A Five Year Sentence

by Bernice Rubens

  ‘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.

  Chapter 3

  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.

  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.

  W
hen 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.’

  Chapter 4

  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 a
nd 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.