Prisoner's Base (19 page)

“Mother!” Claudia laughed her little laugh. “Surely we
don’t talk like that about guests in our home, do we?” And then, turning to Daphne, she added: “Don’t pay any attention—Mother gets like this now and then. It’s her age”—the last three words were mouthed ostentatiously, in soundless
provocation
. Margaret rounded on her daughter with spirit.

“It is
not
my age, Claudia, as you well know.
You’re
nearer to that age than I am now, so you’d better be a bit careful how you use that particular weapon in future! I’m sorry, Daphne, I didn’t mean to be rude, but, once and for all, I am going to speak my mind. It has gone too far, all this nonsense. You’re doing terrible harm, Claudia. I don’t know yet what it is that is going to happen, but I can see it building up, and I’m getting frightened. Why is Mavis like this?—why is she having these dreams? Yes, I know she’s always been silly and hysterical, but she’s getting worse. Why is she so afraid? What is it—what is going on? And Maurice too—he’s getting odder and odder every day. He seemed fairly ordinary when he first came. I don’t know what it is you are doing to them—and you don’t either: that’s the terrifying thing. You have taken over their lives as if you were God Almighty, and now you’re out of your depth—you don’t know what you’re doing. You have unleashed
something
, and you don’t know what it is: something has been set in motion which you don’t know how to stop. And when the crash comes—‘However did that happen?’ you will say: and ‘If only I had been there!’ You will think the catastrophe has happened
in
spite
of your efforts; but you will be wrong; it will have happened
because
of them. It will have happened because of the way you treat people like toys, setting them up for your amusement in situations which they can’t sustain. It’s no wonder that Mavis is having nightmares about a world of toys! It’s
you
she’s dreaming of, Claudia, not Maurice at all! Balanced up on those stilts, larger than life, and administering a toy
kingdom
…! Don’t you understand, Claudia, these people you gather round you are
weak
people, all of them. They can’t
survive
the sort of games you play, knocking them around the nursery floor. They get broken!”

“Old Mother Moore! Bravo!” jeered Claudia. “And what else do you see in your crystal ball? A tall dark man and a journey overseas?
I
can see that, too: poor Derek, I meant to write to him today, but I don’t seem to have had a minute. Listen, Mother, I’m awfully sorry, but much as I’d like to go
through your worries point by point, I simply haven’t got
time
for your hysterical fancies as well as Mavis’, I can’t do
everything
! There—now the telephone! You’ll see, it’ll be yet another person wanting moral support from me! And getting it! Sometimes I feel sucked quite dry, but I’ve never failed any of them yet….”

The gallant words fell a little flat, as the telephone call proved not to be for Claudia at all. A minute later Helen came into the room, looking a little pink.

“Granny! Oh—Mummy—will it be all right if Clive comes here again next Wednesday? Or the one after? He says he enjoyed it so much last night, he really did! He rang up specially to say so!”

The girl’s shy pleasure in her first little social triumph made all the adults smile; and as she left the room they turned to each other, suddenly benign, the recent quarrel temporarily forgotten.

“She’s growing up, isn’t she?” said Daphne admiringly. “She’s really beginning to be quite pretty.”

“Yes, isn’t she,” agreed Claudia, but there was something a little preoccupied in her manner. She got up and went to
rummage
in her desk. “I think, perhaps, that telephone call
does
demand a little moral support from me, just as I predicted!” she murmured mysteriously into the open drawer, and then, straightening up again, with a little package in her hand, she said to her mother: “I think, on this occasion, it is
I
who am realising that life isn’t all a game, particularly for the young. And it’s
you
who are imagining that it is!” With which cryptic pronouncement she swiftly left the room.

*

Helen lay on her bed, gilded by the rays from the evening sun, and savoured deliciously this first experience of having been a successful hostess in a difficult situation. Because it
had
been fun last night—after the first stiffness had worn off—and now she knew that Clive had found it fun, too. Fancy him ringing up specially to say so! He must have found her quite amusing to talk to—she
was
quite amusing, she had felt it at the time, and how lovely to have it thus confirmed! Waves of warm, joyous self-confidence began to flow in her veins. She, Helen, could be amusing, entertaining; she could keep a
conversation
going, see that her guests enjoyed themselves! Wonderful! And Clive was really quite nice, now that he wasn’t
so shy. All the same she had, on second thoughts, invited him for the Wednesday
after
next—it would be awful if it all began to get boring again because of seeing each other too often. But already she was looking forward to it, planning what Granny should cook for supper, and whether to invite anyone else, or to keep it exactly the way it was last night. Perhaps that would be best; having found such a successful recipe for enjoyment, it seemed silly to risk making changes. Not yet, anyway….

