Prisoner's Base (18 page)

“No, he was not! And, Maurice, may I suggest something to you, entirely for your own good? Will you kindly stop behaving in this disconcerting, uncivilised manner that you have adopted in the last few days? This is the third time you have popped up in some extraordinary fashion, startling everybody, and upsetting the whole household. No doubt you are in some sort of trouble that you don’t wish us to know about—and about which, I can assure you, we have no wish to know—but
nevertheless
I do advise you, most strongly, not to allow your
problems
to interfere with ordinary, civilised good manners. It’s always a mistake: always. And particularly when you are living in someone else’s house. My daughter, I know, will stand for any sort of behaviour from you; but
I
won’t; and I think it is only fair to let you know.”

Maurice was gazing right into Margaret’s eyes. He looked tense, and concerned, as if her little homily had struck home.

“He didn’t leave any message for me, then?” he asked, when she had finished speaking. “Or say he was coming again, or anything?” And when Margaret marched angrily off, without another word, he stared after her in surprise, as if hurt and bewildered at her refusal to answer his perfectly simple question.

I
N THE NIGHT
it rained, and Sunday morning dawned grey and gusty, with spatters of light rain against the windows of rooms that seemed suddenly dark, after all these days of
sunshine
. The air indoors was damp and heavy, taking the gloss off the polished furniture, and making the banisters faintly sticky to the touch. And on top of all this, Mavis was roaming about the house trying to find someone to listen to her dreams.

She was wearing her dressing-gown, of course, it being only eleven o’clock, and her grubby mules went slip-slop up and down the stairs and passages, pausing for a while at each room where a preoccupied person might be cornered and made to attend.

It was hard on the wretched girl, Margaret thought, that even Claudia seemed to be taking no interest—Claudia, who had taken Mavis’ earlier dreams with such flattering seriousness. But Mavis must be reasonable; she could hardly expect a
box-office
success like that
every
time, and in any case she should know by now that Claudia never liked this sort of thing in the mornings. Go off your head at midnight, and no one could be more interested and sympathetic than Claudia; but do the same thing at breakfast time, and she would elbow you and your ravings absently to one side, muttering about how long the posts might take to Amsterdam, and whether a stout roneo’d memorandum could be sent by book-post.

But Mavis could never learn. Twice since breakfast she had wandered into the dining-room and leaned, breathing, over Claudia’s desk, and tried to engage her interest.

“I was thinking it might have been a phallic symbol?” Margaret had heard her pleading hopefully, in a pathetic bid for Claudia’s attention; but all to no avail. Claudia had settled down to write letters today, and write letters she would, even if Mavis had dreamed the whole of Freud, Jung and Adler rolled into one.

Margaret, too, had proved a poor audience, for she had much on her mind this morning; indeed, she had suffered something of a shock, from which she was slowly recovering. Getting up long before the others, as usual, and going out into the wet, silvery morning to feed her chickens, she had come across
unmistakable
evidence that the chicken run had been tampered with. The wire gate of the run hung open; the slatted floor of the house itself had been pulled half out, and then left, wedged crookedly, so that it would move move neither out nor back. And beneath this floor, where Margaret had cleared and dug a few days before, the ground had been disturbed again—hasty, clumsy digging had flung clods of earth this way and that, and had left deep, untidy holes all over the ground, interspersed with random hillocks of upturned soil and clay.

Yet the birds were all right. All twelve of them were roaming contentedly—and a little puzzled—in the long grass of the
meadow—a treat usually reserved for the last hours of the
afternoon
. As they gathered round Margaret, hungry for their
breakfast
, she observed them anxiously for signs of injury or fright; but there were none. Whoever the senseless marauder might be, he seemed to have done no harm.

It was a nuisance, though, as well as unnerving. What in the world had been going on? At breakfast, Margaret held forth to the family about her annoyance and puzzlement, but no one seemed to know anything more about it than she did, or to have any idea of what had happened. No sensible idea, anyway.

