“Bars:
Bars across the night, across the day
Enclose the stony casing of my fears;
Cutting me off from all the singing years
That dawn outside, and fade, and pass away.”
There were eight more verses in similar vein, and Claudia knew at once that they were good, even though they rhymed. She could tell they were good not by listening to them (always a wearisome and uncertain criterion) but by looking at the reader; the anxious, defensive flicker of his eyelids as he tried to assess his audience’s reaction without raising his eyes from his MS.; the aggressive lift of the otherwise feeble chin at the beginning of each verse, as much as to say: ‘I will make you listen; you’ve got to know what I have to say’; and then, at the very end, the hurt, defensive shutter that closed over his face: All right, then; say what you like: I’m past caring.
“I thought that was absolutely marvellous!” said Claudia, leaning forward, her voice vibrant. “I thought it gave such a marvellous picture of .. of …”
The fact that she couldn’t for the life of her think what the picture was of didn’t seem at all to detract from the sincerity of her communication. She felt the warm waves of sympathy flowing out from herself towards the stranger, and as she watched his face she fancied that he was responding; the shutter was lifting a little … he was going to speak … and then, of course, everyone else had to spoil it all. They squealed in cacophonous chorus, like a litter of pigs. “Yes, it was marvellous!” “Really a wonderful poem!” “Such a lot of feeling!”
“Oh, but so sad!” came Miss Fergusson’s voice from across the room. “Have you really written eleven hundred poems all as sad as that? Don’t you ever write happy poems?”
What a question to ask of a real poet! Claudia tried to meet the young man’s eye with one of her wryly humorous glances, but he was still looking down at his poem; she had to keep the wryness and the humour in position for so long that her eyelids felt quite stiff by the time he looked up. He didn’t smile, but she felt sure that he had got her message. Not that she was sure herself what the message was exactly; but it was something rare, sophisticated; something that dissociated her utterly from these moronic old tabbies….
“After all—” Miss Fergusson was still questioning him with gentle, unremitting tactlessness—“you’re young; you must have quite a lot of happiness in your life. Aren’t you ever inspired to write about it?”
The young man looked at her cautiously.
“It depends what you mean by happiness,” he said at last; and for some reason the remark seemed to glitter with originality and wit. Claudia felt like clapping, as if he had scored the winning point in a long and closely reasoned debate. Once more she tried by glances to show her sympathy and appreciation; but such subtle methods of communication were utterly swamped now as the rattle of tea cups signified that the meeting could now break up into general conversation. Once again the young man was a target for questions and chatter.
He was answering politely enough now, and it was only after several minutes that Claudia began to notice that he was managing to do so without actually conveying any information of any kind. No, he wasn’t a student, exactly; and no, he didn’t have a job around here, not at the moment. No, he couldn’t really quite say yet what sort of work he was looking for, it was all rather difficult; and well, actually, he hadn’t had a job for some time, not that you could call a job; what with one thing and another, everything was a bit in the melting pot.
But of course he couldn’t keep this up for ever. Like a troop of huntsmen, the questions were closing in on him, closer and closer, cutting off his retreat, blocking one escape after another, slowly forcing him back and back to some central core of secrecy … something he was trying to keep hidden. Ruthless as birds of prey, thought Claudia, these nicely dressed women would peck and peck until the skeleton was laid bare.
Claudia felt righteous anger, like an illness, rising in her throat, behind her eyes. She stepped forward and touched the victim’s arm. “Come over here—I have something to show you,” she announced, clearly, and completely on the spur of the moment; and the voice of the woman who was currently badgering him faltered to a stop. A great sense of victory flooded Claudia’s soul; no St George could have led his princess more solicitously off her rock than Claudia led her protegé over to an alcove by the piano. The dragons meantime fell back in disorder, murmuring, glancing inquisitively towards the alcove, putting their heads together in greedy speculation, but knowing all the time that they had been defeated. It was Claudia alone, now, who was going to find out the young man’s secret—who was going to win his confidence, rather, because of course Claudia would respect his secret, whatever it was: she wouldn’t pry and pester after it like the others.
