Scandalize My Name

CHAPTER ONE

The house had stood upon the hill for nearly three hundred years; even before Wren's St. Paul's rose in its splendour of new white stone upon the skyline, it was there, the many windows in its rose-brick walls looking out towards London. A London that had now long since engulfed it, taking the meadows and the home farm and all but one cottage, but leaving the great house bulked above a walled garden that still retained the fragrance of an earlier time. Foursquare across the hill-top it stood; its mighty roofs supported by carved white modillions; its tall windows, wearing here and there a round wrought-iron balcony like a diminutive crinoline, looking down upon the roaring traffic that thundered up the hill as once they had gazed upon nervous galloping horsemen urging thudding hooves up the slope.

Caroline, too, stared out at the restless traffic, her mind's eye revolted by the memory of Ivan Sweet's pale cold face and the explosive malice that had seethed behind his dead brown eyes...

 

It had all begun with such deceptive quietness when he took on the basement flat nine months before; he had been quietly persuasive, well mannered, undemonstratively enthusiastic. And Naomi had spoken so warmly of him. Yet from his basement redoubt his personality had invaded the house, gently, imperceptibly, touching with leprous fingers.

Oh God, how can I go through with this party tonight, knowing he's there, she asked herself, and turned restlessly from the window. She stared, unsoothed at the great drawing-room, warm with summer sun and scented with roses and it came to her with a new shock of horror that she no longer belonged in this peaceful room. She had become a stranger in her own house.

A rustle sounded at the door, and she turned to see her daughter Elaine in a shimmering blue-green gown.

"Oh, Mother," said the girl, "I've been looking for you. Could you do me up please?"

Caroline Southey hooked the tight-fitting dress across her daughter's warm, fair-skinned back; the girl's white shoulders and slender neck rose out of the gown to bear a graceful head of dark red hair. How young her flesh is, thought her mother, and how perfect; her unsteady fingers achieved the last fastening and she said:

"You look wonderful."

Elaine smiled happily, "It does suit me, doesn't it?"

She looked down at the shining silk, swinging her hips a little to see it move. Caroline stared at her as she stood there glowing in the evening sun and all her fears welled up afresh. Oh God, she prayed, dear God, she's innocent. Don't let her be hurt. Don't let harm come to her through us!

 

"I have such a strange feeling tonight, Mother, as if something absolutely tremendous were going to happen. Isn't it silly?"

Caroline's smile felt stiff on her lips.

"No, love, of course not...come, we must hurry."

William Southey frowned as he tied his black tie for the third time. He was a tall, dark man with a wide forehead which receding hair had made still larger. He wore a small pointed beard and a black velvet dinner jacket, but he did not aim at the conscientiously flamboyant, and the face reflected in the mirror was unselfconscious and austere.

He rose rather wearily and began to put away his paint-stained working clothes; his wife's gown was laid out across their double bed and for a moment he stood looking down at it. A painful sadness came in to his face and he rubbed his broad painter's hand across his forehead as though to push away the thoughts that lay beneath the bone. Macbeth's words thundered across his mind 'What's done cannot be undone'. But the moment passed. I'll be damned if I want it undone, he thought, and Ivan Sweet's face faded slowly from his mind like a receding nightmare.

He could hear his wife's voice now from the adjoining room where she was speaking softly to the baby, and a moment later she came in. They exchanged a brief strained smile.

"Shall I help you into your dress?" he asked.

"Thank you, Will." She stepped into the gown and stood still while he fastened it. Automatically William's eyes registered the slight familiar figure, the soft, wavy hair, greying now; and the sense of unreality deepened. As he finished their eyes met in the glass and for a moment he saw clearly in her face the girl he had married more than twenty years ago. But Caroline sat down suddenly as if she were very tired.