“I expect it was rats,” suggested Claudia comfortably. “I always said you’d get rats there sooner or later, one always does with chickens. Nasty, unhygienic creatures—I don’t know why people are allowed to keep them. Poultry-fanning should be left to the professionals.”

“Rubbish! We’ve
never
had rats! Not in twenty-five years. You only get rats if you neglect the birds—overfeed them and then leave the food lying about. Besides, whoever heard of a rat unlatching a wire gate! Or pulling out a slatted floor!”

“I expect you pulled it out yourself and forgot about it,”
surmised
Claudia blandly. “And rats
do
unlatch gates. I’ve read about it. There was an article in
Reader’s
Digest
which—”

It did not seem worth while to refute such rubbish. Claudia was only doing it to be annoying, anyway, so why give her the satisfaction of seeing that one was annoyed?

“Oh well. It can’t be helped,” said Margaret. “None of you seem to know anything about it. I wonder if Maurice knows anything? Is he up yet—?”

“
Oh
!” suddenly shrieked Mavis; and then clapped her hand to her mouth while they all turned and stared at her.

“I’m sorry—it was just a thought I suddenly had,” she
explained
confusedly, in answer to the enquiring looks. “Just something that struck me—it’s silly, really. It was this dream I had last night, you see, and so when you said ‘Maurice’—”

But Mavis, it seemed, had dreamed about Maurice once too often; everyone was beginning to be tired of her nightmares, and of the monotonous predictability of the conversation that they led to. Even Claudia didn’t welcome it at breakfast time. Thus snubbed on all sides, poor Mavis was compelled to postpone her confidences till some more favourable occasion. Such an occasion she sought doggedly, but with decreasing success,
throughout that grey, drizzling Sunday morning; and it was not until the afternoon, when silvery streaks of sunlight began to break through the clouds, and a slow, steamy warmth to beat up again from the drenched earth, that her opportunity came. It was provided, surprisingly, not by Claudia (who was still busy at her desk) but by Margaret.

This had not, needless to say, been Margaret’s intention. In fact, it had been specifically to discourage Mavis’ confidences that Margaret had suggested briskly that as soon as the rain stopped Mavis should come out and help her to un-wedge the chicken-house floor. She had taken for granted that this proposal would rid her of Mavis’ company (if such it could be called) for the rest of the afternoon. But no: to her
astonishment
, Mavis accepted the ill-natured invitation with something like alacrity, and after a prolonged fuss and upheaval about coats and boots and slacks (Mavis really possessed no garments in the least suitable for this kind of task, and the decision about what to borrow from whom took her a very long time) she appeared at last clad as if for a Polar expedition, and paddled in Margaret’s wake out into the brightening afternoon.

“No, don’t
lean
on it, Mavis, that makes it stick worse. Get right down and
pull
—like this….”

Margaret was as patient as possible with her inept assistant, whose native incompetence was further augmented by
wellington
boots too large for her and an old overcoat of Derek’s that tangled with her feet in the slippery ground whenever she bent forwards.

“I can’t,” she kept saying: and: “I’m pushing as hard as I can, I mean pulling, isn’t that right?” and then “
Oh!
” as a sudden jerky movement loosed her hold on the wedged floor, and she toppled backwards, a bundle of heavy, flapping
garments
, into the muddy chicken-run. Squawking, outraged hens flew in every direction from this bomb-like intrusion into their midst.

“
Oh!
” cried Mavis again; and Margaret hurried to her side.

“You aren’t hurt, are you?” she enquired, anxious and
irritable
. “You
can’t
be, padded up in all those clothes—and the ground’s as soft as can be. Here—let me help you up.”

“No, it’s all right. I’m all right, Mrs Newman.” But still she sat on in the mud, as if settled for a picnic, and with no
intention
of moving. And then, as quietly and undramatically as
an ice-cream beginning to melt in the sun, she dissolved slowly into tears.

It was no good: you had to ask her what was the matter: and then, of course, she told you. Margaret sighed, leaned her elbow on the roof of the chicken-house, and stood listening resignedly to Mavis’ latest dream. To her surprise, and
somewhat
to her dismay, it seemed to be about the chickens.