“I’m sorry—I haven’t really anything to show you,” she murmured, apologetic and half laughing. “I just thought you’d like to be rescued. They are the limit, aren’t they? I’m Claudia Wilkinson, by the way.”
“Oh.” For a moment Claudia thought he would say nothing more; but then he seemed to grasp the significance of her expectant look, and added: “I’m Maurice.” He was watching Claudia carefully while he spoke, as if daring her to ask for his surname as well. She smiled reassuringly right into his eyes.
“Maurice. Well, Maurice, I feel I must apologise for my fellow-members, bombarding you with questions like that! Such a cheek! And particularly when they’d just been listening to your poem—so obviously based on some sort of unhappiness….”
Claudia stopped, terrified that she had gone too far; but when she ventured to glance at him again, she saw to her delight that the blue eyes were looking into hers, and his face was beginning to quiver into response.
The response when it came, however, was disconcerting.
“Unhappiness? Is that what it conveyed to you? But that’s not what I meant at all! It was solitude that I was describing in that poem—in all my poems, actually. Wasn’t that clear? Which were the lines which made you think I mean unhappiness?”
He seemed really anxious to know, and Claudia was taken aback. She had thought that they were going to discuss his poem on some soulful plane which would not involve actually remembering what it was about, let alone quoting bits. She evaded the situation as best she could.
“Solitude. Yes. That’s what I meant, really. But I’d have said that solitude—loneliness, that is to say—is almost the same thing as unhappiness. Wouldn’t you?”
“Oh no!” He seemed to be looking beyond her, far away, at some vision of his own. “No, you’re quite wrong. I’m a happy person—very happy in my own particular way—but nevertheless I’ve experienced great solitude. Isolation, perhaps I should say. Isolation from my fellow-humans—I don’t suppose you can understand what I mean.”
The word “understand” was, as always, like a match to the tinder of Claudia’s soul.
“Of course I understand,” she exclaimed excitedly, “I’ve often felt isolated like that myself. I—”
“Oh, but I don’t think you have, Mrs Wilkinson,” he interrupted her gravely. “I don’t think you can mean what I mean at all. I mean actual isolation. You see, I’ve been pretty well out of human circulation for the best part of seven years.”
CHAPTER V
“AND SO THAT’S exactly why I offered him a lift!” declared Claudia, with a toss of her head, which was perhaps lost on Mavis in the darkness of the car. “But I suppose he was too embarrassed to accept, with all those censorious women looking on—I could have killed them! But anyway, he’s got my address, and he knows he can come round for a talk any evening. Any evening. You heard me inviting him, didn’t you? Didn’t you, Mavis?” she repeated, taking her eyes off the road for a moment to glance at her companion.
For Mavis was looking away from her, out through the car window at the dimly lit streets, where there could be nothing to see anyway. She wished Mavis would not seem so detached tonight, so apathetic. Why could she not share Claudia�
��s excitement over what had happened? Because it was exciting—even alarming, in some ways, though of course not to Claudia; for Claudia possessed that sympathy with the wrong-doers of the world which casts out fear.
“You see,” she continued, “it stands to reason the poor boy must have been in some kind of trouble, and I could tell that he was longing to confide in someone, someone he can trust. If only it hadn’t been for that nosey old fool coming up with her ears flapping, just at the wrong moment, then he would have confessed to me the whole thing, then and there. I could sense that he was going to, and it would have been such a relief, such a comfort to him. He’s kept it all bottled up for too long!”
Mavis turned her face from the window at last, but still she did not quite look at Claudia. Instead, she looked ahead of her through the windscreen.
“Kept what bottled up?” she asked, a little flatly. “I do think, Claudia—I mean, I know it isn’t my business, of course, because it’s your house, not mine—but I do wish you hadn’t given him our address like that. After all, you don’t know anything about him—he may be a criminal or something. That’s what they were all saying after he’d gone—that he must be a criminal. That he must have been in prison!”
All Claudia’s affection for Mavis returned with a rush at these words; though why this should have happened just now, just when Mavis was being really rather stupid, she could not imagine.
