A Five Year Sentence (16 page)

She set the table, and hooked him gently on the wall. It was a
long time since they had dined together and she felt guilty because of her neglect. She lit a candle and put it in the centre of the table. Maurice, too, was entitled to join in celebration. She adjusted herself opposite him and smiled. ‘I wish you a very happy New Year,' she said. He nodded, clearly wishing the same for her.

‘Maurice,' she began, ‘I want to discuss my future with you.' She knew she must not ask him advice or indeed any question at all, because his lack of verbal response only served to shatter the illusion that she was not dining alone. ‘I'm a little bit worried about Brian,' she went on. She thought that if she could talk about it, if she could let the fearful words out into the room, and air them a little, perhaps they would be satisfied and go away and not trouble her any more. ‘It's my investment,' she said, airing every syllable. ‘It's over a thousand pounds now, and I don't know what he's done with it. He said he'd save it for me. You heard him yourself years ago. He said it was an investment, didn't he?' She looked at Maurice and saw that he remembered. ‘Well, he doesn't mention anything about it. And I'm afraid to ask. I'm afraid to ask him,' she repeated and paused, hoping to get some answer from its echo. ‘I'm afraid he'll be angry if I ask him.' Suddenly the need to verbalise the core of her anxieties nagged at her throat, and she got up, for she didn't need Maurice as eavesdropper, and she whispered softly, for she herself didn't want to hear, ‘I don't think he's saved it at all. I think he's spent every penny.' She felt a tear trickle down her cheek and she sat in her place again and noticed that Maurice was weeping too. ‘I'll speak to him tomorrow,' she practically shouted at her companion. ‘I'll have it out with him. Penny by penny. My diary will order it,' she screamed. ‘Then I'll
have
to do it.' Her anxiety eased a little with this decision, painful as she knew its consequence might be. Yet despite the relief she was trembling pitifully, and she knew it as a sign of the hatred growing inside her, a hatred and mistrust for the man on whose behalf she had this day ordered her bridal gown. On whose behalf she had re-planned her own home, accommodating him with gentle consideration. But she didn't want to hate him. He
had, after all, given her a great deal of pleasure. She looked up at Maurice. ‘What does it matter?' she said. ‘Even if I did pay for it. I've paid much more for things that I didn't enjoy at all.' She wanted to tell him a story that would illustrate such pointless expenditure. But she could look back on little pleasure in her life, whether paid for or otherwise. ‘Well, it doesn't matter,' she said. She was on the point of asking Maurice point blank for his advice. She experienced a brief moment of total belief in the flesh of her companion. It did not last long, and for that she was grateful. She wondered why she was grateful. Maurice was patently there. Anybody could see him. She looked at him and she didn't understand him at all. ‘We must keep our wits about us, mustn't we, Maurice?' she said. ‘Tomorrow we'll tackle him.' Mute as he was, she enlisted him for her support, and to that end she decided to use him for a dummy run.

‘Brian,' she said, looking at the mirror, ‘what have you done with my savings?' Maurice turned up his nose. That approach was no good at all. It was much too direct and allowed for an outright negative answer, after which the subject was closed.

She tried again. ‘I read in the paper last week, Brian, that lots of people are putting their money into building societies.' She looked at Maurice for an assessment of her more oblique approach. It had pleased him and he smiled. ‘We can always go on from there, can't we?' she said. ‘I'd let you stay in the room, Maurice, you know I would, but I think Brian might be a bit embarrassed. But I'll tell you about it afterwards. Every word, I promise.' She smiled at him hoping to disguise her feelings of treachery for she wanted him away, back on the floor and out of her face and mind. ‘I'm going to make an early night,' she said to him. ‘We'll have dinner together again tomorrow.' She got up from the table, and without looking at him, she lifted him gently off the wall. ‘I'll talk to him tomorrow,' she said to no-one in particular, and had she been brave, she would have ordered it in her diary there and then. But she rationalised her reluctance by reminding herself that each day prescribed its own event and to precipitate an order would invalidate its purpose as a diary. When it was convenient, she thought of it in that way, but mostly
she no longer understood what the little green book had become. The only thing she knew for certain was that she had become utterly dependent on it, and its benevolent tyranny frightened her.