“I seemed to be half awake at the beginning,” Mavis
explained
. “And I lay there in bed thinking to myself: ‘This is a funny time for them to be cackling like that, in the middle of the night … and then, suddenly, I saw that it wasn’t the middle of the night at all, it was day—but such a queer sort of day, as if the light wasn’t real, somehow. So I went to the window in my dream and oh, it was so queer—this strange, bright daylight. The garden was there, and the road, and the houses opposite—and yet somehow they weren’t real any more. They were all bright, and small, like toy houses; and bright little stiff toy trees. Yes, that was it, it was like looking at a toy country, so bright, so pretty—and so weird. And then suddenly it came into my head—in words, as if someone had said it: ‘The title of this is Nightmare’—and then I knew it was coming. The chicken was coming, the tall chicken, I could hear its feet like metal feet, and its cackling, coming nearer, round the corner of the house. It was tall, right up to the upstairs windows, I could see its beak and its great comb, and then I realised it wasn’t really tall, it was walking on stilts, great high stilts … and suddenly it wasn’t a chicken any more, it was Maurice, high up on those stilts, clucking and gobbling. And the toy houses were his, he’d made them, and all that toy landscape, to be instead of the real world, and he was telling me about it, that was the awful clucking sound, because he only had a beak to talk with, and only a tiny brain, a bird’s brain, behind it all….”

Margaret disapproved of the dream. Her disapproval grew and grew until it could only be described as anger—fury, even. How dared Mavis drag the chickens into her disgusting dreams! The happy, innocent chickens, scratching and pecking out here in the sunshine! The intensity, and the unreasonableness, of her resentment quite took Margaret herself by surprise. She should have been laughing at it—pooh-pooh-ing the whole thing. Just a silly woman’s silly dream!

But somehow it wasn’t quite a laughing matter. There are
certain dreams that can spread out beyond the dreamer, in ever-widening circles. Margaret felt the first chill ripple even now, lapping against her mind.

“Get up, Mavis!” she snapped, trying to allay by bad temper this queasy flicker of foreboding. “Come along and help me with this corner. Just hold it tight, don’t let it move, while I push from the other side…” and as she tugged and wrenched, and scolded her assistant, she felt that she was fighting off more than just Mavis’ nightmare. Claudia’s schemes for selling the field: the compulsory purchase order: the mysterious invasion of the chicken-run last night: they all seemed to be connected now with Mavis’ dream, separate facets of a single, overpowering threat. Together they were gathering strength, converging on her from every side … Margaret fought and struggled with the
recalcitrant
wood like one contending with the powers of darkness.

“There!” A final twist and a wrench, and the floor was
suddenly
free: it could be slid, straight and smooth, back into position. Margaret felt jubilant out of all proportion to the achievement—and so, it appeared, did Mavis, just as though their success had owed anything to
her
incompetent rumblings.

Margaret did not disillusion her; she was only thankful that Mavis should so quickly have shaken off her morbid fancies. Now everyone else would be able to forget them too.

It was disconcerting, then, that the moment they reached the house, Mavis should start all over again about the dream. “Claudia!” she cried, looking first in one room and then in another “Claudia!—Oh, there you are! Listen, Claudia; you
must
listen! I’ve had one of my prophetic dreams!”

I
T WAS ALL
nonsense, of course. Between them they soon made Mavis see that there was nothing prophetic about either this dream or the previous ones. This one had probably been triggered off by the frightened cackling which must have come from the hens when their house was invaded during the night—Mavis’ room looked out on that side of the house, and the only wonder was that the whole thing hadn’t actually wakened her, as well as giving her nightmares. The fact that the chickens had
made similar noises again when she fell down in the run this afternoon could hardly rate even as a coincidence, let alone as anything supernatural. Similarly with the dream of Maurice sitting alone in the dark. Why, at his very first visit he had mentioned his habit of writing poetry late at night; no doubt the vision of him actually doing so had lodged itself in Mavis’ imagination, already over-sensitive on the subject of him and his doings.

