Seven at Two Past Five

by Tara Basi

  Seven at Two Past Five

  by

  Tara Basi

  Copyright © Tara Basi 2018

  All rights reserved

  The right of Tara Basi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Contents

  Chapter One – A Disturbance

  Chapter Two – A Black Mark

  Chapter Three – Zero

  Chapter Four – Sanity

  Chapter Five – Wealth

  Chapter Six – Science

  Chapter Seven – Whore

  Chapter Eight – Sentence

  Chapter Nine – Solicitation

  Chapter Ten – Tiddly Widdly

  Chapter Eleven – Confessional

  Chapter Twelve – Representation

  Chapter Thirteen – The Pre-Hearing

  Chapter Fourteen – The Interview

  Chapter Fifteen – House of Verisimilitudes

  Chapter Sixteen – First-Tier Tribunal

  Chapter Seventeen – Imprisoned

  Chapter Eighteen – The Trial – The Prosecution

  Chapter Nineteen – The Trial – The Defence

  Chapter Twenty – The Trial – The Verdict

  Chapter Twenty-One – Even

  Chapter Twenty-Two – The Terror

  Chapter One – A Disturbance

  I leave for my beloved workhouse at Two Past Five. That is my time. Two Past Five has been my time since I can remember. In my workhouse, I make the humblest of things. Still, they are my creation, they are my things, even if they are taken away while I sleep in the Terrors. I am the maker of buttons. Big and small. Polished and lacquered. Stained and waxed. Plain and painted. It is not hard work. I take my time. Every button I make is the very best that I can fashion.

  My sleep ends at different moments but always well before Two Past Five. Sleep’s end is a blessing. Every night of my long life, at precisely nine past nine, I am taken and delivered to the Terrors.

  Thankfully, with the opening of my eyes, the dreadful and impossibly detailed experience of the night’s Terror quickly dissipates and I am blessed with a forgetting, though my frail body drips with salty sweat and my aged heart drums so hard it hurts my ribs. After my awakening, I vaguely recall a Great Artist and a canvas and a morbid darkness and a morning light. I am left with but a lingering impression that I have been witness to much suffering. What I have forgotten, all the terrible minutiae, the Black Box of my subconscious remembers and it is kept tight shut and locked.

  The reason for my nightly Terrors is beyond my ability to fathom. Their lesson, though, is clear to me. When too many are assembled together, only wickedness and disorder can flourish. Better to be alone. Always alone.

  This most wondrous and glorious morning, I did not awake in dread. I awoke with tears of happiness flooding my cheeks. Joyously and unexpectedly, this night past, there was an absence of the Terrors. Why the Terrors are missing this night past, after a lifetime of unremitting nocturnal misery, I cannot say.

  Instead of the Terrors, I dreamt of being warmly embraced by a green serpent and of a lotus growing from my navel. Although its meaning escapes me, I awoke smiling. I am resolved to accept this unexpected bounty and relish this special morning without question. It is likely that this past night’s reprieve is only a fleeting aberration, and it would be foolish to anticipate any further relief.

  Thinking on the whys and the wherefores or the absence of the unknowable Terrors is fruitless. Already my mind is turning towards the day ahead, which will be filled with comforting routine. The time is now forty past four. In the tarry darkness, I instinctively find the light switch. It has never failed me. The light comes on and the light goes off at my command. My private universe is an oblong box. Bunk-bed-coffin number Seven is my home in the bunk-bed-tower and I am its mistress.

  When I was small, my bunk-bed-coffin was very large, and then, as the years flew by, it started shrinking as age stretched me, until it expanded again as age withered me. Bunk-bed-coffin number Seven is unchanging. Only I have changed. In these later days, the gnarled feet on the end of my shrivelled legs do not reach to the outer limits of my universe.

