A Five Year Sentence (10 page)

He felt his mother staring at him, and sensed how his secret smile displeased her. So he was not surprised when she shouted across the room, with all her spiteful triumph, ‘I've wet.' Wearily he crossed over to her chair, and helped her into the bathroom. Then he took a cloth from the kitchen and mopped the floor. Sometimes he thought that she did it on purpose, and as he wiped away, keeping his face averted, his mind was filled
with thoughts that always seemed to accompany every mopping-up operation as to how much longer it would be before he could decently put her away. And by decently, he meant a time when, in utter ignorance, she would not know where or how she resided. He would have to wait for total senility. He wished her body health for as long as she lived, but he wished her too an infant's innocence and trust that was unavailable to the pain of humiliation. He was waiting for the time when she would not know him, when one morning he would take her her cup of tea and she would ask him his name. Often he daydreamed such an occurrence. He would then, without scruple, dress her with infinite care and tenderness and take her in a car to the Twilight Home and she would never know who had discarded her. And he would visit her weekly and feel no offence at her non-recognition. He couldn't bring himself to do it while she was full of blood and verbal memory and every day he listened for
non sequiturs
and inconsequential prattle. Yet he had heard that senility could not be relied on, that some old people, even in their nineties, had gone raging into dying as if the poor offended world still owed them a living. He listened to her stockinged tread from the bedroom, he riled with every inch of her terrible caution, and he began to question her entitlement to survive at all. But such thoughts were painful to him, and quickly he took the mop into the kitchen and rinsed it under the cold water. Till next time, he told himself, and the next, and he wondered on the quality of incontinence among the posh people at The Petunias and whether it contained an in-built upper-class discretion. He heard her coming from her bedroom and he went to help her back into her chair.

‘Don't do it again,' he said. He always said that after each mopping-up, though he knew there was no point in it, because in a disgusting way, she couldn't help herself.

‘You won't send me away, will you?' she said, but there was little fear in her voice and less sincerity, but she said it after each accident just to let him know that she knew very well what was in his mind.

‘Of course not,' he said, as he always answered her, but his
answer clearly referred to this time, and this time only, and held no assurance that his tolerance was infinite.

‘I wonder how much it costs at The Petunias,' she said.

‘Thought you didn't want to be put away.'

‘The Petunias isn't putting away. It's like living in a hotel for ever.'

‘How d'you know? You've never been to a hotel.'

‘I've seen them on television'.

‘Wouldn't you miss me?' he said.

‘You could visit me sometimes. I'd let you have a hot bath in my private bathroom.'

‘Well, you can forget it,' he said. ‘It costs too much.'

‘You're getting a job,' she said.

He didn't answer at once. He needed a moment to consider the idea she had just planted in his mind. And to remember for always that it was she who had first thought of it. The small monies he expected to receive from Miss Hawkins in payment of his services, had, until that moment, no special purpose in his mind. The odd new shirt for himself, or a box of chocolates for his mother was all he expected his immoral earnings to cover. But his mother, innocent of his part-time vocation, had, unawares, thrust him into trade. If there were one Miss Hawkins, there were plenty more, and libraries galore in which to trap them. He would go public, he decided. He would design half a dozen bills of fare, each one with a different motif, and he would fling his net wide to avoid discovery. He reckoned that with half a dozen regular and well-paying clients, his mother could be kept at The Petunias till the end of her days. And he would always remember that it was she who first put the idea in his mind. He marvelled that such a frayed and failing body still harboured such cunning and clarity of mind.

‘Well, you never know,' he said. He made a note to investigate the prices at The Petunias. Perhaps there was a cheap rate if you had a room without your own bathroom. He hardly saw the point in it anyway, since, as far as her body's natural functions were concerned, his mother was sublimely indifferent to location. The thought of his new career excited him. It would be
hard and exhausting work, but he would be calling on resources that he had never exploited and would surely demand and receive that respect which all his life had been denied him. And he would be doing it for his mother. The fact that it would be an act of such sacrifice robbed it of its overtones of sin. There was nothing more that a good son could do. He thought of Miss Hawkins with tenderness. None of his clients must ever be aware of the existence of the others. He would divide his time between them as equally as their appetites and purses would allow. But Miss Hawkins would occupy a special place in his heart as being his first and loyal customer. He could barely wait till Friday to open his shop.

