Scandalize My Name

"I do wish Richard would come in," she said. "It's not like him to be so late for Elaine's party..."

"I expect he's with Yolande... He'll be in soon. How's Elaine?"

"Radiant!" She busied herself with cosmetics, frowning a little before saying awkwardly, "Will?"

"Hmm?"

"She's in a dream...on top of the world...I would like her to have as much of tonight as she can without a shadow on it..." Their eyes met and Will nodded.

"Of course I'll do what I can," he said. He smiled suddenly, "Our little redhead, twenty-one and lovely as the day..." He stopped abruptly, his head raised to listen.

"It's all right," said Caroline quickly. "It's Richard."

"Hallo, Dick, you're late," called his father and the boy's voice reached them from a distance. "Oh hell! I won't be long."

"You shouldn't be unkind to that boy, Yolande, he loves you." Henry Meade sighed at the mutinous look his daughter gave him and took out his old-fashioned gold turnip watch, holding it away from him so that his long-sighted eyes could read its face.

"You must get ready, my love. Already we shall be late for Elaine's party and that is more than discourteous in these days of inadequate domestic help."

He kissed the top of her head, a long, thin man with a Victorian dome of a forehead over a gentle melancholy face; a relic of a generation soon to be lost, liberal and humane, self-disciplined and unashamedly pedantic.

Yolande turned from the window of their Georgian cottage and looked unhappily at her father. She remembered with a momentary surprise how the things they had done together had seemed to fill her whole life—until she met Ivan. But now her world had shifted its centre and was taking on new colours and new patterns. It was time the old fogey brought himself up to date a bit, Ivan had said impatiently; why should she live like a museum piece? And yet...life with Ivan was sometimes rather alarming... As for Richard Southey, well it was really very silly of him to hang about when she had told him she and Ivan were in love and going to get married.

Standing all the distance of his sixty years away from her, Henry regarded her perplexedly.

"Come, dear, have your bath and put on your pretty frock," he said.

Yolande's eyes came to rest on his face again and stayed there, startled. Despite his gentle tone, something was in his face that sent a cold shudder of fear through her. Perhaps he noticed it, for in a flash all strangeness was gone and his aspect so familiar that she could only believe herself mistaken and foolish.

"I'll be quick," she promised. But she hesitated a moment and laid a hand on his arm, "Daddy?"

He smiled at her questioningly.

 

"Daddy, couldn't you try to like Ivan?"

Immediately she wished she had left the words unspoken. The unfamiliar, cold impassivity seemed to freeze his features again, and his arm was stiff under her hand. After a moment he replied carefully, "I won't be picking any more quarrels with that young man of yours. Now off you go."

"Can't you make that damn brother of yours fork out enough to go on with, he's always throwing money around though God knows where he gets it from. He seems to be out of work as much as he's in it."

Phoebe struggled with a dress for which she'd grown a good deal too plump, as she threw the question at her husband who sat on the unmade bed leaning against the bedpost, gazing at her abstractedly. A small child in a cot watched them solemnly; in a basket on a trunk in the corner, a baby was sleeping.

"Ivan won't part, you know that." He began to roll a cigarette. "Southey's an influential chap; I suppose he might put some commercial stuff my way if I asked him. I'll think about it if nothing else turns up."

"Nothing will turn up. If there's any hope in that quarter, for Heaven's sake ask him tonight when you see him."

"A good fifty other people'll be seeing him, too."

His wife made an exasperated sound.

"Oh, well, all right, I'll see how it pans out. If that damn sitter-in doesn't get here soon, we won't get there at all tonight."

"You shouldn't be rude about her considering she does it for nothing." Steps sounded on the bare stairs outside their

one-room flat. "There she is now."