Prisoner's Base (8 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear,” she answered her daughter blandly. “You can tell me all about it when you come home. I suppose, coming at half past eight, he’ll have had supper, won’t he …?”

The conversation petered out in trivialities; and as she laid down the receiver, shutting off the whole problem for at least another six hours, Margaret felt all the happiness of the
sunshine
and the quiet house flooding back into her soul. It was nearly half past twelve by now, time for lunch. She cut herself a beautiful sandwich of cold beef and white, crusty bread, squashy with newness, and dabbed liberally with mustard. Then she made a cup of coffee, exactly as she liked it, with
top-of-the-
milk zestfully filched from one of the new bottles; and then, like a homing pigeon, like a creature slithering back into its native element, she carried the tray carefully out into the still, shimmering noonday sun.

T
HIS ONE SUFFERED
from insomnia, too. Well, from writing poetry, anyway, which came to practically the same thing, it seemed to Margaret. She was sitting, quiet and
inconspicuous
, in the corner of the sofa, listening to this peculiar young man holding forth to Claudia, while his coffee cooled on the little table at his side, about the sort of ideas that came to him at two in the morning.

They weren’t the sort of ideas that appealed to Margaret at the best of times, and she was sure they would appeal to her even less at 2 a.m. They sounded, to her experienced ears, the sort of ideas that would involve the endless brewing of black coffee, with spills all over the kitchen table; and she was only thankful that, so far, there had been no suggestion that the visitor was to stay the night. Surely even Claudia would draw the line at that, considering what she knew about the young man’s background.

He wasn’t Margaret’s idea of a murderer. She had—naturally enough, after Claudia’s shocking revelations—been eyeing the visitor surreptitiously all the evening, and by now she knew his features by heart; and they weren’t, somehow, the features she had been expecting. What
had
she been expecting, then? What
should
a murderer look like, and in what ways did this young man fall short of—or rise above, perhaps one should say—the conventional image? Was it that he had that pasty, inactive look which one associates with sedentary, monotonous employments—in which category crimes of violence can surely not be included? Or was it that he looked too young? Too young for what, though? It was well known that a large
proportion
of criminals are barely out of their teens. Too young, anyway, to be wearing that neat, middle-aged suit of navy blue. Why, he ought to be in a shaggy polo-necked jersey and jeans! But even as this thought passed through Margaret’s mind, the young man shifted his position in his chair, leaned forward—and now, suddenly, as he sat forward like this, looking so
intently
into Claudia’s face, and with the light falling right across his brow, something was revealed that was not quite youthful. Not wrinkles, or crowsfeet, or anything as simple as that; more a dull, tarnished look, as of energies frittered away—and it
clashed strangely with the almost unnatural brightness of his blue, darting eyes. And there was a slyness, too, that you noticed just now and then if you kept watching him; it would flash for a second as the blue glance slid sideways; it would quiver momentarily in the movement of his mouth as he
pronounced
some quite ordinary word. Oh, it was so slight, so indefinable … and now, here he was again, guileless and eager as an undergraduate, laying down the law about existentialism, and about the outdatedness and futility of all the ideas mankind has travailed over right up to the moment in history when he, Maurice, began to put forth
his
ideas.

And Claudia hers, of course. Claudia, you could see, was loving it: her very own murderer; and flattery thrown in as well. No wonder she looked like the cat with the cream. She hadn’t yet switched on the main light; instead she had put on the little low lamp by the bookcase, and as she sat forward on her stool, her face in shadow, and the light just glinting on her burnished hair, she looked statuesque, benign. Not silly and conceited at all. It gave Margaret a little jolt of surprise to see her looking like that; half pleased, half bewildered, she wondered if she understood her daughter at all; if, perhaps, she had misjudged entirely her motives in taking up with this young man?

He was talking about his poems now, quoting bits
unforgiveably
, and Margaret suppressed a yawn. His poems were not nearly as interesting as his conversation, and the staccato, aggressively anti-sing-song manner of his recitation tended only to obscure what sense there might otherwise have been. Margaret fancied that Claudia was bored by them, too, for although her air of rapt attention, her little murmurs of interest and sympathy, were maintained as before, to Margaret’s sharp observation they now seemed a little forced. There was
restlessness
now, rather than absorption, hidden away inside her still sustained and graceful pose.