Meanwhile, he had much work to do. His business could not expand by personal recommendation. Each customer had to be picked and vetted. A couple of miles from his house was a special gramophone record library housed in the Town Hall. Women who lived alone were as dependent on records as on books or cats. It could be a happy hunting-ground.

‘Think I'll go for a walk,' he said to his mother.

‘Where to?'

‘The park or something. Get some fresh air.'

She hoped he'd leave his list behind on the desk, but, as she was wishing it, he picked it up and rolled it under his arm.

‘Won't be long,' he said, and he was out before she could protest. She fumed after him, stamping her foot like a petulant child. ‘Going to plot against me,' she shouted after him. In his absence she intended to work herself into a ripe fury, so that she could make a good and proper mess by the time he got home.

When Friday came, Miss Hawkins had knitted a good three feet of scarf. Her green rage had diluted to a pale blue, then to yellow and finally petered out into a calm off-white. She was at peace with herself. Her ignorance as to what the future held for her had finally blunted the edge of her excitement, and put a stop to her fanciful guesswork that was based on so little information. By Friday her mind was open and available to all experience. She put Maurice back on the wall with the intention of dining with him that evening, so that she could tell him, detail by detail, of Brian's programme and use him as a sounding-board for advice. Then she was faced with the diary. She opened it and flicked through the week's pages. Since her last meeting with Brian, she had simply recorded what she had done, and each page was filled in at the end of its day. Thus she had risen, breakfasted, lunched and dined, read, knitted, cleaned the flat, and looked at television. It was a week's entry that any diligent, dull schoolgirl would have been proud of. Reading it, she thought how dull it was and she turned back to the very beginning of her sentence, and read the entries with shame. She marvelled at the change that had come over her in the months that had passed since her retirement. She hardly recognised the fearful soul who had risen and eaten so precisely. And had done absolutely nothing else. She was aware of a terrible wastage. Indeed, not only of the days since her retirement but of her entire life, that had consisted in fulfilling duties prescribed by others without one hint of her own initiative. If, as a child, she had had half the daring that she had presently acquired, she would have broken out of the orphanage prison. Such thoughts made her reach again for her knitting, but so strong was her
present control that it took only one line of off-white plaining to dispel them. She put her knitting down and wondered how she would fill her diary for the day. Though she had enjoyed her week's freedom from the diary's orders, she knew that such freedom entailed the dreariness of predictability. For the whole of her life, that had been the norm, and there had never been a break in the pattern. Nowadays that norm was as a holiday. Today she would return to the exacting job of living. But what orders should she dictate? Because she had no idea of what to expect, she couldn't stretch its possibilities by any diary challenge. All she knew was that she would be called upon to spend money. If she ordered herself to overspend, that would incur no risk except that of penury. But to bargain with his prices without being able to use the threat of going elsewhere, that was a challenging order and its ticking off would give infinite pleasure. So she wrote, ‘Halved Brian's prices.' She read it over, and then considered that she might be thought cheese-paring. So she added the rider, ‘without being unfair'. She intended to go to the bank before meeting Brian and to take out a sum rather larger than her weekly allowance. She expected that he would want payment in cash, for such earnings were hardly declarable income. Perhaps on her way to the library she would be bold enough to enter the private bar of the local pub where she had once been on a workers' party outing. It was a sedate place where women on their own could take a quiet drink without being molested. She had never been in a pub on her own before, so it was a challenge worth ordering in her diary. So on the line above her bargaining orders, for she valued a respect for chronology, she wrote, ‘Went to the Pirate's Arms. Had a gin and lime.' She had no idea how gin and lime tasted, but from her reading she knew that it was the correct drink for a woman of her station. She shut the diary, partly because the gesture represented a completed job of work, and partly for the pleasure of opening it on her return, and of reading once again her day's orders before confirming them with her red crayon. She opened the wardrobe for her coat and found its empty, swinging hanger. She realised that it still lay on the settee. She thought to herself
that she was getting slovenly. Yet, for some reason, it didn't displease her. On the contrary, it gave her a strong sense of liberation that such trivia no longer obsessed her. As she put it on, she noticed that the sleeve lining was untacked, and it almost pleased her, and as a final rebellion she went out into the street where everybody could see, without bothering to do up the bone buttons. Miss Hawkins was well on the way to going bohemian.

