Prisoner's Base (3 page)

First and foremost, Claudia was a tower of strength—a virtue more apparent, naturally, to the people whose side she was on than to the others. To the latter, it tended to look like pig-headedness. But whatever you called it, there was no doubt that it made her an excellent wife for the clever and
over-anxious
Derek; you could almost feel, as a lightness in your own soul, the relief with which he passed over to Claudia his never-ending worries and watched them being made magically light in her hands—watched guilelessly, like a child at a
conjuring
show, still inexperienced enough to believe that it really
is
magic, and not just sleight of hand and practice. It made her a staunch friend, too. To her friends Claudia was not only loyal, but imaginatively generous and sympathetic; her sympathy expressed itself not only in words, but in real, practical help. Look at Mavis Andrews, for instance, and her loathsome little boy. Well, her deprived, her unhappy little boy, Margaret hastily revised her thoughts into more charitable form. Look how Claudia, with unqualified kindness, had invited the pair of them for Christmas because they had nowhere else to go, and here they still were.
Still.
In the middle of May. Margaret realised that the contemplation of her daughter’s kindness to Mavis Andrews was rousing in her feelings less of admiration than of maddened irritation. Hastily recalling that it was Claudia’s
good
qualities that she was making a list of, she tried to force her mind on to other, less infuriating, generosities; generosities which, above all, had nothing to do with Mavis Andrews. But it was hard. Mavis Andrews, once thought of, clung in the mind, just as she clung in real life … and as if confirming this ubiquity, there was at this moment a knock on Margaret’s door.

But it wasn’t Mavis; it was Claudia. She must be feeling remorseful—apologetic—about her high-handed behaviour over the field? Perhaps she was even going to apologise? Though that wouldn’t be like Claudia at all: when Claudia gave up a fight, for whatever reason, she usually did so without comment, and never referred to it again, as if the whole thing had been of no account.

“Hullo, Mother,” she said, with a sort of cautious breeziness which warned Margaret that something or other was going to be asked of her. After a few softening-up remarks, she would hear what it was. Yes, here they came:

“I just thought I’d better tell you, Mother, that I shan’t be in for lunch after all. Something’s cropped up at the office—it’s maddening how this sort of thing always happens on my day off, isn’t it?—” Margaret waited, grimly. “Is that all right?” Claudia persisted, with unusual solicitude; “You don’t mind? You haven’t begun cooking anything?”

“No, of course I don’t mind, dear,” said Margaret, wondering if after all her suspicions had been over-subtle. “That’s perfectly all right. I wasn’t going to do anything much, anyway, just an omelette. But if you’re not going to be here, I won’t even bother with that. I’ll just have a piece of cake and some coffee.”

“No, well—” the cautious breeziness returned, and Margaret grew tense: “Well, actually, Mother, I hope you don’t mind, but, you see, Mavis will be all on her own. Of course, she can do her own lunch for herself, if you like; but it would be nice, really, if you could have something together. You know how easily she feels rejected.”

Margaret did. She was sick of Mavis’ inferiority complex. It seemed to her that someone who could extend a Christmas visit to halfway through the summer must have a hide like a rhinoceros; if that was what Mavis was like with an inferiority complex, then the mind reeled at the contemplation of what she would have been like without one. But she wasn’t going to spoil Claudia’s newly softened mood by saying any of this. Instead she put a smile on her face, forbore to mention just how often all this had happened before, and agreed with a tolerable show of good humour. Thank goodness, anyway, that the
unspeakable
Eddie no longer had to be included in the
arrangements
. Just before Easter Mavis had decided, at long last, and after what seemed to Margaret a ridiculous amount of hesitation and futile deliberations about his ego far into the night, to send Eddie to boarding school; and thither, a fortnight ago, picking his nose to the last, he had gone. For the first few days after his departure Mavis had been in a most pitiable state, both
depressed
and garrulous, getting up even later than usual and wandering about the house in a dressing-gown and offering to help with things. This was a little bit touching until you
discovered
that the only things she wanted to help at were the things you liked doing yourself—the things, indeed, that
everyone
likes doing. She liked peeling rhubarb if someone would bring her basin, knife, and a comfortable chair out on the sunny brick area outside the back door; she liked feeding the chickens if you had their food all ready for her to take straight out, and if it was a bright sunny afternoon and not too muddy
underfoot
. She liked doing the shopping, too, when it was fine; and when it rained she liked to settle down by the dining-room fire, with the wireless on, and mend not very big holes in Derek’s woollen socks. She didn’t like the big holes; nor putting in zips, nor sewing buckles on sandals; give her too much of that sort of thing and she would begin crying about Eddie’s emotional blocks again, and everything started all over again, right from the beginning.