For once, Claudia seemed to be backing up her mother’s common-sense point of view; so much so that Margaret, gratified though she was by this unwonted support, began to feel quite sorry for Mavis. Here she was, dreaming wonderful psychological dreams chock-full of all Claudia’s favourite
symbols
; she was all worked up for a lovely nervy scene about her complexes and her repressed incest-fantasies, and now the whole thing was foundering on Claudia’s extraordinary unconcern. Well, yes, agreed Claudia tepidly, the stilts in the dream might very well have been a phallic symbol—well, all right,
two
phallic symbols, then. And yes, the meaningless cackling might have represented the confusion of Mavis’ own feelings, her love-hate attitude towards Maurice. And the toy-like landscape no doubt could have represented an inverted infantile
omnipotence
drive, why not?

Why not indeed? Poor Mavis was like a little girl repeating her homework, conscientiously learned in hopes of pleasing a favourite teacher; and still the teacher remains preoccupied and inattentive. In a minute, of course, the little girl will start behaving badly, compelling attention.

Was it this that made Mavis suddenly clutch at her throat in mid-cliché? The well-learned jargon rose without warning into a scream, “… involve
ment
!” she shrieked. “He’s coming! I can hear him coming!—” and clapping her hand to her mouth as if only thus could she control her screams, she leaped from her chair and rushed out of the room. They could hear her
thundering
up the stairs, still in Helen’s Wellington boots, and then the door of her bedroom slammed.

If the object of this exercise was to make Claudia race after her full of concern and grandiose psychological condolences, it failed grievously, for at this very moment a roguish tap-
tap-tapping
began on the open french window, and there stood Daphne, waiting coyly to be invited in across the imaginary
barrier. No doubt it had been the sound of her footsteps approaching across the gravel that had roused Mavis to her mysterious flight.

Ostensibly, Daphne had called on them for their signatures to a petition about later closing hours at the local library; but it soon became clear that what she and Claudia really wanted to do was to compare their latest scores.

In a way, of course, Claudia was permanently in the lead because of having Maurice staying here; but Daphne was often able, by diligent burrowing round the neighbourhood, and unremitting attentiveness, to shorten this lead by some small fact or item of speculation. Today, for instance, she was all set to score ten points at least with some complicated but
apparently
not unconvincing piece of evidence that Maurice couldn’t possibly have been involved in that bank robbery in Hadley High Street. Something to do with the sister of the woman who ran the Mental Health Flag day—Margaret couldn’t really quite follow it, because she hadn’t kept up properly with the earlier instalments—but the evidence, whatever it was, must have been fairly strong, for here was Claudia giving her little laugh. Poor Daphne.

Claudia made short work of it all, naturally. She pointed out that (
a
) Maurice had never said, in so many words, that this
was
the robbery he was involved in: (
b
) that he, Maurice, must surely know better what he had been put in prison for than Daphne’s Mental Health organiser’s sister: (
c
) that Mental Health should be a charge on the N.H.S. anyway, instead of all this nonsense with flags, and then all these muddle-headed women might find something better to do with their time than indulging in misleading chatter.

Thus utterly routed, Daphne surrendered her points and slunk meekly back to base, listening, with apparent
submissiveness
, while Claudia brandished her own latest triumph. She, Claudia, had this very day written to a literary agent about Maurice’s poems.

“I’ve made no secret of the position,” she declared proudly. “If anything, I’ve
emphasised
the fact of Maurice’s spell in prison! I want them to know that I’m not afraid of befriending such a young man—on the contrary, I’m proud to do so—”

“And of course it should be a good selling gimmick,” Daphne agreed demurely; and Margaret could not help wondering if she
was as innocently surprised as she seemed at Claudia’s quick frown.

