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 awakenin
g. 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.
Chapter 6
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.
Some events in her orphanage life remained close to the surface, and these she could deal with without pain. They belonged to the period of matron’s holidays when she was said to be up north with her mother. At these times Miss Weeks took over, and she was fat and jolly and never wore a uniform. She dispensed with the daily inspection of ears and necks and the rigid going-to-bed rules were bent during her week in charge. The dormitories were left to gather dust on the shelves and the unmade beds, and the washing-up piled high in the kitchen sink. On the day before matron’s return, Miss Weeks would enlist all the children into a minor spring-clean, both of the house and of themselves and matron returned to find all as she had left. Miss Weeks would never send Miss Hawkins a-knitting, but there were enough matron memories to purl and plain away a lifetime.
Once, a strange grown-up couple came to the orphanage, and all the girls were lined up for inspection. ‘Only the girls,’ matron barked, as some little boy tried to sneak into the line in the hope of a break from the monotony of his daily routine.
‘It’s always the girls,’ one brave little boy dared to complain.
‘Nobody wants naughty little boys to live with them,’ matron said. Then it was brightly clear to the scrubbed female line-up that one of them, one lucky one, would escape from matron for ever. One little girl, Brownjohn was her name, Miss Hawkins suddenly recalled, an acne-ed child, who received far more than her share of matron’s rebuff and hostility, rushed forward in desperation, and clutched the strange woman’s coat. ‘Have me,’ she pleaded, her acne leaking. ‘I’m nice, really I am.’
Matron laughed at the utter impossibility of anyone on earth desiring such a child, and guided her gently, for the small public’s sake, into a group of little boys. The child was clearly not in the running. The couple had scanned the line-up at a distance, and Hawkins felt the woman’s eyes rest on her. Her heart pounded with the possibility of escape and she shut her eyes, praying that the choice would fall on her. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes. The woman smiled at her and the man who was with her nodded his head. ‘Not that one,’ matron said, loud enough for everybody to hear. ‘She’s a wetter.’ The woman dropped her hand from Hawkins’ shoulder and moved along the line. Hawkins opened her mouth to protest that she was dry, that never, never in her orphanage life had she wet the bed, but her mouth was dry with hate and fear, and now in any case it was too late, because the ginger-headed Stewart passed in front of her, flanked by her new foster parents on her trembling way to freedom. Later that day, when Hawkins was helping the maids with the washing-up, matron came into the kitchen and gave her one of her rare smiles. ‘Can’t afford to lose you, can I, dear? You’re the best domestic in the house.’ She was drying a large dish at the time, and, in small reply, she dropped it and watched the flowered china pieces scatter over the stone floor. And when the noise had subsided, she took a pile of plates that she had already dried, and staggering under their weight, she lifted them off the draining board, and sent them to join the scattered remains on the floor. The clatter was tremendous and she was looking around for further avenues of destruction as a way of invaliding herself out of that prison, when matron struck her across the face, and grabbed the apron bow at the back of her waist, propelling her through the kitchen and up the stairs to the end of the corridor and the single isolation punishment room. ‘It’s bread and water for you, my girl,’ Matron shouted. And that’s how it was, Hawkins remembered, for two stomach-rumbling days, and no sight of another creature save the stiff and conquering form of matron as she dispensed the daily ration.
By the time Miss Hawkins reached home, her fists were tight and white with fury, and even before ticking off the wool-buying order in her diary, she had cast on a hundred stitches, each single thrust of the needle, a well-aimed stab in matron’s stubborn heart. She knitted until she cooled, then she ticked off the wool shop in her diary. When she left for the library, she hesitated at the door. ‘Goodbye, Maurice,’ she called, and as she walked up the street, she understood how pleasing it would be to leave somebody behind in the house, someone to whom one could, with greeting, return. To know that in one’s absence some object may have been moved on a mantelpiece, some book may have been taken from a shelf, some shape, other than her own, had acqua
inted itself with the uncut moquette of the settee, and she resolved that her home would soon be Brian’s as well.
He was waiting for her outside the library, and they ascended the steps arm in arm. She offered to return the books for him at the desk, while he went to the shelves to make his weekly choice. She watched him from a distance and noted how he collected books at random, without even a glance inside. The lurid quality of the covers seemed to be his only guide. From the back he looked younger than his years, which she put in the mid-sixties. His mackintosh was brown, belted, and probably buckled in the last hole, since it hung loose and draped about his thighs. A small grandchild might have grabbed it as a lead, unperturbed by the huge indifference of the brown and slightly stooped back. For there was an overall unawareness about him, an isolation, as he stood there, uncomfortable at the shelves, impatient to collect his mother’s quota. He turned suddenly, the six gory titles under his arm. He looked irritated but managed a smile when he caught her watching him.
A Five Year Sentence Page 5
