A Five Year Sentence (2 page)

‘Hawkins,' she shouted, pushing open the door. She looked at the sobbing hulk with impatience and pulled her up from the floor, noting the blood on the lino and the red smudge on the sock. ‘Look at your mess,' she said. And then, lifting the serge Sunday pinny, ‘I thought as much,' she said, after a cursory examination. ‘Wait here, young woman, I'll get you your rags.'

Hawkins leaned against the towel rail, trembling with confusion. Matron hadn't killed her. She hadn't even been very angry. And what were the rags she was bringing? Was she going to be dressed in rags for punishment? But what resounded most in Hawkins' ear was the order of, ‘Wait here, young woman.' When matron was angry, she often said ‘young lady', and if she called you that, you knew it was bed without supper or no pudding on a Sunday. But ‘woman' was different. It was a word that belonged to old people, and she began to cry again because she was too young to be old. She heard matron's sensible heels down the corridor. She wished she could stop her tears.

‘Now stop blubbing,' matron said, not too gruffly. ‘It happens to us all.'

‘What happens?' Hawkins whimpered.

‘This,' she said, pointing to the blot of blood on the lino.

Hawkins wondered what she was talking about, but she was too afraid to ask.

‘Here,' matron said, holding out two wide strips of cloth. ‘These are your rags. Two is enough,' she said. ‘Every night before bed, you go into the staff bathroom and wash them. The staff bathroom, mind you. Nowhere else. When it stops, you come and tell me. And you must tell me when it starts again. I've got to keep count, you see, in case anything worse happens.'

‘Like what?' Hawkins was terrified.

‘You'll see,' matron said threateningly, and she was gone, unwilling and certainly unable to clarify further.

Hawkins looked at the rags. Her name, in black marking-ink, was inscribed lengthwise on the cloth. It happens to everybody, matron had said, but by some natural instinct Hawkins knew that boys didn't have to wear rags. But whatever matron had said, there was no doubt in Hawkins' mind that the blood was a punishment from God. Its timing could not be ignored. Later on that day, when matron forbade Sunday baths to Morris, Davies, Downes and Hawkins, she wondered for what morbid sin they too had been punished, and like a reluctant leper, she joined the rag-girl community.

The second event that was to terrorise Hawkins' future, she had desperately but clumsily buried in her soul. It took place later that same night, when everybody was in bed. Hawkins woke suddenly, remembering that she hadn't washed her rag, and that she was in no position to avail herself of further punishment either from God or from matron. Quietly she crept out of bed. On her way to the door, she wondered why Morris' bed was empty. Silently she tip-toed across the landing to the staff bathroom. The door was closed but there was no light from the crack beneath. She turned the handle quietly, feeling for the light switch with her other hand. And spot-lit by the naked bulb, Morris hung from the ceiling. The tongue lolled out of her mouth, and the big toe of one small white foot was upturned in a rigid and offended cramp. Around her young neck was tied a reef-knotted necklace of damp rags, each indelible leprous name coupled with another. Oh, matron will be ever so cross, Hawkins
thought, and she wondered what was Morris' first name. She clasped her hands over her mouth, vainly stifling a scream. Then she was sick and sobbing, and the bathroom was full of people and smells and sighs and horror. Somebody stuffed something into her mouth, and in the morning when she woke up, matron was standing by the bed, telling her over and over again that she'd had a bad dream. ‘A terrible dream, dear.'

‘Yes, yes,' Hawkins was happy to agree. ‘It was a nightmare.'

And she got up and went about her orphan-woman's business, trying not to notice that Morris wasn't there.

Miss Hawkins stared out at the crowded assembly and shivered. She glanced again at Jim Connell's ill-spelt memoranda which no longer bore any relation to what he was saying. By his droning repetition, he seemed to be running out of expressions, and she was grateful that it would soon be over.

‘And on behalf of the staff and management, I would like to present you with this gift as a small token of our appreciation.'

