Jarrod
Sitting alone in his room as the clock struck 11, Jarrod
grew ever more convinced that Dawn would not be home for some time and his
placement of Mansfield on the stool in the hallway was beginning to lose the
dramatic impact he had envisaged at the time. Had she merely popped out to buy
some milk or something like that – which reminded him, she had left a note
asking him to do just that – then leaving her exposed in the hallway, ready to
provoke a reaction of mingled surprise and confusion, would prove effective,
his time alone a well-trained act of silent patience. Mansfield would be his
co-star, equally fascinated by the response she would draw out, whilst he would
be ready to swoop and rescue her, like a lover stepping in to put a stop to an
inappropriate advance. Yet, almost an hour since returning home, following
countless efforts to improve his Milton recitation, it became impeccably clear
that he could not allow this to go on for what could be another 7 hours,
perhaps more if traffic struck.
The opened window carried the echo of the church bells
into his room, signalling the eleventh hour, the regularity of the rhythmic
chiming reminding him of Dawn’s ‘to-do’ list that he had so successfully
committed to memory whilst making a cup of tea the previous evening. He
remembered finding it odd that she had not only outlined events that would take
place within the confines of the house – waking, eating, watching Friends – but had also identified
activities that would take place while she were out.
11am – Nigel Time!
It had troubled him then and it troubled him more now
that the time had actually arrived. If the capitalisation of ‘time’ wasn’t bad
enough, an exclamation mark had been cruelly positioned, tempting the reader –
she must have known he would read it – to wonder just what was so
exciting/dangerous/humorous about ‘Nigel Time’. It also confirmed, if Jarrod
needed any more confirmation, that Dawn was due to be busy at 11 and so there
was little stopping him descending the stairs and indulging in a few hours of
Mansfield before she returned home. Tales of his discoveries would be needed to
combat any explanation of ‘Nigel Time’ she chose to offer.
As he dwelt on the words of her ‘to-do’ list, staring
across the cityscape to wherever she might be enjoying/enduring ‘Nigel Time’,
Jarrod felt peculiarly jealous of the man who had been booked in to occupy her
attention, in whatever capacity, at 11 that morning. He knew, of course, that
Nigel could be no threat – not to him at least – whilst he remained a mere
activity listed amongst other important events such as ‘coffee’ and ‘dinner’.
No, it was when there was no reference to him on the list, when he became an
assumed presence, that it would be clear that ‘Nigel Time’ now stretched to far
more than a mere hour’s slot on an already-crowded list of competing activities.
The very absence of his name from future lists would be proof that there was
now so much ‘Nigel Time’ in Dawn’s life that it was no longer worth identifying
particular periods of the day apportioned to it.
He paused and reflected. As far as he could tell, he had never made it to the list. True,
this was only the first day she had kept a list, but his absence was still
notable. Had he become absorbed into her daily life already, an ever-present
being whose place on a ‘to-do’ list would be utterly redundant? Why was there
no ‘dinner with Jarrod’ planned for 7? Perhaps, he thought, he should eat alone
in his room, just to see if she missed his assumed presence for the evening,
leaving her, if expecting him, craving for his return to the living room. She
would find herself longing for him to be with her again to restore order, a
sense of how things should be now that he was this ever-present figure in her
life, and his timely entrance could prove pivotal. He wasn’t yet sure in what
way it would be pivotal, but the word seemed apt for the way the fantasy was
progressing.
He descended the stairs, casting a sideways glance in
Mansfield’s direction as he headed into the kitchen to make the coffee he would
need to begin reading. Drink was an essential accompaniment to reading,
providing pauses that competed with the author’s attempt to impose a structure
on the reader’s approach. If he were, for example, to take a sip mid-sentence
then this not only potentially altered the entire experience of that particular
section of the narrative but also implied that it was not sufficiently gripping
to defer the drink until a more suitable pause point. If, on the other hand, he
noticed to his surprise that he had waited until the end of a chapter before
continuing with his coffee, then it would be clear that he had temporarily
detached himself from the needs of the world and fully indulged himself in the
private chambers of the author’s revelations.
