polo-necked jersey and jeans! But even as this thought passed through Margaret’s mind, the young man shifted his position in his chair, leaned forward—and now, suddenly, as he sat forward like this, looking so intently into Claudia’s face, and with the light falling right across his brow, something was revealed that was not quite youthful. Not wrinkles, or crowsfeet, or anything as simple as that; more a dull, tarnished look, as of energies frittered away—and itclashed strangely with the almost unnatural brightness of his blue, darting eyes. And there was a slyness, too, that you noticed just now and then if you kept watching him; it would flash for a second as the blue glance slid sideways; it would quiver momentarily in the movement of his mouth as he pronounced some quite ordinary word. Oh, it was so slight, so indefinable … and now, here he was again, guileless and eager as an undergraduate, laying down the law about existentialism, and about the outdatedness and futility of all the ideas mankind has travailed over right up to the moment in history when he, Maurice, began to put forth his ideas.
And Claudia hers, of course. Claudia, you could see, was loving it: her very own murderer; and flattery thrown in as well. No wonder she looked like the cat with the cream. She hadn’t yet switched on the main light; instead she had put on the little low lamp by the bookcase, and as she sat forward on her stool, her face in shadow, and the light just glinting on her burnished hair, she looked statuesque, benign. Not silly and conceited at all. It gave Margaret a little jolt of surprise to see her looking like that; half pleased, half bewildered, she wondered if she understood her daughter at all; if, perhaps, she had misjudged entirely her motives in taking up with this young man?
He was talking about his poems now, quoting bits unforgiveably , and Margaret suppressed a yawn. His poems were not nearly as interesting as his conversation, and the staccato, aggressively anti-sing-song manner of his recitation tended only to obscure what sense there might otherwise have been. Margaret fancied that Claudia was bored by them, too, for although her air of rapt attention, her little murmurs of interest and sympathy, were maintained as before, to Margaret’s sharp observation they now seemed a little forced. There was restlessness now, rather than absorption, hidden away inside her still sustained and graceful pose.
But it was difficult to do anything to redirect a conversation in which so many commonplace topics must by tacit agreement be avoided. Claudia had briefed Margaret beforehand, with great explicitness and urgency, about all the questions she mustn’t ask their guest for fear of embarrassing him. His surname —his lodgings—his friends—his family—his job—all were taboo; and with the banning of these, of course, went automatically the banning of a number of innocuous topics which might prove to be tenuously related to one or other of them. Hobbies? But these implied a settled way of life, such as he had presumably never had. Plays, films? But if he had been in prison for seven years, he would have missed them all. Books? Did they have anything to read in prison, apart from the Bible and improving works? Maybe they did, nowadays, but Margaret didn’t know, and wasn’t going to risk it. If either of them were going to put their foot in it, let it be Claudia.
“You see,” the young man was saying, still riveted to the subject of his poems, “I’m not saying they’re any good. I don’t suppose they are. They may be quite horrendous—don’t be afraid to say so, if that’s what you think, I shan’t be offended. But one thing I think you must admit, they’re not derivative. Are they now?”
Thus appealed to for a personal opinion Claudia at once made herself alert and vivid again.
“Indeed they aren’t!” she assented eagerly. “They seem to me to be absolutely original—fresh—”
“Because
And Claudia hers, of course. Claudia, you could see, was loving it: her very own murderer; and flattery thrown in as well. No wonder she looked like the cat with the cream. She hadn’t yet switched on the main light; instead she had put on the little low lamp by the bookcase, and as she sat forward on her stool, her face in shadow, and the light just glinting on her burnished hair, she looked statuesque, benign. Not silly and conceited at all. It gave Margaret a little jolt of surprise to see her looking like that; half pleased, half bewildered, she wondered if she understood her daughter at all; if, perhaps, she had misjudged entirely her motives in taking up with this young man?
He was talking about his poems now, quoting bits unforgiveably , and Margaret suppressed a yawn. His poems were not nearly as interesting as his conversation, and the staccato, aggressively anti-sing-song manner of his recitation tended only to obscure what sense there might otherwise have been. Margaret fancied that Claudia was bored by them, too, for although her air of rapt attention, her little murmurs of interest and sympathy, were maintained as before, to Margaret’s sharp observation they now seemed a little forced. There was restlessness now, rather than absorption, hidden away inside her still sustained and graceful pose.
But it was difficult to do anything to redirect a conversation in which so many commonplace topics must by tacit agreement be avoided. Claudia had briefed Margaret beforehand, with great explicitness and urgency, about all the questions she mustn’t ask their guest for fear of embarrassing him. His surname —his lodgings—his friends—his family—his job—all were taboo; and with the banning of these, of course, went automatically the banning of a number of innocuous topics which might prove to be tenuously related to one or other of them. Hobbies? But these implied a settled way of life, such as he had presumably never had. Plays, films? But if he had been in prison for seven years, he would have missed them all. Books? Did they have anything to read in prison, apart from the Bible and improving works? Maybe they did, nowadays, but Margaret didn’t know, and wasn’t going to risk it. If either of them were going to put their foot in it, let it be Claudia.
“You see,” the young man was saying, still riveted to the subject of his poems, “I’m not saying they’re any good. I don’t suppose they are. They may be quite horrendous—don’t be afraid to say so, if that’s what you think, I shan’t be offended. But one thing I think you must admit, they’re not derivative. Are they now?”
Thus appealed to for a personal opinion Claudia at once made herself alert and vivid again.
“Indeed they aren’t!” she assented eagerly. “They seem to me to be absolutely original—fresh—”
“Because
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