A Five Year Sentence (8 page)

She writhed at his side, deserting her image on the screen, while she scratched in her mind, searching for any advantage in the situation. He wanted her as his slave, she decided. He wanted her for her service. The role was not unappealing. She had a distinctive need to obey, to be subservient and when she'd retired, the diary had replaced her masters. Brian would be a duplication, but withal, she granted, a human one. Yes, she decided, she could serve a double master. She had found a happy rationale for paying for his tea, and subsequently perhaps, for all his pleasures. It was prostitution in reverse, and it thrilled her with disgust and pleasurable anticipation. She made a quick reckoning of her income, assessing how much she could put aside for his sundry weekly pleasures. Bus-fares, cafes and pictures were assessable, but she had no notion of the going rates for his other little pleasures, and it was hardly a commodity that lent itself to window-shopping or price comparison. But it excited her none the less. Now the notion of being taken out and
of being paid for at every turn, faintly displeased her. She concluded that there was a far greater power in paying than in being paid. But Brian had fashioned his own rationale, and his conclusions, likewise dictated by his needs, were exactly the opposite.

Miss Hawkins turned her attention back to the screen, and Brian likewise, and both wallowed in their separate myths till the end of the picture.

It was Brian who chose the café, one that was nearest to the style of
Splendours of the Night
as the present century would allow. It was a large tea-room, upholstered in red plush and walled with flock. In the centre of the salon was a small fountain gushing from a fish mouth. And at the far end, flanked by potted plants, was a small gipsy orchestra who were tip-toeing through the tulips as they were ushered to their table. Miss Hawkins had never seen the like before and she wondered whether it was the first time for Brian too. She wondered how much this pleasure of his would cost her. Certainly more than the ‘Copper Kettle' she had had in mind. But power increased in ratio to the investment, so she tried not to mind his choice of venue. She reckoned she had almost five pounds in her purse, which would surely be adequate. The rest of the week she would have to economise, especially since she had already spent an unbudgeted sum on her knitting materials. The cost of survival was inflationary. She made do on her pension, but she had a little put aside over the years in a bank deposit. But she would never draw on that except in the greatest emergency. She looked upon her present spending as an investment in marriage, and hopefully Brian would succumb before the nest-egg need be cracked.

The waiter handed them each a menu. It was a large coloured folder decorated with yellow roses which echoed the name of the café. There was a large choice of items catering for every range of appetite, and the prices were astronomical. In a central rose-ringed box was a menu for a standard tea, which included welsh rarebit for an optional extra of 60p. On a quick reckoning, it seemed to Miss Hawkins that it would be overall cheaper than
choosing separate items on the à la carte list, and she was quick to point out to Brian that his rarebit was on the menu.

‘Yes,' he said, he'd have that, and she could have his cream cake. Every large take required a little give, he decided. Thus he could prolong their unequal partnership.

A few couples were dancing round the fountain, and the bandleader moved around the tables, his baton uselessly beating at a distance as he chivvied along other couples to join them. He reached Miss Hawkins' table, and she prayed that he would bypass them. And indeed he saw them as unlikely candidates and quickly passed on, scanning the tables for more likely material. Miss Hawkins would have liked to dance, but she decided she would not suggest it. She hadn't budgeted for dancing and it was up to Brian to make a free offer. But he was silent.

‘That was a nice picture,' Miss Hawkins said in an attempt to change a subject that had been unspoken.

‘I liked the old man best,' Brian said.

‘Bit of a tyrant, wasn't he?'

‘I didn't think so. All he wanted was respect. That's not tyrannical.'

‘But they won in the end,' Miss Hawkins triumphed.

‘But the old man didn't lose, did he?' Brian said. ‘What won in that picture was respect.' Brian marvelled at his sudden profundity.

‘You set a lot of store by respect, don't you?' Miss Hawkins said.

‘The world would be a happier place.' Then, after a pause, he took the plunge. ‘I'm not interested in anybody who doesn't respect me,' he said pompously.

‘Oh
I
do,' Miss Hawkins obliged. ‘I really do. I'd do anything for you Brian,' she said. She heard her nest-egg cracking, but managed a smile. Brian was pleased. She knew what was expected of her. He had laid his cards squarely on the table.

