Hattie and Pearl had of course discussed George, casually before, and in more detail after, their meeting with him on the family picnic. Here Hattie had been as ready as the others to appreciate his heroic rescue of Zed, but had resented the insolent and, she felt, mocking way in which he had stared at her. She had also been annoyed by his misappropriation of the Rover, which had meant that she and Pearl had had to convey Alex and Ruby back to Belmont. (Alex had not concealed her dissatisfaction at this arrangement.) Hattie thought people should behave properly and was unamused by George’s waywardness which the family seemed too much to condone. Pearl had said, though in vague terms since she knew little about it, that George had once been John Robert’s pupil, and this information also, for some reason, displeased Hattie who began to manifest nervous irritation when his name came up. Pearl had earlier imparted to her the usual legend about George’s awfulness, together with her own view that he was simply mad.
George certainly, as he entered the room, looked rather mad. His gaze had the squinting intensity of Alex’s ‘cat look’. His round face was shining, as if covered with sweat, his wide-apart brown eyes were big and moist with emotion, and he was smiling inanely displaying his little square teeth. His head looked weird, like a flickering pumpkin face illuminated from within. He had entered the Slipper House through the coal house, which had an interior window into the back passage which had originally given on to the outside before the annexe was added just before the war. This window, which was covered by a curtain, was inconspicuous and had a faulty catch, promptly highlighted by George’s memory as he walked down the garden. He was excited by the sudden strange night scene and by what he overheard someone say about the girls being ‘barricaded inside the house’. He began to feel that deep nervous urge which he had described to Rozanov as a ‘sense of duty’. He was constrained to, he had to go to the Slipper House and get inside and look again at the girl whose image still chiefly lived in his mind as a flying-haired thing in a white petticoat glimpsed through a window. He had had a good stare at her on the picnic, but this eyeful had on the whole defused the intensity of his interest and fortified his view of her as simply ‘taboo’. He could not afford to be fascinated by Hattie, and was relieved to find that after all he was not. But now, as if he had made a mistake which was being corrected by the gods, everything had switched round again, and he was being drawn towards her by the constraint of an exquisite and agonizing obligation.
Tom had been called away by Hector Gaines, who was asking him how they could end the awful carnival and persuade everybody to go. Anthea Eastcote had gone home disgusted with it all, so someone told Hector who was now chastened and miserable. A crashing among the magnolias suggested that the garden was suffering damage. Emma was waltzing by himself under the ginkgo tree when he encountered Pearl. He recognized her at once although, for her sortie, Pearl had disguised herself. She had on a long dark coat and a scarf round her head.
Emma said, ‘Hello, dear.’
Pearl said, ‘Have you seen Tom McCaffrey?’
‘No, dear. Don’t go, dear.’
‘Excuse me — ’
‘Pearl — ’
Pearl recognized him. ‘Oh - Mr Scarlett-Taylor — ’
‘Don’t be silly, my name is - let me see, what is my name — ’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘I’ve got a whisky bottle here, have some.’
‘It’s horrible, dressing up like that, it’s vulgar, you look awful, it’s all awful, all those people coming and shouting outside our windows, it’s hateful, I can’t understand it. We’re going to call the police. Take off that wig!’
Emma took off the wig. He had found it in Judy’s cupboard as he rooted about when Tom was away and it had given him the idea. He had enjoyed deciding which of Ju’s various garments to put on. He threw the wig up into the branches of the ginkgo tree. ‘Someone said there was a party here.’
‘It’s a disgrace. Go home.’
‘Pearl, do you mind, I’m going to kiss you.’
Emma was only a little taller than Pearl. He dropped his whisky bottle on the ground and put his two arms carefully round her waist, gathering in the black coat and drawing her to him. He raised one hand to thrust back the scarf from her face, then returned the hand to her waist, locking her firmly. Breathing deeply he felt about, feeling her face with his face, seeking her lips with his lips. He found her lips and gently but resolutely pressed his own dry mouth against them. It was a dry kiss between sealed lips. He stood maintaining the pressure, shifting slightly to keep his balance, and closing his eyes. Pearl’s hands, which had been against his shoulders, to push him away, relaxed and then moved a little to hold him. They stood perfectly still together.
George stared at Hattie. Hattie had her hair in two plaits which were drawn forward over her shoulders. She had on the mauve dress from Anne Lapwing’s, for it had been a warm day, and over it for the cool evening a long loose grey cardigan with its sleeves pushed up. She wore short white socks inside her embroidered slippers. She looked like a thin frail schoolgirl, and yet she had a dignified startled embattled look, her head thrown back, her face, milky brown from the sun but still pale, pouting in a kind of intensity which answered the challenge of George’s squinting cat stare. Her lips were thrust forward in an expression of anger, suddenly like that of her grandfather.
George said, ‘Good evening.’
Hattie said, ‘How did you get in?’
‘I hope I don’t intrude.’
‘You do intrude, you simply walked in, I didn’t invite you, this isn’t your house, just because you’re one of those McCaffreys you seem to think — ’
‘Why are you so cross with us McCaffreys?’
‘You and your brother have organized this monstrous impertinence. This is what it’s for, that you should come like this, I see now what it’s all about — ’
‘Well, I don’t,’ said George. ‘Don’t be so excited.’
‘I’m not excited, I’m furiously angry — ’
‘All right, you’re furiously angry, but don’t be angry with me, I didn’t do this, I’m blameless — ’
‘You’re - you’re horrible -just like people said - go away - you frighten me — ’
This was an unwise thing for Hattie to say. George’s emotions as he had climbed in through the coal house window and tiptoed to the sitting-room had been confused, not excluding fear: a piercing exciting amalgam of apprehension and weird joy and a special old urgent feeling of guilt which was indistinguishable from his special feeling of obligation. The sudden shock of Hattie’s presence, and her defiant stance, sobered him a little and stirred him to think. Thought, evidently, had been absent. He had made beforehand no plan or picture of this encounter. So, there was to be a conversation, perhaps an argument, a battle of wits? This prospect changed the tempo, prompting reflection, intellectual strategy. But Hattie’s words, ‘You frighten me’, were a signal which set off a new stream of emotion, now more clearly defined, a sudden desire not to embrace the girl but to crush her as a large animal crushes a small animal, to feel her fragile bones crack between his teeth.
Hattie saw his inane smile and his lighted eyes and she picked up the limestone hand from the table.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said Ruby to Diane.
Ruby had been wandering about among the revellers, sometimes standing with arms folded and looking. The scene seemed to afford her satisfaction. Prowling like a dog, sniffing for the hated foxes, round the perimeter of the stone wall which enclosed the Belmont garden she had come across Diane, crouched, balanced awkwardly against the low branch of a yew tree, half-hidden in the thick blackish foliage.
‘Are you hiding?’ said Ruby. ‘What are you hiding for?’