Prisoner's Base

by Celia Fremlin

  What sort of something it might be she couldn’t, at this stage, begin to guess, but nevertheless the soothing words, over and over again repeated, began to have their effect on her own spirits as well as on Helen’s; and by the time the sunset had changed from flame to pink, and from pink to a clear, translucent green, the two were deep in plans.

  “You see, dear,” Margaret explained, “it’s not just a matter of my standing on my legal rights and refusing to sell. It’s the Compulsory Purchase Order. That’s what we have to worry about now. Did your mother tell you about the Compulsory Purchase Order?”

  Helen shook her head. She looked wary. What monstrous ally was to be brought in now on the side of the eight thousand pounds—already, one would have thought, a cruel and powerful enemy enough?

  Margaret explained.

  “So what it amounts to,” she concluded, “is that if we don’t accept this offer now, for eight thousand pounds, then in a few months’ time the council may be able to compel us to sell it, for some very much smaller sum, your mother says…”

  “But they only may be able to?” Helen seized eagerly on this spark of hope. “Do you mean it isn’t certain that they will?”

  “No—that is, not as far as I can make out. Your mother was —well—a little—” Margaret searched for the adjective that would describe, but not disrespectfully, Claudia’s almost incoherent righteousness as she brought out her trump card. “She was a little—unclear—about the exact degree of compulsion she is envisaging. But I imagine the position is, that if the new road is built along the bottom there, and if the council decide to plan a council estate round it, and if they can get planning permission, then they will be able to force the present owners to sell them the land they need.”

  “If—if—if!” cried Helen triumphantly. “Why, it’s all ‘if’s’, isn’t’ it, Granny? None of it may happen at all! The road may not be built—the council may not want to build houses—the planning people may not give them permission—!”

  “I know. I know. But your mother doesn’t see it that way. She seems to be regarding the whole thing as inevitable—”

  “But surely we could at least wait and see!” cried Helen. “Fancy, if we sold the field now, and then found out afterwards that we needn’t have—that none of all this was going to happen after all! Just fancy how awful—!”

  “I know. That’s just what I’ve been trying to point out to your mother. But you must try and understand, Helen that she sees it all just the other way round. The danger from her standpoint is that if we don’t sell the field now, for this high price, then we may still lose it, but get nothing—at least, not nearly so much—in return. She thinks, you see—and I daresay she is right—that the amount offered by the council would be much less than what we are being offered now. You see, she doesn’t feel about the field quite the way we do—”

  As she spoke, putting Claudia’s case with such scrupulous fairness and moderation, Margaret let her eyes wander over the tranquil evening grass; suddenly the choking rage and grief she had experienced earlier in the evening surged back into her with all its original shock and violence; how dared Claudia barter all this for money, not knowing, even, what it was that she was bartering! She was like a blind woman trampling among Old Masters, fancying that the canvases beneath her spike heels were some cheap floor covering, something not as soft as carpet, not as practical as linoleum. ‘Forgive them, they know not what they do’—but Margaret could not feel that way. To her, it was the ignorance that was the most unforgiveable sin of all.

  “Granny! Who’s that?”

  There was a note of urgency in Helen’s suddenly lowered voice; and Margaret, still dazed and shaken by the sudden recrudescence of her anger and grief, followed the direction of her granddaughter’s gaze.

  There, across the field by the hedge, silhouetted against the last greenish glow of the sunset, stood a horrible man. A neat, town-bred man in a neat dark suit, gazing thoughtfully, assessingly, over the hedge into the field, just like that man from Thoroughgood and Willows three weeks ago. He seemed to be staring this time not only at the field, but into the chicken run as well, as if already making an inventory. Was he the very same man? Or one exactly like him? Was the field from now on to be crawling with dark-suited men, a plague of them, like black-beetles …?”

  All Margaret’s grief, her anger, her frustration, were now focused on a single purpose.

  “Stay there!” she murmured to Helen, low and authoritative, and set off across the field at a savage stride.

