A Five Year Sentence (12 page)

If Miss Hawkins thought that she was the sole disciple of Brian's wayward church, she was mistaken, for over the past few days, her high priest had not been idle. He'd been round and about, drumming up business. He had visited the record library in the Town Hall, thinking it would provide a profitable quarry, and as it turned out, he was right. From the generous sprinkling of middle-aged ladies, it seemed as if music vied with cats and dogs as the indispensable companion to a loner. He had been there only a few minutes when one of the women actually accosted him. ‘D'you like music?' she asked, but it was clear from her tone and facial expression that her curiosity about his musicology was minimal. Hers was a cultural form of soliciting. Nevertheless he took the question at its face value and answered that he did indeed like music, and found it a boon companion to one who lived alone, thus making his tastes and his domestic situation immediately clear. The lady, too, had no desire to beat about the bush. ‘I live alone too,' she said. ‘Perhaps we can listen together sometime.' Her boldness somewhat astonished him, as did his easy lie about his hermit existence. With very little encouragement he had managed to either bury his mother or to establish her at The Petunias, and he was glad that he could do it with so little scruple.

‘Come to my place,' she was saying, and he noticed how her voice was suddenly a whisper. ‘I've got some very special lines.' She winked at him. Instinctively he moved away, then regretted it, for though he wanted none of her services, he would have given his eye teeth to see her price list. It disturbed him to be confronted with the fact that others were in the business, and so brazenly. He reckoned that there were few men in the trade, and they surely had more subtle ways of client-pulling. He heard the
patter of her receding footsteps on the parquet floor, and he turned to watch her, as, record-less, she left the room. Her feet and ankles, he noticed, were swollen, and they were stuffed into short-laced boots with precariously high heels. Her feet were the mark of her calling, the sum of a million to-and-fro steps on pavement stones, and cobbled alleys, and now, with the illegality of her calling, the respectable parquet floors of the establishment. She did not look back. There could be no regrets attached to her trade, else it would have reminded her that she was a woman withal, and without in any way connecting her pursuit with his, Brian felt faintly sorry for her.

On the way home he decided to do his supermarket shopping. This was normally a Monday occupation, but since he would be otherwise engaged, he would do it forthwith, and his mother, without mentioning it, would appreciate his far-sightedness. He would buy her a bar of chocolate as well. Brian had always done the household shopping and cooking. His mother had always frowned upon domesticity, thinking she was above it, though for what reason Brian never knew, for apart from her reading of thrillers over and over again, she did little else with her time. She loved to eat and watch television. Since the onset of her condition, she rarely risked going out, though she would oblige Brian to take her for a short walk sometimes for a lungful of fresh air, to which she was not over-partial, but she feared the results of its deprivation. Yes, it surely was time she went into care, Brian thought, but for both of them the Twilight Home was out of the question. He wondered often why he hated it so; other old people found it adequate enough. What was so special about his mother that both of them considered it below her station. He had to conclude that there was nothing special at all, but that he could not bring himself to dump her there. When their neighbours had suggested it, he wondered at his stubborn refusal. It wasn't even that he liked his mother, but he disliked her so much that he wanted to give her no cause to blame him, no stage for her masochistic triumph. She said often enough, and often without cause, ‘You'd like to see me dead, wouldn't you?' Yes, he would, indeed he would, when her moaning would be
silenced once and for all. But from the Twilight Home she would bleat out her weary martyrdom and would give him little pleasure. The Petunias was the only solution. There, she would not only be out of the way, but grateful with it. He had to find some more clients. The record library had proved infertile ground. He must seek fresh fields. He took a wire trolley and entered the supermarket.

