A Five Year Sentence (3 page)

She circled the park and the graveyard many times, never following the same route, reading aloud those tombs that were legible, hearing her strong voice applaud the dead she'd never known. She marvelled at herself and at the feeling of warm goodwill that invaded her. She noticed how quickly she was walking, with an energy that indicated that she had somewhere quite positive to go, and that there was not enough time to enjoy the small and simple pleasures that she had forgone.

When she reached home, she looked at the clock on the wall. She had been walking for over two hours. She ticked the item in her diary. She had obeyed.

She took off her coat, and in doing so, realised that that too, was an unusual gesture. Normally on returning home from work or shopping, she kept her overcoat on till bedtime, as if to secure herself in one mortgaged home within another. Now she threw
it off her shoulders with a teenager's carelessness. She picked up the pen that lay in the leaves of her open and eager diary, and wrote, ‘Had lunch, then an afternoon nap. Started to read a book.' She shrieked with delight at that suggestion, but the order presented some problems, for she had read most of the paperbacks on her shelf. It gave her an idea for a new order the following day. Her diary would send her to the library. Meantime she combed through the shelf for something unread or forgotten, and found it in a small book of country verse, its yellowing pages uncut. For the rest of the day she obeyed her diary to the letter, ticking off each order as soon as it was carried out, and when she went to bed that night, Miss Hawkins accepted that she had just spent the happiest day of her life.

For the next few weeks, the diary gave her orders, each carefully prescribed within the limits of possibility. Miss Hawkins ticked off window-shopping, library visits, a chiropodist and a hairdresser. The order to read was a daily one, and once, she was so absorbed in a book that she forgot to look at television, though it was clearly ordered in the diary. She refrained from ticking it off, but postponed the order till the following day, and thereafter it was not regularly dictated. The assumption between the diary and Miss Hawkins was that the television was not obligatory and could be watched at will. Meals were no longer inscribed either, nor the simple facts of getting up and going to bed. Life had become too full to record such trivia. So she lived as the diary dictated her, and the weeks passed in a warm current of pleasure she had never thought possible. But pleasure, as her recent reading of poetry had taught her, was a feeling that fell short of itself if not shared. Miss Hawkins had to admit to herself that she needed a friend. Her reading of poetry had compelled her too, to thoughts of love, and she blushed even at the thought of it. But such a fulfilment was a total impossibility, and her wise diary would never dictate it. Yet though loving might be out of the question, companionship was a less remote practicality. And as she sat one evening eating her supper, the table laid with meticulous care, she set herself to thinking about the odds on friendship. Directly opposite her, on the fireplace wall,
hung an oval mirror, and as she watched herself eating, she hit upon an idea. She was so excited that she left the table with her mouth still full, an offence that would have given matron apoplexy. She went straightway to the cleaning cupboard and brought out a duster, together with a tin of lead polish that she used for blacking the grate. Her idea so enthralled her, that she almost forgot to let the diary dictate it. And rushing back to the kitchen, she wrote in large capitals, for it was the boldest order to date, ‘INVITED A MAN TO DINNER'. She was shocked when she saw it written down. It was only a white lie and the diary would forgive her, and she would tick it off with a pen, rather than with the customary red crayon, to show that it was an order of a different kind.

She went straight to the oval mirror on the wall. Winding the cloth tightly around her index finger, she smeared it liberally with the lead. Then, viewing the oval shape as a human face, she placed her finger where she gauged the mouth would lie, and in that space, she drew a handsome handlebar moustache. She trimmed it a little, tapering off the corners to give a waxed effect, then, standing back, she viewed her work with infinite satisfaction. She put the cleaning things away and came back to the table. Then lining up her chair so that it squarely faced the mirror, she sat down and aligned her own face in the glass, so that the moustache grew on her upper lip. She smiled. She had a dinner-mate.

She stared at her companion for a long time, noting how like her he was, and how much they must have in common. A silent man, she decided, but strong.

