Accidental Crime - 6

Jarrod

Jarrod decided that the day demanded the purchase of a book. As he slotted Milton back on the shelf, he was surprised to discover just how much space he had been apportioned. There was clear space on both sides, easily sufficient for an additional presence.

Mansfield’s name had been mentioned in connection with Lawrence – and perhaps Woolf – he remembered, prompting a momentary flush of guilt to fill him with restlessness at his own reluctance to pursue the reference earlier. Milton required an adversary, a rival for the space he was so unnecessarily occupying, and Jarrod had decided, with remarkable haste, that Katherine Mansfield would be assigned the challenge.

He checked his watch. 5.45. He jerked his head forwards in frustration. What sort of world didn’t sell books at 5.45? The restrictions of working hours were unacceptable. Forget public transport or the health service, this would be the first thing he would change when in power. From entering data to making the data: the English dream.

It had only been three weeks since he had first shaken the hand of a man named Gavin and been shown to his ‘booth’. Gavin’s hollow expression upon learning that William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was a distant relative had immediately indicated that stimulating conversation was most likely an unlikely prospect, as he rebuffed further attempts at interaction by pointing his chewed-finger-nail-fingers in the direction of the monitor, the mouse and the manuscript. The trinity of data entry. As Gavin waved his slightly-shaky hand over the keyboard, Jarrod noticed that the letter ‘m’ was signified by a paler white than the rest and began compiling a list of likely m-led words that might prompt such regular visitation of the fingers. It would be one of the first things he would reflect on once Gavin’s clerical foreplay was over and the real work begun. Work that, whilst likely to bring undoubted moments of tedium and regret, would surely be a breeze for a man who once secured a forty-words-a-minute score as an eleven year old user of Touch Typist Pro. It wasn’t, of course, the highlight of the CV he had submitted to Personnel Pros but he made sure it appeared under ‘Other skills and interests’, masquerading as merely another additional ability, the most socially acceptable IT skill he had developed over months of self-imposed solitary confinement following his parents’ surprise decision to place the family computer in his room. He hoped, for Gavin’s sake, that there would be no need for him to demonstrate the other, less welcome, skills.

It was 9.37 when a recurrence of the repetitive strain injury he had acquired earlier that year left him with no choice but to pause from his work and maintain his meditations and musings on the mysterious medley of m-words applied to his keyboard by a previous booth-dweller. It also signalled Gavin’s reappearance, as the musty smell of a morning cigarette loomed over Jarrod’s shoulders, whilst he lowered his slightly-chipped glasses to peer intently at the screen before him.

‘Mmm. Not bad,’ he mumbled, snorting forcibly, as if to add punctuation to his words and thereby document them as an official appraisal of Jarrod’s first 37 minutes. It was not an affirmation that Jarrod particularly needed or desired and yet the suggestion that his efforts were only ‘not bad’ left him feeling a little deflated, as if he had expected the moment to play out quite differently. He smiled as he pictured Gavin spinning his chair round, lifting him to his feet, embracing him and holding him at arm’s length before looking him in the eyes with undeniable sincerity and tearfully whispering the word ‘terrific’, his head slightly tilted to the side in awed wonder at the brilliance of Personnel Pros’ greatest ever find, the man who had redefined just what it means to enter data.

‘Well. Why have you stopped? Keep it up. Many more hours to go.’ Gavin’s words brought a swift end to the increasingly-unbelievable fantasy taking shape in Jarrod’s mind and he found himself nodding along in agreement and uttering the words, ‘Yes, sir.’ As his pin-stripe-suited figure confidently strode towards the nearest exit in pursuit of the latest fifteen minute fix, Jarrod shuddered at his moment of utter submission and conformity and quickly returned to ‘Document 2’ lurking at the foot of the screen. He added his 58^th m-word, ‘more’, perplexed that it had eluded him the previous 57 times, and took a moment to marvel at the opening line of Moby Dick (after quickly adding word 59): ‘Call me Ishmael’. A whole lesson had been spent dwelling on these three words and yet here, when he most needed the distraction, little more than a moment’s musings sprang from his memory bank. He shook his head and glanced down at the data before him. There were 21 minutes to go before he could reasonably justify taking a comfort break. 21 minutes of discomfort. It would be a worthwhile challenge.

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Accidental Crime - 5

Dawn

She returned to the door-handle for a final try.

Peeling away the towel that clung reassuringly tightly to her body, she stood before the three-quarter length mirror that preserved her from the ignominy of including her feet within the whole-body appraisal. For a moment she stood like a soldier on parade, her eyes fixed ahead, trying to avoid the areas urging further inspection. There was something reassuringly naked about being naked; this was who she was, the true her that only she knew. Her eyes began their journey, tracing the contours like a cartographer, critiquing the charted – and uncharted – territory. Sliding her hands around her hips, she slowly sucked in the nervous air and watched intently – head tilted to the right – as she perused her body afresh, her eyelashes blinking rapidly as though struggling to know how to assess what stood before them.

