The Takeover by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online Page B

utterance of such things could be unlucky.
    ‘That will solve your problem, then,’ Mary said. ‘He’ll have to leave.’
    ‘Do you believe in the evil eye?’ said Maggie still speaking very low.
    ‘Well, no,’ said Mary whispering back in concert, ‘I believe I don’t.’ She bent closer to Maggie.
    ‘It’s possible,’ Maggie breathed, ‘that if there is such a thing, Hubert has the evil eye. His name, Mallindaine, is supposed to be derived from an old French form, “malline” which means of course malign, and “Diane” with the “i” and the “a” reversed. He told me once, and as he explained it, the family reversed those syllables as a kind of code, because of course the Church would have liquidated the whole family if their descent from a pagan goddess was known. And they always worshipped Diana. It was a stubborn family tradition, apparently.’
    ‘It sounds very superstitious,’ Mary said in her hush.
    ‘I wouldn’t think Hubert was malign, would you?’ Maggie whispered.
    ‘No, I wouldn’t think that. I think he’s a bum, that’s all,’ Mary said, shifting in her garden chair, while the treetops on the slope below their house rustled in a sudden warm gust of air and the dark lake showed through the branches, calm, sheltered by the steep banks.
    ‘It makes me uneasy,’ Maggie said. ‘Could you keep a secret?’ She moved her chair a little nearer to the daughter-in-law.
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Even from Michael?’
    ‘Well, if it wouldn’t make any difference to our marriage…,’ Mary said.
    ‘I don’t see how it could as it only concerns Hubert and me,’ Maggie whispered.
    ‘Oh, sure I can keep a secret,’ the girl whispered back eagerly, as if the confidence might otherwise be withdrawn altogether.
    ‘I want to send Hubert money from time to time. But he mustn’t know it comes from me,’ Maggie said. ‘I also have to think of my marriage. Berto insists that I throw Hubert out. Well, I have to keep trying, and in a way I want to.’
    ‘You don’t have to tell Berto everything, do you?’
    ‘He wants to know everything,’ Maggie said. ‘He’s the old-fashioned Italian, it’s part of the charm.’
    ‘I can see that,’ said the girl.
    ‘How can I get this money to Hubert without him guessing?’
    ‘Is it a lot of money?’
    ‘Well, if I decide on a sum…enough for him to live on here at Nemi while I’m trying to get him out of the house.’
    ‘I don’t think I follow, really,’ said Mary. ‘But I see what you mean in a way.’
    ‘It’s a paradox,’ Maggie said. ‘But Hubert mustn’t know how I feel.’
    ‘He’d think you were frightened of him.’
    They talked in hushes late into the afternoon.
    ‘We’re going a long way but we aren’t getting anywhere,’ Maggie said as the air grew cooler.
    ‘I wish I could talk it over with Michael.’
    ‘No! Michael would put a stop to it.’
    ‘So he would, I guess. I’ll try to think of a scheme.’
    ‘You have to help me.’
    ‘I’ll help you, Maggie.’
    They looked down on the incredible fertility beneath them. A head and small flash of face every now and again bobbed out of the trees as the country people came and went; one of these, approaching up a path through the dense woodland, presently emerged clearly as Lauro returning. He appeared and disappeared ever larger, seeming to spring from the trees a fuller person at every turn. A little to the north was a corner of Hubert’s roof, and under the cliff below him at a point where the banks of the lake spread less steeply into a small plain lay the cultivated, furrowed and planted small fields of flowers and the dark green density of woodland that covered what Frazer in The Golden Bough described as ‘the scene of the tragedy’.
    The scene of the tragedy lay directly but far below Hubert’s house, and meanwhile the stars contended with him. ‘Hoping to inherit the earth as I do,’ he said, ‘I declare myself meek.’
    This tragedy was only so in the