‘I'm so glad you could come,' she said.

He smiled back at her before lowering his face to the plate. She was suddenly shy. She was so unpractised in contact with an individual. She had managed in the factory because the company of a hundred allowed for being alone. Now, face to face with a particular, she did not know how to arrange her features, and she kept her face well into her plate, fearful of revealing her gaucheness. She knew that her moustachioed
alter ego
was only a game, yet she regarded him with utter seriousness,
as an understudy, as it were, for a possible reality. She opened her mouth for voice practice. ‘It's so nice to have company when you eat,' she said, and she looked up and saw him smile in agreement. His handlebar had slipped a little, and she was quick to re-align herself, because he looked so silly with his moustache askew. She finished her meal, assuming that he didn't want a second helping, since she herself was satisfied. She stood up and thanked him for coming, and she moved away from the table and he was gone. Before going to bed that night, she entered into her diary, ‘It was a wonderful evening.' It was the first time she'd allowed herself a personal commentary.

She didn't invite the man to supper every evening. From her reading she had learned that familiarity bred contempt. So she was sparing with him, not wishing to appear too eager. Those nights when Miss Hawkins dined alone, she removed the painted mirror from the wall and sat facing the dead oval stain it had left on the wallpaper. She had called him Maurice, not by any conscious deliberation, unaware that it was a name that clung to the fringes of her nerve-ends like a burr. One day she would tell him about Morris, and he would know that he was, in some way, a memorial.

Over the weeks, Maurice served to whet her appetite for a real companion, and she thought perhaps her diary was ready for an order to that end. She was not wholly confident, and each day she postponed such a command, for failure to obey the diary would disturb her deeply, and her farewell present would then lose the only
raison d'être
that allowed her to accommodate it at all. One evening, dining with Maurice, she risked telling him about his namesake. The story of young Morris' sad and wasted life, and of her horrible and needless death resounded against the walls without an echo of respect, and she desperately longed for feedback. She slept badly that night, fitfully dreaming of the young swinging shadow. Poor Maurice's insensitivity had intensified her distress. She needed someone who could still her anguish. And on the following morning, daring herself to the sin of non-obedience, she wrote in her diary, ‘Went to the library and met a man.'

She had already reached the library before she realised the difficulty of the assignment the diary had set her. To engineer the conditions under which it was possible to meet a man, could be a dangerous undertaking. Exciting too, she had to admit, and a very positive change from the non-risk pursuits her diary had hitherto prescribed. She noticed how her steps faltered, as if aware of the dangers she was courting. She wondered whether a library was an opportune place for such a meeting. It was true it was public and therefore safer. But it was silent too, a place for eye-communication, the exchange of smiles, expressions of feigned bewilderment or simple curiosity. Miss Hawkins had no schooling in these subtler forms. Speech was her only weapon of contact. She thought perhaps she should go to the market-place, where there was noise in plenty, and one more greeting between strangers would hardly be noticed or judged, but the diary had specified the library, and there was no joy in ticking off a modified order that had been falsely tailored to one's own convenience. She climbed the stairs slowly, and at the top, hesitated between the lending and the reference rooms. It was really a choice between a mobile or sedentary approach, and she preferred a situation which allowed for a moving off if communication failed. Besides, the silence in the reference library was faintly hallowed, having to do with serious study, and should a remark be overheard, it dared not be trivial. Whereas, ‘Isn't it a lovely day?' would echo very nicely along the fiction shelves. So she moved into the lending section and straight to novels. She looked sideways along the shelves, but from A to Z there was no man in sight. A few women browsed among the books, assessing the bait in the blurbs. She wandered through the maze of shelves. Things looked better in the history section, and the religious
department was almost exclusively male-dominated. So she made her way in that direction and found herself facing Islam and Judaica. With feigned interest and deliberation, she extracted a book and opened it on the first page, keeping her eye the while on the browsers around her. ‘In the year 586 B.C.?' she read, ‘the people of Canaan underwent a devastating experience.' Miss Hawkins laughed, hoping to draw a timid attention to herself. The man alongside her looked in her direction and she turned her grinning face and gave it to him. Unnerved, he moved away. She replaced the book. She would have to try another ploy. Alongside the history shelf was a backless bench. She took a book at random, and sat down. She smiled at a passerby, and he hurried on. She wondered what was the matter with her, why people didn't react to her offerings. She was decently dressed and her looks were passable. She could improve herself, she knew, with a little make-up, but the orphanage had drilled into her a contempt for personal adornment as being offensive to God, and though she had long ago cared little about giving offence to that quarter, her mistrust of cosmetics had persisted. She would overcome her resistance, she decided. She would enlist unnatural aids to make herself more attractive and on the way home she would buy herself the basic cosmetic essentials. No. She would go home first, and write such an order in the diary. But she knew she could not go home before obeying the instructions she had already ordered. She had to meet a man and she would stay in the library until she did. She looked about her. There were few enough eligibles and most of them were engrossed in their reading. She regretted her impulsive choice of library as a meeting place. It required too much
mise en scène
. The open air would have been more casual.