  “Will you kindly go away?” she commanded, as soon as she was within hearing. “Will you kindly go away, and leave my property alone? I don’t know what you’re looking for, but you have no business here, and if I ever see you staring in like this again I shall send for the police!”

  Only now, when she was quite close, did Margaret realise that it was not the same man at all, or anyone the least like him. This one was younger—spottier—stupider: oafish, in fact, in spite of the neat suit. He stared at Margaret insolently—and really, in the circumstances, one could hardly blame him.

  “Sorry, lady, I’m sure!” he sneered. “I didn’t know there was laws against looking. My mistake! What you want me to do—drop dead? Just say the word!”

  With humped shoulders he turned away from her and slithered down the bank into the road with a clumsy, unathletic thump. As she watched him slouch away into the twilight, hands in pockets and ostentatiously not looking back, Margaret might well have felt a little foolish and ashamed over her impetuous mistake. But somehow she did not. She felt, instead, a glow of unholy triumph at having routed the fellow so easily. It seemed a good omen, somehow; an exhilarating limbering-up of the spirit ready for the coming conflict; for the day when it really would be the hated Thoroughgood and Willows man who would go slinking off down the road like that, smarting from the lashes of her tongue, and with one less sale to record in his horrible filing system.

  “Granny! I heard you! Weren’t you marvellous!” Helen came bounding through the twilight and the long grass to join her grandmother by the hedge. “It’s going to be all right, I know it is! They can’t take the field away from us if we just don’t let them! Can they! Oh, you were super …!”

  “Of course they can’t!” The two looked at each other and laughed in the fading light, exhilarated out of all proportion by Margaret’s muddled little victory, coming as it did after the hours of grief and shock. “Let’s celebrate!” proposed Helen excitedly. “Let’s have a night-time picnic, just you and me, out here in the dear field, like we did that time with the bonfire, shall we, Granny? Oh, do let’s! I’m starving. Do you realise we never had any supper?”

  “It’ll be rather damp,” began Margaret; but she knew, and Helen knew, that these were just grandmotherly noises, meaning nothing, and of course they would have the picnic.

  “It’s not. It’s as dry as anything … we’ll bring a rug out. Granny, I’ll tell you what, I’ll do everything. You just stay here, and I’ll bring you out a surprise picnic, and millions of rugs …” and a moment later Helen was racing across the field, seized suddenly by that strange gift of running that comes sometimes with the summer twilight, and enables the human being to skim so nearly weightless across the grass, so nearly flying, that the very laws of nature quiver in the dusk and are all but broken.

  It was warm in the starlit corner of the field where they finally spread their rug, sheltered on two sides by the silent, looming hedges, unimaginably sweet with unseen flowers. They talked softly at first, as if in church, or in some vast library filled with knowledge past accounting; muffling with cautious movements the soft pop of the cider bottle, the cracking of the hard-boiled eggs, and the rustle and stir of crisps and chocolate bars. Orion was gone by this time of the year, and Sirius too, and even the Pleiades. The sky was filled now with the less-known summer constellations, which neither Margaret nor Helen could identify, except for Cassiopea and the Great and little Bears. It was as they la
y trying to trace Perseus’ amorphous contours, straggling complicatedly half across the sky, that Margaret suddenly became aware of footsteps vibrating faintly through the ground. She sat up quickly, and peered in all directions through the moonless night, which was yet not quite dark. But even as she stared, a sudden crashing and snapping of twigs nearby culminated in the headlong appearance of a shadowy, breathless figure through a gap in the hedge a few feet away.

  “Who’s that?” cried Margaret hoarsely; and now the figure seemed to lurch and sway for a second, and then suddenly, in what seemed like a single stride through the darkness, it was upon them, looming above their heads as they sat, blotting out half the sky. A voice, so harsh with fear as to be almost unrecognisable hissed down at them:

  “Who was he? Mrs Newman, tell me, for God’s sake! Who was that man?”

  “Maurice! What a shock you gave me! What’s the matter? What are you doing here …?”

