Prisoner's Base (21 page)

Helen had no ready answer to all this, but she remained stubborn.

“You’re being very unfair,” she repeated. “Mummy
was
trying to help you, as best she could. She’s always trying to help unlucky people.”

“Yes? She isn’t, you know. She may have started off that way, years ago, but that isn’t how it is now. All she’s trying to do now is to have unlucky people turning to her for help—a very different matter. She has built herself up as a figure of vast, all-embracing, up-to-date tolerance, and other people are just so much tolerance-fodder for her—and of course the wickeder they are the better they serve! She loves the sin, you might say, but doesn’t care a damn about the sinner. Listen, I don’t know where we are, but here’s a road saying Station Road, so there ought to be a railway station somewhere if you watch out. If there is, shall I drop you off and you can go home by train? You’ll be all right?”

“Of course. Thank you.” Helen lifted her head proudly, and scanned the passing scene for signs of a railway. “But what about the car? I think you’re being terribly mean and beastly about Mummy—she
did
mean to help you. But at least you’ve got to let her have the car back. Where will it be?”

“Look—here we are—out you get, and for God’s sake do it quickly.—I’ve no time to waste! The car? That’ll be O.K.—I’ll leave it somewhere where they’re bound to find it. Just get
out,
there’s a good girl!”

Thus unchivalrously dumped in the deserted station yard, Helen stood dazed for a minute, while the car leaped noisily into motion again and roared off along the empty road. Only then, as she turned away, did Helen realise that the station was closed; that it was after midnight; and that she did not even know what town she was in.

O
VER AND OVER
again, Margaret kept fancying that the telephone was ringing; she would start up, reach out towards it, and then slump back in her chair, realising that once again it was only the singing in her ears, the pulse of her own blood against her eardrums sounding so loud and imperious in the silence of the empty house.

For Margaret kept vigil alone now. Sandra’s father had driven swiftly round as soon as he heard of the finding of the abandoned car, and he and Claudia were now speeding through the night to join the police in their search in and around the little wood. To Margaret was allotted the task of remaining by the telephone in case of—what? Of further questions to be answered? Of some new and awful clue as to what might have occurred? Or even—unimaginable, now, in it’s impossible happiness—in case Helen herself walked in, having magically made her own way home?

Impossible this, as Margaret well knew; and yet still she could not stop listening, fancying she could hear some familiar little sound in the empty house. The dropping of a pencil; the rustle of paper shoved ruthlessly into an over-f satchel—the house seemed alive with such little, impossible stirrings, and Margaret could not rest. There! Listen! Wasn’t that from the direction of Helen’s own room? For the third time, Margaret pulled herself out of her chair, and softly, in idiotic pretence of hope, made yet another journey up the stairs. It was magic she was believing in now, not real-life possibility. It would be magic, not reality, that might even now make it possible that she should push open Helen’s bedroom door, and find the girl sleeping peacefully in her bed, all the terrors of this night wiped out as though they had never happened.

For the third time the magic failed her, as of course she had known it would. The room was still bare and empty in the moonlight, just as it had been before. Not
just
as it had been, though? Surely that atlas had been lying open before, in the middle of the desk? And that pile of exercise books—hadn’t they been spilling out of the satchel before, not tidily packed in like that? For one wild moment, Margaret’s heart leaped in lunatic joy, fancying that Helen must after all have been here
in the last few minutes, finishing her homework, tidying her things … and then the dull weight of sanity returned, and she saw the impossibility of such a happening. How could—or would —her granddaughter have crept into the house like that,
without
a word of greeting or explanation, and crept off up to her room to fiddle silently with school books, and then disappear? The notion was insane.

And yet there
were
noises going on in the house, Margaret felt sure that she was not imagining them. Little, odd, faint noises, now here, now there, unidentifiable, and yet somehow not quite like the inanimate creaking and stirring of
wainscotting
and old furniture. Feeding this faint, impossible remnant of hope, Margaret moved softly from room to room, sometimes peering into the empty moonlight, sometimes switching a light on to make certainty yet more certain—and then, all of a
sudden
, there was Mavis, standing like a ghost at the top of the stairs. In the midst of her anxiety, Margaret had more or less forgotten the girl’s existence, assuming, if she thought about it at all, that she was in bed in her room, sleeping off the effects of the pills she had so foolishly taken.