Claudia was marvellous with Mavis; Margaret had to admit that. She listened endlessly, sympathised, and unobtrusively provided Mavis with pleasant, easy tasks which would enable her to feel useful without ever dirtying her hands or even getting dressed properly. She listened by the hour to all Mavis’
platitudinous
worries about her son—mostly, Margaret suspected, culled from magazine articles; and she tirelessly assured Mavis that
this
particular school couldn’t, not possibly, destroy his ego, certainly not in just one term. Margaret used to feel very inadequate in comparison, just sitting there playing patience and hoping that it could.

Not that Eddie was all that much worse than other little boys of nine, she supposed. Since it wasn’t the fashion to teach them manners nowadays, it was only natural that they should be ill-mannered. And probably he didn’t like living here any more than she liked having him, so why expect him to look as if he did? She probably wouldn’t have disliked him nearly so much, Margaret reflected, if only she was ever allowed to find fault with him; but this was utterly taboo for a very special reason. You couldn’t say anything uncomplimentary about him, even in private with Claudia, since he was illegitimate; and this, in Claudia’s eyes, seemed to render him immune from criticism, a sort of sacred figure, to be handled gingerly and with awe. Something of the same aura, of course, clung around Mavis herself. Her status as an unmarried mother ensured that Claudia would continue to endure indefinitely her slummocky
ways, her foolish, stereotyped talk, and, above all, her unending presence. Though of course it was Margaret who suffered most from this, for she was the one who was at home all day. Look at this lunch, for instance, that she’d been landed with yet again, just when she had been planning a peaceful afternoon in the sun. It wasn’t the cooking of it so much—Margaret didn’t particularly grudge doing that for the creature—it was having to eat it with her that was so awful, and not being able to read. Margaret loved to read over meals, and here was this wretched woman taking this harmless pleasure away from her, day after day, without a word of apology or recompense. If she’d stolen ten shillings out of your handbag every day at one o’clock you could have had her put in prison, reflected Margaret sourly; and yet you had to stand by, helpless, while she stole, one by one, far more than ten shillings worth of happy hours of solitude.

“O
H
,
BUT YOU
shouldn’t
have, Mrs Newman! Oh, how very kind of you! But you mustn’t go to all this trouble just for me, really you mustn’t. Oh, I feel dreadful about it!”

Fixing her eyes on the larger of the two omelettes, Mavis mastered her dreadful feelings sufficiently to squeeze with alacrity into the appropriate place at the little table in the window—a manoeuvre made the more ungainly by the bunchy, floor-length woollen dressing-gown which she clutched around her with an anxious hand. Margaret glared at the garment balefully. Though it was no possible concern of hers, Margaret loathed the way Mavis always seemed to be wearing her dressing-gown—either she had got up late, or was going to bed early, or had just had a bath, or was going to wash her hair—some such untimely nonsense or other, that trailed restlessness and squalor through everybody’s day like a child with a tin can on a piece of string. And it seemed worse than ever just now, with the glory of the summer’s day billowing in softly through the open kitchen window. That this first real hot
sunshine
of the year should be forced to spend its glory on
illuminating
that thick brown garment, dusty and bulky, breathing winter at you—it seemed a desecration, an insult to the blue arc of the sky. Why couldn’t the girl get up and get dressed in
the morning, like anybody else? Hang it all, Margaret reflected crudely, she must once have smarted herself up enough to get herself a man: why couldn’t she do it again? Even the prospect of another Eddie walking this earth seemed at this moment preferable to that dressing-gown.

