Prisoner's Base

by Celia Fremlin

  “What do you mean—‘naturally’? There’s no ‘naturally’ about it. I never asked to have it valued. I never for one minute …”

  “Oh, Mother, we don’t have to go into all this again, do we?” Claudia’s air of embattled boredom seemed to Margaret overdone in view of the fact that the subject had never previously been mentioned between them. Claudia continued, with exaggerated forebearance: “Surely, Mother, you must remember that piece in the paper about the new road proposed along Haddows Bottom? And how it would add enormously to the value of all the adjoining property? Goodness knows you made enough fuss about it at the time—you can’t have forgotten!”

  Claudia shook her head wonderingly, and gave the little laugh with which she was apt to conclude arguments. The little laugh indicated to her opponent that Claudia was not only right, but was magnanimous enough to tolerate good-humouredly the stupidity of the person who was wrong. It wasn’t their fault, said the little laugh; they couldn’t help it: they weren’t wicked at all, just funny. Margaret controlled her momentary desire to take Claudia by the shoulders and shake her till that little smile rattled on her face. Instead, she endeavoured to think, quickly and calmly, what would be her best course now.

  For it was clear that something serious was afoot. Underneath Claudia’s familiar ploys, Margaret could detect a defensive wariness: Claudia was bracing herself against an expected explosion. Clearly, she had already taken some step which was going to rouse her mother’s fury. But what, exactly, was it? Had she actually put the field up for sale already? But how could she? It wasn’t hers, it was Margaret’s. Even though they had all lived here together all these years, and naturally Derek and Claudia had always acted as master and mistress of the house, as became the married couple—nevertheless, it was all Margaret’s really; it was in her name, it was hers by law—though naturally you wouldn’t want to bring the law into a family argument. Still, there it was, you didn’t have to forget it entirely. Claudia certainly hadn’t, as you could tell by all this defensive needling and sneering. If Claudia had had a legal right to sell the field, she wouldn’t waste time being nasty to people; she would simply sell it.

  “You see,” Claudia was explaining carefully, as if to a child, “when something like this happens, the value of a property changes. It becomes more valuable. I’d have thought that was so obvious—I can’t really see your difficulty?”

  “But you can see yours, I hope!” snapped Margaret, her temper and her courage mounting together “Your difficulty is that the field doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to me, and so you can’t do anything with it whatsoever without my approval. It’s my field, and I’m not selling, whatever its value is. So you’re wasting your time finding out about it, you and Derek. I don’t care if it’s worth ten million pounds, I’m not selling it. So go and tell that black creature out there to go and crawl back into his underground office, switch on the strip-lighting, and stop wasting his precious time out here in the sunshine! Tell him you made a stupid mistake, that you had no business to ask him to come, and if he’s still there in five minutes’ time I’ll have him up for trespassing! Tell him that!”

  For a few seconds mother and daughter faced each other, measuring one another’s strength. They had done this at intervals, Margaret reflected, ever since Claudia was five months old, and the texture of the feeling hadn’t changed at all. As she looked at her daughter down the length of the stairs, it seemed no time at all since she had looked under the hood of the pram into those same imperious blue eyes; had watched those same lips quiver, poised for action, seeming even then to be assessing the exact moment at which it would be profitable to split open in ear-shattering howls. The fact that the howls had been replaced over the years first by shrill argument and then by caustic innuendo seemed to make absolutely no difference at all.

  The fact that she could remember Claudia in her pram whereas Claudia couldn’t gave Margaret a sudden irrational feeling of vast power. Age, for all its weaknesses, did give you the upper hand, somehow. Why, she could remember a world that had kept ticking over perfectly satisfactorily without Claudia in it at all! She almost laughed in her relief.

  “Well, that’s all I wanted to say, dear,” Margaret concluded —gently, as becomes the victorious one. “I just thought I should let you know that I’m not selling the field, not at any price at all. So you and Derek can put the whole thing right out of your minds and not worry any more about it!”

  She turned to make a fittingly dignified escape back into her bedroom. She was determined, if Claudia’s voice should pursue her, flinging at her some final cutting remark, she would pay no attention; she would not give Claudia the satisfaction of knowing that she had even heard.

  But trust Claudia to think of the one thing—the one and only solitary thing—that could make her mother break this dignified resolution.

  “I’m glad Helen’s not here,” said Claudia—not loudly, but with a bitterness that carried up the stairs better than any angry shouting. “I’d hate her to know that her grandmother can be like this. I’d hate her to have heard the megalomaniac way you’ve just been talking. I think she’d have been shocked; I really do!”

  The words were just missiles, of course, empty of any factual significance; but nevertheless Margaret found herself strangely shaken.

  “You’re jealous!” she cried incautiously over the banisters. “You’re just jealous, because you know Helen’s going to take my side!” and so saying she swept back into her bedroom and slammed the door.

  That was a mistake, of course, and Margaret realised it at once when she heard how quietly, how composedly, Claudia was shutting the dining-room door downstairs. The one who slammed the door lost a lot of points in this sort of thing; it at once brought their point of view down to the level of a childish tantrum. It had been a mistake, too, to let Helen be brought into the dispute. This was Claudia’s doing, of course, but all the same, Margaret should have simply not answered. In the course of her long life Margaret had learned that by not answering a remark you can make that remark not have been made, practically. It not only takes two to make a quarrel, it takes two to let a communication take place at all.

  They ought to be more careful, she and Claudia, not to use Helen like this, as a stick with which to beat each other; the more so because, in a sense, their roles in respect of Helen were reversed. It was Margaret, the grandmother, who had really brought up Helen—or so at least it seemed to her. For surely it is the person who once washed the nappies and sieved the spinach, who later had the toast and tea ready by the fire at the end of a long school day—surely this is the person who can be said to have brought up the child? Not the one who had always been at work all day, pursuing an absorbing career, and whose relationship with her child seemed to Margaret to have consisted largely of flinging theories of child-psychology, like monkey-wrenches, into the otherwise smoothly running household.

  This was how it seemed to Margaret when, as now, she was feeling angry with her daughter. But there were other times, friendly, good-humoured times, when Margaret wondered guiltily whether she was, perhaps, deliberately stealing Helen’s affections from where they rightfully belonged—with her own parents. This delicate moral issue was further complicated by the fact that Margaret couldn’t—she simply could not—approve of Claudia’s methods with Helen—particularly now that the girl was growing up, just on fifteen, and surely in need of guidance and gentle discipline as never before? In vain Margaret told herself that this was a typical grandmother’s reaction; that times change, methods change, children themselves probably change, are different in their very souls, ever and anon breathing the air of a new, strange decade. Why, it was almost axiomatic that the grandmother must be wrong; and at spasmodic intervals Margaret made the most conscientious and sustained efforts to consider herself wrong about Helen. It never worked, but the effort in itself did seem to make her feel better in some indefinable sort of way, and more tolerant towards Claudia. After all, Claudia, though irrita
ting, did have a lot of good qualities. Leaning her elbows on the windowsill, and feeling it hot through her cotton blouse with the first real sunshine of the year, Margaret set herself, systematically, to make a list of Claudia’s good qualities. She often did this after a quarrel, as a sort of spiritual exercise.

  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.

  CHAPTER II

  “OH, 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 sq
ueeze 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?”