A Five Year Sentence (23 page)

In the kitchen the diary lay open with seven full pages to her freedom. Its current blank page called her attention. Somehow an order must be prescribed. To delay it, she flicked through the years of good conduct and obedience and she experienced a small pleasure of achievement. If she could acquit herself as well
in the remaining days of her sentence she would have gained a small victory, even if everything else around her had crumbled in its name. The thought cheered her a little, and gave her sufficient courage to pick up her pen and consider the day's terrible order. It wasn't that she was wanting in the courage to prescribe it, rather that she was lacking in words. As a literary exercise, her diary was a monument to purity, unsmudged by a single unsavoury word. She couldn't imagine that there was a clean expression for what she was about to do, and she could not sully her diary with its description. After a little thought she wrote, ‘Spent £50.' The diary would understand what she was trying to say. As she read it over, she realised that there were loopholes in the order. It could have meant the expenditure of £50 on anything or in any place. Miss Hawkins had always been very strict with herself, so she added specifics to the original order so that it finally read, ‘Spent £50 on Brian's service, and on one single item.' That order was air-tight, with no loophole for escape or misinterpretation. She read it over. It was written down once and for all, and it was now inescapable.

She wondered whether she should bother to make a sponge. It would be the first Monday for many years that she had bypassed this leaden trimming of the ceremony. But there was no longer anywhere comfortable to take tea, or any surface to bear the candlelight, or any altar to curtain from the daylight. No, she decided, today there would be no ceremony. It would be a simple service, shrineless, and without cake, but God was everywhere and He could be wooed direct, without the trappings of ritual. So having decided against making a cake, and having made out the order, there was nothing for her to do until Brian came. She wanted to go into her bedroom to fetch a handkerchief, but she was afraid to enter the room lest the sight of the clean sheets and their avowed purpose would shake her firm intent. For now there was no turning back. It was indelibly written.

She sat on the floor of the sitting-room and tried not to think of what the afternoon would bring. But it was difficult not to think about it. In that empty room there was no solid object on
which to focus her attention, and all her slippery day-dreams led to the white-sheeted shrine. She concentrated on matron, and hoped that her hatred would freeze her image long enough to endure the service. She had no idea of how long it would take, but she hoped it would be quick and easily forgettable, and she could tick it off in her little book, and when no-one was looking, she could transfer the same order to her wedding day, where it would find proper and legal timing. She thought of matron, and for once could not hold on to that reliable irritant, and she feared that her dark shadow would lurk somewhere else that afternoon, out of her desperate reach. She feared that her intended proxy would not materialise, and it would be she, Miss Jean Hawkins, and no other, who would taint those sheets, and who would cry out to God for mercy, pleading that she was only obeying orders. She decided that she would straightaway put on her wedding dress, just to satisfy herself in her own mind that she was a bride and that the sheets were her God-given entitlement.

Slowly she entered the bedroom and laid the bridal gown on the bed. As she dressed, she felt the need for some music, and she switched on the radio to the morning service. She was glad the organ was playing. For the first time in many years she thought of her mother, and she had a sudden longing to have known her. She was pretty certain, and matron had lost no opportunity to confirm it, that her mother had never worn such a dress, but had doubtless day-dreamed herself into the white and pure veil. She looked upon her own prospective marriage as vindication of the unjustness of her mother's life, and a chance to give the lie to matron's calumny.

When she dressed, she drew the veil over her head and walked slowly around the flat to the organ's mournful tune. In such a way she spent what was left of the morning, acclimatising herself to her new status, and in doing so, validating in advance the events of the afternoon. And so vivid and real was her marital status, that by the end of the morning she was eager to claim her conjugal rights, and almost resented that she had to pay for them.

She took off the dress and hung it beneath its cellophane cover. Already she had ideas of having it altered now that it had served
its original purpose, of cutting it down to serve as a cocktail dress for the dinner-dances that Brian would take her to. The tiara and veil she would keep as a souvenir to ensure her of a passport to heaven.