He was handing it to her. She half stood up to accept it, her hands trembling. She thought of Morris again. I never really cried for her. I must mourn her, she decided, before I go. The tears were already pricking behind her eyes. She sniffed audibly and the audience saw her trembling. They whispered among themselves that she was overcome and they were embarrassed, and the more human among them hated her for the guilt she bred in them. ‘Open it, Miss Hawkins,' someone shouted from the back of the hall. She pretended not to hear. But the shout came again, louder this time, and it was an order. And she, who all her life had obeyed, began clumsily to untie the silver knot beneath the plastic instant bow. Her hands trembled so that she was incapable of untying it, and with great fury she tore the ribbon apart, tearing at the paper, hating them all for their pitying charity. She was like a ravenous dog with a bone, and the audience shifted uncomfortably, deciding that it was probably the first present poor Miss Hawkins had received in her whole life. Then they regretted the ungenerosity of the gift they had given her.

At last, she'd stripped the package. It was a book. She'd
guessed that by its shape as she tore the last lining of tissue. But not an ordinary book. For it was fastened with a gold Gothic lock with two small keys attached. On its green leather binding was inscribed, ‘MISS HAWKINS' FIVE-YEAR DIARY'. She stared at it, somehow gratified that the apostrophe was in the right place. Then her knees buckled and she had to sit, gripping the edge of the table as if it were the rail of a dock. As if they had passed their verdict on her forty-six years of service. A gilt-edged inscribed five year sentence. Anything, she whispered to herself, anything on earth would have been better. With total obedience, a book would have detained her no more than a week. A simple bar of soap, with diligent bathing, would have held her for less than a month. But a five year sentence took five years to serve. No more, no less. She fingered the golden keys. Lockable too. From whom should she hide it, and for what purpose? What secrets, dark and beautiful, could it ever hold?

‘Speech, speech,' that same insistent voice came from the back of the hall. She wondered when, if ever, the vultures would be satisfied. She gripped the table and raised herself, digging her heels into the carpet. ‘Thank you,' she spluttered. ‘It's exactly what I wanted.'

As soon as she reached home, Miss Hawkins turned out the gas-fire in her bedroom. For a while she sat in the room, holding on to its warmth and the shadow of death's embrace that obedience had denied her.

Five years. It was the longest and the most unjust order she had ever been given.

During the first week of Miss Hawkins' sentence, the entries in her diary read as follows: ‘Monday. Got up 8.30 a.m. Washed, dressed, had breakfast. 1 p.m. had lunch. 4 p.m. had tea. 7 p.m. had supper. Went to bed 8.30 p.m. Nothing happened.'

Tuesday's entry was exactly the same, and so was Wednesday's, except that the meal times were omitted. But every day, ‘nothing happened'. The following week was blank but for the Monday when she had merely recorded getting up. Thereafter the pages were empty as if even the appetite to inscribe ‘nothing happened' had deserted her. In fact, after the first week of her retirement, Miss Hawkins had largely stayed in bed as a simple solution to day-swallowing. But on the sixth day, the primal needs of hunger drove her out to view the empty bread-bin and jampot. It was a moment of decision. One way of dying was not to eat, and one way of fasting was not to buy food. It would be a slow and painful demise, but not slow enough to span the five blackmailing years her former colleagues had given her. The diary lay locked on the kitchen table. She opened it resignedly and flicked through the empty week that the bed had swallowed and the two thousand or so pages that had somehow to be converted into eventful vocabulary. Her stomach rumbled and, picking up a pencil, she scrawled angrily across the current page, ‘Went to buy food', and quickly she dressed and went out to obey the diary's order.