They gave the waiter their order. Two set teas with one welsh rarebit as an extra. Brian was more than content. His discovery of Miss Hawkins as a willing and paying slave had offered him on a plate the role of master that had been for ever
denied him. In his working life, he had always been an underling, and this same menial role had been domestically confirmed. Well, there'd be no more of that, he decided. Even though he wasn't paying the piper, he would certainly call the tune. He caught Miss Hawkins' look of salivating adoration and he was smug with achievement. When the worm turns, that turning is usually savage and the bully is but the flip-side of the weakling. And in this turning, Brian needed to perform an act, that cruel as it might seem to others, would confirm for himself his creeping notions of superman.

He looked around the room and his eye rested on a single woman, sipping her tea at a corner table. ‘There's time for a dance,' he said. He rose, and Miss Hawkins hesitated. She didn't associate Brian with dancing, and besides, it was not like him to come to such a positive decision. But she shifted in her chair and was on the point of rising.

‘Excuse me,' Brian said, and he was gone, threading his way to the lone lady across the room. Miss Hawkins remained half-standing, totally bewildered by his behaviour and grinding her jaw in fury as she watched him offer his dancing services to a stranger. She clutched at her chair and sat down. She saw how the two of them almost trotted to the dancing section, and how he circled her waist and clumsily led her around the floor. She crossed her ankles tightly, painfully pressing on the bone, and she heartily wished that her knitting was handy. She could hardly believe what he had done and had a mind there and then to get up and go, and would have done just that, had not the music suddenly stopped and she watched him take leave of the lady on the floor.

He returned to the table and sat down as if nothing were amiss. ‘That's given me an appetite,' he said, as the waiter arrived and placed his rarebit before him. Miss Hawkins was too astonished to protest, and as she unlocked her ankles, she felt a movement on her knee. She lifted the tablecloth to find his hand lying there. She could not understand what was happening. Hardly had he settled down after one aberration, than he was proceeding with another. But understanding was not the
priority. First she had to deal with her feelings, feelings that were so overwhelming, that she feared some unnatural change in her body, and feared it with an awful joy. I am enjoying myself, she had to admit, and even if he withdrew his hand at that very moment, she could, in all honesty, tick off that precarious order. And when he was assured of her delight, he put his hand to the cutting of his rarebit. She still felt its fevered imprint on her knee-cap and she was convinced that underneath her stocking lay the spoor of the devil's hoof. Her cheeks were on fire, and she kept her face averted, as if to face him would be an indecent exposure of pleasure. Brian munched at his rarebit, but he noted with satisfaction that he had pleased her.

‘You liked that?' he said.

‘Do it again, Brian,' she said to the tablecloth.

‘That was a free sample,' he said. He eyed her to gauge her reaction; and from her sudden intake of breath, he knew that she'd got the message. Thereafter they ate in silence. Too many questions crowded her mind, and each more perverse than the other. And in her mind were the answers, too unnatural for the telling. So only silence could cover their unspoken and unspeakable dialogue. But Miss Hawkins was thinking and concentrating very hard. If indeed she had to pay for her pleasures, as Brian's statement had clearly inferred, such pleasure would be pure and untrammelled. Miss Hawkins firmly believed that nothing was for nothing, and any pleasure purloined for free was bound to be adulterated with guilt and shame. No sin could be attached to pleasure if it had been earned with good and hard cash. Indeed, through such a transaction, pleasure would amount to a virtue. It now seemed to Miss Hawkins to be totally immoral to accept a complimentary pass to happiness. It was incumbent on her, as a good Christian, to foot the bill of her gratification.

When they had finished, the waiter handed Brian the bill, and he, without embarrassment, passed it across the table.

‘I enjoyed that very much,' he said, assuring her that her investment was not wasteful. She put a bold face on the bill,
taking care not to betray her horror at the offensive total. The change from the broken five pound note would just about cover it, and quickly she recalled the hell-born print on her knee-cap to offset her dismay. She put the exact money on the plate, covering it with the bill. She had no money for a tip, and she was anxious to leave the room before the waiter returned. She got up from the table, and Brian followed. In the street, he took her arm.

