Scandalize My Name

Patrick Sweet got off the bed; a small, dark, restless young man, tense and on edge despite his effort at a lackadaisical manner.

"You there, duckie?"

"Come right in, Mrs. Haggis."

"Didn't like to march in on you, case you was dressin'. My, don't you look a treat! Y'ought ter dress 'er up more often, do 'er good," she remarked to Pat Sweet, her tone carrying an undercurrent of disapproval.

"Naow, you run along and 'ave a good time. We'll be as snug as a bug in a rug, won't we, dearie?" she apostrophised, the small face peering at her through the cot bars. "Say bye-bye to Mum then."

Out in the street husband and wife started the long climb from the slums at the bottom of the hill to Magnolia House at the top.

From her secret peephole in the hedge of Magnolia Cottage, Theresa Jonas stared with an intensity of envy at the big house; the tall windows, with their rich hangings, bowls of flowers, occasionally frames for the family scenes within, filled her with hard restlessness. She sought in her small shrewd mind for words of denigration to ease the pressure of her hate. Sometimes this was effective, but at others she played with the idea of flames, merciless flames licking the smooth panelling, devouring the shining silk, reducing the proud house to a pile of smoking rubble. Or if some calamity of disgrace...

"Theresa, Ther-ESA!" her mother's shrill, irritated voice made the girl jump. She looked anxiously down at her party dress and crept round to the kitchen door, keeping in the shelter of the hedge; she knew from experience that the down-stairs lavatory could give her an alibi.

Upstairs in her dreary bedroom Barbara Jonas sat at her mirror, applying make-up without art to a sallow complexion and struggling with greasy dun hair. In the small bathroom near by, Edouard (meticulously pronounced for the distinction his French name was felt to confer on the family) hummed a dance tune as he brushed his hair. A narrowly built man with rather pretty good looks, he enjoyed a party where a little trivial flirtation could be carried on surreptitiously under cover of the general jollity. If it attracted his wife's censure, well, that was nothing very new. He brought out a pair of nail scissors and trimmed the small neat moustache above his small neat mouth.

"Edouard!"

"Coming, dear."

"Aren't you ready yet?" she asked. "That girl's disappeared and she's probably ruining her dress in the garden. Send her up to me, will you?"

Edouard squinted ruefully at his half-trimmed moustache in the mirror before he obediently turned to go. Somewhere downstairs a door shut.

"Oh, there she is. Thank goodness for that. Well, you can make the boiler up, and then you'd better feed the cat. Tell Theresa I want her."

When the girl came in her mother subjected her to a long scrutiny. She was a tall lanky child of thirteen, almost completely lacking in any natural grace of posture and movement.

 

Her protuberant eyes were of a cold pale blue and she had her father's small pretty mouth, slightly disfigured by a tendency to projecting teeth. Her light brown hair might have been pretty but it was drawn back over-severely into tight plaits. She simpered now under her mother's stare, but receiving no response began to feel scared and drooped disconsolately as she waited for a rebuke.

"Hold yourself up, child!" Barbara's tone had a hint of savagery in it; her objective study of her daughter had precipitated an unwelcome comparison with the Southey girls. Her inward resentment was flared against them. Suppose, she thought, Ivan had already... she pushed the thought away and stood up, smoothing her own oyster-coloured dress over her thick hips. She wasn't fat, but short and stumpy, only about an inch taller than her daughter. As their eyes met, something in the child's crushed look made her feel compunction and she pulled the girl to her in a sudden rough embrace.

"Now get your coat and wait downstairs. Tell Daddy to come up, will you?"

When Edouard came in she looked at him hard and said: "You'd better be careful how much you drink. It would be unwise to become too talkative."