“But of course he must have been in prison!” she cried. “What else could he possibly have meant—‘More or less out of human circulation’? And for seven years! It must have been something pretty bad. ‘Bad’, I mean, in the conventional sense. As you know, Mavis, I don’t recognise any human behaviour as ‘bad’. Such a word doesn’t exist for me. Human beings are driven by their weaknesses—by the misfortunes of their childhood—by impulses that for one reason or another they cannot control. There is no such thing as badness—”
In the fervour of her disquisition Claudia had almost failed to notice the red lights. She brought the car to a stop with a flourish, just in time. “So you see, Mavis, that’s why it’s so very important that he shouldn’t be made to feel rejected. That’s why I felt so furious with all those smug women, shrinking away from him, rejecting him, the way they did, after he’d said—that.”
“I didn’t think they were rejecting him, exactly,” said Mavis timidly, anxious not to displease Claudia further. “I thought they seemed rather interested, really, sort of flocking round. And talking about it afterwards, too, after he’d gone—that woman with the fat arms and the bangles—don’t you remember?—‘I may have been sitting next to a murderer all evening!’ she kept saying. She seemed thrilled to bits!”
“Oh, but that’s just morbid,” explained Claudia briskly, starting up the car again as the lights changed. “A morbid, vicarious thrill—of course. That’s typical. But how many of them have invited him to their homes, I’d like to know? Or offered him a lift in their cars?”
Elation was beating in Claudia’s blood now, sparking off her senses in little jets of excitement; it was like being in love. She could do so much for this young man, this outcast of society. Whatever he had done, however wicked, shocking, it might be in the eyes of the world, she, Claudia, would not be shocked. He could lean on her as on a rock; she could protect him, inspire him, infuse new courage into him, just as she had infused it into Mavis.
Though in Mavis’ case, a new infusion must be sadly overdue, it seemed. She had gone quite white in the shadows of the car.
“But, Claudia,” she was weakly protesting, “I know it’s terribly brave of you, and all that, and I do admire you for it, you know I do. But wouldn’t it have been wiser to have found out a little about him first? I mean, if he’s been in prison, the Prisoners’ Aid Society, or someone, will know about him, won’t they? Then you could at least be sure that it wasn’t murder!”
Claudia could have hugged her—though again she could not have explained why. How conventional poor Mavis was at heart, in spite of everything!
“And suppose I found that it was murder?” she demanded exultantly. “What then? Do you really, think, Mavis, that that would make any difference to me? If anything, it would make me more anxious to help him, to offer him friendship, trust. The worse his crime, the more he would need it. Don’t you understand?”
Mavis looked up at her, helplessly.
“Yes. Oh yes, of course!” she answered, after a moment. “I think you’re wonderful, Claudia, quite wonderful! So brave!”
Now at last Mavis’ light eyes were raised to Claudia’s face in the familiar admiration. Claudia smiled in the darkness as she slowed down, and then drew up outside her home with a feeling of satisfaction so deep as to be total happiness. It was a pity that Mavis had to spoil it. As she scrambled out of the car she remarked, with a little shiver, looking up at the dark house:
“The only thing is, Claudia, have you thought of the rest of us at all? Especially just now, while Derek’s away. You’re not always in, are you: suppose this man were to come some evening while your mother’s alone in there? Or me, for that matter? Or Helen? Had you thought about Helen?”
CHAPTER VI
MAVIS’ LAST WORDS pricked horribly into Claudia’s elation, and she felt suddenly depressed and uneasy. Was it fear for her loved ones? Oddly, it felt more like anger—as if Mavis was deliberately, spitefully, trying to deprive her of something. Well, not deliberately, Claudia corrected herself hastily; poor Mavis’ spitefulness was unconscious, of course. But it was there, all the same—Claudia saw it clearly now. With subconscious malice, Mavis was hinting that all the courage, all the resourcefulness, might, in the event, have to be displayed by someone else, not Claudia at all.
“Nonsense!” she said sharply. “Of course I shall be there when he comes! He’ll phone, naturally. I’m the one he wants to see, after all. And as for Mother (somehow the picture of Mother being the brave one, the heroine of the drama, rankled most of all), if Mother’s scared, why, she needn’t come down and meet him at all! She can just stay up in her own room until he’s gone!”
