Scandalize My Name

"Your supper, Mr. Paignton."

Cecil Paignton put down his razor, rinsed the soap off his face and carefully dried it. He folded the small towel with precision and replaced it under the basin. The sight of his bare neck in the mirror distressed him and he reached for the collar and tie on the chair beside him, then remembering the woman waiting at the door, he was flustered and crossed quickly to take his supper tray.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said, unwillingly appeasing.

"Well, if it's cold, I can't 'elp it." Mrs. Jarrow stared at him with horrid interest. Cecil flinched under the regard of those cold, pale eyes; he felt particularly vulnerable without his collar and tie—he wanted to cover his throat with his hands.

"Well, I must give Jarrow 'is supper." The landlady creaked off down the stairs whence the smell of cabbage drifted up.

Cecil closed the door with relief; he resisted the temptation to lock it—he'd feel a fool when she came back for the tray.

His mind revolved ceaselessly in anxious circles as he tied his tie and brushed his thinning hair to meticulous neatness; should he go to the party, or shouldn't he? Did anyone believe those unspeakable aspersions of Sweet's? Would anyone throw them up at him? Could he manage to laugh as if it didn't matter?

He ought to go, yes of course he ought...his thoughts scattered like frightened sheep but soon he found them again huddled together in the familiar pen; the unspeakable injury that Ivan Sweet had done him had undone the work of years, frustrated a triumph that would have been the justification for all this indignity... His eyes roved the room again, resting with distaste on the sordid tray by the window—even the drinking glass dirty as usual, he noticed with disgust.

But now it's over, he reminded himself. I must cease to be upset by Ivan Sweet or all will be for nothing...it's part of the past...the past.

On a sudden surge of confidence he settled briskly to his supper. Just a part of the past...like a talisman he repeated the phrase as his mood showed a tendency to ebb...a part of the past, a part of the past. Carefully he brushed every speck of dust from his dark blue suit and his trilby hat. He pulled on his gloves; at the door he looked back, his slippers lay pigeon-toed where he had slipped them off. He returned and placed them neatly side by side under the bed. He took a pipe from the rack on his desk, but, about to put it in his pocket, his hand stopped uncertainly. Carefully he replaced it in the rack. He habitually performed small acts of self-denial in the hope of buying good fortune from fate. And so armed he set out for the party at Magnolia House.

In the turquoise bathroom of her attic flat high up under the roofs of Magnolia House, Naomi Moore stepped out of her scented bath. It was hot up there under the old tiles on this summer evening and the casement was opened wide in the dormer window. As she slowly dried herself Naomi idly watched the steam drifting out, hazing the view that stretched away beneath her far over London to the distant Surrey hills. She sighed as she slipped on her housecoat; she was very tired and felt unequal to the effort of the evening ahead. But I can't afford to be tired yet, she thought; it's essential that I'm at that party. She stood there, frowning unconsciously, while her mind wandered back into the day and abruptly slid off again. She was so still that a pigeon, its breast rosy in the sun, strutted unconcernedly along the wide leaden pathway, the seventeenth-century equivalent of the meagre modern gutter, that ran only a few feet below her window. At last she walked briskly into her bedroom and settled herself at her mirror. Her long, well-kept hands moved over her make-up tray picking out cosmetics and applying them with the ease of long practice. The familiar routine soothed and calmed her. Random thoughts sprang up here and there in the calm, like weeds between flagstones; I should have realised, she thought, that Ivan was a man born to disturb. Perhaps any man so attractive to women was likely to prove—disruptive. She remembered other men who had also been attractive...she caught sight of her own face in the mirror with unbelief...this smart but ageing woman in the glass, could it really be herself? Had it all come to this, the years of her power over men, her all-preoccupying enjoyment of them—and theirs of her? Her husband had been dead for nearly twenty years now and no children had lived...a vivid memory took possession of her without warning, the baby daughter who had died before she was a year old. Where would I be tonight, and what manner of woman, if she had lived, Naomi wondered now? Oh God, but I'm tired. I must get away from all this soon. She shuddered, thinking of that night not long ago when she had woken in the small hours, half stupefied with gas and had just managed to stagger out on to the landing before she collapsed. And only a few days later, she had taken a fall down the long curving flight of stairs from her attic flat. She was only bruised and shaken (even as a child she had had a talent for falling without harm); but she realised now as she looked ruefully at her face that the fall had taken it out of her. She rose wearily and took a dress from her wardrobe; I must go downstairs now and play my part at the party, but after that I'll get right away from here.