  Right at the end of my box, beyond the soles of my feet, is the other box. The foot-locker box. The foot-locker box has two compartments. The larger compartment is the supper-compartment. It contains the relics of my most enjoyable supper: an empty glass that had been filled with warm milk and, beside it, two napkins. A blue napkin that had enfolded last evening’s meal of pale dried fruit, yellow bread cake and a square of darkest chocolate. A white napkin that served the purpose of a napkin and performed its task admirably. Before I retired, I neatly folded the napkins and laid them to rest inside the supper-compartment.

  The smaller compartment in the foot-locker box is the chamber-pot-compartment. Inside the chamber-pot-compartment is the cherished chamber pot. It is a white porcelain bowl topped with a neatly fitting, white porcelain lid. Though that is not all. The waist of the chamber pot is banded with a thin ring of delicate blue flowers. The rim of the chamber pot lid has the same edging, a delicate circle of little blue flowers. I cannot really know that it is my own personal chamber pot. It is likely there are many identical chamber pots beyond the universe of bunk-bed-coffin number Seven. When it is emptied and brought back, there can be no assurance that the same one, my one, will be returned to me. Once, I thought I might scratch my name, Abi, on the base. Then I wondered how I would feel if I turned over my chamber pot and there was a different name scratched there. I knew it would make me unhappy. So, I did not scratch the base of my chamber pot. Indeed, from that moment, I have been singularly nervous about turning the chamber pot over and examining the underside.

  I have spent too long at the end of my bunk-bed-coffin contemplating the foot-locker box. Time to move up. My head and its covering of thinning, white hair rest comfortably on my sackcloth-covered pillow, and it is far from the end of my box. If I push back the fibrous linen blanket and sit up, my head does not touch the ceiling. When I was at my tallest and I sat up, I could squeeze two flat hands between the top of my skull and the ceiling. This morning, I could turn my hands on their sides and rest them edge-upon-edge upon my scalp and still not touch the ceiling of my bunk-bed-coffin.

  Bunk-bed-coffin number Seven smells of me: a musty, dusty smell of turned hardwood, machine oil and wax. The pine boards that line the interior of my bunk-bed-coffin have gradually darkened over the decades. I believe they were a lighter colour once. It is hard to say exactly what happened and when, inside my glacially evolving universe. Everything smells clean, even after many thousands of Terror-induced, perspiration-filled nights. I do not know how my universe is kept so methodically neat or who empties my chamber pot. While I am away and happily toiling, the bedding is renewed, the pine boards are wiped down, the sweat and the smells that can be taken away are taken away, and my refreshed chamber pot is deposited in the chamber-pot-compartment of the foot-locker box. The smell of me is soaked into every atom of the substance of my bunk-bed-coffin, my universe. I doubt it could ever be removed. I wish to believe that carers refresh my bunk-bed-coffin when I am away. I desire someday to see those carers before I die, so that I might thank them for all their good works on my behalf and beg their forgiveness if I have ever caused them unnecessary or unpleasant labour. Perhaps that is when I will die, if I ever catch sight of the carers.

  I have only ever conversed with myself and I do so often. My conversational skills must be maintained in the event that I am required to engage in an Encounter. Though, in these end days and after a long life lived alone, spontaneous combustion of my chamber pot is more likely than an Encounter
. In my pride, I imagined that a young apprentice with little skill and a clumsy demeanour might appear, suitably gowned, to be educated in the wonders of the button-making art under my tutelage. Such an Encounter would only be tolerable if protocols were strictly observed and the Encounter was bereft of unnecessary proximity or overlong interaction. Lessons on the making of buttons would be limited to no more than one hour a day. And an apprentice would have to observe through the workhouse door. Access to my workhouse interior would be most strictly forbidden. A request for an Encounter has so far not come. I am not disappointed, although I do worry that the button-making art might pass with my going.

  I know that my bunk-bed-coffin is number Seven because the word is branded on the boards at the end of the bunk-bed-coffin over the foot-locker box: Seven. Even now, after all these years, the burnt, black number is still as vivid and as authoritative as it has always been. My time, Two Past Five, is written everywhere else: on the other three walls and the ceiling and perhaps under the mattress. I have never looked. But then I do not need to. If my time is etched on the floor of bunk-bed-coffin number Seven, it is not going to make my time any more my time than it already is.