She was too excited to eat any lunch. She straightened the counterpane where the tiara had left its print. In her excitement, she'd forgotten to set out the service charge. She took the vicar's wad of bills, and placed them on the table next to the lamp. She wished they weren't so clean. As her final preparation she took Maurice off the wall, and wondered where to put him. She couldn't put him under the bed for that was his punishment place, and he had done no wrong. But she had lied to him, and was about to cheat him, and he had to be well out of the way of her deception. She would put him in the kitchen, in the pantry against the wall. Afterwards she would try to explain to him. She might even tell him the truth, and risk his desertion as well. In any case, she would soon be a respectable married woman, and perhaps she ought to think of giving Maurice his marching orders. She placed him gently on the floor, facing the wall. ‘We'll talk it all over this evening,' she said.

The doorbell rang and in the instant splintered all her morning illusions. Now the reality of the afternoon's programme could no longer, and in no way, be disguised. Her knees sank to the cold pantry floor, and she prayed to God to forgive her.

At the sight of the bunch of flowers in his hand, she took heart, and knew that, whatever the price, all would be well. He for his part, mindful that this was his last Hawkins call, was prepared to court and to promise and to offer her his all. He followed her into the sitting-room. He was shocked by its bare appearance, but he was careful not to comment. Whatever excuse she made, it was clear that poverty was overwhelming her.

‘I'm buying new furniture,' she said, hugging the flowers, and regretting that there was no table to put them on. ‘I got so tired of the old stuff. In any case,' she prattled on, ‘if you're to start a new life, you need new things to go with it.' She giggled, almost crushing her bouquet in a hot spasm of embarrassment.

For a moment, he felt ashamed, but finding such an emotion so inconvenient to accommodate, he changed it easily and quickly into anger. He could have hit her for being so gullible.

‘Did you think about your mother?' she said.

‘Yes. I'll find a solution, don't worry. You're right. We should be together, you and I,' he said.

Her heart leapt with gratitude, and she crushed the flower stems so hard that the sap seeped through her fingers. ‘Oh Brian,' was all she could say, and he winced at the whine in the name. But it wasn't the name, he assured himself. Miss Hawkins would have whinnied Felix too.

‘Well,' he said, businesslike, ‘where are we going to trade this afternoon?' As he said it, he realised that the brave little Miss Hawkins was finally going to sample the deep end, and that the leaden sponge and sickly port were probably on the bedside table. She looked up at him shyly and confirmed his thoughts.

‘Follow me,' she said. Her voice came out as a plaintive squeak and he walked behind her and noticed that every part of her poor unyielding body was a-tremble. For a moment he thought he might refuse, as a last single act of decency. But what the hell. £50 was £50, and it could go towards the honeymoon. He decided instead that he would be extra gentle with her and that he would give of his best. All she would ever have of him was a memory. The least he could do was to make sure that it was beautiful.

And that he honestly intended, and perhaps it was not his fault that the legacy he bequeathed her proved otherwise. She lay in the semi-darkness, with her eyes screw-tight closed, trying with all her strength to enlist even the shadow of matron into her shame. She wept with the fear and failure of it all, and prayed that the dear and gentle Maurice, with his ears to the pantry wall, did not hear her cry of pain.

‘Why don't you put your flowers in water?' he said, when they returned to the sitting-room. She hadn't recalled dropping
them, but they were strewn over the floor. She hadn't the strength to bend and pick them up. ‘I'll gather them for you,' he said. He put them back into a bunch, and re-presented them. ‘To my future wife,' he said.

‘Oh Brian.'

He tried not to hear it, but pressed on. ‘Would you mind if my mother lived with us?' he said. ‘It's the only solution.'

‘She'd be very welcome,' Miss Hawkins said, not daring to accept what was meant by it all.

‘Then I'm proposing,' he said. He waited for the ‘Oh Brian', and when it was out, he took her hand. ‘We'll be married after Easter,' he said.

She opened her mouth, and he put his fingers gently on her lips. He simply couldn't bear to hear that whine again. ‘I'll see you next Monday,' he said, ‘and we can make all the arrangements.'

‘Mrs Jean Watts,' she squeaked. ‘Oh Brian, I can't believe it.'

