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 y
ou 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?
“So there she was, working away in the kitchen, not thinking about anything except getting the food all set out and ready; and after a bit there was another ring at the door, and there were a pair of members—ordinary, old members, I mean, that she knew quite well. About ten past eight it would be by then, she says. Well, she told them about this new man while they took their coats off upstairs, and then they all came down and she threw open the sitting-room door and began her speech of introduction—she was in a fluster about that, as she still hadn’t got out of him what his name was. And only then did she observe that he wasn’t there any more.”
“Not there?” exclaimed Margaret and Mavis, both together. This ill-assorted pair had somehow combined to form a perfect audience, and Claudia beamed.
“Gone! Vanished! Not a sign of him. They even searched the house, because by then, of course, Daphne had begun feeling a bit nervy, wondering what he really had come for—whether he was anything to do with the Poetry Group at all, or if he’d just used it as an excuse to get into the house. And the trouble was, of course, she didn’t know how long he’d stayed in the sitting-room after she’d left him. He could have been roaming all round the house for the best part of half an hour, and she’d never have known, in there in the kitchen with the door shut.”
“Roaming round the house? You mean he might have been a burglar?” said Mavis, narrowing her eyes shrewdly, as she often did when drawing attention to the quickness with which she could grasp a situation.
“Something like that. Well, naturally it crossed their minds. But nothing was missing, Daphne says. Though there was plenty he could have laid hands on quite easily—a watch, jewellery, a camera, her handbag with fourteen pounds in it. He’d had heaps of time to find the lot and get away.”
“But he didn’t; so he couldn’t have been a burglar after all,” declared Margaret. “So what is Daphne worrying about? It sounds as if she’s being rather silly.”
A tiny frown crossed the narrator’s face. Daphne’s silliness had been, in fact, the conclusion she had been leading up to herself, but she did not like having it whipped away from her like this by Margaret. Rather testily, she proceeded to build up the drama again.
“Well, yes. In a way,” she answered her mother grudgingly. “But after all, burglary isn’t the only crime, is it?”
Claudia allowed this rather cryptic suggestion to have its full effect, and then went on: “After all, you must see it from Daphne’s point of view. She’s all alone in the house; and if he didn’t come to steal, what did he come for? And what’s to stop him coming again? Suppose he comes again tonight, early like that, before any of the others arrive? I shouldn’t think he would, of course. I shouldn’t think they’ll ever see him again (having built up the drama again to suitable point, Claudia was now ready to knock it down in her own way). I expect that’s the last they’ll hear of him; it was probably some kind of muddle, he thought it was a different meeting, or something. Still, you know what Daphne is, she works herself up; and since she seemed to be so jittery, I promised I’d come and hold her hand; and Mavis is nobly coming too, aren’t you, Mavis? We’re to get there well before the meeting starts, so that even if this fellow does come early again, he’ll find Daphne already surrounded by her body-guard! He won’t, of course; he won’t come at all. As I say, it was probably all some quite boring kind of mistake.”
But Claudia’s eyes were bright, her body taut and expectant. It was clear to Margaret that she did think the mysterious stranger would come; that there would arise some sort of situation in which everyone would turn to her, Claudia, for a lead. For if this man did turn out to be peculiar in any way, surely it would be Claudia’s gifts above all others that would be in demand? Courage — unflappability — broad-mindedness — tolerance — out-goingness — sympathy — surely at least some of these Claudia-specialities would be called into service? And could
be deployed to tremendous effect in front of the whole of the Poetry Group, as well as of Mavis, who was being taken along, Margaret realised now, for this very purpose—to provide extra audience for this edifying spectacle.
Stop showing off, dear, Margaret used to say, when Claudia was seven and at a children’s party. What could you say now that she was grown up? Not that it had ever made any difference, even then.
CHAPTER III
BY A QUARTER to eight Mavis still wasn’t ready, and Claudia glanced at her watch impatiently. The meeting didn’t start till eight thirty, but Mavis knew they had promised to arrive half an hour early. Did she understand how very important it was, Claudia wondered? Had she had second thoughts about coming at all—or had Mother perhaps upset her in some way? This had been happening more and more of late, and Claudia was beginning to worry about it. It seemed impossible to get Mother to understand how near Mavis had been to a nervous breakdown when she had first come here, and how much understanding and sympathy were needed to coax her back to health. “She should pull herself together” had been Mother’s tart response to all this; typical, of course, of her generation, but all the same Claudia had been disappointed. No doubt in her own mind Mother had classed Mavis as a ‘Fallen Woman’, after the quaint nomenclature of her day and age; but even so, surely daily contact for all these months should have softened her intolerance? Surely by now she should be able to see Mavis as a person, and not merely as an example of the genus Fallen Woman? During all these months Mavis had been company for Mother during the long, empty days while the rest of the family were out; had helped her with the housework, had shared her otherwise solitary meals—and still Mother remained resentful, distant, ungracious. Making full allowance for the prejudices of the elderly—and Claudia was perfectly willing to do this—it was still hard to understand how anyone could be so self-righteous. Even if Mavis’ unmarried motherhood had been a crime—which of course Claudia could not accept for one moment—even then Mother’s unremitting animosity was inexcusable. It was cruel. No ordinary, kindly person could have condoned it. And to Claudia who counted nothing—but nothing—as a crime, and who attributed all evil whatsoever to weakness, not wickedness, her mother’s attitude was utterly incomprehensible.
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