He knew its layout intimately, for ever since it had opened, he had been a regular weekly customer. His needs and his mother's were straightforward and constant. Indeed they were similar, a thought which often displeased him. So he would move from dairy to fruit, from meat to vegetables with speed and precision. It was only at the household counter that he dallied, trying to save on the cleaning material, mops and disinfectants, that his mother's condition constantly required. It was as he approached this section of the supermarket, that a sense of shame always overcame him, the embarrassment of being seen to have anything to do with women's work. He sampled the prices of the aerosol clean-airs from a distance, feigning only the cursory interest of one who is marginally curious as to how women get through their housekeeping allowance. Then, having fixed on the cheapest and largest, he looked furtively around him and dropped the can into his trolley as he was passing by. As he walked he concealed it beneath the frozen chicken, for he regarded it as the most shameful of his purchases. Then followed the need for toilet paper further down die counter. He baulked again. Such natural functions were unavoidable but there was no need to display their necessity in such a public place and when he saw others collecting their rolls, he could not help but look upon them with a certain disdain, and he was loathe to join their number. The rolls were at the very end of the shelf directly around the corner from the marmalade. He stretched out his hand for a double lavender, which seemed from his distant scrutiny to be the best buy, and as he picked it up from the shelf, another hand, fresh from jam collecting, reached round the corner for its natural need. Their grasp was simultaneous and on the same double roll, so it was inevitable that one should
give way to the other, a sacrifice that Brian was all too ready to make, anything to avoid a confrontation at such a compromising counter. But the face attached to the groping hand now cornered, and was staring at him, and meekly thanking him, crumbling with the embarrassment of his discovery of her human frailty. He avoided her gratitude and quickly moved away, paper-less but proud and with a distinct feeling of gross superiority. He finished his shopping and joined the short queue at the cashier's desk. He was too engrossed in his feeling of separateness to notice the lavender roll on top of the basket of the customer in front of him. And when he did, he noted too the other contents of her trolley. A half a pound of butter, one lamb chop, a small piece of cheese, a quarter of tea and a pound of sugar. To clinch it all was a tin of cat food. It was clearly the sum total of provisions of a woman who lived alone. He tried to recall her apologetic face, but he'd given it only a fleeting glance and nothing had registered. So he studied the back of her as if to find some clue to a possible interest in his price list. The queue moved forward, and she arranged her frugal needs on the counter. She turned to replace the trolley and caught sight of him and gave him again that apologetic smile. He felt he ought to say that she shouldn't worry. He fully understood that like everybody else, or almost everybody else, she too had needs which she would have preferred to conceal, but what then was it doing so boldly displayed on the counter? He felt like offering his jacket as a cover. ‘Isn't it a lovely day,' he said, echoing Miss Hawkins' first introduction. He suddenly felt a strange fondness for Miss Hawkins. No matter how large his clientele, she would always be his favourite, for it was she, as well as his mother, who, both unawares, had first put him in business. He would give her the odd perk or two, he decided.

‘Yes, it is, isn't it,' the lavender lady obliged as she filled her shopping-bag with her needs. Her ready agreement was a conversation-stopper and he scratched in his mind to re-open it.

‘Nice day for a walk,' he said.

She took it as an invitation, and immediately rejected it. ‘I have to go home and feed my cat,' she said.

He was surprised at her interpretation. He hadn't meant it as an open invitation, and if he had, but he was positive he hadn't, he was a little irritated at having been so summarily dismissed. He felt the need for a comeback. ‘I wasn't thinking of it for myself,' he said. ‘It was a general remark. I meant other people.'

‘But we
are
other people,' she said, putting him firmly in his place as part of the large indefinable herd.

He could think of no answer. He should have let it go at that, but he was conscious of a sudden need for revenge, to put this woman in her rightful place, that of servitude. She would make an ideal client. He noticed that she hovered at the end of the counter, feigning some difficulty in arranging her purchases in her bag. Brian concluded that she was waiting for him, and he packed and paid for his purchases quickly, so that by the time he was finished, she too was ready to move away. He dangled by her side and out of the shop.

‘I go this way,' she said, pointing to her left.

