Pearl said, ‘No,’ flickering her eyes at John Robert for a second and then resuming her grim gaze.
Hattie said, ‘Of course she wasn’t! It wasn’t her fault!’
‘It was yours then?’
‘No! You keep saying things and it’s all wrong and you won’t listen.’
‘And I read in the paper,’ said John Robert to Pearl, ‘that you were seen out in the garden passionately hugging and kissing another girl.’
Pearl said nothing.
John Robert said to Hattie, ‘Were you the other girl?’
‘No,’ said Hattie. ‘I didn’t go out. Of course Pearl wasn’t hugging and kissing girls! She was out looking for Tom like I said — ’
‘So that didn’t happen?’ said John Robert to Pearl.
Pearl spent a second wondering whether to lie, then said, ‘It did, only it wasn’t a girl, it was a man dressed as a girl.’
‘I see,’ said John Robert. ‘You admit shamelessly - not that it matters now — ’ He said to Hattie, ‘Your - your maid - is outside in the arms of vicious girls or vicious men dressed as girls, and you tell me she didn’t let George McCaffrey in.’
Hattie said to Pearl, ‘You can’t have been - I don’t understand — ’
‘Perhaps you know Miss Scotney less well than you think, Harriet. I learn only now that she is the sister of that prostitute, that corrupt and degraded woman who is - who is also connected with George - I suppose that is true?’
‘She’s not my sister, she’s my cousin,’ said Pearl in a dull hard voice.
‘Well, your close associate.’
‘No, not— ’
‘If I had known of this connection,’ John Robert went on, ‘I would never have engaged you. I asked you if there was anything in your history which I ought to know about and you said no - you lied.’
‘I have no connection with her. It was not in any way relevant.’
‘Stop being rude to Pearl,’ said Hattie. ‘I love her, and she’s my sister, and she did nothing wrong I know, let me just tell you what happened, we heard all this noise and we closed the shutters and I asked Pearl to find Tom because I wanted to tell him, I mean I wanted him to tell me, I knew it wasn’t a thing against us and I didn’t want to think that he had - and so I wanted him to say - oh I can’t explain exactly, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault — ’
‘I see you can’t explain! But I tell you one thing. You won’t see that young man again. I’ve told him not to show his face in Ennistone.’
‘You told him not to —? But I want to see him!’ Hattie was suddenly panting with emotion, unconsciously unravelling her other plait and unbuttoning the neck of her dress, looking from John Robert’s big face, all wrinkled up with anger and distress, to Pearl’s frozen unresponsive glare. Pearl refused to look at her.
‘You are a child,’ said John Robert, ‘and you do not seem to realize the harm which this boy and his brother have done to you. You cannot want to see him. In any case I forbid it.’
‘It was your idea!’ said Hattie. ‘You wanted me to know him! Now I want to see him again! And I will! I want him to explain - It was your idea.’
‘I have changed my mind.’ He turned to Pearl. ‘Would you please go and pack a suitcase for Harriet.’
‘What do you mean? Stop! Pearl, don’t go!’
But Pearl had already passed her without a glance and left the room and closed the door.
‘Please,’ said Hattie, and at this moment she found it strange and awful that she had no name by which to call him. ‘Please, what is happening, where are we going?’
‘We are going to Hare Lane,’ said John Robert. ‘I cannot leave you unprotected in this corrupt house. I am going to order a taxi.’ He lifted the telephone.
‘But Pearl will come too — ’
‘No, of course not.’ John Robert ordered the taxi, Pearl opened the door to say that the suitcase was ready. Hattie sat down in the bamboo armchair. She did not cry. She breathed, almost gasping, pulling at the collar of her dress with both hands.
After he had put the telephone down, John Robert looked at her gloomily, biting his knuckles. Then he said to her in a hoarse whisper, ‘You are, aren’t you, still a virgin?’
Hattie stared at him; she rose and then she screamed. Alex in Belmont heard the scream. Pearl came and threw open the door. Hattie ran out into the hall and stood at the foot of the stairs, her face covered with a net of tears like a veil.
Five minutes later Hattie was sitting crying in the taxi. Pearl had shoved her suitcase in beside her without a word and was returning to the house. John Robert was standing on the lawn in the light from the open front door. Pearl marched past him. Then she turned in the doorway and said, ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’
John Robert moved to the door, still biting his knuckles, and Pearl stood aside and they stood together in the hall with the door open.
Pearl’s sallow face was hard, her thin nose as sharp as a knife.
John Robert said, ‘You may stay here for the present, and of course pack up the rest of Harriet’s things and see that everything is ready to be moved out.’
‘Where are we going?’ said Pearl. Her voice was steady but she could not stop herself from trembling.
‘We are not going anywhere,’ said John Robert. ‘Harriet and I will be returning to America. You may go where you please.’
‘You mean,’ said Pearl, ‘that my employment is at an end.’
‘I told you at the start that it was to cease when Harriet was grown up.’
‘Did you?’
‘I will give you six months’ wages and a generous honorarium.’ John Robert spoke softly now in a low voice, and his face looked quiet and puzzled and tired as if he had done some hard work and was now resting and reflecting in a rather abstract way about other matters.
‘She isn’t grown up,’ said Pearl. ‘Besides, she needs me, she loves me, she has no one else — ’
John Robert said in his cruel abstracted soft voice, ‘She has been made too precious, she has lived too much out of the world, you have encouraged her in habits of dependence — ’
‘I only did what you wanted.’
‘She has become too dependent, too easily led, too weak, and it is time — ’
‘She isn’t easily led or weak! Anyway it isn’t my fault, you always insisted — ’
‘It doesn’t matter now whose fault it is. It is time to make a brisk change. I have formed the view, on I think sufficient evidence, that you are not a fit person — ’
‘Because you thought I was kissing a girl?’
‘You have unfortunate connections. I no longer trust you. I’m sorry.’
‘But I haven’t done anything, you don’t understand, you wouldn’t let us explain, it was just unlucky — ’
‘I am tired of being told lies, and I don’t want unlucky people in my employ.’
‘You can’t do this suddenly after so many years — ’
‘Better suddenly, better for Harriet.’
‘No, it’s unfair — ’
‘I can imagine that you are sorry to lose a well-paid job. But you can hardly complain that you have not had enough money out of us! And when I think what my money has bought — ’
‘It isn’t to do with money,’ said Pearl. ‘You made me, you invented me, you and, you can’t just say it’s at an end — ’
‘I don’t see why not. It is in the nature of such a post to end. Your family feelings are unilateral, they are your affair.’