A Five Year Sentence (6 page)

‘I came to your funeral,' Miss Hawkins said, which explained her share of the question as well as answering his. A few women came into the hall to inspect the damage and to pick up the crockery pieces that had scattered over the lino floor. It was no place for an intimate discussion. Staring past him, Miss Hawkins noticed an old woman standing on top of the stairs. ‘Brian,' she croaked, ‘what's happened?' He turned and made a step towards the stairs. Then helplessly he turned again. There were too many things for him to handle. ‘Please go,' he said. ‘My mother will see you.' Then seeing the disbelief on her face, he added by way of compensation, ‘I'll see you in the library in half an hour.'

She was gone before he could change his mind, dusting the tea-leaves off her coat and with a spring in her step, and with a warm glow in her heart, not so much that Brian was so patently alive, but that the little red tick in her diary was now a distinct possibility. He would certainly be at the library to meet her, and the only hurdle to the tick was the kiss. But Miss Hawkins was confident. This was surely her lucky day.

She wondered whose funeral she had attended, and who was the old woman she had mistaken for Mrs Watts. Brian would no doubt explain everything and they would laugh together, and it would be a recurrent topic of conversation for many meetings. But the thought was soured by the memory of Brian's fear that his mother would see her. He could hardly get her out of the house quickly enough. She was suddenly angry, and quite automatically
and with a natural impulse that horrified her, she not only wished the old woman good and dead, but she happily saw her own hand in her undoing. And together with this thought came the accompanying recall of matron. She noticed how rage had clenched her fists, and she had to stop by a lamp-post on the kerb and lean against it to still her fury. She was glad when the bus came for the sheer physical occupation of boarding and finding a seat, and searching meticulously through the contents of her handbag for the exact fare. When that was paid, she took out her compact and made running repairs on her face. She took her time with the powdering, so that when she was finished she was only one stop from the library and she used the time to walk slowly down the bus. She was anxious not to spend one second with nothing to do, so she marked time with her feet on the platform until the bus came to a stop. Her violent thoughts had deeply disturbed her, for she sensed with fearful premonition that one day they might well leak out of her control. It would happen in a moment of idleness, she thought, when boredom would dilute the strength she would need for their containment. I must start knitting, she thought to herself. And I shall knit a scarf that shall never never end. She made a note to order her diary to send her to the wool shop but such an order was kids' stuff, she thought. It would have done a few months ago when the orders were timid and fulfillable. Now she had a mind only for risk, for the element of chance in each day's entry. At the same time, she realised that she could not live at risk every single day, and there must be many dry days when a viable order would come in very handy. But she decided that whatever she had in mind to do, whether of trivial or adventurous intent, her diary would so order her, simply to give herself the infinite pleasure of the red tick.

She went up the library steps, which had by now assumed for her a domestic familiarity. At the top, she waited, and after a while, felt herself idling, so she went quickly to the fiction shelves and picked out a book. She read the words, but gathered from them little understanding. Nevertheless she read on, consuming the meaningless print in desperate occupation. In this
manner, she lapped four or five pages, and in the middle of a sentence replaced the book on the shelves knowing that Brian would surely arrive soon. She reached the top of the stairway in time to see his bowed and unasserting ascent to his tardy rendezvous. She suddenly found it difficult to smile and she arranged her features to spell out a welcome. She wondered why she was not more pleased to see him. She half expected a scolding, that she had been bold enough to allow herself to be discovered by his mother, and she decided straightaway to apologise. ‘I'm sorry,' she said, before he reached the top, and she saw him hesitate, gathering quick substitutes for his intended scolding greeting. When he arrived alongside her, she took his arm.

‘I hope it wasn't embarrassing for you,' she said. ‘Your mother, I mean.'

‘I said I'd never seen you in my life before,' he said. He gave what he thought was a conspiratorial smile.

But Miss Hawkins wanted no part in such a plot. ‘Why should you hide me from her?' she said.

‘You don't know my mother.'

She led him back down the steps, needing time to think of what to say next, or to decide to say nothing at all. They walked down in silence. Each thought the other owed some kind of explanation. But Brian was biding his time, or perhaps, Miss Hawkins thought, he was waiting for a lead.

‘Who died?' she said.

‘The man in the flat below. He was very old.'

She waited, but that seemed to be ail he had to say. ‘Who was that old woman?'