‘You want to get rid of me,' Mrs Watts said. It was as good a way to begin a New Year as any.

‘If you don't want to go,' Brian said, confident in the suitcases at her feet, ‘nobody is forcing you. For years now you've been nagging to go to The Petunias. Now it's all settled, my job will see to that, and you can live in comfort for the rest of your life. But if you don't want to go,' he said, making to take off his coat, ‘we can go on as before.'

She wanted to go, desperately. She hadn't slept all night in her excitement and in the morning, the bed was sodden. Brian had tipped the mattress out of the window, and he resolved to burn it as soon as he got back home.

‘What will you do without me?' she nagged. ‘How are you going to manage?'

‘Don't worry about me,' he said. ‘I'll manage all right.' Then, as a small concession, which he could now afford as he envisaged the freedom of his future, ‘I'll miss you though,' he said. He manufactured a smile, and she did likewise, for at bottom, neither had any reason for affection for the other. She wouldn't tell him to put his coat on, because that would have been an admission of her desire to leave. ‘I'll have to go, I suppose,' she said, ‘now that you've paid out all that money.'

But Brian wasn't giving an inch. He wasn't going to budge until she told him outright that she wanted to go. ‘Don't worry about that,' he said. ‘It's only a deposit. I can get it back.' Stalemate.

‘But the others there are expecting me. Especially Miss Winters. She'll be disappointed if I don't come. I can't let her down.'

‘I think she'll get over her disappointment,' Brian said, and he had the actual gall to sit down and open his jacket and slip off his shoes as if he had a mind to spend the day at home.

Mrs Watts was crestfallen. ‘Oh, we'd better go,' she said after a while.

‘Why?'

‘Because you've arranged it all,' she screamed at him.

Brian shrugged. ‘So I can un-arrange it,' he said.

She started to cry. Brian knew the tears were real. ‘D'you
want
to go or don't you?' he said mercilessly.

She nodded in submission and Brian put on his coat. ‘I'll go and find a taxi,' he said. ‘You wait with the cases in the hall.'

He walked down the street to the main road junction. A passer-by would have thought him a self-made man, full of confidence and knowing exactly where he was going in his life and to what purpose. And indeed the judgement would have been correct, for Brian envisaged his future with the utmost precision and content. Unlike Miss Hawkins, he had regularly taken stock. He had all the data he needed. His income fluctuated, but he had enough regular clients to more than cover his basic needs. And the most important of these was a reliable guarantee to petunia his mother.

He had done rather well in the past few years. He had as much business as he desired. More would have taxed his energies, and would thus diminish the quality of his services. His business had been built up almost entirely on recommendation. After his fortuitous meeting with Mrs Makins, he no longer had any need to frequent libraries or supermarkets for clientele. Mrs Makins had a friend, and she, another, and Brian served along the grapevine, and always left by the back door. Over the past year a few clients had died on him, one actually in his arms in the middle of a £3 all-in cuddle. He'd straightened her out on the settee and adjusted her dress. Then he crept out of the back door like an assassin. That experience had unnerved him considerably, and he'd had to lay off for a while, pleading a cold to his clients via the post. He noticed on his return to work how the appetite doth grow by what it feeds on, and his good ladies
were practically climbing the walls on his return. As a consequence, he introduced occasional ‘flu into his timetable, and his turnover rose proportionately. Most of his ladies had gravitated to his specialities. And this category had increased considerably. Mrs Makins had taught him a great deal, learned no doubt from her husband's ‘little quirks,' as she fondly called them, though there was nothing little about them, and certainly they were not fond. Brian had also listed an appendix category, which he called supplementary benefits, and they were certainly beneficial. Most of his ladies had dispensed with the first and second categories, because if they were served with the rest, they discovered that the hors d'oeuvres were an inevitable accompaniment. The climax of Brian's services was almost anatomically impossible without a certain amount of his cheaper offerings. So over the years Brian Watts had made a tidy sum. With it, he'd bought new suits, and an occasional box of chocolates for his mother. And he always took a bunch of flowers to Mrs Makins, because she had done so much to enlarge his clientele. He would never have believed that so many women felt the need of such services as his, and he could only conclude that by paying for it, they could have it only when they wanted it, and the cash ensured their honesty and independence. He wondered whether Mrs Makins felt that way. He was becoming quite attached to her. He respected her because she never took advantage of her favoured position. She would have been entitled to ask for a commission, or some form of rake-off, but she insisted on paying her way like everybody else. But he had given one service to Violet that was not, and never would be, on his list. And he'd given it gratuitously and with pleasure. He had kissed her. He realised afterwards how exclusively it coloured their dealings. A kiss between two people, he surmised, spelt a relationship, while with all the kissless others, there was only connection.