  I reach to put my hands behind my head and wince. My body does not flex so easily anymore. I rest my hands by my side and stare at the brown, planked ceiling etched with the words Two Past Five. There is no clock in my bunk-bed-coffin. There is no watch on my wrist. Time ticks on in my head whether I want it to or not. Precision is vital. I must leave bunk-bed-coffin number Seven at exactly Two Past Five and be at my place of work before fourteen past five. In between, in the intervening twelve whole minutes, I attend to my toilet and change into my work clothes. My advancing years, the inevitable loss of vitality and the electric shocks in my knees, have hindered and slowed my pace. With each passing year, the journey to my workhouse takes a little bit longer. I do not know what will happen if I am late. My knowing does not extend to the consequences of failure to comply. Perhaps nothing would happen if I were to deviate from known ritual. That would be the most terrible outcome of all possible outcomes, if nothing at all happened. Then I would feel mocked. My world is defined by rules and ordered by ritual. They cannot be doubted. I could no more challenge the Two Past Five imperative than my heart’s desire to pump blood. Really, I am not helpless; I could confront my heart and pay the price.

  It will soon be Two Past Five on this joyous morning that has followed my unique and blessed night, free of the Terrors. I ready myself, easily repeating instinctive movements. I switch off bunk-bed-coffin number Seven’s interior light and undress in the dark. Why in the dark? It is the way such a thing must be done as defined by ritual. Respectfully, I fold my nightdress in the utter darkness and leave it at the end of the bed on top of the foot-locker box. The carers will wash and press my thick cotton nightdress, and it will be waiting for me when I return in twelve hours. Now I am naked. I neatly fold my blanket then my sheet, and, finally, I remove my pillow from its pillowcase and fold the case. These items of bedding are left in a neat pile next to my nightdress on top of the foot-locker box. It is time to slide back the side panel of my bunk-bed-coffin. I have always believed that the panel is locked until precisely Two Past Five, though I have never ever tested that assumption. If you test assumptions, I think you must be very brave. What if they are false? You could be confronted with choices you did not want. Routine and ritual are a blessing and a necessary counterbalance to the chaos and calamity of my nightly Terrors.

  The panel slides smoothly aside as it always has. Outside, the light that shows me the ladder is hidden somewhere high up above my bunk-bed-coffin, out of sight. I have only ever known its weak illumination but not the source itself. The ladder is not attached to anything except a never-seen ceiling beyond the overhead light and the floor down below. I am not afraid of the ladder, and the ladder does not tremble when I step upon it. Each rung is wider than my hand and scored with gentle grooves that caress the soles of my bare feet and hold me firmly until I choose to take the next step down. It occurred to me, in my youth, that I might step up and see what lies above; this notion quickly passed and never returned, for that way lies disorder. Peering through the spaces between the rungs reveals nothing, unless impenetrable shadows can be counted as something. If they are something, then I am rich in those things.

  As quickly as my stiff limbs allow, I descend the ladder, past the dark and silent bunk-bed-coffin slots, Six through One. My neighbours have always been very quiet. Maybe a slight tremor drifting down from up above or a dull murmur coming up from down below. If I think hard, I can recall climbing down the ladder and noticing, with great surprise, that an old bunk-bed-coffin had been replaced by a fresh pine bunk-bed-coffin. The old dead are consigned to oblivion in their bunk-bed-coffins, and fresh, new bunk-bed-coffins with fresh, new occupants fill the gaps. It was a very rare occurrence, and then it stopped happening and empty spaces started appearing. Is there no one left to fill the gaps? Or is it that no one wants to do what we do anymore: the work of the bunk-bed-tower folk? That would be a mighty shame. The dark gaps in the bunk-bed-tower are melancholy memorials to my nameless, never-seen and long-gone neighbours. The empty slots in the bunk-bed-tower remind me of my own lost teeth. I recall a time when there were no gaps in my smile or in the bunk-bed-tower.