“Did
you
hear it, too, Mrs Newman?” Mavis’ tone was low and husky, she still looked half-drugged. “He’s here, you know. He’s in his room. I heard him!”

“Who? Maurice?” Again fantastic hope flared; for if Maurice was back, must not Helen be back as well?

“Yes … yes, of course … Not so loud, Mrs Newman, he’ll hear us! He’s after me, Mrs Newman, I know he is, he’s been creeping all about the house! I’ve heard him! He’s back in his room again now. Listen!”

The faintest of faint scratching sounds reached Margaret’s ears, and it did indeed seem to come from downstairs, from the direction of Derek’s study.

“Stay here!” ordered Margaret softly, and full of eerie hope —for if Maurice had indeed crept silently home, did it
necessarily
follow that Helen was safe and well, or could it mean exactly the reverse?—Margaret set off down the stairs.

And now, at last, the telephone was ringing.

At first, Margaret could not seem to take it in that it was Helen’s own voice speaking; it was as if the relief was too great, too sudden: it was beating in her head like great waves
crashing
on to a beach, and she could hear nothing.

“Granny!—Granny, can’t you hear me? This telephone’s absolutely mad—the pennies keep going straight through. I’ve been trying to make it work for hours. Can you hear me now? Listen, I’ve been having
such
a time! … And I’ve got some lovely news for you, too, about the field … I don’t know what to tell you first …!”

The waves of relief were thundering less loudly now: Margaret was able to think: to speak. All alone, in an empty railway station, over fifty miles away … at any other time the thought of her granddaughter thus situated at two o’clock in the morning would have filled Margaret with horror; but in comparison with her earlier fears it sounded now as safe as being in an armchair at home. As to the field, she could not think about that at all; nevertheless, the news lay warm and lovely in the back of her mind, stored safely away until she should have time to enjoy it. Meanwhile, all she could think of was that Helen was safe. Safe! Safe!

“Oh, Helen, I’m so
thankful
!
Oh,
I’m so thankful! You just can’t begin to imagine …! But listen, my darling, we must think how to get you home. If only I could get in touch with your mother, she must be passing somewhere quite near you by now…. I’d better get on to the nearest police station, I think, the nearest to wherever you are, and get them to fetch you. Tell me just where you are, dear, and I’ll arrange it all … and then stay right there, don’t speak to anybody, until the police come….”

Having learned of Helen’s exact whereabouts, Margaret rang off, and quickly set about discovering the number of the distant police station. She was aware of Mavis, round-eyed and still half-doped looking, leaning over the banisters, impatiently
waiting
for this irritating little interlude to be over, and for Margaret to attend once more to her, Mavis’, alarms. “Hurry up!” Mavis kept mouthing out of the shadows: and: “Oh, I’m so frightened …!”

Margaret kept gesturing to her for silence, but it was no use. Mavis, wrapped up in her own terrors, seemed beyond the range of rational communication on any other subject. She still had that drugged, tranced look about her—had she been silly enough to take yet a third sleeping pill, just when the first two were wearing off? What a pest—what an unutterable pest the girl could be … and
now,
of all times!

“Oh, be
quiet
!” hissed Margaret angrily. “Can’t you see I’m telephoning? I’m on a long-distance line … I’m trying to get through … it’s crackling terribly …”

Did the word sound like ‘cackling’ from up there on the landing? Or was it the actual crackling sounds from the
telephone
that sounded to Mavis’ half-drugged consciousness like the sounds of her nightmare? Was she half-dreaming now, half-asleep and half-awake as she stood, that Margaret was ringing up, deliberately, the beaked and cackling inhabitant of her dreams?

She began to scream.

“Stop it!” yelled Margaret furiously; “Stop screaming like that!” … but still the screams went on, louder … louder … and now a new note had come into them which told Margaret that they had crossed that mysterious boundary of the will, and were beyond control. Yet still she tried to silence them: “Stop it!” she cried again, uselessly. “You
must
stop it—you
must
! I’m trying to ring the police! The
police,
Mavis!”

But still the screams went on; and now, in spite of all she knew about Mavis and her hysterical silliness, Margaret herself began to feel the strange, contagious quality of panic seeping through the defences of her common sense. Her heart thumped, and her hand grew clammy as it gripped the telephone.