She decided to try the reference section, but as she opened the door, the solid wall of silence frightened her, and quickly she withdrew, knowing that nothing pertaining to her commission could be accomplished among its shelves. She stood disconsolately on top of the stairway, wondering where next to go to fulfil her duty. Then at the foot of the stairs, a man appeared, an oldish man, but spry in his gait. His head was bowed, checking
each foot on the steps, and unseeing, he walked straight into Miss Hawkins' trap. She looked down on him and waited. When he was almost at the top, she herself started the descent. Seeing another pair of feet in his line of vision, the man stopped and looked up. Miss Hawkins stopped too and smiled at him. ‘Isn't it a lovely day?' she said, giving voice to the line she had rehearsed all the way to the library. He stared at her. Then, with his hand, he swept the raindrops down the front of his coat, a token of his opinion of her meteorological talent.

‘Well, it
was
a lovely day,' she said limply. ‘The rain must have just started.' Then he smiled at her, pitying her embarrassment. He made to walk on. Miss Hawkins didn't want to lose him. The miracle of finding him in the first place was not likely to be repeated. ‘Oh, I forgot a book,' she said, following him back up the stairs. He seemed pretty indifferent to her company, but she insisted. ‘What book do
you
want?' she said.

‘I'm going to borrow some for my mother.' He stopped and looked at her. Then shyly, and with almost an inbuilt knowledge that he would regret it later, he said, ‘Perhaps you could help me choose.'

Miss Hawkins had read about love, and she'd sometimes eavesdropped on the factory girls' courting accounts. She had no more expected it to happen to her than she would be party to a lottery win, but at that moment, Miss Hawkins was convinced that the tremors that tingled through her body could only be labelled as love, and this recognition so astonished her that she was afraid to move her body lest the tremblings became audible.

‘Would you?' he said. It was not a plea, but a mere follow-up of what he had said before.

She nodded her head and could not stop it nodding. The man continued the ascent, and with stiff steps, she followed him. When they reached the shelves, she said, ‘What sort of books does your mother like?' She heard a caress in her voice, and she decided she had fallen in love with his mother too.

‘She likes thrillers,' he said. ‘She's read most of these anyway, but if I let enough time elapse between the borrowings, she forgets she's read them before.'

Though his accent was distinctly working-class, Miss Hawkins was impressed with his vocabulary. He was a man of some education, probably self-taught, and she already felt herself unworthy.

‘I like thrillers myself,' she said, sensing that the way to his heart was through an alignment with his mother.

‘Woman's stuff,' he said, and he blunted his contempt with a laugh. But contempt it was, all the same. Inside herself she agreed with him. Women were silly and of an inferior nature.

‘D'you live with your mother?' she said. It was perhaps a way of asking him whether or not he was married, and she congratulated herself on the deviousness of the question.