  Margaret’s voice was steady, but she felt her heart beating heavily. His manner was so strange; and all she had ever heard about his past now seemed to be glinting in his close-set eyes, just visible in the black outline of his head against the sky.

  “That man!” he repeated almost hysterically. “The man who looked over the hedge! For the love of Heaven, why did you have to drive him away like that? Why?”

  Margaret stared upwards, trying to extract some sort of sense out of the extraordinary questions.

  “Why—because— Well, he had no business here. That’s all. But what’s the matter? What’s it got to do with you? And how did you know?”

  “I—Because I met him. That’s how.” Maurice sounded sullen now as well as scared. “He wanted to know why you drove him away like that. He kept asking me! For God’s sake, how should I know?”

  By now Margaret had risen to her feet with dignity, and was confronting her questioner face to face.

  “Precisely. How should you know? And how could it possibly be any concern of yours in any case? You can tell your importunate friend just this: that it is no business whatever of yours, and that if he wishes to know my opinion of his spying on my land, he has only to ask for it, and I shall be delighted to tell him, all over again! Come along, Helen. I think it’s time we packed up and went in. It’s getting cold.”

  They began rapidly bundling the remains of the picnic back into the basket, and in spite of her brave words Margaret found that her hands were shaking. Maurice still hovered uncomfortably in the vicinity, neither staying nor going, making Margaret feel yet more hurried and uneasy.

  “Allow me—let me carry them for you,” he suddenly offered astonishingly out of the darkness, just as the last plastic mug was rammed in; and overwhelmed by this unexpected—indeed incongruous—display of chivalry. Margaret allowed him to take both basket and rug, and the three of them walked back to the house in a somewhat bewildered silence. Only when they reached the back door, and Helen had gone ahead into the kitchen, did Maurice speak again.

  “I’m afraid I startled you, Mrs Newman. I’m sorry. I’ve had a bit of a—well, a bit of a shock. But just tell me one thing. You don’t know who that man is, do you? You don’t know him at all?”

  “Not in the least. I’ve never set eyes on him until this evening, and I must say, after all this, I hope I never do again! Such a fuss all about nothing!”

  “I’m sorry,” repeated Maurice, accepting the implied reproof subserviently. “But there’s just one other thing—would you mind not telling Claudia about what’s happened this evening? You see—”

  “Well, goodness me, has anything happened? If it has, then I’m sure, Maurice, that you are a great deal better informed about it than I am. To me, the whole episode has been quite incomprehensible, and I would have nothing intelligible to relate about it to Claudia or to any one else. And I can’t help feeling, Maurice, that by far the best thing will be for you, in future, to mind your business, and for me to mind mine. I can assure you that I am very willing to keep to my share of such a bargain.” And thanking him politely for his help, Margaret took the rug and the basket from him and followed Helen into the kitchen.

  He may be a murderer, she thought judicially, but he is also a fool. He has no guts.

  Was this a reassuring discovery, or the reverse? Is a cowardly, frightened killer less dangerous than a bold one? Or more?

  CHAPTER XVI

  IT WAS THAT very night when Mavis’ nightmares began again, and at first Margaret supposed she was doing it on purpose, just to keep up with the Joneses. After all, everyone except Mavis had been involved in an almighty emotional scene that evening, and naturally Mavis would not wish to be utterly left out. Why should she alone be relegated to sound and peaceful sleep when everyone else had such good reason for lying uneasily in their beds?

  Not that Margaret herself was conscious of any such unease. On the contrary, she went to bed that night feeling tired out by emotion as by a twenty-mile walk, and fell almost at once into a deep sleep; and when she woke, drowsy and reluctant, she thought at first that her alarm clock must have woken her, and that it was morning.

  But it wasn’t. Not even the faintest glow of the early summer dawn had as yet blurred the sharp square of blackness outside her open window, and the air drifting in smelt of the deep night, with no trace as yet of morning freshness. And the sounds, too, as her ears slowly woke and joined her other senses, were the sounds of night: the drone of a single sleepless car far off: the distant wail of some night creature, so far away and so unidentifiable that the mind does not even stir itself to guessing. The house itself was filled with midnight stirrings—creakings and clickings in beams and floorboards such as are never heard by day; and now, as well there was the sound of the doorhandle being softly turned.

