Free Possession by Celia Fremlin Page A

times the almost indecent glee that we both feel at the sight of luggage piled in the hall ready for a child’s departure seems like a major virtue. We realise then how special we are, and how unlike the ordinary run of mothers. No one needs to lecture us in the magazines: we are the elite; we are the ones who have won the battle against maternal possessiveness.
    Yes, we have won it; and if, now and again, we get the feeling that it was somehow much too easy, we try to push the thought away. For victory is sweet, and having won it, no one likes to feel that it was after all only a phoney war.
    And that’s why we were so pleased, Peggy and I, to have found a real, flesh-and-blood example of a mother who had failed to win this victory. We fell upon the situation with innocent zest, as if it had been a well-cooked meal. It was all so perfect, you see; she was a psychiatrist’s dream, was Mrs Redmayne; she had everything. An immature personality ; an only son; a dead husband to provide an excuse for emotional blackmail. She also had no friends, no job, no outside interests; she had the time and the money to lead a life so empty that her wretched son was by now the only thing she could find to fill it, and onto him (we told each other) she was pouring all the unbridled emotional energy of a frustrated, idle woman. Obviously, the Oedipus thing was in full spate, with Mervyn as its unhappy victim.
    Or something. Anyway, whatever the exact nature of Mrs Redmayne’s neurosis, she was clearly the kind of mother that we could pride ourselves on not being, and for a little while we gave ourselves up to the full enjoyment of this negative glory. Or at least Peggy did. I couldn’t feel quite the same gusto myself, because, for me, it was important that the unfortunate son should turn out to be at least a nice chap; a potentially good husband, and a presentable family acquisition, whom I could show off to my friends. Of course, he might still prove to be all this, but it was impossible not to fear that his mother’s neurosis might in some way have rubbed off onto him. Hastily, I put together the case for the defence.
    “The hopeful thing about the whole business is the fact that Mervyn stands up to her,” I asserted, with a slight emphasis on the Christian name; Peggy had been referring to him as “the poor goop” and “the silly great boob” just a little bit more often than I, as prospective mother-in-law, could really relish. “I mean,” I went on. “He humours herto the extent of living at home, and staying with her most weekends; but he certainly doesn’t give in about everything. They had several little brushes while we were there; and he certainly stuck to his guns about marrying Sarah. He even seemed to imply that he and Sarah would be moving to Bristol and leaving Mum behind in Bayswater!”
    “Good for him!” Peggy nodded approvingly. “It’s all quite exciting, really, isn’t it? Fancy Sarah married ! Goodness , I wish someone would marry my Pat! But that’s the trouble with marriage; men always seem to pick just the girls you could have got rid of anyway. You know—the ones who can type, or teach, or something; I suppose it’s the ones who know how to do that sort of thing who also know how to catch a man. Oh, for the days of arranged marriages! In the Middle Ages, if you’d had a girl like Pat, who didn’t want to take A-levels, and couldn’t bear office work, and cried over her UCCA forms until they were too smudged to send in—why, you’d have married her off to some knight on a white charger, so dumb he wouldn’t know any better till he got her home. What a marvellous system!” I agreed, cautiously; but pointed out that these benefits, like most others, had to be paid for.
    “There was the dowry,” I reminded her. “The dumb knight wouldn’t be that dumb—he’d remember to come down on Harold for something like a third of his riches.”
    “Just like the Income Tax people,” retorted