  At the bottom of the ladder, in a pool of insipid light, I can barely make out the two doors marked Even and Odd. What else is beyond the bottom of the ladder and those doors, outside my circle of illumination? There is nothing, nothing at all that I know of.

  I pass through the door. My door, the Odd door. After all, I am the resident of bunk-bed-coffin number Seven. After passing through the Odd doorway, which as easily swings inward as outward, I shuffle down the narrow corridor lined with metal. Once the walls were shiny steel. They have long since oxidised and turned dull with countless palm prints. Or is it one woman’s hand stains repeated over and over again? I hope I am not the only one who has left her mark on the metal. How would I know? My feet have certainly contributed to the erosion of the hard stone floor and the marking of the discoloured pathway. I do not wish to believe that the path has been etched solely by the friction and oils of my footsteps. The corridor leads to the warm waterfall: the best part of the morning. Seconds saved before can be spent here, lingering under the cleansing downpour. Each drop wipes away any lingering traces of the Terrors and leaves me refreshed and innocent of their knowledge. I sometimes imagine that I am being showered by the light of the Great Artist. This makes my old, scoured skin feel especially warm and comforted. In my younger days, I was wont to spin on the spot under the falling water, sending droplets everywhere until I was quite dizzy and overexcited. Such childishness ended long ago. But on this morning, this marvellous, Terror-free morning, I shall spin again, though I am now too frail to turn very quickly. Instead, I gently and carefully twirl in a manner which suits my age and giggle quietly.

  The tick of time passing in my head always hurries me on, past the waterfall and on through the drying place, to collect my work clothes, waiting for me on a little shelf. I snatch up the clothes and hobble on to arrive in the cave with its five doors. The semi-circular room might have been carved from solid rock. The ceiling of my cave is low. Everything is of a uniform, dull stone colour, except for the doorways and their frames, which are all made of a pleasing, dark hardwood. Each door is labelled with Bunk-Bed-Coffin and an odd number: One, Three, Five, Seven and Nine. Above each marked door there is a light, which is always glowing. Each one glows, either red or green. Only the light above door Seven is ever green; the other lights are always red. Passing through my door, door Seven, on time, in time, is pleasing.

  My workhouse is furnished with a simple, three-legged stool facing a solid bench. An honest bench of old, knotted wood topped off with tools of black, greasy iron and sharp steel. Beneath the bench there is a chamber-pot box containing a chamber pot of white porcelain bordered by yellow flowers. Draped on a hanger on a hook
on the back of the door to workhouse number Seven is my Encounter gown. It is the gown I must wear if I were to have an Encounter with another individual. It has never been taken down from its hanger. At least not by myself. The carers keep it cleaned and pressed, and I have noticed, over the years, that the gown has been lengthened and shortened as my body has grown and then shrivelled. It is something I expect I shall never ever have any use of now. I do look at it from time to time. It has an exquisite piece of embroidery in a pale-yellow thread across the chest: Seven at Two Past Five.

  Inside workhouse number Seven, I am a different me. Here, I can forget that I am old and cursed with nightmares, with the wonderful and singular exception of this night past.

  My familiar workhouse companions always await me. There are my meals, wrapped in napkins. A cold glass of sour milk. A jug of fresh water. And, the most important item of all, the blue envelope set upon a finely wrought, blue wooden box, large enough to hold a pair of shoes. Inside the blue envelope are button orders. Golden shirt buttons. Silver buttons for a waistcoat. Anything is possible, and I adore the variety, the excitement of not knowing what challenge and delight awaits me. The blue box holds all the raw materials I will require to execute the button order. And they will be my creations, my beautiful creations.

  But today is different.

  Everything is in its place except for my blue envelope, which should be atop its blue box. Its absence leaves me open-mouthed and unbreathing. If the carers had poured the contents of my yellow-bordered chamber pot over my workbench, it would not have been as disturbing as this absence.

  My blue envelope might be missing, but there is an envelope, and it lies upon the bench.

  It is a black envelope.

  My breathing turns shallow and rapid, and I feel cold inside. What could this possibly mean? Is it a consequence, the price of a peaceful night?