’t everybody?’
They were talking at normal volume now, conscious that Jade was sleeping the deep sleep that follows misery and exhaustion.
Alexander went out to his van and came back with a bottle of white spirit and a white rag.
Eva said, ‘Are you going out to torch the neighbourhood?’
‘You may have been in bed for months, but there’s no excuse for letting yourself go.’ He dipped the rag into the spirit and wiped the old nail varnish from her fingers and toes. When he’d finished, he said, ‘And now I’m going to “jooge” your hair.’ He produced a tiny pair of scissors from the Swiss Army knife.
Eva laughed. ‘They’re from Grimms’ Fairy Tales! What did you do over the weekend, cut the long grass in a meadow?’
‘Yeah,’ said Alexander, ‘for a wicked elf.’
‘And what would happen to you, if you failed your task?’
‘Seven swans would peck my big brown eyes out,’ he said, and then laughed too.
It took less than fifteen minutes to transform Eva’s hair from ‘Safe Eva’ to ‘Hey Eva!’
‘And finally,’ said Alexander, the magical helper, ‘eyebrows.’ He picked up his knife and, with great concentration, teased out a pair of tweezers so small that they were almost lost between his long fingers. We want quizzical arches, not unusually hirsute caterpillars.’
Eva said, ‘Hirsute?’
‘It means —’
‘I know what it means, I’ve been living with an unusually hirsute man for the last twenty-eight years.’
Eva felt a lightness in her body, a lack of gravity. She had experienced the sensation before when she was a child and a game of make-believe with other children had, for a few moments, soared and fused so that the world of their imagination was more real than the dull everyday world, which consisted mostly of unpleasant things. She felt the beginnings of a wild exhilaration and could hardly keep still enough for Alexander to pluck her brows.
She wanted to dance and sing but, instead, she talked. She felt as though a gag had been removed from her mouth.
Neither of them heard Brian and Titania come in, eat supper, or go to bed.
At half past five in the morning, Alexander said, ‘I’ve gotta go home. My kids are early risers, and their grandma ain’t.’ He looked at Amber’s mother and said, ‘Should we let her sleep?’
‘I don’t want to wake her,’ said Eva. ‘Let her come to life in her own time.’
Alexander picked up the painting and, keeping the bare side of the canvas towards Eva, took it downstairs and left it in the hall.
Eva heard him drive away in the still morning. He had left his Swiss Army knife on the window sill. She picked it up, it was cold to the touch.
She held it in her hands until it was warm.
Eva was kneeling, looking at her reflection in the window, trying to check her Joan of Arc haircut, when Amber’s mother stirred and woke. Eva watched her face and saw the precise moment when the sleepiness left and the stark reality that her child was missing hit her.
‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep!’ she said, scrambling for her shoes and putting them on. She switched her phone on and said, angrily, ‘Amber could have been trying to ring.’ She checked her phone. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘So, it’s good news, isn’t it?’ she said, brightly. ‘It means they haven’t found her body, doesn’t it?’