*

How much more, then, might this contagion be expected to pierce the defences of a much duller brain than Margaret’s, one much less well-informed, whose owner at this moment cowered in Maurice’s room? His intensive search among Maurice’s things had revealed no packets of bank notes such as he had been imagining; and his cautious exploration of the rest of the house had so far been equally fruitless. He wanted to continue the search, but the old lady was still on the prowl, listening and watching; it was clear that her suspicions had been aroused….

And now the screams! Screams without meaning or sense, but nevertheless conveying to every corner of the house their dark, archaic message: Danger! Terror! Flight!

To the silent intruder in Maurice’s room, panic was a physical rather than a mental thing. It was his hands, almost without help from his inert, bewildered mind which snatched from the mantelpiece the first weapon that came to hand—a heavy, narrow-necked pottery jar; and it was his feet, almost
without his plan or volition, that carried him pell-mell out of the room and across the hall towards the front door, just as the word “Police!” came powerfully from the figure at the telephone.  

‘Police’ too was a trigger-sound, needing no intervention from the intellect. As he dashed past, the hand holding the jar took a violent swipe in the direction of the telephoning figure. As he darted thankfully out into the freedom of the night, the figure slumped, quite slowly, to the ground.

“B
UT
, M
AVIS
,
HOWEVE
R
did it happen? Oh, if only I’d been there …!”

Where—when—had she heard these words before, and recently? Crouching over the silent figure outstretched on the floor by the telephone, Claudia naturally did not follow the futile little flicker of memory to its source. Any moment now the doctor would be here, and then they would know….

“Stop
crying,
Mavis!” she ordered sharply, getting to her feet. “We don’t even know yet that she
is
dead … and even if she is … it’s
hypocritical
of you to carry on like that, Mavis, you know it is! You always got on badly with her—and so did I! Look at me,
I’m
not crying! I have always resolved, Mavis, always, that when the time came I wouldn’t insult the true facts, the true, actual memories, with a display of hypocritical grief and sentimentality! I resolved that even in the first moment of shock, I would remember everything, exactly as it really was … all the quarrels … the annoyances …” Claudia’s head was held high, her tone calm and incisive, and she managed, somehow, to enunciate every one of the proud, premeditated words before her voice choked with tears.

*

Through the sweet summer dawn stepped Helen, lightly, light-headed almost, with exhaustion and with a pulsing,
sleepless
joy. So much had she survived this night, so much
experienced
! Only two fields away now lay her dear home, and neither weariness nor the tangling, dew-soaked grass could slow her eager steps, so uplifted did she feel by triumph, by the sheer joy of having survived, unaided, the ordeals of the night. What
a night to have come through! What a tale to be able to tell …!

Helen felt justly proud of her success in making her way home alone. When the police car promised by Granny had failed to come and pick her up in that deserted station yard, she had not panicked; she had realised that its non-appearance could be due to any one of a dozen reasons—muddles,
misunderstandings
, and delays of all sorts could have intervened between Granny’s intention and the actual arrival of a car. So after waiting quietly for an hour or so in the station yard, she had finally, and with due consideration, climbed over the fence into the station itself so as to wait more safely and comfortably on one of the seats on the platform. And when the booking office at last opened, and she learned that there would be a workmen’s train just before five, she had dealt calmly and competently with the discovery that she had not enough money for the fare. She had explained her situation with dignity to the clerk, and had filled in all the right forms and declarations that made it all right to travel without a ticket and to pay later on.

And so now here she was, all obstacles surmounted, and nearly home. How pleased they would be to see her! How wonderful a thing it was to survive, to come through, by relying on oneself alone! Helen felt the power of survival like a new and glorious gift that she had never known she possessed; an inner,
indestructible
core of triumph and of joy.

And now to find Granny, to tell her everything.

*

“Oh, but she’s dead, you poor dear! Your grandma—Mrs Newman—she’s dead!”

Helen stared into Mavis’ silly, tear-stained face, and did not speak. Joy still pulsed inside her, undiminished: it could not stop so suddenly.

Besides, Mavis was wrong; Mavis was such an idiot, she always got everything wrong. Granny
couldn’t
be dead. Not
Granny.
Not now, in the morning, with the first shafts of the sun already striking gold and glorious across the buttercups, and with the chickens just beginning to stir, making their little, soft, questioning noises as they waited trustfully for their morning mash. Still buoyed up by that new-found inner core of power and happiness, Helen pushed confidently past Mavis, and ran into the darkened house.