‘I'd like to see you again,' he said.

‘What about your mother?'

‘I'll fix her,' he said, with a bully's courage. ‘Next Friday, then?'

She did not answer immediately. She was trying to recall what was due on her pension.

‘I'll have something for you,' he said.

‘What's that?'

‘It'll be a sort of menu,' he laughed. ‘Like in the tea-shop. And I'll decorate it too. With roses perhaps. I'm not a bad painter.'

‘What sort of things will it have?'

They had reached the bus stop, and he did not answer straightaway, taking his stand at the end of the queue. ‘What sort of things?' she said again.

He bent down to her ear. ‘Things I know you like,' he whispered.

His hot breath seared her with its fire, and she shook with the thrill of such intimacy.

‘All kinds of items,' he said. ‘Little and big.'

‘And what they cost?' she said. She wanted to make it clear that she wanted nothing for nothing.

‘It's only a game really,' Brian said. ‘I'll put it all by for you. It'll be a way of saving.'

‘For what?' she said, in as casual a tone as her rising hopes would allow.

‘Well you never can tell,' he said. ‘Of course,' he added, sure enough of his ground, ‘It may not be the kind of game you want to play.'

‘Have you played it before?' she said. She hoped it didn't sound as if she suspected his motives in any way.

‘Of course not,' he said truly enough. ‘We're both beginners, and we'll have to learn from each other.'

‘How will you know about the prices?' she said innocently.

‘Well, we'll start with the smallest item, and say that'll be 5p, and then we'll grade it upwards. Oh it's exciting,' he said.

She saw his bus in the distance. He bent down and pecked her on her ear. Miss Hawkins practically collapsed from her body fever. ‘Another free sample,' he laughed. ‘Today is opening day.'

She was glad when the bus arrived. She leaned against the stop-post, watching him board, and waving goodbye. She stayed there long after the bus had disappeared, then, exhausted, she made her way home. Once arrived, she flopped into the armchair, without the strength to take off her coat. And sitting there, she relived each seething moment of his various assaults. Her detailed recall did little to lessen her fatigue, which was so acute that it even overcame her strong urge to reach for her diary and tick off the day's orders. So she rested for a while, trying to close her mind to all the events of the afternoon. She concentrated on her penniless state, and this helped to dull the edge of her fatigue. Then, opening her diary, she read the orders aloud. She had fulfilled each one to the letter, and in token of her sense of achievement, she underlined her obedience with a double red tick. She thought of Brian, and saw him, paint-brush in hand, scrolling his price list with yellow petals. She smiled. She, too, would have to attend to her husbandry.

She took a piece of paper and divided it with a bold line into two columns which she headed Income and Expenditure. Her pension was adequate for living expenses and to pay off the diminishing mortgage on her flat. The interest accumulating on her nest-egg she put aside for pleasures, but she had no notion of whether or not it would be adequate. Her demands were avid, but as yet she had no guidance as to the supply, though she suspected that it would outstrip the available interest. Then she set to wondering what was the purpose of keeping the nest-egg
intact. In her will it was written that it was ear-marked for the orphanage, simply because there seemed no other purpose for it. Now she saw such a bequest as folly in the extreme, and that she owed nothing to that grey prison of her purl and plain recollection. And that to spite it she must squander every penny. Indeed, so impatient was she to embark on her profligate life, that she began to list what she was prepared to pay for Brian's services. She had no difficulty in imagining what they would be, detail by detail but her thoughts shamed her as her excited agitation grew. So perverse were they, that they were not for speaking aloud and certainly not for registering in indelible pencil. She grabbed her knitting and stitched herself into some modicum of calm. There were five whole days to wait till Friday. Most of the time would be consumed with her knitting, and she would give her diary a few day's rest. This decision pleased her. Though her diary had become an indispensable companion to her daily life, it irritated her sometimes as she feared its power and her dependency. This week, she would call the tune, and the diary would have to hold its dangerous tongue. It would be liberating to live alone for a while again. Maurice, too, would stay on the floor, and she would spend her days in isolated anticipation of an unknown and perhaps perilous future.