As she shopped, sparingly now, because she was mindful of her reduced income, she was surprised at her sudden feeling of well-being, and she remarked to herself on her sprightly step. She paused at the bacon counter to try and analyse this sudden change of heart, and falteringly she ascribed it to the diary's
command. She was obeying and that was just like being at work. She had retired from her colleagues, from a nine-to-five discipline, from a regular canteen three-courser, from the punctual elevenses, but above all she had retired from obedience, and it was that that she regretted and missed most of all. ‘Oh what fun,' she said to the bacon, and those who passed her thought, Poor woman, she spends too much time on her own. When Miss Hawkins heard her own voice, she realised that they were the first words she had spoken in over a week. She tried her voice again, and again to the bacon with which she felt a secure familiarity. ‘You've gone up again,' she said reprovingly. Her voice squeaked as if it needed oiling. I must talk a little more, she said to herself, and she decided that thereafter she would read aloud to keep her voice in trim, just in case one day she would wish to use it for communication. It was the first time since her retirement that she had consciously envisaged a future. She was in a hurry now to go home and tick off the diary's command. She finished off her shopping, buying only as much as she needed for that day. Tomorrow and every day, the diary would order her to the shops again. She began to sing softly to herself, and when she reached home, she ticked the order with a red crayon. She had obeyed, and she trembled with the thrill of subordination. It was natural then, that she should think of giving herself daily orders, so that her diary would concern itself with her future rather than with her past which had proved so lamentably uneventful. This decision excited her, and bold now, she took the pencil and inscribed, ‘Went for a long walk.'

She made herself a filling, if not nutritious breakfast, then took to the streets again. She had been ordered a long walk, so long it had to be. Not far from her street, there was a park, and although she'd lived in her little flat for over twenty years, she had never actually walked inside it. On her way to work each morning, she had passed it in the bus, and the layout of the park had always intrigued her. It lay behind a small church, and because of that, half the park was taken up as cemetery. The other was a children's playground, surrounded by lawns and trees. The swings and slides stood adjacent to the graves, as
close as lovers, with no concession of a rail or a fence to separate the living from the dead. Often when the bus stopped at the lights by the church, Miss Hawkins would watch the old men loitering without intent on the graveyard benches, and the mothers on their guardian seats, each with their own sense of detachment and privilege, yet the children passed between the quick and the dead without surprise. She would go to that park, she decided, and she would walk around it many times. A circular walk, but she would give it length in its passage of time.

There were two entrances, one, a locking-gate that led into the mortal ground, and the other, a free turnstile into the playground. She took the turnstile, intending her graveyard explorations to be casual. She skirted the sandpit, and stood at its edge, watching two bucket-laden children building a castle. Only once had she been to the seaside, in her pre-woman days at the orphanage. She could remember very little about that day except for her cry of astonishment when she saw the vast open sea for the first time. Matron had told her to keep her voice down and to behave like a lady. One day, she hoped her diary would order her to the seaside, and she would greet the sea with an unstrangled cry. She felt herself smiling again, and she took off her glove and outlined the unaccustomed creases on her face, and though the notion of happiness had never occurred to her as part of her birthright, she dared to wonder whether she was not entitled to it after all.

She turned and walked towards the swings. They were empty, and with her ungloved hand, she pushed one gently. She was aware that it was a gesture completely alien to her former self, and it convinced her that Hawkins from the Sacred Heart Orphanage, and Miss Hawkins from the sweet factory, were no more. She crossed over to the mothers' benches. Two women sat there, apart and unspeaking, separately observing their respective children playing in the sandpit. She hesitated at the bench. She was tired enough to sit, but she didn't want to admit of any punctuation between the swings and the graves. She didn't see herself specifically as part of either side. Though she had missed out on the joys of swings and roundabouts, it was
never too late for first childhood, and for her, the second childhood of the other side was premature. So she passed through the unseen barrier without wonder.

An old man sat by one of the headstones. It was crumpled, and its legend indecipherable. It could have had for him no kin-connection, for by its age and layers of verdigris, it signalled a long-past century. But as a reminder of his future journey, it would serve as well as any other. With his stick he traced a circle on the gravel, round and round in ever-decreasing rings. Until he found his still centre, and there for a while, he rested, and looked up at her, but saw her not at all. A child darted past him, vaulting the grave, and in his fleet landing, disturbed the old man's sad geometry. He sucked in his parchment dewy cheeks, and circled again with his stick. Miss Hawkins walked past him and smiled at him, though his eyes were on the ground. She passed through the playground again and hesitated at the slide. Had she been alone, she would have climbed the steps, and in her old and pensionable age, she would have claimed a childhood that had been denied her. One day, late at night, when children were too tired to swing, and old men too circle-giddy, her diary would send her to the playground to redeem her early years.