‘His wife. I told her I'd help with the tea.'

‘I'm sorry about the tea-pot,' she said.

They had reached the street and she was clearly leading him. ‘Shall we walk to the park?' she said. In her mind she had ticked off half the diary's order. They had undoubtedly met at the library and the tardiness of the rendezvous in no way diminished the obedience. The biggest hurdle of the kiss was to come, and she thought the park might be an appropriate setting. ‘I went
to your house because you weren't at the library,' she said, feeling the need to clarify her behaviour. ‘Imagine my surprise to see a hearse outside. I just stood and looked at it, and then somebody helped me into a car.' She paused. ‘Oh I'm so glad it wasn't you, Brian,' she said, and having established her affection, she felt bold enough to ask, ‘Why are you keeping me away from your mother?'

‘She doesn't like me to have friends.'

‘But that's selfish. You can't spend all your time with her.'

‘She's not well,' he said limply, and there was finality in his voice that brooked no further discussion. Nevertheless, the gallant Miss Hawkins pressed on. ‘You should put her in a home,' she said.

Brian stopped. ‘That would be criminal,' he said.

She pushed him forward. ‘Well it's none of my business,' she said, sensing that it was very much her business, diary business, in fact, and her little book would have to deal with it. For the moment she had to cheer him up. They passed a poster advertising a community whist drive. His head was bowed so it was unlikely that he saw it. Miss Hawkins waited a while. ‘D'you play cards?' she said.

‘I play with my mother sometimes.'

‘There's a whist drive next week,' she said.

‘My mother never goes out.'

‘Can't you ever leave her?'

‘Not in the evenings.'

‘Then I could come and see you,' she said.

Her suggestion was so outrageous that he laughed aloud, and it was her cue for sulking, which, from her romantic novel reading, was a sure prelude to a lovers' quarrel, and consequent make-up. At first, she sulked silently, and then, fearing that he noticed no change in her, she pouted audibly, but it emerged as an apologetic grunt. ‘You've upset me,' she said, since words were the only way to make it clear. He did not respond and she held a sulking silence till they reached the park. They were approaching a wooden bench. ‘Shall we sit down?' he said. He rarely made any positive suggestion. He must be tired, she
thought, and she appreciated that a sedentary position was conducive to the fulfilment of the diary's order. He dusted the seat with his gloved hand, then dusted the glove on his shoe. He waited for her to seat herself first and she chose the middle of the bench to minimise the possible distance between them. But Brian made the most of the minimum, and sat himself in the corner. She continued to sulk. Occasionally Brian thought of breaking the silence between them. He suddenly remembered that he'd forgotten to return the library books. His mother would be angry but it would give him an excuse to visit the library again. Tomorrow, perhaps. ‘Are you busy tomorrow?' he ventured.

The question delighted her, but she was at pains not to show it.

‘Can't you see I'm upset?' she said.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, ‘but what can I do?' He regretted it the moment it was put, fearing that she might make a suggestion that he was totally incapable of acting upon. Miss Hawkins saw the opening and took the plunge. ‘You can give me a kiss,' she said.

In his rare and tepid courting experiences Brian had a meagre repertoire, and kissing was not part of it. The act almost repelled him. He was always at pains to avoid it, for it seemed to preclude other activities which he found more enjoyable. He regarded all sexual activities as pleasurably filthy, whereas a kiss was clean and virtuous and reserved only for family. A kiss was legal, and it had no more place in a sexual encounter than a saint in a den of thieves. Still, it would have been insulting to refuse, so he screwed up his eyes and leaning over, he aimed at the presentation of Miss Hawkins' cheek. And a second prior to his movement, mindful of obedience to the letter, she had the cunning to turn her head, so that the target became her mouth. Brian's eyes were defensively shut and for him the texture between lip and cheek was indistinguishable. He leaned back on the bench and opened his eyes. Miss Hawkins was now ready to get up and go straight home and wallow in the joy of red ticking. It had, without doubt, been the most perilous order to date, and
splendidly, she had done her duty. She got up and he followed her.

‘I'm not busy tomorrow,' she said.

‘Well, I'll be at the library at three o'clock. Will you be there?'

‘Yes,' she said. Then, after a pause, ‘Shall we go to the pictures?'

‘It's difficult to be out so long.'

‘Tell her you're going to the dentist,' she said with sudden inspiration.