By now they were indoors, in the hall, which, rather surprisingly, was pitch dark. Claudia felt her way across to the light and switched it on. Blinking in the sudden glare, she peered at her watch. “Only a quarter past eleven,” she said to Mavis, in a somewhat lowered voice. “I suppose everyone must have gone to bed early for once. I’m rather glad, really, I was afraid we were going to walk back into a right row with Mother about Helen’s not being in yet. Mother makes such a fuss always. It’s crazy, really, the girl’s fifteen already—she’s almost grown up. Let’s make some coffee. I feel like some proper, strong coffee to wash away the taste of that dishwater tea of Daphne’s!”
“And is she in?” Mavis was following Claudia into the bright, well-equipped kitchen, which had been left scrubbed and tidy as always, and smelling faintly of Vim. Mother was certainly a blessing in a kitchen, in spite of her tempers and her fusses.
“Is who in?” asked Claudia absently, rummaging in the glass wall-cupboard for coffee. “Real or Ness?”
“Real—if it’s not too much trouble,” answered Mavis deprecatingly, and then resumed, with timid perseverance: “Helen, I mean. You were saying Mrs Newman would make a fuss about her—is she in?”
“Oh. Helen. Yes.” Claudia emerged from the cupboard, clutching the required tin. “Oh, yes, I feel sure she is. She must be. Mother would never have switched out all the lights if Helen wasn’t in. In fact, she wouldn’t have gone to bed at all, she’d be right here, this minute, in her slippers and her dressing-gown, nagging me about it. It’s always like that—you’re usually in bed yourself, Mavis, by then, so you don’t notice it; but honestly, I sometimes wonder if I can put up with it much longer. It’s getting me down—it really is!”
To both of them, there was a lovely cosy sound to the words—the prospect of a real, long, heart-to-heart talk about how difficult Mother was getting. This was a subject on which Mavis was always at
her very, very best—a marvellous companion. But by tacit agreement, they did not pursue the subject immediately; wait till the coffee was ready, the cups set out, the chairs drawn up to the table—… Now, now at last, full, total enjoyment could be derived from Mother’s shortcomings.
“You see,” Claudia began, stirring her coffee slowly, almost voluptuously, “I do try to understand Mother’s point of view in this. I really do. I tell myself that she’s old; that she’s out of touch with the modern generation. That she herself had such a narrow, repressed girlhood that she’s been—in a way—crippled for life. Mentally crippled. It’s not her fault at all. I tell myself all this, and I try to feel sorry for her—I do feel sorry for her. But all the same, however little it’s really her fault, it still comes rather hard on me. Sometimes I just don’t know where to turn—nobody understands the burden it lays on me—”
“Oh, but I do understand—of course I understand!” Mavis’ words seemed almost to fall over each other in her eagerness to show herself on Claudia’s side, an understanding friend. “I’ve watched you sometimes, Claudia, and I could cry for you, I really could. When your mother is being so unreasonable, and you so patient all the time, and so understanding. As you say, you do understand her point of view, such as it is. But, of course, you mustn’t give in to her about this sort of thing. It wouldn’t be right. After all, it’s Helen’s life and happiness that must be considered. Your mother’s had her life!”
“Of course! That’s just it!” cried Claudia, enchanted by the sound of all her own sentiments pouring forth so accurately from Mavis’ lips. “It’s Helen. If it was just me who suffered I might give in, just for the sake of family peace. But it isn’t. It’s Helen. She must be allowed the freedom suitable for a girl of her age, she must! When I remember what I suffered from these restrictions of Mother’s! Only, I was different, you see, I had the strength to break away. I don’t think Helen has. She’s more like Derek that way. But anyway, that makes it all the more important for me to stick to my guns—fight her battles for her, you might say, until she’s strong enough to fight them for herself. And so that’s what I do. Well, you’ve watched me, Mavis, haven’t you, a hundred times. But then, sometimes, I get quite furious, I can’t help it, and I think, well, hang it all, she’s my child, why should there have to be any battles? Why can’t I say what she can or can’t do, like any other mother? It seems outrageous that her grandmother should have any say in the matter at all! Don’t you think so?”
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