But it was difficult to do anything to redirect a conversation in which so many commonplace topics must by tacit agreement be avoided. Claudia had briefed Margaret beforehand, with great explicitness and urgency, about all the questions she mustn’t ask their guest for fear of embarrassing him. His
surname
—his lodgings—his friends—his family—his job—all were taboo; and with the banning of these, of course, went
automatically
the banning of a number of innocuous topics which might prove to be tenuously related to one or other of them. Hobbies? But these implied a settled way of life, such as he had presumably never had. Plays, films? But if he had been in prison for seven years, he would have missed them all. Books? Did they have anything to read in prison, apart from the Bible and improving works? Maybe they did, nowadays, but Margaret didn’t know, and wasn’t going to risk it. If either of them were going to put their foot in it, let it be Claudia.

“You see,” the young man was saying, still riveted to the subject of his poems, “I’m not saying they’re any good. I don’t suppose they are. They may be quite horrendous—don’t be afraid to say so, if that’s what you think, I shan’t be offended. But one thing I think you
must
admit, they’re not derivative. Are they now?”

Thus appealed to for a personal opinion Claudia at once made herself alert and vivid again.

“Indeed they aren’t!” she assented eagerly. “They seem to me to be absolutely original—fresh—”

“Because
some
people have said—” the poet pursued
doggedly
, “that they owe something to the influence of Patmore. But
you
didn’t think that, did you? From the ones you’ve heard so far?”

He looked tense, anxious, leaning forward in his chair to receive Claudia’s verdict as if it mattered to him most seriously. To Margaret, watching her daughter racking her brains to think who Patmore could be, his anxiety seemed rather pathetic.

“But
no,
Maurice! Not in the least!” exclaimed Claudia confidently, after a pause so short that only her mother was aware of it. “Anyone who could think such a thing can’t really have understood your poems at all! You and Patmore—?” Claudia gave her little laugh, to emphasise the absurdity of the comparison—“Why, there is
no
resemblance! The style is different—the rhythms—the whole attitude to life, to the Human Condition…”

Margaret was torn between admiration and horror at her daughter’s polished hypocrisy. But
was
it hypocrisy, in any real sense? What Claudia was really saying to the boy was: ‘I am on your side about everything. Because you are an outcast from society, I will fight your enemies for you, whether they be
self-righteous
old women, Society itself, or even poets I have never
heard of. Down with them all!’ And
this
message was genuine enough; perhaps Maurice understood it. He seemed satisfied, anyhow, for he was smiling now, running his fingers through his stubbly fair hair.

“Do you really think so? I’m glad. And you’re absolutely right, too. Because what makes this accusation such arrant nonsense is that I had never even
read
Patmore at the time when I wrote most of these poems. People don’t believe this—and it’s a little difficult to explain—but you see, situated as I have been … For quite a slice of my life I’ve been cut off from books almost entirely. I’ve had to exist on what I could
remember
—on passages I learned by heart long ago—that sort of thing. I’m not complaining, you understand. On the contrary. It gives me, I think, a very special sense of the value of words—”

Was he repenting of these revelations? A slow,’ bright pink spread over his face as he stopped speaking, and at the same time the slyness, it seemed to Margaret, came back into his eyes. It was as if he was testing his hearers in some way: his blue, brilliant glance darted, swift as a lizard, from one to the other of them.

But whatever the test might be, Margaret knew that she for one was going to fail it. This was the point at which she had better go away, and leave Claudia to pass with honours, a star first. Murmuring something about having some letters to write she stood up and prepared to leave the room; and from Claudia’s quick smile of approval she gathered that she had, for once, done all the right things; stayed with them for the required length of time, and gone away at the required moment.

Margaret had intended going straight up to her room—she really had got some letters to write—but it was not to be. Even as she closed the drawing-room door behind her and stepped into the hall, she was aware of a little flurry on the stairs—a swishing, a rustling, and then a weak little tap—tap—tap. A pink plastic hair-curler rolled almost to her feet.

So Mavis had been eavesdropping. Picking up the roller by its extreme edge, and holding it distastefully between finger and thumb, Margaret set off in pursuit. All was silent by now, of course, but Margaret marched grimly up the stairs and along the passage to Mavis’ room, and knocked.

Mavis, in dressing-gown and hair-net, appeared to be settled in bed, though somewhat out of breath. Unable to sustain
effectively the smallest deception (Margaret noted scornfully) she simply sat bolt upright, clutching the hem of the bedspread, and stared at her visitor, her eyes wide with guilt.

