A Five Year Sentence Read Online Free PDF Page A

down the front of his coat, a token of his opinion of her meteorological talent.
    â€˜Well, it
was
a lovely day,’ she said limply. ‘The rain must have just started.’ Then he smiled at her, pitying her embarrassment. He made to walk on. Miss Hawkins didn’t want to lose him. The miracle of finding him in the first place was not likely to be repeated. ‘Oh, I forgot a book,’ she said, following him back up the stairs. He seemed pretty indifferent to her company, but she insisted. ‘What book do
you
want?’ she said.
    â€˜I’m going to borrow some for my mother.’ He stopped and looked at her. Then shyly, and with almost an inbuilt knowledge that he would regret it later, he said, ‘Perhaps you could help me choose.’
    Miss Hawkins had read about love, and she’d sometimes eavesdropped on the factory girls’ courting accounts. She had no more expected it to happen to her than she would be party to a lottery win, but at that moment, Miss Hawkins was convinced that the tremors that tingled through her body could only be labelled as love, and this recognition so astonished her that she was afraid to move her body lest the tremblings became audible.
    â€˜Would you?’ he said. It was not a plea, but a mere follow-up of what he had said before.
    She nodded her head and could not stop it nodding. The man continued the ascent, and with stiff steps, she followed him. When they reached the shelves, she said, ‘What sort of books does your mother like?’ She heard a caress in her voice, and she decided she had fallen in love with his mother too.
    â€˜She likes thrillers,’ he said. ‘She’s read most of these anyway, but if I let enough time elapse between the borrowings, she forgets she’s read them before.’
    Though his accent was distinctly working-class, Miss Hawkins was impressed with his vocabulary. He was a man of some education, probably self-taught, and she already felt herself unworthy.
    â€˜I like thrillers myself,’ she said, sensing that the way to his heart was through an alignment with his mother.
    â€˜Woman’s stuff,’ he said, and he blunted his contempt with a laugh. But contempt it was, all the same. Inside herself she agreed with him. Women were silly and of an inferior nature.
    â€˜D’you live with your mother?’ she said. It was perhaps a way of asking him whether or not he was married, and she congratulated herself on the deviousness of the question.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said, and he was clearly not going to say any more.
    â€˜What a good son you must be.’
    And again he laughed and again the laugh was a cover. He picked out a book with a singularly lurid jacket. ‘This is the sort of thing,’ he said, flashing the naked blood-dripping torso before her eyes. She shivered, more from embarrassment than horror.
    â€˜Too gory for you?’ he asked.
    â€˜No,’ she said quickly. If it suited his mother, it had to be fit for her. ‘I like to frighten myself.’
    â€˜Just what she says,’ and at that moment, Miss Hawkins saw herself well and truly married, sharing the house with the old woman, feeding her with dead bodies in closets, blood stains on carpets, the smell of burning flesh, a million malevolent malignities that would keep her busy and out of sight and eventually out of mind.
    â€˜Here’s another,’ he said. He showed her the cover. A young girl hanging from a meat-hook. She thought of Morris, or rather, the thought of Morris surfaced, for it was a permanent subtenant in Miss Hawkins’ mind. It was all matron’s fault, she thought, who took the money that bought the ink that marked the rags that made the string that choked the maiden all forlorn. She wondered how matron had died, if dead she was, and hoped with fervour that her demise had been slow and infinitely painful. She felt her teeth clench with the outrage. Sooner or later she