An Unkindness of Ravens Read Free

something so secretive and deceitful about him. I used to think no one could be so obviously like that if they really had something to hide.’
    ‘But now you’re not so sure.’
    Til tell you something I was scared to tell you at the time. I thought you might do something violent.’
    ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ve always been so wild and free with my fists. What are you on about?’
    ‘He made a pass at Sylvia.’
    She said it defiantly. Standing there in the long red dress, holding the sherry glass, her eyes suddenly wide and wary, she looked astonishingly young.
    ‘So?’ His elder daughter was thirty, married twelve years, and the mother of two tall sons. ‘She’s an attractive woman. I daresay men do make passes at her and no doubt she can take care of herself.’
    Dora gave him a sidelong look. ‘I said I was scared to tell you. She was fifteen at the time.’
    The violent feelings she had predicted were there to hand. After all those years. His fifteen-year-old daughter! He resisted the temptation to bellow. Nor did he stamp. He took a sip of his drink and spoke coolly. ‘And, like a good little girl, she came to mother and told her?’
    Dora said flippantly, ‘Sweet of her, wasn’t it? I was touched. I think the truth was, Reg, she was scared stiff.’
    ‘Did you do anything?’
    ‘Oh, yes. I went to him and told him what her father was. He didn’t know. I don’t think there was ever much communication between him and Joy. Anyway, it worked. He made himself very scarce and Sylvia didn’t baby-sit for them again. I didn’t tell Joy but I think she knew and was disillusioned. Anyway, she didn’t adore him any more the way she used to.’
    ‘I was adored once,’ Wexford quoted.
    ‘And still are, darling. You know we all adore you. You haven’t forfeited our respect, running after little girls. Can I have some more sherry?’
    ‘You’ll have to get it yourself,’ said Wexford, opening the oven and taking out the pie. ‘All this drinking and gossiping. I want my dinner.’
    2
     The firm of Sevensmith Harding had been founded in 1875 by Septimus Sevensmith who called himself a colourman. He sold artists’ materials in a shop in the High Street in Myringham. Paints for exterior—and interior-decorating use came along later. After the First World War in fact, when Septimus’s granddaughter married a Major John Harding who left a leg behind him at Passchendaele.
    The first great house-building boom of the eighties and nineties was past and gone, the next due to begin. Major Harding got in on it. He began manufacturing in huge quantities the browns and greens dear to the hearts of builders creating the terraces and semidetacheds which were growing in branches and tentacles out of South London. And towards the end of the decade he brought out a daring shade of cream.
    Already the company had been renamed Sevensmith Harding. It kept its offices in Myringham High Street, though the factory behind was soon to be moved to sites on distant industrial complexes. With the disappearance of its retail trade the shop as such also disappeared.
    The world’s paint industry enjoyed a steady growth during the 1960s and early 1970s. It is estimated that close on five hundred companies make paint in the United Kingdom but the bulk of the sales volume is handled by a few large manufacturers. Four of these manufacturers dominate the British Isles and one of them is Sevensmith Harding.
    Today their paints, Sevenstar vinyl silk and Sevenstar vinyl matt emulsion, Sevenshine gloss and satin finish, are manufactured at Harlow in Essex, and their wallpapers, borders and coordinating tiles at Crawley in Sussex. The head offices in Myringham, in the centre of the High Street opposite the Old Flag Hotel, have more a look of solicitors’ chambers or the establishment of a very refined antique dealer than the seat of paint makers. Indeed, there is scarcely anything to show that they are paint makers. The bow windows with their