“I don’t see that. I don’t know what you mean,” said Claudia repressively. “There’s no ‘gimmick’ as you call it about Maurice’s poems. They’re marvellous—the real thing; and if, when he’s famous, I can feel that I’ve had some tiny part in bringing his name before the world, when everyone else was crushing him underfoot—”

“And television, too,” Daphne prattled on with smiling obtuseness—or was it cunning equal to Claudia’s own?—“They’ll absolutely
lap
it up on television, especially with his hair so short and stubbly. It’s lucky he’s kept it like that. He could pretend he only came out yesterday…. Listen, I’ve got a cousin who knows a woman who once used to work in the drama department. If I was to give a little party, and have Maurice to meet them …”

The battle was hotting up; the stakes were being raised. Margaret felt as superfluous as if she had wandered with her deckchair on to the centre court at Wimbledon. Hastily
gathering
her belongings together, she removed herself, almost ducking her head as she crossed the room, and escaped into the hall.

As she walked upstairs, it occurred to her to wonder how Mavis was faring. Had she realised by now that it was only Daphne, and not the dreaded Maurice, whom she had heard approaching the house? Or was she still shaking with idiotic terror behind her closed door? Thinking to put her out of her misery, Margaret crossed the landing to the silly girl’s room, and knocked.

“Mavis?” she called, quite kindly. “Mavis, are you there?”

No answer. Margaret called again. She felt certain that Mavis was within. Why, then, was she not answering? Was she too frightened? Or was she holding out, sulking, waiting for Claudia to come and make a fuss of her? That was just the sort of silly, spoilt-child behaviour that one might expect.

Yet Margaret could not feel at ease. What
was
the girl doing in there? Once more she knocked, and when there was still no reply, she gently turned the handle and went in.

Mavis seemed to be asleep. Wrapped in the eternal
dressing-gown
, and with the eiderdown pulled half over her, she lay on the bed, quite motionless. Only as Margaret approached the bed, and leaned over to see if she was truly asleep, her eyes opened.

But she still did not move, nor did any sort of expression cross
her face; just her eyes, round and wide open, stared into Margaret’s quite blank, as if she saw nothing.

Margaret was somehow afraid.

“Mavis!” she said, low and uneasy; “Mavis, say something! Wake up! Are you asleep? Mavis! Please!”

A flicker of consciousness came into the blank eyes. Mavis blinked, gasped, and with a great sobbing sigh, she lurched up from her pillow and clutched Margaret’s arm.

“Oh! Oh, Mrs. Newman, how could you! Oh, how could you frighten me so—! It’s wicked—cruel—to do a thing like that!”

“My dear Mavis! My dear good girl, what do you mean? How did I frighten you? I’ve only come to see if you are all right?”

“Why can’t you speak to me? Why are you cackling like that …?”

Margaret took her by the shoulders and shook her.

“
Mavis
! Wake
up
! You’re dreaming! Wake up …!”

Her voice was sharp with fear, and now Mavis did wake up; woke properly, and with eyes suddenly fully conscious she stared, contrite and bewildered, into Margaret’s face.

“Oh, Mrs Newman, it’s you! Oh, thank goodness, I thought … I must have been dreaming! Have I been asleep? Was I asleep when you came in?”

“Indeed you were. Asleep and dreaming, and talking
dreadful
nonsense in your sleep, too. And I’m not surprised, suddenly going to bed in the middle of the afternoon like this! What’s the matter, are you ill?”

“It’s not the middle of the afternoon,” said Mavis
argumentatively
. “It’s—” she looked at her little bedside clock—“It’s nearly seven. I’m having an early night, that’s all. I hardly slept at all last night, really I didn’t so I’ve taken two of my sleeping pills. But they never worked, Mrs. Newman, they just made me feel ever so dizzy—I still do, and yet I’m as wide awake as can be!
Two
of them, too, I usually take only just the one.”

“Well, it serves you right! You’ve been a very silly girl. How can you expect to sleep at such a ridiculous hour, and with the sun shining and all—it’s no wonder the pills just give you
nightmares
instead! I expect that’s why you’ve been having all these nightmares lately, if you’re in the habit of drugging yourself.”

“Oh, but I’m not, Mrs Newman! I haven’t taken one for ever so long, not since that first night after Eddie went to
school, and I was so worried if they were doing things to him like in
Tom
Brown’s
Schooldays.
But then after I’d sent him the cake and the 10s. I felt better—I mean, he wouldn’t be writing asking for that sort of thing, would he, if they were roasting him in front of a slow fire?”