‘So do I,' Brian said, though his disinfected home lay in the other direction. They walked side by side silently.

‘Shall I carry your bag?' Brian said after a while.

‘That's very kind of you,' she said, passing it to him.

He was surprised at how heavy it was, considering the meanness of her shopping. He peeped inside, and underneath the supermarket items, he caught sight of a large box of chocolates. Yes, he decided, she definitely lived alone.

They turned the corner at the end of the supermarket block and into a tree-lined street that was suddenly strangely quiet given its proximity to the High Street traffic. Half-way down the street she stopped. ‘This is where I live,' she said. He offered her the shopping-bag.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?' she said. ‘Because you carried it,' she added quickly, fearing lest the invitation was for its own sake and not by way of recompense.

‘I would have carried it anyway,' he said. ‘But I never say no to a cup of tea.'

She opened the front door. He noticed a man's umbrella stuck in the hallstand. The sight upset his calculations, and he thought
he might ask her if he could use her bathroom, which was a reliable location to assess the gender of occupancy. Once there, he was glad to notice the single toothbrush in the stand, a row of female appliances, and not a male trapping in sight. On the way downstairs, he peeped into open doorways, and noted two over-furnished bedrooms and a store-room. It was obviously a home of many years' standing. In the sitting-room, the furniture was highly polished, but scratched and scuffed from many years of function. The chair-covers were clean, but frayed and faded, and he had the impression that it had once been a family house, a nest from which the birds had flown. And as if echoing his thoughts, she said, ‘I've lived in this house for forty years. Brought up my children here. They're in Canada now.'

‘And your husband?'

‘I'm a widow,' she said. ‘This fourteen years. Now make yourself comfortable. I'll put the kettle on.'

He took advantage of her absence to examine the room for further clues to her standing. On the sideboard was a line of framed photographs, two of weddings, which he presumed were those of her children. At the far end was a silver-framed portrait of a middle-aged man in army officer's uniform. Presumably the dear departed. In the corner was a revolving bookcase, containing more magazines than books, but among the latter, he noticed a preponderance of titles pertaining to spiritualism and the life hereafter. He made a note to incorporate that subject into his sales patter. He heard the squeak of a tea-trolley and took his seat again. Her tea-service, he noticed, was the same that his mother had had for many years. It was a blue willow-pattern and had probably been bought around the same time, for nowadays he knew that such china was very expensive. His mother rarely ordered its use. It was the best china, she kept telling him, and kept for visitors, but since visitors were rare, the set gathered cobwebs on the top shelf of the pantry. He was glad she had the same set. He felt himself part of a special occasion. She poured the tea.

‘Your husband?' he said, nodding in the direction of the photograph.

‘Yes, that's George. That photograph was taken only a week before he died. A regimental dinner, it was. He was a regular soldier, you see.'

‘He looks a very interesting gentleman,' Brian said, hoping with this observation to tempt her into revealing more of her husband's nature, so that he could gauge whether or not he was wasting his time,

‘He was indeed,' she said ‘though he had his little quirks.'

Brian's hopes rose. ‘Quirks?'

‘Well, he was a stickler for tidiness. Everything had to be in apple-pie order, like soldiers in line. I've seen him get up from his armchair, for the express purpose of adjusting one cushion that was a millimetre out of place.'

Sick enough, Brian thought, and very promising. ‘How did you deal with all that?' he said.

‘I let it be,' she said, ‘'cos I have my little quirks too.'

It was acceptable to discuss the idiosyncracies of the dead. It was altogether too personal to show curiosity about those of the living and practising. And though he itched to know what her quirks were, he made a point of not enquiring further. There was a silence between them that timed his unasked question, and her reticence to go any further.

‘What's your name,' he said, ‘if you don't mind my asking?'

‘Violet,' she said. ‘Violet Makins. And yours?'

He hesitated, needing to search for one. He was aware that his trade was illicit, and that he must have an alibi in the event of discovery.