“Isn’t it a wonderful day!” prattled Mavis, nervously
helping
herself to salt; and somehow this innocuous attempt at conversation, harmless to the point of idiocy, roused Margaret’s hostility still further. This woman, who by her garments had so cut herself off from summer, had no right to know that the day was wonderful, certainly not to speak of it. By looking like that, Margaret felt, she had forfeited her right to wonderful days. “I thought,” continued Mavis, “that after lunch I might wash my hair and dry it out in the sun. It’s quite warm enough for that, wouldn’t you think?”

For a second Margaret felt quite sick. ‘You’re not using my sun to dry your beastly hair!’ she nearly exclaimed; but checked herself in time, picturing the scene that would ensue when Mavis described it all to Claudia afterwards. As she would, of course; Mavis was always running with tales to Claudia, and certainly wouldn’t miss this chance of telling Claudia how nasty Margaret had been to her at lunch; how she couldn’t think what she had done to deserve it, and what did Claudia think that she, Mavis, had done amiss? And her eyes would be bright, and her dressing-gown clutched round her tighter than ever in her exultation, as she waited excitedly for Claudia to assure her that she, Mavis, had of course done nothing wrong whatever; it was just Margaret’s old-fashioned prejudice and rigidity; they would just have to be patient about it, and humour the poor old thing as best they could; but it
was
difficult, of course it was … on and on they would go, about how difficult it was, and how splendidly Claudia was coping with it all; the inter-generation rivalries, all these conflicting personalities under the same roof … Claudia’s voice would be concerned, self-deprecating … Mavis’ would be chirrupping praise and encouragement … Margaret would hear it through the floorboards, chirrup-mumble, chirrup-mumble,
chirrup-mumble
—a weary price to pay for the satisfaction of a few sharp words. Margaret forced a smile on to her face. She would be polite; she would be pleasant; but she
would
not
have Mavis drying her hair out there in the garden, nor in the field either.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she began, with feigned concern. “It
looks
bright, but May can be a very tricky month, you know.” The golden day would forgive her for this treachery, she was sure. The wallflowers under the window seemed to be laughing softly with her at Mavis’ expense; the buttercups beyond the low brick wall joined in the conspiracy with silent glee, for it was they, probably, who were to be spared the crushing indignity of Mavis’ striped travelling rug, her folding chair, her wet, sickly sweetish towel, her plastic bag full of rollers, her zip-up cushion, her packet of Polo-mints, and her copy of
Wife
and
Child.

“You don’t want to risk a chill, you know,” continued Margaret, with reckless hypocrisy. “It can really be quite dangerous, going outside with wet hair at this time of year. You can get ear trouble. There’s quite a treacherous little breeze coming up, you know. I felt it when I went out to the chickens.”

The woman must be a lunatic. She
believed
all this! Margaret stared incredulously at the effect of her shameless lying. For Mavis was glaring suspiciously out at the shimmering noonday heat, obediently peopling its still expanses with the treacherous little breezes of Margaret’s fabrication. Then she turned from the window and patted her lank, shoulder-length hair peevishly.

“Oh, well. It’ll have to wait another day or two, I suppose. I don’t want to dry it in front of the fire again, it’s bad for it, it dries the oils out. I was reading about it yesterday, and I think that’s what’s wrong with my hair, I dry the oils out too much, and that’s what makes it so difficult. Because it is, you know. Look at it! You’d never guess I’d washed it only three days ago, would you?”

Margaret would have guessed it, but that was only because she remembered the occasion so distinctly; Mavis had been dripping and combing and dropping curlers all over the
dining-room
for the whole of that afternoon when Margaret had been trying to listen to a play on the wireless; but never mind, that afternoon was over now; it was this one that was at stake.

