Fremlin Prisoner's Base

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ISBN: 978-0-571-31291-7
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 182 Seiten

Celia Fremlin's sixth novel Prisoner's Base (1967) served further proof of her mastery at uncovering anxieties and even terrors in the domestic sphere. It tells of grandmother Margaret, her daughter Claudia, and Claudia's daughter Helen, who share a home from which Claudia's husband is frequently absent. Claudia has a penchant for taking strangers under her wing and into the house, the danger being that they never leave. But a different danger is proposed by Maurice, a self-styled poet who boasts that he has served seven years in prison for manslaughter. 'Haunting...Fremlin continues to prove that the modern horror story makes the traditional Gothic one no more than a child's make-believe.' Los Angeles Times 'Gripping... a tense thriller that keeps one in suspense until the very last line.' Manchester Evening News

Celia Fremlin (1914-2009) was born in Kent and spent her childhood in Hertfordshire, before studying at Oxford (whilst working as a charwoman). During World War Two, she served as an air-raid warden before becoming involved with the Mass Observation Project, collaborating on a study of women workers, War Factory. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, moved to Hampstead and had three children. In 1968, their youngest daughter committed suicide aged 19; a month later, her husband also killed himself. In the wake of these tragedies, Fremlin briefly relocated to Geneva. In 1985, she married Leslie Minchin, with whom she lived until his death in 1999. Over four decades, Fremlin wrote sixteen celebrated novels - including the classic summer holiday seaside mystery Uncle Paul (1959) - one book of poetry and three story collections. Her debut The Hours Before Dawnwon the Edgar Award in 1960.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fremlin, Celia

Leseproben

CHAPTER I

IN THESE DAYS there are few sights more terrifying than that of a well-dressed man with a notebook looking at a piece of land.

As Margaret stood watching him from the upstairs landing window, she kept telling herself that it was of no significance; that she was just a suspicious old woman to be giving it a thought. Why shouldn’t he just be a passer-by, happening to pause at the gate to enjoy the sight of a field of buttercups under the morning sun? Admittedly, he didn’t look the sort of man who would enjoy anything, least of all a field of buttercups; but there, you shouldn’t really judge a man by his looks; who knows how many a joyous soul may lurk gleefully behind a lined and miserable face?

But what about that dark, neat suit—a suit of ill-omen, if ever there was one? Why, poor fellow, perhaps he had just escaped from his office for an hour; and the notebook?—why, it might be anything—a diary … a record of the wild flowers of the neighbourhood … and all the while Margaret’s heart was thumping, deep down inside her, the dark, unmistakable rhythm of disaster.

The field was going to be built on. The man had not yet so much as lifted the latch of the gate; he had not yet taken his horrible measuring implements from about his person, but Margaret felt already that the field was doomed. Doomed now, in the glory of the year, with the buttercups just out and the blossom still pink on the two gnarled old apple trees; now, when in their domain of sun and straw Margaret’s Rhode Island Reds were enjoying their first dust-baths of the year; when Claribel had gone properly broody at last and was settling down beautifully on her clutch of eggs after all the trouble and the worry…. It was now … now, in the time sacred to the sunshine and to new life, that this black, starched, polished monster had chosen to come and look at her field with his small, cement-mixer eyes….

Her field! Yes, of course it was hers really … they couldn’t do a thing without consulting her, of course they couldn’t …! In one swift movement, quick as a girl in spite of her sixty-odd years, Margaret drew in from the window and whirled herself across the landing to lean over the banisters.

“Claudia!” she called—annoyed, as she heard the urgent syllables echoing round the draughty passages downstairs, that she had allowed her dismay to sound in her voice. She had meant to sound calm, authoritative, right from the beginning. “Claudia! Are you there?”

Footsteps from the dining-room, brisk and irritable already, clicking with the ostentatious patience of the one who has to humour a sentimental old fool. So she knows, reflected Margaret shrewdly, listening to those footsteps: she knows just what it’s all about; let her not try any wide-eyed surprise on me …!

“What is it, Mother?” Claudia, looking both striking and competent in a pair of dark slacks and a loose, brilliant shirt-blouse, leaned against the mahogany spiral of the banisters, staring 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 knew that 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 to think, 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 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 of the pram into those same imperious blue eyes; had watched those same lips...