A loud cough echoed in the landing, initially concealing the footsteps that were increasing in intensity as Jarrod marched out of his room.

She crossed her arms across her chest, before reaching with the outstretched fingers of her right hand for the towel that she quickly wrapped around a body that had in one cough become the focal point of inherent shame and embarrassment. Not a breath escaped her lips, her ears intently following the now static footsteps that seemed to have paused outside her room.

As Jarrod turned the handle, she began to tremble and plunged her upper teeth into her drying lips. She clutched the towel tighter and stared intently at the door.

It remained shut as Jarrod entered the bathroom opposite. She heard the door close and the lock that she had forgotten click into place, as a further cough – more muffled and distant than before – cut through the unnecessary tension.

She was fourteen when her dad had burst in on her standing towel-less before her mirror, his embarrassment manifesting itself in uncontrolled laughter and persistent pleas of apology, hers invoking a lasting paranoia that, despite what the lock on the door might suggest, she was never truly alone. Although two doors protected her from Jarrod’s over-eager eyes – she wondered afresh why she had flirted with an unlocked bathroom – it took her a full minute to summon the courage to move and, even then, she maintained a firm clutch on the towel with her left hand, whilst the right padded the bed softly in search of underwear she was sure must be close by. The prospect of needing to walk across to the dresser and open the stiff upper drawer filled her with unjustified dread until, finally, the sound of rushing water indicated a moment’s concealment within the roar of the flush. She rose and skipped across the room, releasing her grip to free the necessary second hand for the battle that lay ahead. As the towel crumpled to the floor, the drawer flew open, the momentum sending her staggering backwards.

A fierce creak from the hallway confirmed her suspicions that Jarrod’s hand-washing speed was now reaching record-levels, as his footsteps shuffled between the two rooms. Closing her eyes, Dawn prayed his movements would be swift, his decisions immediate. Of late, Jarrod had taken to pausing outside the rooms, creating the impression that he had somehow glided noiselessly past before finally moving on with audible nonchalance.

The footsteps continued and, as he clicked his door back into place, Dawn fell backwards, arms spread wide like a skydiver, crashing onto the bed below. Her heart pounded, gradually returning to resting pace as she puffed the air out of her cheeks.

It was about time she began her day.

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Accidental Crime - 4

Jarrod

The sound of pummelling water provoked an awkward reaction. Intentional or otherwise, it was impossible to conceal the realisation that the shower signified that she was duly unconcealed, exposed, revealed – a mere metre from where he sat. The invention of the wall, however, certainly diminished the intimacy of the moment.

Good fences make good neighbours.

He smiled as Robert Frost’s words wormed their way to the forefront of his thoughts, striving to be applied to his situation, but contented himself with a well-visited reflection on his fortune at ‘Mending Wall’ unexpectedly appearing on his Literature paper. Although never admitted aloud, it was the only one Jarrod had felt confident to write about and there was something mischievously shocking in the realisation that, had he been forced to reflect on snowy woods or diverging roads, he may have been faced with the prospect of treading quite a different path.

The water stopped.

Towelling was easier to cope with. He could read again. Austen. The restoration of propriety. He had needed to escape Milton’s hell and where better to turn than Austen’s heaven?

The sound of various bottles, tubes or canisters tumbling into the bath as Dawn’s rigorous towelling continued confirmed, for Jarrod, that their placement had indeed been too precarious. He listened carefully to each being repositioned as before, sure that he would soon discover at least one overlooked cylinder lying forlorn amidst the hair that had yet to find its way down the plug hole. Jane Austen would have kept everything within a well-ordered cabinet, he was sure.

Jarrod returned to the page, unimpressively impressing himself at his ability to immediately return to the exact word he was on before Dawn’s latest intrusion. He was convinced that not everyone was capable of resuming their reading so swiftly, with only a cursory glance at the previous sentence to check that it wasn’t actually about the ordering of items within a cabinet. And, indeed, it turned out that Austen was in fact more concerned about emphasising just how ‘good-looking’ and ‘gentlemanlike’ Mr Bingley was – the exact same words no-one had ever used to describe him.

The bathroom door opened with ease, accompanied by a surprised ‘ooh’ and ‘oops’. Jarrod rolled his eyes up-left, striving to explain to himself exactly what such an outburst must indicate. He heard her shuffle rapidly across to her room – clearly still towel-clad – and open and close her door in a smooth single movement, before clicking the lock firmly into place (twice). A loud, repeated creaking-noise, accompanied by a slight rattle of wood, signalled the testing and re-testing of the door-handle and served to confirm his suspicions surrounding the source of the ‘oops’.

It was about half five but it was still unlike Dawn to be so forgetful. Yet, the notion of her consciously leaving the door unlocked was considerably more troublesome.

He would return to Austen. A reliable door-locker.

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Accidental Crime - 3

Dawn

Tea-making had been harder than usual. It disappointed Dawn that such a mundane activity would cause her this level of distress. It was, of course, not made any easier by the interruption she had so nobly withstood. She had not been prepared for conversation – with Jarrod or anyone who might enter her kitchen at 5 in the morning – and was surprised at the dignity she had displayed in her responses, even clarifying the inaccuracy of Jarrod’s timekeeping.