A knock on the door jarred uncomfortably into Helen’s reverie. Only Mummy knocked on the door ever—it was part of her theory about teenagers being entitled to privacy; and Helen hated the sort of privacy that was solemnly conferred on you like that.

“Come in,” she called. Already she felt uneasy, she could not tell why.

“A little present for you, darling,” said her mother, in a bright, casual sort of voice, tossing a small package on to the bed. “Be careful with it!—it’s rather special.” She was gone, quickly, closing the door behind her, and Helen was left staring, with growing, inexplicable uneasiness, at the parcel. Slowly, and with curious reluctance, she began picking at the wrappings.

‘Contraceptive jelly’ … ‘This appliance’ … ‘Booklet of
instructions
’ … Like the reflex action of an inanimate coiled spring, the muscles of Helen’s arm had jerked the package and its contents right across the room before she was aware that she had moved at all. For she felt as if she was paralysed; she sat stunned, stupefied, with sheer shock and recoil. Never, never, would she be able to face Clive again, even though he knew nothing of this awful happening. Never again would she be able to speak to him. Or to any other boy. Ever. She felt as if she had been hurled headlong by a wave of humiliation so violent that she would never be able to struggle to her feet again.

Yet, as the slow minutes passed, she became aware of a sort of healing process beginning—diffuse at first, and then
concentrating
imperceptibly on to one single point of hope. Sandra! The thought of Sandra was like a glimpse of solid land amid this ocean of disgust and despair. Sandra would make it all seem all right again, even funny! Why, if she could once get to Sandra’s, they might easily be giggling about it before the evening was over! In some deep recess of her soul, Helen felt some inkling that it was a pity that giggling should be the only
way out; but there it was. There was nothing else to be done. Laughter was the one sure refuge from this stormy and terrible sea into which she had been plunged.

“Sandra!” she cried almost before she reached the telephone, after rushing like a mad thing down the stairs. “Sandra! Are you in this evening? Are you? Can I come now, this minute? … Yes,
terribly
… No, I can’t possibly tell you on the phone … When I see you! Yes, I’m coming
now
!”

C
LAUDIA FELT A
little surprised that Helen had rushed out of the house like that, without a word to anyone: surprised, and a little affronted. Not that she would ever dream of demanding confidences from her child—God forbid!—but surely it would have been natural for Helen to have sought a quiet little talk with her mother after such a presentation? Were there no questions she wanted to ask—no points that she would like elucidated—after all, a booklet can’t tell you
everything.
Besides, a gift like this was in a way a gesture—the ultimate gesture of intimacy and trust as between mother and daughter; it was the final, unassailable proof of Claudia’s total sympathy with the teenage point of view. After this, Helen must know that she could confide in her mother absolutely, that she could talk freely, and without shame, about her sexual yearnings. Why, then, had she not done so?

Claudia moved restlessly about the room. The more she thought about it, the greater was her puzzlement. Although, for her, sex had never been more than a minor pleasure in her busy life—she would have traded the lot, at any time, for
wholehearted
, wide-eyed admiration from friends—nevertheless she never for one moment doubted that everyone else was
overwhelmed
by sexual passions continually; if they denied it, then they were either liars or victims of repression. The discrepancy between her own actual feelings and those she attributed to everyone else had never worried her because she had never really set the two side by side and looked at them, any more than the old-fashioned Christian ever set his belief in the goodness of God side by side with the actual stories related in the Old
Testament. Claudia’s belief in non-stop, omnipresent sexuality depended on faith, not evidence; it was one of those beliefs that were beyond question, and absolutely basic to an
up-to-date
way of thinking. You could no more question it than you could question the laws of Aristotelian logic; the whole
framework
of your thinking would be gone.

But Claudia could not go on speculating about Helen’s odd behaviour for very long, there was so much else to see to. First Mavis to be calmed down, as quickly as possible: then more talk with Daphne, who seemed to be settled here for the evening; and then, later on, there was Maurice as well.

Maurice was being difficult this evening. He had come in just after nine, and instead of being grateful and excited when Claudia told him of the letter she had written to the literary agent, he had simply stared at her in stupefaction. “Oh, my God!” he had muttered; and if Daphne had not just then come back into the room after helping Margaret with the washing up, it was highly probable that he would have gone off into one of his strange sulks—they had been becoming more frequent of late—and not spoken for the rest of the evening.

As it was, the situation was saved, at least for a while. As soon as she set eyes on him, Daphne burst at once into a flood of uncritical flattery such as no author can resist; and soon she was trying fulsomely to persuade him to read his latest poem.

But, strangely, Maurice would not comply. He seemed
restless
, ill at ease, and kept glancing at the clock. He was unable to keep his attention on any conversation—even conversation about the wonderfulness of his poetry.