He shrugged at the ineptness of the lie, and laughed a little, baring enough of his teeth to reveal in their falseness that a dentist's services had long been disposed of.

‘Or your doctor,' she added hastily.

‘I'll think of something.'

They had reached the bus stop and Miss Hawkins was anxious to get home.

‘She'd have a blue fit if she knew.'

‘She sounds a right old dragon,' Miss Hawkins said, and added quickly, ‘A fairy-tale dragon, I mean.'

‘She's all right,' he said defensively. ‘She's had a rough time.'

Miss Hawkins was glad to see his bus in the distance. She was in no mood to argue his mother's virtues. She hated her, however much Brian chose to defend her. She saw her as an incontinent obstacle to the title of Mrs Jean Watts and she felt her fists clenching as she day-dreamed herself to the old woman's funeral.

She saw Brian on to the bus, and when he wasn't looking, she blew him a kiss. She decided to walk home slowly, savouring the anticipation of the red tick. She re-capped on each stage of her day. The fearful rejection at the library now seemed years ago, and the wrong number funeral was like a dream, and the smashed tea-pot a sudden awakening. She wondered how many other people had passed such an eventful day, and she concluded that she was a very lucky woman indeed.

She took off her coat as soon as she was indoors, and went straight to her dressing-table to comb her hair and to re-apply her make-up. The red tick on this day deserved some ceremony
and she intended to look her best for the occasion. She lit the gas-fire in the sitting-room, and brought the diary from the kitchen. She laid it open on the coffee-table, the small red pencil in its fold. She replaced the oval mirror on the wall so that Maurice should bear witness to her triumph. She would have him to supper that evening, she decided, and she would tell him in detail all about her day. She took the book in her lap and the pencil in one hand and she read the day's order aloud. ‘Went to the library and met Brian. Brian kissed me.' She considered that each order had turned out to be equally difficult to fulfil and therefore deserved more than a blanket credit. She would give each order a tick to itself. She wet the red lead of the pencil and, with infinite care, she awarded herself a double credit. She leaned back in the chair, exhausted. She closed her eyes, revelling in the afterglow of achievement. She wondered what order she would set herself for the following day. Perhaps, after her exertions, she should now give herself some time to consolidate her position, and that in the morning the diary should order her to the safe assignments of the wool shop, library and cinema. She would put her proposal to Maurice, she thought, for he tended to agree with everything. Tomorrow she would have an easy day and allow herself to enjoy it without fear of disobedience. She closed the book and held it lovingly against her cheek. It was her life-line. It made everything possible, as today's precarious events had clearly shown. It had a life of its own. Of that she was sure. That accounted for its excitement, the utter unpredictability of where it would send her, and on what mission. It was her benevolent and sometimes tyrannous master, and she regarded it as separate from herself as the mustachioed witness on the wall. She was a woman who now dwelt in company, and she wondered how she had managed for so long to live alone.

Maurice advised her to play it cool, and the next day the diary set the lenient orders she had expected. But she would miss the risk, even a slight one. So she wrote ‘Enjoyed myself.' It was hardly a challenge but it introduced a small element of uncertainty which she had now begun to need as a stimulant to her day.

She left the house early, having taken Maurice off the wall, for she knew that that evening she would want to dine alone. At the wool shop she was overwhelmed at the prodigious range of colours and patterns. She was not a good knitter. She knew the basic rules of purl and plain, for those she had learned at the orphanage. For some reason she considered the plain knitting stitch as virtuous, and the purl as sinful. Matron had taught that the right side of the garment was plain, and purl, the wrong, and Hawkins became a victim of semantic confusion. She decided that she would knit the scarf in plain stitch so that it would be right on both sides. It had to be a virtuous pursuit, since the whole point of knitting at all was to stave off the occasional onslaughts of violence that clenched her fists and jaw. A scarf was an obvious choice, because unlike any other garment it was not necessarily terminable. It could be as long as eternity. She chose a large assortment of rainbow colours in thin ply wool, and a narrow pair of knitting needles so that its growth would be slow and leisurely to offset the frenzied tempo of her fury. She was anxious now to get home and to cast on her stitches, but she remembered that knitting was reserved for therapy, and should not be indulged in for pure enjoyment, since any pleasure in its making would blunt it of its purpose. She knew she had only to think of matron to get her fists nicely clenched and this she decided to do on her way home.