The tea had helped her focus on all that would distinguish this day from any other. She contemplated the meeting she had scheduled for 11 that morning and revisited the feelings of anxiety she had been so keen to suppress the night before by immersing herself in a documentary about a child born with wing-like growths beside each shoulder blade.

Breakfast was out of the question. Cereal was rarely an attractive proposition at any time of the day, and as for toast, well, it would need to be at least 6 before a slice became potentially manageable. There were fewer more depressing sights in life than one slice of toast taking over 15 minutes to gradually make its way, piece by agonising piece, through the remarkably difficult digestion process, each piece lingering in the mouth until it became little more than soggy wheat, the parched tongue relinquishing all hope of effortlessly ushering it to the safety of the stomach below.

She glanced down at the left sleeve of the Pink Panther pyjamas that had seen her through the most significant six years of her development into the woman she was today. The cause of the chill that had run along her forearm became clear; an almost perfect oval of dampness confirmed that she had indeed let water drip from the kettle earlier, the work surface unnecessarily hydrated before being partially transported to the 100% cotton concealing the goose-bumps that had arrived on cue the moment Jarrod had entered. How had it taken her so long to notice? She drew the sleeve back with her right hand, drying her arm with repeated caresses. Her nostrils exhaled sharply as Jarrod, with raised-eyebrows, flashed across her mind.

It was, she realised, a little ironic that, after taking the care to dry her forearm, her next meaningful act of the morning would be to drench her entire body beneath the pummelling pressure of the newly-installed shower head; reapplying that which she had just removed, like a serial sinner unable to break the cycle.

She momentarily toyed with the idea of leaving the bathroom door unlocked, just to see what he would do. She was almost certain that she didn’t want to be seen but the thrill of the possibility was enough to permit the idea to linger that little bit longer.

A cold shiver shot down her spine, prompting an involuntary shake of the head and an accompanying clenching of each fist. Pressing her knuckles against the table, she raised herself out of her chair and shuffled to the foot of the stairs.

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Accidental Crime - 2

Jarrod

Jarrod was pleased that he hadn’t been seen.

He remained seated, gazing across at the night clothes she would have expected him to have been wearing. He was certain that the jeans would have sparked a little intrigue, if nothing else.

It had been important to register his disapproval. He had made it clear that he was a light sleeper and the fact that he wasn’t actually sleeping didn’t make her any less at fault. A sin’s a sin.

He parted his lips and whispered Milton into the room before him: ‘Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe’

26 lines. That was the challenge. For now, he’d be happy with 3. Greater men than he had stopped at 2 – he was sure of it – and so 3 was a perfectly adequate achievement. Commit another 23 to memory and he would be on the phone to Guinness, demanding inclusion in this year’s record books.

He would name-drop Milton during lunch, intrigued to see how Dawn would respond to a reference to the rhythmic structure that had held him enthralled the night before. The eyebrow-raise would provide satisfying accompaniment for his ham sandwich.

By 5.30 he had reached Line 5, with only the occasional stutter. Less than a fifth of the way there.

He sighed. Mathematics brought unwanted clarification of one’s limitations.

And English brought unexpected awareness of one’s freedoms.

The nearest pen was a full five feet away. He would remember it.

*

Despite the serenity in his voice, Jarrod had in fact been a little puzzled by Dawn’s tea-making. He had stood for 30 seconds before he spoke, his eyes caught between the clasped tea-bag and the droopy eyes peering at the barely-filled kettle. There was lifelessness in her posture that betrayed the 7am Dawn he was used to observing. She was an exhibit of unwillingness. If Madame Tussauds ever came a-calling, this would not be the pose she’d want to preserve.

He chose his words carefully. An observation and a reminder in one.

‘You’re making tea.’

He smiled for the duration of the journey back to man’s disobedience waiting face-down on the corner-chair of his lowly-lit room. He had obeyed his instinct and, in a way, had therefore shared a crucial experience with Milton’s Satan.

Jarrod’s eyes lingered over the row of identical spines neatly arranged in alphabetised ascendency. Apart from Joyce, of course, whose Dubliners lived encased, not within the accustomed faded yellow that identified Penguin’s insistence on uniformity but rather within an off-white that belied any impression of purity in his writing. It had been possible, he assumed, to find a version that conformed to the colour of the canon but there was something rather fittingly contradictory about Joyce portraying himself as a taller, purer force, and so Jarrod had resolved to accept the disturbance, however uncomfortable it made him feel.

His eyes skipped jauntily through the lines he was supposed to have committed to the cavernous memory he was sure he possessed, considering that perhaps reading the lines backwards would assist him in his challenge. After all, isn’t that how professional proofreaders did it? And there certainly was something strangely satisfying about the notion that he was proofreading Milton.

He reached inside his left pocket and withdrew a slightly blunted pencil.

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