Accidental Crime - 13

Dawn

Dawn was a big fan of charity shops. Every time she dropped a handful of shiny 50p coins into the palm of an unpaid volunteer she could rightly hold her head up high, proud that she had done her bit, made a difference, given her hard-earned cash to a worthy cause. Cancer, perhaps, would be cured as a result of her contribution. Lives would be saved. And, to top it all off, no-one would ever know that her pink Monsoon top once belonged to another equally magnanimous member of society. Snobbery costs lives.

As she slipped into her five pound jeans, Dawn skipped through her DVD collection from memory, plucking decisive reasons from a seemingly-well-prepared list of excuses as to why certain films would be wholly unsuitable for that evening’s entertainment. Next Tuesday, perhaps, would be Pretty Woman’s time to shine, but it was obviously not right for tonight. She couldn’t face Julia Roberts at a weekend. And as for The Notebook, well, that most certainly would not do whilst Jarrod’s probable presence remained a distinct possibility. Inevitable crying was an individual sport, with no room for disapproving glances from an insensitive, arrogant, unbelievable –

‘Dawn?’ He appeared in the doorway.

‘Hey!’ she snapped, assuming that her jeans had yet to be fastened securely, ‘do you mind? I’m changing.’ Their eyes met around her tightly-hugged thighs. ‘Well, OK, I’m changed now. But you could have knocked.’

‘You were right there. You’d have seen me knock.’

‘Yeah, well, anyway, it’s the principle of the thing. Privacy, and all that.’

‘Then why are you changing with the door open?’

She hadn’t realised. The observation disturbed her and sent her hurtling through the last few minutes, piecing together her actions and intentions, like a forensic detective probing for a revelation, some knowledge that would bring at least an element of security. She might not like the knowledge but at least she would know it. Her eyes met Jarrod’s, who had been scanning her room whilst she reflected on the door’s openness, before falling to the floor as she spoke.

‘Anyway. What do you want? How can I help you? How was your day at work?’ All options slipped out at once, her tongue briefly relinquishing the power to select and prioritise.

‘I’m fine,’ Jarrod responded, dismissively. ‘I was just...checking in.’

‘Oh. OK. Is that it?’ She immediately regretted her tone, as her curt responses indicated an irritation that really wasn’t there. She longed for flowing discourse, for humorous reflection on life’s idiosyncrasies, for a lingering moment in which they could finally unwrap the first layer of their projected selves and reveal just a glimmer of how they truly thought, what they truly felt. As she flicked her eyes towards his now half-turned body, she felt a craving for his presence that she had never felt before, a compulsion to invite him to share in just one moment.

Her mind returned to her DVDs. The Reader. That was it! He would watch it with her. If the title or the prospect of critiquing the pitfalls of entering into a relationship with a much older woman didn’t interest him then the promise of nudity, however brief, would surely provide the relevance he needed. As she began to form the ‘J’ in her throat to beckon his interest, the open door swung back into view and she found herself transfixed by the possibility that he had been watching her for some time, that this was no mere accident but rather further evidence of the importance of keeping watch over your doors and locks. Watch your doors and locks her parents had often reminded her – or was that Crimewatch? – and now here was proof that there were indeed ‘strange men’ lurking where you least expected them. How could she share Kate Winslet with a strange man? No, the ‘J’ would remain unspoken and she would watch alone.

‘Oh. Dawn?’

Go. Now. I cannot look at you. Not now. Not knowing what you have seen and what you have tried to see. Go.

‘Dawn?’ He had turned again and taken a slight step inside her room, causing her to retreat in rhythm.

‘Huh? What? What is it?’

‘Um. It’s just about tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ She took a further step back.

‘Yeah, tonight. I’m, um, hoping to have a friend, a colleague, someone from work, round a little later, if that’s OK? I just wanted to check that would be all right with you, that you weren’t planning on doing anything or anything like that, you know.’

He was, in fact, checking in, like he had said. There was greater simplicity there than she had imagined.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. That’s fine, I mean, it’s your house too, isn’t it? You do what you like, don’t you? I mean, you can do what you like. You don’t have to check with me. But thanks. Thanks anyway. It’s good to know what’s going on. And...yeah, I’ll just be finishing getting changed now, and I guess you’ll want to be getting ready for your big evening, so -’

‘Thanks, Dawn. I’ll...I’ll see you later.’ He smiled tentatively and withdrew, as she brought the door to a close at the same time as her embarrassed eyes clasped shut, her left hand offering further, protective darkness. She slumped onto the bed and released an audible sigh that she hoped his eager ears would not have detected. Her eyes fell towards her jeans button. It was, in fact, half-in and half-out, like a tongue protruding from the lips, mocking her sense of security that she had taken relief in only moments earlier. She was neither secure nor exposed. She slipped her fingers down to the button and popped it fully out. Exposure, however small, was better than the middle-ground she so poorly occupied. If his footsteps returned she could always buckle at speed. Buckling at speed was a well-rehearsed routine.

She ran through his words at breakneck speed, before pausing on his three-fold introduction to a potential future guest that appeared to become less intimate an acquaintance with every passing title. A friend, a colleague, someone from work. He had avoided using the gender-revealing pronoun she needed and, in so doing, had ensured that she would be forced to linger voyeuristically on the landing the moment a knock on the door signalled that he or she had arrived. She would, perhaps, pretend to be making a trip to the toilet – surely no guest could doubt the sincerity in such movements – and throw a quick glance down the stairs before she reached the bathroom door, offering the opening of about half a second to reach an immediate assessment. And then the embarrassment of counting seconds in the bathroom until it seemed appropriate to flush the toilet, making quite sure that the guest was left with no opportunity to make the first words spoken to her, ‘Oh, that was quick’. However unlikely it might be that the guest would offer such insight in place of the usual conventions of asking how she was, when they really had very little interest in finding out, timing fake toilet trips was still a far safer option.