‘You will,' he said. ‘You might even live to regret it.'

‘Never,' she said.

He put his arm round her, leading her to the front door. ‘Now you start making a list of all the things we shall need for the wedding. I'll pay for everything,' he said.

She was so overwhelmed with happiness that she couldn't even bring out an ‘Oh Brian'. It was there in her cheeks, but she had to swallow it to stop herself from crying.

‘Till next Monday then, Miss Hawkins,' he laughed. ‘Shan't be using that much longer, shall we?'

She watched him down the street, and he, turning, looked back at her. He gave her his widest smile. He could afford to, after all, in the comforting knowledge that he would never set eyes on her again.

Miss Hawkins returned to the kitchen. She walked very slowly, partly because of the unaccustomed stirrings in her body, and partly because her sudden joy had almost immobilised her. She sat down on her last remaining kitchen chair and unlocked her diary. She opened it at the current page and read the order aloud. Its execution had been the most masterful achievement
to date. Before ticking it, she enclosed it in a red-crayoned flower-frame, and then very slowly, and with both trembling hands, she set her crimson seal. She savoured the mark for a long moment. She knew that henceforward till the end of her sentence, the orders would be simple errands of joy. Brian was going to marry her, and God would understand her frailty and bless their union.

She locked the little book and took Maurice out of the pantry. She stood him on the kitchen work-table opposite her chair. ‘We're getting married after Easter, Maurice,' she said. He was smiling, happy for her. She felt she owed him some kind of apology. ‘I had to do it, Maurice,' she said, ‘just to make sure of him. But it wasn't very nice. Honestly,' she pleaded. ‘It was really quite awful.' He commiserated with her, full of understanding. Gently she put him back on the sitting-room wall. She wondered what she would do with him when she was married. She couldn't send him away after all the support he had given her. Perhaps she could introduce him to Brian's mother, though she did not think they would have much in common. Perhaps she would keep him a secret in the pantry. He would be someone to talk to when old Mrs Watts started to get on her nerves. She was determined, however, to make the old woman comfortable, for Brian's sake. She had to decide where to accommodate her. The spare room that she had set aside for Brian's occasional need for privacy, must now be given over to his mother. She would furnish it as a bedsitting-room, with a little gas-ring, so that she need never leave it and her incontinence would at least be space-contained. Once a week she would give it a good clean-out, and Mrs Watts could meanwhile sit in the hall. Until the old woman died, Brian would have to share her own bedroom. She wondered whether what had taken place that afternoon would be a regular feature of their marriage. She rather hoped that once was enough, that it was a declaration so graphic that it need not be re-confirmed. If Brian, however, did insist on such a right, she would grit her teeth and take comfort in the fact that at least she was not paying for her pain.

She went into the bedroom to remove the evidence of her
innocent blackmail. She opened up the bed and saw the blood on the sheet. Quickly she covered it so that God would not see. Then she sat on the bed and recalled with neither anger nor fear the small smudge of womanhood on the bathroom lino all those years ago. From the naked bulb poor Morris choked on her painful protest, but even that swinging shadow was now still. Perhaps at last she had trapped that restless grief and she could call an end to all her mourning. She felt strangely at peace. Somehow in her mind, the blood on the sheet seemed to be a proof that matron had been there after all.

Mrs Watts woke up on Easter Monday morning and through half-shut eyes, peered at her new bonnet hanging on the brass rail at the foot of the bed. The sight of it informed her of the auspicious day and the events of that day, and she stirred with excitement. It was the first: new hat she'd had in many years. Brian had given it to her for his wedding. And that took place this afternoon in a smart hotel in the country with a woman whose name she had forgotten, and who for some unknown reason, called her son Felix. She got out of bed and went quickly to her bathroom. She had not had a single accident since her residency at The Petunias. Mrs Watts was now as continent as Europe. Whether it was the plush carpeting that restrained her, or the pretty sheets on the bed, she did not stop to question. Perhaps it was simply a matter of constant and friendly care and attention. Whatever the reason, you could take Mrs Watts anywhere.