What in the world could be the matter with him? It was humiliating, the way he kept answering Claudia in preoccupied monosyllables, and with Daphne listening, too. In the end, the best Claudia could do was to put on an air of being the one person in the world who could understand his tortured moods, and knew when to leave him alone and not bother him with idle chatter. It was difficult, though, to make this profound level of understanding look any different from just not being able to think of anything to say.

What with one thing and another, it was a relief when, a little before eleven, the telephone rang. Thankful to escape from the strains of conversation in the drawing-room, Claudia darted out into the hall and seized the receiver.

“Mummy? Is that you?” Helen’s voice sounded breathless somehow, but guarded. “Listen, I’m sorry I’m being a bother, but you see I’m at Sandra’s, and I’d forgotten it was Sunday. The last bus has gone. So do you think someone could come and fetch me in the car?”

“What do you mean—‘someone’?” Claudia gave her little laugh. She was still feeling sore about Helen’s ungracious behaviour in rushing off like that. “You know perfectly well that with Daddy away I’m the only one in this benighted
household
who can drive! And I’m busy, dear. Really I am. I’ve got visitors. Can’t Sandra’s people bring you back? Goodness knows I’ve given Sandra lifts often enough.”

They were out, Helen explained, both of them, and Sandra didn’t know when they would be back.

“Well, why not ask if you can stay the night, then?” Claudia suggested: but that, it seemed, would not do either because of school tomorrow morning. “I’ll need my uniform, you see,” Helen explained. “I’ve got to come home because of my uniform.”

At this Claudia’s temper exploded.

“Well, really! Of all the ridiculous reasons! I’ve always said that this school uniform idea was crazy! I only wish I’d stood out against sending you to the sort of school that goes in for such nonsense! Pernicious nonsense, too, cooked up by a bunch of Victorian lesbians who—”

“Claudia! I say!”

Claudia started, and instinctively put her hand over the mouthpiece. She had not realised that Maurice had followed her out into the hall, and now here he was, standing quietly just behind her. “There’s a problem, is there, about getting Helen home? I wondered if you’d like
me
to go for her? Would that help?”

His voice, as he made the offer, was carefully casual, but his eyes were very bright. Claudia was conscious of a terrible,
chilling
lurch of doubt, somewhere deep in her vitals. She looked at him. She guessed that it was important to him, desperately important, that she should say yes. It would set the final seal on the absolute trust that she was supposed to feel towards him; and in addition it would be the ultimate proof of her own
magnanimity
. Broadmindedness and courage could go no further than this. Of course she must say yes.

She opened her mouth to say it, and found herself temporising.
“But can you drive?” she asked, and waited, in a confusion of unacknowledged hopes, for his answer.

“Oh yes! I used to drive a lot. And I’ve had a bit of practice recently, too. Don’t worry, I shan’t run her into a ditch!”

Claudia’s heart was beating in dull, heavy thumps. Why was he so tense, so nervily eager for her assent? Was it simply that he realised, as she did, that this was the final test; the test which would prove, once and for all, whether she truly trusted him? How could she, Claudia, fail in the face of such a challenge?

Again she opened her mouth to say ‘yes’, and again the word would not come. “But, Maurice,” she heard herself beginning —and at that moment Daphne’s face appeared round the drawing-room door, wearing a little, pitying smile. So she had been listening! She knew of the challenge that had been thrown down, and was waiting now, gleefully, for Claudia’s
humiliation
—for her admission that here, at last, was something that was beyond her courage!

Beyond her courage?
Her
courage—
Claudia’s
? And with Daphne there watching …?

“But Maurice, how very kind of you!” she finished her sentence coolly. “I’d be most grateful. Thank you very much.”

It was done. There was no going back on it; and Daphne’s look of amazement, of shocked, reluctant admiration, seemed in that moment to be reward enough.

Out to the dark garage with him. Hand over the keys.
Explain
to him the idiosyncrasies of the clutch. Watch him back cautiously out into the road—and now, now there was nothing else to be done but wait.

Twelve minutes to Sandra’s house: five minutes, say, for Helen to get herself ready and say goodbye. Twelve minutes back. It wouldn’t take more than half an hour. In half an hour, then, she would be saying off-handedly to Daphne—to Mother—‘Well,
of
course
it was all right! I knew it would be. I can’t think
what
you were both fussing about …!’ Yes, in only half an hour she would be saying things like that. In half an hour this queer, sick feeling in her stomach would be gone.

Meanwhile, there was still Daphne to talk to, to lord it over a little, for really it
was
rather a splendid thing that she had just done, and Daphne was just the person to appreciate it.

And appreciate it Daphne did; her praise was fulsome, and a little awed. “Oh, I do
hope
she’ll be all right,” she exclaimed at
intervals, and Claudia wished that she wouldn’t. It was so obvious and unnecessary, and each time it made the feeling of sickness come back into her stomach again.

