Prisoner's Base Read Free Page A

detect a defensive wariness: Claudia was bracing herself against an expected explosion. Clearly, she had already taken some step which was going to rouse her mother’s fury. But what, exactly, was it? Had she actually put the field up for sale already? But how could she? It wasn’t hers, it was Margaret’s. Even though they had all lived here together all these years, and naturally Derek and Claudia had always acted as master and mistress of the house, as became the married couple—nevertheless, it was all Margaret’s really; it was in her name, it was hers by law—though naturally you wouldn’t want to bring the law into a family argument. Still, there it was, you didn’t have to forget it entirely. Claudia certainly hadn’t, as you could tell by all this defensive needling and sneering. If Claudia had had a legal right to sell the field, she wouldn’t waste time being nasty to people; she would simply sell it.
    “You see,” Claudia was explaining carefully, as if to a child, “when something like this happens, the value of a property changes. It becomes more valuable. I’d have thought that was so obvious—I can’t really see your difficulty?”
    “But you can see yours, I hope!” snapped Margaret, her temper and her courage mounting together “Your difficulty is that the field doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to me, and so you can’t do anything with it whatsoever without my approval. It’s my field, and I’m not selling, whatever its value is. So you’re wasting your time finding out about it, you and Derek. I don’t care if it’s worth ten million pounds, I’m not selling it. So go and tell that black creature out there to go and crawl back into his underground office, switch on the strip-lighting, and stop wasting his precious time out here in the sunshine! Tell him you made a stupid mistake, that you had no business to ask him to come, and if he’s still there in five minutes’ time I’ll have him up for trespassing! Tell him that!”
    For a few seconds mother and daughter faced each other, measuring one another’s strength. They had done this at intervals , Margaret reflected, ever since Claudia was five months old, and the texture of the feeling hadn’t changed at all. As she looked at her daughter down the length of the stairs, it seemed no time at all since she had looked under the hood ofthe pram into those same imperious blue eyes; had watched those same lips quiver, poised for action, seeming even then to be assessing the exact moment at which it would be profitable to split open in ear-shattering howls. The fact that the howls had been replaced over the years first by shrill argument and then by caustic innuendo seemed to make absolutely no difference at all.
    The fact that she could remember Claudia in her pram whereas Claudia couldn’t gave Margaret a sudden irrational feeling of vast power. Age, for all its weaknesses, did give you the upper hand, somehow. Why, she could remember a world that had kept ticking over perfectly satisfactorily without Claudia in it at all! She almost laughed in her relief.
    “Well, that’s all I wanted to say, dear,” Margaret concluded —gently, as becomes the victorious one. “I just thought I should let you know that I’m not selling the field, not at any price at all. So you and Derek can put the whole thing right out of your minds and not worry any more about it!”
    She turned to make a fittingly dignified escape back into her bedroom. She was determined, if Claudia’s voice should pursue her, flinging at her some final cutting remark, she would pay no attention; she would not give Claudia the satisfaction of knowing that she had even heard.
    But trust Claudia to think of the one thing—the one and only solitary thing—that could make her mother break this dignified resolution.
    “I’m glad Helen’s not here,” said Claudia—not loudly, but with a bitterness that carried up the stairs better than any angry shouting. “I’d