It had been an enormous relief to discover that Dawn
understood that the word ‘coffee’ referred to the ground powder that produced
filtered velvety goodness, rather than the fraudulent granules masquerading as
coffee, kept within jars whose labels would surely fail to meet the standards
of the Trade Descriptions Act. Since returning home the previous Tuesday
muttering the words ‘equality and diversity, I’ll give you equality and
diversity’ with only slightly-concealed angst, Dawn had brought an array of the
world’s finest coffees to the cupboard, ensuring each continent – with the exception
of Antarctica of course – was represented in coffee-form. Whilst he appreciated
the possibility of sampling a different flavour every day of the week – he
decided he would take Dawn’s ‘help yourself’ offer as literally as possible –
he was unused to agonising over the choice between Kenyan and Indonesian and
had, so far, found himself returning to his first choice, Columbian, for little
reason other than recalling that it was his parents’ choice and it seemed
sensible that he followed their lead in one area of life at least.
Delving into the same bag each day provided valuable
constancy, marking out his choices to Dawn so that it was impossible to not
know which he had been sampling. He believed it was important to leave little
signs around the house for her to slowly begin to understand his movements and
his motives, to gather the information that would help construct the image of
him he was seeking to portray. She would, he was sure, be impressed by
consistency and regularity, and he had briefly flirted with the idea of writing
his own ‘to-do’ list alongside hers, sharing her craving for order and routine.
After she had gone to bed the previous evening, he had scrawled ‘Jarrod’s Day’
in his neatest hand, forming an accompanying column, but the idea of filling
his day with fixed appointments after liberating himself from the world of work
– progressing, he reminded himself –
seemed contradictory to his newfound freedom and so he had left the column
blank, identifying the potential that lay ahead whilst subtly, he hoped,
signalling that he was joining Dawn in her quest for order.
He looked at the clock. Dawn would be into her seventh
minute of ‘Nigel Time’. Three minutes and he could begin to read - it was
clearly impossible to begin an activity at 7, 8, or 9 minutes past the hour –
and all that was left to decide in the meantime was which room he should
introduce Mansfield to first. Choosing the right room was essential for
establishing an appropriate atmosphere for the first few pages of a new book.
He had once tried to read Mrs Dalloway
on a busy train bound for London and had found himself rather confused when he
later discovered that Clarissa didn’t in fact have an irritating three-year-old
son called Liam who threw colouring pencils across the carriage and wasn’t at
all involved in a business deal with a man named Pete who just didn’t seem to
be listening to a word she was saying. In fact, little of Jarrod’s experience
of the opening few pages seemed to bear any resemblance at all to the
characters and events of the pages he read when sat in a secluded part of a
quiet park later that afternoon. There wasn’t even a trolley-cart offering
light snacks and refreshments whisking its way down the Dalloway’s hallway, as
he had been so certain of barely hours earlier.
The living room was free from distraction, the haunting
absence of Janine evaporating afresh as he strode towards the couch, clutching
Mansfield in his left hand while his right struggled to steady the
slightly-shaken coffee cup that he had, as usual, over-filled when he misjudged
the amount of milk he would need to add to get the colour just right.
The clock read 11.09. He took a sip of coffee and gently
laid it to rest on the coaster before him. The hot liquid sped down his throat,
slightly-scorching his over-eager taste-buds on its way down. Although he
longed to drink again, as he opened up the book to cast his eye over the
contents page that signalled fourteen possible start-points – an unusual
feeling for someone so accustomed to the novel form – he hoped that Mansfield
would so enrapture him, so overwhelm his sensibilities that he would forgo
another taste until she permitted him an appropriate pause.
His fingers skipped gaily through to page 83, a distant
memory of his teacher remarking that Psychology
was a particular favourite prompting him to dismiss four stories with careless
abandon, overjoyed at the realisation that he could return to them at anytime
without disrupting the narrative. 6 pages long. Come 11.30 he could have read
it three times should he so desire to do. The possibilities exposed up by the
shortness of her revelations were exhilarating!
The clock struck 11.10 and he began, devouring the
opening sentence with haste:
When she opened the
door and saw him standing there she was more pleased than ever before, and he,
too, as he followed her into the studio, seemed very very happy to have come.
---------
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