Yet when Daphne dropped the subject, and began talking instead about the proofs of the Drama Club leaflets having been mislaid, and how she, Daphne, had always predicted that
something
like this would happen if it was left in the hands of that conceited idiot who thought she knew everything just because she had once been auditioned for a West End part—well, this wasn’t the right sort of conversation, either. It was distracting without being interesting; it interrupted one’s train of thought and yet gave no relief from it.

Twenty-five to twelve now. Only
just
over the half hour. Helen had probably taken quite a few minutes getting her belongings together; and then she and Sandra would have hung about at the gate exchanging last-minute chatter— Oh, they could easily have gone on for ten minutes, even a quarter of an hour…. It was silly, really, ever to have expected the car back in less than forty minutes.

And still Daphne chattered on. Claudia found it irksome in the extreme: why should
she
care if the woman who formerly dealt with the leaflets was not only offended at being deprived of them, but could also type, and catch the post, and things like that: talents far more valuable in a drama club than any amount of West End experience, didn’t Claudia think so?

Claudia agreed, trying to put bright interest into her voice, and to think of some little comment that would show that she had been listening.

Because it was ten to twelve now. Perhaps they had invited Maurice in for a few minutes? Perhaps they had offered him a cup of coffee, and then all got talking …?

“Why don’t you ring up?” Daphne was suddenly asked. “Why don’t you ring up these Sandra people and ask how long ago they left? Because they
are
being a long time, aren’t they?”

“What nonsense!” On no account must Daphne know of the awful cold throbbing that her words had set off inside Claudia’s skull. “It’s perfectly all right. I haven’t the slightest doubt that they’re all sitting round chattering over cocoa or something, and not noticing the time. They’re
young,
Daphne! If you’d had more to do with young people you’d know.”

It was not Claudia’s habit thus to taunt Daphne on her childless
state; and even now she did not really mean to be cruel. It was just that putting Daphne in her place somehow gave her a moment’s respite from this relentless, non-stop anxiety, like releasing the pressure on a bruise. But it was not to be wondered at that Daphne should strike back in kind.

“Well, of course,
I’d
never have let it happen in the first place,” Daphne declared, with sudden aggressive
self-righteousness
. “If Helen had been
my
child, I’d never have dreamed of letting that young man go for her! I think you’re mad, Claudia, to let him do it! I thought so the minute I heard you agreeing!”

What treachery was this? After all that awed admiration, after all the weeks of rivalry, of mutual envy, of egging each other on—was Daphne ratting on it all? And
now
—now, of all times!

It was a relief, almost, that at this moment Mother should burst into the drawing-room, white faced.

“What’s all this about Helen not being back?” she demanded; and now, of course, she had to be told everything.

“You must be insane, Claudia! You must be a raving lunatic!” she cried, staring unbelievingly at her daughter. “How
could
you allow such a thing—even
you
! Quick, what’s Sandra’s number? … We must ring up at once!”

“Now, Mother, don’t start getting hysterical. Listen”—on the surface of her rising panic, Claudia still managed to
preserve
an air of slightly mocking assurance—“we don’t want to make fools of ourselves panicking about nothing, now do we? It’s not much after midnight yet, I’m sure they’re just drinking coffee, and talking …” This picture of the three young people sitting round a table with steaming, reassuring cups of
something
hot in front of them was one which Claudia clung to as to a life-line; she couldn’t stop savouring it, describing it over and over again. “That’s what you’ll find they’ve been doing. And think how embarrassing for poor Helen to have her family ringing up in hysterics as if she was a lost three-year-old! She’s
grown
up,
Mother! You’ll make her look such a fool!”

But already Margaret was out in the hall, dialling Sandra’s number; and it was only now, as she heard the soft whirr of the dialling, that Claudia realised just why it was that she had resisted so scornfully the idea of telephoning. It wasn’t because she thought it was foolish and unnecessary; nor was it because
she was afraid of embarrassing Helen; it was because she was afraid of having to give up, irrevocably, the little reassuring scene with the coffee cups; the little scene which was even now keeping her sane, enabling her to keep under control the
mounting
waves of panic. But only for one more minute would it serve her now … one more half minute … ten seconds … Yes,
someone
had come to the phone. Mother was speaking. Could it be, even now, that the blessed, reassuring words were going to sound across the dark hall…. ‘Well, tell her she’s a naughty girl, she should have rung us long ago and told us’ … or: ‘Well, ask her to come to the phone at once; I want to speak to her. Doesn’t she realise how anxious we’ve been …?’ Something like that … Claudia could almost hear the very phrases, in Mother’s sternest voice. Already she could feel the panic in her vitals unwinding slowly, expectantly, all ready for the blessed news….