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.
Eva tried to make light of this evidence of Brian Junior’s increasing peculiarity. She was alarmed by this email. He had always been the weaker twin – slower to talk and walk – and the one who clung to her skirt when she first took them to nursery school. But she remembered it was also Brian Junior who had charmed passers-by with his smile when she took the twins out in the double buggy. Even then, Brianne had been less attractive. If somebody approached her, she would scowl and hide her face.
Eva continued to read. She felt nothing but a sense of failure, and perhaps, for the first time, had to face the realisation that Brian Junior might have to move to Silicon Valley where he would be able to live and work with his own kind.
I find it a matter of regret that you will not be attending your late mother-in-law’s funeral. My father is, and I quote, ‘Devastated.’ I have also spoken to Barbara Lomax, the head of the Student Psychology Service, and she assures me that the reason you are ‘unable’ to leave your bed is that you are in the grip of agoraphobia, probably as a result of childhood trauma.
Alexander, attempting to lighten the mood, laughed and said, ‘Did you see something nasty in the woodshed, Eva?’
She was unable to join in. She read the next few sentences to herself, not wanting Alexander to hear them and judge her.
Ms Lomax stressed that she has known people to be cured within six weeks. However, diet, exercise, self-discipline and courage are needed. I informed Barbara that, in my opinion, you have no courage, because you knowingly allow my father to fornicate under your roof and say nothing.
Eva could no longer control herself, and shouted aloud, ‘He’s not under my roof! He’s in his sodding shed!’ Then she continued reading to herself.
Barbara enquired of me, ‘Do you have anger issues with your mother?’ I told her that I can hardly bear to be in the same room as my mother lately.
Eva read the last sentence again. And then again. What had she done wrong?
She had fed him, kept him clean, bought him decent shoes, taken him to the dentist and the optician, built a rocket out of Lego, taken him on zoo trips and cleaned out his room. He’d been on a steam train, the medical box was always at hand, and she’d hardly raised her voice to him throughout his childhood.
She folded the email printout in half, then into quarters, then into eighths, then into sixteenths, then into thirty-secondths and sixty-fourths. She tried to make it even smaller, gave up and put the wad of paper in her mouth. It was unpleasant, but she could not take it out. Alexander undemonstratively passed her a glass of water and she began to soften the wad of paper like a cow chewing cud, until gradually it turned into a pulp.
With her tongue, she pushed the wad into her cheek and said to Alexander, ‘I need a blind at this window. A white blind.’
On the night before his mother’s funeral, Brian went to see Eva. He asked her to reconsider her decision to stay away from the church service and the following interment.
Eva assured Brian that she had loved Yvonne, and would think about her while the funeral was in progress, but she could not leave her bed.
Brian said, ‘What if it was Ruby, your own mother? Would you leave your bed for her?’
‘I need notice on that question,’ said Eva.
‘I can’t bear to think about her lying on those cold kitchen tiles,’ Brian said, tearfully.
Eva stroked his hand. ‘She was fed up with the modern world anyway, Brian. She couldn’t grasp the fact that there was pornography on her Freebox. When she first watched the telly, the newsreader was wearing a dinner jacket.’
‘Do you think she had a good life?’
Eva said, carefully, ‘As good as she could have, given that she was born into a man’s world, and that your dad wouldn’t let her wear trousers.
He said, ‘You know those Valentine’s Day cards she got every year?’
‘An amazing number.’
‘She wrote them to herself as well.’
‘She must have been horribly lonely, Bri. She never got over your dad’s death.’
Were you lonely when I was at work?’ Brian asked.
Eva said, ‘I was lonelier when you came home, and we were sitting next to each other on the sofa.’
‘But we did have some good times, didn’t we?’
‘We must have, but I can’t remember what they were. ‘Brian said, sounding slightly annoyed, ‘The holidays abroad. Camping in Wales. Florida.’
Eva wanted to concur with Brian, but her memories were a blur of mosquitoes, rain, mud, sunstroke, dehydration, endless driving, bickering and grudging reconciliations.