‘Good God!’ said Brian, who had been reading the Ennistone Gazette over breakfast.
‘What?’
‘We’re in the bloody paper!’
‘About the streaker?’
‘No, not that! I mean Tom and George, not us, but we’ll be dragged in. Good grief! whatever have they been up to, damn them? Tom wants thrashing and George ought to be put away, nothing but trouble and it’ll land on us. Look at this awful muck in their filthy gossip column!’ He handed the paper over to Gabriel.
MCCAFFREY PRACTICAL JOKE GOES TOO FAR
Extraordinary scenes took place on Saturday night at the so-called ‘Slipper House’, luxury abode in Victoria Park lately purchased from Mrs Alexandra McCaffrey by Professor John Robert Rozanov as a home for his grand-daughter Miss Harriet Meynell and her maidservant. ‘Rehearsals’ of The Mask of Aphrodite in the Ennistone Hall broke up in confusion when George and Tom McCaffrey led a drunken rabble to lay siege to the two damsels in their flossy seclusion. Drinking and shouting, the revellers, who included parish priest Reverend Bernard Jacoby, attempted to gain access to the house, and failed, proceeded to wreck the garden, fouling the lawns and damaging valuable trees and shrubs. Stones were thrown at the windows, one of which shattered a pane of antique stained-glass. Also present were a number of young men in outrageous ‘drag’ and their sponsor, our own Madame Diane. At last, with the connivance of the maidservant who opened the back door to him, George McCaffrey was enabled to enter the house, while his brother Tom howled with laughter outside. What happened next is not recorded! One fact has emerged. The so-called maid, Pearl Scotney, is no other than the sister of the afore-mentioned Madame D, who is the intimate friend of G. McCaffrey! What makes the whole episode more mysterious (or does it?) is that Tom McCaffrey, with professorial prodding and rather suggestive haste, has lately become engaged to the professorial granddaughter. Miss Meynell may or may not have found the evening amusing. Picking up the pieces should constitute an interesting problem in moral philosophy.
Gabriel read it through with little mews of distress. ‘But it can’t be true, it can’t be true!’
‘It’s true now,’ said Brian. ‘We shall never hear the end of this.’
It was never known for certain later on who was the author of this scurrilous piece. The general view was that it was the editor, Gavin Oare, who was annoyed with Hattie for her slightly haughty letter refusing an interview, and who had an old grudge against George because of a humiliation he had suffered at George’s hands some years ago (an incident at a party). It seems likely that the innocent occasion of the article was Maisie Chalmers, the Women’s Page girl, who had gone along with the others from the Green Man, without any malicious intent, and in fact left fairly early, soon after Anthea Eastcote. The next morning, laughing about it all, she gave the editor an account of junketings in the Belmont garden. Gavin Oare immediately sent out his spies (Mike Seanu was one) and pieced together a fuller and more interesting account. On the day after the Gazette’s revelations, its rival, The Swimmer, the weekly trade paper, also ran the story, taking up as usual a different ‘angle’ from that of the Gazette. According to The Swimmer, the ‘orgy’ had been arranged by Miss ‘Hattie’ Meynell herself, who had turned out to be considerably less stuffy than was at first imagined. The paper also struck a note of its own, reporting that ‘Our Sapphic Sisterhood of Women’s Libbers were also there in force, and the so-called “maid” was to be seen hugging and kissing, clasped to the bosom of another long-haired Amazon.’ The Swimmer repeated, even more suggestively, the tale that Tom and Hattie had become engaged in a hurry at the insistence of ‘our learned Professor’. George also figured prominently. One sentence read, ‘Miss Hattie, so hastily pledged to Tom, appears also to be on friendly terms with George, which goes to show that a McCaffrey will do anything for another McCaffrey.’ (The meaning of these words was much discussed.) The article was headed Prof’s grandchild launched in Ennistone.