2016 School Magazine

THE INFORMANT Hearing the grandfather clock in the hall strike nine, Offred eased open her bedroom door and slipped silently into the hallway that was empty, apart from the ghost of the Commander’s guilt, loitering on the landing outside her room. Steeling herself from his apparition, she mouthed the words of a poem transcribed a lifetime before… “Yesterday, upon the stair, Rolling the words around in her mouth like a lozenge, Offred continued down the stairs and across the hallway, her red shoes susurrating on the dusty-pink carpet. Above the front door, the red and blue flowered glass was saturated by the searching beams from the light outside, staining the front hall with a mizzle of purple. Stopping to listen for any sign of Serena Joy in the sitting room, Offred considered her surrounds. Purple, she mused, was the colour of a week old bruise; the colour of a battered wife in the time before. Assault and battery it had been called — battery, like the hens her mother had campaigned tirelessly to free. Hearing nothing from the sitting room, and feeling ambivalent as to whether she was a battery hen or broiler, Offred slipped past the sitting room, down the hallway and on past the kitchen. Tapping quietly on the Commander’s door, Offred imagined him waiting anxiously for her arrival, just like she had waited for Luke at the hotels where they used to meet. Entering the office, she took her usual place at his desk — secretary to his CEO, altar boy to his priest. Tonight though, she felt empowered. Having seen inside the Commander’s guilt had given her leverage, as well as hand lotion. At her last visit, the Commander had promised her information and she had finally decided what she wanted to know. Recalling one of Moira’s favourite maxims, ‘It takes two to tango!’ Offred smiled provocatively. Assiduously polishing his gold rimmed glasses on his black sleeve, the Commander returned her smile. “I see you’re done with the Dickens. What can I tempt you with tonight?” he cajoled. “I would like to read my file,” she answered bluntly; “I want to know who betrayed me… at the border crossing.” Unhurriedly replacing the glasses on the end of his nose, Offred noticed a quiver of concern, or curiosity, flicker across his face. Reaching into the desk drawer, the Commander withdrew a thin folder that was unremarkable except for the four digits typed on its cover; the same tetragram tattooed Offred’s ankle. “Sometimes it’s best not to know,” he toyed, holding the folder just beyond her grasp. “Sometimes not knowing makes it worse,” she quipped. Fixing her smile — a revetment to the turmoil threatening to erode her composure —Offred reached out and seized his offering with both hands. With loathing she realised her life, her story, had been reduced to abject ignominy — a half-eaten mouse. Mustering all the equanimity prodded into her at the Red Centre, Offred opened the folder and began to read, skimming over the parts she already knew — Age: 33 years, Posting: third, Status: unproductive. Finally, on the second last page was the detail she craved. Recoiling, a spasm of incomprehension shook her. It was the faceless woman. It was the crying, accusing voice over the phone. The voice of evil. Shuddering, Offred was unable to hide her revulsion from the Commander’s scrutiny — her shock complete, colossal, carnal. Replaying the days before their failed escape, she pieced together what had happened. Luke had felt guilty. Knowing that the divorce had also made his ex-wife unlawful under the new order, he couldn’t leave without checking on her. Assuaging his conscience, Luke had dealt with her, just like he had dealt with their cat. The snuffing out of love was one thing, but Offred realised that the snuffing out of life was entirely different. Luke’s ex-wife had not been an ‘it’ to him after all and his concern had led to betrayal. Moving around the desk, and taking a seat on the floor next to her chair, the Commander gently removed the folder from Offred’s grasp. Taking her hand in his, he parcelled out the details she could not bear to read, “She was barren you know. That’s why he left her. She thought that by informing she would have some leverage… Be reinstated as a wife… Raise the child…” Offred flinched from each wanton blow of the Commander’s verbal beating — his limp hand and feigned concern, hard-boiled her heart. Leaving the Commander’s office sometime later, Offred retraced her steps back to the hall. Yearning to see Nick outside the sitting room, she ached for his arms — a fleeting cocoon of comfort. Finding the hallway empty, she mounted the stairs, lethargically reciting the last verse of the poem she had begun earlier that night… “When I came home last night at three, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today, I wish, I wish he’d go away.”

The man was waiting there for me. But when I looked around the hall, I couldn’t see him there at all!”

072 / CREATIONS