“You dropped this, I think,” said Margaret, with grim relish “When you ran off upstairs just now. Why didn’t you come and join us, if you wanted to hear what was going on? Claudia invited you—in fact she begged you to come. I heard her.”

“I know. I—Oh, Mrs Newman, isn’t it awful! Can’t
you
do something? Can’t you stop her? You’re her mother—”

The direct, tearful appeal knocked all the fight out of Margaret. To her own astonishment, she felt a pang of what could only be called sympathy with the wretched girl, caught like a fish, gasping in the meshes of her own silliness. Margaret moved farther into the room, and laid the roller without further comment on the powder-strewn muddle that was Mavis’ dressing-table.

“Don’t upset yourself so,” she said, quite kindly. “Claudia’s always done this sort of thing. Nothing will come of it. She’s always picking up lame ducks and then—” She stopped,
realising
her tactlessness. Unwonted concern for Mavis’ feelings made her rephrase the sentence. “I mean, you know yourself how Claudia is. If anyone’s in trouble, she always wants to help them. That’s all it is with this young man; she thinks he’s in some sort of trouble, so she’s having him round to see what she can do. That’s all. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Margaret was speaking more confidently than she felt, and Mavis must have sensed it.

“But, Mrs Newman, aren’t
you
worried? Really? I mean, it looks as if he must be a criminal, doesn’t it, as if he’s been in prison for years and years! He may be a murderer for all we know—I’m sure Claudia thinks he is herself, she as good as said so! Oh, Mrs Newman, this isn’t
my
house,
I
can’t say anything, but
you
could! Why don’t you tell Claudia she can’t have him here?”

Mavis’ hands were twisting and torturing the edge of the bedspread as she spoke; it would be all dirty and crumpled in no time if she carried on like that, and Margaret had only washed and ironed it last week. It was difficult to know how to reassure her.

“My dear Mavis, how can I?” she protested. “It
is
my house in a sense, yes—but Claudia’s a grown-up woman. I can’t direct
her life for her, now can I? I’ve no more right to choose her friends for her than you have.”

All this was perfectly true; yet Margaret knew that, in fact, she
could
have put up some sort of opposition when Claudia had first revealed to her that an uncomfortable mystery
surrounded
their prospective guest. They had been in the kitchen at the time, Claudia just back from the office, all starched and black-and-white, and looming grandly in her high heels, while Margaret sat at the table in her flowered overall chopping parsley. The volley of excited words had rattled like
machine-gun
fire against her ears. For there had been aggression as well as enthusiasm in Claudia’s impassioned advocacy of Maurice’s visit tonight. Her admission—her boast, rather—that he might prove to be a convicted murderer—had been flung down almost as a challenge. She was braced for battle, expecting opposition. That would have been the right and natural moment for Margaret to have provided this opposition: to have made, in short, an almighty fuss.

Why hadn’t she done so? Simply, she admitted to herself now, because she knew Claudia was expecting it—indeed,
wanting
it. Yes, Claudia
wanted
her mother to play her appointed rôle of narrow-minded, old-fashioned bigot: thus could Claudia’s own generosity and emancipation shine the brighter. And so, perversely, Margaret had rejected her rôle, refused to have it thus thrust upon her without, as it were, her consent. It was out of sheer devilment, of a rather subtle kind, that she had limply agreed with all her daughter’s euphoric platitudes about Society being the Real Criminal, and the Guilt being shared by All of Us, and Not One of Us being entitled to Throw the First Stone.

Margaret didn’t see why
she
should be the one to throw it, anyway, what with supper to dish up, and the chickens to shut in for the night, and her general disinclination for a row after this lovely sunny day. And also, deep down in her heart of hearts, Margaret hadn’t really believed in any of it. She still didn’t. It seemed to her much more likely that Claudia’s
imagination
had been running away with her than that Maurice was indeed a hardened criminal. He didn’t look like one; he didn’t behave like one; he seemed, indeed, to be just the same sort of self-absorbed, garrulous type of person that Claudia was always bringing home. A little less boring, perhaps—except about his
poetry—and certainly more intelligent. Or shrewd. Or
something
. ‘Sly’ was the word that had sprung to her mind as she had watched him down there in the drawing-room, she remembered.