And just how, exactly, did Jarrod manage to know anyone yet? It had only been a week. Five days. Forty hours of working time. What was he offering them?

‘Would you like to hear me read Milton?’ he perhaps inquired. ‘I’m very good. I put all the pauses in the right places and it’s like you’re there with Satan himself, feeling every challenge he felt.’ And as she – Dawn had decided that the evidence was increasingly pointing in this direction – began to look doubtful, he no doubt pulled out his trump card: ‘And did I tell you that I’m working on a novel at the moment? No? Oh, well, you must come and see it. It’s very fresh, very...modern, if you know what I mean. It’s definitely worth a read.’ And with that she was won. Perhaps she could get his autograph and sell it on eBay when he reached the big time? And surely all writers drink, so there must be some good whiskey in the house somewhere?

Or perhaps he was offering a naked frolic in the wheat-fields, coupled with a reflection on how much better it would be if everyone else in the world were destroyed and the earth was left to the two of them?

On his second evening in the house, Jarrod had provided a twelve minute summary of his recent ‘discoveries’ from the world of modernist literature and she, seeking to keep the peace so early into his tenancy, listened patiently while he ran through all the things one could do and say in a wheat-field. At least, those were the bits she particularly remembered and actually prompted her only intervention into his monologue.

‘But do you actually believe that?’ she had asked. ‘Do you think it’s a good idea? Would you really want that?’

He had tried to quote something he said he recalled C.S. Lewis writing about how things can be beautiful without having to be acceptable, mumbling ‘do you know what I mean?’ every time his sentence began to trail off without reaching any firm conclusion or explanation. The phrase, as he spoke it, provided the impression of explanation, with an underlying tone of reinforced inferiority for the listener. ‘Of course you don’t understand’, he was saying. ‘Neither do you,’ would be Dawn’s unspoken observation.

And neither would she, no doubt, as she crawled around on her hands and knees searching for shot glasses while he sought to compel her interest through a series of ‘classic Joyce quotes’. Perhaps, Dawn wondered, the evening could be theirs after all. A few amendments to his room when he wasn’t looking and she’d be out of the door so rapidly that Dawn would be perfectly justified in finding herself commenting, ‘Oh, that was quick.’ And then, turning to Jarrod, she would offer a sympathetic word: ‘I’m so sorry things didn’t work out for you two. She obviously wasn’t quite right for you. You deserve better.’ And off he would sulk, slumping on the sofa, too flummoxed to care what DVD she put on. And then she would take a seat as well – on the other sofa, of course – and share the moment. And he would watch with her, his friend/colleague/someone from work long gone. And perhaps, in that moment, she would even become to him ‘a friend, a housemate, someone I live with’? It was the best the night could offer, especially whilst she remained flat-out on the bed, the door fixed shut, the charity-shop DVD un-chosen.

She pushed the button fully through the hole, clasping her jeans shut, and raised herself to her feet. Without warning, she burst into laughter. A laughter teetering on the brink of tears. She had spoken to Gemma that afternoon, throwing in as many ‘wow!’ and ‘I’m so happy for you’ exclamations as she could muster as the news of the engagement was revealed. It hadn’t been a surprise – G and T belonged together as much as the drink itself – but the sharp pain in her stomach that appeared on cue the moment Gemma uttered the anticipated words kick-started a full-scale rebellion of body, mind and soul that would not allow her to be at peace about what she had just heard. She should be happy for her friend, she knew that, and some part of her – a part she couldn’t at that moment bring to the surface to assume dominance over the rest – was overcome with happiness that at least one of them had, to use the phrase they had repeated until the very possibility seemed so unreal, ‘found their man’. She knew that childhood pacts meant little, that, when the world brought forth an opportunity, no pledge you made in your youth could possibly be binding, and she knew, most of all, that if she had been in Gemma’s position then she would have married Tim many months ago. Yet, for all that she knew and for all that she told herself over and over again, the news had brought a certainty where before there had only been a probability and it was a certainty that she was not yet prepared to face.

In inviting Jarrod to live in her house she had opened the door to the possibility that one day things would change. She shared her parents’ surprise that this had been the answer to Natalie’s departure and not a day went by when she didn’t wonder why they had been brought together. His arrival had been so swift, so unexpected, as though something were being ordained, a situation being established that she would need to come to terms with. It felt as though it was out of her hands and there was a confidence in the way in which Jarrod glided around the house that troubled her more than she would allow herself to admit. He didn’t seek approval and acceptance but, rather, he assumed it and she had found herself welcoming him further and further into her world. As they spoke, she found her thoughts propelling her into a cycle of uncertainty and temptation, as memories of people encountered, films watched, books read and feelings felt danced before her eyes. She could not see the person she was but only the person she could become, that she could allow others to make her into.

G & T would be an unbreakable pairing – she was sure of it, and she celebrated with them that it would be so – but when she looked at what lay before her, as she examined what she had become, she saw no letter to partner her D but rather an undefined figure striving to be moulded into a shape that she could learn to accept and that she could long to embrace.  Jarrod’s presence had unnerved her but it was to be, she persisted in reminding herself, a temporary presence. She would resist the urge to invite him further into her life, to propose in words the suggestion that had gone unspoken, and she would make sure that, whatever she did, she kept the door closed.

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