When she reached the Pirate's Arms, she hovered for a while outside, and as some kind of self-protection, she buttoned her coat. She went inside. On each side of the vestibule there was a door. A lot of noise seemed to be coming from the door on her right, so she tried the left one, and found herself in a small parlour. About half a dozen people sat quietly at tables, most of them women on their own and she felt reassured. She took a seat. There were no waiters in evidence, and she wondered whether it was up to her to fetch her order from the bar. She was too shy to cross the room under the gaze of the other loners. Yet to stay sitting where she was, with seemingly no purpose, might draw equal attention on herself. She hesitated, and the barman, who had been watching her, caught her eye. He trapped her gaze for a moment, and then, with the high disdain of his calling, he enquired across the bar, and in full ear-shot of all his customers, ‘Port and lemon, Madam?' She was too frightened to deny it. She had no idea what it was but it sounded contemptible, a fit combination to offset the obvious inadequacies of her sort of person. She felt assaulted, but as if in answer to an order, she nodded her head. He turned his back and poured it, then placed it on the bar. The ball was clearly in her court. She rose, and in her nervousness, pushed back the chair on which she was sitting and it fell over with a loud clang on the linoed floor. ‘I'm sorry,' she said to everybody and to nobody in particular. She bent to pick up the chair, and as she straightened up, she felt dizzy, and the distance between herself and the bar seemed to have widened considerably. The small, isolated port and lemon had become an alcoholic's blur. She held on to the table to steady herself, and heartily wished she'd never set foot in the place. She staggered over to the bar and collected her potion.

‘40p,' the barman said before she could take it away.

She had to make a return trip for her handbag which she'd left on the table, and as she picked it up, a surge of anger fuelled her, and she wished she had brought her knitting. She paid for her drink and brought it back to the table. She sipped it gingerly – at 40p a go, she intended to savour it slowly – and as she relished it, for it was a new and exciting taste, she recalled the order in her diary. It had been specific. A gin and lime had been its undeniable prescription, and it was an act of disobedience to modulate it in any way. Yet the port and lemon had been by way of an order too. The barman had made that clear, and confused, she wondered how many masters she was serving. Yet the diary's orders, she knew, superseded all, and she downed her drink and went boldly to the bar.

‘A gin and lime,' she said with sudden new-found authority.

The barman raised an eyebrow. He smiled, but not disdainfully. There was a small flicker of respect in his smile, the respect for a hard and dedicated drinker. Miss Hawkins liked his smile no better than his former contempt, for both were indications of total misunderstanding. ‘How much?' she said, before he could inform her. It was she who was master now, and she enjoyed the sudden role-reversal.

‘40p,' he said.

‘And a slice of lemon,' she added, homing in on her newfound authority though she had no idea whether lemon was a fit extra ingredient.

The barman nodded, both in obedience and agreement. ‘I'll bring it to your table,' he said.

For the first time in her life Miss Hawkins felt served. This new experience quite confounded her and led her to speculate on the series of masters she had served all her life. The first was the one who encapsulated them all and there was no need to scour further afield than the Sacred Heart Orphanage to catch the whiff of authority. Again she longed for her knitting, and as an alternative, she took a generous swig of her gin and lime. She had to admit that her recent moment of authority at the bar had been glorious. The satisfaction it engendered was as great as that
which accompanied the ticking off of an order. She set to thinking that to command was as splendid as to serve and she realised that in her anticipated role with Brian, she would be master and call each tune. It's true she would be paying for his services, but that would in no way disturb the balance of the status of master and slave. She would pay him as a grand lady would give wages to her personal maid, for humanity's sake. She was getting the best of two worlds, she decided. She would have Brian at her purse's beck and call, but her own service she would devote exclusively to her diary, and that small green book, which occasionally she loathed for its tyranny, now appeared to her as an object of worship. She was in all ways, she felt, well and truly blessed, and as a toast to her good fortune, she downed her gin and lime. She was feeling quite heady, and spirited enough to consider another order. But she decided against it, not out of meanness or self-discipline, but because she feared that Brian might smell the beginnings of her fall. For fall it was, of that she was sure, and she cared little about it, for a self-indulging drinking habit seemed to be a natural accompaniment to the enslavement she had in mind. For the rest of her life she would go gloriously to pieces in a pursuit of innocent debauchery and diary idolatry.