With all his clients, Brian had been scrupulously honest. They knew that servicing was his profession, and out of it he made a clean and decent living. Miss Hawkins was the exception, and the thought of her was the only scruple he allowed himself. She was being grossly deceived, he knew. He had been careful never
to wear any of his new suits on his Miss Hawkins visits, but appeared always in the costume of their first meeting. When he was with her, he had to conceal his developed virtuosity though her simple requests called little on his skill. Nevertheless, simple and cheap as her needs were, they were monotonously regular, and gently he had screwed her out of a thousand pounds. And it worried him. Not the immorality of it, but the sheer difficulty of talking himself out of the swindle. She rarely enquired about the investments he had promised to make for her, and when she did, it was timid and easily fobbed off with his vague assurances. But one day she would be less timid, and demand chapter and verse. He could of course drop her. One of the bonuses of his trade was that fraud was easy, since no-one would have the courage to tell the police, but he still retained a small affection for his first client, though he pitied her for her parsimonious school-girl requests. But he could hardly tell her that her money was well invested in The Petunias, but that it was an investment that paid no interest or return. For he had used it as an entrance fee, a fee that was obligatory, and only served to secure a place. It was not returnable, but a certain proportion of it was put aside for funeral expenses. In the beginning he had put Miss Hawkins' money by as he had promised, but when the demand came from the Home, he had to avail himself of it, for it was the only ready and large sum he had to hand. His other clients were steady enough to foot the weekly bill but poor Miss Hawkins would never see her savings again. It sometimes occurred to him to give her his services gratis, simply to square his own conscience, but he feared the extremes she might infer from free trading. Now Violet was altogether a different kettle of fish.

As he waited on the corner for a taxi, he checked on his business diary. As he feared, he was due to serve Miss Hawkins the following day. He prayed that she would not celebrate the New Year by enquiring into her accounts.

An empty taxi cruised to the kerb and he took it back to the house. His mother waited on the porch, her calf soldered to the suitcase, her eyes agog with excitement, and a small puddle at
her feet. She looked like a small evacuee. Brian picked up the case and she tottered a little. He took her arm. Then his mother did the most extraordinary thing. She slipped her hand down the sleeve of his coat, and took his hand in hers. Never in his life had he held her hand, and now it felt like a snake on his palm and he very much wanted to be sick. He grabbed her elbow and practically shoved her into the car. She did not look back at the house as she left. Though she had lived there for well on forty years, she gave it not a backward glance. Mrs Watts had no sense of history and even less sense of her own failure, so she allowed herself no nostalgia either. Within a few weeks, she would even have forgotten the colour of the wallpaper. They were due to clock in at The Petunias just before lunchtime. Brian had arranged everything. He had managed to get his mother a room in the annexe of the house, which was slightly cheaper than those in the main building. She did however have her own bathroom, and the only disadvantage was that she would have to cross the lawns to reach the dining-room. She would have company though. There were four other ladies in the annexe, one of whom, a Miss Winters, had taken a particular liking to his mother. He himself had not warmed to the lady and sensed too that she was disliked by the other ladies in the block, who shunned her. Hence her relief at Mrs Watt's arrival.