Margaret agreed that he would not. “And if you’ve managed without your pills all this time,” she added, “it seems a pity to start the habit again now. There can’t be the least necessity. All that’s the matter with you, Mavis, is you haven’t enough to do. If you would only lead a regular, busy life like anybody else, getting up at a proper time, and going to bed when
everyone
else does—”

“You mean I should get a job?” snapped Mavis suspiciously. “But I’m
going
to! Of course I’m going to. When I’m settled, and have had time to look round….”

Familiar phrases. All the Poor Things were going to get jobs on that great day when they were Settled, and had had Time to Look Round. Margaret sighed.

“Well, anyway, I should get up and come downstairs now,” she began—and then she suddenly noticed that Mavis was crying. Great, wet tears were trickling down her cheeks on to the counterpane, with the corner of which—to Margaret’s immense disapproval—she was dabbing at her eyes.

“They don’t work!” she sobbed. “Oh, I can’t bear it! I’ve kept them by me all this time thinking to myself, if the dreams get
too
bad, I’ll take one of those, and get a proper night. It’s been such a support, thinking that! But they make the dreams
worse,
not better! Just now, it was as if I wasn’t asleep at all, and yet I couldn’t wake up. I heard you come into the room, Mrs Newman, I saw you, and still I couldn’t wake up. I thought you had a beak, that’s the only way I knew I was dreaming! Oh, Mrs Newman, I’m so frightened! And I can’t even lock the door, because the key’s gone! Next time it will be someone else—not you—coming in, and I shall see them, and I still won’t be able to wake up …!”

Mavis’ hysterical crying seemed as if it would never end. Margaret felt at a loss, and rather scared.

“Shall I fetch Claudia?” she suggested at last; and to her relief Mavis looked up, alert at once through her tears.

“Oh! But only if she
wants
to, Mrs Newman. I wouldn’t dream of bothering her if she’d sooner be with Maurice, doing
his typing for him! I’m sure that typing stuff must be much more interesting than
my
poor little problems!”

Jealous as a toddler! But all the same, there was something disquieting about Mavis’ condition. Now, if ever, there was real need for Claudia’s much vaunted sympathy and
understanding
.

“Oh dear!” Claudia smiled ruefully across at Daphne, who, rather to Margaret’s annoyance, was still here; she would have preferred to have described Mavis’ unhappy state to her daughter in private. “Oh dear. Well, I suppose I’ll have to go up to her. Of course I will. But it is rather—wearing—isn’t it, just when Maurice’s affairs are coming to a head, his poems and everything—I wanted to have all my energies available for
him.
And now Mavis has to relapse on me! However …” She moved towards the door in rueful triumph, gloriously burdened by all these demands on her patience and
understanding
; and under Daphne’s very nose, too. It was a splendid moment, not to be hurried over. At the door she paused.

“Do you know what I feel like sometimes? I feel that I’m playing that game—Prisoner’s Base—where ‘He’ keeps
catching
people and putting them in prison, and the surviving,
uncaught
ones have to try to rescue them. I feel that I am for ever the uncaught one, forever rescuing the people that Life has captured and imprisoned. I rescue them—I set them free—and then all that happens is that they let Life catch them again, and I have to start all over again rescuing them! Not that I grudge it. I feel it’s the least I can do, since I am somehow lucky enough to have the strength, the understanding—”

“And the insensitivity!” interrupted Margaret with a
savagery
that surprised even herself. “You’re right, Claudia, you
are
playing a game! But you’re playing it with other people’s real lives. Can’t you understand that, for them, it’s
not
a game? It’s real sufferings, Claudia, that you collect around you like toys on a nursery floor, to pick up and lay down when you feel inclined! At this very moment, you aren’t caring a damn what Mavis is feeling like up there—you’re only wondering how her sufferings, whatever they may be, will fit into your display. You’re wondering if they’ll tone well or badly with the
Maurice-display
that you’re concentrating on at the moment, trying to outshine Daphne. You’re like two children in a nursery—”