  Margaret felt no surprise or shock, for it was somehow an expected sound; still stupid and slow with sleep, she only now became aware that this was the sound which must have woken her. She could not remember having heard it before, even in her dreams; but nevertheless her ears remembered, and were unsurprised.

  Somehow she wasn’t frightened—it was as if the capacity for fear had not yet wakened, with her other faculties, from deep sleep. She felt nothing but a vague receptiveness towards whatever might be about to happen, just as she used to feel, in the deep of the night, when a little frightened girl with icy feet would creep in beside her—was it Helen, or Claudia, or some improbable mixture, defying years and personalities, of the two? “But it couldn’t possibly be bears, dear,” hovered aimlessly on her lips, still slack with sleep; “you must have been dreaming…”

  Again the doorhandle whickered feebly—whoever it was was failing to turn it firmly enough, and Margaret felt irritation, though not yet fear, begin to awaken in her.

  “Who is it?” she called sharply; “What do you want? Turn the handle right round!”

  Absolute, paralysed stillness. No sound, no breath, gave any intimation that the intruder was still there; neither did any creak or shuffle of footsteps indicate that he or she was going away. Margaret lay very still, and as the seconds began to build up at last into minutes, she became uneasy; no one, surely, could hold their breath so long, or stand so still?

  “Who is it?” she called again, more softly this time. “Come in! Why don’t you come in?”

  Still nothing. Still the person must be standing, like a dead thing, without breathings outside her door. Silence seemed now to have taken possession of the house utterly; it was pressing in now, through the closed door, right into the room itself, rising like a great, waveless tide, obliterating all trace of sound. The familiar creakings and stirrings of the old wood were utterly stilled; even Margaret herself seemed to have stopped breathing.

  Suddenly a crash, like ten thousand metal tea-trays, reverberated up through the house, and Margaret leaped from her bed half stunned with shock. She crossed the room and flung open the door, on to a darkness and emptiness that still seemed to be filled with flying echoes from somewhere downstairs.

  Too
amazed to think, she shuffled on her dressing-gown and slippers and stumbled downstairs into the hall; and then, still too dazed for real alarm, she hurried along the passage towards the crack of light that blazed beneath the kitchen door. She threw open the door, expecting she knew not what scene of carnage and catastrophe, and was confronted by the spectacle of Mavis, in her nightdress, dabbing feebly at a pool of Horlicks Malted Milk; while all around lay fragments of one of the precious Wedgwood mugs.

  “What in all the wide world—!” began Margaret, bewilderment as yet leaving no room for indignation. “Mavis—what are you doing? What has happened?” Even now she could not bring herself to believe that all that fearful noise had been simply the breaking of a mug.

  Mavis straightened up from her task. “Oh, Mrs Newman, I’m ever so sorry. I really am. I couldn’t get to sleep, you see, and then when I did drop off I had the most dreadful dream, I just couldn’t stop in bed after what I dreamt. So I came down here, I thought a hot drink might settle my nerves, you see, I never meant to disturb anybody. And I was just going to carry it upstairs back to my room when—I don’t know—I somehow—”

  “But what’s happened?” persisted Margaret. “Were there burglars or something? Did you fall downstairs? What was all that noise?”

  “What noise?” Mavis looked more stupid than you would think a human being could look. Even the cat could have made it clearer what had been going on.

  “That crash—that terrific noise!” Margaret repeated irritably; and only now, as Mavis continued shaking her head, her hair flapping, in blank incomprehension, did Margaret admit to herself that she might perhaps have exaggerated the sound—natural enough, really, when she had been listening in the silence so intently and for so long. Another idea struck her.

  “Mavis—did you come to my room before you came down here? Did you try the doorhandle—?”