“It looks all right,” she said “It looks very nice, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.” There. I’ve been
nice
to her. Haven’t I?
Now
she can’t run telling tales to Claudia.

Just as the meal was over, the telephone rang, and Mavis jumped up with unusual alacrity to answer it. Her wooden sandals clop-clopped across the hall—maddening, Margaret
thought, why couldn’t the girl wear something that stayed on her feet when she walked? Margaret wondered idly what it was that had galvanised her into this unusual haste. Could there, after all, be some friend in her life other than themselves? And if so, mightn’t this friend be going to invite her to stay, for months and months? Perhaps she would stay there for ever;
perhaps
it would be in the extreme north of Scotland, or even abroad. By the time Margaret’s rather over-optimistic
speculations
had married Mavis off to a planter in New Zealand and had anchored her there with eleven very ugly children who all cried for the whole of every night, Mavis was back again, with the unexciting news that it had been Claudia on the phone. “She says to tell you she’ll be home rather early for supper, and will be going out afterwards. To a meeting of the Poetry Group. And she wants me to go with her!”

The last words were spoken rather smugly; evidently Mavis was pleased with herself at being thus effortlessly furnished with intellectual pretensions. But why on earth was Claudia suddenly bothering herself with the Poetry Group? Since when had
she
been writing poetry? ‘She’s up to something!’ thought Margaret shrewdly—and uneasily, too; though this, of course, was foolish. What possible connection could a meeting of the Poetry Group have with the selling or not selling of the field? All the same, Margaret decided to watch her daughter carefully at supper time this evening; to question her, too, if it could be done tactfully and without putting her on the defensive.

With Derek away and Helen out with a friend, there were only the three of them at supper, and Claudia seemed in high spirits. She had changed into a pair of velvet slacks and a
sleeveless
jersey of some glittering material and looked rather exotic—very suitable, Margaret supposed, for a gathering of poets. A gathering of
real
poets, that is to say; but Margaret rather doubted that the West Langley Poetry Group would turn out to be like that. There would be three elderly women there, probably, and the husband of one of them forced thither by the fact that he had a car and no moral courage; and perhaps a couple of young nurses from the local hospital, who would come once and never again. If so, then Claudia’s get-up was going to be rather wasted. Margaret’s curiosity probed cautiously, and with consummate cunning.

“I’m so glad you’re going out with Claudia tonight”, she
addressed Mavis in conversational tones. “It’s time you met some new people. Who do you think will be there, Claudia? Anyone we know?”

“Well, there’ll be Daphne, of course,” began Claudia. “She more or less runs it now, you know, since old Mrs Latimer died. And Miss Fergusson, if she can manage to leave her father. She’s one of these neurotically devoted daughters, you know—” Claudia broke off to inform Mavis. “He must be about ninety by now, I should think, because she’s turned sixty-five herself. She’s devoted her
whole
life to him—can you credit it these days? But she has. She got a job at the local coal office when she left school, so as not to have to leave him alone; and my dear, she’s been in it ever since! She’s retired now, with a pension, and he’s
still
hanging on!”

“Goodness! Just fancy!” commented Mavis; and Margaret had a swift vision of the earnest, well-meaning little schoolgirl shyly applying for her first job, which would enable her, with such pride, to be a help to Daddy. How could she have guessed then that the job would last for fifty years while her bright face became lined and her soft body shrank and withered, and that Daddy would still be there?

“One of these obsessional attachments,” Claudia was
continuing
smoothly, “this father-daughter thing; and both of them too neurotic to extricate themselves. They hate each other really. I’m terribly sorry for her, poor thing, and I’ve
sometimes
wondered if there isn’t something one could do to help, but you know how it is with these neurotic, people. You can’t help them because they won’t let you. They’re their own worst enemies.”

This little monologue had been addressed entirely to Mavis, who was obviously flattered at being the chosen recipient for so much up-to-date perspicacity.

