Prisoner's Base Read Free

upwards. “What’s the matter now ?”
    The last word, wearily emphasised, suggested that Margaret had already made a dozen unreasonable complaints this morning; Claudia’s whole stance was that of one braced ready for the last straw. Claudia had always been an adept at putting you in the wrong before you had so much as opened your mouth; Margaret had been waiting for her to grow out of this unlovable talent ever since she was thirteen: but she never had. Indeed, she was getting better at it, and now, at nearly forty, she could switch off most family arguments before they began at all; like turning the water off at the main in some depressing outhouse to which she alone had access.
    But she wasn’t going to switch off this argument; Margaret swooped to the attack.
    “Who’s that man in the field? What’s he supposed to be doing?”
    “What man?” But Claudia herself must have felt this to be pointlessly unconvincing—pointlessly, since her mother would certainly have to be told in the end—“Oh—do you mean Mr Marvin?” she amended, with slightly forced guilelessness. “Oh, he’s just the man from Thoroughgoods’. You know, Thoroughgood and Willows. You pass their office every time you go down the High Street! You must know them!”
    Of course Margaret knew them; and of course Claudia knewthat she knew. The barely veiled suggestion that her mother had grown so forgetful as not to recognise the name of the chief estate agent in the district was a typical Claudia-ism—a calculated manoeuvre to belittle and undermine her opponent on irrelevant issues before the real argument had even begun. This was to be a real fight, then. All right: if Claudia was going to deploy all her best weapons, then Margaret was going to deploy hers too; the chief of them being, of course, the fact that the field was hers.
    “And what, may I ask,” she enquired, with as much dignity as was compatible with making sure that Claudia could hear her over the banisters—“What is the man from Thoroughgood and Willows doing in my field? What possible business can he have there? I didn’t ask him to come!”
    “Now, don’t panic, Mother. Just relax. Why is it that women of your generation always have to be so tense? Naturally, the field has to be valued; and to be valued it has to be looked at. Doesn’t it? Surely that’s common sense? They have to send a man along. To look at it.” Claudia was emphasising the simplest of the one-syllable words as if she was hoping that these, at least, might come within the range of her mother’s intelligence.
    “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 tothink, 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