“Oh yes!” she rushed to agree “I know! I know exactly what you mean—!”

“I don’t,” put in Margaret obstructively. “I don’t know what you mean at all. How can you say there isn’t anything you can do to help Miss Fergusson, when you know she’s always grateful for anyone who’ll sit with her father and give her a chance to get out? You could help her every day of the week if you wanted to. What do you mean, she won’t let you?”

Claudia met Mavis’ eye across the table, as Margaret had
known she would. She knew what Claudia was going to say next, too, and waited for it meekly; she had after all brought it on herself.

“Oh, Mother!” (the little laugh), “I don’t think you really understand quite what we’re talking about. When a person is
neurotically
tied, it’s no use trying to loosen their ties in any material sense. It just doesn’t help at all, because it’s not
material
ties that they’re tied by. Don’t you see?”

Mavis was nodding the completeness of her agreement so enthusiastically that her stringy hair kept sweeping within an inch of the butter, and Margaret dreaded that it should actually touch. But it didn’t, and Margaret pursued the argument
sturdily
. “I don’t know what her neurotic ties prevent her doing, naturally,” she persisted. “And I don’t suppose you do, either, for all your talk. But it’s her material ties that stop her going to the cinema. Or having lunch with her niece. Or browsing round the shops without having to hurry back. If she could do the things she enjoys a bit more often, I daresay she’d settle quite happily for being neurotic. I know I would!”

Claudia did not reply. Instead she threw one of her brightest mother-doesn’t-understand glances at Mavis; threw it twice, in fact, since Margaret had deliberately failed to intercept it the first time. Margaret was, indeed, getting bored with the
argument
she had so gratuitously stirred up—also, her curiosity was still unsatisfied. This Miss Fergusson, however neurotic, wasn’t enough to account for the sparkle and glitter of Claudia’s appearance tonight. She tried again:

“I hope there’ll be a few younger people there, for Mavis to meet?” she hazarded “Do you think there might be?”

She was afraid Claudia would be bound to see through this very uncharacteristic concern for Mavis’ welfare, and
administer
a spanking snub. But no; far from being annoyed by her mother’s curiosity, Claudia seemed to welcome it; almost as if Margaret’s question had been a cue for which she had been waiting.

“Well—I’m going to make a confession!” she began. “I’ve never actually been to one of these meetings before. I’m only going this time because Daphne has specially asked me to—she’s a little nervous about something that happened last time, and she wants my moral support.”

This sounded intriguing. Margaret and Mavis both laid down
their spoons and leaned towards Claudia, who looked for a moment quite disconcerted by this sudden cessation of family bickering.

“Well—” she looked from one to the other of her listeners, and under their rapt gaze the story swelled in her throat, gathered momentum. “Well, it
was
a bit mysterious, from what I hear. Apparently, at their last meeting—well, half an hour before it was due to start, actually, while Daphne was still
cutting
sandwiches and things in the kitchen—there was a ring at the bell; and there, out on the step, was a strange man.”

Claudia paused; the heads leaned closer. She went on: “Daphne had never set eyes on him before, but of course new members
do
turn up occasionally, so she asked him in, explained that he was a bit early, and took him into the sitting-room to wait till the others began to come. She stayed there with him for a minute or two, chatting, trying to put him at his ease—you know. But he was so terribly silent, she says. She could hardly get a word out of him. Every question she asked—you know, just ordinary social questions, like what poetry did he write, and was he thinking of becoming a member—that sort of thing —he’d just look at her, such a strange, suspicious way, as if he thought she was prying into his private affairs. Well, you know our Daphne—she’s not the world’s most scintillating
conversationalist
herself, I fear—so you can imagine what it was like! Anyway, she soon got fed up with labouring away at this
conversation
, and anyway she wanted to get on with the
sandwiches
and everything, so after a bit she went off back to the kitchen, murmuring something about wouldn’t he like to find himself a book to look at till the others arrived?